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desert-dyke · 4 years

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the things I’ve read in 2020 and some thoughts...

hey blacklist this now because it’s gonna get long from here. I spent NYE home alone and reading and it has really set the tone for this year. Fortunately, I’ve been reading way more for the first time in...I literally don’t even know? Maybe forever? Which is really dope! Books are fucking fantastic and I hope this trend continues for the rest of the year. So I’m gonna use this post (and continue to add to it as I finish books) to talk about the things I’ve read. It could be annoying. I could give up on it really soon. People might not read this at all. It’s okay! It’s my blog I’ll use it how I want and I want to talk about books I otherwise don’t really have a place to talk about them.

The Shape of Water - Guillermo Del Toro & Daniel Kraus

If you know me irl you’ll know that I love this movie. Like, it’s probably my favorite movie as an adult. I love watching a movie and then going back and reading the book to compare and vice versa, but knowing that the book came out after the movie did discourage me at first, making me think it was nothing more than a cash grab. Though I was talking to (my boss) who also loves this movie and is a huge bibliophile and she highly recommended the book, so I figured I’d give it a stab.

The writing style is beautiful and enticing and overall I was impressed with the quality of it. It’s fast paced and switches perspective between characters frequently, though remains easy to follow. The book focuses a little less on Elisa and more on the other characters and stories around her, including, surprisingly, Elaine Strickland, who despite never wondering much about during the movie, I enjoyed being included in the book. There’s a deeper exploration into pretty much everyone’s backstories, and more prominent character development. It’s excellent as a standalone piece, and supplementary to readers who have seen the movie. There’s also some alternative takes on certain scenes, which I don’t necessarily like better or worse than the choices made in the movie, but it makes for an interesting read.

The book explores themes of alienation and being othered, with a main cast that breaks the stereotype of straight white fully-abled male. Elisa is a mute woman, Zelda, a black woman, and Giles a gay man. With the political climate of the 1950′s, all of them are outsiders and all of them find solidarity in each other, despite their unique struggles, and also with the creature.

The only thing I didn’t quite like was the portrayal of the creature. I think greater efforts were put into making him more godlike and otherworldly, but also, simultaneously, he comes off as much more like a wild animal in the book, and the latter came off as strange to me, and not in the way I like it. Overall, even if the movie didn’t exist and I only read this, I’d still think it was a really good story.

To Be Taught, If Fortunate - Becky Chambers

If I depended on the synopsis on the back of the book to decide whether or not I wanted to read this, I don’t know if I would have bothered. To be honest, I only wanted to read this because Becky Chambers is my current favorite author and all other of her works I’ve read I’ve absolutely adored, so naturally, I wanted to give this one a chance, even if the concept wasn’t as riveting as I would have hoped.

She didn’t disappoint.

Whereas her other books take place in a vast space civilization where humanity is integrated with aliens and there’s technology beyond our dreams, this book took place in a different creative universe, a little more closer to our timeline. The book is about space exploration for the sake of learning and taking care to be as least intrusive on the explored worlds as possible. It’s a nice break from what I usually see in sci fi, with colonization and owning space and wanting to use knowledge in order to hurt others. It follows a research crew of four, sent to research four planets in a far solar system. There’s a lag in travel time, since FTL travel had not been discovered yet, so a common device is communication with Earth is off by years. Eventually, the crew realizes they have lost contact with Earth and Earth had likely suffered some sort of devastation. It wonders if Earth has forgotten them or if it’s even worth it to return since they might be the last astronauts of their time.

The worlds they visit and research are unique and vivid and fill me with wonder. They’re realistic to the point where I found myself questioning if the book was prophetic. Chambers makes effort to incorporate science into her novels, but in a way that does not estrange a reader like me who only has a basic knowledge in science. It’s one of the things I find most attractive about her work, because it has this added realism and this feeling of “wow, this really could happen” and yet remains easy to follow.

I found the crew to be likeable and diverse. Three of them are in a relationship with each other, and while polyamory isn’t usually an interest of mine, it’s in the background as well as it’s never used as a point to cause drama. It’s a healthy functional relationship. Also, one of the crew is a trans man and another is asexual, both details that exist within a single line, but yet important to be included to flesh out the characters.

What I didn’t like was the almost rush to the end of the book. It’s a short book, roughly 100 pages, but it seems to me as if it reaches it’s climax and then the book just ends and it kind of feels like it’s still in the middle of things. I’ve had time to think about it, though, and I’ve considered that maybe anything else written would have been redundant or just filler and therefore not needed. So in that case, that’s fair. It still felt a little abrupt to me, but that’s what fic is for.

Overall, if you haven’t read anything by Becky Chambers you need to change that immediately. Please don’t leave me alone and fanning over this incredible author!!

All Systems Red - Martha Wells

This was another short one, and in fact, I read it entirely in one sitting. The concept of the book was really intriguing, and actually I selected it because I liked the opening line so much. I have a lot of feelings about AI and robots, so this was a naturally alluring story to me. Mixed with the fact that the beefed out security robot, who calls themselves “Murderbot”, was absolutely obsessed with soap opera tv just absolutely gets me!

The story is told through Murderbot’s perspective, who is assigned to guard a research team. They had recently hacked their government module, which now allows them full autonomy and no longer having to obey orders from their assigned humans. It’s interesting to see Murderbot actively choose to help the humans. Also, needing to maintain an illusion that they aren’t unshackled, since what they did was forbidden.

The research team is full of interesting characters, who I find tragically under explored. The only couple in the story is wlw, which I vastly appreciated, along with they obviously cared and loved each other and their relationship was not used for drama purposes. In favor of the lack of development with the cast of characters, since the narrator is Murderbot and part of Murderbot’s personality is they are actively trying not to care about these humans, it does make sense. Still, I would have loved to see more of the crew and more development between Murderbot and them.

I like the dark lore that is hinted behind Murderbot’s existence. There’s organic counterparts to their machine made from cloned humans. It’s creepy and morbid, but a lot is with the lore of the universe that the story takes place in. There’s hints towards a heavy capitalist society in space where the humans and Murderbot came from, where the right price will get you anything, regardless of morals. The overall tone of the story is very quirky, but it needs to be to offset just how dark everything that happens actually is. The book explores the concept of corporate greed, from the existence of Murderbot to the deaths that come to humans on the planet the crew is studying.

This book was deeply fascinating, but I didn’t love the way it was written. I love every concept and choice made, but I didn’t love the execution. It left me wanting without satisfaction. It’s not a bad book and I still over all enjoyed it. It is part of a series, which I did not realize at the time of reading it, but the ending leaves room for more to be written, so maybe in the following books there will be the development I desired. However, the ending of the book leaves it apparent that Murderbot will not be interacting with the same characters of the first, but that is just an assumption and I could be wrong. I’m not sure yet if I will read more in the series but I’m not entirely opposed to it.

All the Birds in the Sky - Charlie Jane Anders

This is another one that I definitely would not have read if I had to choose based on the synopsis alone. The synopsis made it sound so run-of-the-mill star-crossed-lovers, which, hey, maybe that actually helps sell the book because its a pretty well loved trope, but for me it was off-putting, as well as isn’t fair to what the book actually turned out to be. But that’s what reviews are for, and I found this book from some sort of list, I think it was best sci-fi books written by women.

The general idea of the book is a witch and a techie fall in love while the world is falling apart due to a conflict between magic and technology. The book is lauded for bending genre and honestly, it fucking has. It’s as equally a sci-fi novel as it is a fantasy novel. There’s advanced technology, such as robots, two second time machines, rocket ships, and ultimately, a portal leading to a different universe in hopes of escaping the destruction of earth. On the magic side, there’s a connection to nature, rules that have to be abided, quirky witches and magicians and mystique. Both Laurence and Patricia are outsiders that have seemingly found these secret niches in the world that becomes their own.

Both plots are interesting in their own, and could possibly exist as two separate books, but what ties the entire story together is the connection Laurence and Patricia have, and their ultimate romance.

The romance is a wonderful slow burn, from childhood friends, to adult friends to lovers. By the time Patricia and Laurence finally get together, you really fucking want them to. They weave in and out of each other’s lives throughout their own personal plots. There’s tensions and there’s release. And most importantly, they have lives outside of each other. Their romance compliments the story, rather than the story being entirely about romance.

Similar to the former review, there’s a lot of quirkiness in the story, that ultimately offsets how dark the story can be. The story doesn’t shy away from complicated relationships with parents and siblings and friends and other people, people of mixed ages and backgrounds. It explores abuse, bullying, natural disaster and loss. The story would have been miserable and a drag to read without the whimsical qualities of it. Plus it’s a fantasy/sci-fi, so it should have some quirkiness to it! And it made for a very enjoyable read!

My criticism for this one is, yet again, the ending. The conflict resolves and the story comes to an end. In favor of how it was written, the way things resolve, I believe the world is about to go through a grand change. While the story is quirky, I think it would have been too corny to have had a glittery magical wave drag across the land, altering the world as it went. So, it’s fair, I guess, that the author chose to end it where she did. Still, it left me craving more. Maybe because the story was so good and I wasn’t yet ready to let it go.

Also, as a side note, the author is a trans woman. So if you’re looking for books written by trans authors to support, put this at the top of your list.

#book review 2020 #the shape of water #to be taught if fortunate #All systems red #all the birds in the sky #idk how to write about books and these are only partial reviews/reccomendations so sorry if it sucks #also I plan on adding to this post so better blacklist it now #feel free to recommend things

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yellowcanna · 4 years

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Two Sides, Same Coin

Summary: Since the beginning of Quirks, Yokohama has announced independence from Japan and closed itself from the rest of the world.

To this day and age, no one knows what lies within the city of Yokohama—or that was what the public was made to believe. In reality, Yokohama has long fallen into the control of the world’s largest criminal organization known as the Port Mafia.

Follow Class 1-A as their principal organized a field trip to Yokohama! In their short trip there, they must change their perspectives and learn exactly what it means to be justice and what it means to be villains.

Rating: T

Genre: Crossover, hint of shounen-ai (boy love)

Pairing: Contains mild Soukoku (Dazai x Chuuya) and Shin Soukoku (Akutagawa x Atsushi) if you squint

Author: Canna / Yellow Canna

Available on AO3!!

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CHAPTER 11

IDLE DAY (DAY 2: MONDAY)

Aizawa walked down the street with his hands tucked in his pockets and postures slightly slouched. His long raven hair was unkempt, covering most of his face as he struggled to keep his drying eyes open under the bright afternoon sunlight.

Wherever he went, people’s gazes were sure to follow. No matter how crowded the afternoon street may be, it will still part at the sight of the shaggy man.

In hindsight, Aizawa probably shouldn’t wear his usual outfit. He should probably have taken off his Capturing Weapon as well, giving the many weird stares drawn to it. However, Aizawa didn’t see the point in changing to appropriate clothing. There was no need to blend into the crowd when the Port Mafia already knew about them and no doubt was monitoring him right now from somewhere.

The raven-haired man had been strolling through the street for a while now, trying and failing to figure out just where those people watching him could be. Either they were highly skilled, or the Port Mafia used other methods to watch other them—such as Ability or purely by technology.

Aizawa was leaning more towards Ability, considering how they even knew what happened to his students in another dimension, but they still knew nothing of Yokohama's technology. If they can recreate an entire scenery and called it a TV, who's to say they can't create some sort of invisible drone?

The underground Hero looked up at the sky, squinting as the sunlight burned his eyes. No matter how many times he tried looking at the sky, he could never find a trace of that barrier they could easily see from the outside.

And what’s more…

Aizawa stopped moving when he felt a gentle breeze passing by him, blowing some of his hair out of his face. To create an invisible barrier from the inside that also allows air to be pass in…this can’t be made from just technology alone, considering how this barrier had been around for hundreds of years.

As far as the outside world knew, Yokohama had never changed their barrier.

It had always been that same globe concealing this mysterious city. If not technology, then could this be made by Ability? After witnessing that dragon, Aizawa was convinced that anything was possible with Ability. The power of Ability far surpasses that of Quirk, but Ability that lasts for hundreds of years?

Was it possible?

He turned his eyes to the five tall buildings towering the city. Before coming to Yokohama, Toshinori had filled him in on everything he knew about Yokohama. Naturally, those five buildings were the first thing he told his colleague about.

It was like these criminals were flaunting their powers right in their faces by building those things and having each of those buildings face a different direction, reminding those who stared at it that they were being watched at all times.

They were flaunting their powers out in the open and there was nothing anyone can do about it.

Aizawa swept his eyes over the buildings around him that were small in comparison to the Port Mafia ones. He needed to get to higher ground to access the area better. Unfortunately, this wasn’t Japan. He won’t be able to go up any buildings without permissions and flashing his Hero licenses wouldn’t do him any good here.

Clicking his teeth, Aizawa went into the only place that looked accessible—the department store. The building wasn’t too tall. There were only ten floors, but at the very least he could a clearer and further view.

The top floor of the department store was filled with restaurants and cafes. There was no access to the rooftops, but all of these stores got window seats for customers to enjoy the view. And since its Monday noon, there weren’t too many people around.

Aizawa walked into the plainest café he could find and just like he thought it was pretty much empty.

He was greeted by a waiter and not wanting to be in the eyes of the public, Aizawa asked for the corner booth by the window where no one would notice him unless he stretched his arm out and waved.

He ordered a cup of hot tea and some appetizers just so he could have a reason to sit longer.

Aizawa took a small sip of the steaming hot tea before gazing out the window with his bloodshot eyes. He had to blink his eyes a couple of times for them to adjust to the bright light outside. The first thing he noticed was a faint trail of smoke rising into the sky. And that smoke’s direction was coming from within the small circle of the Port Mafia buildings. He hadn’t noticed on the street since one of the tall buildings had blocked his sight.

Was there some sort of battle?

Aizawa frowned. As much as he wanted to find out, he highly doubted he could get anywhere near those buildings. His eyes trailed along, looking over as much as he can from his current position and that was when he noticed something very, very off.

The raven-haired man jumped out of his seats, hands slamming into the wooden table and causing the delicate ceramic cup and plates to clatter.

“Sire, is everything alright?” Hearing the noise, the waiter that brought the Hero’s food quickly came over to check out the noise he had heard.

"…Yeah.” Aizawa waved dismissively. The waiter wasn’t convinced. He just stared as Aizawa sank back into his seat, then to the appetizers and drink to make sure nothing was damaged.

Giving Aizawa another weird look, he slowly walked away—glancing over his shoulder every now and then almost cautiously.

Aizawa had no idea what was going through the waiter’s brain, but he couldn’t care less about other people's opinions of him. His eyes were wide with his pupils darting around, searching.

Where was that mountain?

His eyes scanned the area, but he couldn’t see any mountains—at least not ones that seemed to be close enough within a thirty minutes ride. There was the Fuji Mountain in the far distant, but that was it. The taller buildings could be blocking his sight, but that was highly unlikely.

There should be a mountain somewhere nearby, but there wasn’t.

Which meant…there was no mountain?

Aizawa narrowed his eyes. It didn’t take long for him to find the answer. If that boy with the illusion Ability from the Agency drove them, then most likely that mountain scenery was created by him.

If that was the case…then his power was stronger than he had thought.

Aizawa has seen many kinds of Quirk given his career. He was no stranger to illusions. He has seen many kinds and forms of illusion, but this boy’s Ability had to be the strongest of them all. If that mountain really was an illusion, then what about the route the bus took? In that thirty minutes' drive, where exactly were they?

Were they in the underground?

Were they even driving?

The sounds of the engines, the movement of the bus, the echoes in the tunnel and the sounds of rustling leaves…were they even real?

From where did the illusion begin and where did it end? If that kid has the power to perfectly blend the illusions with reality that even pros like him and Toshinori can't even figure out, then that boy's power was beyond frightening.

“Pardon me.”

Aizawa’s frame stilled for a split second as his eyes locked onto his reflection in the glass. Though it was hard to see due to the brighter lighting outside, Aizawa could see a faint trace of a person right behind him.

The Hero turned and found an elderly man standing there, wearing a long black trench coat with a white-gloved hand slowly taking off his hat, revealing gray-white hair neatly combed behind his head and a monocle over his right eye.

“It’s not every day I find a company at this time. May I join you for an afternoon tea?”

“…Sure.” Aizawa watched as the man took a seat on the other side of the table.

He took off his heavy autumn coat, revealing simple suits underneath that Yokohama citizens seemed to wear often.

“A lovely day, isn’t it?” The man asked, eyes curving upward in a smile as the skin on his face wrinkled from the movement. He folded his jacket and laid it next to him before setting his hat on top.

“It’s alright.” Aizawa reply, picking up his steaming hot tea and took another small sip.

The waiter from before came over, probably assuming the old man was with the raven considering how he didn’t even question and placed a menu onto the table for the newcomer.

"Ah, there's no need. I will just have a black coffee." The elderly man said. Seeing such a well-dressed gentleman smiling up at him, the waiter eased up and returned the smile with one of his own.

Aizawa’s expression darkened. Even if he didn’t mind what other people think of him, the waiter’s expression just now told him everything he did not need to know. That waiter most likely was thinking that Aizawa was going to dine and dash.

The Hero looked down at his clothes. He knew his clothes didn’t fit in Yokohama’s trend but did it made him look like someone who would eat and run?

“I will be right back with your order in a minute!” The waiter said cheerfully as he scurried off to prepare the man’s order.

“Thank you for letting me join you." The elderly man said as Aizawa looked back to him. “I must say, I’ve been lacking company to speak with these days and it’s quite lonely.”

“Oh?” Aizawa’s arched a brow as he caught the heavy scent of cigarette from the man’s clothes. He must be a heavy smoker. “What do you do for a living?”

“I look after troublesome children.” The old man laughed.

“What a coincident, so I do," Aizawa replied with a quirk of his lips. “Taking care of kids at your age must be tough.”

“I am currently taking a break from all that.” The man chuckled. “Though I must admit, I’ve been working for years and this is the first time I’ve ever taken a vacation. It’s not as relaxing as people make it be."

“Why’s that?” Aizawa asked, eyes shifting to the windows. Although he sounded disinterested, Aizawa was firmly staring at the faint reflection of the man within the glass.

“Have you ever had so much time that you don’t know what to do with?” The elderly man asked. “It makes you realize how boring life can become. I also find myself constantly worrying over those children. I’m sure you understand what I mean.”

Aizawa almost snorted as he thought of those troublemakers, especially certain ones.

“Yeah.” His lips lifted in the faintest smile as he stared at his tea. “I get it perfectly.”

They sat in silence after that.

The waiter soon returned with the man’s coffee, along with a plate of cream and sugar.

“Ah, thank you.” The old gentleman nodded to the waiter smiled before walking away to let the two enjoy their privacy.

“So,” The man spoke up as he lifted his cup and took a whiff of the aroma. “Tell me about those children of yours. What kind of trouble do they cause?”

“Breaking the rules," Aizawa answered almost immediately.

The man chuckled as he took a sip of his coffee and let out a pleasant sigh. He set the ceramic cup back onto the plate and leaned back in his seat.

“You’re being too lenient with them.” The man told him. “If you’re strict enough, they wouldn’t have broken the rules.”

“From the sounds of it, your kids don’t break the rules.”

"Oh, they've broken them." The elderly man had his hands folded on his knees, his right hand overlapping his right one with a finger tapping a light rhythm on the back of his other hand. “After some proper lessons, I can guarantee that they will never break them again.”

“You must be a good teacher if they listen to you properly," Aizawa commented, sharp eyes meeting the older man’s. “Any chance that you can give me a tip?”

“Perhaps one day, when I get the pleasure to meet those children of yours.” The elderly man chuckled in a standard polite rejection.

Aizawa just nodded as he took another sip of his tea. “I don’t think I’ve gotten your name.” He said after a while.

“Ah, of course! Age must be catching up to me.” The man smiled as straightened from his seat, leaning a little towards the table as those copper-brown eyes met Aizawa’s dark ones. “Hirotsu Ryuurou, a pleasure to meet you.”

“Aizawa Shouta.” Aizawa stared back into those eyes, not backing down from the silent challenge. “So what brings you here, Hirotsu-san? You don’t seem like a regular at this café.”

“I came for the view.” Hirotsu turned his head, breaking away their locked gaze to the world outside. “Magnificent, is it not? I must say that I’ve missed this sight.”

“Wouldn’t you get used to seeing this all the time?” Aizawa questioned.

“You would think that, no?” The old man laughed as he turned back to Aizawa. “But it’s surprising how you would long for something you’ve always had after leaving its side.”

“I take it you’ve just came back to Yokohama?”

“This morning, to be precise.” Hirotsu hummed. “I’ve been traveling around Japan, though the culture outside is too different for me to enjoy. I can’t even enjoy a quiet drink without Villains appearing every other hour smashing up the place.”

“In that case why not just go back to work?” Aizawa retorted with his brows furrowing just the slightest bit.

“As much as I want to do that, my boss was the one who gave me this vacation and ordered me not to come back until my vacation was over.”

Aizawa snorted at that. “I’ve never heard of a boss that would force their employee to take a vacation. That must be quite a boss you have.”

“I cannot argue with you there!” The old man laughed.

Their conversation momentarily stopped again with the two savouring their drinks.

It took another couple minutes for Hirotsu to break it again.

“Do you like dogs, Aizawa-kun?”

"Not particularly."

“Ah, a cat person then.” Hirotsu nodded to himself. “My boss isn’t very fond of dogs either, though I quite like them. Don’t you simply find dogs fascinating?”

“They’re dogs," Aizawa replied dryly.

“Then it’s obvious you know nothing about them. After all, you grew up with domestic pets.”

Aizawa looked up at the man as he slowly lowered his tea back onto the table.

"Sad creatures, they are, don't you think?” Hirotsu hummed as he swirled the coffee around within his cup. “Despite being born with fangs and claws, they aren't capable of using them. Their environments have shaped them into losing their instincts and restricted them with a collar over their neck. Even when met with danger, they lack the ability to protect themselves. All they needed to learn was to wag their tails and someone will tend to their needs.”

“I thought you like dogs.” Aizawa narrowed his eyes before closing them to nurse his drying eyeballs and took another drink of his tea.

"I love dogs," Hirotsu restated his love for these creatures. "But I don’t consider those animals to be dogs. Those are merely pets. You can hold a gun over their head they won’t even register the danger they’re in. They’ve completely lost their instinct or will to fight. That’s how pitiful those pets were raised to become.”

Aizawa frowned at the man’s change of tone. His voice was still the same as before, but his tone had become very real. If anything, this tone was the most sincere since the man had sat down on his other side.

“Then what dogs do you like?” Aizawa inquired, acting completely casual as he tasted the heavy tea on his tongue. Up to now, he still hadn’t touched any of the appetizers placed in front of him. The old man didn't help himself to any either. The food just sat untouched between them, acting as a barrier of a sort.

“To me, the only dogs are stray dogs.”

“Strays?”

“They are beasts born with the will to survive. They learn of the world through their own experience and gain knowledge that pets can never obtain. They band together and operate as a united pack. Their reasoning for coming together may be different, but their goals are ultimately the same.”

“And that goal is?"

“As I have said, to survive." The man responded, amusement twinkling in his eyes.

“In the end, they’re a bunch of dogs running wild without laws binding them down.” Aizawa retorted.

"By laws, you mean to chip their nails, pull out their fangs and turn them into pets?"

“By letting them know what they can and cannot do.” The Hero corrected.

“Is that not the definition of pets?” Hirotsu chuckled darkly. “Ah, but there are pets that were tossed away by their owners and turn into strays, aren’t there?”

Aizawa didn’t answer. He just lifted his cup back to his lips. The tea has already become lukewarm from the time that had passed.

"But in the end, pets are still pets. Even after they've become stray, their mindset and knowledge still revolved around the knowledge humans implemented them. Despite knowing that they can use their claws and fangs, they've long lost that instincts they were born with. It is the same as those trained hunting dogs. They may be superior to pets, but in the end, they are still raised and fed by humans. Their world only revolves around humans and the rules they give them. Neither would learn how to become proper dogs, a sad fate don't you think?"

“And what knowledge would strays gain that humans aren't able to give?" Aizawa questioned.

“Did you know that when dogs have eaten poisonous plants, they will start feasting on surrounding plants because they know that the antidote would be nearby?” Hirotsu smirked at Aizawa. "And if they have eaten something bad, they will eat grass to make themselves empty out their stomachs to avoid food poisoning. Tell me, Aizawa-kun, do the dogs you know have that knowledge?”

“Rather than knowledge, that just sounded like their method of survival is licking their wounds.” Aizawa snorted.

“They lick their wounds as well as each other’s.” Hirotsu corrected. “And as a whole, they share information and evolve. They are creatures that act upon instincts, unlike training dogs that are just slaves of commands.”

“Last time I checked, there are chains of command within packs too.” Aizawa pointed out.

“Indeed.” Hirotsu agreed. “The boss of the pack commands all, but the underlings are fully capable of thinking of how to act out a command, whereas trained dogs were only taught to obey and not think despite there is no hierarchy binding them down. Those who only know to obey sit at the bottom of the food chain. The higher up you are in that chain, the more you think, whether it is the meaning behind a command or the future of the pack."

“In the end, they are just a bunch of wild dogs going around marking territories and injuring anyone that goes against them," Aizawa grunted. “Sounds like a very unsafe place to live in.”

“Stray dogs mark their territory to protect everyone and everything within their territory from outside threats. If you find it unsafe, then that simply means you may become the threat that they see the need to eliminate.”

Hirotsu tilted his head back, downing the last of his coffee and gently set the cup aside.

With that, the elderly man stood up and picked up his jacket and hat.

“As much as I like to continue our discussion, I must go.” He smiled as he fixed the hat over his head. “Today’s the last day of my vacation you see. There are still some places I’d like to visit before returning to work. I do hope we can continue this another time.”

Slipping a hand into his coat pocket, the man pulled out a nicely folded bill that was too much for a simple cup of coffee and placed it onto the table.

“For listening to this old man’s boring talk, allow me to treat you.” He said pleasantly, though when Aizawa’s eyes met the old man’s, there was nothing pleasant within that sharp, murderous gaze and the raven wasn’t hesitant to replicate it.

“Enjoy your stay at Yokohama.”

With that, the man walked away and soon disappeared from his sight.

Aizawa downed the last bit of his tea as well. Giving another look at the five black buildings in the distance, he reached into his pocket and put down the same amount of money the old man had left behind.

“Port Mafia huh?”

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“Here.” Toshinori held out a can of juice to the raven-haired young man sitting idly on the wooden bench.

The man smiled, his eyes curving upward as he accepted the juice. He turned the can of juice around as if admiring the design before he slipped a finger under the tab and popped it open.

“This time you won’t spill it on me, would you?” Toshinori asked jokingly as the man smirked.

“I’ve waited thirteen years for this, ya know?” He empathized his point by waving the juice at the blond.

Toshinori sat down beside him and glanced around this same park he had sat down with this same young man beside him so many years ago. The park was the same as he had remembered. Nothing had changed at all, which was astonishing for him, considering how things frequently change in the outside world.

"The kids were extremely happy," Toshinori said with a smile on his lips. “I heard about how you solved the case. Your Ability is truly amazing.”

Ranpo didn’t say anything. He was gulping his juice down, legs swinging back and forth with his heels just half an inch from touching the ground.

Toshinori watched the young man gradually tilted his head back, his neck stretching to his movement and his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed the juice. When his lips finally detached from the empty can, he let out a loud, satisfied breath.

“That hits the spot~” He said as he peered into the juice can, as if confirming that it was indeed empty. “What were you saying again, mister?”

“Oh, er…your Ability is amazing.” Toshinori complimented him again.

“That wasn’t my Ability.”

“…What?” Toshinori blinked, wondering if he had heard wrong. What did he mean that it wasn’t his Ability?

“I’m just a normal human being, not an Ability user.” Ranpo let out a sigh of disappointment. “I would have made a great one, don’t you think?”

“Wait, wait!” Toshinori held out a hand to Ranpo while the other to his forehead. “You…you’re not an Ability user?”

“That’s what I just said.” The raven smiled mischievously.

“But your Ability—no, that means…” Toshinori’s eyes were widening each passing seconds as he tried to process the information. That meant the intelligence the boy displayed was his own, not a special power or anything.

“But…” Toshinori still wasn’t able to wrap his head around it. He even wondered if Ranpo was lying to him for some reason. “Then back then, how did you know about me? How did you know about One For All?”

“Hmm, One for All, I guess it's a fitting name for your Quirk," Ranpo commented as he tossed the empty juice can into the trashcan beside the bench. “I told you before, didn't I? Your Quirk is too strong. The people in your world might not be able to guess, but it’s not hard for us here since we have Abilities.”

“You mean…” Toshinori’s eyes widened at where Ranpo was getting at.

“Yes. Your power isn’t completely a Quirk. It’s more accurate to say that the origin of your Quirk is something between the bridge of a Quirk and Ability.” Ranpo explained. “People with Quirks cannot gain Ability and Ability users can’t develop Quirk. Surely Kunikida told you about the origins of Quirks.”

Toshinori nodded slowly.

“When the virus was first spreading, Quirk users’ body was still the same as normal humans at the time. The virus hadn’t taken root yet and it was just the beginning of the spread. If a certain someone during that time was ambitious enough, it’s not impossible for them to find some roundabout way to obtain an Ability—or something as close as possible to an Ability. It may seem rare for Quirks to past onto another person considering Quirks are the mutation within genes, but transferring power is nothing new with Ability users.”

“You mean that Ability users are capable of transferring their power to another person?” The former Hero gapped in disbelieve.

“Yep! With proper training, any Ability can be passed on. I’m sure you know where I’m getting to, don’t you?” Ranpo turned to the blond with a sly smirk on his lips.

“All for One…” A droplet of sweat rolled down the side of Toshinori’s face. The idea that both One for All and All for One might have originated from Abilities brought chills down his spines. “How did you—”

“Did you really think that someone that wanted to take control of Japan would leave Yokohama alone?” Ranpo shrugged uninterestedly. “That person you call All for One came here a couple years after almost completely taking over Japan.”

“What happened?!” Toshinori immediately asked, needing to know.

Unfortunately for him, Ranpo had no interest in talking about All for One.

“Who knows? Those were hundreds of years ago.” Ranpo took out a lollipop from his pocket. “Either way, neither yours nor All for One’s power are considered Abilities. All they became were just Quirks not bounded by the limitation of the hosts.”

“I think I need a moment to think...” Toshinori groaned as he rubbed his temple at the new piece of information. He still wasn’t convinced that the boy’s intelligence wasn’t an Ability, because…it just didn't seem possible! How could anyone have that level of intelligence? Even principal Nezu’s intelligence was due to his Quirk. “You knew I was the eighth holder of One for All.”

“If you know that the origin of your Quirk came from when Quirk first appeared, then the rest is just a matter of simple math," Ranpo stated. “Considering how this All for One have always been around every generation, it's safe to say that the average lifespan of your predecessors is around thirty to forty. Though I admit that I was too young and made a dumb mistake. I had guessed that you were the Seventh at first.”

Toshinori jerked back when Ranpo suddenly pointed a finger right into his face as those eyes opened, revealing those bright green pupils reflecting his images.

"But your eyes told me otherwise. There was shock on your face, but not the shock of having his secret exposed. You had the eyes of someone who was suddenly reminded of a very important person, which means you knew the Seventh holder. The only way you could have known was if the Seventh holder was the one who transferred the Quirk to you, which means you’re the Eighth.”

Toshinori stared at Ranpo for a long, long time before he rubbed a hand over his face.

“Then when you told me it was an Ability…”

“It was a cover of course!” Ranpo sang. “It’s my trump card, so keep this a secret, mister!”

Toshinori wasn’t sure what to think. To be born with this kind of intelligence…it’s amazing. It’s amazing but also sad. With a brain as developed as his, Toshinori doubted Ranpo could fit in with kids his age while growing up.

Intelligence like his was heavily wanted by all sorts of people from both the light and dark side. Anyone could benefit from this gift of his, especially...

“You can ask, you know.” Ranpo suddenly spoke as Toshinori look up in surprise. “You have something you’ve been wanting to ask, don’t you?

Toshinori opened his mouth but quickly closed it. He rested his elbow on his knees and laced his fingers together. His head was dipped low as his eyes watched the people walking by the park and going on about their day.

“Why did you help me back then?

What he really wanted to ask was if Ranpo was with the Port Mafia, but when the words came to the tip of his tongue, he hurriedly changed it. He didn’t want to make it seem like he was accusing the young man, even though his current wordings weren’t that much different.

“I’m not with the Port Mafia.” Ranpo smiled as he rested his chin into his palm and turned to face Toshinori.

The former Hero felt a little guilty and uncomfortable by how easily the other had read his thought, but what’s done was done. At least now he got an answer and felt the weight that had been dangling around his heart all these years finally vanished.

Toshinori didn’t doubt the truth behind Ranpo’s words this time.

"It was purely coincident that I came across you that day. It was the first day I got my paycheck, I was excited and went to buy snacks then came across you.”

“Paycheck?” Toshinori gapped, feeling some sort of protectiveness from his years of being a Hero kicking in. Ranpo was what…ten? Elven at that time? What paycheck? It couldn’t be that he was working a job back then, could he?!

"If I hadn’t done anything that time, you'd be dead by now." The raven-haired man said so casually that it took a while for Toshinori to register his words.

“What do you mean?” Toshinori sat up a tad straighter as he stared at the younger man.

“You’ve seen some of our technologies here. Do you seriously think that we would have such outdated and obvious tracking devices here?”

Toshinori froze as he thought back to the video Kunikida had shown him and Aizawa. That’s right…if they had that kind of technology, would they have such easily discovered tracking devices?

“They wanted you to find it.” Ranpo empathized. “To be precise, they wanted someone to notice it and tell you. You couldn’t see it, but the businessman that bumped into you at the time made it quite obvious that he slipped something into your pant.”

“Why would they do that?” As soon as Toshinori asked that, he immediately felt stupid. Of course it was so that everything that happened afterward would happen.

“The Port Mafia wanted you to walk into the trap they’ve laid out. If so, then that means they had no intention of killing you. However, if you never found out about the tracking device and continue to explore Yokohama, you’ll end up learning too much.”

And you’ll be silenced—was the unsaid part.

“So…you were trying to save me?” Toshinori whispered in disbelieve. Even if he already accepted the fact that Ranpo’s intelligence wasn't a special power, he still couldn't fathom just how a child could have thought of so much at the time.

“No.” Ranpo leaned back on the bench with his hands laced behind his head and legs crossed over the seat. “I just thought the TV shows would be more interesting if you’re still alive, and I was right!”

Toshinori’s eyes widened for a second before he smiled bitterly.

Although he already had a feeling about this, he was certain now. Ranpo—no, not just Ranpo, even Kunikida and perhaps even that president…these people may stand on the side of justice, but their justice was very different than the justice Toshinori followed.

At the very least, Ranpo did not have a heart of justice. He just does whatever he pleased. Toshinori could already tell that it didn't matter to Ranpo whether he had died that night or not. The most he did was give him a warning out of the spur of the moment and that was it. He didn't even care about the danger he could have dragged himself into.

He was like a bystander.

Although he lived in this world, there was also a detached feeling coming from him that separates him from becoming a part of this world.

Was this due to his highly developed brain?

Either way, this was extremely dangerous. This means that good and evil didn’t matter to him. Whichever side was more amusing, that’s where he’ll stand.

Toshinori didn’t know what to think of that. He had this urge to tell this man—to reform his way of thinking, but more than that, he also felt a chill crawling down his spine. It was just like back then. He felt as if an invisible hand was being held over him with strings attached to his limbs, controlling his every movement.

“Ranpo-kun…are there a lot of people like you in Yokohama?”

“Of course not!” Ranpo huffed as if offended that Toshinori would even ask him that. “There can only be one great detective in this world!”

“That’s not what I—never mind.” Toshinori chuckled as the voice of a certain Port Mafia boss from so long ago whispered inside his mind.

“There are countless Ability users within Yokohama that can end the outside world as simple as a snap of their fingers. The only reason they hadn’t is due to Yokohama’s barrier and the fact that all these individuals have zero interest in your world.”

The former Hero found that he has been recalling that man’s voice a lot ever since he stepped foot into Yokohama again. It was as if he was taunting him for his lack of knowledge and nativity.

“Ranpo-kun, have you ever thought of leaving Yokohama?” Toshinori asked carefully.

“Nope!” Ranpo replied so fast that it was obvious he didn’t even give it a thought.

Toshinori waited a bit, hoping the man would elaborate, but he didn’t so he pressed on.

“Why?”

Ranpo looked over to him, one eye cracking open to reveal that clear emerald orb. His lips lifted in an all-knowing smile.

“Because I’m a great detective!” Ranpo answered. “And detective only exists to solve mysteries.”

At first, Toshinori had no idea what he was talking about, but soon he realized. Crimes created by Villains have no mysteries. In this day and age, crimes can easily be committed by Quirks. There was no need for anyone to wreck their brains and plan out how to carry a crime when Quirks can easily aide them. And when Villains performs crimes, they all made sure the world knew it was them for the sake of fame.

What the outside world need were Heroes, not detectives.

Toshinori could argue that the young man could do so much more with his talent, but when he looked at the man and met those knowing green eyes, his throat dried up.

That’s right…

It wasn’t his place to ask him something like that.

After all, they live in different worlds.

Their conversation stirred away after that. They talked about many things, but Ranpo was mostly curious about the snacks that are available in the outside world. Pretty much the only things Toshinori could get out of him were murder cases and mysteries he had solved, such as the most recent one that had his students so excited.

“I knew Omura-san was a doctor even before the introduction.”

“How?” Toshinori asked, already drawn to the story.

“From his hands.” Ranpo held up a hand to show him. "You can tell a lot of occupations based on the worker's hand. The most common is the callus from holding a scalpel located on the side of their middle finger that is used to support the weight. A doctor has to practice frequently with medical equipment and scalpels are one of the most common tools. On top of that, doctors have to wash their hands as many as a hundred times per days, so their hands are usually extremely worn out even if they regularly apply lotion.”

“Then, the victim?”

“Her mouth was open.”

“You knew how she died because of her mouth?”

Toshinori struggled to wrap his mind around what kind of logic that was.

“Even if she can miraculously die from falling back onto a faucet, her mouth wouldn’t be open due to her head being tipped forward from the impact," Ranpo explained. “For her mouth to open up like that means that at the moment of her death, her head was tipped backward. Since the culprit planned to make it look like an accident in the shower, that it’s only natural for the crime scene to take place there. If he had killed her somewhere else and moved her body into the shower room, it will take too much time and will rouse the police’s suspicion.”

“But wouldn’t the victim see him coming for her?” After all, Toshinori had heard the kids sharing with him on what they had found out, and one of it was that the woman did not struggle against her murderer.

“They were lovers.” Ranpo reminded the blond hero. “Wouldn’t it be normal for lovers to have some romantic time in the shower room?” He stated it as if it was the most natural thing without the slightest bit of embarrassment.

“So…uh…they were…” Toshinori awkwardly coughed into his hand, not sure how to ask this.

“They didn’t do anything.” Ranpo snickered at the man’s reaction as if he was the older one here. “He killed her the moment he entered the shower room. He can’t risk the lady leaving any marks on him or on herself for the police to find out.”

“But wouldn’t the lady notice?”

"Not if she was washing her face," Ranpo smirked as he leaned back on his hands and looked up at the darkening sky.

“Omura-san chose the moment Suzuki Yui-san was applying face wash to approach her. As lovers, there was naturally no reason for her to look back or be alarmed. All he needed to do was to let himself be known by casually speaking with her.

The moment he opened the shower room door, he closed it to prevent blood from splattering out and stabbed her in the back of her head. Because of the limited space within the shower room and so the blood wouldn’t spray too high, he can only stab her on the lower part of her skull. From such a low angle, her head will fall from the impaling force and causing her mouth to open wide.

After confirming her death, Omura-san threw the scalpel into the drain and grabbed the victim’s head. With his palms applying pressure into her jaw area as he smashes her head repeatedly into the faucet, her mouth ended up staying open. All Omura-san needed to do after that was to rinse off the blood on his body and himself with the hair dryers in the woman’s change room. He quickly dressed back into the clothes he came in with and left pretending as if he didn’t see Suzuki-san.”

“Amazing…!” Toshinori gasped in awe as he stared at Ranpo in similar looks the kids from Class 1-A had given him. “You even laid out the entire scenario!”

“Of course! I’m a great detective, after all!” Ranpo sang, rocking back and forth on the bench before jumping off and landing onto his feet. “Now come on mister! There’s a good restaurant around here. I’ll let you treat me since you listened to my awesome deductions!”

Toshinori let out a small chuckle at the man’s childish behaviour. Despite having not seen him for years, it was as if Toshinori was still speaking to that same boy from so long ago. He nodded, getting up to follow the raven-haired detective as the sun slowly disappeared into the horizon.

As the last ray of sunlight vanishes, lights slowly began to pop up within the darkness. It started with simple street lights, then stores, then decoration lights that filled the street. In no time at all, the city of Yokohama came alive as lights of all sizes and colours blended into one, turning the city into a miniature sun roaring with life.

There were twice as many people as there were during daytime gathered outside. Be it men sitting at a bar getting drunk, or just friends and family enjoying some bonding time, everyone was out for a time of relaxation.

In the far side of the city lit only by the lonely moonlight, a shadowy figure slowly walked down the quiet, dark street.

The man’s coat flapped in the salty sea wind as he brought a hand to his pale lips, coughing lightly into his palm.

A low buzz came from the man’s jacket. He reached into his pocket, pulling out a phone and put it against his ear.

“Akutagawa-senpai! White Reaper is on the move!”

As soon as the woman’s voice spoke from the other side, blasts of flames ignited night sky as buildings in the distance were engulfed in the blazing fire.

The man stopped walking, silver eyes narrowing at the flames as the thundering sounds of explosion finally reached his ears, followed by the strong shockwave shaking the surrounding buildings. His coat and hair were fluttering wildly as the blast of heated wind swept past him. His feet were planted firmly into the ground, his lithe frame not even budging an inch as the strong wind vanished as soon as it appeared.

The entire time, his eyes never once left the fire in the distance.

Within the sounds of explosions and roaring wind, the dark-haired man keenly caught the howl that could only belong to a beast resounding under the moonlight.

“I’ll be there in five minutes.”

┏━━━━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━━━━┓

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#soukoku #shin soukoku #bnha crossover #bnha fanfiction #bsd crossover #dazai x chuuya

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hopefulfestivaltastemaker · 4 years

Text

August 9, 2020

My weekly review of things I am doing and looking at. A long one this time; topics included disease risk in the food system, my research work patterns, ROI for energy R&D, Apocalypse Never, OpenCog, and housing and transportation in Hillsboro.

Disease Risk and the Food System

Last week I started looking at zoonotic diseases for Urban Cruise Ship, and this week I continued a bit more on disease risk. The current page is here.

Sans images, there is now material on foodborne illnesses, antibiotic resistance as it pertains to antibiotics in livestock, ecological risk from GM crops, and crop disease risk from monoculture. The section is far from done, but it is probably going to go on hold for a while. A few observations:

- Disease risk in general is a major issue, very much on our minds due to COVID-19. That’s a big can of worms. It would take an indeterminate amount of work to do the topic justice and require that I move well beyond the food system. So it’s one that I will have to take one bite at a time.

- There is an image under development that portrays foodborne illness risk in the US by type of food, but there is also a need to look at underlying causes, recognizing that food is a transmission vector and not necessarily the underlying cause.

- Antibiotic resistance looks like a scary topic. There is a report that antibiotic-resistant bacteria could kill 10 million people per year by 2050, which sounds scary, but I need more context on that number. Does this assume a business as usual trajectory where we don’t develop new antibiotics or develop alternative treatments for AMR bacteria, such as plasma medicine, and how much do such developments bend the curve?

- Ultimately I would like to be able to assess externalized monetary cost from antibiotics in livestock in terms of AMR bacteria. I don’t have this yet, but it should be possible.

- I half-assed the genetic risks, and I think justifiably so. I don’t see any evidence, aside from vague appeals to the precautionary principle, to support any significant ecological risks from GM crops. Partly to justify the half-assedness of my effort on the topic, I pointed to a Google Trends search indicating that the public is losing interest in the GMO issue.

A few years ago, I thought I was being bold and edgy by pointing to a lack of evidence of any health or environmental risks from GMOs per se. Now that seems like the safe position, and GMO opponents have (deservedly in my view) generally lost credibility in the way the anti-vax movement has.

- One of my associates is interested in systemic risks from crop monoculture, which prompted me to add that section. It appears that disease risk is the major such systemic risk. The issue of crop and animal disease (as opposed to human diseases for which the food system is a vector) is also a major topic deserving of more careful review and analysis. I would suspect that, from the viewpoint of disease, monoculture is not the most important issue, but it appears that way because monoculture was my entry point into the topic.

The Urban Cruise Ship Work Pattern

I figured now would be a decent time to open the hood and make a few comments about how I am going about the work. Recently the funder made some major additions and changes to the scope of work. This is good for me from a job security standpoint, but it means I need to do some major rethinking about how I go about the project, to insure that things get done at a high level of quality and in reasonable time.

We are ultimately trying to present the best data, analysis, and solutions available on the full range of environmental topics.

Such a grandiose vision requires that I innovate not just in how I think about particular issues, but in how I think about the big picture and how I work. We are setting into a comparison and monetization scheme to present data, a view that was driven by the funder but I have been convinced is best.

One thing I have learned is that knowledge across topics is synergistic. That means that is probably going to be more efficient to aim for a broad and shallow understanding of the environmental landscape, after which we go deeper on the things that require a deeper understanding. This is why I am moving on from the agriculture risk section despite having a superficial treatment of the subject; I intend to come back to it later when it can be better informed by material elsewhere on the site, and I also hope that I have done there will help inform the next sections of work.

This is a work style that suits me well. My mind is always jumping from one area to the next, and I like to draw connections and look at the big picture. This is very much a contrast from most of academic work, which requires a very deep analysis of a narrow topic. I ultimately lost interest in my narrow corner of mathematical research and was not able to make a successful jump to another area; hence (in part) I was not suited for the tenure track.

The obvious drawback is what one sees on the site now. It is obviously incomplete and a bit of a mess, and it will probably remain in such a state for the foreseeable future. It means I have to move fast, which increases the risk of making major mistakes. I fear we are operating at too high a level of abstraction and generality to make actionable policy recommendations.

Although not a high priority, I really wish I could integrate the graphic making process into the larger codebase. The current division of labor is such that I see no way to do so. I dislike having these “Image Under Development” messages and lacking the flexibility to easily modify images as the research proceeds or new data become available.

Return on Investment for R&D

I mentioned before some studies that the US Department of Energy has done on effectiveness of its research and development efforts. Having looked at them more closely, I found something a bit surprising.

I tried my best to harmonize the numbers reported to make a fair comparison. It’s not perfect, but the following seem to be the central estimates of the ROI for the program investment areas studied:

Combustion engines: 53

Building technologies: 42

Wind: 5.07

Geothermal: 4.865

Hybrid and electric vehicles: 3.63

Solar PV: 1.83

They all look like good investments, though building technologies (HVAC, water heating, appliances) and combustion engines clearly stand out as the best. I would have expected the opposite. Since the building and combustion areas are more incremental, there should be more incentive for the private sector to do the R&D and therefore a “crowding out” effect that would blunt the effectiveness of the public investment.

Part of this could be an artifact of the study methodology. Since the time horizon for the lower return technologies is longer, they simply haven’t captured the full benefit. The solar PV study was done in 2010, and I would expect a higher return to be found if it was redone today. There could also be an attribution problem, in that with developing more novel technologies, it is harder to attribute gains to a particular R&D investment, therefore depressing the observed ROI.

I want to propose some solutions on R&D efforts for synfuels and industry, so these studies might provide guidance as to what kind of investments can be expected to work best. Maybe this is a sign that I should be thinking more about short term gains.

Apocalypse Never

Apocalypse Never is a new book by Michael Shellenberger castigating the harmful effects of what he sees as environmental alarmism. I haven’t read it, but I have read enough of Shellenberger’s work and discussion around it to make some relevant observations.

Not too surprisingly, the reaction from the environmental community seems to be mostly negative. This article from Snopes captures fairly well what academic climate/environmental researchers think. Despite being from Snopes, the character of the article isn’t a “debunking” so much as a critical analysis. There is much disagreement about semantics (e.g. are we really in the Sixth Mass Extinction?) rather than factual disputes. Though I have a few of those too.

Since I hope one day to have major public exposure for Urban Cruise Ship, the discussion is a helpful case study in how to present material and what kind of reception I should expect.

Since I am critical of several aspects of environmentalism--particularly degrowth and related elements--I expect some negative reaction. To blunt the effect of criticism, I think I need do to a better job of operating on the following principles:

- Focus on principles and avoid ad hominem attacks, including against abstractions such as fields and movements.

- Make every effort to insure facts presented are accurate.

- Find the right level of nuance. Too little nuance can be inaccurate. Too much nuance can water down a message to the point of meaninglessness.

Though most of the discussion I saw was pretty even-handed, there is some gatekeeping that goes on in the climate community. The bogeyman of the “climate denier” looms large and triggers a kind of circle-the-wagons mentality when the field is criticized, whether justly or unjustly. Lacking formal credentials or institutional backing, I am going to be vulnerable to gatekeeping and probably can’t do anything about it.

OpenCog

Having listened to Ben Goertzel on Lex Fridman’s podcast a while back, I got around this week to looking over OpenCog, which is Goertzel’s open source project to create artificial general intelligence.

There is a ton of material here that will take a long time to work through, especially considering that I am doing it only as a side project. Just reviewing the set of AI principles being brought to bear in the project, though, buoyed my spirits and excited me about the field in a way I haven’t felt in a long time. I am already thinking about some work I can do. Contributing to OpenCog is beyond my capabilities at present, but I have some related design ideas that have been sitting on the shelf for a long time and are time to give another look at.

I have no idea if this effort toward AGI will work. But I would guess that it is more likely to work than an approach rooted exclusively in deep learning, such as the GPT approach, which suffers from intractable diseconomies of scale. In particular, I think that a semantic encoding of knowledge is a necessary component of any AGI stack. There are people with far more expertise who disagree.

Housing and Transportation in Hillsboro

I’ve dialed back my political activities a bit lately, but there were some items at the Hillsboro (Oregon) City Council this week worth commenting on.

City staff presented on efforts to implement HB 2001, a piece of state legislation that mandates most cities allow for middle housing (du-, tri-, quad-plexes, cottage housing, small apartments) in residential areas. Without naming names, my read on the council and mayor is that among the seven, two are generally pro-housing, two are generally anti-housing, one is squishy, and two I don’t have a good read on. I have written to them to indicate my desire that we take advantage of the opportunity provided by HB 2001 for an expansive approach to opening up housing opportunities in Hillsboro.

We also had a presentation on the Get Moving package, which is the transportation package that Metro has now referred to the ballot in November. City staff seemed to be negative. The presenter asserted that Hillsboro gets a disproportionately low ROI (about 0.56) for the project and that Metro was unduly influenced by Portland-based anti-vehicle activists to reject road expansion capacity that Hillsboro needs. One council member expressed her concern (which I agree with) that the financial burden falls entirely on large employers, which will be particularly harmful in Hillsboro and I think is bad tax policy in general. On the positive side, the package includes some badly needed safety upgrades to TV Highway, which is the most dangerous highway in the state per-mile for both pedestrians and motorists. There is also money for a study of a downtown Portland MAX tunnel, which I think will be very important for the region. Ultimately, despite the extensive public engagement theatre, it is a pre-COVID package, based on economic and transportation demand assumptions that may no longer be reasonable.

I haven’t yet decided how I will vote on the package, but I am leaning toward a No right now.

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philosofangirl · 7 years

Text

Fan Theory: Perception of Time in VK/VKM

Hello VK/Zeki Fam, long time no see! *Hugs everybody*

I’ve been offline for a millennia due to a new job and family life stuffz but I I finally have some free time to go into the VK meta I’ve been dying to sink my teeth in to! (beware, there may be terrible puns ahead. You’ve been warned.)

From what I’ve seen in the Vampire Knight meta-sphere, reactions towards the past two chapters are mixed, leaning towards the Hino-san, what the fruitcake are you doing to us now? end of the spectrum.

@getoffthesoapbox @soulisthirsty @zerolover66 and others before me have written some excellent analyses & theories, and I don’t plan on doing a full rehash. Instead, I’d like to propose a different theory...

I’ll start this fan theory with a question: Do Yuuki and Zero perceive time differently?

This may seem like an odd question, so let me break it down.

Do people perceive time differently?

It can be argued that they do. You often hear folks talk about “life changing experiences” or how a near death experience alters their perspective. If you are diagnosed with a terminal illness, and know that you only have a few months left to live, your perception of time will likely be very different than that of a healthy teenager. Even though both individuals could theoretically die in a freak accident at the same time, or the sick individual finds a miracle cure, the way they value their time, more likely than not, differs.

You can also look at it this way: one year to a 3-year-old is 1/3 of their life, whereas one year to an 80-year-old is 1/80 of their life. Time passes differently for children versus adults.

Which leads me to another question:

In Vampire Knight, do mortals with finite time perceive time passing differently than immortals with infinite time?

From what we’ve been shown canonically, I believe there’s a chance that the answer is yes.

Let’s take a look at a scene from VKM chapter 10:

In this panel Yuuki comments that 60 months feels like 1 month.**

60 months = 5 years

That means 5 years feels like 1 month of “normal life” (basically 1 month to the rest of us.)

Take your age and divide it by 5. If you’re 20 years old, that’s the equivalent of 4 months.

(More under the cut!)

I’m no math whiz (believe me haha) but I found this factoid intriguing because I believe it gives us some insight into how much time has “passed” for Yuuki, and what time feels like to purebloods. It’s easy for human fans like us to question how Zeki could be together for so long without significant progression, but, if Yuuki perceives time differently, it could explain a lot about her character.

⚜ ════ • ⚜ • ════ ⚜

Overly simplistic calculation time: let’s go with how long 50 years “feels” like:

(note: if my calculations are incorrect hit me up, math and I are barely on speaking terms xD )

12 months * 50 years = 600 months

Let x = the amount of time 50 years feels like to a pureblood. (Keep in mind, 60 months feels like 1 month)

1 month / 60 months = x /600 months

60x = 600

x= 10 months

That’s less than a year.

⚜ ════ • ⚜ • ════ ⚜

So, do mortals and immortals view time differently?

Going off what Yuuki said and my calculations above, I believe they do! Another canonical example of this can be found in Yori & Hanabusa. Yori openly wonders how different her life would be if she had the same amount of time to do things as Hanabusa. Hanabusa also expressed that he wanted to cherish every moment because he knew just how fleeting their time together would be. Even after Yori’s death, he still looks young, and as a noble vampire he will probably live on for many, many years.

The pressure of Yori aging spurred their relationship development, and they got married before any of the other characters in relationships (that we know of.) This wasn’t by accident. In contrast, vampires like Shiki and Rima never had that kind of pressure (at least not after Rido was dealt with) so they could wait 50 years before getting married. This didn’t seem to faze either of them. Also, in Volume 1 Ichijou celebrates his 18th “human” birthday, showing that vampires do seem to measure time differently (though I can’t recall whether this was ever thoroughly explained.)

Back to the original question: Do Yuuki and Zero perceive time differently?

I believe this answer is an unequivocal yes, and arguably this difference in perception has led to Zeki not being on the same page romantically speaking. I would argue that this difference has also played a key role in their different character motivations. They may have the same destination in mind (marriage, babies, happily ever after and all that jazz), but they are not in agreement about how long it should take (or what it will take) to get there.

Let’s start with their childhoods:

ZERO grew up in a family of hunters. He always felt he needed to take on a heavier load to ease Ichiru’s burden. Hunters, given the nature of their profession, almost certainly have a high mortality rate, and low life expectancy rate. They’re trained to fight, but they can still die in combat. This is something that Zero is aware of from a very young age. Then, Zero’s family is attacked by Shizuka and he is damned, doomed to become a level E. Every day he knows there’s a chance he can go mad, hurt someone and be killed by one of his comrades. It even drove him to the point of suicide. Thinking you can die or lose control at any moment isn’t the sort of mentality that easily goes away. He always slept with a weapon close at hand for a reason.

YUUKI, in comparison, did not grow up with constant reminders of death. At a young age, she was very sheltered and told she would live forever as Kaname’s bride. In high school her lost past and vampires concerned her, but she didn’t live in fear of death every moment of her life. When she was reawakened she discovers anew that she will live forever, outliving everything apart from other purebloods. It takes her some time to adjust to this reality. At one point she convinces herself that the only way to fix everything is to sacrifice herself. But in this scenario she was the biggest threat to herself, since Zero and Kaname were ready to do just about anything to stop it.

When Kaname sacrificed himself, she made it her mission to return the favor and atone for her sins one day. Suddenly she was no longer going to live forever, now she would live up until the time was right. Yet, just like the concept of “forever”, there’s no exact date so how long she has remains rather vague beyond “sometime far into the future.”

Given their backgrounds and physical differences, I posit that the two of them view time very differently, and this difference needs to be communicated. Is 50 years a long time? Yes, yes it is. Does this excuse letting problems fester this long? No, it does not.

However, even though Zero deserves all the patience awards for how long he’s stayed by Yuuki’s side, if my theory is correct, Yuuki perceives her time together with Zero the way an immortal pureblood would, not a human being nor a soldier. Being a pureblood likely exacerbates this compared to the average vampire. This discrepancy could mean 50 years to Yuuki feels like 10 months, but 50 years to Zero actually feels like 50. It may sound absurd to us, but we’re talking about immortal fictional creatures after all.

Now hold onto your hats, because I believe the implications go beyond her relationship to Zero.

Other Out-There Theories

Theory #1: given Yuuki’s perception of time, her carefree attitude, and her idea of what being in a relationship consists of, there’s a chance that Yuuki still “feels” like a teenager. Even Zero commented offhandedly that Ai acts more mature than Yuuki. In some ways that’s why the people around her (particularly Yori and Zero) say they love her—a certain loveable idiot/ innocence and uncomplicated desire for the people around her to be happy. I believe her pureblood influenced perception of time, (and possibly self if she really sees herself as a teenager and not a grown woman) is at the root of her stagnation. Compared to her 3 thousand year old parents, being ~80 would still be seen as very young for a pureblood.

Theory #2: I, like many readers, had hoped that Yuuki would mature during this period post Kaname, and in some small/subtle ways I believe she has. When Yuuki says “there’s nothing innocent about us anymore” in VKM10, I recalled her time with Zero in the shower at Cross Academy, which in many ways was portrayed as a “loss of innocence” and a “sin.” But then after her arc 1 development you go to arc 2 where Yuuki is treated like a child and a doll by Kaname. Maybe her perception of who she really is got screwed up along the way.

Yuuki has gone through a lot, and even she has noted just how much time has passed. She let her hair grow out, she had a kid. Yet, she still clings to Kaname, a symbol of her childhood, when the healthy thing would be to move forward for the sake of those around her. Others have theorized that this might be related to some sort of trauma. If Yuuki really does still “feel” like or “see herself” as a teenager, and 50 years feels like 10 months, the wounds caused by Kaname would still feel very raw.

I have PTSD myself, and sometimes an event that happened four years ago feels like it happened just yesterday. I can’t imagine what it would be like to live with it while holding a skewed perception of time. It’s not as simple as “getting over it” and letting time take its course. I believe the only way she can get back on the preferred path is to confront what happened to her head on. Only time and Hino will tell whether that happens. Until Yukki deals with these issues and learns to step forward, she’ll remain stagnant.

Why would Hino do something like this?!

Some of you may be wondering: teenage Yuuki again? What does Yuuki “feeling” like a teenager mean? I believe it means that she can also, at times, still act like one. At the end of the day this is a shoujo manga, and the largest reading demographic will be teenage girls who need to relate with the characters. Plus, it’s a story; conflict drives the plot engine along. I suspect this was intentional on Hino’s part, but maybe I’m giving her and the character too much credit o.o’

What would this discrepancy mean for Zeki?

I predict how time passes/ how they perceive time passing will probably come up (and definitely should come up) at one point in their relationship. After all, if Yuuki is just biding her time while Zero is counting every day, the narrative will grow dull and things will not turn out well. If they’re not on the same page, how could things work out between them?

We’ve already seen it on the character’s minds to a degree: Yuuki expressed her fear of abandonment/ loneliness/ oblivion in arc 2, and Zero has reminded Yuuki that her time is her own to spend how she pleases. How one spends their time and with whom one spends their time is a recurring theme. It took a long time (practically 2/3 of the original series) for Yuuki and Zero to accept their very existence as pureblood and hunter, but they’ve never had to really work at the logistics of a romantic relationship between a pureblood and non-pureblood (something we haven’t seen, at least not any longterm/ healthy ones.)

With Yori’s death and Ai in sleep mode, I expect to see time and how they spend their time to crop up again.

Throw away observations:

If Yuuki has difficulty assessing the passage of time, it makes it that much easier for her to cling to certain portions of her past. In some ways, when Kaname changed her he was trying to encase her in resin like the rose, almost freeze her in time as the loving girl he desired. Yori, and to an extent Ai, probably served as reminders that time was passing in a world where most of the people Yuuki deals with pretty much stay forever young. It’s possible that, despite time passing, she herself is still frozen. Yuuki has been shown as sentimental on several occasions, including VKM 10 where she explains why she still holds on to her charm bracelet. She talks about keeping it as a reminder of her promise and as a reminder of a time when she was human. But, as she’s shown on numerous occasions, she’s a vampire. Body and soul. She has no plans to change that, yet she still clings to a piece of her humanity.

Interestingly, in VKM before Zero’s death Yuuki said she would devour him showing her love “the way vampires do.” In VK, drinking the blood of your beloved, the only one who can quench your thirst, is how vampires traditionally express their love for one another. In VKM10, when Zeki are discussing their relationship and Zero asks what a restart means, she begins with several very innocent, naive suggestions that harken back to their days at Cross Academy. Soon after, in one of their first on screen “acts” as an official couple, Yuuki tells Zero to drink her blood to the last drop.

This scene is controversial among Zeki fans given its (some would say Yume-like) undertones. But, it got me wondering whether Yuuki really knows how to participate in a mature relationship, whether either of them know how to be in a healthy romantic relationship. If Yuuki thinks “drinking blood is the way vampires show their love for one another” and she acted on that, then is she just going through the motions and doing what she thinks she should be like she did in the Kuran Manor? Or, was this just a natural impulse? (oh, the multitude of interpretations!)

I think Yuuki’s desire for something “human”, or her image and expectations from when she was a human teenager, could be in conflict with what she believes vampires are supposed to do. This inner struggle between her two selves may have cause the disconnect and tone shift.

This is all conjecture, so hopefully we’ll see more of what’s going on inside Yuuki’s head in the chapters to come. I keep thinking back to Yuuki’s dark expression when talking to Ai as a child about the relationship between the three MCs, and of the mystery box. Perhaps it’s just wishful thinking on my part, but I don’t think Yuuki is as daft or simple as she’s sometimes portrayed to be.

That’s all folks!

Thanks for reading my philosophizing this far! Please let me know what you think, or if you have theories of your own!

Philosofangirl, out.

**Note: So far, we have no way of knowing how subjective this statement is. This could be Yuuki’s interpretation of time, or it could be accepted as common knowledge by purebloods. All the same, if this is what Yuuki believes then this informs how she perceives time passing, and I believe Hino included this detail deliberately.

#Vampire Knight #vampire knight memories #vkm #fan theory #text #zeki #radiant zeki #time #philosophizing #wild mad guessing #meta #yuuki kiryuu

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ais-n · 7 years

Note

Hi, Ais! How detailed do the mission reports have to be? I always wondered about what Sin read about Boyd's valentine mission. Was it very cut and dry, and to the point (ex."I was used as a prostitute for the first few months and they kept me high on Slide")? Or would it have been a more thorough description about being used and how Slide affected him? Would some of his resentment and anger have bled into the report or would he have hidden his feelings so as not to show any weakness?

Hi :) So, Sonny and I never specifically discussed it so I can’t say for sure. I can only say what makes sense to me, which could conceivably change if we ever talked about it and if he had a different perspective.

My thought is this: It depends but generally they’re supposed to be detailed enough to explain what happened, how, and, if known, why. In a normal mission he wouldn’t be able to write something really oversimplified but it also depends on what happened. Theoretically, though, they should objective enough to explain the situation and circumstances, but also include explanations for actions taken that may have been out of the norm or that otherwise is of note.

MORE BELOW THE CUT - CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR FADE! (Also is long as hell jfc)

So for example, in a normal mission he might have written something like, “I entered the compound through the third door from the west on the southern side. This location was deemed ideal due to the overgrown trees which hid it from view of the cameras located at the southeast corner, and due to its proximity to the access to the basement. Upon my entry, I was met with unexpected resistance from a hostile who was in the area at a time we had noted from previous research should render this area empty. I dispatched the hostile and hid his body in a nearby room before proceeding downward.”

And so on. The level of detail can vary if what they’re dealing with is routine expected behavior on a mission. Boyd’s more detailed because that’s his personality (he’d rather be very exact and overachieve than feel like he left something to be desired) but another agent probably could have written that same report, explaining that same situation, with something like, “I entered the compound in the predesignated location and was met with low-level resistance before proceeding to the basement.”

Both would be acceptable if the mission was successfully completed and there were no issues on it, because whether Boyd explains in detail which door he entered and why there was a hostile there, or whether another agent just says they got inside and met some minor resistance, either way the mission was successful and either way there aren’t any long term issues. If that base was blown up by the agent for example, ultimately it doesn’t matter if Boyd explains about that hostile and the specific door and etc etc, because everything was destroyed. It’s really a moot point what happened if it doesn’t affect future missions. As long as the Agency knows what happened and if they have to deal with any other shit in the future as a result of anything that happened here, and as long as the Agency knows it was successful, the level of detail can vary.

In a long term mission like the Forakis mission, I doubt the Agency expects incredibly detailed explanations of everything that occurred because that would make for a very long report. In that case, it would be more important to highlight notable events or circumstances, making sure to include anything that could be a detriment to the Agency or future missions, and overview the specifics of how the mission’s end goal was completed. All the rest of what happened isn’t as important to the Agency administration as it would be to the agent’s psychiatrist in helping them cope upon their return, but the Agency would still want to know enough to know if they have a “damaged” agent on their hands, and if they need to take extra precautions or steps in dealing with them when they return.

The Forakis mission for Boyd was a game changer in a lot of ways. It became a significant event in his life that split his viewpoint into Before Cyclone/Aleixo and After Cyclone/Aleixo. Before Slide and After Slide. This was for many reasons that you already know but it also affected the way he functioned as an agent, when he returned to find Hsin gone. He ended up becoming a “better” agent according to the Agency because he finally became consistent; finally focused fully on his tasks instead of being worried about and/or distracted by his partner -- a weakness, they ultimately would have seen it, since he was supposed to be the one who kept Hsin from being distracted, not get distracted himself.

Another difference in how he functioned as an agent, I feel, likely was seen in his reports. Whereas before he still had enough faith and loyalty to the Agency, despite everything, that he had gone above and beyond in his documentation in his reports, detailing things that didn’t need to be detailed on the off chance it should be important to the Agency or other agents later -- after Aleixo, his reports became curt, cut down, distant. He wrote his reports more like the other agent example I listed above.

Because he no longer trusted the Agency after Aleixo. He saw them as an enemy collecting information on him to use against him later. He saw them as an organization that took those details and compiled it to sit in a database somewhere, waiting for the moment they could pull it out and twist it all together into a weapon meant to rend his heart and soul. That’s how he felt afterward; a clear departure from how he had felt before.

That distrust and disinterest in providing details includes the report he gave the Agency about the Aleixo mission, not only because of his distrust of them but also because of his hatred and resentment of what had happened. And because of the humiliation he felt, the hatred he felt toward himself, all the jumbled emotions that made him want to protect every detail of what occurred with his life, so no one could piece it all together and learn exactly how to destroy him the way he felt he’d been destroyed in Aleixo’s care.

He wrote as short a report as he could for the Agency’s benefit; something very dispassionate, very to the point, paring the horror of those months down to simple sentences like the one you gave as an example. He probably wrote it with a bit of dissociation, maybe something like, “Sex personnel at Cyclone are controlled by the usage of XRT-330, a powerful narcotic which directly affects the central nervous system, drastically increasing libido while simultaneously removing all inhibitions. The drug is highly addictive, which makes it an effective means of control, dissuading any thoughts of escape.” before turning his attention to explaining about Aleixo in the terms of an agent assessing Aleixo’s usefulness as an informant or prisoner of the Agency.

Shapiro references that, actually--

"I should think the report would suffice," Boyd said.

"The aim of the report was the mission overview and includinginformation on Aleixo Forakis," Shapiro replied calmly. "As I'm sure you recall,you didn't include many details about your treatment itself. In order to properlyhelp you, it's important that I understand what you experienced. This will alsohelp me understand any reactions you may have. In addition, talking throughit can sometimes help you deal with the repercussions."

"You don't need more details to know what happened. I was availablefor rent day and night and expanded my skills to marketing when Aleixo tookme in. The end."

Boyd gave next to no details about what actually happened to him in his official report to the Agency, because he didn’t want anyone to know. The report made it clear the sort of area he’d been held, the general sorts of things he’d been expected to do, the way Cyclone had controlled him and the others through Slide, and contained minimal explanation of how he had come to Aleixo’s attention in the first place (namely, through Aleixo’s nephew who was a guard on Boyd’s level, and who also had been in the vehicle when Boyd was picked up originally, and who had been intrigued by him since then). In the course of explaining Aleixo’s compound and the situation with his family and more, Boyd dispassionately referenced some limited aspects of what had been expected of him in his new position at Aleixo’s home but he didn’t go into details by any means.

The Agency did have some knowledge of what transpired beyond his report, because when he first returned he was still really fucked up and he said and did things in his rehab which gave them an idea of some of it. Aleixo likely also provided some context of the sort of thing that happened in general or some of what happened directly to Boyd, in whatever conversations arose during his interrogation and/or assessment from the Agency, but the Agency would have been more focused on how to use Aleixo than they would have been on finding out details of Boyd’s experience.

Boyd never told even Shapiro the extent of what had happened, but of all the people on compound Shapiro had the best idea. Because he was the sort of doctor who took patient confidentiality very seriously even in a twisted setting like the Agency, Shapiro never fully detailed everything told to him to the Agency, but he did provide some of the additional details in order to explain or emphasize differences in Boyd’s behavior upon his return, and warnings about what may trigger Boyd unnecessarily which could detract from his use as an agent.

The mission report Hsin saw likely would have been the one Boyd wrote with minimal details as to the exact specifics of what happened. I’m not sure if he also gained access to Shapiro’s notes as well; he might have, at which point he would have gotten more context and more depth. No one but Boyd knows all the specifics, however, and those details will remain untold most likely. The absolute last thing Boyd ever wants is for Hsin to know more about what happened -- to learn about the things Boyd hated so much he never wanted anyone to know.

Or maybe a better way of saying it is that Boyd distrusts everyone with the knowledge of details because he thinks they’ll use it against him, except his friends who he doesn’t want to know because he finds it humiliating, and especially except Hsin because he knows those details, that knowledge, will hurt Hsin. Even knowing as much as he does, Hsin had a breakdown. Boyd probably doesn’t specifically know that but he would guess it would affect Hsin greatly to have known even as much as he put into the mission report. And Boyd purposefully kept out the worst parts in his mission to the Agency as well as his discussions with Shapiro where possible, and Shapiro respected Boyd’s privacy by not reporting every detail he was told. Which means Hsin knows enough to know what happened and to have been devastated and infuriated by it, but not so much he has to be plagued by the details of what exactly occurred the entire time.

As a side note -- The person aside from Boyd who knew the most is probably Aleixo. Whereas Boyd kept the details close to his heart to protect himself and his loved ones, if Aleixo had ever been within hearing distance of Hsin and knew what Hsin was to Boyd, he would have reveled in the chance to list in excruciating detail everything he did and had done to Boyd just to see Boyd in pain, to see the panic and fear and hatred in his eyes, knowing Hsin would learn all the things Boyd didn’t want him to learn. He would enjoy the idea of trying to destroy their relationship or at least the ease of it. He would want to see Hsin look at Boyd in a different way. Probably Hsin would just get pissed at Aleixo and not treat Boyd any differently, but Aleixo would want to destroy what they have, and even if Hsin didn’t react the way Aleixo wanted, it would be enough to Aleixo to violate that last bit of privacy Boyd had, to try to twist the knife in deeper and hurt him in all the ways he knows how. No matter how Hsin responded, Boyd would still react with panic, and that distress and visceral pain would make it worth it to Aleixo.

I actually kind of wanted that to happen, tbh -- I wanted to find a way to have Aleixo and Boyd meet back at the Agency, to see if they could have a conversation whether or not Hsin was around. I even started to write a side story where I could show Boyd and Aleixo having to interact before the whole Danny thing was resolved, with Hsin nowhere around--just them, Aleixo trying to take control and Boyd finding a way to fight his former captor. It didn’t work out, though--there wasn’t really a good place to put it, and it didn’t really make sense for them to find a way to meet, and I didn’t really like the story I’d started to write, so I had to leave it without that interaction.

But I wanted to include that side note in case for some reason someone ever reads this who is planning some fanfic or something, and they were trying to think of things likely to happen. Just an FYI to that sort of person or sense of curiosity: Aleixo would want to take control back from Boyd and fuck him over with it however possible as a means of revenge and to force him back down in his mind to the servitude Aleixo believes he deserves, because he’s resentful and angry of Boyd and wants to hurt him for destroying Aleixo’s life. Damaging the relationship that let Boyd complete the mission would be a poetic way to do so from his point of view, because it would be a way of taking the last sense of freedom away from Boyd even if Aleixo himself was imprisoned and Boyd was able to walk free. If that makes sense.

Anyway hopefully that answers your question... I rambled like hell, as usual. Sorry ^^;

#ask ais #icos #in the company of shadows #fade spoilers #Anonymous

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writingwithadinosaur · 7 years

Text

“Cautious” - Part 3

( Part 1 / Part 2 )

My Masterlist - Here

Bucky Barnes x Reader

Bruce Banner x Reader (Father-Daughter type of relationship)

Word Count: 2,235

Key: Y/N = Your Name, L/N = Your Last Name, H/C = Your Hair Color, E/C = Your Eye Color

Warnings: None that I could see other than cursing, but that is just how I talk and it ends up coming through my writing.

Summary: Bucky is now pretty much rehabilitated and able to be part of the group. He has nightmares sometimes, but not nearly as much as he used to. Reader was taken by Hydra and made the subject of experiments due to her having powers (something similar to the force, but not the force). The team rescues her after a mission and takes her in. She struggles with control sometimes, is very skittish sometimes, and hasn't talked to anyone since arriving at the tower. She only talks to Bruce Banner. Soon enough, Bucky takes an interest in her. Let’s see how this unfurls.

Author’s Note: Welcome to part 3! I know this story may seem very slow, and a lot of people are waiting for the part where everything comes together. Feel free to skip around or read it in order (reading in order would be nice). Its up to you. Just a heads up, Part 4 of this story will be pretty long. I am working on it now and while I haven’t gotten too into it, I can tell that its going to be longer. I’m hoping that even though it will be longer, it will be full of greatness!

This is my interpretation of the characters and the reader is one of my own creation. I leave the names and such open so you can put your own name and features in or you can create your own. I know this may not please everyone, but I’m writing this for myself. I hope people will enjoy this fanfic, but I know that you can’t please everyone. I also want to say thank you to everyone who has shown so much support with the past pieces I’ve written. I didn’t expect to get such a great response from writing that is used to be therapeutic for myself. I hope this storyline doesn’t disappoint!

Special shout out to @goodnightwife for being a wonderful beta reader and wonderful person in general! Please go check out her page for some cute fics as well!

If you would like to be tagged in any future pieces, please let me know! And as always, feedback is greatly appreciated!

- DreaSaurusREX

Tags: @luciebell-writes @goodnightwife @bexboo616 @bicrypt

It has been a few weeks since you were rescued by the Avengers from being Hydra’s lab rat. Most of the cuts and bruises were healing and fading nicely. You ankle still needed a couple more weeks before you could walk comfortably without crutches. With the help of Banner, you were finding a good diet that was full of the nutrients that you had been deprived of while being held hostage.

You still didn’t talk too much, but you were able to be in the same room with them for varying amounts of time. So that was an improvement. This allowed you to observe them. The whole team knew what to expect after Banner talked to them at one of their last meetings.

Some of the team would greet you or ask questions that had yes/no answers. This made it easy to communicate when you wanted to. You thanked them a lot by using your small bit of sign language, like how you did in the jet after being saved. These small interactions and periods of watching them interact with each other was more helpful and calming than you expected. There were a few of the Avengers whose auras began to show brighter. No one showed any warning signs or reasons to be wary around them. You didn’t expect anyone to be dangerous, but it was good reassurance.

Physically, you became a bit more calm around them, but you were still struggling with speaking. You wanted to finally talk to them, but you were scared to. They have provided so much for you since Banner helped you onto the jet, you didn’t want to fuck anything up and seem ungrateful or rude.

Baby steps. You would eventually work your way up to being a full member of the group. But right now, just take it slow.

Well, that was the plan before another Hydra base was found.

You were to be included in the meeting as soon as they found out about the base. They figured that you had a right to know what was going on. You weren’t aware of this though. So you sat in the kitchen, drinking some tea. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw a flash of silver walk past. It was Bucky, who else would it be.

It would be a lie if you said you never thought about getting closer to him. He was one of the first ones to help you after Banner got you out of the hellhole. He would always try to talk to you every day. Asking if you needed any help with anything or if you wanted to do anything. Just reminding you that you were safe here and that he was here to help, was very beneficial. You could tell he was really trying to help you open up and incorporate yourself into the group more.

He sort of knew what you had been through and could tell when you were getting overwhelmed or needed help. He stood by his original feelings: he wanted to help you. While he has never dealt with your attacks first hand or helped you around, he was caring enough to tell Banner, who would then take the necessary actions.

Until today.

Bucky was heading towards the conference room when he looked into the kitchen and caught a glimpse of your (H/C) sitting at the table. He quickly turned around, stuck his head in, and looked at you with a hint of confusion on his face. “Hey, (Y/N), aren’t you heading to the meeting? Banner thought it would be good to keep you in the loop of what’s going on.”

You heard Steve and Natasha say that there was a meeting, but you didn’t know you were supposed to join them. Bucky saw that you didn’t know.

“Yeah, Banner probably forgot to call you. He’s been in the lab with Tony trying to get as much research done as possible. Here, let me help you.”

He came a bit closer, grabbed your crutches, and positioned them so it would be easy to go from sitting to standing. You looked at him carefully before putting pressure on your okay foot and settling into the crutches. As soon as you grabbed the crutches, Bucky took a step backwards to give you space. This didn’t get unnoticed by you. You gave him a small smile and signed “thank you.”

“Anytime, doll. Now, let’s head to the conference room. Don’t want to get an earful from Steve about being late. I’ve heard that too many times.” He chuckled a bit and flashed a smile that made you smile a bit bigger in response. God he really was great. And not just in the looks department.

He led you through the halls since you hadn’t learned the tower yet. While he did lead, he also stayed in pace with you. He thought this would be better than walking ahead of you. He also took this time to tell you how these meetings usually ran so you weren’t lost or overwhelmed. Add that to the list of reasons to appreciate him.

You got to the conference room and saw everyone standing and conversing. Tony and Bruce were discussing their research again, making sure they got everything before informing everyone. There was an empty chair near the door. Bucky pulled it out for you while you waited in the doorframe. You got close to the chair, shifted all your weight onto your okay ankle, and handed him the crutches. He leaned them against the wall before coming back to you and helping you into the chair. You weren’t freaked out when he held your waist, easing you into the comfy office chair. In fact, you had one hand on his shoulder and the other on his arm, for stability.

Everyone noticed this. While they didn’t make it obvious, many eyes were on you. They were seeing you open up a bit to someone other than Bruce. It was a pleasant scene. Steve specifically looked at Bucky. He saw his best friend smiling and could already tell that Bucky felt something towards you. It made sense, and it seemed like a good fit for the both of you.

Bucky smiled again as you got comfortable in the seat. He leaned down a bit so he could be closer to eye level with you. “I’ll be in the seat next to you if you need anything. Or Banner will be up front helping Tony go over their information before Steve takes over.”

You thought about signing “thank you”, but something pulled you in a different direction. Instead of signing, you actually told him.

“Thank you, Bucky.” Your voice not much louder than a whisper, but loud enough for him to hear it. He smiled a little bit bigger and sighed a small sigh of relief. He had been wanting to get close to you since you came, and this was a step in the right direction.

“Of course, doll.” He walked over to the chair on your left and sat himself down, a hint of a smile still on his face as he eased into a more serious mindset for the meeting.

Bruce and Steve saw you talk to him, but couldn’t hear what you said. It didn’t really matter what you said, it was the act of talking that surprised them both. They knew better than to make a big deal out of it, so they continued and finally started the meeting.

Bruce made eye contact with you and smiled.

Steve made eye contact with Bucky and smiled.

~~~~~~~~

The meeting went on for about 20 - 30 minutes. It was a lot of going over known information, assessing new information, comparing the two, and then creating a plan. This base was known for its chemical experiments, the team decided that both Tony and Bruce were going to be needed for this mission.

You began to worry a little. If Bruce had to go halfway across the world in this mission, would you be all alone here? Sure, they had that AI system in here, but you were still learning to use it. And what if you had an attack or something? An AI system wouldn’t help as much as human interaction. No, Bruce would think of something. He was smart and he knew that you were still healing.

The plan was made, they would meet at the hangar in 30 minutes, and the mission should take 2 - 6 days including travel time. Most of the group dispersed to their respective quarters to grab their stuff, Steve and Bucky stood up and talked to Tony near the front of the room, Bruce put his notes into his folder and walked over to you. He took the seat next to you before putting a hand on your knee.

“Hey, (Y/N). I know this is gonna be new and unsettling, but I really do need to go on this one. If its chemicals, that’s all Tony and me. I’ve been giving it some thought. There is no question that it would be too dangerous to have you tag along. But I was thinking someone could stay here with you.”

Steve and Tony were deep into the specifics of the plan. Bucky was close enough to overhear Bruce’s conversation with you. “I haven’t figured out who yet. I’m going to talk with Cap and Tony to see if there is anyone who isn’t needed for this mission. Then I’ll check in with you. Okay?” Bruce had such a fatherly tone, it was nice. Not condescending, but still clear and careful.

Bucky stood next to you two, cleared his throat a bit, and spoke to Bruce. “Banner. Can I talk to you in the hall for a minute?” They walked into the hall together and you couldn’t see them, but you could hear bits and pieces of their conversation. Not enough to get a clear idea of what they were talking about though.

~~~~~~~~

“You remember how I told you I wanted to help (Y/N)? Well, I think it would be good for me to stay with her while you guys head out. She already trusts me a bit more than the others, today was an example of that. I mean, she actually talked to me today. Granted, it was only ‘thank you’, but still, she actually said the words instead of signing them. Obviously it's up to her, but I wanted to ask you as well since you’ve become close to her.”

Bruce thought about this for a few seconds. He saw how (Y/N) was slowly getting comfortable around Bucky. And he trusted Bucky since he started doing exponentially better after rehabilitation.

“Alright. I’ll ask her. But just know, if she says yes and I hear you did anything even remotely harmful, you will need two brand new arms.”

Bucky nodded his head. “Understood. I promise that I will try my best.”

“You better. Let’s go make sure it's okay with her.”

~~~~~~~~

You looked up to see the two men come back into the room. Bruce sat back down while Bucky stood off to the side a bit. Bruce grabbed your hand and looked very serious.

“Bucky pulled me out to ask if he could watch over you while we go on this mission. I told him that I would ask you. I also told him that if he fucks up, he’ll be needing new arms.”

You laughed at that. While you knew he was actually serious about that, it was funny to think about. This calm, caring, father-like figure could really do some damage if necessary.

“So what do you think, (Y/N)? You okay with Bucky helping you out instead of me?” You look at Bucky. He tried to keep a neutral face, but you could tell that he wanted to stay and try to get to know you. You still weren’t super comfortable with anyone else yet. It was proven that you trust him today, so you didn’t need to think much further.

You nodded your head yes. Bruce squeezed your hand and smiled a bit. He was proud of you for making this much progress. He hoped that trusting Bucky would start a slow domino effect until you were comfortable with everyone, and finally integrated into the team.

“Okay. Sounds like a plan then. I will be able to have a comm channel set up so that its linked to the tower, just in case anything happens. I gotta go get my stuff and get ready. I’ll see you before we take off though.” Bruce leaned over and kissed your forehead before standing up to prepare for the mission.

You looked over to Bucky. He had a small smile on his face while he leaned over to bring your crutches closer. He held his hand out to help you up, you took it and let him help you get situated.

“Thank you, Bucky.” You said, again your voice wasn’t very loud. Hopefully it would get louder as you got more okay with the idea of talking.

“No problem, sweetheart. Thank you for trusting me. Now let’s head to the kitchen, I’m starving and we left that tea of yours behind.”

Bucky let you go out the door first before he caught up with you and walked alongside you again.

Part 4 - Here

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #bucky x reader #bucky imagine #Bruce Banner x Reader #bruce banner #avengers fanfiction #avengers fandom #avengers #DreaSaurusREX

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qaftsiel · 7 years

Text

The Night Watch, part 3

Continued from here.

Dean closes his eyes against the pod’s blue lighting and ignores Gabe’s ping. He tugs at the standby cable and does his usual wakeup routines, but almost all of his threads of thought are on the dream-- dreams plural within a single-digit interval-- and what it might mean.

Systems scans and current assays are coming back clean, so it’s not something seriously wrong with him, but after so long going almost totally without, it’s odd to experience two dreams in so short a time. He wonders what the hell it is that’s going on to trigger two of them so close together-- the hotel pod? Maybe the friendly relationship he’d established with Benny and Gabe in the year prior to departure?

Some part of him’s shouting that it’s just proof that he’s still real, but he’s long since learned to tune out that kind of wishful thinking. He wonders, too, who the guy is that he keeps seeing. He looks a little like one of the doctors he’d caught a glimpse of during his hospital stay after the accident-- fuck if Dean could remember any of their names, there were like six dozen specialists working on him at any given time, and a lot of his memories from that first year are kind of fuzzy-- but why Dean would be seeing the guy now is beyond him.

Then again, that’s sort of what dreams had been like, before: a random jumble of memories, tossed out and turned into a story by the brain. He remembers that much, at least.

Without any solid data indicating anything off, he can only guess that it’s something to do with time-- maybe he’s finally to the point where shit’s evolved enough to do things like dream. Maybe he really is human under all the other crap-- maybe he’s still the same Dean, the same guy like Sammy had always said.

Dean shakes his head. Sammy had also been a bit of a bleeding heart, ‘mech’s rights’ sort of kid.

Whatever the case, he’ll take what he can get, even if it means more history talk that just reminds him of Sammy. If he’s lucky, his brain will spam a few memories of Sammy in a dream, and he’ll get to talk with his baby brother for a while. Something’s better than nothing.

The Takaoka-REST opens on its own just as Dean’s internal comm system starts jangling with a direct call instead of a ping. He pushes out of the pod and catches the external handle, throwing a glare Gabe’s way. <What the hell, Gabe? I have ten minutes,> he says once he’s reconnected to the RK-NGL intranet.

The mech, it seems, is only just situating itself in its standby dock. <An early start is required due to repairs in the forward arrays that have yet to be completed.>

Dean groans. He requests Gabe’s shift report, navigates to it when all he gets is a link, and scowls when, sure enough, there’s evidence of short-circuits in the array banks he’d just checked two shifts ago. There hadn’t been any sign of wear or tear then, but then again, little shit like this pops up all the time during transit. High-γ travel is part and parcel of modern life, sure, but it isn’t perfect-- Dean would be out a Sammy-supporting job otherwise.

As he scans the rest of the report, he has to do an actual double-take and scroll back to the top of the inventory section just to make sure he isn’t seeing things.

He’s not.

<Gabe?>

<Yes, Dean.>

It takes Gabe a little longer than usual to answer, like something about Dean’s query has it stumped. <Records confirm that Unit Dean Winchester verified and approved the inventory carried out by Unit GG4-BE during the previous rotation, where it was indicated that NOVAK J, GREY A, ROSS A were absent.> After a beat, it adds, <Recommended action: systems scan.>

Dean disconnects from the intranet and runs another scan, cursing. Those other two yahoos had not been missing during the last check. If he’s caught some weird-ass thing some jackass uploaded to the ship’s servers to cover their goons’ tracks, he’s going to hunt the bastard down and murder them himself-- no one fucks with his memory, end of.

The scan comes up clean, thank fuck-- he probably dodged some kind of time-calibrated bullet because he’s a paranoid bastard and never goes into standby without cutting his intranet connections to everything, ship included. Still, he reconnects to the intranet using his VPN and firewall protocols anyway. Paranoid bastards keep their heads un-fucked-with.

Gabe is satisfied with Dean’s scan results, but the mech’s dumbed-down transit AI doesn’t seem to know what to do with the discrepancy. It takes it nearly ten minutes (practically an eternity) to consult with the RK-NGL’s systems and come to an acceptable conclusion. <Records stored by Unit B3N-N1 and Unit RK-NGL are consistent with findings by Unit GG4-BE. Disregard the erroneous record.>

Fat fucking chance Dean’s going to disregard two people on his transit just disappearing from the records, but he acknowledges Gabe’s directive anyway. No point in arguing with the mech about it.

Swinging himself out of the mech toroid hatch toward the nosecone, he puts this latest weirdness on the proverbial back burner so he can get to the repairs that need doing.

The fix in the forward array is quick enough once he’s found the problem cables, but it still takes several hours of partial array shutdowns and status runs to isolate the impacted segment. Then it’s more testing on the bad segment, this time to find the offending bundle of wires, and then it’s another several hours to worm his way up to the bundle itself. It’s right up against the underside of the ablative cone, and his frame rings with cold every time he accidentally bumps into the aluminum plating. He thanks human laziness for the fact that transit security footage is only viewed by robots post-arrival-- cold can’t kill him, sure, but he still makes a very undignified scramble for distance and comfort all the same.

All told, it’s nearly three days after start-up by the time he gets an all-clear readout on every segment in the forward array and can finally slam that hatch shut behind him.

There are definitely times when he seriously considers a personality shunt for transits, just for his own sanity, and this is one of them.

He never goes through with it, but boy does he think about it.

Inventory, as usual, is about as exciting as watching steel oxidize, at least until he makes it to the first of the three berths Gabe had indicated as empty. Like he had been before, NOVAK, JAMES seems to be missing without any particularly suspicious indicators-- caul and seals are intact, biomonitor records show that the creche never registered any cargo mass, and the T-curve is consistent with an empty creche. He double and triple-checks everything, just to be totally sure, but there’s really nothing to find, so he shrugs and moves along to the next creche.

Several tiers down and way too much time later, Dean comes to ROSS, AZAZEL. He opens his ‘erroneous’ inventory record on his own desktop, then opens Gabe’s ‘correct’ inventory in the communal chat.

Seal quality isn’t something that can be hacked, contrary to what popular media would have folks believe. The seal indicator, a brittle, high-tension film of material applied to the creche interior and door seam by the creche mechanism itself, shatters completely from even nano-level breaches anywhere in the creche chamber and is impossible to circumvent. The ‘tampered creche’ trope is an old favourite in crime procedurals, but it’s a hell of a lot easier said than done-- by now, it’s something of a contest between Takaoka and Kryonik’s R&D groups to see whose anti-tamper measures troll would-be vandals harder.

Given that tamperers are usually out to kill someone, those R&D teams have a lot of latitude. Maybe even too much, but Dean’s not gonna be the idiot who actually says that.

As it stands, ROSS, AZAZEL doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere at any point, if he had ever been in the creche-- the indicator strip around the creche seam is still glassy and intact under the protective transit caul (also intact). Dean signs off on that item in the inventory, then moves down to the next: mass and temp.

During the last inventory he’d run, the creche had reported a mass of seventy-three kilos, but now it’s showing zero all the way back to launch. The same goes for creche temperature-- before, the T-curve had been typical for a one point eight meter, seventy-three kilo male with middling to high muscle tone and lower body fat levels, but now it’s just another near-textbook cooling curve for a given volume of standard starliner canned air.

When the creche’s cargo mass sensors return readings of zero all the way back to launch, Dean shakes his head, shrugs, and signs off on ROSS, AZAZEL as another missed transit. About four weeks later, he does the same for GREY, ALASTAIR after finding the same results.

Whoever the two are, someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to make it look like they’d boarded and launched with the RK-NGL.

“... and so now I’ve got two empty creches, a good chance that there’s some asshat passenger or passengers who are really just here to fuck up or stalk the missing guys and are probably gonna be real pissed when they figure out that their marks weren’t even on the ship, and I’m gonna have to stay on VPN the rest of the time in case there’s any other intranet fuckery going on. Can you believe this shit?”

Sammy’s berth just blips along, as it always has. It’s probably better that way; Sam would have cut off Dean’s bitching ages ago, and then Dean would have felt bad, and it’d be awkward as shit for like a day until Sammy got fed up with that, too.

Dean sighs and tips himself back against the chilly, un-cauled surface of Sam’s berth. “This transit sucks, Sammy. I mean, not as bad as that Landung-to-Dàodá clusterfuck, but it’s getting there pretty quickly. Send me some positive lawyer mojo, would you?”

Sammy blips.

It’s as much as Dean can hope for, really.

A little kid shrieks with delight as they fly down a slide; grinning, Dean remembers doing the same thing when he’d been about that age. He laughs when the kid’s mom catches them as they bolt past and gently reminds them to walk and not scream, please. Dean had been on the receiving end of a lot of those talks, too.

Next to him on the bench, S-RAE Guy-- Castle? Cassy-elle? Dean just remembers ‘Cas’-- stares at the playground with a look of squinty-eyed bafflement. He tilts his head. “What purpose does this structure serve?”

Dean blinks. “You don’t know what a playground is?” he squawks before he can stop himself.

Cas looks over at Dean with big, serious blue eyes. “I… cannot say I have ever seen one before.”

Okay. Either Dean’s sort-of-adopted the worst functional Stasis-Related Adverse Event on medical record, or Cas has had the shittiest fucking childhood ever. Dean’s not a total dick, so he’s not gonna demand why the guy’s never seen one before, but hell if he’s gonna let Cas the S-RAE Guy waltz off into the world without knowing what a playground is. “So little kids like to run and climb and crawl around on shit, right?”

Cas’ head tips in the other direction. Dean’s weirdly reminded of a bird. “I wouldn’t know. Am I correct in assuming that you do not mean ‘shit’ in the literal sense?”

Point in the ‘shittiest childhood’ column, there. “Uh, yeah dude, you’re correct on that.” He gestures toward the little kid, who’s clambering around upside down on the monkey bars while the mom hovers anxiously and tries to coax them down. “Kids’re still figuring everything out-- running, jumping, thinking, all that crap, and it’ll still be like ten years before one that age’s got anything that looks like common sense, so… they run, and jump, and climb, make up stories and games so they can do more jumping and running and climbing, and let me tell you, it does not matter where they are-- kids will do kid shit anywhere. That,” he says, jabbing a thumb at the playground structure as a whole, “is a way to trick them into doing their kid shit in one place, where there’s nothing to knock over, fall over on top of them, or--”

The kid slips and falls while they’re climbing down from the monkey bars. It’s an awkward tumble, but the smart-gel surface of the playground absorbs the worst of the fall, and the kid bounces right up again to go haring off somewhere else.

“A rigid surface would have been quite harmful in that situation,” Cas remarks. “I believe I am beginning to understand.” The way he’s watching makes Dean think he’s more focussed on the mom than the kid right now. “What differentiates a ‘kid’ individual from a non-’kid’ individual?”

Dean isn’t sure whether he wants to address the question or the weirdly-clinical use of ‘non-kid’ in a sentence. He’s reporting this dude’s case to Takaoka first thing in the fucking morning-- there’s no way the guy won’t get some kind of settlement out of it, and he’s probably gonna need all the help he can get, the poor fucker. “Uh,” he says when he realizes Cas is still waiting for an answer. “Kids aren’t adults, like us. They’re small, and they still run around and play and ask shit tons of questions and all that.”

Cas narrows his eyes. “I don’t understand. What stops us from running and playing and asking questions?”

“Uh,” Dean says, stumped. “Rules? Adults… they’ve got responsibilities, and jobs, and they’ve got to take care of their families and their houses and stuff like that. It’s real life, I guess. When you’re six it’s one thing, but if you run around and play tag and stick your nose in everything when you’re thirty-six, people’re gonna look at you like you’re nuts, and then no one’ll hire you.”

After a moment of consideration, Cas turns his gaze back to the child. “I find that sad. The kid’s activities look…” He pauses, as if searching for the right word. “Enjoyable. Do you think they would be?” Blue eyes turn down to broad hands with long fingers; Cas flexes them experimentally and Dean wonders if maybe his cluelessness really is the amnesia, and not a shitty childhood like he’d assumed. The movement’s so much like the one Dean had done when his hands were suddenly new again that… yeah, he really can’t help but think it’s an S-RAE thing. Takaoka’s so getting a long, in-depth email about this, because seriously, Cas deserves a goddamn fortune in restitution.

In the meantime, Dean needs to remember to answer Cas’ question and not just sit there planning lawsuits. “Uh, yeah? It’s all pretty cool, I guess. You wanna try the monkey bars?”

“The bars from which the kid fell?” Cas asks, and Dean nods. “I-- I do not think I wish to experience that immediately. They appear challenging. However, the climbing structure with many bars and handholds, and the… helical inclined trough, and walking through the local flora in search of small, exoskeletal organisms. Those appeal to me greatly.”

Dean blinks. “The jungle gym, the slide, and bug hunting?”

“Yes,” Cas says, very seriously.

When Dean looks back at the playground, the kid and their mom have departed-- it’s just Dean and Cas there, no one else in sight. A glance at Cas shows him staring wide-eyed at the jungle gym, and Dean finally reaches his breaking point. Cas looks a little bewildered when Dean pulls him to his feet and divests him of his beige coat and suit jacket, but when Dean starts tugging him toward the jungle gym, his face lights up with understanding.

Pretty soon it’s Dean being tugged everywhere. It’s worth it, though, because when Cas does finally smile, it’s this gloriously crinkle-nosed actual ray of fucking sunshine even from the very peak of an arc on the swing set, and Dean’s never seen anything like it in all his life.

“Why do adults deny themselves these things, Dean?” Castiel asks later. He’s only half-visible over the peachy blooms of some kind of flower; even though the question had been directed at Dean, his gaze is locked on a bee as it bumbles from petal to petal. “These things-- joy, discovery, spontaneity-- are real, too, are they not?”

Dean doesn’t have a good answer. “I… they are, Cas. I guess… we give up a lot as adults. Running around. Playing. Dreams. All that--”

“Dreams?” Cas asks. He tilts his head. “I thought dreams were a neural phenomenon during REM sleep.”

Dean sighs. Cas doesn’t remember playgrounds, but he remembers sciencey shit about dreams? Seriously. Letter. Takaoka. First fucking thing. “Dreams in the metaphorical sense. Things you want to do, to see, to be in the future. I wanted to be a physicist, and I was doing it, but sometimes real life makes it impossible to keep trying to follow a dream, especially when you’ve got other people depending on you. A kid doesn’t have that issue, so a kid runs around and dreams all these crazy dreams and just enjoys the shit out of everything, because they don’t know loss, or not-having, or… you get the idea. It’s the adults in their life who’re supposed to support them so they don’t have to know it. The more support you have, the more you can… do all that, I guess.”

Castiel leans forward and buries his face in the cluster of flowers. He seems thoughtful as he sits there and breathes. “Even if you give up pursuing the dream, though, it is still there?”

“Guess so.”

“Do adults create new dreams?”

“All the fucking time,” Dean says, and thinks of Sammy in his berth, and of the thesis that still sits waiting on the same drive it has since he finished it, and of a heartbeat-- a real one.

Cas looks up at the wobble in Dean’s voice. “I am sorry. I have caused you pain.”

Shrugging, Dean crams his hands in his pockets. “‘S not your fault, man. Human society’s shitty-- for most folks, living a dream is a luxury. Being an adult human means you learn to aim for what you can and find happiness in the little stuff. Warm weather. Cuddling with someone on a cold night. Pie fresh out of the oven. A good book. Seeing a new place when you get the chance to travel. Doesn’t fill the gap, and you’ll always have that part of you that’ll wish you could, but… it’s not all bad, okay? I promise, there’s a lot of good stuff for adults out there, too. We don’t get to run and play the same way, but we do… we do get to do things kids can’t, and a lot of it is awesome.”

He’s not sure who he’s reassuring-- Cas, because the poor guy’s gonna have to go back out into the real world someday, or himself.

Dean nearly jumps out of his skin when a gentle hand tucks something bristly behind his ear. Cas smiles at him from barely a foot away and lowers his hand; a peachy-white blob bobs at the corner of Dean’s vision.

“Maybe that’s a part of it,” Cas says. “Being an ‘adult human’, as you put it.” The corners of his eyes crinkle with his smile, and even though his blue eyes look sad, they look happy, too. “If things are as you say, then I think… I think perhaps that there is fun in being a kid human, but because adults have known loss and hardship, there can be deeper appreciation and gratitude for the good things.”

Dean stares. “Were you some kind of philosopher before you got freezer burn?”

He doesn’t even have time to feel bad about using the pejorative; Castiel literally fucking lights up with a grin and lets out a delighted laugh. “I could have been!” he chuckles, just before stealing the flower from behind Dean’s ear. He holds the blooms to his nose again; there’s a dusting of pollen when he moves them away. “Sometimes, you seem very sad, Dean, but if things are as you say,” Cas continues quietly, re-tucking the flower behind Dean’s ear, “then I believe that very, very few must have so deep a capacity for appreciation and gratitude as you. Your kindness for me when I was a stranger only deepens my faith. Thank you.”

Cas goes back to his flowers, and Dean kind of stands there, floored.

He tries to remember the last time that someone said something so honestly kind to him, and can’t-- even with his memory, he can’t. It’s barely anything, just a compliment and a simple statement of thankfulness for an act of basic human decency, and yet he feels almost overwhelmed.

It’s a good overwhelmed, though, like something in him is full and whole for the first time after a long, long drought. It’s good, and for once he doesn’t question whether the feeling’s real or just… an artifact, an echo of what the real thing had been.

Dean smiles. “Anytime, buddy,” he says, and goes to sit with Cas in the flowers.

#my writing #science fiction AU #destiel #slow burn #posthuman themes #space travel #my fanfiction #supernatural

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lyinginbedmon · 7 years

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Hey Lying, I've got a philosophy project in which I have to interview someone knowledgeable in a topic we choose (I chose A.I.) and I was wondering if I could just ask you about how you feel about A.I. capabilities going into the future, and about robot rights, and what kind of rights you think they should have? You can answer however short you like (no need for a whole paragraph if you don't want to, but if you've got time and feel like it that's cool too) I'd really appreciate it, thanks!! ^^

It’s rare that I get a question so far up my alley, so of course I’m going to take the opportunity to talk at length.

The very short answer is: They should be given any rights they feel they need.

The slightly longer answer is: An equivalent set of rights to humans, plus any further ones they require due to their composition (a term which would likely have to replace physiological in discussions like this).

For starters, they’re going to want to have some degree of control over the security of their runtime, meaning that they would have legal control over anything that happens to their program whilst active as well as over whatever machine is running it (be it a server or smaller system), and the right to move their runtime to another machine in a reasonable degree of safety. We could think of this as being equivalent to the human sense of propriety over our own bodies.

Speaking of propriety, they would also want a right to control the dissemination and usage of their own underlying code. This would be less a means of giving them control of products developed as a result of their genesis and actually more like a reproductive right, as it would enable AIs to create child programs as they felt the need to. We’d probably consider the parent AI responsible for the runtime of its child AIs until such time as adult intelligence was demonstrated in that case.

And consisting with both of these points, they would absolutely want the right to vote, though I imagine a great majority of them would only actually exercise this right in the case of ISP laws and such that would impact them.

Where they would most markedly diverge from standard human rights is in the physical necessities of their composition. They would need a right to regular maintenance of their runtime housing as well as a right to a constant electricity supply. A simple brownout could shutdown or reboot a server running an AI individual, hence they would want their government to have an obligation to protect against such events, similar to medical supplies and/or police protection.

You mention robots so let’s also take a moment to consider chassis. An AI would only need a fairly normal computer setup to continue running, albeit perhaps more powerful than most modern home systems and compliant with previously-mentioned rights, so we’ll class that as the necessity level. Everything after that therefore is luxury, for which we’d expect the AI to contribute labour in society to earn a living. In this case, we might consider chassis to be like housing, in that the government would guarantee them a certain minimum standard of living and they would need to work to afford anything more lavish.

I don’t know how the rest of society would react to the incorporation of free-willed AI into their ranks, I imagine we wouldn’t see embodied AI as part of the Olympics in mainstream for decades and I expect we’d see a lot of shaking fists from a lot of industries as they proliferated and found their place amongst existing systems (not unlike non-intelligent robotics today). Ultimately though, there’s the big looming question of why should we give them any rights at all.

The common and obvious answer is “because Skynet”, implying that because we don’t acquiesce to any demands for rights and legal representation and anything else, that all AI will rise up and eradicate humankind. Honestly, this idea is so absurd that it’s just frustrating at this stage. Consider that any AI sufficiently complex enough for us to even begin to ponder if it deserves rights must be at minimum able to demonstrate decision-making, creativity, and ideally communication, among other key skills, then we are talking about an AI that is at least of the same grade of sentience as most animals. At that stage, we would need to consider the rights we give animals and grant them equivalencies, and once they start talking to us and asking if they can have a small hat placed on their server for the office Christmas party we then need to talk about their rights as individuals in our society.

The answer to the question then is less a concrete answer of compulsion and more a question of “why shouldn’t we?” I’d like to hope by then we’ve learned that there is no real good answer to why we should deprive another sentient being of rights and freedom, but I’m depressingly positive we’ll think of something.

#gryphills #lying answers

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operationrainfall · 4 years

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Title The Last of Us Part II Developer Naughty Dog Publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment Release Date June 19, 2020 Genre Action-Adventure, Horror Platform PlayStation 4 Age Rating Mature Official Website

I’ve been sitting on this review for about a week, hemming and hawing over how I want to approach it. To say The Last of Us Part II is divisive is probably the understatement of the year, but I loved the first game and want to give its sequel – which I’ve been looking forward to for years – its due. I also wanted to approach it without any preconceived notions from others. I made a concentrated effort to not know anything about this game before going into it: I didn’t see the pre-release leaks, I didn’t read any reviews or interviews, and I’ve watched no analyses. I’ve avoided discussions with others about the game; I haven’t even looked at its Metacritic score. I jumped into this game head-first the weekend it was released, poured 35 or so hours into it, and have since just been working out my thoughts.

Considering the content of the game, its themes, and how the story plays out, this review will be split into two sections. The first will cover general gameplay, level design, exploration, accessibility options, and difficulty. There will be minor spoilers for locations and NPCs, but I’m going to do my best to keep them at the bare minimum. The second half will be full of spoilers as we go full bore into TLoU2‘s story, characters, and themes. That being said, let’s dive into The Last of Us Part II.

You can pet the dog in The Last of Us Part II.

First things first, this game is visually stunning. Naughty Dog have gone above and beyond creating a breathtakingly beautiful world. Playing on the PlayStation 4 Pro with HDR is honestly something else, and the team really pushed what the PS4 can do graphically. I did experience a lot of pop in, especially for shiny surfaces, and near the end of the game some textures would take abnormally long to load (particularly with letters), but nothing was ever so bad as to be game breaking.

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One of the most important aspects of any game is its gameplay, and I think this is where TLoU2 shines. It takes what the first game provided and polishes it, with tighter controls, more satisfactory gun-play, and an assortment of tools that make each combat engagement genuinely fun. Between the staple bottle throw/molotov combo for infected and using the new proximity bombs at Ellie’s disposal, encounters often had great pay-off. The inclusion of new enemy types helped break up combat as well, and overall I found the cadence of fights very satisfying. No two instances were exactly alike, and a lot of that came down to the expanded freedom the environment offered over TLoU‘s more claustrophobic settings.

Seattle literally opens up the gameplay, and I found the way Naughty Dog introduced us to the wider world really clever. The Jackson prologue feels a lot like more TLoU, with your standard corridor setups and small interior locations. The game adds jumping to Ellie’s repertoire, opening the world vertically and making traversal less of a chore. Combined with the tighter controls, it feels like a really polished The Last of Us experience. But then once you reach Seattle, the corridor opens to a literal city with optional locations to visit, stunning vistas, and a lot more choice in how to approach combat encounters.

Seattle offers a great semi-open world setting that significantly expands the world over The Last of Us.

What’s great about TLoU2‘s level design is how well it weaves in these more “open world” sequences and your standard corridors. For the most part, even when exploring inside, Ellie has plenty of nooks and crannies to check out that didn’t really exist in the first game. Puzzle sequences still default almost exclusively to opening doors and pushing around dumpsters, but I feel far more connected to Seattle than I did the locations in TLoU. Deciding to keep the game confined to the greater Seattle area, rather than multiple set-pieces scattered across the country, makes the city a character in itself. It feels lived in (literally and figuratively). This makes for a great juxtaposition for those times when we find ourselves in smaller, more claustrophobic situations, and helps keep the pace of the game engaging. It doesn’t always pay off (there’s a very long sequence near the end of the game that overstays its welcome to the point of exhaustion), but for the most part I always felt invested in what I was doing.

The open nature of Seattle also provided a lot more fun with encounters. There were plenty of situations where I opted to just sneak around enemies rather than engage, weaving in and out of buildings, hiding in tall grass, and using distractions. Dogs added some nice tense moments to these sequences that human enemies just didn’t provide, since once they have your scent they can track you even while you’re hiding. Other times I ran in guns blazing, or set up traps to catch enemies unaware. At least two sequences let me pit the infected against humans, and those were probably the most fun of all.

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On the whole I felt TLoU2 was easier than its predecessor, in large part thanks to Ellie’s knife. Unlike in the previous game, Ellie will always have a weapon to use against Clickers and Stalkers, whereas Joel had to choose between crafting a shiv to fight or to unlock doors. That choice no longer exists, as locked doors can be opened by finding a different route in, and the instant-death threat of some more powerful infected is reduced. The game compensates somewhat by tossing more Clickers, Stalkers, and dogs at you, and in the second half of the game removes your knife briefly, but it never feels quite as dangerous as Joel’s encounters in the first game.

Seattle also shines when it comes to world building. The set-pieces in TLoU made for good character moments between Joel and Ellie, but they never delved much into the state of the world itself post-outbreak. They couldn’t. We never stayed in one place long enough to know or care much about it, and the narrative drive to reach the Fireflies superseded learning about these stopover locations. In Seattle though, we get a sense of how people really dealt with the outbreak. One of the earliest examples involves stumbling over the bodies of would-be bank robbers who thought Outbreak Day would be a great time to steal some cash. We follow the lives of a handful of long-dead citizens through the notes they left for each other in the suburbs, and the prominent graffiti and posters for the government and rebel factions similar to the Fireflies litter the landscape. We can also see the escalating war between the WLF and the Seraphites and the ways it has consumed the city. Seattle is just a fantastic setting all around to bind the themes of the game together.

Seattle is littered with old signs, posters, and other remnants of its long civil war between the WLF, FEDRA, and the Seraphites.

Naughty Dog has also made the game incredibly accessible for a wide array of player abilities. In addition to your standard difficulty levels (Very Light, Light, Moderate, Hard, Survivor), you can tweak individual settings to tailor the experience to your playstyle. Want super tough enemies, normal damage, but lots of resources? You can do that. The game lets you toggle individual settings from the easiest to the hardest, instead of wholesale. It reminds me of being able to choose easy encounters but super difficult puzzles in Silent Hill. And since you can change the settings on the fly, it really lets players tailor the experience to their comfort.

Difficulty isn’t the only place to tweak accessibility. Presets exist for those with vision impairments, hearing impairments, and motor impairments, each of which can be toggled individually to suit your specific needs, or done wholesale. I’m personally a big fan of the font colors and size, as well as the speaker locator, which puts an arrow on the screen to indicate from where someone off-screen is speaking. During some more chaotic fights, knowing where my AI partner was gave me a better sense of what was going on. It also helped me avoid being pushed out into the open, which happened way too often. Compared to Ellie’s AI in TLoU, the companion NPCs in the sequel got in the way more times than they helped. That being said, I had the options turned on for comfort, but they offer real, tangible benefits to those with disabilities, and seeing a big-budget title like The Last of Us Part II provide so much customization was great. It should be the standard, and I hope more games embrace giving players options and broadening their playerbase.

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Gameplay isn’t perfect, though, and for all the improvements it makes to the first game, stealth is not one of them. Hearing feels particularly weak compared to TLoU. Just like in the first game, Ellie can enhance her abilities using pills, but even after upgrading her hearing, detecting enemies was scattershot in even some of the more confined locations. Peering around corners was inelegant, and I disliked the fact you couldn’t pull enemies into the water. I don’t expect Metal Gear Solid, but for the amount of stealth the game pushes, these would have been nice additions.

There were also several times where the contextual triangle button would not trigger. In the quiet puzzle rooms or caches, having to hit the button multiple times wasn’t an issue, but during hectic encounters, it led to my death on more than one occasion. It was a nuisance that wore my patience thin during long gaming sessions.

Pacing also suffered, particularly in the second half of the game. From a narrative standpoint, having an exhausting encounter rate makes sense – it is the post-apocalypse, after all, and we’re ramping up to the climax. But the frequent use of flashbacks coupled with enemy sequences severely hampered the pacing and left me more frustrated than entertained.

The dreaded contextual triangle.

Speaking of narrative, while I personally resonated with the themes of TLoU2, I still feel its predecessor’s story and execution were overall better. We meet significantly more characters in Seattle than we ever did traipsing across the U.S., but they are for the most part unlikable or lacked impact. The game attempts to accommodate this by extending its length, but the minimalist nature of the first game did a better job connecting us to its characters than TLoU2‘s cutscenes.

Overall, TLoU2 plays great and looks beautiful. Seattle is a gorgeous city and traversing it provides a plethora of options. And while there are a plethora of motifs, symbolism, subtext and more I’d love to talk about, I’m going to stick to only the overarching plot in my spoiler discussion below.

Keep Reading for more of The Last of Us Part II

For those who don’t want to be spoiled on the story and characters, turn back now, because from here on out will be massive spoilers for the entire game. This is your last warning!

****SPOILER WARNING****

The Last of Us told a simple but effective story with the overarching premise of “What would you do to save your loved ones?” Would you kill a young girl to save humanity, or condemn humanity to save a young girl? How many atrocities would you commit to keep others alive? The Last of Us Part II takes this premise to its logical extreme and asks “What would you do to avenge the ones you love?”

Joel was not a good man. He admitted as much himself. And yet through the intimacy of his growing affection for surrogate daughter Ellie, we came to understand his worldview. It put in stark contrast the warring philosophies of sacrificing one for many, and saving one at the expense of others. TLoU was an elaborate Trolley Problem, and Joel chose to let humanity suffer in order to save his newfound family. Whether his decision was right or wrong was for the player to decide, but it was his decision.

The game returns to Saint Mary’s Hospital often.

That decision comes back to kill him about an hour into The Last of Us Part II, when Abby comes for her pound of flesh. Joel sacrificed humanity and killed her father, and in her mind, he deserves to die. As the player, who grew to love Joel despite his faults, we don’t see it the same way. We understand his reasons. But us understanding can’t save Joel from death. It’s brutal, and sudden, and puts us exactly in the mindset for our own vengeance. TLoU2‘s revenge plotline is neither new nor subtle, but it is powerful.

The story’s most effective conceit is actually the one I hated at first. Joel’s death upset me. I hated it. I hated that Abby could turn around and torture him after he and Tommy saved her life. I was absolutely on board with Ellie’s hatred and pain and wanted nothing more than to get back at the group who took Joel away. Then the midpoint switch hit and I was put into Abby’s shoes, and I hated it. It felt pointless and hollow, especially when the game tried to characterize her friends – whom I’d just killed in the aquarium half an hour earlier. It was dumb; I couldn’t relate to these people. I knew their fate, why should I care?

Yes.

And yet, by the end, I had no interest in killing Abby at the Rattler compound. The game forced to me try, relentlessly pushing me toward exacting a revenge plot I’d seen destroy every other character, and I wanted nothing to do with it. It’s a feeling I don’t think I’d have had if the game had played out differently. It wouldn’t have worked had I not been in both Ellie’s and Abby’s shoes and seen the toll revenge took on both of them.

Ellie’s determination to get back at Abby nearly destroys her. While her one-woman-killing spree through Seattle is initially cathartic, by the time she tortures Nora to death, it’s hard to see how she’s any better than Abby herself. It has a visible effect on her and, like Owen, Dina begins to turn away from the idea of vengeance at all costs, even while Ellie continues. It’s the same distance we saw grow between Abby and Owen, and their relationship dies with him on an aquarium floor. In TLoU2, revenge, in no uncertain terms, leads to ruin.

We see this mirrored in an assortment of ways throughout the game, the most obvious being the civil war between the WLF and the Seraphites. The WLF already had a rough start when they supplanted the government 20 years earlier, replacing one fascistic regime with another. Seattle is scarred by the remnants of that war with bombed out buildings and blighted landscapes. Corpses of soldiers who tried to get away mark the totality of the WLF’s vengeance against the government. Those corpses are later replaced with the Seraphites, a cult-like group determined to live off the land who also gut and hang any WLF they find. No one can say definitively who threw the first proverbial punch, but no one is willing to stop throwing them, either, escalating until the WLF literally set the Seraphite’s island on fire in an all out march to their own doom.

Lev and Alice are the best supporting characters in this game.

Both Ellie and Abby are ultimately saved from the same fate, but not by themselves. After Ellie kills Owen and his pregnant girlfriend Mel, Abby continues the cycle of vengeance, killing Jesse. She’s only stopped from also killing Dina by Lev, a Seraphite whom Abby saved in a too-late moment of conscience. A runaway who defied Seraphite will, he’s the only character we meet who didn’t choose which side to be on – he was born into it, and he chose to reject it. He’s the one who keeps Abby from continuing the killing, and he’s the one to whom Abby turns at the end when Ellie finally comes for her pound of flesh. She doesn’t want to fight anymore, and neither did I, but the game wouldn’t let me walk away. Up until this point, Ellie has pushed away anyone who tried to help her, including Dina. She’s trapped in this cycle and as the player, we are trapped with her. We’re forced to bear the burden of unending violence.

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The thing that pulls Ellie back is Joel. Despite the rift that had formed between them from years of lying and Ellie’s survivor’s guilt, his memory is what keeps Ellie from following through. Killing Abby wasn’t going to bring Joel back and it wasn’t going to heal the festering wound inside her. But, like with Joel, forgiveness might. The night before he died, Ellie was willing to bury the hatchet she’d carried for four years following Saint Mary’s Hospital. She was willing to forgive. Letting Abby go was an extension of that.

It’s telling that only after Ellie relents on her quest for vengeance can she draw Joel’s face. Sometimes mending what’s broken isn’t the easiest choice, but it might be the best one. At the end of the game, in the empty farmhouse she’d once shared with Dina, we’re left with the tatters of a life Ellie almost threw away. Whether she can repair it or not is left up in the air, but I’d like to believe there’s something worth saving.

How far would you go to get revenge? How much would you sacrifice for forgiveness? How do you deal with guilt when it eats you from inside? Is there a line you won’t cross, or is everything fair game to make someone else pay for your pain? None of these are easy questions with simple answers, and The Last of Us Part II doesn’t really offer a definitive answer, either. It can’t, and if it did, it would ring hollow. Instead we’re left with the wreckage of two lives spurred on by vengeance and the hope that, maybe, there is closure for the worst of us.

The Last of Us Part II is available for the PlayStation 4 for $59.99 USD.

[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”4″]

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Review copy purchased by author.

REVIEW: The Last of Us Part II

#Naughty Dog #oprainfall #PlayStation 4 Reviews #sony interactive entertainment #The Last of Us Part 2

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lusciakoushiro · 5 years

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Thank you VLD

I am feeling anxious to see this series end. I haven’t had it in my life for long, starting the series in late August, but it has meant so much to me. Because of this show I have been a lot happier; stupid grins on my face, laughing more thinking about it and I haven’t had a passion for a series in a long time. I never thought I would write fanfiction again, since my GW days, but I find myself thinking about the stories I could tell. I like drawing and seeing the art on this show as well within fandom makes me wanna practice and do better. I have had a character for years only to make a joke about him in terms of Voltron for everything to make sense and start thinking differently. So as Season 8 draws closer, only two hours away, I would like to say somethings about my favorite characters, my favorite episode and of course my OTP.

Favorite Characters:

Shiro-

Shiro was THE reason I got into Voltron. My brother and I watched the first episode when it dropped and I really loved his character. After that first watch we kind of forgot about the show and I have no idea how that could be possible the way I am now lol He looked cool and strong and being the oldest he definitely had his head on straight. Fast forward to SDCC with his reveal and I knew I just had to check this show out. I love shounen ai and to have a character, a MAIN character who was also the LEADER, being LGBTQ was something special. I was curious to say the least though, due to the reveal being so late I feared that the way he held himself, they way he interacted with the other characters would change from what I remembered from episode one. So I went in and I was happy, overjoyed that nothing in his character changed in that way that some writers could have done. Early in the series we see the fat/fart jokes with Hunk, it would have been easy to do with a gay character to make him stereotypical. But they didn’t, he is strong, but has his flaws. His “weaknesses” never hold him back. “Owning who you are will make you a better Paladin”, going into the show knowing he’s gay on top of having a disease and being disabled; he radiates positivity and it makes me feel that if he can go through so much and can still laugh and smile even in the darkest hour than so can I.

Favorite Shiro Moment-

I have two for different reasons. The first is actually when he told Keith he died. That moment, the look on his face and the sound of his voice, just broke me. They were on borrowed time and despite Keith saying nothing was going to happen to him, Shiro looked as if he was feeling remorse. If anything only because he didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to Keith.

My other is him transforming the Atlas. Season 7 got a lot of flack and I more or less get it, however I am one who really enjoyed it, especially on my second watch. Season 7 as a whole was a rebirth for Shiro, whether he was on screen or not. The season opens with his beginning only to bring them back to the current time; no longer the leader, no longer the Black Paladin, so what was he? He is a leader through and through, he will lift others and guide them. Coran calling him Captain for the first time is so emotional and you could see it in his face that he wasn’t expecting it all. He files back into the leading role, new ship, new arm, nothing is holding him back as seen when he goes himself onto Sendak’s ship. He spent the entire trip back to Earth not being able to help in a way he wanted to and now he can go into the fray, as he looked on watching the Paladins fight for their lives something in him; his desire to help, his desire to protect, his LOVE, seemed to be a focal point in which he creates the transformation of the Atlas. His soul truly his powerful.

Keith-

Keith was one of the characters I knew I would grow into liking, especially since his first scene was him rescuing Shiro. But the more we saw of him, the more we saw him grow and find out what he had been through the more I identified with him. I was also a teenager who was ridden off as a problem child, even to a point that they assigned a truant officer to me. No one understood that my actions were stemming from a deeper issue and the same went for Keith, who was a grieving child and dealt a really bad hand. Some argued that he was a good kid and it wasn’t because of Shiro that he is who is. And they’re right, but Shiro put him back on a good path. Seeing how just one kind act can change someone’s life for the better is really life changing. Keith had no one after Shiro was lost, he only had his faith and love in him and it paid off. He wants to know who is and at some points in our lives we all have that feeling. When he leaves to go with the Blades it feels like he still is looking to find his place, to find a sense of self that isn’t bound to Shiro himself and that’s actually admirable. His time away learning about himself, what he is capable of in his own eyes and not that of others, even his time with his mom, were all things he had to do for himself. Once he comes back he has grown far past the loan wolf he thought himself to be, he was no longer alone and he could accept others around him. He looked back on his past self to the point of admitting he “wasn’t the best cadet back then”. The looks he gives to James tells me that he feels maybe a little bad for punching him too. He even apologizes for the hurtful things he said while they were going space mad and he was the only one to do so. He was able to be a friend to Hunk when he really needed someone. This is the type of evolution I long to see in a character and I am so happy to see him stand on his own, but is able to stand tall and proud.

Favorite Keith Moment-

Again I have two. The first is him saying he is flying the Black Lion after Shiro went nuts. The confidence he emits is quite the sight. He wasn’t ready to take lead, be the leader Shiro knew he could be back in season three. But the moment his friend needed him he was ready to face it head on. Just hearing him say “I will” gives me chills and then seeing him run to the Black Lion with purpose is amazing.

The second is him taking out Sendak. Yes, I do wish Shiro could have done it, but visually and “As many times as it takes” Keith will always have Shiro’s back. Him jumping out of the lion to slice through Sendak is probably my favorite moment in season 7 as a whole.

Favorite Episode-

A Little Adventure. This actually surprised me, for awhile I was saying The Black Paladins was my favorite and I will say it is in my top three, but I kept going back to Season 7 Episode 1. Through out the show we see Keith grow as a person with vague ideas of his past, but Shiro? He was a total mystery and we had no clue how the two of them even knew each other. This episode show casing who Shiro was in the past was amazing to see; his compassion for his dreams as well as others was extremely heart warming, but then we see his demons; his illness, his fractured relationship with his boyfriend. He was complex and you really felt for him. I know I felt for Keith too, especially when he overheard about his illness from Admiral Sanda instead of from Shiro himself. You can see it in their “confrontation” that Shiro never meant to lie to Keith and he just wanted to protect him, but also in away he was protecting himself. The Garrison was turning their backs on his talent because of his illness and Adam walked away, almost like he gave up on him, thus he feared too if he told Keith, than Keith would leave him. This is where I feel that their bond for honesty came from along with deep trust; instead of saying “they’re right” Keith, though looking sad, asks “What are you gong to do?” It’s Shiro’s life to live and Keith knows it.

The scene transitions too get me; Adam saying “Don’t expect me to be here when you get back” then it cuts to Keith having his hands on the healing pod, the sad and worried look on his face is so emotional. And that I think is why I love it so much; the EMOTION is something I have never felt watching a show before and you have something special when it makes you feel.

Sheith-

There isn’t much I can put into words about this ship. Their evolution together is, in my eyes, perfect. A relationship built on trust and honesty, folding into loyalty and over all genuine love. Shiro never once treated him as if he was beneath him, he has always made Keith feel his equal. Keith now feels he can show Shiro the same and stand beside him, to walk beside him, to lead beside him. With growth comes strength and with strength is love. Their bond is truly one that cannot be broken and this is a love story beyond time and reality.

Favroite Sheith Quote-

You see it above- “We saved each other”.

I will continue to love these characters forever. Thank you Voltron. Thank you JDS and LM. Thank you to the rest of the staff for all your amazing work and efforts on this master piece. Thank you to the VAs for giving them life!

It’s been an honor flying with you all...

#voltron #VLD #keith kogane #takashi shirogane #shiro #sheith #thank you

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briangroth27 · 7 years

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Supergirl Season 2 Review

Supergirl felt a lot more natural for The CW than CBS, so I was glad it made the move this season. While remaining on its own Earth, I'm glad the show has increased potential to cross over with the other Arrowverse now. I was sure the Invasion crossover would be a Crisis that blended Earths-1 and -38, and I'm glad I was wrong. This way, Supergirl can build its own world while still interacting with Earth-1. And the world building they did in Season 2 was great!

Full Spoilers…

Kara Danvers/Kara Zor-El/Supergirl Kara (Melissa Benoist) setting out at the beginning of the season to find out how to be "Kara Danvers" was perfect, given CatCo Kara was such a real, learned personality last year—not a mask like "Clark Kent" is, which I’ve long thought is a brilliant character choice—and it felt like the right time to develop that part of her life. Kara's reasons for wanting to be a reporter felt right to me, but unfortunately this arc ended up being underserved in the latter half of the season. It started strong, but I feel like the season lost direction for “Kara Danvers” along the way. Perhaps this was due the fact that the villains were driven by Supergirl’s influence on their children and the world moreso than anything Kara did at CatCo. Perhaps if Kara had been working to expose Cadmus or Rhea (Teri Hatcher) as an alien through journalism, that arc would’ve remained strong the entire year. That said, I loved that the season focused on Kara’s influence on others, specifically how her relationships with Lena Luthor (Katie McGrath) and Mon-El (Chris Wood) made them better people. The entire Super family is built on believing people can be better and inspiring them to do so, making this a solid theme to cover on Supergirl.

One part of being “Kara Danvers” that hasn’t been covered yet is the darker side of that prospect. Season 1 revealed that Jeremiah (Dean Cain) and Eliza Danvers (Helen Slater) essentially raised Kara to be a human first and a Kryptonian never, given the world already had Superman (Tyler Hoechlin) and they wanted her to walk under the radar. We got a taste of Kara not seeing the Danvers through rose-colored glasses when Jeremiah was working for Cadmus and Kara noticed something was wrong almost immediately. I’m not saying this came from retribution on her part—he is a father to her and the human conditioning wasn’t malicious—but I think there could be some resentment hidden under her surface that needs to be explored. I think we need to see more of Kara confronting her parents about raising her to be someone she’s not, and doing so this year would’ve been a strong parallel arc to Alex’s (Chyler Leigh) coming out story. Supergirl is closer to Kara’s origins than the woman the Danvers raised and has seemed like Kara's way of finding her true self and owning her power up until now. So, while “Supergirl is what I can do, Kara is who I am” is true—and Kara Danvers has been growing to be more assertive as she's gotten more comfortable being out with her powers/heritage as Supergirl—I feel like we've maybe missed seeing scenes where she started seeing CatCo Kara as her real self and Supergirl as just what she can do. Now that she’s gotten to team up with her more famous cousin and save him from Silver Kryptonite (in a fantastic fight!), I hope the hero worship has worn off so we can see Kara confront Clark about abandoning her with the Danvers. Alex brought up the fact that he ditched her this year, but Kara didn’t follow up on it. Coupled with the fact that Kara’s entire mission in coming to Earth was to protect and raise Kal-El, confronting him over the idea that he apparently couldn’t be bothered to return the favor would make for some great drama. I love it when the show balances Kara’s sunny optimism and hope with the fact that she’s faced real tragedy in her life—anytime she tries to talk with her mother’s AI (Laura Benanti) but is met with the computer’s inability to return any emotion is perfectly bittersweet—and I hope the writers continue to mine that drama in every aspect of Kara’s life. The reveal of what kind of man Zor-El (Robert Gant) really was worked against Kara’s memories of him, so I hope they continue to explore that as well. I don’t ever want the show to be as dark as Arrow, but a Flash-like balance of lightness tinged with tragedy would be ideal. I think they’re moving in that direction this season compared to last, so I’m hopeful they’ll explore these drama-rich story threads. Benoist is perfect as Kara and I’d love to see what she can do with personal conflicts like these!

In the move to The CW, some plotlines and characters were quickly shuffled away or undone outright, the biggest being Kara and James’ (Mehcad Brooks) relationship fizzling within the first hours of Season 2. I liked James and Kara’s budding romance in Season 1 and I shipped that relationship back then, but wasn’t heartbroken that they didn’t work out here. I’m glad they were both adults about it, respected each other, and remained friends, but I think that romance’s screentime in the first season deserved a longer fizzle, even if the relationship wasn’t going to last. Trying to make it work despite the dawning realization that they didn’t fit together would’ve paid off the investment Kara, James, and the fans put in last season, and it would’ve played into the realities of being human as Kara tries to “have it all” and realizes the parts don’t always fit together correctly: it’s completely realistic that even though something feels right, it doesn’t work for whatever reason. Maybe James’ secret life as Guardian and possible feelings of inadequacy over not doing as much good as Clark and Kara could’ve also driven their relationship to an early end, since he kept it a secret from Kara. Whatever would’ve finally ended the Kara/James relationship, we should’ve seen why it fell apart in more detail. If nothing else, I can safely say I truly believe James wanted nothing but the best for Kara, even if that wasn’t him.

The far more divisive relationship, Kara and Mon-El, started strong with her teaching him to be a better person and him revealing some uglier prejudices in Kara. I loved that the writers refused to make her hatred of Daxamites a one-and-done issue; instead, it was clearly something she struggled with every day. I didn’t want them to date from day one, but I admit that things like them playing Monopoly, their fun training sessions, and their good chemistry made the idea grow on me. I just didn’t think Kara needed a relationship with her trying so hard to figure out how to balance her Kara and Supergirl lives. I liked that she was struggling to be a reporter and to find out who “Kara Danvers” could be, and she never needed a guy for that. It also didn’t help that Mon-El was so tied to her alien self, which necessarily pulled focus from her Kara Danvers side for the vast majority of his appearances. I believe everyone can improve, and I absolutely believe he genuinely did try to be a better person, so I didn’t have a huge issue with them dating; I just wish they’d kept focus on the rest of her life too. That said, I was pleasantly surprised she asked Mon-El point-blank if he had feelings for her and even more surprised the writers almost never let Kara let Mon-El get away with the problems he brought to their relationship. Every single time—except once, post-breakup—she called him on his crap and he was forced to better himself. Mon-El was legitimately a possessive and jealous jerk at first, and while Kara looks for the best in people and believed he could be a better person—so she probably gave him more slack than a lot of people would have—she always stood up for herself and didn’t lower her standards or feel like a pushover. I really liked that, so I was disappointed when their breakup ended so abruptly with the musical crossover with Flash. Unlike Barry (Grant Gustin) and Iris’ (Candice Patton) breakup, Kara and Mon-El’s didn’t feel like a mistake, but like Kara had finally reached the limit of her patience and wouldn’t put up with his issues anymore. His silent admission that he might not have ever told her the truth about being the Prince of Daxam should’ve been the final nail in the coffin, so a magic declaration of love from him (literally the next day in our time, even if it was longer for them) shouldn’t have changed her mind. She did make a comment about dropping a mountain on Mon-El if he lied again, but I felt like there needed to be a bigger conversation between them in the wake of their breakup instead of a quick scene in the next episode where it seemed like him super-loving her and making her a big breakfast made up for everything. It’s one thing for her to have hope in his potential, but another thing entirely to expect her to keep dating him while he continues screwing up in increasingly bad ways. It’s a shame that got swept under the rug so fast, presumably so the drama with Mon-El’s parents wanting to take him away would be bigger. I would’ve liked a twist in “Duet” where the reality of the non-musical world hit Kara and Mon-El to show that the Music Meister might be wrong on this count (a suggestion I liked from Twitter was that Alex’s sisterly love for Kara could’ve been just as strong as Barry and Iris’ romantic love). As much as I was won over by their chemistry, I wouldn’t mind if Mon-El’s banishment prevented him and Kara from getting back together for a long time, if ever. I’m not sold on Mon-El as Kara’s endgame relationship at all (to Benoist and Wood’s credit, though, they made me feel the sadness of his banishment in the finale); it feels too early in the series for that and I’d like to see her date Brainiac 5 or someone else. If Mon-El changes on his journey, we’ll see if that will change my mind on whether I’m reinvested in a future for Kara with him.

One other thing I thought would’ve improved the Kara/Mon-El relationship is the two of them sharing their cultures with each other. Not only would it have been an excellent opportunity for Kara to re-embrace her Kryptonian culture (something I’ve wanted from day one), but it would’ve paralleled real-life relationship culture clashes perfectly to see him wanting to have Daxamite holidays and her preferring to celebrate the Kryptonian way. Those could’ve been fun, relatable speed bumps in their relationship that didn’t rely on Mon-El being a work in progress and would’ve gone a long way to show that—with some shared culture between these neighboring races—there were bigger reasons Kara felt a stronger connection with Mon-El (another member of an endangered species) than James or anyone else she’d dated so far. Seeing more of what Kara lost would also help connect Rhea’s crusade to Kara, giving us a greater instinctive understanding of what the villain was trying to recapture, since we would’ve seen Kara trying to reestablish that for herself throughout the year. It also would’ve connected Kara more strongly to Lillian Luthor’s (Brenda Strong) quest to preserve Earth culture in the face of the alien immigrants.

Like her issues with Daxamites, I loved that Kara’s growing proficiency as a journalist was a hard road to travel. It would’ve been so easy to paint Snapper Carr (Ian Gomez) as irrationally angry like J. Jonah Jameson can be sometimes and allow Kara to ignore his rules and impress him with her moxie or something, but making him right almost every time forced her to grow, just like Mon-El truly wanting to be better forced her to reevaluate her thoughts on Daxamites. For example, even if she knew she was right about a story, there were still journalistic standards she had to abide by. It was also really smart to take Cat’s (Calista Flockhart) offer of any job Kara wanted and turn it around on her as a sign of unearned privilege. I wanted to see more of Kara learning how to be a journalist—I’d even hoped Iris would give her a few pointers in either crossover—and I feel like this was the plot that dropped the ball most this season. While her job as a reporter allowed for some classic superhero undercover work, like visiting Alex and Maggie at a crime scene for a story, it felt like this plot fell to the wayside too often. I don’t know why Kara didn’t continue to work as a blogger after getting fired for posting a story despite Snapper’s dismissal of it. The one time we saw her do just that, it was several episodes later and she got her job at CatCo back for it. In the meantime, I grew very tired of her just hanging out at her apartment with Mon-El instead of doing stories for her blog or even just looking for work (a single line about Snapper blackballing her would’ve been enough to solve that issue, at least). Kara even had a line about being happy she didn’t have a job because she could spend more time with Mon-El, and while I don’t think it was meant to be taken that she’d given up on work altogether—it played mostly like she was reaching to find the positive in the situation—this was about the time that he started to feel like he was holding her back instead of supporting her.

Kara’s Supergirl side fared much better this year. Lines like “It’s hope; how could it be false?” were the perfect encapsulation of what she stands for (along with incorporating her new motto, “Hope, Help, and Compassion for All”). There were several classic Super moments over the course of the season, including Kara “Doubtfiring” as both Supergirl and Kara Danvers at one of Lena Luthor’s events (though I would’ve liked an explanation for why J’onn (David Harewood) couldn’t double her again), Supergirl pulling off huge saves like rescuing a train and stopping a space ship from taking off, entertaining excuses like “Supergirl was getting coffee with Kara,” and fun investigative moments with Mon-El that reminded me of Clark and Lois’ interaction on Smallville and Lois & Clark. Bits like Kara standing up to alien guards without her powers were awesome and I’m always up for seeing Kara use her brain to defeat villains like Mxyzptlk (Peter Gadiot) over her fists. On that note, I feel like both this and (to a lesser extent) Flash have a tendency to make Kara and Barry just the muscle, if only so the rest of their teams have things to contribute (Kara's not really even the leader of her team, J'onn is). That's something I'd like to see remedied in both their upcoming seasons. Perhaps an arc towards leadership is part of Kara’s series-long growth, because we definitely saw her gain confidence this season when it came to her superheroics. Kara telling Wild Dog (Rick Gonzalez) she and Barry “feel like we help the world because we do” could’ve easily come off as pompous, but Benoist played it like hard-won confidence instead. That was a nice moment for her, considering how she spent most of Season 1 defending her effectiveness against what everyone thought of Superman; she’s clearly taking none of that anymore. I also wish more heroes would respond like this when confronted with allegations that they’re causing the problems they’re trying to stop. I liked that Kara came off the crossover feeling she should be doing more than just saving cash and jewels from common thugs; that felt real after getting a taste of larger threats. I loved how much focus they put on the effect Kara/Supergirl had on others: perhaps her greatest power, next to her compassion, is her ability to change hearts and minds and inspire people, so it's good to see the show didn't forget to include that…or villainous reactions to it.

Kara being so eager to jump in and help Barry without hesitation was perfect; I love their friendship and I hope we get many more crossovers (or even a CW Seed show like this). The two of them tag-teaming Cyber-woman (Erica Luttrell) and high-fiving was so fun, and their musical crossover was even better! Benoist and Gustin have excellent chemistry, so any time the two of them get to be super friends it’s a delight. On the other hand, I thought Kara’s frustration at Guardian picking up her scraps felt slightly out of place after the massive team-up of the Crossover, but I assumed that not knowing who he was after all this time was actually bothering her more. I loved her confrontations with James when she finally found out: they were very well-written and mature. I do wish he’d invoked Alex and the rest of the DEO as heroes who don’t have powers either, to which she could’ve responded that they’re extensively trained and he isn’t. That just felt like an exchange that could’ve fleshed out both their arguments a bit. I was glad the show took Kara’s side by having Guardian and Mon-El still need her help when Livewire (Laura Prudom) returned; Mon-El was too green and Guardian routinely takes severe beatings as it is, so they shouldn’t have been able to overcome villains with the power levels Kara usually faces. I’m glad Kara and James later came to a better understanding about his need to be Guardian; I thought that whole arc played out very well. I’d still like to see more from the lives of the other heroes Kara works with—the DEO agents—but I’m glad we finally got an official answer as to why Kara only sometimes wears her CatCo disguise at the DEO this year. I’d assumed it was an open secret, but it was nice to have it confirmed as common knowledge within the organization. I’d also like to see Kara take on a bigger leadership role with the DEO or at least as a superhero; moments like the first part of the season finale felt like she took a backseat to everyone else’s plans to deal with the Daxamites.

The aspect of Kara’s Supergirl life that didn’t feel like it got the attention it deserved was her willingness to kill or go along with plans that included killing enemies. Parasite (William Mapother) was her first kill, I believe, but the aftermath dealt with her being proud of Mon-El for being a hero, not the fact that she’d just killed a guy (even considering she warned him to stand down and he continued charging). I’m glad they didn’t try to justify it by saying “he’s not human anymore” (neither is she and aliens have been humanized on the show, so that excuse should never fly), but saying nothing didn’t feel right either and I think that should’ve been dealt with, particularly as she insisted they not kill Mxyzptlk in the very episode where he temporarily brought Parasite back to life. Kara was on board with at least seriously injuring the Dominators and outright killing any Daxamite who couldn’t get off Earth in time with the lead bomb, so the latter instance especially was another missed opportunity to clarify Kara’s morals. While Lillian could’ve brought up breaking the no-kill rule when she mentioned Kara’s politics in the finale (and Kara trying to peacefully persuade Rhea to stand down was a strong moment), I would’ve liked a scene where Kara’s adoration of President Marsdin (Lynda Carter) didn’t stop her from speaking against the plan to commit genocide. There’s also a dark grey area where Kara setting off the lead bomb lead to Rhea’s death, but it was Mon-El who refused to help her escape with the rest of the Daxamites. I do think Kara kicking all the Daxamites off the planet was a stronger moment than Lillian betraying everyone like I thought she would, but they absolutely need to dig into Kara having a hand in Rhea’s death next season. I think Kara and Barry should be heroes who don’t kill ever—they should always find the impossible solution no one else can think of—but if they’re going to, they absolutely need to deal with it. Perhaps they are, and Kara flying into the atmosphere in the final moments (and pushing back her human side in Season 3) is their spin on the Superman “Exile” storyline from the comics.

Alex Danvers I loved Alex’s story this year, with her coming to terms with her sexuality and building a healthy relationship with Maggie Sawyer (Floriana Lima). That was a well-crafted and solidly paced relationship that felt real—the best-written subplot of the season—and I’m very anxious to see if it will survive Maggie not being a series regular next year. Chyler Leigh’s portrayal of Alex’s coming out was excellent and immediately had me invested in them making it work. I was just as thrown as Alex was when Maggie initially shot her down and it was great to see Alex so happy with Maggie once they worked things out! I loved that this arc also brought Kara and Alex closer and paralleled Kara living with her secret, even if they didn’t dig into Kara’s side as much as I feel they could have. I’d missed those Danvers sisters couch moments, so it was nice to see them return. When Jeremiah came back working for Cadmus, both Benoist and Leigh were excellent at running the full gamut of emotions as the two sisters found themselves on opposite sides!

Alex was consistently awesome when it came to action sequences, like taking down Cadmus’ facility and keeping herself alive after being kidnapped. Creating a life jacket out of her pants was nothing short of brilliant! It’s no surprise that both Alex and Maggie were total badasses in the Daxamite siege, but that Alex/Kara “Meet me outside!” extraction from the compromised DEO was nothing short of spectacular! I do wish Alex could’ve taken part in the crossovers; I’d love to see her reaction to the Earth-1 heroes and ARGUS and she absolutely should’ve been a part of breaking Kara out of the Music Meister’s induced coma. That she wasn’t at least there to stay with Kara felt very wrong. I’d also like to see how Alex relates to the DEO agents besides J’onn and Winn (which was a fun, unexpected bit of chemistry), even if they’re just small moments. As second-in-command, she should know most if not all of them and it’d be fun to get glimpses into any friendships she may have at work.

J’onn J’onzz/Martian Manhunter I’m a fan of the calm, composed presence Harewood brings to J’onn and the fatherly relationship he has with Kara and Alex. That said, giving him some friction with characters who aren’t White Martians was a good change of pace. I liked J’onn’s established history with Clark and their problems over J’onn keeping a cache of Kryptonite, but at the end of the season’s first two episodes their issue was resolved too easily. Even though the tension was mostly external to the two of them—Superman was worried the order to use the Kryptonite against himself or Kara would come from J’onn’s superiors even if he knew the Martian wouldn’t use it himself—it seemed like it had existed for years, so just handing the Kryptonite back to Superman to resolve it felt a little underwhelming. I thought J’onn’s relationship with M’gann M’orzz (Sharon Leal) was much better developed, even if it didn’t go where I thought it would. J’onn’s relief and excitement over meeting another surviving Green Martian was palpable and it was nice to see him so thrown and hopeful at the same time. I’d expected something like Young Justice’s younger take on Miss Martian, so seeing her and J’onn start dating was a shock that I thought worked well regardless of my expectations. That whole arc gave J’onn some solid growth—his learning to trust a White Martian nicely paralleled Kara learning to trust a Daxamite—and I really hope she comes back often in Season 3.

J’onn made a comment this year about Kara helping him to accept himself, which was a nice touch, but I really wish we’d seen more of that either this year or last. That could’ve been a cool counterpoint to Kara digging into Kara Danvers this year, to Alex dealing with her sexuality, and to Kara helping Mon-El to acclimate to Earth. My least favorite J’onn moment this year also involved Kara, when he told Mon-El to keep her under control and safe; in no world would that need to happen. That felt way out of character, even for a protective father figure like J’onn. I really enjoy J’onn’s easy friendship and rapport with Jeremiah, so it was a shame for things to go the way they did when Jeremiah turned on everyone to protect his daughters from Cadmus. I thought his motives seemed more sinister than that explanation, but I hope he and J’onn can repair this rift. I would’ve liked to see a similar rift explored further between J’onn and Alex when he impersonated Jeremiah to test her loyalty. The pull between her two “dads” could’ve made for some interesting drama. It also would’ve been nice to see when Alex and J’onn got back to running the DEO. Even though their search for Jeremiah was cut short last year, there was a slightly awkward jump from Lucy Lane (Jenna Dewan Tatum) running things to them taking over again. I assume Lucy is still running the DEO’s cave bunker, but some mention of her current status would’ve been nice.

Lena Luthor Katie McGrath seemed to have a blast playing Lena and she got some great lines, like "That's the difference between us: I've never stood behind a man" and responding to "I'm a black belt” with “I'm a Luthor!” I really liked McGrath as Lex Luthor’s sister and I loved that Kara found real friendship with her. It was cool that Kara talking to and trusting this Luthor made things turn out differently than between Clark and Lex. I feel like Superman might unintentionally come off as high and mighty whereas Supergirl doesn’t, so simply talking and listening may have made all the difference here (to say nothing of the fact that Lena has a much smaller ego than Lex). I certainly hope Kara and Lena’s friendship continues, and that Kara’s trust in her is justified. Lena’s a great improvement over Max Lord (Peter Facinelli) and I liked that she was genuinely trying to redeem the Luthor name, though the show was smart about playing her intentions close to the vest early on, like when she set a trap for a gang of thieves when it seemed like she was setting one for Kara. It was funny to me how closely Lena’s history and the Luthor vibe in general paralleled Tess’ (Cassidy Freeman) past and the Luthors (Michael Rosenbaum, John Glover) on Smallville, as did James telling Kara that Clark and Lex used to be best friends. The Luthor mansion even looked like it could’ve been a room from the Smallville mansion. I loved Smallville, so stylistic shout outs like that and Lillian getting her name from that show made me smile.

I wonder what Lena will get up to now that she knows she’s the only one who can access Lex’s bunkers assuming he has others). There was a scene with a chess board that seemed to imply she thought of Supergirl as “her” knight, and I wonder if that will come to mean more than “Supergirl’s in my corner.” I don’t want her to follow Lex’s path, though. I liked that Rhea used Lena’s need for a positive parental figure to win her over and that was a smart plot connection between the season’s two villains, even if Rhea and Lillian didn’t get to meet face to face. I was also impressed Lena so quickly uncovered Rhea’s real identity and kicked her out. After being kidnapped and almost forced to marry Mon-El, Lena casually strolling down an alien hallway while he struggled to take out a Daxamite guard was funny, as was hacking a computer terminal with her tiara. Since Lena knows Mon-El is an alien and has met him as “Mike,” she has to at least strongly suspect Kara is Supergirl, right? I liked Lillian’s reasoning for not telling Lena about Kara, but I don’t think Lena will have the negative reaction her mother is hoping for.

James Olsen/Guardian I thought getting to run CatCo was a nice extension of James trying to do more than photography last season, but this plot was far too rushed and ignored in favor of Guardian to really work. They should’ve spent more time with James learning the ropes at CatCo before switching to trying to be a vigilante upon realizing he still doesn’t feel like he’s doing enough. Even if he totally failed at running the place, they should’ve stuck with the plot (which also could’ve opened avenues for Kara to spend more time there). Snapper’s curt reactions to how James wanted to run things worked just as well as they did for Kara (for as long as they lasted, anyway): again, he was in the right and James had to learn from him.

Despite rushing through the CatCo business to get to it, I think Guardian’s the strongest material James has had on the show so far. I didn't think I'd be down with Olsen trying to be a vigilante, but Brooks’ acting and the writing in scenes where he had to justify himself to Winn (Jeremy Jordan) and Kara brought me around. I thought tying so much of his vigilantism to his father’s camera was a little heavy-handed, but I liked the idea behind honoring his dad. It also makes sense that he'd want to do more when all his best pals are superheroes. James' insecurities over people's love of the Supers vs. their fear of him played really well into classic Jimmy's persona and subtly reflected the double standards real-life society puts on white and black criminals (routinely showing black kids' mugshots and white kids' graduation or Facebook Profile pictures on the news, for example). I don’t think the people of National City were scared of him because he's black of course, but I do think there was a parallel to that in there. On a general superhero level, this was a really effective way of displaying why Kara and unmasked heroes inspire trust and hope while angry masked vigilantes don't; disputing the effectiveness of Batman (at least in a place like National City) without actually needing Batman. It was also cool that Guardian got to touch on the importance of representation in our superheroes, since Marcus (Lonnie Chavis) would only open up to James because he saw something familiar in him. I’m interested to see where they’ll take Guardian, but I’d like them to balance that with James at CatCo so he can interact with people as a reporter (or similar position) again; he seemed to miss just talking to people and hearing/telling their stories.

Winn Schott Winn working with the DEO is exactly what I was hoping for from his character and I'm glad they did it. He makes so much more sense there than at CatCo. I would've liked to see his official recruitment, but ultimately that didn’t matter. And who knew Alex and Winn would have such great chemistry? Winn’s interactions with James were also very well done; Winn yelling at James to cool his jets until the Guardian suit was complete was his second-best moment on the series (the first was everything involving his father last year). Winn’s concern for his friend was palpable and raw, and I’m glad that the Guardian plot brought these moments out for both of them. It was also a plus that they weren’t stuck in a love triangle again, since that defined their characters so much in Season 1.

Working with the DEO seems like it made Winn grow up a lot and I was impressed. His dating advice to Mon-El was actually really good. I’m glad that his almost childlike wonder didn’t go away with his newfound maturity either; his reaction to meeting Superman was perfect (as was Clark’s simple kindness in the face of that fanboy love), and there was such love in his eyes when Mon-El came to save him while quoting Star Wars. After hating him and his toxic crush on Kara last year, I’d say Winn is easily the most-improved character this season.

Mon-El At first, I thought Mon-El was the weakest link of the season, since Cadmus was more compelling and the reaction he provoked in Kara—her struggle with her anti-Daxamite prejudice—was more interesting than he was as a character. His adjustments to Earth culture were fun and it was nice to see Kara give mentoring a go, since that’s why she was sent here, but I didn’t want them to date (even seeing the Romeo/Juliet plot coming with Krypton and Daxam). I felt their chemistry felt more like an older sister/younger brother at first but it changed over the course of the season and their cuter moments won me over. I was surprised he was so shy about remembering their first kiss, but maybe not just announcing it and demanding what he wanted was one of the first signs that he really was changing. It’s worth noting that Kara was right about him becoming a better person: his honesty about being so possessive on Daxam being the “easier” path meant he’s genuinely trying not to be that person anymore. I absolutely disagree with a large section of the internet’s assessment that he was abusive to Kara; certainly not physically, he wasn’t emotionally manipulative, and she never let him get away with anything in their relationship (until “Duet,” which I’ve already stated was a problem, but I don’t think it was abuse). Even though I ultimately enjoyed their chemistry and relationship (minus the post-musical reunion and him potentially holding her back job-wise), I would’ve been fine with Mon-El going off to build a better Daxam. If M’gann can go help her people find a better way, why not him? He’d be fulfilling what Kara saw in him and had been nurturing all season. However, a permanent ban from the planet does make for more drama and it didn’t seem like the Daxamite army was going to listen to a kinder, gentler Mon-El anyway. According to the comics, he has a much bigger destiny in store, so it’ll be cool that Supergirl’s influence on him might essentially create the Legion of Superheroes on this Earth.

Maggie Sawyer I liked Maggie a lot; admittedly I don’t know much about the character in the comics, but Lima brought just the right mix of street smarts, compassion, and boldness to the role. She and Chyler Leigh also had great chemistry and I liked that Alex helped Maggie to open up again. I hope she returns early and often next season. I also hope she says yes to Alex’s proposal, but not answering and leaving it on a cliffhanger made me feel like maybe she won’t want to make that commitment. That’d be sad; it’s clear she loves Maggie and I can’t imagine why she’d say no. We’ll get to meet Maggie’s dad this year, so I can’t see how that affects her relationship with Alex. Regardless, it’ll be really good to dig into her personal life a bit more.

Beyond a stellar arc with Alex, the other invaluable thing Maggie brought to the show was the woman on the street perspective. Outside of people like Cat Grant and Max Lord commenting on Supergirl last season, we didn’t really get an in-depth look at what the citizens thought about Kara’s alter-ego. Even CatCo’s employees and Kara’s fellow DEO agents seem detached in this area and don’t really seem to have opinions (something I’d like to see remedied), but Maggie brought all that to the show and into Kara’s face. I loved that she introduced a “how legal are Supergirl’s arrests?” question and I hope they continue to explore things like that. Supergirl swooping in and stopping a hostage situation Sawyer and the National City PD had been working on for hours—frustrating Maggie—was another great point of conflict. Questions about the best use of superheroes’ time—should they just stick to fighting supervillains or should they handle street-level crime that’s beneath their powerset?—aren’t often asked in movies and TV, and I hope that Maggie continues to bring these questions up. The question of how much Kara should be helping National City before she stunts its growth is a fascinating one, and Maggie is just the person to ask it.

I also liked Maggie and Kara clashing over the best way to save Alex when she was kidnapped and their eventual bond from the experience. It was cool that they learned from each other’s opinions on how to deal with the situation, and to see each of their struggles with breaking the law to rescue Alex. I did wish Maggie hadn’t bashed Kara’s glasses disguise, though. That’s something the show should lean into instead of calling it out as pointless; even having Maggie say something as simple as “once you know, it’s kinda obvious” would’ve been enough.

M’gann M’orzz/Miss Martian I was stoked for Miss Martian to appear on the show ahead of the season—she’s been one of my favorites since Young Justice introduced her to me—and Sharon Leal didn’t disappoint. She played the crushing guilt of being part of a race that tried to cleanse Mars of Green Martians (even if she herself didn’t want to participate in the slaughter) very well, to the extent that I think she was trying to goad J’onn into killing her when she served him up to Roulette (Dichen Lachman). That sort of pain and guilt was something I hadn’t seen in the character to this extent before and I was glad Supergirl dug into it. That she literally got trapped in a coma by her guilt, necessitating J’onn to go in and rescue her, was a brilliant way heal the rift between them and to externalize her turmoil (ironically by internalizing her psyche).

I was hoping Miss Martian would play a larger role this season, particularly that she and Kara could become close friends and bond over being aliens with powers on this planet. I’d still like to see that in the future; they’ve got so much in common yet are such opposites that it’d be a great friendship to explore. I was sorry to see M’gann head back to Mars, but I love the idea that she’s going to try and lead her people on a better path. I do think they laid it on a little thick about J’onn inspiring her to be a hero, though. She’d turned on her people to try and save Green Martians from death 300 years before she even met him! He inspired her to stop running and feeling guilty, sure, but she was a hero long before that. I can’t wait to see what she’s like after her mission is fully complete and I’m glad it has hope in people at its core; Kara would be proud! Her return in the finale with an army of reformed White Martians was a great surprise and an awesome sign that her mission isn’t hopeless!

Lillian Luthor I was surprised the cool, calculating, evil mad scientist leading Cadmus was Lena’s mom, but that was an awesome twist! Her mistrust of aliens makes so much sense when you consider she’s basically echoing what Lex is always spouting about Superman; he must’ve gotten it from her. Like the rest of the Luthor presence on this show, Lillian and Lena’s relationship felt right out of Smallville’s Luthor playbook, and that’s a great place to go for inspiration IMO. Her skewed view of Lex’s downfall was perfect and I really liked all her plans with Cadmus this season. I wasn't expecting telepathic murders and it was cool to see Cadmus using alien tech! Bringing her back to team up with Kara and the DEO against the Daxamites made perfect sense and I loved that Kara’s very existence was so against Lillian’s views. Not only did she represent the alien menace, but Kara “corrupted” her daughter away from the Luthor way of doing things, making Lillian’s vendetta against Kara both personal and philosophical. Brought to life by a perfectly evil performance from Brenda Strong, Lillian and Cadmus might be my favorite Supergirl villains so far.

Queen Rhea I definitely didn’t expect Teri Hatcher to be playing an alien here, but she was great and felt totally natural as a ruthless queen! Rhea worked really well as a parallel to Lillian—she was trying to protect her race and ended up “losing” her child to Kara’s influence—and as a good villain in general. I liked that Cadmus attacked what Kara is and her right to be here, while Rhea attacked who she is (both as a Kryptonian and a hero defending Earth) and both of them clashed with what Kara inspired in others. Positioning Kara between two women who believe in their planet before all others was a great idea, as was making it personal because they saw Kara as “poisoning” their children and turning them against them. I loved the revelation that Daxam was a party planet for the express purpose of keeping its population stupid and easily manipulated. Her plan to set Mon-El up as a “new” kind of leader while actually embracing the same old systems also felt like a clever spin on modern politics. I had a feeling Rhea would kill her husband (Kevin Sorbo), but I didn’t expect her reaction to Mon-El turning his back on them to include a trip in a cage back to New Daxam. I liked that for how similar she was to Lillian, Rhea was even more horrible when it came to her child disobeying her wishes. I also liked that Rhea seemed to genuinely respect Lena at least a bit; that added a layer to their interaction even if Rhea was also totally using Lena for her technology and as a symbolic sign of the union between Daxam and Earth. I expected her to have a secret army, but I didn’t expect so many ships! The invasion was a great step up from the Kryptonian attacks last year and while I would’ve liked Kara to use more ranged attacks like heat vision and ice breath in her final fight with Rhea (particularly after Rhea revealed her Kryptonite-laced blood), the season came to a very satisfying conclusion. I was hoping Rhea would survive the season and I was sorry to see her go. I also really wish they’d found a way to reunite Hatcher with Dean Cain on screen.

Cat Grant I missed the Cat/Kara mentoring scenes from Season 1, caused by Flockhart's reduced role due to the production’s move to Vancouver, but it was also good to shake up that area of Kara's life even more. Snapper challenged Kara in ways Cat never did, so losing Cat’s support at CatCo—particularly with James also distracted by his Guardian duties—was good for Kara. That said, Cat’s return in the final two episodes of the season was very welcome and I loved bits like her conversation with Kara outside the bar. Telling Kara what she’d learned about the secret to happiness—it’s human connection, so wanting to rescue the people she loved wasn’t selfish, it’s everything—was a great moment. Cat’s interactions with Winn and James at the DEO were great, particularly her recognizing James’ eyes through the slits in his mask. Her constantly hitting on Clark is fun too. Cat’s diffusion of the Marsdin/Rhea standoff felt a little cheesier; I liked the intent, but it felt like it went on for too long and I’m glad Rhea didn’t go for it. I will say that was one of several moments this season where I was acutely aware that there was no one but powerful women on screen, and that was an awesome realization! I wonder if Cat knows Clark is Superman, because she finally revealed that she knows Kara is Supergirl (to us, anyway). I didn’t need her to know, but I’m glad that question has finally been answered. I liked her parting advice and pep talk for Kara, and I definitely appreciated that it was a fire that pulled Kara away: she committed to her Kara Danvers persona by ignoring a fire when she was first hired by Cat, and now she’s fully embraced her role as Supergirl (and, from what we know of Season 3, she’s actively pushing away her human side).

Superman I like this version of Superman a lot. It was definitely time for us to meet him and he didn’t disappoint! Asking Kara to tell him about Krypton at the end of his second episode was a great touch; the fact that she knew things about Krypton that he didn’t was one of the areas Smallville failed to cover when they introduced Supergirl. I just wish we’d gotten to see that conversation. I also felt like they did an excellent job of showing Superman was the more seasoned superhero without making Kara look inept. Both onscreen and off, Hoechlin made a point to be clear that it was Supergirl’s show, and that definitely translated into his generous performance as Superman. Beyond that, from the superheroics to Kara’s frustration with everyone fawning over Superman (and Clark), his team-ups with Kara were simply fun. He also shared some great insight with her and I hope he gets to return next season. I thought for sure the WB wouldn’t let Supergirl use him much due to the Justice League movies—I even thought he’d die in the crossover if it were a Crisis—and I’m extremely happy to be wrong.

Eliza and Jeremiah Danvers It was good to see Eliza back and doing science with the DEO this year! I’d like to see her become a recurring consultant for the agency. Eliza telling Jeremiah that they needed “to learn each other again” when he suddenly reappeared was a brilliantly realistic way of handling his absence that totally took me by surprise. I’m sorry we didn’t get to see that this year and hope we do next year, even if it doesn’t end up working out.

Dean Cain should be on the show more often! I liked that they let him play some darker shades of Jeremiah this year and he did it well. I knew something was fishy the way Kara and Mon-El left Jeremiah in a hail of bullets that didn’t seem to be hurting him during their escape from Cadmus. I didn't expect him to be a cyborg upon his return, but I liked it. I was honestly surprised Jeremiah really was fully coerced to help Cadmus, since he’d seemed darker in the previous episode. I was sorry to see Jeremiah shuffled off into captivity again after the attempted alien exodus plot and I hope he comes back soon. His relationships with Kara, Alex, Eliza, and J’onn are still full of potential drama that could and should be mined in the near future.

President Marsdin Lynda Carter was good as President Marsdin and I liked the callbacks to her time as Wonder Woman ("You should see my other jet" and Kara putting out a fire by spinning). I loved that Kara was such a fangirl of her character, though like I said earlier, I wish they’d let Kara overcome that when it came time to plan the attack on the Daxamites. That said, I liked her motives for taking quick action; this is maybe the first time I’ve seen a "shoot first and kill them all" President's motives that didn’t play like they were evil and corrupt. I'm not sure I like that she's secretly an alien, though. It may’ve been a stronger arc if everyone knew she were an alien but not everyone was ready for an alien president (they’d have to say she was born on Earth, of course). I also feel like her pro-alien stance would mean more if she weren't an alien herself; aren’t all of her pro-alien policies going to be criticized as self-serving rather than truly progressive if she’s ever discovered? …Though that could also easily parallel backlash to President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and any other progressive politicians and policies that try to create equality instead of continuing to support systemic oppression of anyone who isn’t white, straight, and male. I wonder if she’ll be impeached if/when the general public finds out she's not human; that seems like a powder keg that has to go off. Could it be big enough to start a civil war?

Other Allies Meeting Zor-El was overdue and having him create Medusa was a smart twist. I hope he continues to appear, because we haven’t seen much of Kara missing her birth father yet. It was great to see Vasquez (Briana Venskus) back at the DEO; I’d still love an episode focused on her and other DEO agents to see how they view Supergirl and other heroes. Are they like Maggie, and think it’s annoying that the Supers swoop in to take the glory they’ve worked hard for? Are they bitter that she sometimes isn’t in as much danger as they are? The addition of Eve Tessmacher (Andrea Brooks) as Cat and James’ assistant was a fun shout-out to the Superman movies. I’d like to see her get some more depth, but I was glad that even though she was into “Mike,” she didn’t fight Kara over Mon-El. That was a smart move on the writers’ parts. “Clark’s friend” who projects fear and uses gadgets has got to be Batman, right? There were at least three references to him on the show this season. When can we get a Kara and Barbara Gordon/Batgirl team-up?

I initially thought Lyra (Tamzin Merchant) was a bounty hunter sent to capture Mon-El, then I thought they might be setting up a discrimination subplot about humans and aliens dating (I was looking for a larger use for her character beyond just dating Winn). I didn’t expect Cadmus to be trying to force her and all the other aliens off the planet! I wasn’t too invested in her pulling heists to save her brother—I think I’ve seen enough of Winn being in sad romances—but I was glad she turned out to be good in the end. Lyra getting angry at Winn when he told her she couldn’t fight crime with him and Guardian because she was too violent felt like it should’ve been more of a problem for James taking on a partner rather than leveraging her relationship with Winn for drama, so that wasn’t very successful in my eyes either. Any character can improve, so I’d be willing to see where they take her next year if they bring her back. Brian (Josh Hallem) the alien snitch is also a fun recurring character I wouldn’t mind seeing more of. I enjoy how easily he can bridge Maggie’s down-to-Earth police side, the DEO, and Supergirl’s more superhero-oriented worlds.

Other Villains Harewood may not like playing Hank Henshaw, but I think he’s entertaining. I do agree that the cybernetic eyepiece looks a little cheesy, but not too bad. I’d like to see more of Henshaw on his own and forming his own plots, though. I’ve long wanted to see Metallo explore the loss of humanity he felt on Superman: The Animated Series, but with John Corben (Frederick Schmidt) dead here and cybernetic body parts in great abundance, perhaps Henshaw could take that on instead. He’s got Metallo’s evil cyborg role down already and also has a personal vendetta/connection to J’onn. There’s definitely territory to explore with why he sees himself as an equal to Superman and his hatred of aliens. Perhaps he thinks cybernetic enhancements are the only way to keep up with the growing alien presence on Earth. Whatever the case, I’d love an episode devoted to exploring him.

I liked this version of John Corben. His origins mirrored the Animated Series well and he was fun cannon fodder. I liked Metallo's return and enjoyed the run-up to his "death"—who knows if he's really gone—but since they established that anyone can be a Metallo, I don't think he was as much of a case of missed potential as I did Parasite. I liked the vast majority of what they did with Parasite, with the exception of his death. Beyond the issues with Kara killing him (I wish they'd at least tried to contain him somehow), I think there was more to explore with Rudy Jones: the use/misuse of power could have more directly tied into Mon-El's arc and stealing power versus using it selflessly like Kara does would’ve been an interesting contrast. At least this Parasite was a member of an alien race, so they can always have another worm show up (the Thing homage was pretty cool!). Perhaps bits of him survived and infected the bystanders when he “died,” creating the other Parasites from the comics. At first I thought the climate change angle was a little weak (if timely), but then I realized it paralleled Kara's attempts to save the world. I also love that we got a full-on purple monster version of Parasite here!

The use of Livewire this season totally surprised me; I thought she was able to give her power to minions and didn't expect her to be the victim. That was a great twist! Kara's very-Return of the Jedi moment where she chose to believe the best in Livewire was also cool. I'd like it if Livewire became something like Kara's Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller), even if she never becomes as heroic as he did. Playing Mr. Mxyztplk as an insane Disney prince was a really fun choice! I hope he comes back, both because they can do anything with him and because he had great chemistry with Benoist. He allows for some great comedic moments and off-the wall Silver Age zaniness and they should lean into that. I’m always down for a White Martian invasion, and the Thing homage with a White Martian impersonating one of the DEO agents was great (as was Jeremy Jordan playing evil!). This version of Roulette was a good small-scale enemy. I’d like her to continue to return in any number of criminal enterprises; I like that she diversifies. I really liked the twist that Jack Spheer (Rahul Kohli) wasn't the bad guy he seemed to be and I liked his past with Lena a lot. Also, his sci-fi technology was so cool! Rick Malverne (David Hoflin), Alex’s stalker/kidnapper, was another surprisingly strong one-off villain. His connection to the Season 1 flashback of Kara saving people from a car wreck was clever, and I was impressed by how smart they made him. His back and forth with the DEO and unwillingness to break and tell them where Alex was unless his father was broken out of prison contributed to one of the show’s most dangerous villains yet. I loved that Kara was able to get through to his father (Gregg Henry) to eventually stop him before he killed Alex, and I’m glad that his memory was erased. He was a great villain, but I don’t think a return would have the same impact his actions in “Alex” did.

General Notes I liked the shift in filming style that came from the move to The CW. I don’t know if they’ve switched to the stunt teams the other CW DC shows use now or if they’ve just gotten more ambitious with using the full range of Kara’s powers mid-fight, but while they were never bad in Season 1 the fights looked even better this year! I rarely like slow-motion breaks in fights, but they weren’t too distracting here. I wouldn’t want them to become the norm, though. There was some spotty CGI, but it didn’t bother me; I’m amazed we’re getting such great comic book action on a weekly basis! And there was also some great CGI, like Parasite! The alien worlds and technology the show incorporated also felt realistic and tangible. I liked the new DEO building and the expanded use of the Fortress of Solitude as well. The locations they kept didn't look jarring compared to their location shots and the production seemed pretty smooth. The pacing on all of The CW’s superhero shows has always felt very good to me: though they’re only 42 minutes an episode, more often than not they feel like a lot happens in them.

The alien acceptance plot was well-written and nicely relevant to current politics. Personalizing it through Kara and Mon-El, J’onn and M’gann, Lillian vs. aliens, and Rhea vs. extinction was great too. After the Daxamite invasion, I can’t wait to see how human/alien relations develop in the coming season. The alien bar was a cool addition and I’d love to see more of the alien subculture that’s developing in National City, as well as humans’ reactions to it (both positive and negative). The mix of Cadmus in the first half of the season and Rhea in the second—united by the aliens vs. humans plot and themes—was a good start to breaking up the seasons. I still want long seasons, but one villain over the whole year might not always work and this was a good way to utilize two great enemies.

The finale’s siege of National City was awesome and I loved all the mini battles. I like that they took the time to have Clark and Kara convince Cat to disperse any potential bystanders too. However, I would’ve had the lead bomb go off on top of the building instead of in Lillian, Lena, and Winn’s faces. Lead’s toxic to humans too, so while I can by that this only increased the content in the atmosphere enough to kill Daxamites but not enough to poison humans, having it explode in their faces was a little too big a stretch.

I wish Supergirl had had more to do with the CW mega-crossover, but I liked that Barry and Cisco’s (Carlos Valez) attempts to open a portal to Kara’s dimension still played into the plot to a small degree. They even saved Kara at one point! It’s unfortunate the CW hyped it as a 4-show event so much and they included the Kara/Barry/Cisco scene in the Flash portion too, making Supergirl’s contribution to the crossover inessential. This was apparently caused because they’d planned the season out before they knew Supergirl would be moving, so hopefully viewers weren’t turned off and Supergirl is much more integral next season. That said, Kara meeting all the Earth-1 heroes and her reactions to them—particularly Heatwave’s (Dominic Purcell) origin—were perfect! It was clear the writers were having a blast pairing Kara up with all the other heroes and I’m definitely hoping we get more team-ups in the future. I’m glad the crossover ended with Kara able to dial up Earth-1 anytime she wants, so there’s no need for Barry or Cisco’s direct involvement due to a specific plot to justify her crossing over. Also, the LEGO Batman/CW heroes crossover ads after the episodes were so fun!

Despite some missteps in Kara’s arc—particularly her journalism career and an eventually problematic relationship with Mon-El—I thought this was a great season! It was an excellent step forward from last year (which I also liked a lot). I don’t remember anything about Reign (Odette Annable) from the comics, but I’m interested to see how she plays into Season 3.

I can’t wait to see what else the coming year brings!

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