#ja is living in his main character arc at all times

[reacty]

OK OK everyone today is the finally is out!!!

But before we start SOME IMPORTANT WARNINGS:

You'll play this game from Dorran's PoV,he's not the canon from Onyx's Route;but an alternate universe version with a different story(like from an eleseword version of a DC character or a What if ? version of a Marvel character).

This is NOT a redemption arc for Dorran, do not treat it as such. Because Dorran's Onyx(Original Canon) is UNREDEEMABLE. So treat all characters in JA-LIN story(all of this won't exist with JA-LIN thank you.) for the sake of story-telling.

This story contain a lot of serious topics that may or may not include:parental abuse,general abuse,violence,alcohol abuse, drug overdose,PTSD and suicide.

Please take care of yourself first,since mental health is always a priority and if you feel uncomfortable playing from Dorran's PoV, reading Dorran and Onyx's romantic relationship, or any of the topics that may be discussed please EXIT THE GAME. Please understand this is a non-canon work of fanfiction inspired by the original SWM story

If you feel otherwise enjoy it this awesome work:

-Each Abuser a victim,Each victim a Abuser-

-Samuel Stern Comic-

-Its better to break your own heart by leaving an abusive relationship, rather than having that person breaking your heart every-

-At any given moment you have the power to say, "This is not how the story is going to end"-

No matter your gender:male,female,non-binary,transgender,etc....No matter your sexuality VIOLENCE,ABUSIVE and TOXIC relationship ARE UNACCETABLE. Please ask for help your parents,your friends,police, seek and go to the closest Antiviolence Center & Shelter Home they will help you.

And as I promised a reaction/preview of SWM prequel, 3-2-1--go:

???:(We're born as monsters who masked ourselves as human to sin.To be human is to sin.

Our virtue is hidden behind our masks. When we embrace our inner monster is when our true selves is set free?)

ME: So you say human are monster and that are not so different from demons? OK, and the shadow self is your true self is the bitter truth of this world, Tohru Adachi would be so proud of you*1

Here we know the Main character and PoV Dorran Park who explain that as both Sin assassin and as the leader, everyone lives from the troupe to innocent civilians are his responsabilty but he comes to Las Vegas for personal reason as well:to throw his old life behind and start anew to be a civilian again,blend in the crowd,doing boring routine stuff. Start over, rewind, replay.

Seven months ago he takes to protect the innocent,the weak and helpless bystander who have done nothing wrong from the evils of the world 

(Pride)

Me:In which is soon see why is so blatant why youre quite prideful because as he say he choose to take this for selfish reason as well,after all hes only human so is in his nature to sin....Dorram!?! those are dangerouse troughs your and it will not absolve you anything you will do!

.Dorran:This is Las Vegas Demon Hunting Ground not even the purest soul is immune to sin, to addictive effects and demons are sin incarnate. This mission tonight is imperfect since my fellow sin assassin dont take this duty seriously! tey’re sloppy and not focused.

ME:Oh You’re brilliant and perfect.

Dorran:

Dorran relax,

You need to get laid (I guess Gabe),

Dont be a Mood Killer ( I guess Ranza),

Dont be a meanie ( I guess Ripley),

.....this and this. ( I guess Yvette,my Byronic wife errr ooops,Cal the Mono-expression,Floral Quack Nahara and Izaiah).

I’m not a babysitter and they don’t undestand thata this duty don’t allow us to relax.

ME:Hello you just confirmed their words,this job sucks so relax any time you can.....

Dorran:Nights like this make me wonder who will be the next leader after me. They dont understand how heavy this job is since everybody suck.

Cal has brain but he’s selfish and he think himself comes first before his teammates.

Ranza is impulsive and brashful like her sin(Wrath)

Gage and Ripley are too Kind-hearted and caring to be leaders.

Izaiah is good in theory but poor in application.

Yvette precise and skillful, but she also carries a large burden on her shoulders, but it would make a good leader.....maybe.

a week ago she said to have business to deal(Vuzgamad) and we haven’t heard of her since.  

ME:Contrary of you Stupid Baka!*2

Ripley,Izaiah and Gage tried to search her on Chatsphere*3 to no avail

(But I'm sure that is full of Ripley's meme)

ME:(For once agree,so she is like Juliette*4)

And since there's no update about Yvette i go on street, going on Vegas strip may be counterproductive but between prostitutes luring men,buzz neon lights,the scent of alcohol from stranger walking from around me is relaxing since is familiar to me*5 and they throw their mask away to be free and be their true selves .....

Suddenly Dorrand sense a different melody a soft beat who doesn't belong in the Vega's chaotic orchestra ...someone in danger!?! So he go after a possible demon brawl but in the dark alleyway there is no demon brawl but

Her Onyx Wren!!! And while Dorran is lovestruck to see her Radiant Goddess wondering what she's doing here?

Answer :The Radiant Goddess is being screwed up again by her big sister, a second time! Despite she asked for help and the Radiant Goddess but she should have know better.

Dorran:(Damn,all those negative emotions are like siren song for demons its make them easier to found them,to inhabit them until they are 100% Consumated....and then Dead.

I've to calm her down or the demons Will be there Now)

The Radiant Goddess lie to herself:from being happy for sister success since her failed works gets her sister Vinca to finish on News! To not caring for that herself failed, everything is fine.

ME:Hint no😔.

Dorran:That's not everything's fine(What's she's lying to herself about ?) and who's Vinca?

ME:Well here the answer

SHE IS VINCA WREN!!!

Dorran:Its seem that she's enjoying her victory and her facial expression can cut down anyone's confidence....and her face she's the Radiant Goddess twins?

But they're like the sun and the moon:

Radiant Goddess is the Warm Sun

Vinca is the Cold Night and like her namesake flower:mysterious,beautiful and deadly.

So we see that the Radiant Goddess is Onyx,that Vinca states its party time since Nitsa stated that every modeling agency in Vegas wants her and for a second pOnyx.... Dorran(Her smile its a mask,to hide her true emotion. We all wear a mask out of fear to be judge for our true inner self is she REALLY OKAY?)

And while the Twins speak and "enjoy the victory",Vinca's fan are being mean ad bully Onyx

Dorran:(people suck,how they can say those things?)

Onyx is silently drinking,while Vinca is mute and don't stop them.

Dorran:(So I'll do it!)

ME:.....

Dorran:There you are, we have to go over the costume designs tonight.

(This is the right thing to do and so I put myself between the nasty Vinca fan's and I let them know who really I am)

Vinca is nonplussed,Onyx mute and Vinca fan's drilling all over him....

And he stated that Onyx is the only competent and passionate about her job. The others? Money and Fame.

And Vinca stated Onyx doesn't need them. She is the family pride and joy of her family, without her she can't do nothing, she needs me.

ME:Or you need her and won't to admit it yourself?

Dorran:(family are pride and joy,worth everything for) As you are Pride's family and joy.....you are empty!

End of the Prologue

~Here below there's the link for the download ↓↓↓~

*1)One of possible Social Link of Persona 4 and Persona 4 Golden.

 *2)Baka from japanese means stupid and sorry im kinda biased here Yvette my favourite Byronic wife.

*3)A fictional chat app originated from Villainous Nights

4*)One of Love Interest of Villainous Nights and meme lord

5*)Criminal Minds Docet:you come from a broken family with domestic abuse for breakfast,an alcoholist father for lunch and a neglectful/passive mother for dinner.🤮

PS:the above info are all my theory take them like the grain of salt.

[godza]

happy woman month. i shall be describing my fave sssrh ladies. there are so many of them though. roughly chronological order

black dragon witch. shes the best. she has a tough and cold exterior but is such a delightful and happy woman on the inside. she secretly likes romance novels and has killed thousands. she tortured some people by dropping them in a blank dreamspace for thirty days. is besties with the protag. we love friendships between diff genders that arent romantic at all. the main chapters may seem romance potential but thats just gongja grovelling at the feet of anyone who is nice to him. shes ukranian and fled to the tower. nationality is pretty important for the guild leaders so ill be mentioning it. i know her real name but im not telling you. i know all of the guild leaders real names bc theyre gongjas besties

the paladin. shes so cool. captain of the vigilanre corps. only guild leader who has never killed anyone. always wears her full body armor, especially her helmet. shes a huge music nerd, and eventually does a jazz performance with gongja and black dragon witch. shes venezuelan and is one of the last characters gongja gets to know the name of even though she was one of the first to trust him

the countess. i swear the paladin and countess have something yuri going on. can shapeshift into a cat. once the paladin was getting really into talking about music with the countess in her arms and was petting the shit out of her. gongja wondered if the cat theming of the countesss guild was for the paladins tastes. he didnt like thinking like that. the countess is from an indian slum and worked her way up to having money. she considers money the most important thing in the world thats why shes so rich.

ester/preta: okay its kinda hard to explain her deal. its be best to read her arc since its beautiful. s1 of the manhwa. basically she was a goop monster that took the form of whatever it ate. she happened upon a girl in the forest and became her. she later became a saintess in her home town because she could cure people by secretly eating them. the king of her empire didnt like this and sent people to kill all of her village. she became the demon king of autumn rain in response and attacked the empire. gongja dies to her like 5000 times and gets her to retreat into her human form and back in time. he kills her and resurrects her into his ghost army. to replace the name she stole, he calls her preta. theres a funny scene where he makes her do acrobatics to prove to the kings army he can control her. she later regains the name ester once the family clan is established. i call her earthworm girl because of an unfortunate simile in the translation

ja soo jung: she shouldnt really be here in the chronological order since she isnt rightfully introduced at this point but she does appear to gongja, if only her voice and shadow. i honestly dont know how to explain her to you, she is a lot. she is the tower master, she created it. shes lived a lot of lives, and she can rewind and see time however she wants. she has control over all timelines, and she wants everything in the universe to blamed on her. she lets bad things happen, and forces gongja to watch. he sees her trauma, which is basically her whole life. she married her cousin, gay marriage but at what cost. honestly her arc was really fucking confusing and i didnt umderstand it, but the burden of god was understood. gongja has sex with his wife in her living room

sylvia evanail: im saving the best for last. sylvia is my evil terrible girl. shes basically "i had a crush on this girl and didnt know how to deal with it so i wrote her a note to get out of my school" she was so infatuated with raviel and jealous of her that she stole raviels fiance and tried to take her place in society. she even asked gods for help. that damn cow. she failed bc raviel is better than her and then had to join raviels family clan as the chancellor which is awkward.

raviel: MY HUSBAND! raviel is the duke of ivansia, and was betrothed to the crown prince. the crown prince liked sylvia instead, so she stabbed her heart with a magic sword and wishes her love would last forever and became the apocalype for their world/story. then she became a regressor, repeating the same ten days over and over again. enter gongja, who is sent to stop the apocalypse. she teaches gongja about love, and they eventually fall in love. they have to kill each other several times to counter the regression loop. gongja simply does some quick maneuver to take them back, but when he becomes to immersed in his role, raviel kills him ten times with her bare hands to have him watch her trauma to bring him back. after they get married, raviel becomes the duke of ivansia, and gongja becomes her wife. the webtoon is a coward that didnt translate it as wife and instead used matriarch and consort. they dont know gender roles. bi4bi t4t. thats not canon but to me it is. raviels my fave character in the series sorry for talking so much about her wife hes just integral to her character arc. shes his first bitch of a lover

#t #elises list #most of this was off the top of my head until jsj and raviel

[popsiclemania]

My 2020 in K dramas (+1 J drama)

I began watching k-dramas in 2018 but I’ve never watched as many shows, Korean or otherwise, as I have in this one. 2020 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I think what helps me really enjoy this over Bollywood+Malayalam+ American pop culture I grew up with is that a smirk on the wrong character’s face doesn’t make me seethe with rage and want to burn everything down. It’s not like growing up with SRK on screen and then having SRK wannabes leave you with lifelong trauma in reality. I can just move on. It’s removed enough from my everyday life but still familiar in a generic Asian family way. Does that make sense? It’s not perfect and it’s not free of its own harmful stereotypes and narratives, but there’s enough of the good stuff to make you stick around. This year I fell in love with Nana, Kim Hye Soo, Han Yeri, Park Eun bin, Ahn Eun jin, Kim Bum, Kim Yong ji, Flower Boy’s Go Dok Mi and Search:WWW’s Bae Tami. Cancelled Ji Chang wook (bye). Desperately missed Kim Jae Wook. Had thoughts on Hwang In Yeop, which were mostly heart eyes. Discovered J dramas and fell in love with Cherry Magic’s Adachi.

My year-in-review below:

LOVED

Into The Ring - I am so glad I saved this for a rainy day because it’s exactly the kind of upright citizen shenanigans my unemployed ass needed at the end of the year.

Goo Se Ra thinks the govt should work for the people but that doesn’t mean her own moral compass always points north. Her purpose is to make steady money, and I love seeing her go hard to survive and cobble together what she needs. The thing that really works for me is that she wants to be good, but she isn’t always. And you get to see her be disappointed, upset, embarrassed and hurt from being publicly kicked in the gut as she navigates a job where she appears, on the surface, to be a supremely confident, self-serving, accidental politician. What you see as her naiveté is mostly just her being a regular person in an environment dictated by backhand deals and rich people politics. She gets hit again and again, and you see what it does to her sense of worth to get back up again, how she grapples with her self. And through all this the show is funny?! Se Ra is what writers of manic pixie characters think they are doing and not doing at all. Love her friends, and Jang Hye-jin is *chef’s kiss*!

Hyena - Kim Hye Soo’s Jung Geum Ja is perhaps Se Ra’s older and darker contemporary.  Geum Ja is a survivor and will get what she wants and where she wants to, however many hells she has to cross. She’s single-minded about her success, ruthless and has no qualms about bending morals to get the outcome she needs. She’ll never compromise on who she is or justify how she lives, can build people up and also tear them down, but she also knows care and kindness.

I turned to Signal for more Kim Hye Soo but was disappointed in how the first few episodes seemed to shortchange her. May try again in 2021.

(Highly recommend @saltr0se​’s  fic series which just GETS Geum Ja so well. Fic writers are the best)

Search: WWW (Finished in 2020) - It took me half a year to finish this. I started watching Search in Oct 2019 and raced through the first 6 episodes because I couldn’t take my eyes off the rollercoaster of Bae Tami’s life. And then I had to take a break because it was a little too close to the frenetic pace of my own industry. As @drivingsideways wrote, a lot of Search is premised around ‘patriarchy? who dat?’, which is why watching its politics play out is so fascinating.  It’s also deliciously turmoil-y to watch a very clear-sighted, weathered Tami put on rose-tinted glasses for her romance and then frequently peer over them to evaluate whether it could actually meld into her life.

Catch The Ghost - Kim Seonho oozes charm and perhaps Startup was a showcase of how effectively he can be a typical male lead. But Catch is exactly not that. Go Jiseok and Yoo Ryeong have moulded their lives around to meet their most desperate wishes in life and in the process also left parts of themselves untended. There is guilt, pain and need. Now guess who will tend to whose wounds? Their dynamic is electric even when the central mystery flags towards the last few episodes of the show. I really hope Moon Geun Young is doing well and gets more amazing roles soon. She is so good here.

(Highly recommend @melonatures​‘s fic for putting that sizzling on-screen chemistry into words. HOW?!) Cherry Magic - Stories about painfully awkward people are my jam and Eiji Akaso gets Adachi’s shy, nervy energy so right. Cherry Magic is straight up just 12 hours of 🥺🥺🥺. 

Stranger/Secret Forest - I’ve been devouring the entirety of Agatha Christie’s work this year after Stranger reminded me how comforting murder mysteries can be. I love Bae Doona. I also love characters who don’t get social norms, not always because they are out to flout them but because that’s just not how their mind/brain works. (have to watch S2)

Flower Boy Next Door -  Honestly, the opening scene introducing Park Shin Hye’s character Go Deok Mi sold me on this immediately. An introverted, penny pinching copy editor living alone and working from home thanks to extreme social anxiety? Love. All the side characters are a lot of fun and I’ve never loved Kim Seulgi and Go Kyung Pyo more. It’s a warm show, slowly rounding off the sharp edges of every character.

JUST FUN

The Spies Who Loved Me -  It’s been a year of disappointing rom-coms and Spies kind of quietly turned it around for me. I want to be the fly on Yoo In Na’s wall as she figures how to play her characters. I’ve only seen her in 3 roles but somehow she always manages to be in character arcs that don’t short change her. Spies could’ve been and sometimes is the regular heterosexual fare, but In Na ups the ante over and over again, coming out on top as the smartest person in the room.

ENJOYED WITH *RESERVATIONS*

I have to watch A Piece Of Your Mind again because I don’t understand how Jung Hae In and Chae Soo bin built SO MUCH warmth and crackling chemistry with barely a kiss. I was iffy about how the whole AI thing started off and the tortured musician plotline (angsty male artists will forever be an eyeroll for me).

Park Min Young is a queen who never disappoints and When The Weather Is Nice is everything you want in a winter romance. My reservation was in how they explore so much of domestic abuse and the complex ways its traumatised the women in this family. I’m ok with the characters having imperfect ways of processing and understanding the violence, I welcome it. I’m not ok with the show dancing around whether the pivotal crime was justified/ self defence (it was).

A lot of dramas did this. I loved Han Yeri and Choo Ja Hyun in My Unfamiliar Family, I didn’t like the free pass the show gave their dad’s abusive character. 

Hwang Jung Eum’s comedy style is generally not my thing but she was pretty great in Mystic Pop-UP Bar. But I’m side-eyeing the sanctity surrounding motherhood. Maybe I should read more about babies and Korean folklore.

Hospital Playlist was my comfort watch through June and July. I think its wholesomeness and non-plot writing came at a good time for me. But I noticed then that the throughline for all main characters was moral superiority and hence what I then saw as *wholesomeness*. It’s kind of what makes it a grating rewatch in parts. Plus the real life of misogyny of Yoo Yeon Seok makes me want to push his angelic catholic character off a cliff. (For context, i was raised catholic). I want to continue loving Chae Song Hwa, and for that the showrunners need to stop cornering her with overbearing romantic interests (let that woman breathe! she literally ran away to another city!) 

Hospital is good at creating moments of comfort, so much so that I went to watch Reply 1988 after it, but had to drop it coz I couldn’t get into it. Maybe I’ll come back to it next year.

Once Again is what I call joint family propaganda. What it does well is lay bare the mechanics of living in a society that prizes the heterosexual family structure, the loops you have to jump through to hide when you break its rules and what happens when you are found out. I love the characters, their fights, their frustrations. I just don’t love the validation of joint families. (context: i grew up in an oppressive joint family lol). In my au, Nahee and Gyujin don’t get married again or immediately have children, but take the long route to figuring out how to love the person the other is. Gahee is openly dating Hyo shin and her parents have to figure out how to process her success and her romance. Young dal and Ok boon have to learn to stop dictating their children’s lives.  Joon sun runs his company from home, so his wife Hyun kyung can work on what she wants. Choyeon, Joori and Ga-yeon go back to being flamboyant AF and the market learns to not judge. Gyujin and Jaesok have to actually work on the relationship with their mother and what sent her into depression. Just a lot of learning involved.

Just Between Lovers was a nice watch, i just don’t get how Kang doo and Ha Moon So’s relationship will survive his constantly simmering anger. 

Crash Landing on You was so much fun until the main romance turned angsty, but it gave us North Korean soldier shenanigans and the epic romance of Seo Dan and Alberto Gu that we needed more of.

Tale of The Nine Tailed is probably what Goblin wished it was. I, however, will never be over Lee Rang. (Also, when can gods stop meeting their love interests as babies? Asking for my sanity)

I literally ignored everything in Oh My Ghost except Park Bo Young and Kim Seulgi and it was amazing. 

NOPE

Goblin, Dinner Mate, Oh My Baby and My Secret Romance were a whole lot of NO, NAHI, ILLAAA. 

I loved hate-watching The King:Eternal Monarch with the rest of k drama tumblr but someone please take away Kim Eun-sook’s access to gigantic budgets and all-star casts.

It was painful to watch Do You Like Brahms squander away its potential but I’m glad to be introduced to Park Eun bin. Age of Youth is next on watchlist.

More than Friends to me is only Ahn Eun jin. Someone give her amazing lead roles asap.

Why did Record of Youth do that to Park So Dam and her clothes? Just why

WANTED TO WATCH, BUT COULDN’T BECAUSE *INTENSE* 

World Of The Married, It’s Okay Not To Be Okay, Sweet Home, Extracurricular, Penthouse, Flower of Evil, Lie After Lie

WILL WATCH NEXT YEAR

SF8, Stove League, Birth Care Centre but I’ll start the new year with School Nurse Files coz it looks very good.

#long post #kdramas #review #2020 #A DECADE #Goo Sera’s and Yoo Ryeong’s are the kinds of stories I wish I’d watched through my late teens/early 20s #Jung Geum Ja and Bae Tami are who I’m taking into my thirties.

[convenientalias]

Brief Belated Review of "Mine"

Since I made a couple posts about Mine on here sort of recommending it, I thought I would do a brief belated review on what I think of it now that it's been a couple weeks since I finished it. When I first finished it, I was kind of like "...huh", and felt vaguely disappointed, but wasn't really sure why. Now after thinking it over, there are still some things I really liked about it, but it didn't really live up to its potential.

Spoiler warning--I do discuss the ending in this review, though not in great depth.

The Good

The female characters all have their own motivations and are really interesting. The actresses playing them are great too. You have a range of people: some nicer than others, some more rich and powerful than others, some older or younger than others. You get wealthy wives who pretty much are expected to just be wealthy wives at this point in their lives due to familial expectations (they're mostly okay with this). You get a rejected mistress who wants to win back her man and, more importantly, reclaim her child. You get a servant living a Cinderella story but feeling ambivalent about it. You get an old matriarch with anger management problems. You get major conflicts arising between women, women supporting women, and women having sexual tension with women.

I have a hard time finding female-centric shows that I like, especially thrillers (always open to recs btw), so all this was very exciting to me.

Mine is also very aesthetically pleasing. The sets of large, luxurious houses are appealing. The outfits are all elegant and lovely. I actually found myself wearing more dresses than usual while watching this show bc Seo Hi-soo's wardrobe in particular kept on reminding me how nice it is when a skirt goes swish swish.

The Not-So-Good

I'm not sure everyone would agree with me that this is a flaw, but while this show starts out with a lot of female characters in conflict (Seo Hi-soo vs. her mother in law, Jung Seo-hyun vs. Kim Yu-yeon, Seo Hi-soo vs. Kang Ja-kyeong), by the final act, basically all female characters have either ended up on the same side or faded from importance, leaving the major conflicts to be about one man being Just the Worst, that man being of course Han Ji-yong.

The argument in favor of this development could be two-sided: first, arriving at one central conflict rather than eighty separate conflicts makes the finale more streamlined. Second, having female characters cooperate to take down a sexist and abusive man is a feminist plotline. So I guess both of those aspects of the ending are good. I actually really liked Hi-soo, Ja-kyeong, and Seo-hyun teaming up together for the most part.

However, it does make things much less interesting--and honestly, while the female characters all have their own arcs that bring them to the point of cooperating and becoming better people, the fact that they are ALL better people and ALL getting along by the end makes the women of this show feel kind of toothless. This is a show that starts with a murder flash-forward and heavily implies one woman will end up murdering another. By the end, not only do no women die, but the murder turns out to have been essentially defense and therefore justified. And wasn't even committed by a major character! This show spent episode after episode having its female characters grow more aggressive in their fight against Han Ji-yong, and all three major women threaten to kill him at some point, but in the end, it doesn't have the guts to follow through on these threats. Its women have to be good people :) :) so the murdering is foisted on a minor character, who is not even shown as really guilty of murder bc she did it in defense.

This is a thriller! Can I get some morally ambiguous main characters please?

I also thought the way Ji-yong went from kind of an asshole to a complete villain was pretty stupid. If the show wants to condemn him for bringing his mistress into his home, or for abandoning her in the past, or for lying to his wife, that makes sense. For him to continue mistreating women also makes sense if that's how he treats the women in his life. Do we need him to be secretly funding an extreme fighting ring? Hiring assassins? Do we need his lies to be shown as the reason his wife miscarries, and for this to be treated as a natural result he should have foreseen happening? No, we don't need any of that. I feel like Mine started out with a kind of boring Ji-yong, and then just threw all kinds of bizarre character traits and backstory details at him in an attempt to make him interesting. Making him a user and abuser of women would have been enough.

Overall Thoughts

It was a fun show. I don't regret watching it, and I would recommend it for femslash lovers--though the canon femslash is pretty boring, it's still great to see canon lesbians, and Seo Hi-soo/Kang Ja-keyong has amazing enemies to lovers potential. But I do think getting so focused on Han Ji-yong was a mistake, and the ending was very anticlimactic.

#mine kdrama #mine tvn

[zelskzerker]

Mangadex went down so I read alot 4/7

Let’s CONTINUE reviewing

Magicraft Meister

Chapters 1-31

[Insert isekai setup here] but this time MC inherits powers of an old master. Kinda like Legend, except MC here is actually all powerful and can do anything with magic. Primarily making robots, like his main maid assistant. Pretty much an isekai with seperate arcs making it feel like an episodic anime where anime hijinks happen. THUMB SIDEWAYS.

Tenkuu no Shiro o Moratta no de Isekai de Tanoshiku Asobitai

Chapters 1-21

[Insert isekai startup here] but this time he has a castle. Guess MC is so unimportant he literally isn’t deserving to exist on the cover. Just the castle. Literally the castle existing is the character. Meh. THUMB IN BOTTOM CORNER. Guess it wasn’t offensive.

Neta Chara Tensei to ka anmari da!

Chapters 1-6

Im a sucker for [Insert isekai startup genderbend redux] but this time it’s the MC’s roleplay character. So the MC is roleplaying this super edgy but goodhearted character and it is really funny to watch em try to yuri it up and seem like a badass despite barely knowing whats going on. Perfect art for its goal. Love the funni faces. THUMBS UP. Flesh fang good.

Kuro no Shoukanshi

Chapters 1-70

So now its time to describe the battle maniac subgenre. Battle Maniac manga are all about the fights, and the MC who loves fighting for fighting sakes and therefore creates situations that allow them to fight. For this manga in specific, the setting is an isekai and the MC is a summoner meaning that he recruits quite a few allies. But he is also a battle maniac and fights on the front lines an insane ton. All the fights are fun to watch, well drawn, with fun mechanics. Somehow this manga manages to feel like a slice of life battle manga, which is odd but feels really nice and homely. THUMBS UP.

Fushichou e no Tensei: Dragon Taoseru tte Futsuu no Tori ja nai yo ne?

Chapters 1-5/END

THUMBS DOWN. Guess it was cancelled at just 5 chapters end, so don’t waste your time. Pretty much “I was reincarnated as a sword”-lite and the guy is a phoenix instead of a sword. Had potential but nothing realized.

Chichi wa Eiyuu, Haha wa Seirei, Musume no Watashi wa Tenseisha.

Chapters 1-33

[Insert isekai startup here] but this time she is the daughter of a legendary hero and the originator goddess. Ontop of being half human half spirit, the MC has knowledge of chemical compounds so her spirit power is controlling elements off the periodic table. This manga is strangely alluring with its slice of life pacing and fantastical elements of its hikki scientist turned little kid learning how to be both royalty and a demi god and also just a human being. Oh yeah and also trying to avoid the king’s plot to have her marry into kingly royalty. Sins of the past. THUMBS UP. 

Kuro no Maou

Chapters 1- END

Right off the bat, it got cancelled and is unfulfilling so THUMBS DOWN. About the manga though its [insert isekai startup here] but this time himbo MC escapes the torture lab and runs away to try and live a quiet life with demons. It doesn’t work. Suffer porn ensues. Also of note, yandere loli fairy GF. She is stronger than MC but not strong enough to stop the suffer porn from occurring. Really makes everything the MC does feel useless because he barely ever gains any ground.

Yasei no Last Boss ga Arawareta!

Chapters 1-40

[insert iseaki sta - NO FUCK THAT. THIS MANGA STARTS OFF SEEMINGLY LIKE A GENERIC OVERPOWERED ISEKAI but then it goes places. It gets good. It has a mystery with twists and turns that gets parts answered and more questions raised. Traitors and quadruple agents appear. All while the MC, Ruphas Mafahl, sets out to regather her Twelve Zodiacs. Despite such a simple goal, this manga employs a variety of submysteries, character arcs, thematic naming to make for a very interesting plot. Note to mention the video game skills are well explained, cool, unique, and combined in awesome ways. THUMBS UP. Also this is a genderbend manga. Also also I love the zodiac and zodiac theming is rad. Also also also. Aries.

As the self proclaimed [男の娘 の おたく ],  it is my duty to investigate and review traps. Honestly came out of nowhere in the manga, but I am blessed for it. Shoutouts to my guy Mizaal the dwarf for keeping it real.

Aries’s focal point, as shown in the image above is obvious. Sheeps have fluffly wool. So of course our sheep boy is gonna have his Trap Focal Element be his fluffy rainbow hair. Even better that its depicted as sky blue. Not only does he look great, he has lots of screen time due to being the first zodiac gotten, major plot focus due to being Rufas’s most trustworthy member of the zodiac, and EVEN character development and huge focus in 2 different arcs. Cool, trustworthy, cute, dependable, fluffy, the strongest, ignorant of his appearance.

MAJORLY RECCOMMEND. 

#Magicraft Meister #Tenkuu no Shiro o Moratta no de Isekai de Tanoshiku Asobitai #Neta Chara Tensei to ka anmari da! #Fushichou e no Tensei: Dragon Taoseru tte Futsuu no Tori ja nai yo ne? #Kuro no Shoukanshi #Chichi wa Eiyuu Haha wa Seirei Musume no Watashi wa Tenseisha. #Kuro no Maou #Yasei no Last Boss ga Arawareta!

[fortunatelylori]

This is a long one: having read all of the sympathetic and convincing Sidney Parker posts here, I am wonder if you’re letting Sidney off a little too easily? It seems to me that no matter how much he may want to find love (as has been so eloquently argued here), he has not yet learned true selfless love imo. His half proposal is a point in case. Consider the comparison with Babbers.

Sidney: “What a brute I was… I hope that I am a different man now… If I have changed at all it is in no small part to you. I have never wanted to put myself in someone else’s power before. I have never wanted to care for anyone but myself.”Lord B: “My dear girl don’t you know that I am in love with you… It’s enough that you like me and that you trust me…I have no wish to own you…i want to make you happy. I could never try to lead or constrain you, Esther. All I ask is to walk through life by you

I know he was just getting warmed up, but Sidney’s expression of love is still very firmly about his own development and his own realisation, while Babs’s expression of love is very much about what he hopes to give, and what it means to love. Sidney’s growth arc is incomplete and he still hasn’t fully earned Charlotte, whom Rose Williams has made so generous, brave and loveable. You have already pointed out that this is the midway point in the story, and I completely agree.

But I would love to hear your thoughts on how this circle can be squared: Are we supposed to think that Sidney has done something noble by pimping himself out to Eliza Campion for the sake of his feckless brother and disappointing and destroying his own happiness and, more importantly by JA rules, that of a young inexperienced woman whom he has publicly shouted at, exposed himself to, felt up, kissed, and half proposed to?

Andrew Davies has put Sidney in a hell of a bind: If he breaks it off with Eliza now, he’s a dishonourable cad. If Eliza breaks it off with him, Charlotte looks like second prize to his first great love in the world’s eyes. If he marries Eliza and she dies and he runs back to Charlotte, how can we expect Char to enter that “river” again?

The only comparable situation in JA is Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferrars, and Edward’s honour was completely intact throughout: his secret engagement occurred when he was young and naïve; he retreated from Elinor once he realised he loved her before more damage was done; he stuck by the loathsome Miss Steele once their engagement was public despite wanting Elinor; Miss Steele throws him over for his brother making clear that she was only ever interested in money and feelings were not at stake.

By contrast, Sidney has broken the heart of an intelligent and worthy young woman for a venal and loveless marriage, though the cynical “bargain” seems to be that he try to love Eliza. Ugh. Badly done, Sidney! How can we redeem Sidney to the point of making him worthy of St. Charlotte? How can he be extricated from this mess without losing his honour and without making Charlotte suffer any further?I would love to see Charlotte released from the passivity she has been forced into here.

She has been robbed of any agency after being established as an active character – a toiler and a spinner. Perhaps she will concoct a way to save Sidney’s soul behind the scenes, showing him in the process what true selfless love looks and feels like. I have a weird feeling that in one episode someone said something like “Men need to be helped without ever knowing they’re being helped…” or something similar. That’s coming back to me now – maybe that’s the only direction this can take:

Charlotte orchestrates Sidney’s rescue with the help of Lady S and the Prince Regent and then retreats back to Heraclitus and rabbit hunting in Willingden, where Sidney comes to find her. After a spot of grovelling and sexy scything in the fields to show that he is not just a dandy city boy but a man of substance, he will win back our Charlotte. Whew! sorry forth long one, had to get it off my chest. Now, about that GOT ending…

Hey there!

Whew … that was INTENSE! Lol … I hope you really meant it when you said you wanted my thoughts on this take because you’re going to get them and …. I don’t think you’re going to like them.

So here goes nothing … I’m going to break this down into topics because your messages covers a lot of ground.

Firstly, the issue of selfless love:

When I was much, much, MUCH younger that I am now, I watched a little movie called Love Story (1970). This film was essentially The Notebook of my mother’s generation. And the most famous line in that film is:

Jenny: Love means never having to say you're sorry

The main female character is standing in the freezing cold with no way to enter her apartment because her husband got pissed off at her and bolted. And that’s what comes out of her mouth … Because love is selfless, right? You don’t need to apologize for anything EVER because love means never having to say you’re sorry.

Let me tell you something: THAT IS COMPLETE AND UTTER BULLSHIT! Anyone who believes romantic love should be selfless needs to reevaluate. The belief in selfless romantic love will not help anyone find that kind of love (because it doesn’t exist). What it will do is that it will allow that person to be prayed on by fuck bois/fuck girls everywhere because you are going to continually excuse their behavior … because you have to love them unconditionally, right? WRONG!

Selfless love is acceptable only in a parent-child dynamic. That’s it! As Cersei would put it:

Cersei: On that front, a mother has no choice

Romantic love is very much conditional on treatment, involvement and attraction. When it isn’t, that’s fertile ground for abuse.

You think this is romantic?

Babington: My dear girl, don’t you know that I am in love with you?

Esther: And what is that to me since I do not love you?

Babington: I don’t care. It’s enough that you like me and that you trust me.

What happens six months down the line when Babs catches Esther having sex with Edward in their marital bed? Do you think he’s still not going to care she doesn’t love him back? What Babington is doing in his proposal is lying to himself. No person who has ever been in love ever genuinely does not care if the object of his affection loves him back. We all want to be loved back. We pretend we don’t because we’re so desperate to have that person that we think we’re able to live without it or, most likely, because we think we can talk them round into loving us.

To be clear, I don’t think Esther will cheat on Babington with Edward. But you can bet your bottom dollar Edward will be coming back into her life in season 2 and that she won’t be over him. Guess who will get his heart put through the ringer?

Sidney’s proposal, on the other hand, is very much how an adult should suggest a lifelong commitment to another adult.

Sidney: If I have changed at all, it’s in no small part down to you. I have never wanted to put myself in someone else’s power before. I’ve never wanted to care for anyone but myself.

In his speech what Sidney is laying out is the following: I am well aware I have issues and that we’ve clashed around those issues time and time again. I am committing myself to fixing them because you make me want to do better. I have trust issues but you make me want to hand you my heart because I know you won’t hurt me. I want to share my life with you and make your needs a priority in my life because you make me less selfish.

I’m sorry … but I’ll take Sidney’s proposal over Babington’s any day of the week because Sidney has a plan for our future (lol) while Babington knows I don’t love him but he is so blinded by infatuation that he can’t see he’s promising something he can’t deliver on … and most crucially no one should deliver on.  

Sidney’s growth arc is incomplete and he still hasn’t fully earned Charlotte, whom Rose Williams has made so generous, brave and loveable.

I agree that Sidney’s arc is incomplete but so is Charlotte’s. She’s not fully come into her own either and this isn’t a matter of one character being flawless while the other has to work his way to her perfection.

Sidney doesn’t need to earn Charlotte because Charlotte is not a possession, she’s a person and Sidney is not some lecherous monster that needs to go through the 7 circles of hell in order to “earn” anything. Sidney and Charlotte are two people that have had some conflicts but nothing truly disastrous (until Sidney proposes to Eliza, that is) and in which they both have had their share of blame. It’s not like Sidney has been the sole aggressor in all of this. Charlotte has insulted him and mocked him in an assortment of ways.

In the end they have chosen to put those differences aside and have come together with a new understanding of who the other person is. They’ve chosen to love each other and accept each other’s flaws. There is no discrepancy in worth between the two of them that needs to be addressed by Sidney.

What should happen in a potential season 2 is that he will need to rebuild Charlotte’s trust after breaking it with his engagement to Eliza. But that discussion is separate since his initial proposal comes before the Tom Parker realizes he doesn’t have insurance debacle.

Are we supposed to think that Sidney has done something noble by pimping himself out to Eliza Campion for the sake of his feckless brother and disappointing and destroying his own happiness and, more importantly by JA rules, that of a young inexperienced woman whom he has publicly shouted at, exposed himself to, felt up, kissed, and half proposed to?

I think what we’re supposed to take from Sidney’s decision to sacrifice his happiness to help his brother is that his “outlier” facade was just that … a façade. Beneath all that is a man who is willing to go to extremes for the people he cares about. I also think that it shows Sidney, despite his outward confidence, doesn’t really love himself that much.

You’re making the mistake of assuming Sidney’s decision to marry Eliza is a rejection of Charlotte. I wouldn’t blame Charlotte for thinking it but we have a 360 view of the story that she doesn’t have the luxury of having.

We know Sidney loves her. We know he is heartbroken at having to let her go. But he doesn’t want his brother to go to jail and he has only 1 week to figure out a way out of the hole Tom has dug himself into. I’m pretty sure Eliza was the last option on the list of things Sidney tried to do in order to help his brother.

As for your implication that Sidney somehow dishonored Charlotte, it’s pretty obvious from the tone of the show that the whole “there always has to be a chaperone” and “no kissing before marriage” etc. are not rules they are choosing to include in their version of the regency. Charlotte leaves Sanditon with her reputation intact. It is her heart that is broken and I’d be willing to bet that in Sidney’s mind, he has already convinced himself that she will recover very quickly while he will be in pain for the rest of his life. Because … as I’ve said … he doesn’t love himself enough to realize just how much Charlotte loves him.

If he breaks it off with Eliza now, he’s a dishonourable cad. If Eliza breaks it off with him, Charlotte looks like second prize to his first great love in the world’s eyes. If he marries Eliza and she dies and he runs back to Charlotte, how can we expect Char to enter that “river” again? The only comparable situation in JA is Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferrars, and Edward’s honour was completely intact throughout

I’m not sure what your point is here? For starters, who cares what “the world” thinks? Charlotte will know that Sidney loves her and only her and that his engagement with Eliza was an act of desperation on his part. And so will we, the viewers, because and I quote:

Sidney: I don’t love her, you know.

Charlotte and Sidney’s situation is exactly the same as Eleanor and Edward’s, with the exception that Sidney didn’t flirt with Charlotte and almost proposed to her while being engaged to someone else the way Edward does.

And if we are going to take “the world’s” opinion into account, I’m pretty sure people very much speculated that Edward was nursing a broken heart over the woman for whom he risked everything, was disinherited and that abandoned him to marry his brother. After all why else would he retreat to the countryside and marry the almost old maid with no fortune, Eleanor Dashwood? See how you can spin anything into something negative if you want to?

How can we redeem Sidney to the point of making him worthy of St. Charlotte?

Sigh … Sidney has always been worthy of Charlotte. He is a good man ... with great AAAABBBSSSS. And while Charlotte getting her heart broken is deeply sad, I think it’s safe to say it’s Sidney that has gotten the truly shitty end of the stick. He has tied himself to a woman whom he does not love and who treats him like he’s her dog.

I don’t think people realize just how hopeless his situation is. It’s not like if he marries Eliza, he can get a divorce a few years down the line. He is stuck with the woman who betrayed him 10 years ago for the rest of his life. And he’s in this situation not even because of his own venal desires or greed. He’s in it to save his brother … a brother that will probably ruin himself regardless. That kind of thing eats at a person.

Charlotte’s state, on the other hand, is not permanent. I’m not trying to minimize her pain. Heartbreak is horrible and deeply traumatizing. But as everyone who has gone through it can tell you, it eventually goes away. You recover, you move on.

I don’t think she will need to go through the entire letting go process because she and Sidney will be reunited and everything will work out for the best but if she had to, she would go through it and come out the other side even stronger than she is now.

I would love to see Charlotte released from the passivity she has been forced into here. She has been robbed of any agency after being established as an active character – a toiler and a spinner. Perhaps she will concoct a way to save Sidney’s soul behind the scenes, showing him in the process what true selfless love looks and feels like.

See … this is confusing to me. On the one hand you think Sidney isn’t worthy of Charlotte, on the other you want her to save him. I would suggest it’s not Charlotte’s job to extract Sidney from the shitty situation he’s in. He has to do that for himself.

As for Charlotte being robbed of agency … what’s that even based on? What was she supposed to do in that situation? It’s not like there’s 80.000 pounds hidden under the Heywood family tree that Lassie can dig up …

After a spot of grovelling and sexy scything in the fields to show that he is not just a dandy city boy but a man of substance, he will win back our Charlotte

And this is the part where you truly lost me … As a born and bred city girl, with a generational line of city dwellers dating back centuries, I will have you know I have SUBSTANCE, ok?!?! I have many, many substances … I’m oh so substantiated and stuff.

All joking aside, why does Sidney need to prove that he is a man of substance? What the hell has he done to make anyone assume he isn’t?

I guess in the end our conflicting views come from our perceptions of Sidney as a person. I don’t think Sidney is a bad boy that needs to be redeemed through his love for Charlotte. I think he has always been a good man who is trying to do his best for those around him, who has had to deal with some pretty shitty situations in his life and who is involved in at least one toxic relationship (with his brother). In addition to that, he has a self-destructive streak (people who get dumped don’t necessarily react to it by setting fire to their whole lives and almost dying in the process) which makes it easy for him to prioritize Tom’s well-fare over his own life.

The reason why he falls so deeply in love with Charlotte is because she offers him a real chance of breaking out of those patterns and being able to be seen and loved for who he is. The problem is that toxic past relationships are still very much encroaching on his ability to move on with his life in a healthy way.

In order to break free, what Sidney needs isn’t to be saved. What he needs is to put a stop to the negative patterns that exist at the core of his relationship with Tom (and Mary by extension) and to put the whole Eliza relationship to rest.  

#sanditon #sidlotte #sidney parker #charlotte heywood #sanditon meta

[littlemisssquiggles]

RWBY Musings #77: The Puppet Who Wanted to be a Real Girl. Is Penny Polendina really back?

jade-rosepine asked “ While I didn't mind penny and all, I can't help asking; what was the point of bringing her back? I mean yeah wasn't beyond the realm of possibility. Only thing I could think of was to make ruby be forced to make a difficult choice - kill a friend to keep her from being used by the villians (she is still a robot and could, theoretically, be hacked by a way more advanced virus. Basically the cyber-version of brainwashing or possession!) OR let her live and be a slave to the baddies?”

Squiggles Answers: 

@jade-rosepine​ Whelp I was going to save this bit for my musing on the first episode of RWBY V7, but since you brought it up, I might as well voice my thoughts here. I’m going to be honest with you, fam. This squiggle meister has mixed feelings about Penny’s return.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Heart of Machine

In the past, I was a big fan of the idea of Penny being rebuilt and returning for the Atlas Arc. However back then, I liked it under the pretence that she wouldn’t exactly be the same Penny Polendina that we all met back in V1. I figured she’d be an entirely different character and the justification for her being this way was so that the plot could’ve allowed for Ruby Rose to finally have some semblance of closure since it’s been shown throughout previous seasons how much Penny’s death has affected her emotionally.

As a matter of fact, as evidenced by her ‘Indomitable’ moment in V6, Penny’s death (along with Pyrhha’s and the events of the Fall of Beacon) are still a visible mental block to Ruby being able to fully utilize her Silver Eyes. Since Ruby was shown to still have much growing with mastering her unique power, I was hoping that part of her arc for this season would be coming to terms over her loss over Penny as I was certain being within her old friend’s home kingdom was bound to bring back memories of their time together.

Now I’m not so sure whether or not closure with Penny will still be in the cards for Ruby. It’s not he fact that Penny returned that troubles me. It’s the fact that she returned and is presumably supposed to still be her old self but fixed now. I’m sorry but I’m just not actively buying that at all. I mean, like you, I get that this feat wasn’t entirely impossible to do given that Penny was a robot and technology can be easily repaired; especially in a kingdom as technologically advanced as Atlas and especially by the hands of Pietro Polendina---the man who was literally described as the Greatest Mind in the kingdom. So yeah, Penny returning--- totally could have seen that coming. But that don’t mean I’m not heavily suspicious about it knowing these writers.  I still feel like there’s something’s awfully fishy about this whole plot twist.

This brings me to my hunch about Penny 2.0. I don’t believe that that’s Penny. I mean, she is her. She looks like her (albeit with a more updated design that is reminding me a lot of Bach Do’s design of her from her RWBY 3.0 art series). Talks like her and of course, acts like her. But I feel like this version of Penny is merely a shadow of the soul she once was. I still feel like the old Penny that Ruby befriended perished at the Fall of Beacon and what we’re seeing now before us is just a copy mimicking the behaviour of its original predecessor.

When Penny 2.0 first appeared, after getting over my initial shock and excitement of seeing the character again, I couldn’t help but shake this icky feeling in my gut that something was off about the new Penny. I know the series is trying to get me to think that Penny is back here but…I don’t know. I’m not entirely buying it. I feel like something is awry about this and not even her bright and shining smile in the opening is enough to quell my lingering suspicion. I can’t help but feel like something is going to happen to Penny…again.

Perhaps your theory will be correct here Jade. Perhaps it will be a case where Arthur Watts creates and implants his strongest computer virus yet into Atlas’ system which not only corrupts all the Atlesian Battle Droids in Atlas but all technology within the whole kingdom; Mantle included. This is inclusive of Penny 2.0 and possibly even Pietro Polendina’s mechanical wheelchair which goes haywire and knocks the poor old soul man off of his seat leading to Maria Calavera having to defend him and help him to safety.

Perhaps it will come down to Ruby having to fight an infected Virus Penny 2.0. However I don’t think Ruby will be forced to kill Penny. I think a moment like this will boil down to what’s stronger---hardware and programming or the soul.

It was stated back in V2 that Penny is the first (and possibly only one) of her kind. The first artificial lifeform to produce an aura. As we know, aura is described as the manifestation of one’s soul. Penny is supposed to be a soul within the body of a machine. While her body may be synthetic, at her core, she is supposedly human or the closest thing to it.

And since the V7 opening hinted at love being a major theme for this volume, it makes me wonder if we’re going to get a potential moment where a mind-controlled Virus Penny tries to harm Ruby but in the end, it’s the strength of the profound friendship shared between both girls that ultimately allows for Penny to combat the virus corrupting her machine software with the love she feels in her soul for her dear friend. Y’know love conquers all.

I wouldn’t even be too surprised if it’s a case where Penny ends up sacrificing herself to put a stop to Watts’ tyranny. Like Penny uses her core to cause a chain reaction that obliterates Watts’ powerful virus.

Dr. Polendina mentioned in the first episode that the only reason he was able to fix Penny in the first place is because Atlas was able to salvage her core from Amity Arena. Penny’s core is obviously an important part to her. I’m assuming it’s the part of her that contains the soul that’s keeps her alive. So no matter how many times Penny’s body is destroyed, so long as her core is still intact, she can be brought back. Why mention that little detail at all if it wasn’t going to be relevant later, ey?

What if … Penny’s core does eventually get destroyed. If that gets obliterated, then Penny---or at least the version of her that Ruby knew and loved--- will be gone for good this time.

I feel like the V7 finale could set up for a Terminator II type of conclusion where the machine our protagonist has grown to know and love over the course of their story is forced to sacrifice itself for the greater good of saving our hero from a dark fate. I feel like should your headcanon be made reality in the canon, we’re likely to see Penny sacrifice herself on the grounds that this time, there’s no coming back.

I can imagine Penny’s core being used as the key to stopping Watts reign over Atlas and this time, Ruby is allowed to do what she couldn’t do back in Vale. Not only would she get to save Penny but she would also get to officially say goodbye to her friend and tell her how much she loved her before tearfully watching her give herself up for the purpose she was built to do---save the world.

That’s how I’m more seeing things going down for Ruby and this newly rebuilt of Penny for their shared storylines this season. As per usual, these are only my headcanons here and I can very well be very much wrong in my prediction. But nevertheless, for now, I’m leaving this thought and theory on the table.

Then again, I’ve also gotten ahead of myself here.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More Machine Than Man

Now that I’ve discussed how I figured Ruby and Penny’s story may conclude for V7, allow to me to voice my views on the build up to it.

As I’ve said, I feel very off about Penny being back. While I’m relishing in seeing her again, I also can’t feel a sense of this is too good to be true; y’know what I mean?

I feel like this is all a set-up. Like right now, both the audience and our main gaggle of heroes are left to believe that Penny had returned and she’s all good as new---almost like she never died at all, right?

But I feel like there’s a catch to that. I feel like at some point, in a later chapter of V7, Ruby is going to have her chance to spend some quality time catching up with Penny. At first, things seem pretty normal between them. They’re both laughing. Swapping stories…having a grand ole time with their heart to heart girl talk…only for Ruby to notice something quite off about Penny.

Like I have this scene imagined in my head. A scenario in which Ruby is supposed to head back down to Mantle to hang out with Penny P who’s finally have some free time to catch up with her old friend and desires to take Ruby on an official fun tour of Mantle---the nicer parts that is.

As a matter of fact, let’s say Penny invites the whole squad---JNPR_RWBY down for a night of fun and dancing down in Mantle with her and father. Pietro did mention in the first episode that he’s been working on shows that dance. Given his enthusiasm, dancing must’ve been one of Pietro’s favourite pastimes prior to losing function in his legs. So maybe, at some point, since the kids have all been working hard with their huntsmen duties and training, Pietro decides to treat them all to a nice of entertainment.

 Imagine if …Pietro and Penny take the group to an old fashioned Mantlese Carnival which is basically RWBY’s version of Mardi Gras with a big parade of bands with nonstop musical entertainment.

I was kind of hoping that our heroes would have reunited with Team FNKI while they’re in Atlas. But it doesn’t seem like they’ll be present at all for this season. Unless, it’s a case where our heroes run into them while out with the Polendinas.

Resuming my Mantlese Carnival idea, let’s say after the group finished watching the parade, the Polendinas lead them to an old-fashioned snazzy little joint whose taste in jazz music is as sweet as its food.

I couldn’t help but be reminded of jazz music and the blues by Pietro Polendina’s design and the way he talked. His sense of fashion is giving me mega New Orleans type of vibes. Like he walked straight out of the set for the Princess and the Frog.

Anyways, like I said, our heroes are treated to a night of music and dancing by the Polendinas but while out and about in Mantle, they also happen to run into none other than Neon Katt and Flynt Cole.

Like imagine the group enjoying a nice performance by a local jazz band in Mantle only to find out that one of the musicians is Flynt.

Neon is also there to either show Flynt support (as my headcanon is that the two are dating) or perhaps she’s part of the performance with him as a singer as she and Flynt deliver a sort of Jazz/Blues rendition of Neon’s classic theme. Why not, ey?

After briefly exchanging pleasantries and catching up with their ole pals from Vale, Flynt and Neon invite everyone to an underground Mantlese rave. So unfortunately for Pietro and Maria (who was his date/company for the night), the younglings end up ditching the old folk for a night of partying. Not that they minded. Even Penny was allowed to join the group at the rave.

So as promised since V2, Neon and Flynt take JNR_RWBY plus Oscar and Penny out partying. As a side note, I’m not sure if Oscar would even be allowed to set foot inside a club given his age as a minor. Like I can just imagine Oscar, innocent as ever like the country munchkin that he is, walking up to the club bouncer only to be immediately barred from entering for being both underage and looking the part. Like would you believe Oscar is actually his age given his short stature and baby face?  

As a matter of fact, the only way I can see Oscar being allowed inside of a rave is if a) he faked his age by having one of Flynt and Neon’s friends hack into Atlas’ s system and alter his birth date by two years (since I’m imagining Atlas using electronic ID scans that instantly verifies a person’s personal records by just scanning them on the spot) or b) Flynt and Neon pulls some strings to have Oscar allowed in as they’re known regulars of the club. Why not?

So the group are out having a grand ole time, and while enjoying themselves Ruby and Penny sort of skedaddle for a bit up to a private place where they can just talk to one another. Since y’know…it’s been so long since they shared a chat since one of them was presumed to be dead and all. Anyways, it’s during their talk that Ruby noticed something peculiar about Penny’s behaviour.

She keeps recalling memories of times she and Ruby shared in excruciating detail. But that’s not the part that threw Ruby off. No matter how many times the Silver Eyed huntress attempted to deviate the conversation and get Penny to talk her more about how she’s been doing since what happened at the Vytal Festival, Penny kept reverting back to recanting the same stories.

The hunch I had in mind here is: What if…Penny 2.0 is actually a copy of original Penny. Rather than being a soul mimicking human nature from within a mechanical body, it’s more a machine operating purely from memories that were transferred to it from its old former self.

When we first met Penny, while the implications of her being an humanoid were clear as day from the instant she first bumped into RWBY (I mean I certainly called that she was a robot from day one), you could also still tell that there was something remotely human in nature about Penny. I got that sense the first time Penny revealed to Ruby that she wasn't a real girl. You heard the strong tinge of genuine sadness in her voice as she said it which was what made her friendship with Ruby all the more pure. Their bond was wholesome and important to each other inspire of only knowing one another for a short space of time.

And when Penny died in V3, you didn't feel as if it was a machine being destroyed. You actively felt like a character---a real person died. We, as the audience, got to feel the same sense of sadness that Ruby Rose felt watching her dear friend die before her very eyes after failing to save her in time.

Ruby failed to protect Penny (and eventually Pyrhha too) which was what made her answer to Maria’s question in V6 all the more meaningful.

She wishes to master control of her Silver Eyes, not just for the sake of being able to vanquish the Grimm but for the sake of protecting the people who matter most to her---her friends and family. The people who love her as much as she loves them.

This also kind of presents another reason why I’m conflicted on Penny’s return. Penny being back all fixed and good as new as if the Fall of Beacon didn’t happen kind of puts a bit of a damper on Ruby’s trauma as a result of what happened. It’s one of those things that made me question why show Ruby suffering from flashbacks of her friends’ deaths just to have said friend return good as new.

As we saw during her ‘Indomitable’ moment in V6, thinking about Penny and her death caused Ruby to lose focus. Yes Ruby managed to summon her light to petrify the Leviathan. But not before using Jinn to buy her some time so she can concentrate and let’s also not forget that Ruby’s power didn’t work.

While she succeeded in petrifying the Leviathan, she failed to kill it. This to me was a clear indicator that Ruby hasn’t full mastered her unique power and still has much to grow. A detail that I was relieved the CRWBY kept since I never felt like Ruby’s indomitable moment was rightfully earned so it almost felt like a waste of a good moment, in my opinion

I’m probably in the minority here when I say this but I actually disliked Ruby’s Indomitable scene from V6. As I said, it wasn’t properly earned and that took me out of the whole moment.

Instead of watching Ruby go through an arc of learning to fully master control of her newfound abilities, struggling at first but also learning more about herself and her heritage in the process building up to this grandiose moment where she finally perfects her power.

Instead we spent two whole seasons with our little red rose being written to be rather neglectful of her eyes, never once further questioning its mysterious origins; not even when in the face of the very person who told the last person who first told Ruby about her eyes.

Ruby learnt about the Silver Eyes from Qrow during the finale of V3. Qrow, on the other hand, said he learnt about the Silver Eyed Warriors from Ozpin. Ruby had her chance to ask Oz for more on the Silver Eyes at any point during V5 or even V6. Instead the Writers have her question everything but her Silver Eyes…despite showing her using it again later in the season during the Battle of Haven.

It is such a darn shame that Maria Calavera was only brought in for V6. I honestly feel like her character and role as Silver Eyed mentor to Ruby should’ve been better utilized as early as V4. 

Instead I was left feeling that Maria’s presence in Ruby’s development was made irrelevant especially by the end of V6 when Ruby had her big brain idea to use her Silver Eyes on the Leviathan…despite having zero prior training. I don’t think that’s how progress is supposed to work? 

And let’s not forget the fact that Ruby has only known Maria for only four days since the entirety of V6 (and the start of V7) only took place over the course of four days in RWBY’s timeline.

So yeah, Ruby’s Mastery of her Silver Eyes has much more groundwork to do and I have a feeling the Writers brought Penny back to aid with that

Did they necessarily have to though? No not really. As a matter of fact, Penny 2.0 unfortunately falls into the ball park of how the Writers brought back Neopolitan in V6 for me. While it’s nice to see Penny again, I didn’t honestly need her back especially since her death was framed in such a symbolic way to the plot in terms of how it affected Ruby’s character these past few seasons. Now I’m left questioning what the whole point of all of that was.

Listen, I’m not trying to imply that bringing Penny back was a terrible idea on the Writers’ part. I’m more saying, I don’t 100% buy into it. Not exactly.

I honestly feel there is going to be a catch with this. The Writers can’t have Penny’s death still affecting Ruby only to just magically have that trauma and mental block magically disappear now that she’s back in the picture. They’re not gonna do that, right? 

They’re not gonna undo that big detail established in previous seasons, right?  I mean…it’s not like they’ve done things like this before, right?

Nuh uh. Not buying it. Hence my theory on Ruby having a moment with Penny 2.0 only to realize that she’s not exactly all good as new as she was proclaimed to be.

Either that or it’s a case where even though Penny is back, Ruby herself can’t seem to look past the past.

She can’t seem to shake the haunting fact that she once saw her friend die before her very eyes because she failed to help her. Like I’d figure that that memory would still remain as a nightmarish lingering thought in Ruby’s psyche. Right?

Like imagine this scene. A scenario where Ruby and Penny are out exploring Mantle together, catching up only for Penny to be called back to the line of duty when another alert of Grimm attacking the city blares it ugly head. As Penny flies off to do her thing, Ruby follows her below on foot determined to help her out. When Ruby finds Penny, she arrives just in time to see her down a couple of Saybers from attacking a couple of fleeing civilians.

Ruby calls out to Penny. Penny, in turn, spins around to wave to Ruby. But while Penny is distracted greeting her friend, she is neglectful of one stray Sayber that suddenly comes in from behind and slashes Penny straight through the chest.

Ruby looks on in complete horror as Penny 2.0 is once again cut down in front of her; the nightmares of her decapitation at the Vytal Festival resurfacing. And for a moment, Ruby freezes on the spot. She doesn’t even react as the same Sayber charges at her.

But before the Sayber could get to Ruby, it’s killed before it could lay a bloody talon on her. As Ruby looks up  slowly from her daze at her saviour , she sees that it was Penny. In spite of her damage, Penny was still functioning enough to protect Ruby.

Let’s say, for the sake of the scene, the rest of the heroes---JNR_WBY plus Oscar were down in Mantle too and overheard all the commotion from the emergency alarms; all seven huntsmen and huntresses arriving at the scene to aid with the rescue. 

Let’s say the others had seen what happened to Penny and immediately came to her side to quickly gather up her severed parts to take her immediately to Dr. Polendina so he could repair his daughter. 

As the others handled Penny, let’s say…Oscar approaches Ruby as he noticed the disturbed expression on her face. Oscar urges Ruby on the matter of them taking Penny to her father as quickly as possible. At first, Ruby reacts like she didn’t hear Oscar; apparently too lost in her own wild thoughts. It wasn’t until Oscar gently touched Ruby’s shoulder did she finally stir out of her stupor. Long story short, the heroes manage to get Penny 2.0 to Pietro in time. 

After studying her injuries, Pietro reports to everyone that Penny was going to be fine. She may be off duty for a couple of days given that he’ll need time to repair her. 

But beyond that, Pietro assured the group that Penny was going to make a speedy recovery; much to the relief of the heroes. But in spite of hearing the good news, this doesn’t serve to uplift Ruby’s mood and her bothered expression of deep concern is still apparent on her face. Even as JNPR_RWBY depart from the Polendina residence to return up to Atlas. 

As the group look to head back home, Oscar is the one to take notice of Ruby’s awkward silence. 

 I say Oscar of all people rather than her teammates or Yang since it’s been highlighted before that when Ruby is feeling pressured or looks distressed in some shape or form, Oscar is quick to pick up on that.

He’s also been shown to act out on trying to help Ruby in this type of emotional scenario. This is why should we ever get a moment like this in the canon, I can picture it being another prime chance for the Writers to show Oscar being an emotional crutch for Ruby.

If a scene like this ever comes to pass in the series, the way I see it going down is Oscar confronting Ruby again about Penny and the two sharing another heart to heart moment where he gets her to open up about her true feelings. I’ve been itching for another V5 Dojo-esque scene between the Rosebuds.

I’d love to see another example of Oscar helping Ruby through another emotional rut; particularly if it involves Penny.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So to conclude…

I guess the main point I’m really trying to get at here with this musing post is that I don’t believe Ruby’s arc revolving around her grievances about Penny’s death is over. Even with her being back in her life.

It can’t be. Just because Penny was repaired and has returned doesn’t instantly erase the fact that she did die nor does it erase Ruby’s memory and clear trauma over it.  At least, I hope that’s not how the Writers are going to portray it. Ruby’s thing is that she sees Penny as a real girl. She sees her as a person. But Penny isn’t entirely a real person.

She possesses a soul of her own, yes (and I’m curious to learn the origins of said soul) but she’s also a machine. Her body is fake but at her core, she is a living being. Sort of---really need an origin episode on how Penny was created and where Atlas and Ironwood got the soul that’s a part of her.

Did it come from the Relic of Creation? Was Penny an unexpected by-product of the Relic’s power; brought to life by an experiment tested by Ironwood using the Relic of Creation? 

Is the Relic of Creation the RWBY equivalent of the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio? Is the being of the Relic of Creation inspired by the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio? 

Who knows? These are all questions I’m looking forward to this season answering for me.

But in the meantime, in regards to Ruby’s bond with Penny, We got to see Ruby grow to care for Penny as a person and what’s interesting to note is that Ruby has always valued Penny as more human than machine.

Keeping that in mind, picture if part of Ruby’s story with Penny for V7 is her leaning to accept that Penny isn’t a real person. This is why I like my theorized scene of having Ruby witness Penny 2.0 being cut down again; highlighting she’s still not over what happened at Beacon. Imagine if that creates an issue for Ruby where she actively feels uncomfortable at the thought of losing Penny time and time again since she can’t handle watching her friend getting destroyed in spite of the fact that she’s a machine that’s built to protect humanity.

I know this concept probably sounds rather farfetched based on how I’m describing it. However, that’s how I’m choosing to look at it; for now. Perhaps the story for this season might change my mind on that. We’ll see.

Anyways, that’s all I have to say on this subject matter for today. For the most part, I hope I managed to answer your question, Jade. As usual, please let me know if I did. I’m always open to hearing other FNDM fam members thoughts on my thoughts on my thoughts.

Similar to you, this squiggle meister is also left pondering why the Writers’ brought back Penny. It’s actually kind of sad that I have to question it. If I wasn’t so skeptical over the CRWBY Writers’ writing decisions given their recent track record then I wouldn’t be questioning this decision so much.

Right now my theories are my best bet at understanding why this decision was made for the plot but that don’t mean that that will be the case in the canon. I’m praying there is a good narrative reason for Penny’s return and that it wasn’t done as a gimmick to hype up the fans for the new season---y’know bringing back another fan favourite character just because they thought it would be quote, unquote, ‘cool to do’.

I didn’t like that that was the rationale for Neo’s return, as mentioned in the V6 DVD Commentary, and I’d be equally peeved if that was the rationale for Penny’s. Then again, maybe I’m getting too ahead of myself here. We’re only one episode into V7 so let’s not jump the gun. Let’s just be patient and wait and see what the rest of the season brings, ya?

Until then, hope you at least enjoyed my new musing post.

More Squiggles’ RWBY Content

 ~LittleMissSquiggles (2019)

#rwby #penny polendina #ruby rose #oscar pine #rwby theories #rwby volume 7 theories #rwby volume 7 spoilers #rwby volume 7 #rwby musings

[readbythestarlight]

c2e91

Fingers crossed for more Essek tonight

Did Matt get a haircut?

Oh lord Sam xD

"Cryptonic Override" lol hi Laura

Lol Laura xD

She’s such a good friend

"0010011 which is binary for YES" is it tho I wanna know

[[MORE]]

I love how the ads have become an arc xD

I’m pretty sure the gauntlets are forfeit already based on the time limit they gave her, but I hope Matt just ignores that

Also TravelerCon keeps getting further and further away I swear lol

Hott boi! OMG HE WANTS TO COME OVER FOR DINNER

IM GONNA CRY

A BABY BOI

he came for dinner to hang out with them and he brought a gift I’m crying

Whispers

OH MY GOD he stopped floating

He’s like!! Relaxing around them!!

Guys I’m so stupidly happy.

He’s opening up just a little bit

Not only is he a prodigy but his mom is the head of his Den?

"I’m not imposing, am I?" Oh honey never

They’re making him so at home guys I’m so emotional

I live for all this domesticity

Cad’s cooking, Essek is chilling casually with them. I’m so happy.

Oooo that’s an interesting take. Essek is consecuted but he doesn’t really buy into all the religion aspect, feels like it distracts from good things that could be done

Oh my god Laura just connected a dot from AGES ago

E: "I can see a similar spark in you, Caleb. I want to unlock these mysteries.... To pursue beyond the limits of what you’re told is capable. To seek the impossible. To do what every archangel before us has failed to do."

Like not to get too shippy on main but Caleb and Essek could be SUCH a wizard power couple

Beau I understand what you’re getting at and you’re right but let the wizard boys geek out about endless magic possibilities

Ohhhh no now he’s talking about things that would definitely interest Caleb

...Okay I can see now though how he and Caleb could not be good for each other, if neither is likely to restrain the other. If they’re both just the sort to delve headlong and get lost in it (even though Essek said they’d go slow) it wouldn’t be healthy.

Whispers!

Essek’s like where is this happy fun ball where is it

He’s a lonely boy who just wants to be friends!

He needs hugs tho and to be slightly less aloof still but it’s fine he can work on it

Y: "do you ever get lonely? In your solitude?"

E: "I didn’t think so, until recently. How about you?"

Y: "Yes, I think so... to be honest, I... didn’t feel lonely in my solitude until I became friends with them."

My HEART

Also Beau likes him which means the whispers were good

Fjord talking about how his goals are now to keep the group safe I’m EMOTIONAL

There’s a lot of sweet things being said I’m crying

I’m so torn about the Traveler because on the one hand for Jester’s sake I do not want him to be malicious (he was her only friend for such a long time, and who would she be without him in her own eyes), but also story wise it would be so fascinating.

J: "trying to find... you know... where I fit in...." oh honey

Jesus Essek you’re dropping the HEAVY lore oh my god

He got his dad killed??

"Doesn’t bother me necessarily, he wasn’t a great man. He had... little aspirations." Hmm... see okay that’s a side I don’t like and a side I don’t think would be good to have around Caleb.

Like doesn’t that sound a bit similar to the Trent/Astrid/etc way of thinking? What’s a life in the face of aspirations? What’s a life when that life doesn’t value what *I* value?

That’s something I hope we get to see Essek grow out of, but for the time being I’m gonna have to admit that suddenly I’m not vibing with Essek/Caleb as much. It doesn’t seem healthy just now.

Here’s another question: is Yasha consecuted

Is there a chance her WIFE could be consecuted?

I get what he’s saying and why he’s advising it, but it would backfire so hard if the Bright Queen ever found out

Ohhh that’s an interesting take. They want to "stop" the war so the war stops prying into what they’re doing

Oh man I forgot about the potion I’m glad they have it.

Oh my god he’s gonna dip in the hot tub xD

Getting some Cad lore and more found family feels

"Supported then as they’ve blossomed into heroes" babyyyyy

"These are good people, despite themselves." That’s the ultimate description of the M9

Beau cutting in is good because Caleb/Essek is now a potentially dangerous thing but I still crave that Caleb/Essek interaction

"It is one of many things that are fascinating about him." Goddd Liam

They’re trying to give Jester pointers for recruiting to her cult

And it’s actually kinda working xD

"Jeff is sold" that’s so sweet Fjord

And then she mentioned the volcano and it’s done xD

Talking about Cad’s stuff now

As much as I love the overall arc I’m ready to get back to character’s personal arcs too

Oh my GOD

"When you’re at an orphanage they give you a shit last name. Mine was Stone."

HOOOOOLY SHIT IT’S DESTINY

Oh my god if this is a coincidence it’s an AMAZING one

Caleb taking some time to encourage Jester

C: "I’m the transmutation wizard but... you’re the one who changes people. I see it every day."

J: "Really?"

C: "Ja. You’re a good friend; and you move people. I don’t know if you see that, but you do. Every day."

Oh Jester, honey... it’s not your fault, sweet pea.

Caleb offering to use major image to "decorate" to cheer her up

God they’re such the best

I’m cryyyyying god remember when they used to snip and snap at each other and now Caleb’s being so soft and sweet with her

TT: "You were my first, and you will always be my favorite." See that seriously lends to my personal favorite theory that he just didn’t exist until Jester imagined him into being and then he became a god because she believed so hard

Awww Yasha ans Cad sleepover because she doesn’t sleep well alone right now oh honey

Cad taking care of them all has just been my favorite. I can’t wait for them to get to/have to take care of them.

Yasha: slightly more buff

Beau: is aroused

It’s so cute that she was so determined to pay for them herself, didn’t want anyone to feel obligated to help her, and everyone was like NOPE

Also I’m so glad that Matt just let her have them and ignore the original time limit

So the first two hours were chilling with Essek, hour three was shopping, hour four will just be trying to decide where to go next

I’m imagining Essek just like sitting there at the table with all this breakfast food wondering when they’re going to show up and wondering if they just forgot or if he scared them away last night and they don’t really want to have breakfast with him, and when he gets Jester’s message he just jumps up and then has to try and play it cool

I love how he stopped floating as soon as someone mentioned it

Are they trying to

They are trying to teach him how to swagger now xD

He’s like please just eat the cheese and stuff I laid out

Caleb geeking out over Essek’s magic tower god they need to stop being cute

Oh my god we could get Veth fully back TONIGHT

Fuck I wish I hadn’t decided Essek/Caleb was probably not a good idea because I am LIVING for the shippiness right now

Like the whole exchange of “we should work together more” like GOD

Okay okay okay slow burn slow burn is fine they’ll have time to work out their issues and learn to reign each other in and it’ll be okay I can live with that and still slow burn ship it

But anyway this is about Nott

I’m... gonna. Miss Nott a lot of she leaves.

Oh fuck oh god it’s happening

Oh god oh god

Caleb is gonna miss her

I mean they all are but if she leaves Caleb will miss her the most. They started this together.

This can’t possibly be the end I can’t tolerate the idea of saying goodbye man

Sam why do you do this

Fjord coming in to say he understands the fear of making the choice to change

Oh god oh god oh god

It’s fine for Sam to crush us all huh

I’m crying guys this whole thing

What

Oh no oh god

What’s going on????

WHAT THE FUCK

WHAT THE FUUUUUUCK MATTHEW

oh god she’s cursed??

Matthew MERCER

HOLY SHIT

what the FUCK

The episode was a ROLLER COASTER

What if she’s just cursed?! What if she didn’t actually die??

On the one hand I’m glad Nott won’t be leaving but FUCK what a plot twist

Goddamn that was good

#critical role #cr spoilers #emi watches critical role

[overthinkingkdrama]

Exit Rave: Nokdu Flower

[This is a largely spoiler free review with some allusions to the ending of the drama and trajectory of some character arcs.]

I have a poor track record with traditional sageuks. I wish it weren't so. I've always wanted to watch more of them. But whether because of the often daunting length, the historical learning curve, or some other personal failing, I rarely manage to finish them, much less review them. The small handful of traditional sageuks that I have managed to finish, however, have been exceptionally rewarding experiences. Six Flying Dragons and Tree With Deep Roots specifically come to mind. And 2019 has furnished us with a third drama from the same director, Shin Kyung Soo, which has immediately put itself in contention for one of the best dramas of the year.

Nokdu Flower takes place prior to the Japanese occupation, in the contentious period just a handful of years before the events portrayed in Mr. Sunshine and focuses on a trio of characters who all become involved on one side or another with the Donghak peasant rebellion, a cultural and religious movement aimed at removing corrupt officials and moving toward a world where all people are equal. The plot revolves around a pair of half brothers, Baek Yi Kang (Jo Jung Suk) and Baek Yi Hyun (Yoon Shi Yoon), who end up on opposite sides of the ensuing violence as well as a shrewd merchant named Song Ja In (Han Ye Ri) who always follows money over factions.

From the very first episodes, this drama really moves. My first impressions were all about how good this drama looks, sounds, and feels to watch. I worried that the drama wouldn't be able to maintain the same pace and intensity over the course of the run, and while the pacing does become considerably less break-neck as the show goes on, it never seems to drag or lose direction, always moving with a sense of inevitability toward its conclusion. There is also a surprising number of "battle scenes" employed throughout the story (which is ultimately one of war and rebellion) all of which I thought looked good and were used to thrilling affect, with a clever implementation of fog and darkness to make the scale feel even more epic.

The tone of the drama is remarkably dark, with a lot of lurid details and morally ambiguous characters driving the plot. While this might be off-putting to one subset of viewers, if you're like me it's definitely a selling point. I've watched many dramas that try to strike this kind of tone early, hinting at or outright showing their characters flaws but falling into the trap of trying to simplify and sanitize those characters later on for the sake of a clean narrative. Nokdu Flower gradually develops its characters over the course of the entire drama, in a thoughtful manner that makes each dynamic change feel hard won. Of course you can't talk about Nokdu Flower's characters without talking about the incredible cast.

While I've watched a handful of his movies and dramas, I wouldn't call myself a huge Jo Jung Suk fan, though I respect his considerable acting talent and ability to disappear into his characters. Nokdu Flower was the first drama where I really felt like I couldn't imagine the show without him, between his satoori and mannerisms, his bombastic and his quiet moments, it really felt like he lived in this characters skin for a while. I've seen Han Ye Ri's turn as Song Ja In praised elsewhere on this site, and the praise is all well deserved. I've been following her career since Age of Youth and this is the first character that I've really fallen in love with as much as Yoon Sunbae for all her pretty and ugly sides.

I couldn't get through the review without mentioning Yoon Shi Yoon's performance. Every time I review one of his dramas I end up feeling like a YSY shill. Maybe that's just his disarming charm, that I end up liking whatever he does in spite of myself. (I swear he's not paying me to say these things.) I don't know if it was working with an experienced director or the fact that this character is a marked departure from type, or if it has something to do with experienced actors like JJS--who YSY mentioned in one interview gave him invaluable advice on how to portray his character-- but the character of Baek Yi Hyun and his portrayal felt like a decided elevation of YSY's craft. Be warned, he is not a cuddly flower boy in this drama. This character goes dark, his trajectory is tragic and poignant and at times his descent is incredibly painful to watch. Despite all this, and despite where he ends up, Yi Hyun was hands down my favorite character in this drama and, in my opinion, this is the single best performance of YSY's career. As much as I like his clownish and romantic roles, I really hope we get to see more like this from him in the future.

The main trio of actors should be enough of an enticement to check this drama out on their own, but the entire extended cast really helped to fill out this world, make if feel lived-in and help cement the story in my mind. Choi Moo Sung as Jeon Bong Jun, aka General Nokdu, left a big impact on me. In all of his scenes you could feel that sense of awe that the full charismatic force of this man could inspire, you could feel what the Donghak followers must have felt that made them willing to lay down their lives for these ideals. He quite literally gave me shivers at multiple points through the drama.

Park Hyun Kwon as well, as Yi Hyun and Yi Kangs's vile father, Baek Ga, left me frequently stunned or seething with rage as I wondered how a human being could get so twisted. You will absolutely despise this character, but the performance is one of the best in the drama and he is a frequent scene-stealer.

I have only a few minor quibbles about the drama, none of which seriously hurt my enjoyment. There are moments when the plot, especially regarding the Donghak army, Yi Kang and the detached force felt slightly repetitive and could have done with a little trimming. The Japanese characters are consistently portrayed as utter monsters, which isn't really a surprise for a drama set in this era, but for a show so committed to showing humanity in all of its ugliness even with regard to history's "heroes" it would have been nice to see a slightly more nuanced portrayal. However, my bias may be showing in this regard. I doubt what would be to my taste would play as well on Korean television (especially recalling the KES/Gu Dong Mae controversy from last year). It did take me a long time to get on board with the romance between Yi Kang and Ja In, which felt somewhat rushed in the first half of the drama, but came admirably into its own in the latter episodes and became one of my favorite elements with one of the most satisfying screen kisses of the year.

Pretty much everything else I would say about this drama would only serve to spoil things, when ultimately I really think you should just watch this drama yourself. If you have an interest in this period of history, or well-told character driven stories, or have been looking for a solid sageuk to sink your teeth into after SFD, or even if you just like the actors and want to watch for them, I don't think this would be a waste of your time. I truly felt like this drama was slept on while it was airing,  and I'm glad that I devoted those 24 hours and these words to watching it. For all of the above, I have to rate Nokdu Flower 9/10.

#nokdu flower #the nokdu flower #jo jung suk #yoon shi yoon #han ye ri #exit rant #exit rave #kdrama review

[ty-talks-comics]

Best of DC: Week of September 11th, 1019

Best of this Week: Gotham City Monsters #1 - Steve Orlando, Amancay Nahuelpan, Trish Mulvihill and Tom Napolitano

Who wanted this?

Serious, this is a strange team of characters to put together for a story, but it’s so jarring in a way that it makes me really interested to see what their team dynamic is like. This book carries so much of a Universal Monster movie vibe while mixed in with the superheroics of comic books in a manner that it’s already caught my eye.

The book begins with several haunting establishing shots of Monstertown, one of the few neighborhoods in Gotham that is doing well under the control of Bane. These shots set the tone for what the story will be; a grimy, dark outing where the only light to be found is in the darkness. Naheulpan does such an amazing job capturing the essence of Gotham, while at the same time making things feel so...40s and 80s right before we’re introduced to our first hero, Andrew Bennett aka. I, Vampire.

Bennett, having been hunting down vampires that choose to spill the blood of innocents, dispatches a large group of evil vampires and learns of a new vampire king that’s soon to be restored to life. Bennett tears out the lead vampires heart and tries to drink his blood to kill him, but finds that his blood is poisonous to him. He then vows to kill their new leader no matter what. Within only a few pages Bennett is established as a noble vampire unlike some of his kin and those who were previously unaware of him are given all that they need to know about the man. His scene also feels very reminiscent of The Crow or Queen of the Damned in terms of style and color palette.

Soon after, we cut to a newly freed Waylon Jones who’s very excited to leave his past life as a criminal behind to carve out a new life in Monstertown, but sadly he knows that people will still only ever see him as Killer Croc. I can see that his arc will be all about redemption as he tries to make things in his life right after all of the turmoil he’s been forced to go through. Part of me wonders if he’ll ever learn about Roy Harper and his death at Sanctuary, given that he acted as Roy’s sponsor when the archer was getting off of heroin. He’s not seen again after his two pages which does suck quite a bit as I thought he would have a larger role starting out.

Things start to heat up as we run into the actual lead character of the story, Frankenstein, former Agent of SHADE. It has been quite some time since Frankenstein has been seen in any book, I think the last one he was in was a Valentine’s Day special from 2018. Before he is even shown, we see patrons of a local bar running in fear of the chaos that the undead one has wreaked in search of one of the last open cases SHADE had before Leviathan destroyed them. Frankenstein is not here to play games, holding the throat of a man infected with a disease that turns him into a bull-man.

Naheulpan draws this scene with the dourness that Frankenstein is often known for as Orlando scripts him to say that “in a far world you would live, but now more than ever… the world is not fair.” Napolitano’s letting also helps to make this scene even more saddening with Frankenstein’s shaky word balloons even if Frank himself is anything but. He lights the man on fire after smacking him upside the head with a bottle of ”Damn Fine Whiskey”, totally not Jack Daniels’, and watches as the creature tries to crawl away in fear and pain, terror in his burning eyes.

After this short excursion, we are introduced to our last few cast members in The Orca and Lady Clay, the latter of whom I had no clue existed. While I have limited experience with Orca as a character, mostly from Nightwing: Rebirth and the Injustice 2 tie-in comic, I know her story (and have an attraction, don’t judge me) and it’ll be interesting to see if Steve Orlando plays into the romance angle from the latter comic to give Croc the strong beau that he’s been missing since Enchantress was taken from him. Lady Clay, however, is new and exciting to me because she doesn’t know who she is anymore and finds solace in taking on the appearances of others like a Faceless Person. I’m very interested in whether or not she’ll betray the team for a sense of understanding from the main villain.

Throughout the book there had been murmurings of an opera going on in the city. This plays as the hook that will cause all of the plot to go full steam ahead in the next issue. While the crowd thinks they’re watching an amazing show, they are soon sacrificed to bring back Melmoth, an immortal whose blood was used to help in Frankenstein’s creation. Melmoth’s entire motivation is to continue being what he considers the “Last King.” He wants to subjugate all beneath his feet and will kill as many as he needs to do so, yet his followers see him as some sort of savior.

Gotham City Monsters succeeds as a story in the vein of the cheesy horror movies I liked to watch at a younger age. The stories and motivations given for each individual hero are simple, much like to protagonists of those old movies and gives this comic a nice monster movie team up feel. Naheulpan’s art is grim and made even better by Mulvihill’s gritty coloring and great use of dark inks for the moments that need shadows. For a first issue, this one was a blast and I absolutely cannot wait for the next one!

---------------------------------------------------

Runner Up: Wonder Woman #78 - G. Willow Wilson, Tom Derenick, Trevor Scott, Norm Rapmund, Romulo Fajardo Jr. and Pat Brosseau

Love is dead. Cheetah has killed her.

The fallout from Cheetah’s actions continue as Wonder Woman has lost her will to fight and is easily overpowered by her most deadly foe. Things begin in the most bleak way possible as illustrated by Tom Derenick. We cut back and forth from the immediate past to the current present as Cheetah wrests or destroys Wonder Woman’s armaments. 

Her sword is cut in half and her shield is demolished after swipes from Cheetah’s new Godkiller sword. Her tiara is broken and sent flying after a solid punch. The Lasso of Truth is snatched away as Cheetah mocks her, asking who is truly worthy. Even the Gauntlets of Submission are absolutely destroyed after being hit with the sword. 

Cheetah smiles with absolute glee as Diana is driven before her, helpless and unable to defeat her with her new and powerful weapon. She manages to escape into a nearby river and calls Atlantiades to help her. The demigoddess hears her call and with the help of Steve Trevor, they find Wonder Woman, broken and defeated without love.

Superman is commonly thought of as being the main hope in DC and there is a lot of merit to that, but at the same time, Wonder Woman is just as much of an inspiration to some if not more. She has almost never given up hope, even after killing Maxwell Lord in the past or losing her ability to see, hell even after fighting the Amazons after they invaded Man’s World she wasn’t at all fazed. Losing to Cheetah and feeling the crushing weight of the world on her shoulders now that she doesn’t have the hope of love to keep her head up high. It’s even worse when Steve Trevor is also suffering from this lack of love. Even while giving Diana a soothing bath for her injuries and trying to console her, his eyes are empty of the love they had and she can tell. 

Not only is love gone, but so is compassion as we see in a short scene shortly after the bath. A mail carrier on a bike accident hits a car and no one does anything to help him. It's telling that people just either drive around him or stand idly by seeing no reason to try to walk through traffic. We see even later on that people are far more willing to commit crime, especially after Lex has been offering people gifts and changing how they think, bringing out the darkness inside.

Eventually Wonder Woman is left with no other choice than to ask Veronica Cale for help. Veronica Cale, who has nothing but enmity for Wonder Woman, decides to help her as she doesn't even remember the feeling of dread that she had when her daughter was trapped in Themyscira and see this as an opportunity to show the Gods that mortals can see what they cannot.

In a way, Cale and Cheetah are similar in that regard. They have nothing but hate for the Gods and Wonder Woman and will do everything they can to tear them down, Cale with wit and guile and Cheetah with pure rage. 

G. Willow Wilson is absolute bringing out the bloodlust from Cheetah that we haven't seen in some time and is making her a pretty credible threat. If her trajectory continues the way that it jas, then there's no doubt in my mind that this entire run of Wonder Woman will end in one of their deaths and that is exciting.

#dc comics #dc #gotham city monsters #frankenstein #killer croc #i vampire #steve orlando #amancay nahuelpan #monsters #wonder woman #cheetah #steve trevor #veronica cale #g willow wilson #tom derenick

[princessamericachavez]

Fjorester in Episode 43

I watched this ep live which means it was 4-7am to me and I might have missed stuff, but here’s what I remember

When Jester wants to start a bar fight and Fjord knows she’s going for it, so his first comment about it, before she even says she wants to fight is “No killing, Jester.”

And then the others keep trying to talk her out of it but the only opinion she asks is Fjord’s saying “Tusktooth?”

But, like, Fjord (as I’ve yelled about so many times before) enjoys Jester’s shenanigans even when he pretends to be frustrated by them, so instead of talking her out of it, he pretends to be chugging on his ale, which Jester correctly takes as a “go ahead”.

heart eyeeeees

“One gold on the blue one!” Awesome callback to their fight in the Gentleman’s speakeasy, further proof that Fjord is just a chaotic prankster at heart and a reminder that he’s constantly in awe by how badass Jester is.

Fjord’s soft-ass smile after the fight when Jester excitedly declares “Hey, I made a friend!” “Yeah, you kept all your teeth!”

When they are talking about the Divers Grave and they are discussing what kind of monster might be in there and then Jester says “It’s an underwater banshee, for sure.” 

“Is that a thing?” 

“Yeah.”

*knowing full well he’s being fucked with* “Hmmmm.”

I don’t know why that exchange feels so flirty to me, and like the fact that they keep zeroing in on each other during group conversations like they live in their own little bubble, kills me.

The Caleb and Jester talk!!!!!!!!

(I will make a whole separate post dissecting this conversation later)

“Really, none of us like it here but Fjord” “I don’t even know if he likes it a lot” 

Yes! Give me Jester picking up on Fjord’s general discomfort with the situation and how stressed and uneasy he is with how everything’s gone down!

For real though, if I have to see one more post talking about how Jester doesn’t actually care about the real Fjord or how he feels about this whole situation, this talk is one of the very many scenes imma shove on their faces passive-aggressively. 

“Well, there’s parts of it that he likes.” “Like Avantika” “I don’t know”

Rip my heart out, Laura Bailey, why don’t you!

“You’re sweet on him, ja?” “I don’t know...” “Yeah.” “It feels funny.” “How do you mean?”

THIS WHOLE THING WAS SUCH CALL BACK TO VEX AND VAX TALKING ABOUT PERCY THO

“Well, you know when you really like somebody but then you start to know them and you go ‘do I like them, or do I like what I thought they were’? And you don’t know.”

Mfking laura bailey giving us that character growth arc with sheltered naive Jester who believes in love at first sight and the romance all her books talked about and is now beginning to realize that real deep feelings are much stronger and complicated than all of that.

Like the way she says it “feels funny” really says so much.

And I know some people might take this as “oh so she never liked him for real” but I think that would mean taking this conversation entirely out of context. 

This whole arc, Fjord and Jester have had some very big moments together, and I think Jester’s confusion does not stem from being disillusioned with Fjord...

I think the fact is that she’s feeling more than she expected, she’s discovering she likes Fjord in a way she has no words for, in a way that makes her hurt when he talks to Avantika, that makes her confused about their interactions, second guessing his intentions and whether he’s fliriting back with her or not, overanalyzing what his gestures mean, like the kiss...

Jester is in Love with capital L and none of her mother’s teachings and experience have prepared her to handle it.

What I want to talk about here, though, is not about Jester’s confusion per se but how Travis and Matt react to this. Since if anyone is aware of what Fjord feels about this it would be the two of them.

“Do I like them or do I like what I thought they were?”

This is the face of a man who just realized his wife is taking her funny character’s crush and turning it into real feelings and he’s going to be fucked.

WHAT IS THAT LOOK YOU TWO. I CAN SEE YOU. WHAT DO YOU KNOW.

That is the face of a DM who is ready to take the most advantage of this situation in the future.

Bonus: Taliesin “I’ve been in the receiving end of this” Jaffe is enjoying this too much. He is just shaming Travis/Fjord for his bad choices.

“And then you think they are flirting with you but then you find out they probably weren’t, you know?”

Travis’s blush just tells me that there was flirting (which was pretty obvious, and Laura knows it)

“And you feel kinda sad about it and maybe a little stupid?”

LOOK AT THOSE FACES

Travis after that talk contemplating his life choices.

But for real, what kills me about that talk is how familiar it feels, and how confused Jester seems by Fjord’s hot and cold attitude, but she’s not ever blaming him for not liking her, or not living up to her fantasy standards, not even for leading her on,  instead, she’s blaming herself and feeling stupid for not comprehending right away all of these complicated emotions.

Caleb: “Tomorrow we get sorted out, we help Fjord figure out his shit.”

Jester: “Yeah, that’s important to him.”

TELL ME SHE DOESN’T CARE YOU DEMONS I’M WAITING

Also, thank god that Jester talked to Caleb about this because he’s the one person who gave her some sensible advice: let’s focus on surviving and once back on main land you can take your time to figure your feelings out.

He also brings up that this is important for Fjord, which she agrees on. So no matter what, feelings or not, they will support him through this as best as they can.

Which brings us to Caduceus’s an and Fjord’s talk.

I love this conversation in light of what Tal’s said about Caduceus’ point of view during last weeks Talks: he’s aware of how Fjord’s decision to sleep will Avantika will create friction within the group, especially with Jester.

C: “I think this place is dangerous. She is dangerous.” F: “That she is.” 

And Fjord tries to avoid the subject, but now that they are there, you can see Caduceus scrunch his face and take a stab at the subject:

C: “Fjord, you know why everybody is doing this, why we’re all here, right?”

And Fjord sighs heavily because, to a degree, I don’t think he understand the answer is “because we care about you and want to help you”. To Fjord, the answer is: “this is your fault, your responsibility”

F: “Yeah. I mean, I think.” C: “I think you know. I just wanna point it out ‘cause that woman, she doesn’t care what any of us want. I’m sure she’d be interested, but it’s way low in her priorities and I don’t trust anybody who keeps other people’s needs that low in the list. You should keep in mind all that, while you’re getting in bed with her, so to speak.”

Fjord: *panics*

Fjord: *desperately tries to convince Caduceus to keep this knowledge to himself*

And I think, Caduceus with his high AF perception, can tell why Fjord cares so much that this is kept from the others. It’s not like it’s something bad, it’s actually beneficial for their group as a whole (as iffy as that makes me because of the unequal power dynamic), and it has been suggested multiple times.... so what reason does Fjord have to keep it so fiercely in the down-low? 

Friction. 

“I think I get it. I’m not gonna talk out of term. I trust your intentions, so...”

And here’s a good part:

C: “You’re asking if I can tell that you’re conflicted?”

F: “No, I think that’s pretty clear.”

C: “You would be amazed, but alright.”

Because Caduceus knows that not everyone in the M9 —cough, Jester, cough— is convinced that this is all just a play on his part. 

Fjord goes on to reaffirm that he’s trying to keep Avantika close for the party’s good. 

okokokokok

MOVING ON

LET’S TALK ABOUT VERA’S TALK GO JESTER

LET’S TALK ABOUT VERA AFTER KNOWING THEM FOR LIKE 2 WEEKS SINGLING OUT JESTER AS THE PERSON WHO LOOKS AFTER FJORD

LET’S TALK ABOUT VERA TELLING JESTER TO LOOK AFTER FJORD BECAUSE AVANTIKA WILL HURT HIM

“He would not be the first she’s left in ruin. He would not be the last. I would take care of him, if he cannot.”

i am so frustrated that Laura/Jester seemed to misinterpret Vera’s warning help me god someone please bring it up on Talks or something because it will bother me forever

When they are planning: 

Caleb: What if Fjord keeps Avantika busy... 

Beau: Do we need to have him distract Avantika? Can’t we just go now?

...

Beau: And we can have [Caleb] make sure that [Fjord and Avantika] are busy. If you [Fjord] are comfortable with that. You don’t have a lot of a choice. 

FJORD

JESTER

*Nott keeps planning*

JESTER

J: Well, Caduceus is very perceptive. 

F *having flashbacks of Jester going down in the jungle*: THE TWO CLERICS ARE NOT GOING ON THE MISSION TOGETHER.

J: So we all wait until Fjord starts boning....

Fjord’s face journey tho

he is so confused help him

when your crush who was jealous is suddenly ok with u sleeping with someone else

wait i thought she liked me

Fjord’s worried overprotective mode ON as soon as Caduceus casually mentions that two guards stabbed each other and probably everything is pandemonium 

Jester saying they should frame Vera was clearly rooted on her misunderstanding Vera’s warning, but I really like that as soon as she thought someone was a direct threat to Fjord she was like “nope gotta get rid of them”.

Avantika’s notes talk about her having dreams about people who were close to her “chaining her back” and how she had to get rid of them...

...and we’ve seen hints of that with Vandrin and Sabien in Fjord’s dream the other time....

...but I’m calling it that we’ll eventually see Uk’otoa try to pit him against the M9 and the one he’s closest to is Jester by far and I’m sure we’re gonna get some dramatic moment out of it I can’t waiiiit

*After reading the journal*

J: Fjord, as you as crazy as she is? Because holy shit.

Fjord:

I LOVE THEM GOOFING AROUND PLS MAKE EACH OTHER SMILE IN THIS TRYING TIMES

and likek

thanks i love them

anyway

in two weeks

if they don’t die

tune in to see me keep screaming about this two, and cross your fingers for a one on one talk if they manage to get a breather away from Avantika

#fjorester #critical role #fjord #jester lavorre #sofia's nonsense

[what-eats-owls]

THE MERCIFUL CROW Master Post!

GUYS. JUST LOOK AT THIS COVER. GUYYYYYS. GUYYYYYYYYYSSSSS!!!!!

I have been screaming about this A LOT, but I wanted to consolidate some info in one handy post for y’all. So I will be updating this with new info as it comes in, and as always, you can check my #themercifulcrow tag for things like art and excerpts that aren’t included here.

SO. Let’s start with the big one: preorders. The neat thing is that preorders count towards the numbers for the NYT Bestseller list! I’m not gonna lie........... I really wanna be on that list. AND I THINK WE CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN.

So here are links to preorder from major retailers: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indigo Books, Books-A-Million, IndieBound

Can’t preorder but still want to help out? (or you want to do both because you’re a rad human being?) YOU DEFINITELY CAN, AND HERE’S HOW:

Request The Merciful Crow at your local library. Most library websites let you request a purchase, and that’s HUGE. Look for links like “Suggest a Purchase”, “Ask the library to buy a book”, etc - sometimes it’s under the Contact page, sometimes under Services, but it’s always free for you! They’ll want to know the book title (The Merciful Crow), the author (Margaret Owen! That’s me!) and the ISBN (1250191920). 

Add it to your TBR on Goodreads! For better or worse, the Goodreads stats can be an indicator of how interested readers are in the book. All you have to do is follow this link, find the drop-down menu beneath the cover thumbnail on the left, and select “Want to Read.” 

Honestly, just talk about it??? Word of mouth remains the most effective form of marketing, and yet also the most low-commitment way to do it?? Literally just tagging stuff on instagram or dropping a link in the groupchat??? idk it’s witchcraft y’all but it works somehow

Those are all the key ways to support the book right now! The Merciful Crow comes out on July 30th, 2019, so we’ve got plenty of time to really make a difference. 

Now, below the cut: a bit about the book itself.

SOME QUICK STATS:

The Merciful Crow is a Dark Young Adult Fantasy. It releases July 30, 2019. It’s being published by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, a division of the Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group. For bookstagram folks, bloggers, reviewers, etc: it is a Fierce Reads title, so you’ll want to reach out to them for publicity-related things like Advance Copies (though you can submit a direct request through my Google form here or keep an eye out on Edelweiss and NetGalley for e-ARCs.)

THE OFFICIAL SUMMARY:

A future chieftain Fie abides by one rule: look after your own. Her Crow caste of undertakers and mercy-killers takes more abuse than coin, but when they’re called to collect royal dead, she’s hoping they’ll find the payout of a lifetime. A fugitive prince When Crown Prince Jasimir turns out to have faked his death, Fie’s ready to cut her losses—and perhaps his throat. But he offers a wager that she can’t refuse: protect him from a ruthless queen, and he’ll protect the Crows when he reigns. A too-cunning bodyguard Hawk warrior Tavin has always put Jas’s life before his, magically assuming the prince’s appearance and shadowing his every step. But what happens when Tavin begins to want something to call his own?

CONTENT WARNINGS:

The story deals with enormous differences in privilege and power. I wanted to be honest about what that looks like without being harmful to readers who have first-hand experience with marginalization, but I still want to provide a list of content warnings to let readers decide that for themselves. The story involves the following:

Discussion of violence and harassment targeted at the main character’s specific caste

Depictions of violence and harassment targeted at the main character’s specific caste

Brief threat of a sexual assault, and discussion of the societal implications

Mention of past child abuse

Mention of past sexual assault

A scene involving a cat in a significant and distressing amount of danger

General gore and body horror... like, guys, I didn’t mean to write a body horror book but I sure did. The main character cuts throats for a living and, as you may have seen me joke, the big bag of human teeth is not the most upsetting thing in the story, not by a long shot. I have no time or patience for torture porn, so the body horror is more in the Uncanny Valley range of nightmarish (less Zombieland, more Coraline) but it’s meant to be very unsettling nonetheless.

LGBTQ+ REPRESENTATION

I got this question on twitter, so I’ll basically rehash my answer here! The short version is yes, there are LGBTQ+ characters, but their specific experiences and relationships are not explored much. 

The longer version is this: I think writing inclusively is the bare minimum we can expect from authors, especially YA authors, in the year of our lord 2018. As such, of the main trio, the prince is explicitly coded as gay, and the love interest is coded as pansexual; one of the secondary characters uses they/them pronouns; another is a woman with multiple spouses; I try to avoid gender-binary language or language that ties gender to genitalia; there are casual references to same-sex relationships and marriages. I am also VERY aware of the Bury Your Gays trope and I am avoiding it like the plague.

That said, I currently identify as your garden-variety cisgender straight woman, so I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to occupy space on the bookshelf that is better served by LGBTQ+ authors writing much-needed stories about their experiences and relationships. (Nor do I think I’m qualified to write those stories, tbh.) So there’s a whole array of folks present and identified on the page, but the main romantic relationship that is developed and explored is between a cisgender pansexual boy and a cisgender straight girl. 

PREORDER CAMPAIGN

If you do preorder the book or place a request with your library, take a screencap and/or hold onto the receipt! I’ll be putting together some fun things to mail y’all as a thank-you once we’re closer to the release date.

That’s all I got right now, but please hit up my inbox if you have any questions!

#my books #the merciful crow #master post #you guys if I debut on the NYT list I am gonna be so smug #so so so so smug

[somuchkdrama]

Hwayugi 17-18 (II)

@dramajib I don't see how they're going to wrap all this up without it feeling anticlimactic honestly. Like the last we hear is that Oh Gong, by defeating the Geumganggo on his own, has created an opportunity to change fate. Which fits in with the Son Oh Gong of legends who is constantly defying the gods and the restrictions they try to impose on him

dramajib: But given how Sam Jang's duty/task has been this huge overarching driving force, I just don't see how they'll build it up enough in two episodes and knock it down without it just being another "haha jk easy fix" thing

dramajib: Another thing I wanna talk about is Ma Wang and also Bu Ja so holla when you guys are up

@rocknghorss​:  About Ma Wang... I’m feeling sympathetic toward him again

@triangularlily: Can I just say I wasn't paying too much attention to the episode and I was about ready to quit when I thought they had actually killed the secretary dog whose name I'm forgetting

triangularlily I was like THIS IS THE LAST STRAW

rocknghorss Lolol

A Potentially Boring Ending? 

rocknghorss: I was worried but then I realized that this show has never killed or seriously injured any of the main characters

rocknghorss: Kinda like what Ekta was saying earlier, the ending is probably going to be wildly boring unless they don’t let Oh Gong circumvent fate after all and Sam Jang kills him

rocknghorss I think her name is Secretary Ma btw

triangularlily: Ok I thought that's what it was too

triangularlily: Maybe there will be some kind of twist like I haven't found the show really that predictable maybe because it's so wacky

rocknghorss: Wacky is a good word for it

triangularlily: Also I know I kept harping on about wanting the guegensjskaong bracelet thing off but like it's too late at this point I think their romance won't ever do it for me

triangularlily: Like I am glad his feelings are real but it's just too late at this point

rocknghorss: His feelings are real but what are they based on is my issue!?  Because the version 1.0 model forced obedience upon whoever wore it

triangularlily: Yeah that is a good point

triangularlily: Actually a really interesting idea that probably won't be explored in the show

triangularlily: Like for me they must never developed the romance/their feelings  like they put the bracelet on and tada! he loves her! Like how am I supposed to be invested or believe in that

triangularlily: In the beginning of the show I thought maybe they would take the bracelet off and then they would kind of start over in their relationship and fall in love for real like sometimes what kdramas do with amnesia plots but like that's not what happened

rocknghorss: Their romance I think is really tough to believe cause of what you said earlier and also because they don’t really know each other.  Who is Jin Seon Mi really?  All I know about her is that she really likes the fact that there’s finally someone who likes her despite (or because of?) her magical powers.  And that’s a sad basis for a relationship.

dramajib: I think that’s a good point - I don’t have trouble believing their feelings for each other, but I just don’t care.  And that’s mostly because Seon Mi as a character hasn’t been fleshed out.  This sudden “I’m going to empty my heart of love and save the world” thing just makes no sense to me, it just seems like a way to keep the story moving

triangularlily: I think they def are just trying to keep the story moving.  I was glad tho that she seems to be the only one who cares about Bu Ja rather than PK rn

triangularlily: Also I rather wish she had powers since the beginning I kind of like that addition to her character even if it’s just more of a plot device

dramajib: Back to Ma Wang for a quick sec - I wondered if him being so gullible and easy to trick had anything to do with him being the (a?) devil.  Combined with how he’s so softhearted just seems like an interesting personality choice for this character.  Like we do see him being cold and harsh, but it never last very long and he’s obviously the biggest softy and everyone knows it.

rocknghorss: Ma Wang, kinda like Oh Gong, is ultimately harmless.  They’ve even dialed back Ah Sa Nyeo’s diabolical plans and made her seem almost sympathetic.  i really hope that whatever plan Oh Gong has up his sleeve also is meant to save BuJa too— it’s irritating that it’s only been PK and Octopus(?) that have seemed to care for the last ~8 episodes.

rocknghorss: Oh yeah, and Seon Mi too, when the writers let her care about something other than Oh Gong

triangularlily: I’m just really worried they’re gonna give the shaman some kind of redemption arc and she like agrees to be burned or something and BuJa just is like gone

rocknghorss: Let’s hope not!!!

rocknghorss: Also, going back to what you said last week Kristin… this show has so many side plots!  It’s pretty amazing that they’re all fairly (?) relevant to the overall plot.  Even Jason (that was his name right?) had a part to play in showing that Seon Mi could have a fairly normal human life if she found the right person.

triangularlily: Yeah, I think maybe that’s why it’s not living up to my expectations of a Hong sister’s drama.  I think it’s too complicated and maybe because it’s an adaption of something.  Maybe they’re just a lot better at writing their own stories.

rocknghorss: that’s an interesting idea.  I never thought of it like that.  They also did an adaptation of Chunhyang back in the day right?

triangularlily: Oh idk. I haven’t seen it!

rocknghorss: Well all I really recall about it is that it was boring lol.  

triangularlily: Well maybe I’m right then lol

rocknghorss: Ekta will you tell me what you meant earlier about Ma Wang being a/the devil and being gullible?  

dramajib: I just noticed that of all the characters, he seems to be the one who gets painted as this dumb foolish guy a lot, someone you can easily put one over

dramajib: Like even with PK, it’s only the BuJa angle that allows him to be manipulated.  But with Ma Wang it’s love, and then pride, and envy and family, and whole gamut of things that let people lead him on and allow him to be very susceptible to suggestion

dramajib: I mean, yes, he does eventually catch on and shake it off and get back to bad business, but mostly there’s this quality of gullibility attached to him that we don’t really see in the other characters as much - and it made me think about how in all the folk stories we always hear about the devil being tricked or outsmarted so that good triumphs over evil in the end.

dramajib: I know the other characters do get tricked and manipulated too, the main premise of the show is supposed to be about Seon Mi and Oh Gong’s feelings being manipulated, but it doesn’t have that same quality of “look how stupid this creature is lol” to it as it does with Ma Wang… Or maybe that’s just be being partial to Cha Seung Won again

rocknghorss: No lol.  I don’t think it’s the CSW bias.  I guess my only point of contention (if it can even be called that) is that as the devil, Ma Wang may be doing such a poor job at tempting people and is so easily tricked himself is because he’s a devil who was trying to become a deity.  

dramajib: Re BuJa (because I was asleep when you guys discussed it, because time zones ugh): I wonder if her mom actually died, or was just transferred somewhere else.  The translations for that bit seemed a bit off.

dramajib: If they are giving Ah Sa Nyeo a redemption arc, maybe she’ll sacrifice her soul to make BuJa human again or something like that.  it still seems a bit unsatisfactory though. I will be sad to not get BuJa back, but can’t think of a way for them to do it that wouldn’t frustrate me.  Unless she comes back, stays a zombie, but becomes a pop star and the energy she gets from her concerts keep her going?

dramajib: I want her to do it on her own, you know?  Not just because someone helped her.  As sweet as PK is with her.  But he mentioned something about hoping Ah Sa Nyeo becomes good so he can make her his little sister too, so who knows how things are going to go.

rocknghorss: Bu Ja did want to become a popstar didn’t she? I’d forgotten about that.  But in terms of Ah Sa Nyeo and redemption, my prediction is that she’ll get one and it’ll paint her in a super sympathetic light and Prof. Kang will go down (but not die!) and somehow BuJa will be reincarnated.

triangularlily: I just want BuJa back somehow and not forgotten

#hwayugi #smk: the discourse #lee seung gi #lee el #cha seung won #oh yeon seo #lee se young

[komatsunana]

Ai Yazawa End-of-Book Notes 1-21

So at the end of every volume of NANA, Ai Yazawa has a brief paragraph about the manga or just some introspection about her life. They give great insight into the series and I think only a few are found on the scans of NANA online, so I thought I’d share them all!

Volume 1

The creator, Ai Yazawa, told us, “I created this story so that it could be enjoyed as a stand-alone and, at the same time, have a complete ending that could be connected to an ongoing series.  I hope you’ll look forward to the future of the two Nanas!”

Volume 2

A note from Ai Yazawa: “I had thought that if the two Nanas met each other, they would probably be constantly fighting, but they seem oddly friendly.  What’s up with that?!  It’s one of me (not so) seven wonders (ha-ha).”

Volume 3

Since childhood, the artists I’ve looked up to haven’t been writers and illustrators, but mostly musicians.  Music provides me the most emotional effect and excitement.  If there was no music, I don’t think my creative juices would boil.  Music is that important to my life.

- Ai Yazawa

Volume 4

I realized one day that there are hit songs with the same names as the main female characters, NANA, JUNKO, and SACHIKO (the kanji for JUNKO is different, though).  It’s not that big a deal, but I sometimes just hum the melodies longingly.

- Ai Yazawa

Volume 5

In the initial drafts, Nana’s band was a rockabilly band like the Stray Cats.  But due to various circumstances, I didn’t keep it that way.  But if they were rockabilly, Ren, Nobu and Shin would have had pompadours.  And Yasu too?

- Ai Yazawa

Volume 6

When I was a child, I used to take piano lessons.  Even after I stopped taking lessons, I bought sheet music I liked and continued playing.  I’ve had my hands full for several years now, but one of these days I’d like to learn how to play jazz piano, which I’ve wanted to do for years now.

- Ai Yazawa

Volume 7

I had an opportunity to interview a group of professional musicians.  I showered them with questions, but they answered willingly, and it was very helpful.  I was having problems balancing the fictional world of manga-like simplicity and gorgeousness with a sense of reality.  But I realized again that what’s important is the humanity of the characters.

- Ai Yazawa

Volume 8

When I was in high school, there was a cool girl in my class who was a lone wolf.  I was really into a foreign New Romantic-type band then, and when she asked me one day, “Do you want to go to their concert together?” I was overwhelmed.  My heart fluttered more than when I was with my boyfriend (☺).  Have you had a Hachiko experience like that?  - Ai Yazawa

Volume 9

One day, I realized I had to write a bonus story.  I was talking to my editor about it (Let’s do a story about the history of Trapnest!) when Naoki swooped down triumphantly, shouting “Then I’m the star!”  The day will come when he gets his place in the sun.  You really don’t know what’s going to happen next in this manga! ☺  - Ai Yazawa

Volume 10

Natural disasters can’t be prevented, but man-made disasters don’t have to occur.  That’s what I think.  I didn’t end up writing real world events into the Nana story, cause there are people who would have been deeply affect by my retelling.  I wouldn’t be able to keep it ambiguous enough, and I didn’t want to just brush over the issue irresponsibly.  I hope you all understand.   - Ai Yazawa

Volume 11

The 2001 Chofu City Hanabi Festival was really postponed ‘cause of typhoon and was rescheduled for Oct 27.  When I was taking photos by the Tama River, an old man started talking to me and told me that “the fireworks festival that as cancelled is going to be held soon.”  The entire fireworks arc was born that way.  A uniquely precious encounter.  It came out of this chance encounter with that man.  Thank you very much.  - Ai Yazawa

Volume 12

Nana is expanding into other media!  Since I believe it’s my duty to concentrate on my work, my policy is to get involved as little as possible.  (Sorry!)  The way the creators are developing this work is so passionate, I’m overwhelmed by it.  I have to do my best along with Blast, so people don’t say this manga is worthless and that the publicity is the only good thing about it.   - Ai Yazawa

Volume 13

Before the shooting of the movie began, I accepted and offer to rite the lyrics for the theme song.  I did this to thank them and hoped it would be a song of encouragement.  I had my doubts, ‘cause I was worried it might not turn out how they wanted.  But the heartwarming work of HYDE, the composer, cheered me on.  The live-action NANA movie is filled with director Otani’s (and many others’) love for Nana.  I was very moved by that.  So please watch the movie and feel their love too.   - Ai Yazawa

Volume 14

I confess.  The seven characters I find easiest to draw (as pictures and as characters) are Kudo from Search Weekly, Hachi’s father, Kawano from Gaia, Matsuo from Gaia, the guard Yamagishi, Ginpei Moroboshi, and Mitsuru Narita.  I’ve been a manga for 20 years.  Lately I’ve been wondering about myself as a shoujo mangaka. ☺

- Ai Yazawa

Volume 15

In the small garden of the house I’ve been living in for over ten years, I have encountered many living beings.  Stray cats taking naps, intimidating praying mantids, lizards shining iridescently, a jet-black leech with a head shaped like a hammer, long thin flatworms, and snakes.  A perfectly shaped cast-off cicada shell has turned into a fixture for three years because I didn’t want to take if off the window screen.  When I’m busy, I want to move to a condominium in the heart of Tokyo, but I feel at home in this place.

Volume 16

I talked before about wanting to make Blast a rockabilly band.  The other day, the editor of Tenshi Nanka Ja Nai pointed out, “Ms. Yazawa, you said you wanted to do a rockabilly band story before you began Ten-nai.”  I don’t remember that at all, but I had the idea that long ago?!  Nowadays, I really have the urge to draw a comedy manga: What if Blast was a rockabilly band? ☺

Volume 17

I don’t particularly like talking about my age ☺, but maybe because of my age or not exercising enough or the curse of the Demon Lord, I can’t overexert myself anymore.  I’m going to get a thorough physical checkup for the first time in my life.  It’ll take two days, including an overnight stay, and they’re going to check all my internal organs thoroughly.  How frightening.  I should have the results by the time this volume comes out in Japan.  Please pray that I won’t be thrown in the hospital.  Not for my sake, but for Nana and the others!

Volume 18

Hello.  They found something wrong with me during the thorough physical checkup I mentioned in volume 1.  I went to the hospital, I gave up smoking for a while, and in the end, I had an operation.  I’m finally getting better.  I apologize for making people worry.  During my hospital stay, the beautiful nurse inserted a painkiller suppository as if it was nothing and told me “I’m a big fan ♥.”  I was really embarrassed! ☺ Thanks for taking care of me. Thank you!

Volume 19

Hello.  I wrote in the last volume that “I’m getting better,” but as soon as I wrote that, I had to call an ambulance and was forced to suspend the series, so the release date of the new volume was set back.  I’m really sorry to keep you people waiting!  For those of you who waited patiently, thank you so much.  It’s a rare thing for me, but I took a break like a human being, and so this time I was able to recover completely.  From now on, I’ll my best but won’t push myself to the brink of collapse.  Please watch over Nana-san and the others from now on as well!

Volume 20

Hello.  Because of the way the story turns out, I thought it would be inappropriate to joke around with bonus pages at the end of the volume.  I figured we could do without them sometimes, that they’re just bonus pages, so I took the plunge and did away with them completely this time.  But I’m feeling super anxious ‘cause it seems like somethings missing.  It looks like I can’t be a stylish mangaka who can play the game with just the main story, someone who doesn’t need to throw up a smoke screen with the extras.

Volume 21

Hello, Yazawa here.  With this volume, no matter what scene I was drawing, I as heartbroken.  I had a hard time, and it took longer than usual to draw.  So it was such a relief when Satsuki appeared.  Somehow the panel with Satsuki and Yasu together felt especially soothing.  I never envied any of Yasu’s girlfriends or Nana, whom Yasu protects, but I’m totally jealous of Satsuki, whom Yasu’s taken under his wing since she was a baby.

#nana #ai yazawa #if you noticed any typos tell me!! #i hemmed and hawed over posting these all separately or not #i decided not to for the sake of everyone's dashes #i also have so much I want to say about what she said... but again #i worry about people's dashes lol #i admit i got a lil emotional once i got to volume 17 #just knowing how things turn out with her health #what a gracious woman though #i hope she's learned jazz piano in the passed 7 years like she mentioned wanting to do #i feel so much love for her right now #i scream #my nana feels

[knightofbalance-13]

Boomerang Compliant

http://hungryallday.tumblr.com/post/164139816706/its-funny-we-say-that-jaune-is-miles-self

Its funny we say that ja//une is miles self insert, because just like ja//une miles also took a position that would require him to do (write) things he was not ready to do (write) yet. And just like ja//une he even admits to this folly (to a certain degree). And, just like ja//une he too doesnt seem to be taking active decisions that would help improve the current state (of the shows writing)

The only thing funny is that if Jaune IS a self insert, then he’s an example of a self-insert done RIGHT and thus, you look like an idiot for saying he’s a bad writing decision when the other option is one of THE MOST REVILED WRITING DESCSIONS IN LITERARY HISTORY.

Let’s go down the list, shall we? (Considering in this context, Mary Sue and self insert are the same thing)

http://sci-frey.livejournal.com/8706.html

1) The Mary Sue character exists for the Suethor's wish fulfillment. The Sue looks like the author wishes she looked, acts like the way she wishes she could, says what the author wishes she could say, and creates an environment within the canon in which things that the Suethor wishes would have happened in the canon, does. Â The Mary Sue is sometimes the gender or sexual orientation which the author wishes (s)he was, or feels is fashionable.

Miles and Jaune don’t look anything alike and Jaune isn’t even that attractive looking. Miles has called Jaune out for not acting the way Jaune should act, Jaune has spoken out once in the series and the story (AKA Miles) portrayed him as wrong with the person he was calling out and the environment was planned by Monty, not Miles. Not to mention that Kerry and Grey also make the environment so it can’t be solely Miles’ creation. So no dice on the first point.

2) There is a sense or tone of whimsy and /or self depreciation in the text.

Most Mary Sue characters are written to be "competent. But not too competent; she’s still a little girl inside, and there’s a sense that at least some of what she accomplishes is done by accident or luck (Pflieger 11). Suethors experimenting with wish fulfilment don’t often also experiment in agency and therefore introduce chance to further the plot, which lends an air of the narrative pressing forward despite the Mary Sue character, rather than because of it.

Right here the accusation falls apart as well: Jaune can only be called competent as a leader and tactician. But as a solo fighter: He gets crotch-shotted, bitch slapped and punted. And that was only in Volume 4. And this further decays as while the tone of these can be whacky, context prevents it from being fully whacky because Jaune doesn’t like this. He is not okay with being treated like this by the world and it actually makes his situation funny in a “haha, look at his misery” way. Similar to Sokka from Avatar The Last Airbender.

And the number of times the narrative is pushed forward by Jaune? 0. The number of times the narrative is pushed forward by chance benefitting Jaune? Also0.

3) The Mary Sue’s appearance, personality, and even scent are often divulged in detail within the exposition of the story; Mary Sues often have physical traits that are a biological impossibility, such as eyes that are violet or shift colour, pointed ears, the limbs or ears of an animal, or hair colour that is not within the normal spectrum of shades.

Jaune’s appearance is not  biologically impossible: In fact, Jaune is the ONLY character who looks realistic, it’s everyone else who is biologically impossible. By the very definition above. Nobody makes a note of his personality except Jaune himself one time (and that kind of reveal is common in fiction)

3) The Mary Sue often was given a name with a hidden or relevant meaning, or that simply “sounds cool”, with no regard for ethnic tradition or likelihood.

Again, this goes for everyone EXCEPT Jaune: He at least has a plausible name and it is very much incontext for ethnics and likelihood in RWBY. Everyone else has the fancy names.

4) The Mary Sue is a character either previously unrecognized by the fandom's central protagonists and antagonists before the commencement of the story, or drops in from 'reality' into the fandom.

Jaune was introduced at the FIRST episode so this is impossible.

5) The Mary Sues’ abilities / magical powers / skills / talents not only outdo the canonical characters (even if, or especially if, the canonical characters are the most powerful / talented / skilled at this particular ability) but often eclipse them. The Mary Sue directly copies the skill and is better at it. The Mary Sue is adept at any sort of fighting or magic wielded by the canonical characters, often surpassing the canonical characters in ability with little to no practice or previous experience.

Jaune doesn’t have any skills that outdo any canonical character’s. In fact, Jaune LACKS a special ability that the other characters have. And he is nowhere near close to surpassing anyone in canon. You can try to argue he surpasses Ruby as a strategist...but looking it up, that’s only because people get strategist and tactician mixed up and Jaune is the latter so that’s not even correct.

6) The Mary Sue is immediately accepted into the canonical character's inner circle of friends and confidants, no matter how unsociable or closely guarded said circle of friends is in the canon.

6.5) If the Mary Sue is related to a major character that is not the romantic interest, then said relation is often used as a haphazard excuse to introduce the Sue to the canonical characters/ future romantic interest.

Actually, Jaune was introduced BEFORE the group of friends where established and the inner circle still consists of Ruby, Weiss, Blake and Yang. Nor is he related to anyone so this is yet ANOTHER critera he fails to meet.

7) The Mary Sue acquires friends or romantic interests / partners among the canon characters, blocking or disrupting the canonical friendships, partnerships and romantic relationships within the canon.

Jaune does not stop the main team from interacting with anyone except one time that Weiss tried “befriending” Pyrrha and he doesn’t stop any relationships.

8) The surrounding canon characters are made to act out of character by the Mary Sue’s presence.

Pflieger points out that this is called, by most fan craft readers, “character rape” (Pflieger 6), and occurs because character’s personalities have developed in relation to only those characters that exist within the show. In adding an unknown quantity, the chemistry of the ensemble must change. Some mistakes in out-of-character instances, however, could also be traced back to the Suethor’s neophyte writer status, in that she has yet to master the subtly of writing that allows a character to remain in character, even when written by an outside party like a fan crafter.

Yeah, Jaune doesn’t cause anyone to act out of character.

9) The Mary Sue robs the strong female characters of their rational agency, turning them into catty bitches.

Again, this could be traced to the Suethor’s newness to crafting, but also to the feminine inclination for competitiveness. Strong, capable female characters threaten the Mary Sue’s agency, importance, and place in her beloved’s heart and therefore they must be removed or made undesirable. Teenage girls, the primary bulk of Suethors, are also living in a phase of life where all women are potential competition and bullying is a fact of life; all girls feel persecuted, and the existence of a character that could challenge a Mary Sue’s ability to form relationships with the desired characters / romantic target, is therefore a potential threat and must be neutralized via changing their characterization

Because the person in question would relate to their corresponding gender, but RWBY doesn’t have enough prominent male characters to do this: I will argue still for the female characters.

Jaune doesn’t stop anyone from forming relationships in canon, excluding one time with Pyrrha and Weiss (since that was, in fact, an attempt by Weiss to try and use Pyrrha.) Nor does he stop anyone from making their own decisions: When Pyrrha wanted to become the Fall Maiden, she did so without ever talking or thinking about Jaune. And when she does mention it, Jaune encourages her. You may argue he takes away Ruby’s agency, but then I argue he wasn’t involved in Ruby’s plotlines enough in Volumes 1-3 to interfere and in Volume 4, Ruby has actually taken away Jaune’s agency as he only has one or two scenes where he is the focus (the armor scene and the brief scene with Qrow) whereas the training video scene was built up by Ruby, framed by Ruby’s point of view, we learn nothing new about Jaune and learned something new about Ruby. And in Kuroyuri, we have Ruby about to blame herself and instead Jaune pushes aside and devalues his suffering (the one thing he gained in the Volume) to make Ruby look and feel better. Ergo, this point he also fails.

10) The Mary Sue is sexually attractive to all canon characters, regardless of their sexual orientation or availability.

Jaune is noted to be attractive by ONE character in the entire series up to Volume 4: His love interest. So no dice here.

11) The Mary Sue is often ardently desired by the villain despite there being no advantage or reason for the villain to want said Mary Sue.

Neither Roman, Cinder or Salem give a shit about Jaune and all I could gather from Tyrian being interested in Jaune is that he might want to rape him. Nowhere near this point.

12) The Mary Sue is often the reason for the main conflict in the plot, whether inadvertently or as a central figure. Â Any special destiny, quest, or plot arc possessed by the central character of the canon is often usurped by the Mary Sue.

Jaune causes no impact on the main conflict of RWBY. The plot never concerns him and he is usually the focus of or integral to CHARACTER arcs, not plot arcs.

13) The Mary Sue is witty and snarkish, and no matter how lame said witticisms are, the canonical characters akin the Sue's sense of humour to that which is quite practiced and enjoyable.

Jaune has not made any snarky or witty banter except for one time in Volume 3...and that was self deprication at his expense. And no one found it funny in-universe.

14) The Mary Sue is often able to shift shapes, or has a friend or magical pet that can shift shapes.

... NEXT!

15) As the Mary Sue is the author’s avatar, the Mary Sue enters the world of canon with the same understanding of character, plot, and universe as the Suethor; the Mary Sue therefore has incredible insight into the lives and workings, the desires and dreams and fears, of the characters with which she is interacting and often serves as a conduit for advice that the Suethor wishes to impart on the characters.  The Mary Sue ‘understands everything’. The advice considered, the canon characters often behaviour is often altered to accommodate the Suethor’s desired changes.

16) The Mary Sue has a tragic past that proceeds the story, or something traumatic and mentally scarring occurs mid-story that they 'get over' cheerily, suffering neither post-traumatic stress, Stockholm syndrome, or other disorders or phobias brought on by their past experiences. Any scars or marks that result from the trauma are 'cool', or are interesting places or shapes, and are often aesthetically tasteful. Sues are rarely ashamed by said scars or marks, or associate them only lightly with the trauma.

16.5) Mary Sues mope, brood, or pout, but only for as long as it takes for the canonical characters to distract her. Long-term guilt or pain is rare in a Sue.

1. He has no idea of the plot, no idea who characters are until they are introduced and actually has LESS of an idea of the universe than the other chaarcters. Jaune didn't understand what Aura is or what a Semblence is. So no dice here.

2. Jaune actually has a less tragic backstory than everyone else. While his parent may have not believed in him, it’s not as sad as Ruby and Yang or Blake or Weiss or Pyrrha or Ren and Nora. And Jaune is actually VERY ashamed that his family had no faith in him and it is not made to make Jaune look cool.

3. ... Volume 4 and Pyrrha. That is all I need to say.

17) The Mary Sue is the centre of the plot, the key player in any battle, and is the only one who can 'save the day' by virtue of her wonderfulness.

17.5) And in doing so, the Mary Sue ‘ties up loose ends’, filling in plot holes from canon, getting characters who the Suethor believes are romantically destined for one another together, or forces an ending to the major plot arc from canon in a satisfying (to the Suethor) and happy way.

1. Jaune is usually the type to act from the sidelines and assist while when he does fight directly against any non-Mook opponent: He gets hit in the crotch, chased, bitch slapped or punted. So nope here as well.

2. Yeah...Jaune does none of this: This is the work or either Qrow or Salem.

18) Somehow the Mary Sue character 'saves the day' in unlikely ways that leave the canon characters stunned and amazed, often at the cost of her own life / health / magic powers / happiness / love / ability to stay with the characters or in the fandom.

Do I seriously have to bring up the numerous ways Jaune gets made a fool of in fights? Or how about he has won one big battle in his life against the Ursa Major?

19) Yet somehow there is a happily ever after wherein the Sue and the Love Interest are reunited, often affirming their relationship through marriage and procreation, therefore supporting the patriarchal hegemony that a powerful female character like a Mary Sue could otherwise challenge.

19.5) Unless the Mary Sue dies, in which case her death is tragic, meaningful, beautiful, and offers the characters that the Suethor is most directly interested from the canon a lesson / morale / momento to take with them.

...A. They are never getting back together.

B. That’s a common trope known as the Tragic Keepsake.

And that was literally the ONE check that Jaune gets where he is a Mary Sue. The others he defies or outright contradicts. So in this case, jaune cannot be a Mary Sue.

But why is he called a Mary Sue still?

Easy

(http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue) First example under “Intereptations of a Mary Sue) it says this:

An alarmingly widespread use of the term, and one reason a lot of people feel that the term has lost whatever useful meaning it once had. There are a lot of reasons why this usage is so common. Most obviously, as rants about and mockery of the Mary Sue phenomenon became increasingly well-known in fandom, it became increasingly easy to throw the term around as Flame Bait. The fact that so many of the other definitions are highly subjective doesn't help.

People who accuse characters of being Mary Sues rarely admit that this is the definition they're using. The best way to tell is if their justifications for the character's Sue-hood are all based on shoehorning, Alternate Character Interpretation, misrepresenting the sources, and Accentuate the Negative. Describe any non-fanfic character as a Canon Sue, and you'll be lucky if no one accuses you of using this definition of the term. 

AKA what the RWDE tag does. He’s just a character you don’t like so you call “MARY SUE/SELF INSERT!” to try and get him removed or justify your hate. Well, doesn’t work if someone actually KNOWS what a Mary Sue is.

#rwde bullshit #hungryallday

[lazybarbarians]

Star Wars: Aftermath by Chuck Wendig

Ragnell: A couple weeks ago I chose Star Wars: Aftermath by Chuck Wendig and predicted to Kal that this would be the first time I fail to read my own pick. Because as much as I’ve badly wanted to know what went on right after Return of the Jedi I have the hardest time being drawn into Star Wars material that doesn’t feature a Jedi or really any forceusers. I’m not a smuggler, or a politics of the Star Wars Galaxy type, I’m all in for the mystic order of space-monks and the various other factions of light and darksiders. But I do like the normal humans and the third book just came out with Lando in so I decided to give the first a try and see if I could get that far.

And wow, once I got a chance to sit down and read it I really got into this. I like most of the new characters, the new villains, the various things happening in the galaxy as a direct result of Return of the Jedi. I’m tearing up my apartment looking for the second book (I swear I picked it up somewhere) as a result.

So, to recap the first novel of this trilogy (reader beware there’s spoilers down there)...

We get to meet the characters thread by thread against interludes showing us what’s going on elsewhere in the galaxy. The main villain, Admiral Rae Sloane, is gathering the remaining Imperial leadership for a survival meeting on Akiva. Rae is alive because she was not at the Battle of Endor. The rest of the remaining Imperial leadership remained alive because they were also not at the Battle of Endor. Unfortunately for them someone--no, two someone.. No, three… Wait, Four. Four someones who were at the Battle of Endor converge on Akiva for various reasons.

Significantly, one of these someones is Wedge Antilles, who was scouting for Imperial supply lines and got captured by Rae. He manages to try and signal help, but only gets inside the system. Luckily, Norra Wexley who was in Gold Squadron, is there trying to pick up her son Temmin (and if you can identify Temmin from non-Aftermath Star Wars material give yourself a pat on the back), who is in trouble with the local mob boss and has managed to cross the sphere of the other two Endor vets, Jas Emari (bounty hunter who was there to assassinate Leia and changed her mind), and Sinjir Rath Velus (Imperial officer who saw the rag-tag band of rebels blow up the Death Star and the Ewoks decimate his unit and went “fuck this shit, I’m out”).

Kalinara: Confession, I didn’t actually recognize Temmin. :-) I’m usually pretty good at that kind of thing. But not this time. Ragnell defeated me.

R: This book is packed with action scenes, but ultimately the four of these guys team up to try and bust up the meeting. To do this, they incite rioting on Akiva and a little mini-rebellion. (well, planetwide but for Star Wars that’s mini.) Wedge manages to escape when they knock out the power and actually gets a message to the fleet, bringing Admiral Ackbar and some of the Alliance Navy to Akiva to help. They all end up captured and on a ship that crashes into the bay of Sloane’s flagship. Sloane escapes. The rest of the remaining Imperial leadership is captured or killed. Wedge has a really bad week. Jas gets a heart, Sinjir gets courage, Temmin gets a brain and Norra gets a sense of home. They form a team with some guy who was in the book for five pages to hunt Nazis who escaped the Hague Imperial war criminals and I want to read the next book now dammit!

*Ahem* I generally like the new characters. I was sad both times he faked out Norra’s death, which were both totally believable because honestly both Star Wars and Disney have this thing against mothers. I recognized Temmin so I knew he’d live but I was expecting this to be the story of how he was fully orphaned, instead it was a “How I learned to stop being a douche and love my mother” story for him.

Sinjar and Jas were great fun. I like the idea that simply being at Endor changed both their lives, for the same reason but in different ways. Both saw the way the wind was blowing and while Sinjir tried to hide away Jas tried to adjust her life to fit. Neither of them got it quite right then, but it looks like they’re on the right path now which was cool.

K: I have to admit, it took me a while to get into it. I’m very picky about original characters, especially ones who have no obvious connections to the characters I love. Norra drew me in first though. I liked her immediately. Temmin was a douchebag for most of the book, but I thought he had a really nice, not redemption arc precisely though certainly betraying the group was an issue, but just a general growth arc. As child characters go, he was pretty believable. Not always likeable, but believable.

I liked Jas and Sinjir a lot. And I particularly liked the reveal that Sinjur was gay. (I had suspected when he talked about having to interrogate a “beautiful” young man, but it’s always nice to have things addressed overtly.) As reveals go, I thought it struck the right balance. Jas was surprised, because she had misread some signals, but she wasn’t shocked or horrified. It felt like it was a fairly normal, accepted part of the setting. Additionally, Norra’s sister, who had been Temmin’s guardian, has a wife. This is presented in a very matter of fact way.

In a way, the Star Wars new canon reminds me a bit of Bioware games. I feel like they are genuinely trying to give us a more diverse and inclusive setting. They don’t always succeed and there are definitely missteps and missed opportunities (do we really need five white brunette protagonists??). But I do feel there is a general push to do more. And I’m reasonably hopeful that they’ll continue to make efforts to improve.

R: We saw a half-dozen interludes on different planets just establishing how much things have changed for people across the galaxy. I liked that. I don’t feel a particular need to revisit these people for full books but wouldn’t mind updates later, or just more situations that were changed by the actions of the main characters in the trilogy. I like that some of these established that the galaxy was still a complex mess, that some established a brighter future, and that some showed the seeds of darkness being sown.

Rae Sloane is now one of my favorite supplemental villains. I honestly prefer someone like her to Thrawn, someone who’s pretty badass but not without flaw or mistake. Her plans are sensible, not ridiculously far ahead, and she is good at working by the seat of her pants. Honestly, in the Star Wars universe you’re always better off as an improviser than a long-term planner. But she has the ability to scheme and layout plans.

K: I agree with you. There were one or two moments early on that felt a little Thrawn-ishly heavy handed. But for the most part, Sloane got to be a three dimensional villain. She made mistakes, she miscalculated, and she recovered. It made her far more effective to me. I’m looking forward to seeing how she regroups from this affair.

The other villains are a great cross-section of the type of non-force-user bad guys you see in the Star Wars universe. You have your mob boss, your rich asshole who is behaving criminally but keeps a legitimate front up, your Moff, your Admiral, and your weird religious dude. Of them I thought Tashu, the old Emperor’s Advisor who was WAAAAY into being a Sith Acolyte, was pretty interesting. He and one of the interludes established a cult worship of Sith that’s a good darkside counterpart for the reverence the Jedi get from the Church of the Force and the Guardians of the Whills. I’m glad he survived and someone can dig him up to a) vex Luke, and b) menace Wedge again.

And finally, I just wanted to say… poor Wedge. He really has bad luck when Luke isn’t around.

#The Secret Origin of Snap Wexley: Resistance Pilot 3 #How Anakin Skywalker screwed up other people's children #And of course the droid was Toto #Wedge and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day #Luke Skywalker has VANISHED #A Disney Prince(ss) in Space #Star Wars: Aftermath #Chuck Wendig #Ragnell's pick