#but its a very entertaining b plot and once you finish the game and all its routes maybe the devs are kind enough to make an event or someth
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My Review of The Caraval Series by Stephanie Garber
See a full list of my book reviews here
*Disclaimer: there will be spoilers later on in the review*
Review Word Count, non-spoiler: 800 Review Word Count Total: 1,514
Hello. I am a little late on this review because I finished this series a couple of weeks ago and the motivation to sit down and write just wasn’t there, on top of that I read these books in quick succession, so I didn’t have time to write in between books. And that brings me to the point of this review of the whole series instead of just one book: the aforementioned reading times, which then caused all the books to become one long book in my head so, tada!
A couple of things before we get into it: the spoiler part of my review will contain spoilers for the whole series so be warned, and also this review is going to be mostly negative, be warned massive Caraval fan base.
Now that that’s out of the way, review time.
Caraval follows a pair of sisters, Scarlet and Donatella “Tella” Dragna who long to escape their abusive home on an island in the middle of nowhere and dream about experiencing the elusive Caraval, a magical carnival run by a man known as Legend, that promises a once in a lifetime experience and a great prize for the winner of the game. The sisters get dragged into the magical world of Caraval where you don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. Then the series follows the sisters learning about the magic outside of the game which threatens the existence of the entire world if they don’t find a way to stop it.
I would first like you all to imagine the TikTok audio that goes along the lines of “what happened to the original plot of the story?” because that’s how I felt reading books two and three. Don’t get me wrong, they weren’t bad, but genuinely how did we get from point A to point B? I loved the first book, this wasn’t my first time reading it, I read it first my senior (?) year of high school sometime before the release of the second book, but I didn’t finish the series until now due to life getting in the way and just forgetting the books existed until I saw someone talking about them online. I will say, the first book still holds up, it’s very entertaining and a great introduction to the world of Caraval within the scope of the game, the reader is essentially playing with Scarlett not really knowing what is real and what isn’t, so you’re fully immersed in the game. Then the other two books happened which take a sharp left turn into something so unrelated to the first book that you start to question if it’s even the same series. And the thing that makes me the most upset is how good of a concept Caraval is, it really could’ve been a standalone book or maybe had a sequel to tie up the loose ends from the end of the book but keeping everything within the same concept and not just shoeing in the concept of the Fates in the middle of the second book just because.
Really my main complaint is that for a book series called Caraval there is only one book that deals with Caraval, one and half if you count the second book but I’m not because it didn’t feel like Caraval. Essentially Tella spent the whole second book jumping in and out of Caraval when the whole concept of it is that you’re supposed to be so fully immersed you start to forget what is real and what is the game to the point people have gone insane and died. I honestly at one point forgot what was part of the game and what was part of Tella’s strange side quest. The third book is even worse because we had deviated so far from the original plot that there was nothing about it even remotely related to Caraval except the characters. It honestly just felt like the author was writing fan fiction with her own characters in a random AU. This isn’t to say that the non-Caraval plot was bad, it just wasn’t what I signed up for, it could’ve been its own story independent of whatever was going on with Caraval and been very interesting and successful, but it honestly just felt like the author crammed as many plot lines into one trilogy as if she was running out of paper to write her stories.
I think overall I would only recommend the first book of the trilogy if you’re interested in reading it, the rest is unnecessary and strange so you really could just google a plot summary to satisfy your curiosity instead of putting yourself through the second and third books. Definitely a got worse as the series went on like milk out of ten.
Spoilers Below!!
I have so many things to complain about which all happen in books two and three but in order to not spend hours writing this and turning it into my own personal unnecessary work of literature I’m going to speed round a couple of things first. For starters, I have never met a not dumb love triangle and this book isn’t an exception by a long shot, the whole Tella x Legend x Jacks plot was so bad. Both guys sucked a lot for their own unique reasons, but I think the kicker was that they were both immortals incapable of love or else they would become mortal (aka the worst thing ever for both of them) and Tella so desperately wanted love yet she was asking for it from the last two men on earth who would give it to her. Also, the love triangles Scarlet had were all so pointless, sure her picking Julian over the duke (or whatever he was) was a moment of character development and growth that was crucial in the first book, but like beyond that, unnecessary. They really brought in the real duke in the last book just to create another love triangle only to kill him off immediately and then right at the very end allude to Poison being in love with Scarlet after looking at her like twice, for literally no reason.
And do not get me started on the Fated Objects. They really had like half of the objects only to use them like twice and then never again, with the exception of the dress which like is never explained why Legend causally had a fated object and then casually gave it to essentially a rando. There’s the magical key which Scarlet and Julian use to go on an adventure off screen so I’m not counting it but in terms of the actual plot it’s used a handful of times despite being so beyond useful. Also, the magic book you can write with blood in was so cool, and yet it was used once and then never talked about again. Honestly just the number of things that were introduced only to be immediately written out or just never talked about again was disappointing. What do you mean Tella and Jacks were spiritually married and the spiritually un-married with little explanation as to why and how? How come their dad just gave up on getting them back home at the end of the first book? What was up with the alternate dimension witch and why didn’t we talk more about how she was in an alternate dimension and also a witch? Why was their mom in a deck of cards in a safe only she could unlock, like how did they put her in her safe without her key?
Side note, now that I’m here and re-angry about this, the whole plot line of their mom disappearing one day and ending up trapped in a card is just blown over despite how much weight it holds in terms of the story. Why did she disappear? Who disappeared her? Why did they put her into the deck of cards? How did she manage to just exist for about a decade without anyone finding her despite her having enemies? Was she really the empress’ daughter? Did their dad know about her crime past and was he just cool with it? Did he know he wasn’t Scarlet’s real father? And before anyone dares to come into my house with “it was implied that...” and then you proceed to connect vaguely related dots, don’t, I will scream because those details should’ve been more explicitly written in.
Cutting my rant short (unless you want to come into my asks and request more anger, I will be happy to oblige), I will just say I was disappointed with the direction the series went after the absolute chef’s kiss that was Caraval. This might also be a given but I’m not going to read the Jacks spin off series out of spite and just general dislike of him as a character. If reading any of this prompts you to come into my asks and send me angry messages please do, I love laughing and you won’t change my mind, God bless.
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rating disney movie sequels ive seen from worst to best bc i can
12. pocahontas II: journey to a new world - caught sight of it on my tv one time, and as a child who was probably still identifying as republican at that point, i s2g it was so racist i could not finish it. ‘wait till he sees you’ gives me fuckin hives
11. tarzan II - its. tarzan as a kid. like just more young tarzan adventures and dont get me wrong its a cute idea but after about 5 minutes it gets so boring
10. atlantis: milos return - this one gets a lil bit of a pass bc from what i heard it was supposed to be a better sequel but that got canned and they were working on a spin off series too so they just like. took a couple of the episodes they were working on and stitched it into a movie. its like a bootleg parody of the first film and my family and i despite loving the original , once again, could not even finish this one. the only memorable part for me was kida picking up a life preserver presuming its a game and milo telling her you throw it to someone whos drowning and she responds “does this not make it difficult to play the game”
9. beauty and the beast: the enchanted christmas - not that bad, tim curry plays a great villian per usual, its just kinda confusing where and how it fits into the plot of the first film. and its like. Dark? perhaps scary? for a christmas movie??? i remember my mom didnt want me to watch it every year she’d dread it bc it was such a bummer lol
8. brother bear 2 - ok nah introducing the new girl character was actually a baller move, and the concept was pretty cool. they just didnt make it fit very well and ngl the entire rest of the movie also feels disconnected from the first. had a lot of good dots but no good connection ya dig. also even though they tried in the end it was still just a ‘we have to give this character a love interest’ movie which kinda trumps the whole reason the first movie revolved around brotherhood. it aint wife bear
7. cinderella II: dreams come true - i barely remember it i am literally just giving it this high of a rating bc the romance between the baker and one of the stepsisters was so fucking wholesome. that true love lives in my head bitch xoxo
6. the rescuers down under - i never saw the original so when i saw this on tv i thought it was the original , thats how quality it was imo. i just hardly remember it and had no real urge to seek it out again for years. its eye catching but not super duper memorable
5. the little mermaid II: return to the sea - ik most of the plot is just the first movie reversed but i actually rly liked the character melody and how they inverted a lot of the concepts, its just. a lot of it includes secondhand embarrassment and some of it rly is too lazy for me to ignore. solid B- for me
4. the lion king II: simbas pride - INCREDIBLE soundtrack, nothing can beat the first but its still Baller, and the newly introduced characters are all iconic. my only qualm is how like. the concept of bigoted simba is very hard to watch which ik ik it makes some sense with the events of the first movie but jfc my man does not have a great look in this one
3. mulan II - most ppl hate this one?? but i actually rly loved the princess characters and the music as well, i watched it a LOT growing up. the whole mushu trying to break up mulan and shang thing is equal parts entertaining and frustrating. and the animation is a tad bit... off. but like am i ever gonna FORGET mulan hanging off the bridge and reaching for her man and screaming with her entire heart? or the way she kinda parallels his ‘ping, hold on’ from the first movie with ‘shang, hang on’? no
2. peter pan II: return to neverland - broe....... howd they take the racist misogynistic trainwreck that was the first film and make this. its so fucking good, it has emotional depth and speaks to kids who feel they are being forced into growing up too fast by showcasing wendys daughter going thru WORLD WAR II and making her an incredibly realistic portrayal of a traumatized kid, pairing her with the happy go lucky peter pan and the lost boys who CANT grow up, symbolizing the death of her innocence with the way that her not believing in fairies is slowly killing tinkerbell, it all just makes for a really impactful movie. and even in a kids movie sense its just so entertaining and at times really funny and/or whimsical? not to mention the ‘i’ll try’ song/scene gets me crying every single time. beautiful movie dude the only reason its 2nd is bc it is , So emotional that im not always in the MOOD to watch it bc i have to prepare a little
1. the lion king 1 1/2 - god yes i fuckign loved and still love this one so much. the music is fire the comedy still makes me laugh so hard and the whole idea is so fucking genuinely clever. god bless whoever came up with this one i had it on dvd and im p sure i watched it for years till it was so scratched up it wouldnt play anymore, 11/10
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Creator Tag Game
I was tagged by @for-the-love-of-wolves
RULES: it’s time to love yourselves! choose your 5 favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works <3
1. Once Upon a Time ( 99.768 words)
(Teen Wolf, The DILF Club, Chris/Peter/Noah, A/B/O)
Summary: Having one soulmate is a blessing, having two is cosmic. Chris Argent left town seventeen years ago under the threat of his family, only returning briefly eleven years later for a funeral. When he left again he couldn't have foreseen the circumstances that led to the Hale fire and yet, he blames himself for it. So when he finally returns with his three pups in tow, he has to navigate a barrage of emotions, old friends and lovers, and murders being committed in the town where it all began.
Notes: I feel like I would be lying to myself if I said that this wasn’t my favorite creation of all time. It’s been SO therapeutic to write, has gotten me through hallucinations, ptsd attacks, panic attacks, and my own worst memories. It’s truly what I consider to be my magnum opus and is still ongoing. It’s a story about found family, about trauma recovery, and rekindling old flames while overcoming your past demons.
2. Once Upon a Time trailer (1:37 long)
What is it? A little video project I made as a trailer for Once upon A Time and it still makes me smile. I’m very proud of it even if it doesn’t have many notes.
Notes: One of the only vids I made this year and it was a blast to do so. If it had done better I might have done more of them. But we’ll see what next year brings.
3. Parachute (8.336 words)
(Detroit: Become Human, Hank Anderson/Connor/RK900/Gavin Reed, A/B/O)
Summary: Staring at his hands, he realized he couldn’t take any of this for much longer. The words kept replaying in his head, like a broken record or a terrible unending mantra. He shook his head, groaning miserably as another wave of nausea hit him. He had to get himself through this. He knew that hooking up in the middle of a revolutionary celebration- or humanities last night of freedom- as he called it, wasn’t the best idea. But he couldn’t have known it would fuck his life up beyond repair. Not unless he got it fixed. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.
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Luckily there's three assholes who are more than willing to help him out. Or Gavin Reed's introduction to polyamory and basic human decency.
Notes: Honestly, one of the better written fics I’ve put out this year. I never really finished it as I moved from the dbh fandom into 911 and then into teen wolf as my hyperfixations changed. But I still really love what I have written and consider it one of my better written works despite its unfinished state.
4. The way I tend to be (5.542 words)
(Teen Wolf, The DILF club, Chris/Peter/Noah, Cabin fic, Trans Chris Argent)
Summary: Peter, Chris, and Noah get stuck in a Cabin while searching for a rogue wolf. Oh, however will they keep themselves entertained and warm? Shenanigans ensue.
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Fate could be a very cruel mistress when she wanted to be. And often she came together with a little vicious thing called irony.
The last year had been crazy. He discovered werewolves, banshees, wendigos, and werecoyotes were real, and so was whatever Kira was supposed to be. Chris Argent, Allison’s father and Isaac’s foster father, turned out to be a hunter, and the little bane of his existence during his career as a deputy, a certain Peter Hale, turned out to be a werewolf. As was Peter’s nephew Derek and his niece Cora. He still couldn’t completely wrap his head around that one.
Notes: Self indulgent porn with a plot and accidentally aquired a universe to write in. Was supposed to be a cabin fever fic and somehow I already have 3 new fics lined up for this universe. I just have to write them. Very smutty, a bit angsty, and features both a trans male character and bisexual dilfs who fuck each other. What’s not to like?
5. Honey, honey (1.600 words)
(9-1-1, Eddie Diaz/Evan Buckley, A/B/O, Mpreg, I didn’t know we were dating)
Summary: Eddie's been calling him this word for a while now and he can't figure out what it means. So naturally, he asks the internet for help. Specifically, Reddit. What else was he supposed to do?
Notes: Just a really sweet short story based on a reddit post that was going around at the time that I wrote this. Pretty well received, one negative comment, but overal people seemed to like it. And considering I didn’t create that much this year (6 fics and a video), I figured it was a good addition to the list.
And those are my five favorite creations this year. Though honestly, I think despite the type of year that it has been, I think this features some of my best work to date.
I am tagging @msmischief101 @mostly-vo1d @latelierderiot @thoughtfulbreadpolice @mother-shipper @crystallized-iron and anyone else that wants to do it. Also feel free to ignore if you don’t want to do it.
#teen wolf fanfiction#dbh fanfic#911 fanfic#creator tag game#ben says stuff#ben writes fanfiction#creativity he wrote
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Doing something for fun: RPGs about broken anuses.
As promised, after the abomination that was the Sam arc, I am now going to write random posts about more positive/fun things. However, I also decided to add a little twist to them and correlate them in some way thematically to Dobson. E.g. by reviewing a game/show that does all the things Dobson hates/obsesses about/or fails at right.
And my first entry in that regard is related to a videogame that came out a couple of years ago, based on a tv show Dobson claims to hate. South Park: The fractured but whole.
Seeing how the game is 3+ years old at this time and there have been tons of reviews & walkthroughs showing how good and fun the game is, I do not really want to cover the plot and all the things that make it great in detail. Lets just say you can really feel that Parker and Stone were heavily involved in the writing of the game, as it is filled to the brim with references to the show and the typical satirical humor of it, that in parts manages to cross the line even further for me than the show. Right from the start you get a very dark but smart social joke and commentary out of the way, when as you set up your characters looks and the difficulty of the game, it is the tone of your skin that decides how hard the game gets. Meaning if you play as a black person, you are having a very hard time. It is not too preachy, just an acknowledgment that yes, in American society, blacks can have it harder compared to white people. Especially when living in a town like South Park, where social standing is pretty low and the police force is inherently corrupt and racist, doing something so outrageously to black people, I do not want to spoil it. Let’s just say it ends in a better Lovecraft joke than any of the shit SJWs did in light of censoring Call of Cthulhu board rpgs.
The overall plot is simple: While last time the kids played fantasy and things escalated quickly as they do in South Park, this time they play superheroes, with two fractions having formed: Coon and Friends vs the Freedom Pals and things escalating just as quickly. What starts off as the hunt for a missing cat to earn a 100$ reward Cartman wants to use to start a multi billion dollar movie franchise just like Marvel, turns soon into the player and his friends having to fight a real crime conspiracy thought up by one of South Park’s most nefarious characters, which also involves genetic mutations, time travel and eldritch horrors. Thankfully you, the “New Kid” from the last game, even after losing all your previous powers thanks to no one playing fantasy anymore, gain new superhero powers, make friends with the South Park kids again and even learn new fart techniques by none other than Morgan Freeman, that help you out along the way. All while also slowly revealing more about your backstory hinted on in the previous game and the tragedy of your dad having had intercourse with your mother.
Being a South Park and RPG fan for years, I wanted to play this game for quite some time, but only managed to do so recently. And even if I spoiled myself massively over time with cutscenes and major battles online, this game is still fun (thanks in part also to the fact I watched the cutscenes years ago and by now forgot a lot of them). The turn based battle system is way more interesting than last time by also depending on you positioning the characters on the field in a strategy based RPG style, there are lots of classes to choose and powers to combine (I myself going for elementalist, assassin, plantmancer and blaster currently) and you have a ton of allies in the game. The original cast of the four main boys, Jimmy and Butters has expanded significantly in this game with characters such as SUPER CRAIG, Clyde as the blood sucking MOSQUITO, Token as TUPPERWARE and Wendy as the social media huntress CALL GIRL (yes, that is her name) and they all are fun to interact and play with, with each one having their own unique sets of moves and finishers once again. Even outside of the battle, thanks to the writing, there are always great lines from them to get when interacting or taking missions from them. I especially came to love Tweek and Craig, who are not just decent fighters (Tweek in particular is a great elementalist) , but in this game are also now a couple ever since that yaoi episode from South Park. Helping them reconcile after a bad break up over the course of the game just feels surprisingly nice, mostly because unlike other LGBT celebrating media out there (Korra and She Ra e.g.) none of the characters crosses some sort of moral line where you question why they deserve to be together (Hello, Catra), it is not heavily handed garbage fishing for brownie points and it is obvious through dialogue and actions they care for each other, even if they are at first going through a bad break up as only South Park could ridiculously portray it.
Overall, the game is also surprisingly “inclusive” and socially relevant without being preachy about it, if you ask me. From the aforementioned skin color thing, to LGBT representation via Tweek and Craig, the police being involved in a plot that especially nowadays is sadly more relevant than ever (mind you, I do not believe that in real life all cops are bad, but in my opinion bad eggs on both sides certainly led to the current situation in the US and that is all I say) to the fact you can over the course of the game decide not just if you are playing as a boy or a girl, but even something in-between, a cis-/transgendered person and decide your race, religion as well as to whom you are sexually attracted to. Granted, I barely see how it has any bearing on the game’s plot, but I appreciate the following things: a) the inclusion of the possibility to decide on those factors itself, making creating your character even more fun (a basic right others demand for certain games nowadays in all the wrong ways) and b) that the game does not make the biggest of deals about it. See, I am under the impression that often times the most progressive and inclusive thing is to just let the story and personality of a character speak for itself, instead of the fact that it also identifies by a specific gender, sexuality, race or other allignment. In fact focusing on those things on a character only is something I consider ”positive stereotyping”, which for me is just racism in the opposite direction. And if you no think I am going off track here and need to be beaten up by someone who genuinely has some grip on pc culture, don’t worry. This game features PC Principal actually doing an ok job teaching you about microaggressions in his typical PC Principal manner, which in itself becomes a relevant move in future battles and is hilarious to watch. Speaking of the new kid, putting things like your chance to gender identify yourself with it in more detail (which you can also adjust again later on in game if you feel like it) aside, for a silent protagonist he/she/it can have a nice level of debt to it, if you look too much into it.
Not only does it have a funny backstory explaining its fart and social media powers, there are recurring scenes of the kid’s parents being on each others throat and the kid just silently eating dinner for the night that genuinely feel sad and create sympathy in our little FartLord to the point you just want the kid to go out there, have an adventure and hopefully find a way to change its parents for good, cause it is obvious they love the kiddo, but damn do they need to cut off the substance abuse.
Storywise you get something out of this game that is way more entertaining and hilarious than the last two seasons of the show combined (FUCK the season of 2019) and game content wise you are also rewarded with a lot of shit, just for exploring the town. Be it you finding hidden yaoi fanart that earns you money, your allies helping you solve puzzles that reward you with exp and new costumes to further customize your outfit, making new friends on Coonstagram by taking selfies with all the major and minor characters of the town, helping Big Gay Al finding his missing cats, stumbling upon Memberberries, forging new artifacts to increase your strength, finding summons… all stuff that helps you not just gain exp and become stronger, but also makes you enjoy going through South Park outside of the main story content. In fact I spend a majority of my first twelve hours in this game only wrapping up the prologue missions and first two chapter of the game, while otherwise talking with as many people in town as possible, exploring the stores and houses, doing side missions etc. just for the fun of interacting with the characters and the world they are part of.
Now, how does all of that relate to Dobson?
Well lets see…
Game based on something he hates that has however rightfully more success than he ever deserves, with lots of political commentary and satire for years in its humor? Check.
Game itself having more of that commentary done right then Dobson in his own comics and story attempts? Check
LGBT representation via Tweek and Craig as well as Big Gay Al that does not feel too stereotypical despite Al himself being extremely stereotypical in design? Check
Some pretty decent/hilarious female characters in the game once you know them? (again, Call Girl and Classi, who fucks the L out of the A-S-S) Check.
Being a style of game he hates for no apparent reason, but executed well (RPGs)? Check
Thematically focused on superheroes, a trend he is obsessed about, but here both appreciating while also poking good fun at common tropes of it and the marketing of the MCU, in doing so just highlighting how much of a mindless consumer Dobson is? Check
Being a game where you can also play as any gender and race and its not turned into a “groundbreaking” industry changing feature pandering to minorities that in the eyes of corporations are just a market to exploit, not people? Check
Heck, if Dobson was not a biased idiot, the game would be perfect for him. It even panders to his toilet fetish in videogames.
Kid you not: a mini game in the game itself features the possibility to go to every toilet in town and shit in it. The process of defecation itself being a rhythm game and you earning exp from it once you took enough dumps. And considering Dobson once spend hours in Skyrim looking for outhouses, that sounds right up Dobson’s back alley.
Bottom line, this game is fun. If you like South Park, superheroes and RPGs, this game is perfect for you. And seeing how it has been a few years since it came out, I think it should be possible to get a cheap copy of it somewhere. Go on, play it. But always remember:
Never fart on another dude’s balls. It is just not the polite thing to do.
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For many turns whispers have filled the ears of Hingashi citizens; rumors of violence, darkness, depravity— a secret culmination of shadowy powers that work their hands in all manners of business throughout the whole of the One Sea. Even with the Garlean Occupancy, these families found ways to reconvene and keep their ever intangible power in place. These families, the ‘yakuza’ families of the East, found means by which not only to keep a revolving door of power in place: but also a means to orchestrate organized chaos for their very own entertainment.
And it rises, rearing its bestial head.
[BALMUNG SERVER]
From the shadows does the Mujihigi return to the world once more; a single crest that strikes a myriad of emotions into those who gaze upon it. For some, determination and excitement. For others? Fear.
(A special thank you to @wayward-whelpling for helping me finish the emblem! Go check out his work!)
WHAT IS THE MUJIHIGI?
The Mujihigi is a b-monthly underground fighting event, open to all underworld/syndicate and yakuza RPers on Balmung, including those with links to gambling and trafficking. But it is more than that. The Mujihigi is a storytelling event, a story in which is open to all who want to participate!
In this fighting den, powerful criminal organizations/families and/or those with underworld ties from around the world will pit their fighters against one another for the glory of the champion’s title (Yokozuna), the riches acquired through bets (IC gil,) and for the honor of showcasing martial prowess and strength in the name of your family.
Each Mujihigi consists of 9 fighters: Shin-Yokozuna (Current Champion) included and is preceded by ‘Hype Night.’
WHAT IS HYPE NIGHT?
Hype Night is an event preceding every Mujihigi that is more of a social gathering of aforementioned malignants where they mingle, place bets, make backroom deals and grow their influence within the organization for chances at betting on fighters for even more riches. It is a night of celebration, with performances and plenty of connections to be made.
Bets will begin on Hype Night and end as fighting starts on Fight Night!!
ARE THERE ANY PRIZES?
The person who can successfully guess the bracket results correctly (match by match, including the winner,) will receive a crafted furnishing item of their choice.
The winner of the Mujihigi will receive art from ryancaesar @ AnC to be completed on the artist’s schedule.
Information for how to sign up and place your bets will begin on Hype Night!! Can you correctly guess how Fate will weave her story?
WHEN IS THE MUJIHIGI EVENT AND THE HYPE NIGHT?
「HYPE NIGHT: 4/21/2020 starting at 8pm EST」
The Hype Night (4/21/2020) for the Mujihigi will take place in Goblet; Ward 18 Plot 34 at 8pm EST: Entertainment! Gossip! IC Gil Betting! IC Gil Fighter Auctions!
「MUJIHIGI FIGHT NIGHT: 4/24/2020 starting at 8pm EST」
The Fight Night (04/24/2019) for the Mujihigi will take place in Shirogane; Ward 14 Hidden Shores at 8pm EST: Put those bets to the test! Watch the carnage! See who will become the Mujihigi’s next Yokozuna!
WHERE CAN I SIGN UP TO BE A FIGHTER? WHAT DO I GET FOR BEING A FIGHTER?!
We open signups a week after our event concludes, but because of the Holidays it might be a bit late this month. We post the signup sheet >>HERE<<, and in our discord for anyone interested to fill out, and close it once we reach the number of fighters we are looking for. For more information about what is expected of fighters, and the process check out this post >>>HERE<<<
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
The Hype Night (4/21/20) for the Mujihigi will take place in Goblet; Ward 18 Plot 34 of the Housing Subdivision at 8pm EST.
Similarly, the Fight Night (4/24/20) will take place in Shirogane, Ward 14; Hidden Shores, at 8pm EST with the area segmented as so:
We look forward to seeing you on the sands!
(Side note, WE WELCOME ALL CRYSTAL ROLEPLAYERS TO REACH OUT!!)
(ADDITIONAL SIDE NOTE! We have characters with apartments in the ward of the fight night location. If you or a friend NEEDS a teleport because you don’t have Kugane unlocked, find Bengara Akiba in game or contact us and we will get you hooked up!)
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2019 in review in review:
A few years ago I started tracking yearly goals, books read, movies watched etc in a year, along with overview blurbs, in private posts. End of 2019/beginning of 2020 I was really frazzled/burned out about a lot of stuff and just never finished up making the thing. 8 months later, got the urge to read back what I’d got done, then figured I’d maybe go ahead and see about finishing.
Media tracking below the break. thoughts/blurbs written in 2020 italicized, 2019 not.
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Didn’t do so hot on explicit personal goals, but had a lot of stuff go ok around them this year.
School’s been fine/better than fine.
Job’s probably the biggest failing. Still with same job, haven’t made the firm moves to jump off, dragging my feet too much on exploring stuff w/ Columbia/NASA GISS.
Did not get better with covid, lol
Dating life still non-existent, but I’ve registered on apps, gotten more comfortable with selfies, improved general social life dramatically, been flirted with, updated my wardrobe, and generally started to get comfortable accepting that I’m a hot person.
Somehow got extremely better during covid.
Books
Grant (finished)
We stan a taurus legend
Guy was good at exactly one job, and was fortunate enough to have been in the right place/right time to get to do it.
Mort (discworld)
Definitely best discworld I’ve gotten to so far.
Don Quixote p. II
Really entertaining in a way that part 1 wasn’t; I was shocked how much the meta element landed for me.
Consider the Lobster (DFW collection)
had zero context on who DFW is/was when I read, and still don’t exactly tbh. Wanted to wait for a pause in The Discourse before diving into more of him, but dunno if I’m ever going to get that.
Crime and Punishment (revisited)
Weirdly didn’t get much more out of this than I did the first time I’d read it
Better Than Sex (HST Gonzo papers)
Xerox/widespread fax accessibility opening citizen access to mass media in a manner really reminiscent of what social media would go on to do at a much larger scale. Has a much more deliberate narrative arc than the other gonzo papers collections, also has that excellent HST richard nixon eulogy
The Brothers Karamazov
SPQR
Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Didion collection)
Pet Sematary
Not my favorite King, but not bad
Sourcery (discworld)
still funny/charming, but Mort really made clear/reminded me how much the hapless sadsack Rincewind mold of protagonist wears on me after a while.
The Devil's Teeth
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Liked it a lot more once I realized it was doing a Fear and Loathing thing.
Homage to Catalonia
This should be the Orwell that gets taught in schools. Make it a followup to All Quiet on the Western Front or something, jeez.
Lyndon Johnson I
Having now finished all of them, this one’s probably the least-interesting but sets up a bunch of important context that the others still then feel the need to retread.
The Razor's Edge
Recommended to me as a “white guy discovers eastern mysticism” book, but also is more interesting in its treatment of that than I’d expected (helps it was written in the 40s).
Cat's Cradle
There’s a part in this where Vonnegut’s making fun of people who try to bond with strangers over being Hoosiers, and my dumbass immediate thought was “ooh, Vonnegut’s a hoosier? Me too!”
Lyndon Johnson II
Robert Caro felt compelled to apologize for spending so much words lionizing Coke Stevens, segregationist opponent to Johnson’s senate run. His goal was pretty clearly to show lbj’s lack of campaign charisma by contrast, definitely definitely overcommitted in his own narrativising.
Libra
I want to go back to this after reading some more De Lillo.
Gravity's Rainbow
This book absolutely kicked my ass
Overstuffed and referential in a specific way that really keeps me hooked in instead of put off. When I learn about some piece of cultural context that I retroactively recognize as being referenced in this, I want to go back and reread the entire thing.
From Caligari to Hitler
Kind of fails both as film criticism and cultural analysis, but absolutely made me want to run for the hills when considering current relationship between mainstream movies and demands of pop culture.
I took a class on Weimar cinema in undergrad that I now realize was probably biting pretty heavily from this and never once referenced it.
Movies
Venom
Movie itself is not as fun as the Tom Hardy hype coverage. PG13 was the absolute worst space to aim for, PG- or R- versions of this could have been a blast.
Harryhauser Argonauts
Was tripping when I put this on, and it was all kinds of fun.
2001: a Space Oddyssey
First time seeing this, all-time classic for a reason!
A Good American (the NSA doc)
Dr. Strangelove
Mel Brooks History of the World p. I
Not my favorite Brooks, best joke was at the beginning.
In Bruges
Had been a while since I saw a proper dark comedy.
Spiderverse
Fukkin awesome!
Visually great, and extremely better than usual superhero stuff for being aimed at PG instead of PG-13.
You Only Live Twice
Highlander (Revisited)
I watched The Old Guard on netflix recently and it mostly just made me wish I was watching Highlander instead, because at least Highlander knows exactly how goofy it is
Moonraker
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
Much like The Shining, I though this would have been 100% spoiled for me by cultural osmosis, but turns out it wasn’t, and even the scenes I had seen *totally landed* in-context still.
Kung Fu Hustle
Ichi the Killer
Really gross, really fun
Matrix Reloaded (watched thru highway scene) (Revisited)
The highway scene was not nearly as cool as I remembered it being.
John Wick 3*
Probably dumbest plot of all of them, best choreography. I like how every single fight had its own distinct flavor. “Knife museum fight” “horse fight” “halle berry dogs fight”
Akira
A classic
Pet Sematary * (ugh, bad)
Why can’t john lithgow be in good movies anymore
The Revenant
MCU Spiderman
Fuck this was awful.
MCU Spiderman 2*
Really weird, complete Rorschach Test of a movie: it’d be totally valid to read into this that global warming is Fake News, for instance.
Lmao this was completely awful
Rites
Dredd (non-stallone)
oh hey Lena Headey’s in this
For All Mankind!
Watched in honor of moon landing anniversary
Lion King *
Watched it way too stoned, was like dark side of the moon + wizard of oz except instead it’s a lion king script reading + nature footage edited for lip syncing.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood *
Many scenes of very long setups for really stupid shaggy dog jokes, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. I do kinda want to rewatch now knowing more about manson, which I knew pretty much nothing about beforehand
Blowout
A good john lithgow movie
also I think I like travolta in things.
Lord of War
A Good cage movie
I like when Eamon Walker shows up in stuff.
Taxi Driver
A classic
Snowpiercer
Watched in a bar with only one speaker working, which is the correct way to watch. Weirder and funnier than I thought it was going to be, which still doesn’t make it good, but,
dbz big green dub
Exorcist III
Brad Dourif just tearing it apart
Deep Red (argento)
Suspiria (1977)
Watched the remake in 2020, which was ok, but nothing tops the Goblin score.
Elf Bowling
Thanks, Gnome
Parasite *
Interesting to me that this one seems poised to hang around people’s good esteem for a while
TV
FMA: B
Rick & Morty
Saw some episodes, generally pretty funny, some misanthropy that’s probably appealing to a certain type of teen al a something like House, but ultimately I don’t totally Get the intensity of discourse about it.
Leterkenny
Mob Psycho 100
One Punch Man
Deadwood
Watchmen
Only watched like half of it. Was playing around with a lot of hefty imagery/thematics, but didn’t really seem ready to rise above playing (tho also I feel like it’s weird on some level to *expect* them to rise above that in the first place)
Music
New Avantasia
HEALTH/ show
lol remember concerts
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard/ show
Just learned about King Gizz in 2019 and got completely obsessed with them. I don’t tend to expand my music selection very readily, and a lot of what I currently *do* know is old/inactive stuff, so it was/is incredibly exciting to have an active group with good momentum just immediately win me over like that.
Mistimed the edibles and ended up with a really good finale and a really long subway ride home.
New Yeasayer
Sad they split up
Steve Wilson Tull remixes
Aqualung’s a good album and the sound mixing’s kinda bad, so I liked this project.
Stonefield
Opened for Gizzard. Really good as studying music
Video Games
Civ VI: Gathering Storm
Hades
Turns out Supergiant’s design proclivities all work *extremely well* on a roguelike
Baba is You
Untitled Goose Game
Cute, if maybe a bit overhyped
finally fucking finished Pillars of Eternity
Had fun with it, but too long, and really dour for how long it is.
Pillars II
Kinda drifted off it eventually, but I do genuinely like that the flavor of the fantasy is colonial era rather than medieval.
There’s a Balancing Bastard Factions element where it’s like the writers are just being smartasses after a while. Having to go extremely out of their way to make siding with colonizers seem like a competitive option.
Pokemon shield
Cuphead
pisses me off, which was a nice outlet when I was stranded by flight cancellations during thanksgiving
Celeste
Also very difficult, but really easy to stay patient with, which is nice.
Disco Elysium
None of the discourse made me want to play this, but people talking about the mechanical stuff it did got me extremely interested. Mostly Delivered IMO.
Breath of the Wild
You can approach the nodes of the main quest in the order you choose, and the second one I chose made ninjas start fucking spawning everywhere when I’m just trying to explore, and there’s no way to make it stop. May go back to it one day.
Podcasts
Relentless Picnic Patreon feed
The treats really helped me start distinguishing individual personalities, compared to the regular eps.
Picnic Discord!
<3
FatT Counterweight
Fun, but also I think Mechs are not my shit.
FatT Spring in Hieron/ end of that particular world
8 months since I’ve last tuned into FatT. ah well.
Law School
He’s in everythiiiing!
You Must Remember This: Manson family
*There’s* the context
Misc.
Kindle train guy
Times Square sleeping guy + kids taking selfies w/ him
toddler singing along after Psycho killer (a, ya, ya ya, ya)
drunk and dragged to a drag show
Central park football family
Soft Steel Drum Subway Busker
Weird old lady going to grand central for oysters
2018 in review (cards):
MySelf (CC)
Self: Tower
Blocked: 10 Cups
Ethereal/subconscious: 8 Swords
Material: 3 Swords
Past: Justice
Future: Page Wands
Attitude: Sun
External: King Swords
Hopes/Fears: 5 Coins
Trajectory: High Priestess
Also Self:
Hierophant
7 Cups
7 Coins
Blind Spot:
(self & others): 5 cups || (others not self): High Priestess
(self not others): Moon || (nobody): 3 Cups
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Welcome to Everworld
If you were a kid in the '90's, chances are you crossed paths with the book series Animorphs in some way. Written by K.A. Applegate and Michael Grant, this sci-fi/action epic about kids turning into animals to fight off an alien invasion was one of the Scholastic Corporation's most popular IP's of that decade, rivaled only by Goosebumps. It had sixty-four books, numerous video games and toy lines, a TV show that ran for two seasons on Nickelodeon, and even cross promotions with fast food chains like Taco Bell and Pizza Hut that sold Animorphs collectibles with their kids' meals. An official graphic novel adaptation is now in the works, and the series still has a devout fanbase.
And rightly so. I started reading Animorphs at age nine, and to this day, it's easily one of the most powerful and formative works of literature that I've ever read. It was funny but tragic, relatable but imaginative, entertaining but horrific, and it often hit you with a sobering dose of reality that made the message of each book stay with you long after you finished reading. Best of all, its mature themes and ideas about the morality of war have made it just as meaningful and relevant to read as an adult as it did as a kid, so I highly recommend the series.
With that said, I want to discuss another book series that Applegate and Grant wrote during that same time called Everworld.
I occasionally saw ads for this series in the backs of the Animorphs books (exactly four of them), but the ads were always vague, and eventually those back pages were used to advertise other things. A promotional CD called The Everworld Experience was given out in bookstores upon the third Everworld book's release, but if the series was ever sold in Scholastic's monthly school catalogues or at any of its school book fairs, I can't find evidence of that. Botton line, it barely had any of the exposure or success that Animorphs did, and the series came to an earlier-than-planned conclusion after two years and twelve books.
This is a real shame, because now that I've finally sat down and read all of Everworld, I think the series is great. It deals with four Chicago teens (David, Christopher, April, and Jalil) who are dragged by a witch named Senna to a parallel world where the gods, monsters, and famous figures from all of Earth's mythologies live at constant odds with each other. The teens exist in this place, called Everworld, and on Earth simultaneously, with their consciousnesses jumping back and forth from one world to the other whenever they go to sleep. In addition to staying alive, their main goals in Everworld are to save it from an invading alien god named Ka Anor and to keep Senna from transporting more dangerous people to—and from—Earth.
I should start by saying that Everworld was written for an older audience than Animorphs; for high schoolers instead of middle schoolers. As a result, it has a much darker and grittier tone with less, shall we say, innocent protagonists. It shares a few themes with Animorphs, such as the stress of leading a secret double-life and having to compromise personal values for the greater good, but it also deals with themes like letting go of old perceptions as you grow up, realizing the cost of your deepest desires, and deciding whether to keep to the safe life you know or venture into a greater unknown.
Everworld's premise is clearly a metaphor for coming of age, a representation of the crossroads between childhood and adulthood where you need to start finding a direction for your life. For all of its fantastic settings and elements, the series is really about the four main characters' internal conflicts, not the external conflict around them. The external conflict is just a device that serves to make the characters deal with their internal conflicts, and this is important to keep in mind when reading the series. We don't see much of how the teens change Everworld by getting involved in its dealings, just how much deciding to get involved changes them.
As for the characters themselves, I think we're given a pretty well-rounded and relatable main cast. We have David, the self-appointed leader who feels unfulfilled in his normal life and is desperate to prove his worth due to his toxic masculine upbringing; Christopher, the less-than-sensitive class clown who leans on immature humor and sitcoms to cope with his problems; April, the wily, religious idealist who takes care of business when she needs to; and Jalil, the level-headed skeptic who tries to learn the science of everything so he can master it. A huge part of the overarching conflict is these four learning to get along and work together, and once that starts to happen, they become a fun group of friends to go through all of these crazy adventures with.
I've read complaints that some of their early character flaws (especially Christopher's tendencies towards xenophobic humor) turn off a lot of readers after the first few books. That's understandable, but the point of giving the characters those flaws is that they eventually see the error of their ways and reform. I don't approve of Christopher's intial brand of humor, but I actually like him the most out of the four because he undergoes the biggest and most dramatic transformation throughout the series. You see how finding a life goal in a world where he can't tune out reality so easily makes him a better person.
The other major character is Senna the witch, who really serves as the main antagonist of the series. Not that she's a villain; a major part of the story is trying to figure out her motives and allegiances, since she seems to help the four leads as often as she gets them in trouble. We even get a book narrated by her eventually, and that does a great job of swaying you to feel one way about her right before the series yanks you in the other direction. She's not as complicated as Snape from Harry Potter or Gollum from Lord of the Rings (even though she does shape-shift into him in one rather amusing scene) but I found her arc just as engrossing and its conclusion extremely rewarding. The whole series is worth reading just to get that rush at the end.
And that level of engagement is the ultimate reason why I recommend Everworld. It's one of the most immersive works I've read in a while, both in setting and tone. It takes you right back to the '90's from Page 1 with its now-nostalgic pop culture references and laid-back view of the world, and then it slowly pokes at that bubble with an ominous undertone until all hell finally breaks loose. The descriptions of Everworld effectively capture the feel of every location and threat, and Applegate and Grant's tongue-in-cheek humor goes a long way in keeping the series self-aware enough to avoid turning hokey. One of my favorite parts is in Book 4 when the teens try to catch a wild boar for food, only to have it beat them up and then suddenly order them in English to give it what little food they do have. It becomes a running joke after incidents like this for David, Christopher, April, and Jalil to mumble, "W.T.E. Welcome to Everworld," and then move on with their business.
Also, borrowing so many of its settings and characters from preexisting mythologies (with the authors' own creative twists, of course) builds anticipation as you wonder what other pantheons the series might explore as it goes on. It also gives the protagonists some prior knowledge going into each conflict, especially when some of them start using their "visits" back to Earth to research mythology. This helps endear them to readers by showing their proactive sides, as well as their overarching growth throughout the series as they start trying to help Everworld instead of escape from it.
What's interesting though is that the scenes on Earth are also very descriptive and immersive. It's easy in cross-world narratives like this for the "real world" to take a back seat to the more creative fantasy world, but the Earth scenes in Everworld have their own overarching story that also builds into a genuinely suspenseful conflict. This really sells the idea that David, Christopher, April, and Jalil still have some grounding in their normal lives that keeps holding them back from fully embracing their new lives in Everworld.
With that said, I do wish that their families had more of a presence in the series. The families in Animorphs were very well defined and prominent in a lot of the B-plots of some books. This made us like them almost as much as the Animorphs themselves by the end of the series, which raised the stakes tremendously whenever things started to escalate. In Everworld, we see the families occasionally but get very little sense of their personalities or the teens' relationships with them.
I don't think either of David's parents ever makes an appearance throughout the whole series, and I actually forgot for a while if Jalil's mother was even alive until he mentions her in one of the other characters' books. Things like this make it hard to feel the full emotional weight of certain events near the end of the series. I guess the idea is that teenagers going through major life changes like these just aren't always that close to their families, but it still feels like this particular element of the story could have had a little more focus to sell how torn the characters are between their two lives.
It's worth noting that Christopher's parents and brother probably get the most character out of all the families, with scenes as early as the second book showing their interests and personalities as they banter with him. Given his similarities to Marco, the main comedic character from Animorphs, I'm starting to think Christopher was the authors' favorite lead as well.
Also, one of the Earth antagonists in Everworld is named Mr. Trent. This was also the human alias of the main villain on the Animorphs TV show, which predates Everworld. I can't find any information on how both of these characters came to have the same name, as Applegate and Grant didn't write the TV show, but it certainly has me conjuring all kinds of theories about the two book series existing in the same universe.
So why wasn't Everworld more successful if it's so good? Why didn't Scholastic advertise the hell out of it to at least try and hook the millions of Animorphs fans back then?
Sadly, I think the answer lies in the reader demographics. When you're dealing with kids, a couple of years can mean a huge difference in maturity and what's considered appropriate material for them. Animorphs was surprisingly graphic and intense for a children's book series, but it was still written for children. I can't recall a single swear word ever being said in it, and things like drugs, sex, and xenophobia were either very vaguely implied, disguised in metaphors, or presented as problems that the alien characters (not the humans) struggle with.
The very first Everworld book features flashbacks where David recalls seeing a camp counselor molest a child and hearing a football coach call a player the "F" word for not being tough enough on the field—and they don't just say "the 'F' word" in the book either. Add a few dollops of religion, sexuality, infidelity, teen alcoholism, and other adult language throughout each book, and there was no way Scholastic could promote this series to the same kids who read Animorphs. The Everworld books don't even have that bright red Scholastic logo at the bottoms of their covers; there's just a tiny, inconspicuous logo on the spine and an even less conspicuous trademark credit on the back.
Again, I can't currently find any information about this. I'm very curious to know how this situation came to be though. Did Scholastic give the authors more leeway for Everworld because of Animorphs' success and then found out too late how far the pair had run with that? Did the company want to experiment with publishing more adult material but then started getting cold feet closer to Everworld's release?
The worst part of this, if it's true, is that Scholastic may have been right to worry. According to some of the YouTube comments and online book reviews I've read, a lot of kids who read Animorphs in the '90's were barred by their parents from reading Everworld. Some say their parents found the series too dark and inappropriate. Some say their parents took issue with it for religious reasons, due to all the pagan deities that it shows to exist. One person even said they were almost barred from Animorphs too after their parents vetoed Everworld. Not the kind of thing a Scholastic executive in 1999 would have wanted to hear.
I know that Scholastic would go on to publish the Harry Potter and Hunger Games series over the next decade, and both of those saw their share of controversy too. All things considered though, I do side a little with the parents when it comes to Everworld. The topics that I listed three paragraphs ago are important for teens to discuss, and it's realistic to include them in a story about teens, but I feel like the series presents them a little too bluntly for me to totally disagree with the parental discretion. There's an entire book about a lustful underworld goddess who does nothing but capture men and force them to "please" her under threat of castration, and there's an ongoing subplot where April questions what the existence of all the different pagan deities in Everworld means for her own Catholic beliefs. Even if this series had come out today, there would be a legitimate reason for the concerns.
I'll never say to bar your kids from reading anything, but here's a thing to consider: the main characters in Animorphs are roughly thirteen years old at the start of the series, they're sixteen by the last book, and the Everworld characters are sixteen throughout their series. Maybe letting your kids read Animorphs first and giving them a chance to mature alongside those characters is a good gauge for when you think they'd be old enough to read Everworld.
And if they decide for themselves that they don't want to read Everworld, then that's them choosing a direction in life, just like the series would want them to make.
~
#ka applegate#michael grant#everworld#animorphs#book series#scholastic#young adult#scifi#fantasy#david#christopher#april#jalil#senna#gods#goddesses#mythology#loki#ka anor
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Letter for Chocolate Box 2020 (cut for major wall of text; fandoms I requested are Dragon Age, Tortall, Darkest Dungeon, Original Work)
Hello, dear chocolatier, thanks for creating something for me! I’m thereinafter (isyche) on AO3.
I like both fic (any rating you want to write) and art (gen or romance or implied sex fine, no explicit porn), Prompts below are copied from my signup, followed by a long general likes list and then DNWs.
Dragon Age
Cassandra/Leliana: I love them and their long history/intimidating outsides/romantic insides/right hand-left hand balance a lot. some prompt ideas: a) on a mission pre-DAI and some forced-intimacy or h/c trope pushes them to admit/act on feelings b) escalating personal notes attached to official reports c) sneaked moments away from Skyhold d) fighting back to back e) either one convincing the other to take a break and do something fun, in her own way. Or anything from my likes list you find inspiring, get-together or established.
For art: I’d love them being romantic or formidable together however you want to draw it.
Leliana/Josephine: I also love their history and friendship, and how Josephine can potentially light up Leliana’s tendency to darkness, and also how Leliana is playful with/protective of her. There are a lot of established-relationship missing-scene type scenarios I’d like for them, e.g., an excursion to Val Royeaux from Skyhold, a dance together at Halamshiral, Josie waiting up for Leliana to finish spy business, distracting each other from frustrating work, managing difficult guests. Or being drawn back together when Josie comes to the Inquisition after having been in the past. Or, again, anything else from my likes you’re into.
I’d be delighted by art of them as well, if you want to illustrate any of these ideas or just draw them being cute.
and some gen ideas I’ve thought about recently and would like to read:
Cassandra & Vivienne: Since Vivienne is a knight-enchanter and thus technically a melee fighter, I’m curious about how and where she trains or has in the past for that, and I’d be interested to see her and Cassandra bond in some way through testing themselves against each other.
Female Hawke & Leliana & Morrigan: These three could have all potentially met in Lothering before the Blight, so write me something about that? Maybe they all get into a scrape together and have to cooperate? Maybe it was caused by Hawke’s or Morrigan’s magic?
Morrigan & Sera: I once drew Morrigan being amused by Sera stealing templar breeches and ever since I’ve kind of wanted that fic. Morrigan is entertained by Sera’s pranks on targets she dislikes and offers to help? Sera is suspicious/scared of her but eventually decides she’s all right? (Sera makes friends with Kieran?)
Tortall
Keladry of Mindelan & Baby Griffin: Having recently read the Kel books, I was really charmed by her heroic efforts to care for the griffin baby until its parents are found, and I’d like a little fic exploring that more, or maybe it coming back to find her later on? Daine and/or Alanna could be involved too if you like.
I also am pretty sure this would make for adorable art.
Darkest Dungeon
I feel like there are potential stories around a lot of the mechanics in this game: the quirks and stress and breakdowns and need to recover through drinking or sex or gambling or religion, the weird trinkets and cultist groups, why new adventurers keep showing up to get fed into the dungeon. So, with this fandom I’m interested in fic playing with those things and building on what’s implied in the game (or art along those lines illustrating some offscreen scene, or creating a shippy moment).
I picked these three pairings because I thought they made for interesting dynamics, but if you want to include other characters or enemies, go for it (and use whatever names you want).
Antiquarian/Grave Robber: bonding over an interest in treasure and desire to stay alive and out of the melee? Getting lost on an unadvised side trip in the ruins?
Arbalest/Shieldbreaker: Arbalest takes Shieldbreaker under her wing and tries to cover her in combat/patch her up/help with her nightmares?
Hellion/Vestal: opposites attract, Vestal has impure thoughts about Hellion, and/or healer/fighter h/c?
Original Work
I pictured all of these in fantasy settings when nominating them, but some could also work as SF/space opera or historical.
Female Adventurer Lost in the Snow/Female Fire Spirit: Obviously she needs warming up, however you want to take that (does the spirit warm her and let her go like a grateful one night stand? Or a darker take where the woman lets the spirit consume her and make her one of them? or both at different times in her life?)
Female Armorsmith/Female Warrior Who Needs Frequent Repairs: This could go in either a funny “why do you come in here so much” or an angsty “why do you get hurt so often” direction and I’d like either (or both).
Female Knight/Female Bath Attendant with a Crush: I like knights and requited crushes and the sort of caretaking involved in baths, and would be happy with any cute/romantic or comfort/solace or sexy take on this combination.
Female Court Painter/Impatient Princess Sitting for a Painting:
Maybe the princess is a flirty rake and the painter is a serious type with no time for her nonsense but secretly charmed, or vice versa? Or they keep falling out over how the portrait should go and then making up? Or they're in a secret relationship and the impatience is because it's the only time they can see each other?
Grumpy Lonely Sorceress/Female Courtesan She Hires for a Ritual: I pictured this as a lighthearted story where the situation starts awkward and ends more fun than expected for them. Why does the sorceress need to try this particular ritual/spell? (unexpectedly necessary for something she’s researching?) does it succeed? do they decide to collaborate again? up to you.
Anchoress/Woman Outside Her Cell: I’d be happy with either a historical medieval setting or a fantasy/SF invented religion. Here for the pining and inability to touch that the premise suggests; would prefer a hopeful ending to a super bleak one.
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General likes (mainly a fic-oriented list, but if you do art for me and want to incorporate something here, great):
In case you want more inspiration in addition to the above. Take from it as you wish, all these things are good alone or combined
for both gen and shipfic:
Lighthearted (romantic or friendship) fluff and humor
Glimpses of how the characters manage everyday life stuff in canons where the focus is more on big dramatic events
Canon divergence AUs in the “what if x event in canon turned out differently” sense
Casefic if the characters do cases or missions or short adventures
Epistolary or “found documents” stories, and other unconventional story structures
Time loop stories, Rashomon-style stories, and other kinds of variations on a theme (including “five times” fic)
Worldbuilding/exploration of the canon world and backstory, especially parts unexplored in the canon; also, in-universe stories, songs, mythologies, histories, etc.
Holidays and celebrations and balls, masquerade or not, and dancing, romantic or not
Characters doing things in disguise, whether they’re good or bad at it
Heists and rescues/jailbreaks
Court plotting, intrigue, spying
Road or sea trips/wilderness survival situations
Swordfights, duels, tournaments, sparring, training for all kinds of fighting
Characters making things for others, whether it’s art or music or crafting or food or magic or whatever, and giving gifts
Artists (in any art form), artistic rivalries, artist/muse dynamics, artists inspiring each other
Competence and being very good at what they do (but perhaps awkward or lost in other contexts); relatedly, learning/practicing new skills
additionally for shipfic:
Angst with happy endings
Pining, preferably requited in the end
Repressed feelings and extended UST, especially between working partners who are busy with something more important
Loyalty/dedication/faithfulness/devotion, us against the world, knight/queen dynamics (either one-way or where both consider themselves the knight to the other), bodyguarding, love conflicting with other loyalties, noble self-denial and sacrifice, courtly love
Stoicism and hidden feelings/bad at feelings but has a lot, or good at feelings and good at hiding them
Secret/forbidden relationships as a source of angst and/or for the excitement of sneaking around
Hurt/comfort, rescuing each other, fighting beside each other
Snuggling/bathing/dressing/playing with hair/other caretaking
Forced intimacy tropes like bedsharing, huddling for warmth, fake dating, marriage of convenience, handcuffed together, dreamsharing/psychic bonds, bodyswap
Longtime friends to lovers, old friends meeting again, old enemies who aren’t really anymore and have to admit they like each other, rivals who respect each other
Ascetic/hedonist or repressed/libertine or inexperienced/more experienced pairings
for sex scenes:
cuddling, kissing, laughing, eroticized hands and voices, clothed/semi-clothed sex, complicated undressing, talking whether emotional or joking or dirty, curiosity/discovery, playfulness/inventiveness, eagerness/desperation, being overwhelmed by feelings, having to keep silent or hold still, interruptions and delayed gratification and intentional teasing/drawing things out, body worship, sex against walls, informal mild kink (e.g., tying up, holding down, blindfolding, taking direction, scratching/marking, tearing clothes, mutual roughness), sexy letter writing, one fantasizing about the other, decadence, voyeurism/exhibitionism, writing/painting on skin, sex pollen, magical or magic-enhanced sex
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DNWs:
unrequested setting AUs (like high school or coffee shop), non-canonical/unrequested polyamory, non-canonical/unrequested pregnancy and kids, non-canonical nicknames
infidelity (unless it’s something like escaping a forced or political marriage)
sexual violence/rape (eroticized/described in detail; I’m OK with, e.g., a character being a survivor or hunting down a rapist)
a/b/o, formalized bdsm, daddy/mommy kink, underage, incest, shit/urine/vomit/spitting
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The Hand(print) of Fate — Thoughts on: Secret of the Scarlet Hand (SSH)
Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN
Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.
Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.
Unique to this game is a section in between Suspects and Favorite Things, titled “The Hardy Boys”. The content it covers should be fairly obvious.
If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with links to previous metas.
These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: SSH, SCK, mostly non-spoilery mention of TMB and DOG, National Treasure, very spoilery mention of Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders.
The Intro:
Secret of the Scarlet Hand is the game that introduces one of Nancy’s most enduring and obvious character traits — her interest in ancient cultures. This comes up again in TMB, where Nancy once again chooses to do an internship, and once again it surrounds an ancient culture.
Given that, going forward, Nancy mostly gets “chosen” for her cases, rather than stumbling upon them and choosing to solve, the times when Nancy does make a choice are important for establishing (and re-establishing) her character.
SSH is also the game where Nancy starts being “tested”. It’s not quite as overt as some of the other games, but the culprit does call Nancy into their office at the very beginning of the game, worried that someone will steal from the Beech Hill Museum.
While we know from the tagline on the outside of the box that we’ll be catching a thief (more on that tagline below) so this isn’t a huge spoiler, it does show how the culprit is setting up Nancy to be tested — to answer their one question; can she stop them?
She can, of course, not the least of which because the culprit is obvious. However, this isn’t a negative part of the game — because for the first time, the culprit is obvious to Nancy as well as the player. Heck, everyone else in the game figures it out too — what they’re lacking is concrete evidence, not knowledge.
But this is a mystery game — this is a Nancy Drew game — so why would the devs not care that everyone knows the culprit from the very beginning?
Mostly because that’s not the main mystery in the game. Even the handprint — which should be the main mystery, because it’s on the cover and in the title, right? — is a borrowed clue, or a forged signature, if you’ll allow the pun.
The mystery isn’t who stole the Pacal carving, or who pushed (if anyone) Henrik down the temple stairs, or any other mild mystery that the game sets up. This game isn’t even technically a mystery— instead, as we’re told first thing, it’s about secrets.
This is a game about secrets, lies, and above all, the little inter-personal squabbles going on against the backdrop of a museum exhibit opening. Nancy’s puzzling out who hates who and why, who likes who and why, who each of these people really are at their core, and how this information can help her catch the culprit in the act.
This isn’t a whodunnit, or a howdunnit— it’s a howcatchem, which is fitting when your villain isn’t a murderer or mischief maker, but a smuggler. Generally, smugglers are well known to the police and other organizations; the problem lies not in identifying them, but catching them.
This is further proved by the Historical B-Plot, which once again doesn’t contain a mystery about who killed the Whisperer, but rather focuses on the relationship between the King and the Whisperer, and how secrets ultimately work to both kill (anciently) and save (in the present day).
Come to think of it, maybe this game should have been called “Secrets Can Kill”, and SCK should have been called “the one where murder is taken Lightly and Awfully and also there’s no puzzles”.
The Whisperer is an incredibly important character, not just because she also knew the value of secrets and knowledge, and was ultimately killed for it, but also because she’s one of the few examples of a theme that becomes omnipresent in the later games — she’s a shadow of Nancy. A woman who knows secrets, who is hunted and ultimately hurt by those whose secrets she knows. The game makes this comparison obvious by the end when, like the Whisperer herself, Nancy is shut inside the monolith.
Fate is the other big player in this game (though I’ll get into this later), thematically speaking. The fate of secrets, as popularized by the well-known aphorism “two can keep a secret if one of them is dead”, is to get out. The secret of the smuggling operation tries its best to get out over and over, resulting in Henrik’s fall and amnesia, Joanna’s temporary firing, Alejandro’s machinations, and, of course, ends with Nancy in the monolith.
Outside of the story, I’ll give mad props for this game being an excellent representation of an understaffed museum before a big opening. Sure, the whole thing is an ADA nightmare (all those stairs, the basement portion, etc.), but the game came out in 2002, before a lot of buildings etc. had to be ADA-compliant.
People running around, unpaid interns doing the heavy lifting, red tape everywhere — the game embraces these realities of opening a new exhibit on a shoestring staff and budget, and it’s fun to see.
I’d be remiss in not acknowledging the importance of Secret of the Scarlet Hand as the first game in what I call the “Expanded” series of Nancy Drew games, moving on from the “Classic” series that covers games 1-5. In the “Expanded” games, which runs roughly from SSH through SHA, Her Interactive pushes the envelope, relying on their now-established patterns and tropes, but also working on making the games bigger, more immersive, more detailed, and more complicated.
Here in SSH, the locations are bigger and more detailed, your list of phone contacts is longer, the amount of puzzles expands (especially compared to FIN), and the story has a bit more depth and nuance — a good option considering the game is somewhat longer than the first 5 (especially SCK and FIN).
SSH is also important because it’s the first game where the Nancy Drew Universe is really established.
We have our first mention/appearance of Prudence Rutherford, a character who appears in or is referenced in several games, establishing a canon of celebrities/socialites in the Nancy Drew Universe. There’s also Krolmeister and, perhaps most strikingly, Sonny Joon, whose escapades (and drawings) first appear here.
With the addition of these and of the Hardy Boys (much more on them later), Her Interactive shows that they’re interested in creating a universe rather than one-shot style games. This trend should hardly surprise anyone who knows that this is also the first game where Her Interactive is an independent distributor. With full creative (and distributive) license, Her became wholly free to build the kind of Universe that we know and love and associate with the Nancy Drew games — and the kind of Universe that the games needed in order to really come into their own.
The final section of this absurdly long intro is going to focus on possibly the most important thing SSH gave us: the Hardy Boys. As they’re introduced in this game (through Bess and George), the Hardy Boys are friends of Nancy who haven’t seen her for a while and show up at Bess and George’s place (or rather, one of their houses), crashing into the game with all the elegance of….well, the Hardy Boys.
This introduces the only voice actor who’s voiced their character from first appearance to present day: Rob Jones, voice of Joe Hardy. Joe’s voice is as iconic as Nancy’s herself, combining smarts with a youthful brightness and a high-energy, can do attitude. It’ll be a few games yet before Frank’s voice settles into the best-known incarnation by Jonah Von Spreecken (who debuts in Danger By Design), but the Hardy Boys’ characters are pretty well set in this game: logical, practical, and studious (though slightly anxious) Frank, and laid-back, action-oriented, and conspiracy-enthusiast Joe.
All in all, Secret of the Scarlet Hand keeps to the solid Nancy Drew formula while adding a few key new items that themselves become part of the Expanded formula.
It paves the way for the next section of Nancy Drew games and is, if you don’t have access to MHM or TRT, the single best starting point in the Nancy Drew series. Polished, engaging, and always entertaining, SSH is a fascinating and fun addition to a burgeoning series.
The Title:
The title of this game — Secret of the Scarlet Hand — is a bit of a difficult one. It begs the question what is the secret of the scarlet hand, but doesn’t do much in the way of answering it.
The game isn’t shy about showing us the titular scarlet hand; it’s displayed proudly where the Pacal carving is stolen. It’s much shyer about telling us the titular secret, building up the handprint as a Big, Symbolic Clue but never really satisfying the player’s curiosity about it.
There’s more to the handprint than that, but that’ll be covered in the section immediately below.
The other odd thing about the title is that it’s very indeterminate. In SCK, there’s a person who finds out secrets, and is killed — a rather point-blank title. STFD is an obvious pun on “stay tuned” in a television sense, and is easily understood that way. Both MHM and TRT refer to a definite noun within a location, and FIN takes us back to puns/wordplay. SSH, however, has an indefinite subject tied to another noun, and thus is far less grounded.
The indeterminate nature of the title could represent the distractions in Nancy’s way. Ostensibly, she’s just there to help the museum in its build-up to the opening of the Maya exhibit in her capacity as an intern, but that motivation gets cast aside as soon as things start going wonky — aka, beginning with the culprit’s “worry” that the museum will get robbed, and then solidified by the Pacal carving being stolen.
Along the way, Nancy is distracted by everything: taking care of the museum, solving Sonny Joon’s riddles, interrogating suspects, Henrik’s fall, provenance, Joanna’s departure, the Hardy Boys — the list goes on and on.
Perhaps the indeterminate title is to tell the players that the titular secret is supposed to stay a secret — that while Nancy works out every other secret in the game, the secret of the scarlet hand is just that — a secret.
The MysterySecret:
While there’s no real mystery at the beginning — beyond how a HS graduate from the suburbs of Chicago gets an internship with a Large museum in DC without any credentials besides “I fight crime” — there are secretsfrom the very beginning, starting with the silhouetted Nancy in the cutscene with Joanna.
HER wanted to show off what they could do, and they did it with panache, making the camera its own character rather than Nancy’s eyes, at least for a scene.
The secrets pile up, however, with the monolith in a box, Sinclair warning you about other thefts around the world, the question of if the Pacal carving/monolith are acquired legally or not, the disappearance of the carving, Sonny Joon, the smuggling ring, “Big Bunny”, Henrik’s fall…the list goes on and on.
The tagline for these games often help spell out the “big mystery” of the game. The tagline for this game is “expose buried secrets and catch a thief red-handed”, but does this actually happen?
Nancy does expose several secrets that are “buried” in some form. The mystery of the Pacal carving theft is buried in Henrik’s memories; the Whisperer is buried in the monolith; the final piece Nancy needs is buried in the painting in Sinclair’s office; the answers to the quizzes are buried in the museum. So definite props for the first half of the tagline — which pretty much spells out the first half/three-fifths of the game.
But what about “catch a thief red-handed”?
There are indeed thieves afoot, and Nancy does catch them, in all fairness. She catches the “thief” that steals the Pacal carving and the thief looking to steal the secrets of the monolith. But the phrase “red-handed” is obviously a reference to the titular “Scarlet Hand” (as well as a recognizable aphorism in English), and therein lies the trouble.
The true secret — or mystery, if you like — in this game is what the “scarlet hand” means, and to figure that out, we have to first dive into the significance of a handprint.
Handprints are usually a signature or an identifier – we fingerprint everyone from felons to teachers, and so the primary use of the word “handprint”, whether literal or figurative is to denote a signature.
The word “signature” when involved with crime, however, takes on a slightly different meaning; a “signature” here is an identifying behavior or “quirk” that a criminal has that differentiates their crimes from other criminals’. The obvious corollary that follows from a criminal’s signature and the phrase “red-handed” is the metaphor of “blood on the hands”. All of these sayings mark a specific crime performed by a specific person.
Except that’s not the case here.
When Sinclair is mentioning the other thefts that have him “worried” about thefts at Beech Hill, the red handprint comes up here as a specific signature, seemingly appearing like clockwork when the Pacal carving is “stolen”.
Except it’s not the same culprit at all.
Like the culprit in Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders committing three murders to conceal the only murder he had motive to commit, Henrik uses the red handprint as a smokescreen, trying to make it seem as if the theft is one of many (so it won’t be questioned) rather than an act of attempting to save the carving by stealing it first.
In this way, the handprint is a mask, serving to identify the culprit without actually identifying him at all. One of the greatest parts of the mystery/secret behind the game is that the handprint is a forgery, confusing the lines of proof just enough to make the player take a step back and think.
In the Introduction, I mentioned that Fate plays a big part in the overall plot of this game, and it’s here that fate really comes into its place of importance.
From the beginning, the Pacal carving is “fated” to be stolen, so much that when it happens it’s not really a surprise as much as a signal to the player that the introductory part of the game is over.
It’s a joke both in- and out-of-universe that Nancy is fated to find mystery wherever she goes, which adds another nail in the pre-determined nature of her internship.
It’s the unchanging fate of secrets that leads Sinclair to bustle around attempting to stop any hint of his smuggling operation from getting out while at the same time watching Nancy carefully as she solves the mysteries and exposes the secrets that he needs to get his hands on the secret of the monolith.
Nothing shows the hand of fate more, however, than Sinclair not actually being caught by Nancy. The Poetic Trio reciting their end-of-game lyrics simply say that the villain is stewing in his own miscalculations, and, other than giving him the wrong "treasure”, Nancy has absolutely nothing to do with Sinclair being caught.
Fate ultimately has more power than even Nancy in this game, leaving her not to “catch a thief red-handed”, but simply giving her the opportunity to “expose buried secrets”.
It’s a solid mystery from beginning to end, as Nancy tries to figure out how Sinclair could have pulled off the theft before realizing that it wasn’t Sinclair after all. Joanna and Alejandro do their best to muddy the waters and distract Nancy (and through Nancy, the player) just long enough to make the game feel like a true adventure.
The Suspects:
Joanna Riggs is the first person you meet in the game in an opening cinematic meant to show off what the game engine could do and to tease us with a silhouette shot of Nancy.
She’s also the least-impactful character in the game, which should stand as a testament to how good this game is with its inclusion of characters into the plot. Joanna’s in charge, basically, and gives Nancy her go-fer tasks until the Pacal carving is stolen.
She’s supposed to be a bit “quirky”, with her non-sensical Latin and her whining to Nancy about how the only thing worse than a highly prized and expensive carving going missing is her mom leaking her prom photos onto the internet (a v weird thing to equate, honestly), but she’s also the most innocent of the bunch, as her only crimes are over-spending on an artifact that the museum really couldn’t afford, and having the worst taste in employees/business associates ever.
As a culprit, Joanna wouldn’t have been a bad pick — it’d be a basic case of theft-for-insurance-money — but she’s certainly the most boring option, so I’m glad that she’s got nothing to do with it. That kind of a crime really wouldn’t fit the Hardy-Boys-aesthetic that’s going on in SSH anyway.
Henrik Van Der Hune is the employee in charge of glyph translation and the man who apparently was the sexual awakening of quite a few of the Clue Crew. He’s also a recent addition to the staff after he heard of their new Mayan exhibition pieces, so I can’t for the life of me figure out why he wasn’t the immediate suspect for the police, especially since it’s his handprint.
Henrik did a bit of a National Treasure-level spoof on the cops, stealing the carving first so that it wouldn’t get stolen later. He orders the cinnabar to make the handprint in Joanna’s name (really Henrik?? Like you didn’t know it was Sinclair all along?? Why??) and pulls off a moderately daring heist, considering he works 50 feet down the hallway from the carving.
Of course, if this were to come to light, the game would be over with no real bad guy nor tension, so Henrik takes a fall down the Insanely Dangerous replica stairs and winds up with a bad case of the forgetsies. At 61 years old, he’s lucky he didn’t bust his hip.
Henrik is a culprit, but he’s not the culprit, which is good, because I’m not sure that HER had the time or space to tackle the moral issue of a thief who loses their memory and can’t technically be tried for a crime that they didn’t knowingly commit.
They definitely could have tried, but I don’t think it would have worked.
As a culprit, Henrik could have worked, but there’s just not enough time to have him fake-steal and then steal for real. It would have been cool to have him be faking amnesia and sneaking out of the hospital to Burgle…but it would have taken a more advanced game engine and a much longer game to pull it off.
Alejandro Del Rio is an ambassador who works at the Mexican Consulate and is the epitome of “just because you’re technically right doesn’t mean you’re actually correct”.
While he’s right in that a ton of artifacts were stolen from Mexico (and other countries, but honestly he only cares about Mexican artifacts), but he’s incorrect in blaming Joanna and others like her, since those thefts didn’t happen in the number and scale that he’s referring to by 2002 (as opposed to, say, British archaeology in the early 20th century, as is touched on in TMB), and Joanna acquired the artifacts legally.
His cause is right, but blaming those who aren’t responsible does him no good — and can actually hurt him, as is the case in the game, where no one really takes him seriously.
He’s also an uptight, rather humorless character, but has a touch of Devilry about him (he’s not above blackmail, for example, or “trading information”) that makes him slightly different from Jeff Akers in DOG.
Alejandro’s biggest claim to fame is in fanfic, where, like in canon, he is Totally banging Joanna, and is apparently Very Physically Gifted. Good on you, Alejandro.
As a culprit, Alejandro would have been a rather hackneyed choice, as he’s the one who’d obviously steal the carving and monolith to transport it back to where it came from. It would also include giving him more to do in a game than setting up his Hate-FWB to take a call for something he, in all honesty, knew she didn’t do.
Taylor Sinclair is an art dealer with facial hair that’s sort of a grotesque work of art in and of itself, and also happens to be the culprit. He also has a CrimeFursona named “Big Bunny”, which is honestly enough to lock him up and throw away the key.
Sinclair is part of the black market and is looking to sell the carving and the secrets of the monolith in order to make it rich, which is a pretty standard motive, but is notable for including smuggling in a Nancy Drew game rather than a Hardy Boys novel, so that’s a point for him.
SSH is a howcatchem, so Sinclair’s real job in the game is to avoid leaving behind proof — and he does an excellent job. Granted, Henrik steals the Pacal carving before he can manage it, but until he shuts Nancy in the monolith and takes (what he thinks is) the treasure, there’s no piece of physical evidence to tie him to his crimes.
But, like all egotists, Sinclair’s failure comes because he just couldn’t resist being a cackling madman.
As a culprit, Sinclair’s perfect for this game. He’s slimy, untrustworthy, and pretty much everything you imagine a smuggler to be. He doesn’t really need any fleshing out beyond what he already has, because he lurks in the shadows for most of the game, only appearing when he has to in order to get information.
The Hardy Boys:
Honestly speaking, the Hardy Boys are the most important “innovation” of this game, and are the addition that really created the Nancy Drew games as we know and love them today.
Not only do the Hardy Boys establish that Nancy isn’t alone in this universe — that there are others her age out there like her, who solve mysteries and catch bad guys — but they also give the game regular phone friends who are established as capable of helping Nancy solve anything she asks for.
This makes a lot more sense than Bess/George/Ned suddenly becoming Super Sleuths, and frees up Ned/Bess/George to offer help and have dialogue more appropriate to their increasingly-fleshed-out characters.
And that’s the real benefit to the Hardy Boys: they allow for varied characterization for Nancy’s friends.
Before this game, Bess/George/Ned have all been indistinguishable from each other, possibly excepting Bess’ lame puns. From this game on, each reoccurring phone friend has their own personality, their own quirks, and their own areas of expertise.
Also, I adore the Hardy Boys (and have since I was small), so it’s great to see them semi-regularly. I love that sometimes you call them together, sometimes it’s one or the other, sometimes they appear in game…it’s really nice to have these characters to lean on and provide entertainment and freedom to the Nancy Drew world and formula.
On a final note, I don’t find it to be a coincidence that this is the first game with the Hardy Boys and that it’s also the most Hardy Boys-eque game so far (smuggling plots, false thefts, a suspect nearly dies and then decides to help out, the Hero Detective is trapped with no obvious means of escape, etc.). It’s a nice nod to the source material, and I appreciate it.
The Favorites:
I love the focus here on knowledge and on the quizzes as Nancy learns with the player. It’s one of the few games to truly be “edutainment” in the sense that it was meant back in the early 2000s, and I really do adore the pure and unbridled appreciation for learning in this game.
The puzzles in SSH are well-placed and make sense as part of the museum exhibit, allowing for the classic puzzles that Nancy Drew games (and players) know and love without having them feel kitschy or out of place.
Hands down my favorite thing in this game is how much characterization it features. Nancy’s in fine form, as are Bess and George, and the Hardy Boys, but even minor characters like Franklin Rose and Poppy Dada and Prudence Rutherford all have their own unique voices, problems, motivations, and secrets.
The four suspects are well-introduced and fleshed out, and do things simply for their own reasons rather than attempting to sound suspicious for the developers’ sake. It’s a great trend, and one that continues to grow (despite a few misses) as the series goes on.
Hat-tip to the Hardy Boys again here. I’ve said really all I want to say, but it’d be lying to not include them in the list of my favorite things about this game.
Sonny Joon is a great little easter egg (albeit a retroactive easter egg) and I thoroughly enjoy his presence in the game. “Hurricane Sonny” blows in and sticks around for the rest of the series, and it’s a joy to experience.
The best puzzle in the game…I really enjoy the audio quiz thing, but I get how it wouldn’t be other people’s cuppa. I’m gonna go ahead and say that it’s figuring out how to get the last artifact from the Poppy Dada painting, as it requires you do jump through just the right amount of hoops, and gives you some hilarious conversations while you’re figuring it out.
The best moment in this game hands-down is when Prudence Rutherford insinuates that she killed her mother-in-law for the necklace. It’s hilarious.
The Un-Favorites:
There are, however, a few things about this game that make it into the least-favorite category.
Collecting the packages with the different artifacts is almost wholly reliant on luck and patience, and it can be extremely annoying to have to go to sleep and wake up 4/5 times in a row before the final package arrives. As this would be an easy fix, it sticks out especially in my mind as being a pointlessly annoying thing.
Taylor Sinclair’s tie. No art dealer would wear that. It looks like a bottle of mustard and a placenta had a baby.
I do hate (as noted below in the Fix section) that you can only call certain people on certain phones. Phones don’t work that way — not even back in 2002 — and it is frustrating to have to travel back and forth or wait for morning to make a game-progressing phone call.
The worst puzzle in the game in my opinion is probably lugging the monolith stones around, because it really bothers me that if you take the shortest path, Nancy drops them, but if you take a slightly longer path, she’s totally fine.
While I can see how the quizzes might cause some people problems, if you take notes like the game encourages you to do (I remember taking notes in a spiral notebook for the first…10 games, about? Until we moved to sticky notes, because as me and my sister got much older, we didn’t need to write down as much), the quizzes are a walk in the park.
The worst moment in the game (which is still a great moment, just definitely my least favorite) is when the sirens go off in the museum. It’s loud, obnoxious, and Joanna just APPEARING suddenly makes me jump every time. It’s a testament to how good this game is that this is the worst moment I can think of.
The Fix:
So what fixes does SSH need?
Honestly, not many.
It’d be great to simplify the phones, so that any person you can call on one phone you can call on any phone (avoid the travel back and forth from the hotel to the museum, in other words), and to have deadlines or exact moments for package delivery so that you’re not waiting days (in-game) for the last straggler to show up.
Other than those small quibbles, however, there’s not much that needs fixing or refreshing in SSH. It’s educational, entertaining, difficult enough on the first go-around to keep you on your feet, but not so hard that replay value is lost — and there are no puzzles so bad that they make the game lose replay value, either.
SSH is a great game, both as #6 in the series and as a first game to those who can’t access the Classic Games, and is a delight to play — both the first time and in replays.
#nancy drew#nancy drew games#clue crew#secret of the scarlet hand#nancy drew meta#SSH#video games#my meta
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2018 in-house shows posted!
Once more, no mention on their facebook page or in their emails, but I suppose that’s what I’m here for. If you go to PARF’s website, you’ll find that the list of in-house shows has at last been updated for this season. I took the liberty of copy-pasting it all here nonetheless.
King’s Court
King Henry and Queen Catherine host the visiting king and queen of France. Never before have so many monarchs gathered upon a Mt. Hope stage! Will the Master of Revels, Sir Walter Roderick Kensington, be up to the task of entertaining four royals? Join them at the Endgame stage, and watch the saga of the Field of Cloth of Gold commence!
(I am so pleased that they specifically mentioned the question of whether Sir Walter will be able to cope with four monarchs.)
Human Chess
King Henry and King Francis, in the spirit of friendly competition, have agreed to match wits in a game of Human Chess. All the denizens of Mt. Hope, from lowly peasants to noble knights, will take the board as members of the kings’ armies. But as the ring of steel fills their ears, and the thrill of battle heats their blood, will the contest stay friendly for long?
(I didn’t read the above description, for it undoubtedly contains what would count as spoilers to me.)
Ultimate Joust
As the sun sets upon Bosworth Field, four knights will meet in mounted combat, as a crowd of thousands looks on. Come and cheer for your favorite knight; thrill to the pounding hooves and the clash of steed and steel. Join the royal court and all the villagers of the Shire, in the epic Ultimate Joust that has made Mt. Hope famous.
(I didn’t read the above description, for it undoubtedly contains what would count as spoilers to me.)
Finale in Song
As the festival day draws to a close, the town gathers for a final celebration of song, dance, and laughter. Join King Henry and Queen Catherine, along with King Francis and Queen Claude of France, and the entire town of Mt. Hope, in a village event that reveals the very heart of the Shire.
(I didn’t read the above description, for it undoubtedly contains what would count as spoilers to me.)
Grand MacGuffin Melee
Good Master MacGuffin has not had much luck with his establishment. It seems like every new business venture he tries always winds up in a massive brawl. But this time, he has decided to attract a fancier sort of clientele. Come attend the grand opening of MacGuffin’s Gallerie of Fine Arte. With such a high-class aspiration, what could possibly go wrong?
(I’d finished reading this before I registered that it was for a show I consider storyline, and therefore didn’t want spoilers for. That said, this can only end well.)
Disasterpiece Theatre
The Master of Revels, Sir Walter Roderick Kensington, has assembled the shire's best performers (who had nothing else going on at the time) to delight our guests with a masterpiece on the stage. They present a different modern story with a 16th century twist every weekend; and of course when Sir Walter tries to get something done-- anything that can go wrong will go wrong. It will truly be a Disasterpiece!
(As soon as I’d read the title and the fact that the description starts with naming Sir Walter, I was already dying with laughter. I am so glad that character and his particular style of overwroughtness managed to become so iconic. This promises to be fantastic. I predict that they will definitely adapt Mean Girls, if nothing else. I also vote for an adaptation of Newsies. Les Mis would be great, but I dunno that that counts as “modern”, and it’s also a little long, ya kno?)
Bloody Best
Attend the tale of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, He Who Would be King of Scotland. ‘Tis forty minutes of brutal combat, murder most foul, and disturbingly comic violence. And blood. There will be blood.
(B l o o d y B e s t i s t h e S c o t t i s h P l a y. Which should be interesting, because the entirety of the grounds count as a theatre, and it’s only safe to name the play if it’s in the script. So what if someone tries to interact with the performers regarding the contents of Bloody Best after the show is over? Would improvised interaction be close enough to keep them safe? Or will it call down the curse if they are forced to utter it in that circumstance? And if the latter is true, will they then be able to get to the edge of the grounds / the gate into the performer-only area [that is, leave the theatre] in time to be able to perform the ritual to lift the curse? Most importantly, am I cruel enough to put this to the test?)
The Sirens
The pirate crew of the Relentless Contessa is out for blood and gold...on any other normal day, but today, they are taking a break to demonstrate their fierce musicality, daring boldness, and filthy pirate jests!
(THE SIRENS ARE PYRATES THIS TIME AT LAST FINALLY YESYESYES I HAVE BEEN WANTING THIS FOR YEEEEAAAARRRRS!!!) (No Bloody Shame [THE BLOODY SHAME!] though. I’m sad.)
The Rakish Rogues
What happens when two French Nobles and two English Nobles are employed by Their Majesties to entertain the masses? They don't know either! Watch these charming nobles sing revelrous songs and regale you with rowdy vulgarities.
(After years of the Rogues being in some of the more lightweight outfits, their day of reckoning has finally come. Boys, welcome to the excessively heatstroke-laden life of a noble.)
The Irish Revels
The three Eugenia Sisters, proprietors of The Wild Rose Inn, are celebrating the return of their father by reassembling the family band. Join them for rousing Irish folk music and quirky family values.
(THE IRISH REVELS ARE RETURNING THE IRISH REVELS ARE RETURNING THE IRISH REVELS ARE RETUUUURNIIIIINNNNNG!!!!!) (Yo, the MacGuffin Stables and Tavern has competition!)
Friday Knights
Come see our Improv Track perform feats of mental, verbal, and physical agility for your entertainment! Presented in 2 acts, the first half is a competition of comedy as 2 teams face off against each other in "Whose Line..." style improv games hoping to earn the laughs and love of our audience judges. Then, after the intermission, both teams come together to perform a completely improvised musical based on the audience's suggestion!
(Quite pleased this is back. Rest assured I shall actually attend this time.)
Neighborhoods
Kings and Queens are great and all, but what do the average citizens of Mount Hope do on a festival day? Seek out these interactive stories that you can get involved in all over the shire to find out! Provide your expert opinion at a Town Hall Meeting; help track and arrest a wanted thief (or help the thief escape!). Get involved in the happenings of Mount Hope and influence the lives of its inhabitants at these scenarios found not on stages, but in the neighborhoods all around the shire.
(So.... literally exactly what it’s always been. It’s just listed here this time.)
Music with Their Majesties
Take a break with Their Majesties, as they demonstrate Their musical merits and host the best of entertainment from the realm.
(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Robin Hood
You think you know the story of Robin Hood? You've probably never heard it like our Apprentice of Revels and her rag-tag team are going to tell it to you.
(........ Apprentice of Revels? There’s a Apprentice of Revels now? Sir Walter has a hecking apprentice this year! I’m like really really hyped about this character’s existence. For some reason, my mom is convinced this role is gonna be played by Katie Markey.)
Finale Dumb Show
Have you missed every Plot Show during the Faire day? Did you not even know there WAS a plot? Arrive to the Globe Stage 15 minutes before Finale In Song to catch up on what happened in the silliest way possible!
(I am left with a deep-seated happiness over the Dumbshow’s return. But they wrote it wrong. I have it from the actors, it is oNE WORD!)
The Legend of One-Eyed Willy
The Cabin Boy of the "Relentless Contessa" has been tasked with finding more members for the ship's Pirate Crew. Come join his crew, and witness the tale of the most feared pirate to ever sail the seven seas! Presented by The Mount Hope Players!
(was One-Eyed Willy aboard the original Bloody Shame [THE BLOODY SHAME!]? That wold be a good reason to fear them.)
King's Cavalry
Join the Master of Revels and The Lady Mayor for some literal horse-play on the chessboard directly before our Human Chess match! Bring your nipperkins so that they may join the King's Royal Mounted Cavalry!
(Everybody who, like me, attends King’s Cavalry because they went to Chess early to secure good seats, Y’ALL BETTER FUCKIN’ CLAP AND CHEER FOR THOSE KIDS, I SWEAR!)
King Arthur: The Legend of Murray
Everyone knows that King Arthur was the Wizard Merlin's greatest apprentice, but did you know Merlin had another apprentice after Arthur? Come experience the tale of Merlin's OTHER apprentice: Murray!
(I’m gonna have to figure out how to make this fit with the canon of BBC’s Merlin, friggin’ fantastic.)
Is... is there no Tournament Joust this year then, or....
#i'm actually really caught up over the absence of tournament joust#what does it mean?????#in any case i am EXTREMELY EXCITED#THESE SHOWS LOOK SO GOTDAMN GOOD OKAY#AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA#MY ANTICIPATION KNOWS NO BOUNDS#IT IS A POWERFUL BEING ALL OF ITS OWN#IT MAY HAVE ALREADY ACHIEVED SENTIENCE#AM I EVEN THE ONE TYPING THIS ANYMORE?#COULD IT NOT BE MY MANIFESTED ANTICIPATION WHICH ACHIEVED SENTIENCE AND FORCED ME OFF MY OWN COMPUTER?#parf news#parf in-house shows#parf 2018#parf#pa ren faire#pa renn faire#pa renaissance faire#pennsylvania renaissance faire#renaissance faire#renn faire#ren faire#faire#renfest#ren fest#renaissance festival#here's a health to the queuempany
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Research, Holiday Task 2021
Will Wright
Will Wright is a Video Game Designer known for revolutionizing simulation games during the time when he worked at his company Maxis and EA. After 2009 he left Electronic Arts to run a Think-Tank, Stupid Fun Club Camp, and start working on the Mobile Game Proxi. Will Wright Is most famous for designing the Sims, a life simulation game where you control and simulate the lives of your “Sims”. The Game Involves numerous mechanics to achieve the life simulation for example getting your sims to go to work, form relationships and eat food. the player can also buy, sell and renovate their houses to fit the players style. The Games where inspired by two books, A Pattern Language and Understanding Comics which describe the need for a designer and consumer/user to “collaborate” to achieve a functional design and to get them involved and interested in your creation. The Sims was actually a side project worked on by Will Wright since the heads of the company didn’t think it would be profitable, so he had to work on it on the side while developing SimCity 2000. SimCity is also Will Wrights Magnum Opus, its a city building simulator developed in 1989, the point of the game is to build and design a functioning city, other then that there are no specific goals to complete. the player can build roads, zone areas change taxes and build power grids anything to build the city they desire. the game has a ton of code running in the background changing constantly depending on the crime rate, happiness of the citizens, traffic laws and the player will have to adapt to deal with these problems when they arise. Development started on this game when Will was working on Raid on Bungeling Bay, which he described saying that he found it more fun to design the islands then actually playing the game. Will Wright is an inspiration to me cause he understands the need to create a good design and system so a player can easily pick up and play such complex simulations and find it enjoyable. Will Wright has changed how games should be designed which got me interested in the actual “making a game fun” part of game dev. The actual creating part of what the player will see and interact with. Will Wright stands out to me because every project he has worked on people said that it wouldn’t sell, it wouldn’t be popular and yet he has created franchises and games that have sold millions and has won him so many awards and accolades, just shows the dedication and perseverance he has and gives to his projects.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGqERcLlatc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yLpvhNfoWA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVH9Q8M8eaQ
SimCity 1989, Multiplayer mode
SimEarth
Ken Levine
Ken Levine is known for developing and designing many story driven First Person Games, leading him to being called one of the “Storytellers of the Decade”. Ken Currently Works at the company Ghost Story Games which he co-foundered. Ken first project was with Doug Church when he helped design Thief: The Dark Project, a stealth video game released in 1998. The Game is set in A Gaslamp fantasy world where players take the role of a master thief that gets involved in a complex plot involving a cult trying to unleash a unnatural chaos. Ken Levine helped design some unique and integral mechanics for the game such has using light and sound for the stealth mechanics, requiring player to alter the environment to maintain stealth. Ken Also helped to design the world and feel of the game, a city on the verge on a transition from medieval to modern. After he finished working on thief he went on to found Irrational Games, which is where he would create many a masterpiece. First he worked on System Shock 2, a hybrid of a role playing game crossed with a first person shooter. The Game is about a solider thats trying to handle a outbreak of genetic infection that has devastated the spaceship they are on. The Game is a blend of an FPS with role playing elements for example the player can develop skills like hacking on psionics. the player has a range of weapons from melee to space wizard attacks allowing the player to play the game the way they want to play it. This Game is also where backstory and lore is told through audio recordings but also a lot of environmentally story telling is used which would be more famously used in Ken’s next game. Another feature that would be used in other games was the research feature, where the player can research specific enemies to get buffs against them. The Most Famous game he worked on has been BioShock, it could be described as ken Levine's Child. BioShock is a game which uses all the elements from ken’s previous games to create this magnum opus. The game is set in a retrofutristic art deco city underwater in ruin. the player must use a range of weapons and powers called plasmitds to fight your way through rapture and uncover the story of this place. The game has a lot of moral choices presented to the player through out the story to change the ending of the story. It is a clear demonstration as Video Games as an art Form. I learned of Ken Levine from watching story analysis videos about bioshock that give high praise to Ken and his writing and direction of the game. which lead me to finding him in other classic games like system shock and theft. Ken is an inspiration for me cause he was able to completely change the genres he worked on and be able to tell such captivating stories, which i believe is the point of every game dev to push the boundaries of what video games are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3__6BknDHc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHWYCfuPQHM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrqfPG4ZcAA
Bioshock
System Shock 2
Thief The Dark Project
John Romero
John Romero is an Video Game Designer known for pioneering the FPS genre when he worked for id Software, currently its said that John is working on a new FPS game with former ID software co-founder Adrian Carmack. Before ID software was created John met and worked with other co-founders of ID at SoftDisk where they helped create titles like Dangerous Dave. One story is that they developed a Mario bros 3 port for PC with smooth side-scroll graphics, which they sent to Nintendo. Nintendo was impressed by didn’t want their IP to be on anything other then their consoles so it wasn’t allowed to be developed. This port led them to develop Commander Keen and the founding of ID Software. Once there Romero Helped develop Titles like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake. The Forefathers of FPS Games. Wolfenstein 3D was made cause John Romero Suggested to remake the game Castle Wolfenstein a 1981 stealth game with the new 3D Game Engine John Carmack was making. the entire pitch of the game was to be Violent and Fast, a game like no other on the market at that time. The gameplay is pretty simple, just find guns and gun down nazis in grid like levels. and even doe its presented in a 3D perspective the actual sprites and assets are all 2D. ray tracing is used so the player is only shown the stuff thats needed for that level. Probably his most famous work is DOOM, a FPS game from 1993 that completely revolutionised the genre. The game is about a space marine fighting his way through hordes of demons. Doom helped to pioneer FPS Games but it also helped with developing 3D graphics with techniques like ray tracing. The games design was focused on the technology that was being developed at Id software, romero suggested to use the engine to create a fast and brutal gaming experience and that the game should primarily focus on creating a fun experience for the player and not some detailed story. Romero helped to design the spiralling levels that we see in doom, with numerous levels, pathways and non-linear feel to them. The wanted to design a game that didn’t just feel like a flat boxy plain like Wolfenstein. Romero also worked on the Mulitplayer levels of Doom, which he named Deathmatches this would lead to the huge popularizing of Multiplayer modes in FPS games. After the release the Doom and Doom 2 the company started development on a true 3D game that wasn’t just a bunch of 2d Sprites at specific angles, Quake. Quake was the first truly 3D FPS game developed by Id since the game engine could actually do real time 3D rendering, sadly the development of this game was rocky and many prominent Id software devs left after its release, one of them was John Romero. there were a lot of creative differences between the company and romero, romero really wanted to push to capabilities of the game while many higher ups that the project took too long which resulted in a “death march” to finish the game. Romero Soon left and would go on to found Ion Storm which would eventually create the first Deux Ex game. I came to know of John Romero when watching videos on the development of Doom, and the overall history of Id Software and how instrumental he was to all of it. John Romero inspires me cause he takes everything he did in the previous projects and improves on them in every aspects always trying to create the best and enjoyable experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DV2vhmtGBqM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P_dic-pSKo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnqLJpgq7jc
Tim Cain
Tim Cain is a Video Game Developer and Designer, he is most famous for developing the 1997 computer rpg Fallout. Tim Cain Currently Works at Obsidian Entertainment with many other former members of Interplay. Tim Cain started out as a Freelance Programmer for interplay working on a number of projects like The Bard’s Tale Constuction set. After finishing that game he solely started working on the Engine and Game concept that would eventually become Fallout. The Game was very expensive to develop for the time, costing about 3 million dollars and 3 years to make. and for most of development it was treated like a b project, since it was risky to create such an monumental game for the time. Development at first was pretty rocky since it was a side project Cain was working on in his spare time, eventually gaining access to the GURPS roleplaying game and using mechanics from that board game into fallout. Cain from earlier development designed the entire game engine and most of the features himself, even convincing the company to let him continue development even when the company could of worked on more lucrative projects. Tim Cain designed Fallout to be opened ended and non-linear to feel like you are exploring the world and you are telling your own story not some pre drawn out plan for you to complete. At one point Cain how to completely redesign the GURPS system into the SPECIAL system we see today due to licensing issues and he had only a week to code it, showing the dedication he had for his project. Tim Cain would soon leave Interplay shortly before the release of Fallout 2 which he helped create the main story arc of. after he would found his own company called Troika Games that would develop the cult classic RPG game, Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, Vampire Bloodlines is a Role Playing game set in a world where vampires are a thing and the player is a recently turned vampire. The Game is extremely open ended, the overall design of the game is every little action and choice has a huge impact and effects things you can’t even see and know about. It really pushed the boundaries of what RPGs could do. sadly even though this game has since become a cult classic, the game did not sell well and caused the shut down of Troika Games. Tim Cain would eventually join Obsidian Entertainment where he would help with Pillars of Eternity and Would direct and Design the Fallout New Vegas spiritual successor The Outer Worlds. I know of Tim Cain while watches videos on the original Fallout game, since i think the first two games are the best in the series and he basically designed all the aspects of those games. They are an Inspirations cause even when the people around he questioned why he was working on a game that wouldn’t sell he continue to work on it and create a true masterpiece of video game art. He also keeps improving and experimenting with game developing making the games he makes even better each and every time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60vqfUQHqc0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOPv4o9Q8Cc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4tiIhZnVqs
Fallout 1
Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines
The Outer Worlds
Warren Spector
Warren Spector is an Video Game Designer, he is known for creating the Immersive Sim genre of video games, games that emphasizes player choice and systems that react to those said choices to create emergent gameplay. Warren Spector actually started out in the Tabletop roleplaying game industry which i believe helped him to create such immersive rpgs later on in his career. In 1989, Spector would join the Looking Glass Games and would be involved in numerous projects from the Ultima Underworld to the more famous System Shock game. All this work would eventually lead him to become the manager of Looking Glass Austin branch. He would eventually leave Looking Glass and go on to work on his magnum opus. At Ion Storm Warren Spector would develop the genre breaking game Deus Ex. A game set in a cyberpunk themed dystopia and it follows the character of JC Denton which the player can control all aspects to tell the story they want to be told. The gameplay of the game is a combination of a FPS game, with a mixture of stealth elements, adventure and role-playing, with all of these features allowing the player to complete the game in whatever way they choose and each choice affects the story, outcome and characters. The game allows the player to go into specific skills to play the game they want to and allowing for unique exploration and character interaction. after a couple of years he would leave Ion Storm and get a job working for a Disney owned dev studio. He headed this new studio called junction Point and would create the game known as Epic Mickey for the Wii. Spector was fascinated with the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit Character that was the precursor to mickey mouse and wanted to create a game about him. The Game is a platformer with a slight mix of the immersive sim elements Spector is known for, such as its morality system that affects the world and characters depending on the players choices. Following the Closure of Junction Point Studios by Disney spector would eventually join OtherSide Entertainment where he is currently working on System Shock 3. I know of this person when i watched an analysis video Epic Mickey and how his past games influenced Epic Mickey. This person is an inspiration cause it shows what no deadlines, no budget etc can do for a video game when its just people working on, also he is an inspiration cause he create an entire new genre of video game due to his dedication, skill and creativity as a game developer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLDlDG1q0_o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DViSjLMC-dY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIWAMT2og3M
System shock 3
Deus Ex
Epic Mickey
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here’s a big rant about The Child Thief
ok i have a big confession to make
I’m kind of obsessed with the book The Child Thief.
It’s not a particularly good book. In fact, I would go as far to say it’s poor. The writing has the cadence of 15-year-old-going-through-their-novelist-phase. I guess I could say it reads like fan fiction. The plot is very messy. The characters are badly written. It feels like a book that wasn’t edited. The word “magic” is used a lot, and it’s embarrassing. There’s a part where a character slams their fist on the ground and yells “WHY?!” and it’s embarrassing. The dialogue feels like it came out of a 1990s teen adventure fantasy movie trying to imitate the success of a Corey Feldman/Haim movie. Several times throughout the book the thought, “Why did the author do this?” popped in my head. However, the author is a fantasy illustrator, so the descriptive writing is a plus. He knows how to illustrate the landscape with words as well as he would in painting. The book is not a special unit dumpster fire piece of shit insult to literature; in fact, as far as I know a lot of people like it and it has gotten a decent amount of praise. It’s just not very good, in terms of the surface level writing. But I can easily see a lot of people enjoying it for basic entertainment value.
So that would be my YA-focus blog summary review of the book.
My public outcry summary review of the book is this:
I’m obsessed with the book because it’s so fucking weird.
It’s so fucking weird in that it’s a perfect shitstorm of the author not knowing what he’s doing, and thinking he’s knowing what he’s doing. Like a perfect bad B-movie that exhibits textbook schlock where the director is incompetent and clueless but lacks any self-awareness, in terms of style, layout, and production.
But also, the author thinks what he’s doing is…cool.
The book is about evil Peter Pan.
I could end this whole thing right there. But I must release these hounds. I’ve been needing to let all this out.
My wretched insanity craves affirmation.
This book should be a carbon copy of every other average to below average dark fantasy novel that you see on the bookstore shelves and never heard of and wonder what the author is doing now with all their not-fame. This book should be one that could’ve been written by anybody and it wouldn’t have made a difference. This book should be one of sixty million examples of nothing special. In a way, it is definitely 100% yes definitely yes all those things. The universe decided that I would be the bearer of the burden of having much stronger feelings about it then necessary. I probably feel more strongly about it than the author ever did. It is in my life now.
The biggest thing about this book being so fucking weird is the mind boggling tonal inconsistency. There are a number of shifts in universe-encompassing moods, which go from “Christopher-Nolan-but-also-kind-of-Stephanie-Meyer-dark-gloomy-the-world-is-unhappy-and-I-like-it-that-way”, to “David-Fincher-the-world-is-ACTUALLY-awful”, to “Oh-right-this-is-a-Peter-Pan-story-whimsical-fun-Goonies-meets-Disney-Channel-original”, to “A-worse-version-of-The-Hobbit-movies-with-some-redeeming-qualities”, to “Quentin-Tarantino-literally-wrote-this.” This isn’t hyperbole. The writing language can be REALLY EMBARRASSING and straight out of a Disney movie. That tone of a fun romp for the whole family is cradled by an abundance of swearing, unsettling fantasy-horror, and extreme, shocking violence.
You know when you’re watching Beetlejuice, and you’re like “Okay this movie is for children” and then out of nowhere Michael Keaton goes “NICE FUCKIN’ MODEL” and grabs his dick.
In The Child Thief, THAT washes over you every time you finish reading a sentence. Only, it’s as if you’re watching Hook, and at one point Robin Williams slices a person’s face off, and the camera stays on the faceless person for a minute and Steven Spielberg walks into frame and points to the gurgling faceless head and describes to you how you can still see the holes where the mouth, nose, and eyes were.
(Yes that actually happens in the book.)
Or if you’re watching Neverending Story and at one point you get expository dialogue explaining how Atreyu was pimped as a boy and had to live on the streets because his mother was, uh, a drug addict or something?.
(That also happens.)
Or if you’re watching Indian in the Cupboard and the film opens with a little girl about to get raped by her dad.
(I’m serious.)
Or if you’re watching Hocus Pocus and Bette Midler is a vampire and she preys on a 6-year-old kid and neither of them have shirts on.
(I swear to god.)
Or if you’re reading a modern re-imagining of Peter Pan and the story involves blatant themes of gore in acute descriptive detail, mass murder, torture, and scenes with naked women and perverted fantasy-creature-men.
(Oh, wait.)
You’re probably thinking, “All those themes are found pretty much everywhere in every medium, especially the naked women and perverts. Big whoop.” I’ll add, then, all those themes, involving children.
Now you’re thinking, “Jenna don’t you love that movie Drag Me To Hell which involves a child being murdered within the first 2.5 minutes?”
Just hear me out and yes.
The Child Thief is entertaining in how CAPTIVATING the strangeness is. The tonal mishmash of kid-friendly meets rated-R is something I actually like, when it's a hit. I like things that have a quality of whimsy amidst dark themes. Movies such as Temple of Doom, Gremlins, Return to Oz, Darkman have this quality…basically almost every movie from the 1980s during the period when audiences had grown up with movies after censorship was abolished and half the world said “think of the children” and the other half said “no.” There are tons and tons of other examples in every medium of how general tonal contrast makes for unique and effective works of art. My point is, this specific type of tonal contrast also can be done well.
But those movies don’t open with attempted child rape, and they don’t end with children literally being mowed down in a grisly battle scene (I’m serious). I’m making a lot of comparisons to movies because the book almost feels like a movie, in that the author isn’t a novelist, he’s a visual story-maker who wrote a book because he knew that no movie studio would pick this shit up. Maybe the films I listed didn’t intend for tonal contrast to be a calculated driving element for their stories, but the subtlety of tones in those movies allows for one encompassing, harmonious tonal blanket to wrap them in. There is no subtlety in The Child Thief.
The tonal confusion of The Child Thief is, I almost wanna say coincidental. I think the author just didn’t know how to write well, but he’s a very dark visual guy and had all these dark visuals in his head ready to be unleashed. All the horrible violence and awful themes are fine in and of itself, but they aren’t earned if the attitude of “I’m gunna turn the children’s book foundation on its head” isn’t committed to, and “I’m gunna subvert everything you know and love about Peter Pan” isn’t calculatedly plotted out. The author has a bad sense of humor, a poor understanding of what is required of an epic storyline, and treats violence, horror and revenge less like a literary device and more like a fetishization of coolness in a vulgar display of power as a writer.
The misguidedness goes as far as the character writing. None of the characters’ motivations make sense. The author couldn’t keep track of either committing to one motivation or the other, a lot of the times for the sake of the plot. Especially with the Peter Pan character. He’s basically literally the anti-christ (this is 100% canon, if the author says it isn’t then he’s a liar and an idiot) and written like a “troubled villain” but then gets these VERY polarized directions of unrelenting psychopathic Cause It’s Die Motherfucka Die Motherfucka Still, Fool villainy and ham-fisted humanism and victimhood. It’s a case of like, the author meant for him to be the charming bad guy who tricks the audience into being on his side because that’s what Peter does to the characters in the book. But the author found him too cool and wanted to be his friend, but in order to justify being friends with a character who wants to murder everybody, he inappropriately gives him remorse and forces the reader to feel bad for him.
And like all the kids in the book are supposed to super love Peter Pan but the version of Neverland is like this horrific, NIGHTMARE HELL of a place and the kids are basically being used to fight in a war, and all the kids are totally okay with it, because their lives in the real world were really awful and the whole thing is that Peter “saves” them and they’ll do anything for him. And it’s like, okay???????????????????? But wouldn’t it be cooler if the kids were like okay this guy is a fucking psycho and Neverland is a horrific, nightmare hell and I’m learning a lot about myself right now having once trusted him???? And then in their retaliation Peter would show his true colors and enforce aggression onto them in serving as his personal enslaved militia? And it becomes like this inner circle of conflict? And since Peter is the only person who can bring them back to the real world, they play ball but hope to steer their own agenda out of the situation? OH, right, that DOES happen, but with ONE of the characters. ONE. Conveniently, the main character. And god knows there can’t be more than one smart human being at a time.
But if you want to SUBVERT the BELOVED CHILDREN’S STORY FORMAT wouldn’t it be fun to do PETER PAN VS. THE LOST BOYS? Instead of MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE PETER PAN AND THE HOT TOPIC LOST BOYS VS. THE ONLY SEMI-SMART MAIN CHARACTER? Like wouldn’t it be GREAT if the characters WEREN'T DUMB? And the author put in some CONSTRUCTIVE, CHALLENGING CREATIVE EFFORT and treated the interactions like a CHESS GAME instead of a CONTRIVED MISUNDERSTANDING BETWEEN JOEY, ROSS, CHANDLER, RACHEL, MONICA AND THE OTHER ONE? Wouldn’t it be GREAT if ALL THE CHARACTERS TURNED AGAINST PETER but then Peter SLOWLY CHARMED SOME OR ALL OF THEM BACK IN, to make him MORE like an UNEARTHLY MONSTER? Like the lost boys became SELF-AWARE LITERAL VICTIMS OF THE ORIGINAL TALE FORMAT, where Peter Pain is this IMPOSSIBLY CHARMING CHARACTER THAT IS BELOVED BY THE LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE? ALSO, the MAIN CHARACTER is supposed to be the MODEL OF REASON FOR THE READER TO RELATE TO, but the main character still gets CHARMED BY PETER PAN, WHILE WE KNOW AS RATIONAL ADULTS WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING TO HAPPEN? LIKE THAT’S SUPPOSED TO BE HOW READING BOOKS IS? When we KNOW WHAT’S GUNNA HAPPEN? BUT THE AUTHOR WANTS TO BE PETER’S FRIEND SO HE DOES IT ANYWAY? AND LIKE SEVERAL OTHER CHARACTERS THAT THE MAIN CHARACTER IS FRIENDS WITH ARE ALSO SUPPOSED TO BE FIGURES OF REASON BUT THEY’RE ALSO 100% PARTISAN IN SIDING WITH PETER? SO IT’S LIKE HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO LIKE ALL YOU DUMB, DUMB KIDS?
LIKE OKAY, SO HOW IT GOES IS THAT PETER CAN LIKE WALK ACROSS THE DIMENSION BETWEEN NEVERLAND AND THE REAL WORLD AND THAT'S HOW HE GETS THE KIDS? SO AT ONE POINT IN NEVERLAND THEY ALL HAVE TO SCAVENGE FOR FOOD BECAUSE THE VEGETATION IN NEVERLAND IS DYING, AND THEY MENTION HOW PETER USED TO BRING THEM FOOD FROM THE REAL WORLD? AND IT'S LIKE, HOW ABOUT YOU JUST KEEP DOING THAT? OR LIKE, WHY DON'T ANY OF YOU WANT TO JUST LEAVE? YEAH THE REAL WORLD SUCKS, BUT IS IT WORTH STARVING TO DEATH JUST SO YOU CAN STICK IT TO THE MAN? LIKE ARE THERE PEDIATRICIANS IN NEVERLAND? ARE THERE AT-RISK YOUTH SHELTERS? FOSTER CARE? NEVERLAND SOUP KITCHENS? NEVERLAND SOCIAL WORKERS? NEVERLAND CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES? NEVERLAND POLICE? NO? JUST MONSTERS THAT PAINFULLY KILL YOU, ZOMBIE PIRATES, NO FOOD, AND LITERALLY THE ANTI-CHRIST?
AND THEN THERE’S RIDICULOUS SHIT LIKE, AT ONE POINT ALL THESE MAGICAL FANTASY CHARACTERS HIJACK A NEW YORK CITY FERRY TO GET TO THE HARBOR AND IT’S LIKE, THIS IS SO RIDICULOUS IT SHOULD BE AWESOME, BUT IT ISN’T AWESOME BUT IT SHOULD BE SO WHY ISN’T IT?
AND LIKE ONE OF THE CHARACTERS IS A FAT USELESS KID NAMED DANNY AND THERE IS NO REASON FOR HIM TO BE IN THE BOOK BESIDES TO BE THE TOKEN FAT USELESS KID NAMED DANNY?
BUT DANNY IS LIKE ALSO THE ONLY OTHER SMART CHARACTER IN THE BOOK BECAUSE HE’S LIKE WHY DID I SAY YES TO THIS WHY ARE WE STILL FOLLOWING THIS GUY WHY DON’T WE JUST LEAVE AND IT’S LIKE YEAH PUT DANNY IN CHARGE BUT NOBODY LISTENS TO HIM AND HE’S JUST COMPLETELY UTTERLY USELESS?
AND THEN CAPTAIN HOOK ADOPTS DANNY AND IT’S LIKE OH MY GOD THE AUTHOR FORGOT HE NEEDED TO GIVE DANNY SOMETHING TO DO?
AND LIKE I DON’T EVEN REMEMBER THE MAIN CHARACTER’S NAME?
AND THEN AT THE END OF THE BOOK, SO, THERE’S THIS BIG HUGE BATTLE SCENE WHERE CHILDREN DIE LEFT AND RIGHT, LIKE THE “ANTAGONIST” (NOT PETER) HAS A HUGE SWORD AND IS SWINGING AT THE KIDS LIKE HE’S HARVESTING WHEAT, OH AND YEAH, BY THE WAY, AGAIN, THE REAL WORLD IS LOCATED IN NEW YORK CITY AND THE BATTLE HAPPENS ON LIKE THE FRONT LAWN OF A LIBRARY OR SOMETHING. LIKE THE STORY KIND OF TOTALLY GOES OFF THE RAILS INTO FANTASTIC SCHLOCK. AND AT ONE POINT THE BATTLE IS ABRUPTLY INTERRUPTED BY NYC POLICE AND IT’S LIKE ARE YOU SHITTING MY NUTS THE NYC COPS ARE INVOLVED IN THIS FANTASY BATTLE THIS IS AMAZING, BUT THEN THAT DOESN’T HAPPEN AND IT GOES NOWHERE. AND ALL THE MAIN CHARACTERS ARE DYING, AND NONE OF THEM HAD ARCS, LIKE NONE OF THEM REALIZED WHAT THEY GOT THEMSELVES INTO OR WHAT PETER REALLY WAS, AND AT THE ACT 3 POST-LOW POINT THE MAIN CHARACTER DIDN’T GO OFF TO DO HIS OWN THING AND TRY TO SAVE THE DAY, HE JUST GOES WITH PETER TO DO WHATEVER HE WANTS, AND THEN HIS ARC IS BASICALLY NOTHING AND THEN HE DIES. AND *PETER* WINS. AND AGAIN HE’S LITERALLY THE ANTI CHRIST SO THE BOOK ENDS WITH HIM BRIDGING THE REAL WORLD WITH NEVERLAND, AND BASICALLY BEING THE BRINGER OF HELL UNTO THE EARTH. AND UP UNTIL THEN THE BOOK HAD ABOUT 68 INSTANCES OF THE READER SWITCHING BETWEEN FEELING BAD FOR PETER AND THEN ACCEPTING THAT HE IS HITLER NURSE RATCHED MAO STALIN. SO WHEN ALL THE KIDS DIE, HE HAS A SCENE OF FEELING REALLY BAD AND THE READER IS SUPPOSED TO BE ALL LIKE AW HE REALLY DOES CARE! AND THEN NEVERLAND GETS BRIDGED INTO NEW YORK CITY, AND HE’S LIKE HA HA HA HA I DID IT I WON. BUT IT’S WRITTEN IN SUCH A WAY THAT LIKE, THE AUDIENCE IS SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE, WHEEEEEE! LIKE THIS THING THAT HAPPENED IS THE DOOM OF MANKIND, AND THE TONE SHOULD REALLY BE “OH GOD NO.” BUT THE AUTHOR WAS HAPPY THAT PETER WON IN THE END BECAUSE HE WANTS TO BE HIS FRIEND, EVEN THOUGH LIKE FIFTEEN PAGES AGO PETER CAUSED THE DEATH OF AN ARMY OF CHILDREN (AFTER ANOTHER 600 PAGES OF ALL KINDS OF OTHER AWFUL SHIT). SO NOT ONLY ARE WE SUPPOSED TO FEEL SAD THAT PETER FEELS SAD, BUT THEN WE’RE SUPPOSED TO FEEL HAPPY THAT PETER FEELS HAPPY. HOW ABOUT GO FUCK YOURSELF? HOW ABOUT IF YOU’RE GOING TO MAKE PETER A CHALLENGING UNRELIABLE ANTI-HERO, DON’T MAKE HIS DARK QUALITIES SO INCONTESTABLY EVIL, OR, EITHER CHOOSE TO MAKE PETER HATED BY THE AUDIENCE, OR MAKE THE AUDIENCE FEEL FOOLISH FOR BEING CHARMED BY PETER AND PARTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL THE BAD SHIT THAT HAPPENED AND GO FUCK YOURSELF?
...
I’ll give a different example of both tonal incongruence and bad character writing.
So, the opening scene of the book that involves attempted child rape, so. What happens is that Peter saves the little girl in time by killing the dad, and gains her trust to go to Neverland. The way the story regards the introduction to Peter is that of wonder and curiosity through the little girl’s eyes, as if it was derived from the original children’s tale. So the opener is meant to establish: a gritty “realness” to the book (which is never earned but i digress), and Peter as a mysterious magical hero. Then, the story carries on into describing Peter’s motivation in saving (the book uses “stealing”) children, which vaguely mentions his villainous indulgence (he’s saving children to recruit them in an army in Neverland to fight captain hook because his mommy is the president of neverland and there’s almost-Oedipal themes going on). Fine. However, the cadence of Peter actually being villainous is very very…undermined. Like the actual voice of the NARRATION is misinformed. Like the narration sounds more like Peter’s inner monologue speaking in the third person. Like the third person is in on it. Like the author is painting Peter as this wicked wrongdoer as if it’s a cool thing and he wants to be his friend (Oh wait).
This is how the voice of the opener is handled: Child rape —> Peter prevents child rape and saves child —> Peter is a good guy for doing this —> Peter is still a good guy for doing this but he did it maybe not for the right reasons.
As it turns out, Peter is unquestionably the bad guy. Peter was the bad guy from the start, Peter was the bad guy while he was saving the little girl.
The rest of the book is handled like this: Peter is cool and badass —> Peter is mischievous but still the person we want to follow —> Peter is a psycho...but still cool —> Oh shit Peter has a super awful past and his psycho-ness is the result of being a victim so I forgive him —> Wow Peter’s both a psycho and an asshole—> Okay I dunno about Peter —> The author keeps having Peter save people from being raped as if he’s not an asshole but he’s still a psycho and an asshole so I still don’t know —> The plot has a a lot of stuff so I guess I’m still with Peter —> Okay Peter won but everyone is dead because of him and he’s still an asshole so I still don’t know.
Peter tricks victims of rape, abuse, slavery, etc. into thinking they’re being saved when in fact he objectifies them for his personal needs. Remember how I said this book’s insane tonal confusion isn’t subtle? Well, from the book’s perspective, putting a finger on Peter’s good side and bad side...is subtle. Problematically subtle. Which, on a literary standpoint, sounds like a good thing, but...
This is the part when I say the thing you ACTUALLY SHOULDN’T BE SUBTLE ABOUT is PETER. You CAN be subtle about his tragic backstory. Be subtle about sprinkling his good qualities over his CAKE TOWER of BADNESS. Give him some KICK. Have the flavors INTERACT. Make the audience be like “OOOH, is that cumin?? Interesting! HMMMM! INTERESTING! CUMIN! ON DORITOS! YEAh I am definitely eating Doritos, this is absolutely Doritos, but there’s some CUMIN in there! Okay, back to eating my DORITOS! OOOOH, IS THAT CAYENNE?????” But whatever you do, make it CLEAR what you are SERVING. You should not have a MIXED BAG, a MEDLEY, and try to sell it like not-a-medley. You should NOT make half your plate super spicy and half your plate super sweet and make the audience roll the dice on each bite they take. Peter Pan isn’t some complexass Faustian character study, it’s SUBVERSIVE HYPERVIOLENT DARK FANTASY PORN. IT’S DORITOS
This is how the voice of the opener should've been handled: Child rape —> Peter prevents child rape and saves child —> Peter is the bad guy.
This is how the voice of the rest of the book should've been handled: No matter what happens —> Peter is the bad guy.
I don’t have and never will have the literary criticism credentials to say anything with credible boldness, but I’m going to say this anyway: Using child rape to force the reader to feel a certain way about the tone of the world and the first heroic impression of a character is wrong. Forcing an act of heroism (especially for you to then later say “Just kidding not the hero”) in that context is inappropriate and wrong. That’s like throwing 9/11 into the background of a love story to force the audience to feel extra emotional. 1) There are many, many, many, many ways you can establish “realness” in your opener with or without violence. I’m not saying there is a hierarchy of what kind of awful things involving children are okay to write about, but opening your story with attempted child rape is an unnecessary extreme if parts of your story reads like an episode of Saved By The Bell. Revenge alone isn’t cool. John Wick is cool because of the way revenge is handled. Writing about attempted child rape and then immediate revenge on the rapist is the Epipen-shot-to-the-brain method of forcibly getting your audience to go “I LIKE PETER!”, which isn’t at all earned and probably shouldn’t be in your story… 2) ESPECIALLY if you don’t simultaneously establish with slats nailed on a wall that Peter is the bad guy. The author basically deceived the audience into liking Peter in the worst way possible, ironically, which is what he had Peter do to the other characters. If you want to cleverly deceive the audience into liking Peter, do it through his dialogue, personality, the externalized product of the relationship between him and his environment. Be inventive about it. It’s a book. You got words. Use...words to your advantage. If you want to open your story with attempted child rape at the very least as a way to tell the audience this shit’s serious, don’t.
Just don’t. It’s fine.
The Child Thief can’t be pinned as So Bad It’s Good. It’s poor, but it’s not Tommy Wiseau-acclaim-bad. The only way I can describe it is So Disorderly It’s Weird. But it has potential for being SO Weird It’s Kind Of Genius. Which makes it So Almost SO Weird It’s Kind Of Genius It’s Frustrating.
The book’s biggest detriment is that it takes itself too seriously. The author’s motivating in writing the book (this is fact) was that he recognized that the beloved original tale of Peter Pan has a lot of dark elements, but continues to be celebrated as a children’s story. And he wanted to take that notion and run with it. What happened was that he selectively fell in love with elements of that concept, and instead of writing a story that was meant to pull the rug from under us, he ended up writing a run-of-the-mill edgy dark fantasy that he was obliged to pepper with Peter Pan references. Instead of pulling the entire rug beneath our feet and hauling us onto our asses, he took a small handful of rug here and there and just occasionally tugged at it roughly, so that we’d almost lose our balance and get annoyed and tell him to stop.
The book lacks its own conceptual self-awareness that it built for itself, and the result is two different bodies trying to be forcibly shoved into the same book-sized box, when it should’ve been a new gross, satirical, humorous, unique body entirely.
In that sense, I really think this book could’ve been truly unironically awesome. I love the idea of cartoonishly exaggerating the dark elements (especially the violence) of the original tale that have been culturally ignored, like a lot of (or most) (or all) old children’s tales. My ideal solution to this book would actually be making it even more ridiculous in every way, but strung together with self-awareness and intention, where the author could acknowledge that the absurdity is instrumental, not indulgent. There are many aspects of the book that I really like thematically, and none of them are fully (or at all) seen through to their potential. These ideas aren’t really intentionally presented in the book, but: I like the idea that Peter is a sadistic volatile killing machine because he’s cursed with being riiiiiight on the cusp of hitting puberty, and his body is trapped without that natural sexual/psychological release, turning him into an aggressive animal constantly teased by unfulfilled subconscious heat. I like the idea that the lost boys element would be subverted into an inevitable Lord of the Flies esque shitstorm. I like the idea that the danger and villainy are at first generalized in adults but eventually presented in the children. I like the idea that every single possible fucking thing in the world—both the real world (mostly nyc LoL!) and Neverland—are a threat and are actively trying to kill the children, and the children treat it like an adventure before the horror becomes real. I like the idea of illustrating the outcome of blindly following fun naive figures of leadership. There are even a number of character interaction scenes that I like format wise. Just minus the embarrassing dialogue. That stuff's easy to rewrite in your head as you read it. Also I would take out that part in the book that I described as Bette Midler not having a shirt on while preying on a 6 year old. That part was really fucking uncomfortable. Seriously wtf, Gerald Brom.
I must concede this notion: The writer didn’t set out to create a masterpiece. He wrote the book to have fun. He succeeded, and his readers expected the same thing and received the experience they wanted. Of all the things that could’ve landed in my hands and tickled me in a weird enough way to make me wish it was better, for some reason it had to be this.
I could keep going, but...eh, (sigh).
But lastly—again, the descriptive writing of the world is very lush, and at times effectively horrific. The reading experience is a constant stop and start call-and-response of really great potential, really clumsy writing, and really misunderstood tonal directions. All those things put this book directly on the edge of FRUSTRATING. Uniquely frustrating. It couldn’t have been salvaged by the hands of a more competent writer, because the product came to light specifically out of the author’s unintentional confusion, not his laziness. A lazy product with potential can be salvaged through additions and tweaks, but The Child Thief cannot because the story was seen through the way it existed in the author’s head and heart. It is exactly what it...is. It can’t be imitated, or inspired by, or re-re-imagined. This weirdass fucking book is just sitting on this planet, being read by people, and shit.
…..Anyway. This was all just meant to be the caption for my fan art.
http://jennacha.tumblr.com/post/172559227502/i-made-fan-art-of-a-book-i-both-love-and-hate-lol
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Why Don’t Men Read Romance
This article is a lot better than the title would indicate, speaking also about why women don’t read WWII books and the like. As a “men” of sorts, I feel uniquely qualified to talk about why I don’t read romances. Keep in mind, I’m going to tell you why I, an individual, don’t get down with romances, not why men, as a whole, avoid them. But if you want to take what I say and assume there are kernels of truth in there in regards to a large segment of the male population...I’d say you’re probably right to consider it.
By the way, blanket statement: This is my opinion, but I don’t necessarily recommend others live this way, and it’s not my opinion that romance is inferior or bad or whatever. I read books with titles like “Tumor Fruit,” so I’m the the transparent-est of glass houses. Just know that this is my opinion of the little bits of romance I’ve experienced, not a demand that anyone else change their reading habits.
1. They’re Boring
I find most romantic subplots in movies very boring. Creed? Terrible. Nobody should fall in love with their loud-ass neighbor. That person is rude and inconsiderate. Avengers? Why are Hulk and Black Widow in love all of a sudden? When did that happen? And is there not enough stuff going on that we really need that?
Usually, to me, the romance part of a movie is the most boring part, the piece I could do without, and I tend to like movies that have little to no romance. I just re-watched Beetlejuice for the 1000th time, and there’s very little romance. Army of Darkness? Not much romance.
I also find sex scenes boring. What can I say? The 80′s are over, and I think the most common nudity in movies these days is male butts. I find male butts boring, I find it mostly awkward to watch people on a screen have pretend sex. Sue me.
And I’m not really a fan of “how we met” stories, either. In real life, when I know the people. Once in awhile you get a good one, but most of them are same-y. I know they’re very exciting for the people who lived them, but for me, meh.
Being boring is no great sin, it’s just something that keeps me away from romance. I’ve been bored by the majority of romantic plots and subplots I’ve experienced, so taking a deeper dive seems antithetical.
2. Predictability
I hope I’m not saying something hurtful to people who like romances when I say they’re predictable. I mean, they’re sort of meant to be, right? The Happily Ever After and all.
I don’t really like reading a book or watching a movie and trying to predict what happens. I think it’s a weird way to experience something, honestly, because...it’s a fictional story being presented to you. OF COURSE you can make predictions. Because you’re not really predicting what happens, you’re predicting how someone would tell a story of this type. You’re predicting fiction writing. It’s not a huge achievement.
I know I’m wrong about this, but this is how I experience stuff. Most people love uncovering a mystery, and as far as I’m concerned, go for it.
That said, I find it hard not to read and predict with romance. I think you’re meant to think ahead of what you’re reading, wonder how the story goes from Point A to Point Happily Ever After. I feel similarly about mysteries, too. Predicting plot isn’t interesting to me, so plot contortions aren’t all that thrilling for me.
The things I like either tend to have very unusual, unpredictable plots, or tend to be less centered on plot, more on characters, writing style, and so on.
3. There’s Just Other Stuff I’d Prefer
I don’t know who these people are that don’t have a thousand books that they would really like to read. I have such a long list of books that I’d LOVE to read, and romance isn’t on that list. I suppose it could be, given the right options, but I’m just not looking to add a genre, honestly. If my reading habits were a marriage, I’d say that we’ve been pretty steady for a good decade now, I’m very happy, and I’m not really looking for anything else.
Point being, it’s not like I’m avoiding romance and reading nothing. I’m reading other things I’d prefer.
When I finished library school, one of the things I was most excited about was reading whatever the hell I wanted without a sense of obligation. This hasn’t always worked out, but I try to read things I like anymore, avoiding things that I feel like I “should” read.
Some might feel this makes me an inferior librarian, that I’m not able to make recommendations outside my taste, but I haven’t found that to be true. In 15 years, I don’t think I ever recommended books to anyone who I would say had remotely parallel tastes to my own (Tumor Fruit, remember?). Additionally, I think a better method, rather than trying to read everything out there, is to find go-to people you can rely on. Even if I read a couple romances a year, I’d never compare to my co-worker, who read these things by the dozens, spoke the lingo, and knew what was happening in the romance world.
What I’m doing is giving myself permission to read stuff I like, which is what I’m always trying to instill in other readers anyway.
Not a popular librarian opinion, but hey, I wasn’t blessed with a high tolerance for books I dislike, and I would be happy to test my skills against other random librarians in a random genre recommendation contest. I don’t think I’d be the champ, but I think I’d be comfortably in the middle.
4. That Stuff is For Girls
While I’m on unpopular opinions...
While I understand that gender lines are being blurred, moved, and erased, you have to understand, I didn’t grow up that way. I’m a guy. I wouldn’t call myself manly, but I tend to like more traditionally masculine things.
Hey, I have no problem with other people being wherever they find themselves on the gender spectrum, I’m happy to hang out and have a beer with whoever, and I certainly support efforts to make things like books more gender neutral in terms of their covers, marketing, and so on. If I had a dudebro friend who liked romances, I would probably be curious, but whatever!
But I’d be lying if I said romance doesn’t seem designed with a female audience in mind.
Yes, I’m aware that romance is often at the forefront of developing new authors, storylines with non-traditional romances of all stripes, and basically mixing it up and experimenting with narratives.
That said, most of the writers are women. Even of man/man romances. Most of the readers are women (between 85 and 90% it appears). So, most times, even a romance intended for a male reader (or, to move away from a binary, intended for anyone other than a traditional female reader), is very likely coming from a female writer working within a very female-influenced tradition. I don’t have a problem with women writing men, even straight women writing gay men. I just highly suspect these narratives aren’t created to please me and people like me.
We shouldn’t be surprised that men aren’t reading a ton of these. They’re not really intended for us. It’s the same way I feel about, I dunno, Frozen. That’s obviously not intended for me, so I don’t have much interest in it, and that’s fine. Would it expand my horizons to watch Frozen and sing along? Maybe. But most likely, I just wouldn’t enjoy it. Because that’s not the goal its creators had in mind.
5. Rejection or Passivity?
And keep in mind, this isn’t me refusing to watch Frozen. This is me, in a 2019 world of infinite streaming possibilities, choosing other things without Frozen even entering into the equation. As an adult man with no kids, I’m not really presented with the choice to watch Frozen or not. Likewise, I’m not really presented with the choice of a romance novel that I’m turning down.
This really is a key concept. There’s a world of difference between, say, refusing to take my son to watch Frozen because “it’s for girls” and me not going out of my way to watch Frozen because it’s for girls. Turning down a romance novel as opposed to just never picking one up.
I’d have to reach out to romance as opposed to romance reaching out to me, and that’s probably not going to happen. There are plenty of forms of entertainment designed with me in mind, and I’ll probably enjoy the (Tumor) Fruits of those labors. Because I have a higher chance of enjoying what I read.
It’s always a numbers game with books, always a gamble. I’ll invest X time in hopes of getting either Y enjoyment or Y+B enjoyment plus information. Or B-Y, information minus enjoyment. There’s a lot of equations at play here. It turns out this is a bad metaphor because it makes things more complicated instead of less.
Anyway, if a book isn’t designed to please me, it’s a lot less likely that it will. So, when I’m betting on a good return on my time investment, the likely winner is something that’s geared towards me. There, that was a lot simpler.
~
There ya go. That’s why I don’t read romance. Argue with me if you’d like, but you’re really arguing a matter of taste. Romance novels are not to my taste, and that’s why I don’t read them.
Whether you think what I’ve said applies to men in general, I’ll leave that to you.
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For many turns whispers have filled the ears of Hingashi citizens; rumors of violence, darkness, depravity— a secret culmination of shadowy powers that work their hands in all manners of business throughout the whole of the One Sea. Even with the Garlean Occupancy, these families found ways to reconvene and keep their ever intangible power in place. These families, the ‘yakuza’ families of the East, found means by which not only to keep a revolving door of power in place: but also a means to orchestrate organized chaos for their very own entertainment.
And it rises, rearing its bestial head.
[BALMUNG SERVER]
From the shadows does the Mujihigi return to the world once more; a single crest that strikes a myriad of emotions into those who gaze upon it. For some, determination and excitement. For others? Fear.
(A special thank you to @wayward-whelpling for helping me finish the emblem! Go check out his work!)
WHAT IS THE MUJIHIGI?
The Mujihigi is a b-monthly underground fighting event, open to all underworld/syndicate and yakuza RPers on Balmung, including those with links to gambling and trafficking. But it is more than that. The Mujihigi is a storytelling event, a story in which is open to all who want to participate!
In this fighting den, powerful criminal organizations/families and/or those with underworld ties from around the world will pit their fighters against one another for the glory of the champion’s title (Yokozuna), the riches acquired through bets (IC gil,) and for the honor of showcasing martial prowess and strength in the name of your family.
Each Mujihigi consists of 9 fighters: Shin-Yokozuna (Current Champion) included and is preceded by ‘Hype Night.’
WHAT IS HYPE NIGHT?
Hype Night is an event preceding every Mujihigi that is more of a social gathering of aforementioned malignants where they mingle, place bets, make backroom deals and grow their influence within the organization for chances at betting on fighters for even more riches. It is a night of celebration, with performances and plenty of connections to be made.
Bets will begin on Hype Night and end as fighting starts on Fight Night!!
ARE THERE ANY PRIZES?
The person who can successfully guess the bracket results correctly (match by match, including the winner,) will receive a $25 mogstation prize of their choice. (Can be multiple items totaling to $25 as well.) || US & Canadian Residents only, excluding Quebec. No physical prizes, digital delivery, no purchase necessary.
The winner of the Mujihigi will receive a cleaned and colored sketch of their character in kesho-mawashi and haori reflecting the emblem (kamon) of their sponsor by @jeaart, to be delivered on the artist’s schedule.
Information for how to sign up and place your bets will begin on Hype Night!! Can you correctly guess how Fate will weave her story?
WHEN IS THE MUJIHIGI EVENT AND THE HYPE NIGHT?
「HYPE NIGHT: 12/17/2019 starting at 8pm EST」
The Hype Night (12/17/2019) for the Mujihigi will take place in Goblet; Ward 18 Plot 34 at 8pm EST: Entertainment! Gossip! IC Gil Betting! IC Gil Fighter Auctions!
「MUJIHIGI FIGHT NIGHT: 12/19/2019 starting at 8pm EST」
The Fight Night (12/19/2019) for the Mujihigi will take place in Shirogane; Ward 14 Hidden Shores at 8pm EST: Put those bets to the test! Watch the carnage! See who will become the Mujihigi’s next Yokozuna!
WHERE CAN I SIGN UP TO BE A FIGHTER? WHAT DO I GET FOR BEING A FIGHTER?!
We open signups a week after our event concludes, but because of the Holidays it might be a bit late this month. We post the signup sheet here, and in our discord for anyone interested to fill out, and close it once we reach the number of fighters we are looking for. For more information about what is expected of fighters, and the process check out this post >>>HERE<<<
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
The Hype Night (12/17/19) for the Mujihigi will take place in Goblet; Ward 18 Plot 34 of the Housing Subdivision at 8pm EST.
Similarly, the Fight Night (12/19/19) will take place in Shirogane, Ward 14; Hidden Shores, at 8pm EST with the area segmented as so:
We Look forward to seeing you on the sands!
(Side note, WE WELCOME ALL CRYSTAL ROLEPLAYERS TO REACH OUT!!)
(ADDITIONAL SIDE NOTE! We have characters with apartments in the ward of the fight night location. If you or a friend NEEDS a teleport because you don’t have Kugane unlocked, find Tyalo Moro in game or contact us and we will get you hooked up!)
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Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel
bAUderlands: straya
Where/When/Why: Borderlands: the Pre-Sequel is the first of the series that I didn’t run through with friends at launch. Instead, I got it during a steam sale in July last year for US$16.50 as part of a finish-your-Borderlands-collection package/bundle, with an eye to playing it when I got to it. Apparently I bought Rocket League at the same time? Momentous.
What/Who: It’s in the title, hey - a Borderlands game set between Borderlands 1 and 2. I’m struggling to think of other game and movie franchises that have done this, which perhaps why there isn’t a better descriptive term for it. The newish Baldur’s Gate expansion maybe? Rogue One? Anyway, instead of being set on Pandora - the fictional frontier planet where the previous two games were set - Pre-Sequel is set on Pandora’s moon, Elpis.
Elpis is a noticeably Australian place; it’s inhabited by Australian NPCs and full of parodies of Australian animals and stories (the main characters are all still American though - don’t worry). This is probably because the game was made by the 2k Australia branch [official site], based in Canberra, and so apparently it just kind of happened that way. The Pre-Sequel came out in October 2014. Sadly, 2k Australia shut their doors in 2015, which means there’s no AAA games development happening here for the time being.
Time Spent: 23 hours.
Completed: Yep, finally - we managed one. 19 of 63 achievements ticked. Oh that’s not a lot, hey. Oh well.
Notes: We had a pretty good time. That should probably be the main takeaway. The day after we finished it, Lauren said that she missed playing it. The mindless shooting, looting and questing loop of Borderlands 2 is well repped again here. The flow of it is quietly addictive.
We found the going a bit tough for a while, though, there at the beginning. We spent a lot of time hunting for mission waypoints through the larger moonscape areas of the game, which are not intuitive to travel around in vehicles (lots of dead ends, crevices, mountains, barriers), and awful to travel around on foot (too many things that want to kill you and/or distract you). A few times we went to bed mad at each other after having our patience stretched thin (**n.b. it should be added that while we did often end up playing this in the last hour or two before bed over the past few weeks, this game, like the other Borderlands games, is not something that actually benefits from being played while tired, despite this seeming like the natural state to play it in). One particular semi-optional mission for urchin NPC Pickle nearly drove us to the brink with its arduous navigational requirements.
The quaint fugue that Borderlands draws you into can be a hindrance too: if you don’t pay attention you can be tricked into fighting scores of creeps that could easily be avoided, and which don’t offer much in the way of endorphin release or in-game reward. The next time you come past they’ll all have respawned anyway, making the intervening grind feel particularly pernicious. Things improved immensely once we had more fast travel unlocked, and as we got better at paying attention to who we were meant to be fighting.
Pre-Sequel also has a couple of particular gameplay gimmicks. At first we were like “???”, but we came around to them. The game is set, as mentioned, on Pandora’s moon, Elpis, which being a moon has low gravity. As such, you can jump higher and further. Because the moon surface lacks breathable atmosphere, you carry oxygen tanks, referred to forever as “Oz kits” because Australia lololololol. These deplete when you’re out in the open (which you are for maybe half the game), causing you to lose health, but we found after the first half hour it’s something you only have to be slightly mindful of, so far as annoying gameplay factors go. More importantly, you can use these “Oz kits” to boost mid-air to reach far-off platforms. It’s pretty good! Any excuse to be able to jump a long way is an acceptable one: thanks, videogames.
The Australiana accents/jokes/parodies that pervade the game are, like, pretty cool...I think? I enjoyed the ironic Australia-for-market shtick tempered by its necessarily cringeworthy over-the-topness. Cliches and stereotypes can be funny too, sometimes. I’m also aware how rare representations of anything Australian are in games, good or bad, particularly home-grown ones; a feeling which is enhanced by knowing this was made by a studio arm that no longer exists. O’, state of thy industry. It’s not that I’m at all patriotic, and the construction of this nation and its cultural identity is as problematic as any other post-colonial state, and there are issues which this game, with its frontier-Western representations of “Australianness”, attempts to avoid altogether, leaving the giant wombat very much in the room. On the other hand is the essence of the game and its uncritical light entertainment sheen, a series of good-enough jokes that beg not to be looked at directly in the eye, the fact that this is what it is, the last of its kind, no more big-budget gaming in Australia or about Australia (no Forza Horizon 3 I’m not talking to you), no Australia at all; and that’s upsetting too. Lauren and I both particularly enjoyed the foul-mouthed shotgun, Boganella, who somehow never stopped making us laugh, and who I kept equipped all the way to the end. I certainly didn’t expect to get that much mileage out of it.
Lauren played as Athena the gladiator, while I played as Nisha the lawbringer. Neither of us particularly liked the special abilities of our characters. I found the auto-aim of Nisha’s “Showdown” a bit glitchy, with it sometimes locking on outside the enemy’s hitbox. We made do anyway without relying on them too much. Neither of us had played the DLC the Athena appears in, and I hadn’t remembered Nisha from Borderlands 2, so while playing we were unaware of these character’s other roles in the series.
One thing I did find surprising was how ‘epic’ the Pre-Sequel became in the final act. It almost seemed like it was speaking out of turn, I mean…it’s called “The Pre-Sequel”. That’s a title that screams incidental and unimportant if there ever was one. “This game is just setting the scene for the more important game that was worthy of a real number in its title”, is what it suggests. And for the most part as you play it, it feels that way too. You’re playing on the moon, for instance (and everyone knows moons rate lower than planets on the astronomical bodies ladder). And you’re helping the bad guy! Surely, none of what you do here should be as big, important or ‘epic’ as in the numbered Borderlands titles.
But then, as you approach the finish line, you find yourself fighting multiple boss battles (“surely this is it” I said, erroneously, each time), delving into a massive cavernous space with funky, brilliant colours, into a galaxy-esque background, fighting the forerunner guardians, while the stakes seem to go up and up. The ending is basically prophesy-esque, all bigger picture feels. It’s an odd match.
This is mirrored by the length of the game. We played for 23 hours, which was longer than my playthrough of Borderlands 2. Again, I find this surprising, not least because it also feels smaller at first, with the player limited to the same few compact (if difficult to navigate) areas for quite a while. I’d initially figured it for a 15 hour romp, maybe. This isn’t a complaint necessarily - the game was enjoyable enough for the most part to justify the time spent in it - it just seems structurally unsound to me that a “pre-sequel” should be as big or bigger than the game it’s foregrounding.
As for the story itself and how it goes about setting up the Borderlands 2 plot, it seems... well I guess it seems cohesive enough, not having recalled many details about Borderlands 1 & 2. You’re basically helping Jack, arch-villain of Borderlands 2, but he’s not evil yet - maybe. He just wants to stop the moon being destroyed by a group called The Lost Legion, while perhaps finding a vault and turning a profit for Hyperion in the process. You watch him do his Anakin Skywalker -> Darth Vader transformation as the game progresses, but because the protagonist vault hunters themselves are morally suspect, they/you don’t seem to mind too much. It's an unusual situation, to be playing the bad-guy, and it’s handled pretty effectively by the writers, if you take this game in a vacuum. That being said, it's also kind of...contradictory, if we do consider background events of Borderlands 2, where Jack’s evilness is established as being a more endemic, long-term thing. Whether the whole coheres depends on what you think/who you listen to, but I've enjoyed reading some forum-posted opinions on the matter anyway.
And so: This brings us to the end of our Borderlands sojourn. We finally finished one - hooray! Promises well kept. Paradoxically, finishing the Pre-Sequel took less time than it took to pass on Borderlands 2. All up, to sift, avoid and play through these three games has taken nearly the entire winter, which is...sub-optimal. My wish is to be done with the B’s by the end of the year. The letter grows stale; I yearn for a fresh beginning. As of now we've got fifteen games to go. Four months. Hmm.
Addendum: My multi-talented friend Caro started a Tinyletter. It doesn’t have much to do with games but I’ve been enjoying it very much. Consider signing up! It will cost you nothing except your time.
up next is Botanicula
#game53#borderlands: the pre-sequel#borderlands#2k australia#gearbox#take-two interactive#2k#agamewithguns#fps#first person#rpg#australian games#2014#loot
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Ghost of Adam - A Superphantom Crossover (1/1)
Cross-posted on ffn and ao3 with author’s notes.
Despite what tabloid rumors and his vast fortune may lead the average person to believe, Vlad Masters did not have an army of servants to care for his vast mansion.
Yes, living in a large, empty home all by himself could feel lonely, but that was why Vlad filled the endless foyers and sitting rooms with memorabilia of the things he could not have. Anything else would just make him feel emptier. The job of cleaning the vast corners and high chandeliers was much more easily handled by a few weak spirits he employed, though he knew the feudalistic nature of the Ghost Zone too well to keep no more than the few families he would need. Despite what Daniel and his improper friends insinuated, the half-ghost businessman had no desire to take over the world, merely obtain the power necessary to finally have what he wants. Except what he needed to keep up appearances, Vlad Masters did not indulge in things that would bring company.
A normal human may complain that the situation left the Wisconsin estate feeling rather dead. Should that happen, Vlad could all too easily see himself flashing some fangs and the 'scary eyes' and remarking that the sentiments didn't bother him in the slightest.
Right now, however, the only complaint Vlad had with his housekeeping was that they were absolutely useless in entertaining callers who came to the door, given the whole visibly dead thing. It was late on a Thursday night, almost early Friday morning, and Vlad had been contented to spend the rest of the evening upgrading the latest Fenton ray his spies stole for him as well as tinker with a number of his own original designs when the unmistakable sound of the doorbell broke his concentration. Gritting his teeth, Vlad tried to ignore it and return to his soldering when the sound echoed more persistently.
The billionaire was certainly not expecting visitors.
With a mutter of 'oh fiddlesticks' the businessman peeled off his ectoplasm-resistant gloves, shrugged into his suit jacket and tie (it better be someone important at this hour) and stomped his way downstairs.
The ringing had gone quiet after its third chime while Vlad was still in the lab, and the man angrily plotted the ways he would get back at whoever disturbed him if they ran away before he had a chance to face them. That was one benefit of living in the middle of nowhere: even if they were in a car it'd be easy to invisibly chase them and pinpoint exactly who it dared play Ding Dong Ditch.
There was in fact a person at the door when Vlad slammed it open with a scowl, although not at all what he was expecting. She was young, in her early twenties, with long brown hair and a plain face that had an innocent, natural beauty. The look was emphasized by her modest white dress, but quickly fell apart at the small amounts of dirt on the fabric and what appeared to be a sizeable bloodstain on the middle of her side. Looking down her feet were barefoot, caked in enough dirt to show that she had been walking for a while that way, but not enough to make it seem she went out of her way to dirty herself.
She had an almost serene smile on her face, but Vlad had met enough sharks to see the hunger behind it.
"Hi." Her smile grew slightly wider as her gaze finished taking in his appearance in turn and the billionaire knew she was trying to appear slightly bashful, despite her inner confidence drowning out any attempt at subterfuge. "Can I come in?"
"I'm sorry miss, I don't get involved in this kind of thing." Vlad all but spat, getting ready to slam the door in her face. Some of the details were unexpected, but Vlad had dealt with exactly this type of scam before, had even used it on a few competitors. Send a pretty, lonely girl to someone rich and famous's house at night and see if you get any good blackmail material out of it. Especially for a man living alone almost any outcome could be scandalous: at best you get an affair, at worst you get him coldly shunning her to the streets or taking her in for unsupervised 'alone time.'
Vlad already had a reputation for being cold and ruthless, whoever would set this up would be disappointed by the lack of a headline they found themselves with.
Her hand reached out and easily caught the door, despite the heavy wood being at the fastest point of its momentum. "I'm not wanting to do anything like that." She murmured, her face looking slightly disappointed by his rejection but still holding that mockingly serene smile, as if she was always on the inside of a joke with the world.
"I just wanted to get to meet you face to face. I've heard so much about you and couldn't help my curiosity." Her fingers trailed along the wood grain of the ornate door in a way that was not helping expel Vlad's preconception, and he mentally pinched his nose at the thought of either a crazed seductive fan or a very determined blackmailer.
"It's such a pleasure to finally put a face to the legends…" She pursed her lips and somehow managed to whisper the last word in his ear from more than two feet away. "Plasmius."
Vlad's blood ran cold. Perhaps she did have a secret in with the world.
"Wh-who are you? How do you know that name? Did Daniel put you up to this?" The last question came out just to hide the twinge of fear creeping in on the billionaire. While he and Daniel may have their fights and games, the boy should know that there were boundaries. If he told a stranger about this as a sick joke he'd…
"No, I don't mean to hurt you at all, Vladimir." She kept her voice to the same soft even tone Vlad once mislabeled as seductive, leaning in closer to him with all of the common signals but none of the intentions. Her finger trailed down along his tie and pulled it out of his suit jacket, yet she never tried to touch his skin. "I promise you I just came here to meet you, and maybe to have a little chat."
Vlad swallowed, promising himself it was just nerves, and let his voice harden. "You never told me your name."
The girl leaned her head back to meet his eye and let that knowing grin spread all the way across her face, as if she held the answers to the universe. "I'm Eve."
Knowing who she was, Vlad wouldn't be surprised if she did.
Even though she got her children to let her out of Purgatory in order to start a war, Eve would be lying if she said she wasn't trying to have a little fun during her time on Earth. There were, however, very few things Eve cared about other than her children, and like any good mother her sole focus was entirely on what would keep them safe. For that reason alone she had little desire to leave Purgatory before Crowley started torturing her firstborns, and few motivations to stick around when she was done.
It was rare that she ever focused on something other than her children, so when Eve had heard of a creature that fascinated her as much as her own monsters from within the realm of Purgatory she was for once disappointed at her imprisonment. Once she starting planning an escape she promised herself she'd find time to visit when she was Earth-side.
Ghosts always called out slightly to Eve, in-so-far as they were twisted versions of the human soul that could prey on and kill the species they once were. They were far nobler than demons, who rotted in Hell and their own militaristic hierarchy, and Eve respected their individuality and the soul that Hell beat out. Eve valued the immortal soul as more than just a power supply, and considered it the core of her offspring, to be protected just as their bodies were. There were no classes of monsters beyond the distinction of her firstborns, and Eve only made her monsters an army because she needed them. Her battle plans were merely to turn all of humanity and starve Hell rather than put her children in harm's way.
Unlike demons ghosts lived (died? As a resident of an afterlife herself Eve was in no position to judge) largely in solitude and were ruled by emotions and lost souls. The Mother of All in Eve had long yearned to adopt them into the fold of her family, but Death and God were persistent that those who refused a Reaper be left alone in punishment and insisted that she already had her own supply of souls.
As the one primordial beast who still believed in balance, and was safe and immortal because of it, she wouldn't fight against the status quo unless encroached upon first.
But the man in front of her… was amazing.
Human and ghost, Dead and lingering but with a soul that had yet to be committed to a final destination. He had never met a reaper or ignored their advice, had never died and been brought back as another creature. He wasn't cursed into a haunt by Death's taboo.
He got his powers through an accident. And he had turned.
Eve liked to think that that made him fair game.
And while she had spent the past couple weeks flitting from town to town, hitchhiking her way and greeting her children and turning every human she met in hopes of working out the kinks in the perfect monster for her plans, Eve couldn't help but dream up a more impossible design. It would be impractical for the entire human race, a change hard to force and noticeable to the victim, but not a single human had discovered the current halfas' secret and that was a level of discretion that she admired.
The ectoplasm she could sense pulsing through veins of the man before her was a paint Eve had never had access to before, and the artist in her longed to reach her fingers out and smear it across his canvas.
She could make him such a precious child, her heart swelled at just the thought of it, and she just knew he would learn to appreciate every gift she gave him.
He had been so alone. An Alpha without a Mother, coming into himself on his own and convinced that his beautiful gift was a disease. Abandoned by the pair who made him, rejected by the woman he loved after she changed his life, spurned by his only descendant: Eve had to push herself back from reaching out to him and keeping the man by her side forever. He would be the perfect general, his resources and technology helping her spread her newest creation even further, his experience with supernatural experimentation maybe even able to help smooth out chinks in her beta testing.
But she held herself back. Vlad Plasmius was an Alpha in his own right. And she had too much love for creation, be it hers or the God she was modeled after or anyone else's to mar such a stunning original.
Even if she was tempted to make improvements, she wasn't the little girl vessel she appeared to the world, and she could control herself. But she still yearned.
"I can help you." Eve voiced as she followed Plasmius into his sitting room, unafraid to do a small twirl to take in the grandeur of the place as if she really was her virgin vessel before sitting on a purple and gold armchair. There was a love seat nearby that remained empty, and Eve had to bite her lip at the thought that that's where they'd sit if she turned him.
She just had to keep remembering that he was already turned, despite not being one of hers.
Vlad walked briskly out of the room and returned with a teapot, his eyes still glancing her over with caution clear in his gaze. He was confused and unsure, and clearly not expecting her behavior after what he had heard of someone so feared. But he still stood strong, with the intimidating aura of a man (with just a little more leaking through) who fought and cheated his way to the top, and would do whatever it took to hold his position.
Eve couldn't help herself from being relaxed in his home. His wealth didn't make her nervous; it made her proud.
"I didn't think that ghosts fell under the category of monsters you look after." The man only responded after he poured her tea and sat down, using the distraction of his own full cup to avoid eye contact. His gaze met her only seconds later, however. He was far too used to intimidation games to spend long being afraid.
"I already said I don't want to harm you. I don't have anything against anyone except Crowley." Eve saw Vlad's face curl slightly in disgust at the name and let her smile become more genuine. She tilted her head at his piercing gaze and pressed the irony of the situation. "Is that alright? I thought you two did business."
Vlad stiffened, either from fear of her mentioning his friendship with her mortal enemy or the fact that the Mother of All was slightly teasing. "Crowley's deals are profitable from time to time and we each admire the other's resources, but neither of us are a fan of competition. Crowley throughout his reign has had a habit of sticking Hell's fingers where they simply don't belong, and he isn't opposed to backstab a friend if he thinks they might one day have the strength to become an enemy."
"I suppose you could put it that way." Eve kept sipping her tea. She came here to meet the soul behind Vlad Plasmius, she needed him to make the first move.
And within less than a minute of waiting he did, leaning forward in impatience as she calmly sipped her drink. "That doesn't explain why you personally came looking for me. My businesses are involved in very little outside of human and ghosts and I know for certain none of our arrangements involve what he is doing to your monsters. You have no reason to come after me."
Eve couldn't help the burst of anger at his phrasing, "What Crowley is doing is torturing my children and I am going to do everything I can to hunt him down and kill him!"
She forced herself to lean back and take another sip of her tea, recognizing the faint brew of a rare plant that had the property to temporarily calm souls. She had no soul, at least in mortal terms, so it wasn't like it would have an effect, but the thought was cute. However looking up at the man trying to hide his primordial fear of her Eve figured perhaps the brew was intended for himself.
"I won't apologize, but don't worry. My visit here is completely separate." Eve took another sip of her tea. "I wouldn't lie to you. Like I said I wanted to meet you."
Vlad's eyes narrowed "Why?"
Eve didn't look down or away as most would. Instead she turned her gaze right back into his red ones. "Because I look after firstborns."
He paled. "I'm not your monster. I'm-"
"-Not a human, not a ghost. You're the first of your kind." Eve cut Vlad off, her voice laced with an almost seductively reverent understanding, made all the deadlier in its sincerity. "The oldest, the strongest, you've had so much time alone to master your own powers and it's made you incredible." Eve leaned forward and in her eyes Vlad saw the hunger of an all-powerful creature faced with the one thing she was denied.
A passing thought wondered if this was what Daniel saw when he looked at him.
"Any decent mother will always recognize her children, but a good mother can pick out and feel for an orphan child as well." She pulled his empty teacup out of his lax fingers with a soft grip, still never touching his hands. "You've come so far on your own, and made yourself into such a beautiful creature that I don't need to make you mine to care for what I see."
Eve cleared away the dishes to the side table where a servant would've waited had Vlad employed any as she continued. "You know a war is coming, but I'm not asking you to fight. You've already done too much on your own for a mother to ask that. Just let me help you get what you want in the aftermath." Coming back Eve settled herself on the love seat she noted earlier at a closer angle to her present target.
Taking in his expression for the first time now that she returned, Eve could make out the surprise at her words, followed quickly by suspicion at the unexpected gift. Of course he would be. He was a businessman: he wasn't used to anything coming that easily. Especially not when he was expecting to be threatened or coerced by something stronger. Both the man and the monster knew from experience that that never ended well.
It only made Eve want to care for him even more.
"Why are you offering me anything? Why do you care about what I've been through?"
Eve smiled. "You remind me of my children, and I give gifts to anyone who does. Gifts I'm not sure you would accept," she let a small frown settle on her lips. "Not to mention it would be a shame to change another firstborn. Just because you're not mine doesn't mean you deserve to die. Or to be alone."
"What are you proposing?" Vlad's glare still cut like ice, as if he was the other one who held her interest. The billionaire didn't seem any more convinced by her sentiments.
"My monsters have already started building an army, and soon they'll start moving even faster. I'll turn the entire human population if I have to, until Crowley lets my children go or runs out of souls to keep his operations running." Her hand reached out to his sleeve, caressing in a way that wouldn't change him. "I didn't want to hurt you by involving those you love without asking, so I made a stop along the way. That, and I wanted to meet you to make sure you were someone I wanted to work with."
He pulled his hand back. "What are your terms?"
Eve sighed, running that hand back through her hair. "Don't tell Crowley of my plans and I'll let your family live. Your real family. We both know that ones who turned you and your own kind run deeper than blood." She could see that moment that she finally caught Plasmius's interest.
"Tell me where he is, or at least prove to me you looked," she met the halfa's eyes to show that she'd know if he lied, "and I'll bring them back to you. My gift."
Eve smiled her most maternal smile and Vlad stared, his posture helplessly losing its formality for a moment to wonder. "But you'll-"
Knowing they were going down a dangerous path Eve cut him off before they reached the technicalities. "They won't be minions. I said I'll let them live and I'll keep them safe. They're your family, and if you'll let me…" Eve leaned all the way out of the love seat, pushing herself onto the armrest so she could lean a breath away from his ear. For the dozenth time she swallowed the temptation to turn the man before her.
"If you let me, by extension they'll be my family too."
Vlad pushed himself until he was sinking in the high-backed chair, panic at her advance driving out all previous lines of questioning like Eve planned. "I'm not one of your monsters, and I don't want to be."
Eve let her face fall and backed away as she let him pretend he had his victory. "You may not be my monster, but you will always be a firstborn, and all firstborns are my most precious children. Just accepting that makes us family enough."
With that she danced out of the chair, loving the way her virgin vessel let her smile serenely at the world and care with all the human's heart as she gave it to those who no longer had them. "I am so glad to finally get to meet you, but I need to keep moving before my children get jealous. I hope you'll enjoy my gift when I next see you."
She wanted to smirk at the way Vlad was torn between a snarl and a polite smile. He was just as fun to play with as to care for. "I think you seem to already know perfectly well what I'd like."
She smiled back to him. "I just want to help you." And she did. She was just glad to clear up that she could do so in a way that helped herself.
Without needing Vlad to show her the way Eve started towards the front door, her bare feet echoing across the marble as she thought of how this would fit in with her plans.
She'd be sure to be in Amity Park when her army got to turning it. She'd either let one of her more violent children kill Jack Fenton or she'd bring him to Plasmius as a peace offering to sooth his anger. Maybe she'd even let Maddie or Jasmine Fenton remain human if that'd calm him even more. There was little harm in leaving one or two human souls remaining for Crowley to potentially prey on, that was far too little to keep his war machine running. In fact, she was planning on offering a similar deal to the Winchesters in exchange for their help.
She'd need to win Vlad's favor back after all, with what she planned to do the crown jewel of his desires. As much as the mother in her yearned for the ghostly orphan who gave her the hope of experimenting with ectoplasm, nothing would allow her to put another creature before her children.
She promised him none of them would be minions. She didn't say they wouldn't be monsters.
Because if Vlad Plasmius was the hope of new species, the masterpiece of fate and circumstance she had to refrain from experimenting on, Danny Phantom was the prodigy she couldn't wait to take under her wing and recreate in her style. He was already strong, and had a title among the ghosts she once wished she could turn, but still he was human. A human turned monster due to the interference of another of his species, with enough of a blast to cause instant transformation and avoid the pesky dance with death she could smell in Vlad's past. Even if Vlad hadn't intended Danny to become a halfa when he sabotaged the Ghost Portal blueprints in an attempt on Jack's life, neither he nor Eve were disappointed in the result.
The calling card of a monster versus a new brand of spirit was the ability for an existing to infect a human to become like them. Ghosts had never done that before, and more than anything that technicality gave Eve all the leeway she needed if ever confronted by the wrath of Death or God.
Vlad had given her with so many gifts and unique abilities that Eve couldn't help but thank him in person, even if she had to hold off on giving him her favorite gift in return. Still, once she turned his family he would be family in turn, and Eve giggled at the perfect end to this incredible anomaly.
It was disappointing she could never own Vlad because he was an Alpha, and Alphas were off-limits. But there's no hierarchy beyond firstborns either in monsters or ghosts, meaning everything else is fair game. So while she loathed the limits on what she could do she could still tie him closer with everything he desired, giving and taking and twisting his soul as much as if he were truly her Alpha.
And Eve couldn't wait for the chance to make the world's second halfa an Alpha in his own right.
#superphantom#supernatural#danny phantom#vlad masters#eve mother of all#eve#mother of all#I'm happy with how creepy this came out#especially the second scene#also just glad to be posting oneshots again#akg fic
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