#let your setting just function different beyond magic being present | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

itsclydebitches · 3 years

Text

RWBY Recaps - Volume 8 “War”

Hello, everyone! Story time.

Yesterday food was delivered for my two idiot dogs (they’re thrilled about it) but, because it was delivered by Fed Ex, shenanigans were bound to ensue. These particular shenanigans involved realizing that the food had not been left at the front door like tracking said it had. Instead, it was down the very long driveway by the mailbox. Specifically, it was on a low wall beside the mailbox, currently inaccessible due to a mound of plowed snow.

Now, how the delivery guy managed to get it there I’ll never know, but given that our postal system is currently killing itself to get us our Amazon orders for Christmas, I shrugged, let it go, and resigned myself to lifting an 18 pound bag plus box over that snow without dying. Which meant that in reality I just dragged it, uncaring what bumps the bag might accumulate along the way. What are the dogs gonna do? Complain about presentation?

Snow successfully circumvented; I was home free!

… until I was lifting the box into the car, hit a patch of black ice, and was suddenly looking up at the sky, my right hip and leg screaming.

I’m fine. Bruised, but fine. It’s 2020. Did I expect to not fall? C’mon, Clyde. Be sensible.

The reason I'm telling you all this is because falling on ice at 10:00pm with an oversized bag of dog food was less painful than watching this episode.

I jest... but only a little. To be fair to RWBY, it admittedly wasn't painful in any new way. Everything that's a problem this week has been a problem for years now: confusing motivations, changing semblances, unpersuasive character beats, etc. So in some ways this episode — especially as a hiatus episode — is rather underwhelming. I expected RWBY to do something big before taking six weeks off, but this episode simply set the (unstable) stage for what's to come. With the exception of Ren, nothing changed this episode, which makes for a rather "Okay..." note to end on. It's not inherently bad, it's just a bit of a letdown after hyping ourselves up over the expectation that something even crazier than grimm soup will happen. Which, to again be fair, is on us as opposed to the writers. But that feeling of, "If this was last week, what in the world will we get right before an unpredicted hiatus?" was palpable. Turns out the answer was, "A pretty tame episode."

As always though, let's start at the beginning. This episode is titled "War" — straight to the point — and it's actually a little shorter than our last three episodes, adding to that "Okay..." feeling overall. We open on the outskirts of Atlas, amidst what appears to be a wheat field, or something similar. Upon reflection, it makes sense that the bubbled city would be able to grow things not normally growable in the tundra. This might also explain Cinder's strange beginning. Perhaps her orphanage existed on these rural outskirts and then she was brought into the city proper? We'll probably never know for sure, but at least this is a simpler answer than, "The Madame went off to an entirely different Kingdom to secure her child slave." Occam's Razor and all that.

Ironwood's army has assembled to hold off Salem's army. Wow, aren't we glad Ironwood invested in thousands of trained professionals rather than a handful of independent fighters? Seriously though, this is now a battle of numbers. May says later in the episode that Ironwood's forces are doing their best to assist Atlas, so they should go help Mantle... but that help only exists because years ago he recognized that the tiny class sizes of the Academies, this

wasn't going to be enough if grimm attacks suddenly increased. Sure enough, now they're in a situation where Ironwood needs even more men to keep up with Salem's creation magic. The fact that he has any at all is crucial to what little hope is left. How do Jaune, Yang, and Ren think they're going to get the time to look for Oscar without everyone dying while they're gone? Because Ironwood's army is keeping the attack at bay. I love how the story keeps angling for the "Military people are evil" message while actively showing us how much a military is needed in this world. If Ironwood had been a generic Good Guy who dismantled his armed forces because others wanted to ignore that they've always been at war against objectively evil creatures — both the grimm and Salem — then there would have been nothing to hold Salem off until small team rescue/bomb plans could be implemented.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. As usual. The army is on the front lines and one guy is scared enough that he's shaking. Can't say I blame him. As always, RWBY functions best when it leans towards horror, with skeletons rising alongside the normal grimm and intense music playing to convey the stakes. Ironwood watches the onslaught and immediately calls for a civilian evacuation into the subway system. Get people below ground, behind a few, defendable entrances, rather than wandering about the city where land or sky grimm can pick them off easy-peasy. Makes sense. Yet I'm already seeing fans make snide comments about how Ironwood is "still running," which just demonstrates how many viewers take the emotions of the show at face value — who is Good and who is Bad — rather than considering the situation and deciding for themselves. What's far more egregious than viewers enjoying a story however they'd like on a Saturday before the holiday though (seriously, my salt aside, no one has to enjoy RWBY any one way) is that RT again tries to paint Ironwood as crazy when he's... just not? Beyond the choice to animate him with scary expressions

once he gives the order the soldier starts to say, "But sir — " and Ironwood yells for him to obey right now. The scene makes it look like Ironwood is doing something shady again. Here's this goon balking at the order, but we're not told why. What's bad about getting the people to (relative) safety? Why is this order treated like something to question at all? We're not told and, from what we do know, it's not something that would be questioned, so unless we learn something new post-hiatus, that line exists only to make Ironwood look bad. It's a (nonsensical) excuse to have another ally turning against him (slightly) and to give Ironwood the chance to look scary and violent again. Nevermind that his city is under attack and if a subordinate started questioning a completely sensible and time-sensitive order? I might yell too.

So we're off to a great start. The above looks particularly stupid given that we immediately see the flying grimm arriving in a populated area, terrifying all the civilians there. Everyone bolts for the subway and we cut away from a man trying desperately to reach his daughter, unsure if either of them survive. But people want Ironwood to not use what few resources he has? See, this is why generic messages like, "You have to stand your ground" don't work. Sometimes there are situations where you should run and that doesn't automatically equal being a coward. It means you're smart enough to take the actions necessary to save as many lives as possible.

Later on we'll have a similar issue with the message, "You have to trust people" when my darling Oscar briefly loses his mind.

Now though, we see that the "fugitives" Yang, Jaune, and Ren have been taken into custody. Of course they have. Look, when the preview dropped yesterday I saw a number of takes along the lines of, "How dare the Ace Ops do this. They need to put aside their differences until the attack is over!" but no, they really don't, because it's no longer their responsibility to extend trust towards this group. Especially when doing so, to their mind, has a high chance of making a horrific situation that much worse. What are they going to do if, in the middle of a Salem attack, the kids they decided to trust betray them, attack them, and leave them knocked out somewhere while the world burns?

...Oh wait, they already did that.

See, the group broke trust first. Numerous times. The Ace Ops listened to Yang admit that she and Blake had betrayed Ironwood days ago. Then they watched Ruby betray him again by alerting the rest of the team, turning them against him. They swore they wouldn't attack, so Team RWBY attacked them first. They learn that Qrow had a hand in murdering their leader. They encounter the group again and Weiss gleefully asks if they want a second defeat. They watch Ruby tell the entire world to dismiss Ironwood because he’s the one who can’t be trusted. Outside of JYR not immediately attacking them when they arrived to help (something I praised them for), this group has never put their trust in the Ace Ops. So why do they — and we — expect the Ace Ops to do so now? Imagine for just a moment that it was reversed. We find out that someone betrayed the group for no good reason, set themselves against them, continued to do so as everything fell apart, told the rest of the world they’re the enemy, and then a close associate is involved in Ruby's murder. How many people would expect the group to just shrug all that off? Would they put their differences aside and embrace these people because blind trust is (supposedly) the right thing to do? Of course not! Yang would punch their lights out and everyone would cheer, but that's because they're the established heroes. Outside of that role, no one else is allowed to mistrust those who have proven themselves untrustworthy and take precautions against getting betrayed again. To say nothing of how these characters don’t have our meta perspective. Meaning, they live in a world where this trio is not a part of a protagonist group destined to remain a part of the plot because that’s how story conventions work. They’re three random teens who were promoted to huntsmen early. They’re three soldiers out of many who can, at any time, be taken out of the fight. No one on the Ace Ops is working under the belief that they “have” to be a part of this fight. From their in-world perspective, you could toss them in jail for the rest of the battle and that’s that. Outside of their fugitive status they are entirely unimportant.

So yes, Jaune, Ren, and Yang are in handcuffs. They deserve to be. Don't worry though, they get out very soon.

Yang makes a snide comment about Winter "Still just following orders" and honestly? I've lost the love I used to have for her as a character. Yang is just an exercise in frustration whenever she speaks now. Thus far she's blamed Ruby for everything that's gone wrong (ignoring her own choices there), did a 180 to yell at Ren for acknowledging how bad things are, worried nonsensically about Blake being disappointed in her even though Ruby is the one she fought with, and is now back to the "You just follow orders" shtick. Yang will label anything she personally doesn't like as evil order following, but conveniently ignores how following Ruby's orders helped get them into this mess, and how the one time she went AWOL made things even worse. These characters don't actually have beliefs they stand behind, they just say whatever is currently necessary to make themselves look good, even if that contradicts previous statements or actions.

She also gets mad at Vine for saying that grimm don't take prisoners, ignoring that she only found this out a few hours ago. No one in the group is equipped to navigate the emotional minefield that is this war because they can't even take two seconds to put themselves in another’s shoes. Weiss doesn't bother to consider Whitley's situation. Jaune points at the snow and gets frustrated that Harriet doesn't magically know there's grimm soup flowing nearby. Yang snaps at Vine for stating what she also knew to be a basic fact about grimm up until Oscar's kidnapping. It's all framed as, "How can you be this stupid?" rather than, "Oh yeah, these people haven't had the experiences I have. If I was randomly told this I'd doubt it too. I should try to explain this in a way that will make sense to them and increase my chances of being believed."

This is the group who decided it was a good idea to tell the whole world about Salem and did it just as badly as I suspected they would. The story has shoved a delicate, information-based war into the hands of punch-happy teenagers and refuses to grapple with how that's a bad thing.

Anyway, Ironwood comes on the radio to say that the whale is pretty indestructible on the outside, but it might be vulnerable from the inside, so let's get a bomb in there. Seems like a good enough plan as any, especially given that the grimm is currently on the very outskirts of the city, away from the civilians if/when it's blown up. What kind of bomb might this be though?

Could it, perhaps, end up being a now severely damaged android who is based off of Pinocchio?

Time will tell. For now, the group is quite obviously upset that Ironwood is planning a big BOOM while Oscar (and Ozpin! Tellingly, no one mentions Ozpin...) is still inside. Here's the thing: Both sides are right here. YJR are right to be worried about their friend, while the Ace Ops — who have no emotional ties to Oscar and, as just established, are questioning whether or not a grimm really kidnapped him — are right that they cannot prioritize a single life over the entirety of Atlas. They just can't! And any hero worth their salt is going to recognize this. You cannot knowingly sacrifice thousands of people (if not more) for one (admittedly awesome) farm boy. It would be a different situation if the people of Atlas volunteered to remain in danger to give Oscar a chance at escape, but that obviously isn't the situation here. If someone told me, "Sorry, Clyde, we can't get you out because the place you're in is super dangerous and attempting to extract you would likely cause the rescue party to die. Also, the longer we don't blow this location up the longer lots of other people die" I'd be like, "Fair enough. Have a nice life!" I mean, obviously anyone would be terrified and devastated by the news, but if you're still thinking straight and have even an ounce of compassion for others, you don't trade all those lives for your own. Spock does not open the door to flood the whole Enterprise with radiation!

And notably, neither does Kirk. Oscar isn't given the chance to sacrifice himself — ignoring his choice to try and undermine Salem's forces rather than escaping — so Jaune, Ren, and Yang are deciding that for him. Which, again, makes sense for them emotionally, but it's still a selfish choice. They're prioritizing their family over everyone else's. If someone ever told me they’d risked a whole city for my sake I’d be touched, but also pissed as hell. Because what were you thinking?

Which is really my biggest issue with this divide. It would have been nice if the show had done more to make me believe these three are that ride and die for Oscar. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled that they are and I'll take this characterization over the apathy we had in the past, but let's be real, it kind of came out of nowhere. The group as a whole pretty much ignored Oscar up until the movie invite and two of these characters — Yang and Jaune — have actively hurt him in the name of getting at Ozpin. Now suddenly they're willing to toss aside their huntsmen duties — protect the people — in order to save him? Nice sentiment, it's just that, as always, we have very little development for it, especially given the level of emotion shown. Particularly when it comes to Ren. The prospect of someone sacrificing Nora? I 100% believe that he draws a hard line and this kick-starts a change in his semblance. Ren is shown to be thinking about how he lost his teammate Pyrrha? Totally believe it! Someone is sacrificing the kid I'm not sure he's ever had a conversation with? That's less persuasive. At the very least, it would have been nice to have the trio grapple with whether they can or should prioritize Oscar over everyone else, rather than taking such a black and white stance of, "Of course taking the time to save this one guy while everyone else dies is worth it. You're evil for thinking otherwise."

We even get a shot of Winter's hand shaking and clenching like Yang's used to, just to hammer home who the correct party is.

While they begin this argument we cut to Salem who is literally conducting her grimm in their attack against Atlas.

Very nice. I love when a villain has

Emerald watches her, clearly freaked out, and then sneaks off to where Oscar is held. In the hallway she encounters one of the jellyfish grimm, so she casually makes it not see her until it has passed.

Her semblance works on grimm, but not “real girl” androids? Okay.

We all realize how crazy powerful Emerald is though, right? The stuff that she could do in a fight is staggering and I'll be forever salty that all she managed in the Penny battle was to create a couple different Cinders. Emerald, Marrow, Salem herself... RWBY has a real problem of having the antagonists conveniently not use the power at their disposal when the heroes need to win.

So Emerald starts listening in on Ozpin's torture. We learn that Hazel was recruited when he tried to kill Salem numerous times and had to watch her keep reforming. Which, if I remember correctly, is a technique she used back when she and Ozma were playing at Gods. It worked and now Hazel believes that they "share a vision. She's going to create a new world order," one without Kingdoms or Huntsmen Academies. No, says Ozpin, she's going to divide humanity past reform, summon the Gods, and hopefully die when they take out all of Remnant.

...My god, did we finally get Salem's motivations after seven years?

Seriously though: seven years. It's way too late, especially when we now have so many questions attached to this supposed goal. If Salem always wanted to divide the world irrevocably, why didn't she attack, oh, say, a thousand years ago? Why has she kept to the sidelines until now? None of this answers why she held off until our simple soul was conveniently ready to fight her. We also have the issue of Salem's knowledge, or lack thereof. So she obviously knows about the Relics and that they'll summon the Gods, but not how to work them? How did that come about? Even Ozpin's motivations are murky now. He repeats Salem's curse word-for-word — though notably, minus the "You must learn the importance of life and death. Only then may you rest" part — yet unless Salem told him this herself when they first reunited — and we know they both hid things from the other — Ozpin could have only gotten this line from the lore episode, something he witnessed along with us just a few weeks/months back. So is he only now realizing that this is what Salem wants the Relics for? Might he be wrong? Or did he somehow figure this out lifetimes ago and we're just not told how? If this is the case, why haven’t Salem’s motivations come up before now?

This sudden, "Oh yeah, she's always wanted to die" feels pretty tacked on. Like RT had Salem arrive last Volume because that's ~cool~ and then suddenly realized that they have to deal with her motivations now, so they hastily cobbled this together. But, as said at the start, this is entirely expected for RWBY nowadays. A problem to be sure, though one we've been putting up with for a couple of years now.

During all this, Hazel shouts that this is what Ozpin deserves and the first word out of his mouth is, "Yes."

But Oscar and the rest of Remnant don't deserve it, so make the right choice for them. How did RT think they were going to make this guy an antagonist? Ozpin has so much self-hatred and yet is still trying SO HARD that he makes Ruby Drinking Tea While The World Burns Rose look laughable.

Oh yeah, we'll be getting to that scene in just a second, but for now I just want us all to appreciate Ozpin as a character, even if the story won't.

....

.......

..............

...Okay, moment done lol. Sorry, Oz, there's a lot to cover this episode.

We cut to a semi-conscious Nora who asks Weiss, "Now what am I good for?" So that’s a double serving of oof. That's when Ruby arrives with fine china steaming with tea. Or coffee. Or hot chocolate. Whatever it is these girls are drinking. What comes next is accompanied by a strange kind of vindication for me. I mean, the fandom dragged me so hard for taking issue with their snuggly smiles during Ruby's message, yet now we literally have the girls sitting back in a mansion as everything goes to shit around them. I know the knee jerk reaction to this will be, "They have to watch over Nora" and “They deserve a break” but really? All three of them need to watch her? And a break during the height of the action? Blake says she hopes everyone else is okay, but who is actually out looking for information about the rest of their team? May. Who's going to do something to get Nora help? Whitley. These characters are so good at telling us they're the heroes while rarely ever displaying those traits. They all (somehow) saw the attack on Atlas and have the ability to get out there and defend people — the job they wanted — yet Ruby looks out the window and asks, "What can we even do?" while taking a long sip of tea. The people of Mantle are (supposedly) freezing to death, yet one of the few with aura, Weiss, sits by a roaring fire going, "Do we just wait for someone to come? If they even come.” I'm sorry, you didn't consider this before you told the whole world about Salem? No one questioned whether asking for potentially non-existent help was worth the risk and what they'd do if it never came? Or even just what they’d do in the meantime? I’m not saying the girls can’t have basic necessities like drinks, or that it can’t be done in style when that’s conveniently available. I’m saying them enjoying the food, warmth, and relative safety of the Schnee household (built on racism) while casually talking about what, if anything, they should do for the people dying outside looks a bit Not Good. "Should we wait for the fire department?" Asks the character as their kitchen burns, sitting beside a number of water buckets that could help slow things down. "If they even come," they sigh, taking another sip of tea. This is ridiculous! The city is currently under attack by the series' Big Bad and half our heroes are just sitting around, watching the evil lightning, wondering if they should try to do anything about it.

"How did it all get like this?" Ruby asks her cup, ignoring the many steps she took to make things this bad. It continually boggles my mind that Ironwood is out here trying to keep people safe in the subway, coming up with a plan to blow up this whale, sending out an army to kill countless grimm... yet "What can we even do?" Ruby is supposed to be the hero here. You know, the one who has silver eyes and could one-shot huge numbers of Salem's army if she actually went out there and tried to help.

Ironwood is taking action... and so is May. As said, she's the one out looking for info on their teammates and when she returns says that they should all get back down to Mantle. Why? Because, as mentioned earlier, Atlas at least has an army to help with things. Mantle only has them.

Yet suddenly, Weiss doesn't want to leave.

Where did this come from? They succeeded in their preferred plan of telling the world what's going on over Ren and Yang's plan of helping what people they could, and now they're looking for something to do. Why wouldn't they head back to help? (Especially now that the shields are down.) Weiss yells that there are people dying in Atlas too but, as established, Atlas has the army. And where was this concern when they refused to let Atlas leave? After a Volume and a half of pro-Mantle content, this seems to come out of nowhere. Worse, Weiss tries to guilt May by asking if she has family in Atlas, which leads to the reveal that she's trans. Her family rejected their daughter.

I want to be clear that I'm very happy RT made this canon. For what she is — a side character we know incredibly little about — I really like May and the fact that they were clear in her identity rather than keeping it to twitter deserves recognition. Yet I'm not going to pretend that the reveal didn't leave a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, simply because we have this incredibly privileged cis girl, who knows a great deal about shitty families, hearing how horrible May's was and still trying to tell her she needs to suck it up and help Atlas over Mantle. When May angrily asks whose side she's on, Blake makes a comment about hearing that before, comparing her to Ironwood. May is painted as the misguided one here, but can you imagine if someone told Weiss to go help Jacques over her found family, Team RWBY, regardless of what he's done to her? The fandom would explode, and rightly so. There's something to be said for realism here, showing us Weiss and Blake's inability to see where May is coming from... but it doesn't feel like a commentary on that. It feels like another Penny situation: May is put in her place for being inconsiderate, even though this time it's her choosing to help people who are ALSO in danger over the people who represent family she's broken with.

I wanted conflict this Volume and I absolutely got it, but damn if it isn’t badly thought out at times.

Because rather than grappling with these personal motivations, Ruby brushes them aside by yelling, "There are no sides! We want to help everyone."

Does that extend to Ironwood? Ruby's speeches started falling flat when she betrayed Ozpin, attacked Cordovin, betrayed Ironwood, attacked the Ace Ops... This girl does not want to "help everyone." She wants to help those who agree with her.

Yet her rock solid optimism generates the question, “So how exactly do we get out of it?” which, as expected, Ruby has no answer to. The story keeps showing us how bad a leader Ruby has become, yet no one is actively responding to that. They kinda disagree about lying to Ironwood, but still go along with it. Yang kinda criticizes her sister, but that's then lost to general worry as they split (on Ruby's end, anyway). They want to know how she'll lead them next and are seemingly fine when Ruby continually says, "I don't know." At this point I'd be like, "Well... you didn't like May's plan of going back to Mantle, but apparently can't come up with a plan yourself... so I'm going to go with her."

This is the same conflict we had last Volume: Ruby spoke optimistically about saving everyone, yet was unable to come up with a way to do that. Ironwood had a plan that, while horrific, might save a lot of lives. Yet Ruby is presented as the one to back. Now here she is, hours later, still unable to figure out a way to achieve her perfect outcome. Ruby wanting things to be a certain way is not going to make them so and I’m wondering when someone within the group is going to recognize and act on that.

As Ruby fails to answer this crucial question, we pull back to see Whitley listening in at the door.

Cutting back to Ozpin and Oscar, Hazel has listened to all this craziness about Gods, immortality, the destruction of Remnant... and literally goes, "Cool story, bro."

Okay, he says "Nice story" but the emotion is the same. Which I'm really happy about! I mentioned in a recent post that, as far as we know, Hazel hasn't been told anything about the Gods up until now. What Ozpin is telling him sounds like gibberish at worst, incredibly hard to believe craziness at best. Now chuck in Mercury's point that as a tortured prisoner he'll say anything to get free, as well as the fact that this is Ozpin talking to Hazel... and I'm really glad Hazel just ignored his speech (for now at least). It wouldn't make sense otherwise. Granted, this means that the plan literally amounted to, “Let’s info dump a bunch of nonsense-sounding lore on our enemy in the hope that he’ll believe us and betray Salem.” It’s something to try, certainly, and it admittedly is a much better plan than what Oscar is about to cook up.

So since Hazel won't listen to Ozpin, Oscar wants to try instead. Why did you two switch in the first place? It's really obvious that RT is having the characters do weird things in order to stretch out the plot.

Either way, our farm boy is in control again. What new strategy will he try?

"Her name is Jinn."

This is BEYOND stupid. No, none of this "You have to trust people" nonsense. This is not “people,” this is Hazel. There is a Grand Canyon's width of difference between learning to trust your allies and blindly trusting an active villain who just rejected your "Please defect :(" speech. Even if we remove Hazel from the equation, this is still a monumentally foolish move. I mean, has Oscar considered where he is? This isn't some random warehouse he's been taken to, this is a semi-sentient grimm, a creature creating other creatures out of its ceiling

and whose doors automatically open when people need them to (Mercury). This is a living being created by and connected to Salem herself. How does Oscar know Salem can't hear everything he says? Or that the whale can't relay information to her? That the grimm in the walls won't pop out and run to their master? Or even that a normal person isn't listening in at the door — like Emerald is. If that had been Tyrian instead, that's it. They're done. Game over.

Someone: "Wow. Salem got the Lamp and managed to ask where the Beacon Relic is. Since the school is still overrun by her army, she snatched it up quick, finished destroying Atlas, and is now on her way to Vacuo. She's nearly completed her plan in days! How did all this happen?

Oscar: I, um... told her what she wanted to know?

Someone: You what?

Oscar: But not Salem! I just told Hazel! ... and then the information somehow got back to her.

Someone: "Somehow?" You deliberately told one of Salem's henchmen this crucial piece of information, in a place where there was a good chance you would be overheard by conventional or magical means, and you're surprised that she "somehow" learned it and used that information to doom us all?

Oscar: ...Yes?

This is so staggeringly stupid it... well, it could only have been done by a kid. So at least that fits lol. Oscar, I love you, but Ozpin should have been screaming in horror the second those words left your mouth. Generations of precautions undone because a kid wants to believe the best of the guy currently pummeling him. Sweet, but stupid. I’m all for optimistic characters, they just can’t risk the whole world on that optimism. Oscar risking himself on the seemingly doomed plan to turn Hazel is one thing, Oscar risking all of Remnant on the seemingly doomed plan to turn Hazel is another thing entirely.

Even though you know this is precisely how the story will go. Oscar willingly hands over Jinn's name to Salem's forces, but happily none of the THREE who hear about it will tell her. The story's unwillingness to follow through on consequences doesn't change what a bad move this was. I mean, Oscar himself accused Ironwood of playing into Salem's hands by disagreeing with them about how to not die, yet a few hours later he will willingly give Hazel the one piece of information Salem needs to move closer to world-wide destruction? That's uh... well, that's something.

They should have just had the poor boy be tortured, spill the beans to make it stop, and start an arc of self-forgiveness. Oscar can be awesome without coming up with world-dooming plans.

So yeah, Oscar is hoping that Hazel will use the Lamp himself and find out the truth. He wants Hazel to trust him and the man he despises most in the world enough to go against the immortal woman he's terrified of, get the Lamp away from her somehow to use for himself, wasting a once in a generation question to confirm all this, so that Salem will lose a guy with muscle who, to be frank, is absolute insignificant in the grand scheme of her power. Fantastic.

As said, Emerald overhears all this and immediately runs to Mercury, who is less than convinced by her "Salem wants to destroy the world" talk. Just as he's expressing doubt, Tyrian appears to confirm that this is exactly what she wants to do — and he's loving it.

“Of course she is! You’re surprised? Salem is destruction incarnate!”

It's a legit point. Are our villains so dense they never considered that Salem might do something to the world they didn't like? It's like the group not thinking about how Salem is still around if Ozpin has been fighting her for a thousand years. RWBY continually gives the impression that these characters don't think about their situation past what they're doing at any given moment.

Tyrian maintains his title as best villain though, simply because I understand what he's doing, why he's doing it, and he's so damn good at it.

Also, can we appreciate Mercury's face here?

Amazing. This is the kind of humor we should be getting in such a tragedy-laden Volume.

The two of them, Tyrian and Mercury, head off to Vacuo for the Secret Mission, despite Mercury's newfound hesitation. I quite liked these quiet moments between him and Emerald. It has a very "Do what you've gotta do" vibe while showcasing their care for one another, something we haven't seen in a while.

Back with the airship group. YJR are still horrified that Ironwood would blow up Oscar (even though he has no idea Oscar is there), begging the Ace Ops to give them "a chance to try to rescue him first.” Ren goes pretty hard on the "no one is replaceable" bit, which is frustrating not being what he’s saying is inaccurate (it’s not), but because that's not the issue here. The writing has Harriet start yelling about Marrow replacing her old teammate and Winter replacing Clover, but the question is not whether you'll just forget a teammate and move on with someone new, but whether you're willing to sacrifice them for the greater good. That's the stance: Should we sacrifice one life to save thousands? Will you, as a protector of the people, put those people before your own found family? Yet what RT has Harriet say is: Oscar is replaceable. Which obviously makes her come across as an ass. Like the random soldier questioning Ironwood — or making Elm about to punch a defenseless Ren in her anger — it exists solely to show how bad these character are... even as they say pretty persuasive things.

The writing also continues to be confused about whether the Ace Ops are friends or not. Yang certainly didn't think so... up until she asks (rhetorically) whether Marrow would sacrifice himself for Elm, Harriet, and Vine. Since their introduction, the story has loudly insisted that the Ace Ops aren't friends... up until it's revealed ("revealed") that Harriet is actually gutted about Clover. So which is it? Are we supposed to believe that these are cold soldiers who only work together out of duty, or that they're a team who clearly love one another? I'd say that show has shown us the latter, but it doesn't seem to understand what point it's trying to make. Does this look like a soldier who doesn’t care?

It’s especially weird when Ren again makes the claim that this is why they lost to Team RWBY. Because they're not a team.

...So is this why they did such a fantastic job fighting the geist, demonstrating such perfect teamwork that the group was open-mouthed impressed? Is this why they nearly took down a Maiden together? Is this why Ren, while furious at Yang and Jaune, was still able to work seamlessly with them to try and rescue Oscar? Do we think if Yang was suddenly beside Ruby again that the two would fail spectacularly in a fight because they had a minor disagreement?

This is now the third time RT has tried to excuse nerfing the Ace Ops with, "They disagree about things and are thus not friends and thus can't fight well together" — despite all evidence to the contrary — and it's getting really old.

At one point Harriet tells Ren, "I had you pegged as the most level-headed of the bunch, but I guess you’re just as naïve" which, ignoring her then random claim that people are replaceable, is correct. I also pegged Ren as the most level-headed of the bunch considering he was just yelling at Yang for how much damage they've caused, all the mistakes they've made, and that maybe — just maybe — they should have tried harder to work with Ironwood. Yet now here he is, in a position to start that process, and the Ren we got in the snow is simply gone. He's fully Team Yang and Jaune again, facing off against the evil Ace Ops.

I knew this was going to happen, but it's still disappointing. The story gave Ren a great speech to appease those of us frustrated with the direction the story has taken... and now we’re back to ignoring that. Ren was told off for daring to question how great the group is, apparently thought it over in the snow, and is now of the opinion that yes, they are that great. People are going to die because of us? Who cares about that anymore! We will absolutely, single-handedly rescue Oscar and there's no reason why this might be a questionable choice when an entire city is on the line. Again, emotionally understandable (if we buy into the group suddenly loving Oscar this much), but it rings hollow right after making Ren the one person who was willing to look at the big picture.

Good news though: Jaune got the braincell this week! He suggests that they go in to try and rescue Oscar/provide intel, but won't stop the Ace Ops from launching the bomb when necessary.

See, this is heroic. This is what the group should have done during the Mantle conflict: Volunteering to take the personal risk of facing off against Salem while letting Atlas try to escape. Basically, not forcing everyone else to risk their lives for their pipe dream, which is what Ren and Yang want by rejecting the bomb entirely. Jaune recognizes here that they can't prioritize Oscar over an entire city, but also that they may still be able to save him before the bomb is complete and ready to go. So they compromise, with JYR the only ones at risk.

Good job, Jaune!

Winter agrees to this plan with a firm, "I outrank you" to Harriet. People are going to love that.

Oh, but in his anger Ren's semblance suddenly changes. So we're back to the ridiculous.

Truthfully, I like this direction. Granted, I would have liked some buildup to it, especially since this is the second time this Volume that RWBY has dropped a major semblance change on us, but the idea itself is really cool. Ren can now see emotions! Awesome! And I don't mean that sarcastically. I actually think that’s a neat extension of his original semblance.

Too bad the story seems to think he's a mind reader.

Seriously, take a look back at the dialogue. What Ren sees are confetti-like petals floating around a person, their color seeming to determine their emotional state. Red means Harriet is mad, blue is sadness for Marrow, etc. But what Ren ends up saying is a great deal closer to mind reading. Harriet is angry about Clover and is gutted at his loss. Marrow is questioning his place here and wants to leave. These aren't base emotions, they're targeted thoughts and feelings about situations not immediately apparent from the verbal conversation. “In fact, you don’t want to be a part of it at all anymore." How does Ren know that? They just gave him telepathy instead of the cool power with firm limitations that the imagery suggests.

There are also some, uh... iffy implications in all this. For example, Ren allows Yang privacy by not reading her mind emotional state, but has no qualms about reading every one of the Ace Ops’. So privacy is only for the people you care about, huh?

We could also say something about RT perpetuating unfortunate racial stereotypes: the two women of color are pure anger, the marginalized man is pure sadness, the Asian coded character is pure calm... and the white woman set to turn against the others gets a mix of all emotions. AKA, human complexity.

To be clear, I don't think RT is doing this deliberately. Rather, they’re writers who have demonstrated time and time again that they don't have a good handle on depicting the sort of sensitive material that RWBY is infused with, and that extends to the mild, but still unfortunate, implications in scenes like this. Even if we ignore the iffy details — a benefit of the doubt that, at this point, many fans aren’t willing to grant — we're still left with the continuity errors. Visually, we're presented with a woman who is experiencing multiple emotions at once and is, therefore, torn. Yet Ren reads Winter definitively: "I know you [don't want this] either." It's yet another moment that makes me wonder how much communication there is between the writers and the animators, because too often the two seem to be at odds with each other.

As the group prepares to go into the belly of the beast (literally!) we return to Ruby who is, once again, failing to make me believe she's this super compassionate person.

“Wait! What about Qrow and Robyn? Maybe if we get them out of wherever they’re held—”

Please tell me I'm not the only one who took issue with this? Ruby doesn't express an ounce of worry for her uncle, not even when she learns he's been arrested, and the one time she brings him up it's in the context of what he can do for them in this fight? Ruby doesn't grapple with whether to rescue her uncle (personal desire), or get the message to the world (her version of the heroic action) and then realize that, now that her duty is done, she can finally turn to the more selfish act of helping her immediate family. Instead, Ruby seems perfectly happy to let Qrow stay in prison up until she's unsure what to do next and thinks that maybe he has the answer. Heaven forbid Ruby think about rescuing him because she loves him.

Sadly, this Ruby is long gone.

In recent years she's expressed no gratitude for him saving her life, no respect for him as her teacher, demonstrated incredibly little compassion for his own struggles, and outright told him that if he wasn't going to listen to her then he doesn't need to be part of the team. Then he's arrested and she doesn't care until she deems him useful again. Like the fandom wondering where the sisterly bond between Ruby and Yang went, I'm likewise wondering where the bond between Ruby and Qrow went.

May outright rejects this though, yelling that they still don't get it. “This is not a situation where everyone wins!"

She tells the trio they have to choose for once: Are you going to help Mantle, or Atlas?

...which means there's immediately a knock at the door, interrupting the moment where they have to decide.

See, this is just like Ren. The story keeps giving us moments where characters speak absolute truth, dangling the potential for the group to grow from these realizations... only to pull back before it goes anywhere. Ren is once again aligned with Yang and Jaune in their desire to save Oscar. May's demand is interrupted by the plot. If means nothing to give us these moments unless the story acts on them.

It's Klein at the door. Whitley called him to help with Nora because I guess he's a doctor now, as well as a butler? Fine. Let’s run with it. Weiss is super pleased to see him and hugs Whitley for the good deed.

Why so shocked that Whitley would look out for another, Weiss? Could it be because he's had so little reason to be kind when everyone, including you, has treated him horribly? If Klein always had these medical skills — if you’ve grown up with a doctor — why didn’t you talk to your brother and ask if he knew how to contact him? And of course, she apologizes to Klein for her father’s actions, but not to Whitley for her own. Whitley's surprise isn't cute to me.

Weiss stuck a weapon in his face, insulted him, sent him to his room like a toddler... and now is randomly hugging him because he did something she liked. The context of this scene doesn't paint Weiss in a good light. Like the rest of her friends, she only extends basic respect and kindness towards others when they're assisting her. Whitley was nothing to her until he suddenly proved himself useful. That's not cute sibling love, it's a love that's going to run out the moment Whitley puts a toe out of line, according to Weiss' unspoken list of what behavior keeps him in her good graces.

I believe that Klein cares for Whitley because he greets him kindly and gives him that shoulder pat on the way up. Whitley didn't need to first prove himself to Klein somehow and Klein didn't start this interaction by shoving a gun in Whitley's face, just in case he wouldn't let him through the door. They feel more like family than this hug does.

So yeah, Whitley and May have done more good this episode than our entire main cast. How about we just make this story about the side characters instead?

We then hear a massive boom and the group runs out to find a crater. Penny has landed in front of the manor, which is pretty convenient considering we saw her pass out as she fell.

She's somehow still in control despite the hack and apologizes to Ruby, then falls unconscious (again).

And that's where we end! Definitely a cliffhanger, though a rather underwhelming one considering we already knew Penny was in serious trouble. As said at the start, this episode felt rather underwhelming to me, especially as a halfway point before a hiatus, and compared to some of the stuff we've seen previously. It's not bad per-se — especially if we ignore the issues that have been around for an age now, which is most of what this recap deals with — it's just not terribly exciting either. Everything of importance — Salem's attack, Oscar's rescue, Penny's demise, subordinates turning, Nora's condition, etc. — had already been established in previous episodes and very little of it moved forward. Ren's semblance is the only thing the episode gave us that we couldn't have (generically) guessed for ourselves between last Saturday and now.

So yeah, underwhelmed is the mood of the day, with a hefty dose of salt for everything that continues to be a story-breaking problem in this show. I will say though that, as has become the trend for this Volume, all the establishing shots are gorgeous. RWBY is, at the very least, pretty to look at.

As a final note, in lieu of the Bingo board (since, again, not a whole happens plot-wise) I want to point out something mentioned by a friend: how absolutely bonkers our timeline is now. We began the second day last episode with the sun rising (recall that Jaune had tried to sleep that night at the outpost. So it’s definitely sunrise as opposed to sunset).

And we re-confirm that it’s sunrise at the start of this episode.

Yet throughout the episode many of our shots take place at night (note the stars behind the trio).

These moments with Ruby can't take place in the past because they're talking about the attack, an attack that only happened after Jaune's group met up with the Ace Ops and the geyser attacked — during early morning. I doubt I'm supposed to believe that it has been another full day of Salem starting an attack, a full day for the group to fly to the whale, a full day for Penny to fall, a full day which would put us at the end of the Volume’s timeline at only the halfway point... so I think RT is just going for the aesthetic of night shots without thinking about what that does to the continuity. It's a mess.

Not the highest praise to end on, but I’m working with what I’ve got lol. I feel as naïve as Oscar when I say that maybe Part II will be better.

I will, of course, see you all in six weeks. Until then, I'll do my best to catch up on asks. Another doomed endeavor, but one can try!

A very Happy Holidays to all of you who celebrate and, as always, thanks so much for reading! 💜

[Ko-Fi]

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #rwby recaps #rwby war #mymetas

94 notes · View notes

jaynovz · 3 years

Note

tell us more abt the hannibal and black sails parallels pls

Okay, first off, I am so sorry this took so long!! I’ve been moving and shit has been so busy.

Second, yay!! This question. Now I have an excuse to ramble.

Okay so, the two shows do have a lot of similarities. The big one you notice right off the bat is that both have an extremely codependent relationship at the center.

There are a ton of ways the Flint-Silver and Hannibal-Will relationships parallel, like, they both talk about melding minds with another person, being monstrous, reveling in being monstrous, being made complete by an unlikely source, personas/playing roles/person suits, knowing yourself more completely next to another person, darkness as a source of freedom, something beyond choice/being drawn inexorably into a person’s destructive orbit and being forever changed by it. They deal with the nature of truth, both have supernatural elements, both have religious imagery connected to one half of the ship (Flint and Hannibal both compared to god).

Also, both shows end with an impossible choice and, ostensibly, tragedy; and they both have open endings that are interpretable based on what you want to believe.

But at a certain point, the similarities end and the two shows veer off from each other. Namely, the dynamics between the two ships are fundamentally different in a lot of ways, and it's more interesting to look at the ways in which they don't parallel. At the end of the day, the biggest one is that Silverflint is not anywhere near as destructive, whereas for Hannigram, mutual self-destruction is sort of the name of the game. Silverflint may be as codependent but I think the important addition of either Madi or Thomas or (ideally) both, helps make the relationship a lot healthier. If they would actually just talk to each other and work some shit out, it could be great. This is of course contingent on whether you think one or the other could compromise. (The compromise being that they come to some middle ground between Flint giving up the big picture Cause for personal happiness, or Silver throwing in genuinely with the idea of revolution and it being worth the risk of the people most important to him.) The end tragedy of Black Sails sets us in a spot where it doesn’t seem like either Flint or Silver are willing to do so, but perhaps one or the other could grow and change (with helpful mediation, as stated.)

Whereas Hannigram, well. It’s rooted from the very beginning in gaslighting, manipulation, and a completely skewed power balance. It’s absolutely like, this person has done so much bad shit to you, they’ve killed people you love, they’ve sent people to kill you, they’ve lied to you, isolated you, made you fundamentally doubt what kind of person you are etc. But still, you literally can’t cut them out of your life because nothing is ever going to compare to the experience of having them around even if it’s, most often, largely a negative influence. Like, damn. So dark, so unhealthy. They’re the zero-sum game.

For Will it’s: you love this terrible, terrible thing and you hate yourself for loving it, but also can’t deny it and it makes you feel alive. And for Hannibal, Will’s really the only person who can understand and accept him, but also is uniquely positioned to be able to lie to him, manipulate him in return, and be his utter ruin. They both tried to cut each other out and it didn’t work. So, can’t live with him and can’t live without him. That’s why we end with a cliff dive (impossible choice), Will can’t abide the thought that this thing that is objectively terrible, this ugly thing, is the thing he wants desperately, but he also can’t give it up. So it’s like, “let me try to do my last little bit to society by throwing both our asses off of this cliff b/c we’re both terrible.” Will is so interesting b/c he is at all times living in both the dark and the light and has trouble reconciling these opposing drives. It’s a function of his magic empathy.

(I think they’re metaphorical cliffs also b/c like.... there are no cliffs in Maryland jsyk. What is it with these shows that I like and Metaphorical Cliffs. Edit: I have been corrected there are some cliffs in Maryland but they're not as absurdly high as the ones in Hannibal.)

Anyway, let’s do the one-to-one and talk about Empathy and my Mirrorball boys first. Silver and Will are both extremely good at reading people, seeing what they most need to be, and shapeshifting into it. They both have the ability to shrug on different personas as easy as changing clothes. HOWEVER, the way in which they view this ability is very different. For Will, it’s a curse, he literally cannot turn it off, can’t stop himself from doing it, and it torments him. And I think for Silver, he also does it unconsciously and can’t help himself, but it’s not a torment in the same way. It’s rooted in survival and is an acquired skill that a very intelligent mind learned in order to stay alive. Though I would say they could commiserate on their mirrorball tendencies getting them into trouble/in over their heads.

As for Flint and Hannibal parallels? Well Hannibal is the unrepentant monster who revels in wickedness and largely views the rest of humanity as inferior. He’s having an absolutely excellent time murdering and cannibalizing folks, and the only real thorn in his side is Will Graham and his inability to kill Will b/c Hannibal loves him.

I think Hannibal is the absolute beast that Flint fears himself to be. And though both are presented as the “destructive orbit” or “intoxicating presence” and both perpetrate great violence... well they’re on opposite ends of the spectrum as far as how they view those behaviors. Flint is drowning in guilt constantly, hates that he has to be this monster, the persona of the dread pirate Captain, and that he’s losing more and more of his humanity every time he does some heinous shit. Whereas Hannibal is a “happy little duckling,” literally feels zero guilt about his heinous acts. Hannibal’s playacting a real man in a lot of ways while Flint is playacting a monster. So, Flint wears a monster suit and Hannibal wears a person suit.

Anyway, I could go on and on about this. The way they use supernatural elements, the way characters embed multiple meanings in subtextual dialogue, how well quotes from Silverflint can transfer to Hannigram and vice versa. Oh the way each show deals with like, queer issues, disability issues. etc etc ad infinitum

But I’ll let this be it for now, lol. If you wanna hear me ramble more, let me know~

THANKS AGAIN FOR ASKING.

#fictionandmusic #thoughts #hannibal #black sails #hannibal spoilers #black sails spoilers #hannibal/blacksails

30 notes · View notes

centrally-unplanned · 3 years

Text

(Spoilers ahead) Partner and I finished Season 2 of the Fruits Basket modern remake this weekend. I had only seen the, uh, 2001 original anime (2001? It was 20 years ago? Fuck), with no exposure to the manga, so a lot of the plot elements were new to me. I liked a lot of the show, but I have some big complaints about it handles its villain, Akito:

1: Akito occupies a very awkward place in this story. He (don’t worry, ill get to that) is the head of the main crew’s family and constantly inflicts abuse on all of its members, and is therefore the source of conflict for the plot, both in past trauma and present attempts as control and gaslighting.

Okay, so stories often have to walk a tightrope with abusive characters like this. Stories are normally pushed along and resolved internally - the main cast is going to experience the pain and drama, and fix it themselves, because that is the arc. For many plots that is easy, but if the story revolves around an abusive sibling/parent figure like Fruits Basket does, you will always be asking yourself the question “uh, why doesn’t anyone call the cops? or why don’t they just leave?” There is a tension between realism in the setting and the needs of the plot.

You can in fact resolve this tension in a lot of ways. If the abuse is primarily mental, slowly building, inflicted out of sight of responsible parties, etc, you can make this work. Lots of people don’t report abuse to authorities, or just move out of their house, but instead deal with it due to it being normalized. Other ways include making the characters teenagers - they don’t think of the world as having authorities outside of family (or school) and its much harder for them to reach outside of that bubble - the classic highschool bully problem. So Akito can work if he is subtle, slowly ramps, and controls his surroundings to hide his abuse from relevant authorities.

Anyway here is Akito pushing a 17 year old girl out of a two story window shattering her back and hospitalizing her for months:

And here he is threatening a 17 year old boy with life confinement in a literal cage unless he, uh, wins a duel with his cousin?

These are the worst moments but they are far from alone. This person is a raving lunatic, which fair enough that the 17 year olds don’t know how to handle that, but Akito himself is no older than 20. And the cast of characters who know everything that is going on includes:

-27 year old *published author* Shigure, who directly cares for both Akito and two of his abuse victims

-27 year old completely-independent business owner, Ayame, who is the *brother* of one of the abuse victims

-27 year old licensed medical doctor Hatori, who lives with and is the physician of Akito.

Hatori is violating every ethical obligation of his profession on the daily, dude is stone cold! This again could work if these characters were bad guys, but they aren’t - they are sympathetic protagonists or in Aya’s case even comic relief! The show wants you to think they are doing their best, Shigure even has a secret “plan” to deal with Akito that he has been planning for *years* and they all have "reasons” why they feel stuck due to the Zodiac curse yadda yadda. But you have to memory hole the fact that they are functioning adults in 21st century Japan, because otherwise Shigure and Hatori in particular reach levels of negligence to the children they care for that it tips right on over into being evil itself.

These kids go to public school, guys!

Now I know what any defender would say - “its the curse!” The whole cast carries the curse of the Zodiac where God invited them in long-ago times to a dinner, Akito is the current manifestation of that God in some form, and so they are bound to him to enact that “dinner” metaphorically in some way by staying by his side (also they transform into their respective Zodiac animals when chest-on-chest contact occur from the opposite sex, because Anime). Again, you can make this work! Show Akito exerting a magical force on characters who stray too far from him, or a compulsion locking them to being forever near the Sohma estate where he lives. Something showing that yeah, the relevant authorities could not handle this and dragging Akito away in chains won’t work. But sadly the show just...doesn’t bother. There is a “curse” but we are two seasons in and any negative consequences of the curse beyond Akito Being An Asshole are Footage Not Found (Kyo is an exception, but not a relevant one), despite everyone pretending like there is. Everyone wants to break the curse? Fine, kill Akito. Then you all get to live in peace and transform into adorable animals when you’d like, curse broken. Just throw “doesn’t cuddle or do missionary position” on your OkCupid profile to make your love life work, no one is gonna bat an eye, and some people will be, lets say, readily down with your particular transformation fetish.

None of this is fatal to the show per se, you can suspend disbelief. But the show takes itself so seriously that you can’t help but think these thoughts, and it colors in particular how the older characters act. And it would be so easy to fix! They just didn’t bother.

2: Can someone explain to me, in the year of our Zodiac Lord 2021, how a character secretly being a girl is a “surprise reveal” worth ending a season on? The final shot of Season 2 is that our resident asshole Akito has some female-presenting nipples, which is apparently a Big Deal? (maybe the show takes place on Tumblr, *zing*) Its the villain, they are an abusive maniac and also metaphorically/actually a divine being. Why does doubling their X chromosome count affect or change anything? I can envision plots where that is relevant, but this was not one! Maybe the next season will build that into the arc, but they haven’t done that yet, so the moment itself falls incredibly flat.

Yet people obviously feel differently from me - as is my habit I checked the reddit threads for the final episode and they are replete with people commenting on how shocking a twist it was, how they looked forward to it as manga readers, etc. Its a classic suspense trick I think, of how you can just have an event be surprising without it being thematically relevant, and it will work as long as you add the right drama bells around it. This was just a pretty egregious example of it.

-----

Between these problems, Fruits Basket has this aura of laziness around its none-core characters that does drag it down. Which is sad since I do actually like how it treats its core cast, even if it is stretched out over twice as many episodes as it needs. I am just guessing here, but beyond just “not caring” and doing it for the drama, I think it stems out of adapting the manga “faithfully”.

So Fruits Basket got an anime adaption in 2001, and the author (Natsuki Tayaka) haaaaated it. It was only twenty six episodes, a ~third of which got consumed just introducing the zodiac cast, so its plot had to be mixed around and truncated, and it was much more comedic and zany in tone. It was still very popular, so demand for a “better” adaptation of the full manga was high, which eventually happened in 2019. This time around Tayaka insisted on a high degree of control and faithfulness - I would bet it was essentially a “shot for shot” adaptation, and I have seen manga/anime comparison compilations to that effect.

The problem lies in how manga are made - they are almost never planned out start to finish. You pitch like a chapter, it gets picked up, and then its being published in tandem to its own production. That means that its pretty rare for the ending to be thought out, and the story figures itself out as it goes. Early manga Fruits Basket is pretty zany! Which means it plays fast and loose with its worldbuilding and its adult characters act silly most of the time. Once the high drama kicks in you realize that doesn’t work anymore, but you have already published it all months ago, no way to revise it now, so you just have to bite the bullet.

An anime adaptation would be a good time to clean that up! Its what Kare Kano did - a manga that starts as a cute highschool romcom and ends in sexual assault, for the anime they tried to create tonal consistency right from the start and change plot details around accordingly. But when the author, burned by a past studio, insists on Complete Accuracy...well then the anime has to bite the same bullets the manga did. And so you get Fruits Basket (2019), a show destined to never rise above its source material.

But hey, if Season 3 ends with Tohru just whipping out a gun, shooting Akito right between the eyes, and walking off into the sunset with a harem of zodiac hotties, then all will be forgiven.

#fruits basket #Fruits basket spoilers #Does a 2001 anime qualify as '90's anime discourse'?

42 notes · View notes

im-the-king-of-the-ocean · 4 years

Text

Coming Home

I recognize that the finale will probably give us an entirely different plot line with Eda, but I have A LOT OF EMOTIONS ABOUT THAT LAST EPISODE OKAY, and needed to write something, so here we are.

Or Eda’s perspective of being trapped by her curse, and then getting out.

Eda always knew, if she became the owl beast permanently, whatever would be left of her would be trapped in the gray mindscape she tends to visit when the curse overpowers her. What she didn’t know, up to now, was how boring it would be. She’s just sort of here, wherever here is. Sure, it’s most likely her mind, but it irks Eda that her mind is this dull, though. She’d think she’d have a lot more interesting things going on in here. At least before she’d had the recurring memory of when she was cursed. Even that isn’t coming to her now. Not that Eda wants to think about it, about Lilith. She just…she wants something.

Something to ground her in this endless gray. Eda can ‘walk’ in any direction and feel like she’s going somewhere and nowhere at the same time. She can look at her hand and consider it both close to her and far away. Eda’s perception of reality is skewed, warped. She’s both conscious and not. She hates this feeling. Having enough awareness to know she still exists, but not enough to truly be anything.

Eda is fading away. She knows this in a calm, accepting sort of way her old self, the one who existed back in the physical world, would never tolerate. If she’s anything right now, it’s merely a phantom projection of that self. The last vestiges that refuse to let go before the curse consumes every corner of her mind and Eda as she was is finally no more.

She’s not really Eda anymore anyway, is she? Not Edalyn Clawthorne. Not the Owl Lady. Not anything. Just a ghost, a lingering memory. Will the owl beast remember her? Doubtful. She never had any awareness of what the beast did when it was in control—only the terror of those who witnessed its carnage afterwards. The memories of fearful faces of former friends comes back to her for a brief second. A moment to be sad, and a little relieved. No one will mourn her. After all, there were reasons she lived alone in a secluded house in the woods.

The thought that that’s not quite right struggles for her drifting attention. The details are blurred shapes she can’t quite focus on long enough to recall.

There had been a reason for all this, hadn’t there? A strong emotion for something—someone?—outside herself. She can’t describe it, but she knows it. There was something and, whatever it was, it drove her to pushing beyond the breaking point, to where the curse could fully exert its control.

She doesn’t regret it, is what she assumes her last cognizant thought will be. Even though this is her fate, she doesn’t feel remorse. Whoever it was, was too important to her.

It’s comforting, in this final moment, to know she had something worth sacrificing everything for.

Hooo.

And then there’s an owl. Sitting on her knee. A vibrant splash of brown and gold disrupting the endless gray monochrome. Her focus is caught on it, stuck on the only thing that can differentiate itself from the miasma.

Hooo.

The owl spreads its wings. Small, cute, familiar. She can’t place how, but she knows the little creature. It circles around her once, twice, and then starts flying in a direction. Entranced, she follows it. This time, when she walks, she feels like she’s going toward something.

She arrives at a door. Its details blur and meander, but eventually settle into a design. Soft wooden features. What looks like two spy holes over the backside of an owl—owls seems to be a recurring thing now. Vaguely she wonders why. It feels important, that there are owls.

There’s a long door handle. She looks at it, blinks at it, and then realizes she can reach out and take hold of it. She does. It feels heavy. So heavy. Impossibly heavy.

The owl that led her here—Owlbert—coos comfortingly in her ear. She can do this. It’s just a door. She can open it. She’s opened lots of doors before, hasn’t she?

She pulls. The door resists. She pulls harder. The door doesn’t budge. She wraps both hands on the handle, hopes they don’t pop off as they occasionally do, and yanks. The door jerks open. She’s sucked beyond, plunged into an abyssal unknown.

“HOOT HOOT! HEY EDA, YOU’RE BACK!!!”

The sky is above her. Her head throbs with the worst imaginable headache. Hooty is yelling obnoxiously. Eda groans. She’s going to lie here, wherever ‘here’ is, for the rest of her life. Everything hurts.

“Eda!” She’s being squeezed. A set of arms wrapped too tightly around her. A body pressed against her own. Soft, muffled sobs soaking her tattered dress. “I thought…I thought…” Luz clings to her, as if letting her go will mean Eda will slip away again.

It takes Eda’s brain some time to catch up. She’s out. She’s not sure how exactly, but she’s escaped her mind. Either that, or this is the afterlife, but if this were the afterlife, Luz wouldn’t be crying. Granted, it seems to be a relieved, joyful sort of crying, but still. Eda wants no part of any afterlife that causes her apprentice to cry.

“Uughghgh…” Eda’s first attempt to vocalize start and end with her jaw forgetting how its supposed to function. She moves her mouth around, adjusting to the feeling of having a defined, physical presence again, and then tries speaking a second time. “W—what happened?”

Luz relaxes her tight hold on Eda, sits back, and looks up into the Owl Lady’s face. She wipes tears out of her eyes. “We rescued you and Owlbert, but we couldn’t get you to turn back. Then Owlbert went and got the Bat Queen.” Luz gestures to where the massive demon is watching them from a distance. “They did a palisman magic thing and went in your head I think? I’m not sure. Then you changed back.”

“Oh,” is all Eda can say.

“Curse is not gone for good,” The Bat Queen speaks up. “More must be done to prevent it from coming back.” She pauses and dips her head in a slight bow. “But help I am willing to give to Owl Lady.”

Eda nods. She’s having trouble keeping up. Words of her own will have to wait.

“Hey, Luz, I got the blankets. Do you think she’ll want some twigs too? You know, cause she sleeps in a nest and if she’s stuck like—EDDDDAAAA!” King drops everything he’s carried out of the house, charges forward, ducks under one of Luz’s arms, and slams into Eda. His tiny limbs can’t fully wrap around her, but he holds her tight regardless. “I—Luz was so worried you wouldn’t be back this time!” He buries his face against her stomach, careful to keep his horns pointed away.

Eda wraps one arm around King. The other she uses to draw Luz back in closer. She hugs them both tightly. They’re real and present and solid, and she’s here with them. Owlbert lands on her shoulder and nestles against her neck. Hooty stretches down, squirming his way into group embrace where he can.

“Thank you,” Eda whispers, “for bringing me home.”

For being my home.

#the owl house #eda the owl lady #edalyn clawthorne #luz noceda #toh king #toh owlbert #whirls writing

96 notes · View notes

lushthemagicdragon · 3 years

Text

On Deadpool, WandaVision and Breaking the Fourth Wall

Hey pals, let’s talk about breaking the fourth wall / extrapolation of meta information in multiverse universes--say, the Marvel cinematic vs the xmen films vs the comics. Actually, let’s talk specifically about the Marvel multiverse.

I wrote you an essay, just go under the cut it’s shiny.

As a general rule, suspension of disbelief works better on paper than it does on video. Heroes was an excellent example of this problem. This was the first time TV show was made directly based on a comic book format, trying to emulate a comic book format. The ship sank when they tried to keep comic book pace, and to play by similar rules. Long story short, this is because the way our brains consume literature and comics is different from how we consume photographic media like movies or tv. Video, like photography, convinces the brain that it's depicting reality even when we logically know that it isn’t. Therefore, unless the rules of the video/TV world are well established as being different from our own, we apply to it our own real-world understandings of what is possible. We are able to follow the fantastic more willingly when we're imagining it (because we’re reading it) instead of seeing it with our senses.

Breaking the fourth wall and/or being self-referential is extremely tricky on video media because you're forcing the audience's brain to acknowledge that this is fiction, which can cause some cognitive dissonance if the goal of your show/movie is to create second world immersion. Sitcoms are good at breaking the fourth wall because, with laugh tracks, live studio audiences, and a general lack of real-world consequences, our brains understand that it isn’t real. Generally, they’re not trying to fool us into believing that they’re real. Still, if Chandler Bing suddenly turned around and made eye contact with the camera, that would be weird. It’s not established in that particular sitcom world that they understand that they’re fictional. Fresh Prince on the other hand, did that all the time.

But we’ll get back to Sitcoms, because WandaVision. As opposed to most sitcoms, most serious dramas and adventure-thrillers are trying to create a very different vibe. In order to function, you have to be fully engaged, and have to completely believe the second world you are currently in. Otherwise, the emotional experience falls short. Tonality must be consistent, whereas sitcoms can get away with having the odd emotional moment surrounded by a laugh track.

Marvel is very weird when it comes to second worlds and believable experiences, because Marvel films, tv, and comics are all existing in the same multiverse but with wildly different tones. If you try to wrap your head around all of it as one body, it can give you a headache. Which is why I find it so interesting whenever they try to be meta.

The MCU as we understand it is presented as a realistic second world. Yes, it's fun action adventure with magic and superheroes, but presented in a way that feels real, and rationalizes its reality. It explains with technobabble and sciencebabble everything that it's doing. It wants to feel real. There are a few examples of comedy in the MCU (AntMan, Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor Ragnorok), but their silliness can for the most part be explained away. With the latter two, they take place in space, with aliens, so our brains allow that as an explanation of wackiness outside our own reality. For Ant-Man, honestly I think it was a brilliant idea to make it a comedy because there was no way that film would have succeeded if they tried to make the audience take Ant-Man seriously on screen. I love Ant-Man, it’s a spectacularly made film. But I digress. Importantly, even though they’re funny and campy, they never lose their sense of realism, with emotional anchor points to keep them grounded. When these characters are in an ensemble, they lose their high camp aesthetic and become part of the realism whole.

Even when they say in the MCU, Oh look at this I am an action figure, I'm in comic books, it's presented as in-world realistic. These people are famous now, and they're real life superheroes, so obviously action figures and comic books are being produced about them. It all makes sense. Even the X-Men films, for as camp as they are, do this in their own realism bubble. I would argue the X-Men films actually do it better because you don't have to suspend as much disbelief to believe mutation as you do to believe in a super suit that shrinks people (I love you Small Rudd).

Things get weird when the fourth wall is broken, and the multiverse is acknowledged, because the marvel cinematics have done an excellent job of creating stable second worlds. The Deadpool films, the prime example of fourth wall breaking in Marvel films/tv, are excellent because they go whole hog into breaking the fourth wall and acknowledging how ridiculous it all is. But it works for two reasons.

1. Deadpool is the only person in the entire movie that acknowledges the fourth wall (I am pretty sure, it’s been a while since I’ve watched them but I am pretty sure). Because he alone is aware that he's a fictional character in a wider fictional universe, it's not weird when he references his actor being the green lantern or talks directly to the camera. It’s exactly what we expect from him. With Deadpool, we're in on the joke but no one else is. And that's funny.

2. The tone of the Deadpool films is always funny and stupid. Even when it gets serious, that becomes the joke. There is no cognitive dissonance because it's consistent. See: Sitcom Logic. If the tone is light, breaking the fourth wall doesn’t jarr quite so much.

3. Deadpool is never in the other films, and MOSTLY, the characters in Deadpool (beyond the odd brief cameo) aren't in the greater universe (I say mostly because of Colossus, but he was in one movie ages ago for like ten minutes it’s not the biggest deal). It's consistent, and it doesn't become confusing because it's contained in itself as a weird fourth wall bubble on the side of the greater universe. Anything that happens to characters in the Deadpool films will not carry over to the more serious timeline.

There is one place in which I would say that the Deadpool films miss the mark, and make a mess of things. By making that one joke where young 90s xmen from the newest film are behind a door and shut it before he turns around, a wrench is thrown in. The weirdness of the Deadpool films suddenly is an issue because the question is asked: Where do the Deadpool films sit in the timeline? The answer is that the Deadpool films don't fit anywhere in the established XMen Cinematic Timeline, and the big mistake was having a group of characters from an xmen film on screen at the same time even as a gag. In this moment, the Deadpool films are very suddenly part of the greater universe, rather than a sidecar referencing what’s going on inside. By doing this, Deadpool is not the only character breaking the fourth wall. Now the physical world is breaking the fourth wall. And our brains will try to make sense where they cannot make sense.

But anyway for the most part, Deadpool does an excellent job of it by being a weird little fourth wall meta bubble on the fringe of existence. Wandavision though, that gets weird in a different but also very fun way.

The reason why the first 3/4ths of WandaVision work in terms of being meta-referential and also occasionally breaking the fourth wall is because

1. genre and tone. It sets up from the beginning, this is a sitcom world, not gritty realism world. We get sitcom world, we know what to expect from sitcom world. We can laugh along with the laugh track when something odd or silly or referential happens, and accept it as truth, because a sitcom generally does not pretend to be reality.

2. Whenever the fourth wall breaks in a way that doesn't make sense, it's intentional. Wanda reacts accordingly. Something goes weird, she fixes it. When something goes weird for someone other than Wanda (Say, the Vision), the integrity of this sitcom world is called into question in an intentional way that tracks with what is actually going on in the gritty-realism world (acknowledging that we’re in a bubble within a bubble). This camp sitcom world breaks the fourth wall within itself, not to us. Billy talking to the screen isn't talking to us, he's talking to the imagined viewer in-world.

3. Most of the meta-references are either subtle enough to be Easter eggs (like the kick-ass reference) or exist solely as fun gaffs that have no consequences and are never acknowledged as being meta (the Halloween costumes). I say most, because there is one big meta-reference that I think was a mistake, and where it kind of starts to fall apart in my eyes.

As much as I adore Evan Peters’ Pietro, as extremely happy as I was to see him on this show, this particular meta-reference was done in a way that breaks the second world illusion, because they pointed a big red sign at a meta reference and then tried to explain it without breaking into the multiverse.

The thing about breaking the fourth wall and meta-referencing is that it has to be toungue in cheek to be sustainable. Our brains are accepting that this reference is for us, but to make it a serious part of the story requires an answer to the question: why? By explaining that actually, this fake Pietro was Ralph the whole time, a real person who exists in this gritty realism universe, the illusion of tongue in cheek is gone. Suddenly, there is a person who brings into question the entire structure of the second world. Because this second world does not have access to the multiverse (Into the Spiderverse is wholly its own thing), it doesn't make sense that this random guy who happened to be used to play Pietro looks exactly like Pietro from elsewhere in the multiverse. It stops being fun, and starts becoming confusing, and we start trying to find answers where there are none.

IMO, two ways to solve that problem. 1. never explain it. If you never explain it, it's just a weird meta reference for us that also exists in Wanda's fake-world that is in itself accessing the multiverse (see: the costumes), without touching the realism world outside the bubble.

2. What I'm now calling the Taika Waititi method. Give a nonsense explanation told with a straight face as a brush-off. Say, Wanda asks Agatha who this guy is, and she says something along the lines of, oh I don't know I just pulled some random Pietro out of the universe, I never met the guy I had to improvise.

Anyway I still give WandaVision an 8/10 and an A for effort. Pulling off multiple tones and multiple second worlds simultaneously without even explaining it away with the multiverse is fucking hard, and they did a pretty good job all things considered.

And if anyone is interested in wtf I'm talking about re: second worlds, I highly recommend Tolkien's essay On Fairy Stories which pretty much defines how fantastic fiction works.

#wandavision #deadpool #mcu #mcu meta #film theory #marvel cinematic #xmen cinematic #miri meta #miri writes #look ma i wrote something #wandavision spoilers #pietro maximoff #long live uncle pete #maximoff family values #wanda maximoff #wade wilson

13 notes · View notes

self-loving-vampire · 3 years

Text

Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle (1993)

Summary

Serpent Isle is a direct sequel to the Black Gate. The arrival of the Guardian has been prevented and his cult has been outlawed and disbanded, but his most loyal follower has escaped to a place called the Serpent Isle to enact their backup plan.

But the Serpent Isle is not just an island, it is another world that you find yourself in after sailing your ship between the Serpent Pillars (yes, you get isekai’d while already living in another world).

This strange land is populated by people who fled from your lord long ago, and it seems to be suffering from an apocalyptic event that you soon experience for yourself, as a magical storm teleports your companions away and replaces most of the potent items you arrived with with random junk.

So your goals are clear: Recover your items, find the Guardian’s followers, and try to prevent the world’s destruction.

In many ways, Serpent Isle can feel like a more linear and limited game than the Black Gate (for one, you can’t own and freely sail a ship), but there are actually many things that I think it actually does better.

I played it using Exult and the SI Fixes mod.

Freedom

While Serpent Isle is not fully linear, it is definitely not nearly as open as the Black Gate was.

Where the Black Gate lets you travel nearly anywhere in the world almost immediately, even enabling several forms of transportation for this purpose, Serpent Isle initially allows only one section of the island to be explored with the rest opening up as one progresses through the game.

To its credit, the way in which these areas are locked off are sometimes reasonable and do not feel arbitrary. For instance, Moonshade is an island and nearly every ship in the land have been wrecked by the same magical storms that affected your party at the start of the game, so reaching it is not as simple as just buying a boat and going there.

There are other cases, however, where the restrictions do feel nonsensical. Such as the way the Bull Tower pikemen demand obscene amounts of money for the captain’s release but will happily accept a single much less valuable gold bar instead (since acquiring those is tied to a plot point). Then there’s all the stuff with the Hound of Doskar...

On the positive side, you can deal with various parts of the game in whatever order you desire within these limitations. This includes resolving the central quests in each of the land’s three cities in your own preferred order.

However, the game is still lacking in alternate solutions for quests in general. There are some decisions to be made, but they are rather minor in the grand scheme of things.

Character Creation/Customization

This aspect of the games is just as barebones as the Black Gate. You can only select your name, gender, and portrait. Your starting stats are pre-set and there are no further decisions to be made there.

However, Serpent Isle does have a marginal benefit over the Black Gate in that how you spend your training points matters a lot more, since you can’t just automatically max out your stats by completing the expansion.

Even then, there is not much to the character creation here at all.

Story/Setting

I think this is one of the game’s stronger points. The Black Gate may have had a larger world with more total settlements, but Serpent Isle’s three cities of Monitor, Fawn, and Moonshade are each significantly larger than the average Black Gate town and, most importantly, this world feels more dynamic.

Due to the way many of the game’s quests and events work, Serpent Isle manages to feel more alive than its predecessor. I will not spoil the details, but you often feel like something is always happening and like new developments are organically finding you rather than you having to actively search for them.

As has become typical of the Ultima series, the setting this time around is also centered around virtues, but in this case it goes beyond the Eight Virtues you mastered in the last trilogy.

Serpent Isle’s three cities are inhabited by the descendants of people who fled the reign of Lord British and who resent his edict of the eight virtues. The knights of Monitor considered Valor to be the highest virtue, the sailors of Fawn wanted to elevate Beauty as a virtue, and the mages of Moonshade did not feel that their profession should be associated with the virtue of Honesty.

But in addition to all that, much of the game revolves around learning about and mastering the ancient Ophidian virtue system, which functions differently from what you are used to.

The Ophidian virtues are divided into Order (Ethicality, Discipline, Logic) and Chaos (Tolerance, Enthusiasm, Emotion). The forces composing both sides must be in balance to achieve a new set of principles (Harmony arising from Ethicality + Tolerance, Dedication from Discipline + Enthusiasm, and Rationality from Logic + Emotion).

The incoming apocalypse you face in the game is the result of a cosmic imbalance in these forces. The ancient Ophidians polarized into Order and Chaos factions that warred each other, with Order winning the war and destroying the Chaos Serpent, which causes the universe to begin unravelling.

While this game does have an antagonist, resolving this imbalance remains the most significant part of the game in terms of story.

The game also has multiple big scripted scenes that did not quite exist in the Black Gate, and the world as a whole changes dramatically partway through as a result of a certain event.

Immersion

As previously mentioned, things like the quest design and more dynamic world can help make this game more immersive than Black Gate in some ways. I am reasonably certain that some of the NPC schedules are a bit more complex this time around as well.

There are also a few new things, such as a frozen wasteland up north that you need warm clothes to traverse without freezing.

Apart from that, all the features mentioned in the Black Gate are still present here, such as weather, day/night cycles, and more.

But really I think one of the most significant differences is actually just the fact that you are significantly less overpowered than in the Black Gate and have less allies. I feel like that changes the feel of the game a lot on its own in ways that have to be experienced to be fully understood.

Gameplay

Combat is, as in Black Gate, automatic and uninteresting, though it is slightly more difficult now overall.

The rest of the gameplay is largely the same as in the Black Gate as well, though dialogue has been slightly expanded with more complex trees.

Really the main difference comes down to the differences in the world and available items rather than any mechanical changes.

Some of the most significant items are a ring (obtained from the Silver Seed expansion) that provides infinite magical reagents and a magical goblet that provides endless nourishment. These things are not nearly as broken as what the Forge of Virtue provides in the Black Gate, but are still nice conveniences.

While this game has less towns than its predecessor, it does have larger and more interesting dungeons overall. The one issue with them is that some of the puzzles in them are not very interesting (often amounting to just placing items on pedestals and such).

This is also where I should talk about one of the game’s major flaws: It is the first one where the influence of Electronic Arts began to manifest. It is nothing too major at this point (just wait until we get to Ultima 8 and especially Ultima 9) but it does mean there are some questlines that were left unfinished due to EA rushing things.

It’s not just questlines either. The towns were supposed to be larger and with more content, the player was meant to eventually gain a ship they could freely sail like in the Black Gate, and a major plot element had to be changed. The Silver Seed expansion in particular feels incomplete and inconsequential in terms of story, and is largely centered around four dungeons to explore for unique loot (both the dungeons and the loot are reasonably good at least).

I also dislike just how many plot-critical items are in the game. I would like to use my backpack space for other things.

The game also offers a decent amount of locations to explore, including many optional curiosities unrelated to the main quest.

Aesthetics

While the engine and graphics are largely the same as in the Black Gate, there have been graphical upgrades, most notably in the form of significantly more detailed and lifelike portraits for NPCs.

But I would say that the biggest aesthetic changes here have more to do with the game’s design and atmosphere.

Serpent Isle is a far more unfriendly place than Britannia, and you will be accosted by assassins and deceivers during your quest. It makes for a more grim adventure.

The whole game has a much darker tone than any in the series since Ultima 5, I think. The world is completely falling apart due to the imbalance, with storms obliterating Fawn’s fleet, goblins making significant gains in their war against Monitor, and plagues are starting to break out. You do get the sense as you explore the world that this is a land experiencing its final days.

And things only get worse from here too.

I also like how unique several of the locations are. The city of Monitor is not just a walled city, it is populated by knights who organize into three different commands that rule the city. Meanwhile the city of Fawn is completely unlike any other in the series, being built entirely over the sea.

It is good stuff, and I wish they had had the time to expand and develop these locations as they had originally planned.

Accessibility

Exactly as good in this regard as the Black Gate, I think. Even the increased difficulty (which is still not enough to make this a “hard” game by any means) does not really matter since at the start of the game you get a magical hourglass that can be used to resurrect any fallen party members and the local monks will take care of your own mortality as well.

If there’s frustrations to be had here, they may come more from some of the less intuitive puzzles than anything and plot points than anything. The core gameplay is still extremely simple.

While the game can theoretically be played on its own, I strongly recommend playing at least the Black Gate first to learn a little about the events that led to this whole expedition. The two games really are part of the same package.

Conclusion

Between the Black Gate and Serpent Isle, I always got the impression that the Black Gate was the more popular of the two. I can understand why, as Serpent Isle was a bit rushed and lacks the open exploration that has defined the previous games in the series.

Despite this, I remember loving it about as much as the Black Gate largely because of the atmosphere and how the game feels. It is a particularly easy recommendation for those who enjoyed the previous game, as the engine and mechanics remain largely the same.

I also recommend this game for anyone who may be interested in following the story or looking for an immersive experience, but who doesn’t want to bother too much with stuff like combat or numbers. Even just watching the NPCs go about their day can be fun in this game.

#vampire reviews rpgs #ultima 7 #serpent isle #long post

3 notes · View notes

beneaththetangles · 3 years

Photo

Reader’s Corner: SAO Project Alicization, Evangelion ANIMA, and Cooking with Fluffy Friends

Ascendance of a Bookworm: Part 2, Vol. 3

Recently, I introduced my sister to the Ascendance series, and she’s hooked. As she gobbles her way through the novels from Part 2, I’ve been rereading them to keep up with her questions and comments. And I have to say, I really like this volume in particular. In some ways, it’s a filler novel, sandwiched between the rising tensions of volume two and the approaching climax in volume four. Myne sells off rights to the paper ink, completes the first printing press (finally!), finishes sets of playing cards for the orphanage, and cooks up some new sweets recipes in the interim. Nothing incredibly unique, but it’s the small details about Myne’s life that I love—including her banter with Benno and Ferdinand, of which there is much in this volume. Of course, it’s not all easy reading. Now that nobles know about Myne’s wealth of mana, she’s in more danger than ever before; and the arrival of a *certain* blue priest sends the whole temple into a panic. But whether you’re reading for the tension or the sweetness, you’ll definitely find something to love in this volume. At least, I did—even on my second read. ~ sleepminusminus

Ascendance of a Bookworm is published by J-Novel Club, which offers a free preview.

Sword Art Online: Project Alicization, Vol. 2

Volume two of Project Alicization picks up right where the initial one left off, with Kirito waking up in a digital world and meeting his new friend, Eugeo. He discovers that Alice has been taken by the Integrity Knight, but the next day, he and Eugen also can’t find Selka, the latter’s friend and sister to Alice. Elsewhere, Asuna and the OG gang try to figure out where Kirito’s body is after he went unconscious. It seems foul play and deception are afoot with Rath, the company who created this new game. Volume two keeps the action going at a frenetic pace, but it struggles with the same issues as the previous one. There is too much dialogue about how souls work in the game, in addition to other non-essential details. Some will enjoy the heavy focus on detail in this volume as with the previous, but this reviewer finds that SAO tries a little too hard to explain itself instead of moving the story along. I am, however, enjoying the new characters and plot as well as basking in Kirito’s bravery, so I continue to look forward to the next part of the series to see what happens next! ~ Samuru

Sword Art Online: Project Alicization is published by Yen Press.*

Since I Was Abandoned After Reincarnating, I Will Cook With My Fluffy Friends, Vol. 1 (light novel)

After her engagement to a pathetic prince is dissolved because of a malicious plot, Laeticia regains memories of her past life as a Japanese woman who loves animals and cooking. From there, she accepts an offer to become a figurehead queen in a neighboring country, and not wanting to bother the king—who has become distrustful of women—she lives apart from him in a villa with various servants and, of course, fluffy animals. There’s actually quite a lot more than just slice-of-life cooking here, as volume one presents nefarious noble plots Laetitia has to deal with, which adds drama to the story. Also, there is a bit of a fun element to the romance aspect, because while the king doesn’t quite want to meet his wife-in-name-only in person…well, he is the King of Wolfvarte, so maybe he can approach her incognito in a, let’s say, fluffier form? There are other neat fantastical elements here, and, of course, plenty of cooking and petting animals, making this was a fun story that I would love to read more of. ~ stardf29

Since I Was Abandoned After Reincarnating, I Will Cook With My Fluffy Friends, Vol. 1 is published by Cross Infinite World.

Neon Genesis Evangelion ANIMA, Vol. 1

The Evangelion franchise has birthed several alternate universe (AU) series since its initial inception—two of which we’ve covered in this column in recent months—but ANIMA, originally serialized in Japan between 2008 and 2013, is distinctive both for being a light novel entry and in its ambition, functioning as a direct line from the original series if it has gone the direction of Shinji avoiding Human Instrumentality and now, three years later, dealing with a new threat, while bringing along most of the remaining characters from the series as well. Little time is spent exploring school life, as noted by the author himself in the volume’s extensive extras, with the action begining almost immediately and continuing in an unrelenting manner. Much like the final stretch of the anime, challenges occur one after another, barely leaving readers time to breathe. At once, the novel is a thrill because of this structure, as well as in how KHARA and Ikuto Yamashita reenvision NERV and the world it protects in light of the changes that come with Shinji’s altered decision and three years of maturation, while keeping tone and characterization consistent with its predecessor, and also disappointing because it doesn’t allow room for much growth for its characters. That’s not to say that Shinji, Rei, especially Asuka, and all the rest, haven’t developed greatly in the preceding three years, and readers are invited to witness these changes throughout volume one, but little growth occurs throughout the course of these some-300 pages. There is a much heavier focus on the sci-fi elements of the story, which will delight many fans, especially those who are interested in how technology in this universe works and how it’s progressed, but which will also serve to confuse others. ~ Twwk

Neon Genesis Evangelion ANIMA is published by Seven Seas.

Your Lie in April, Vol. 6

Continuing my re-read during the month of April, I completed volume six, which continues the story of Kousei as he’s told that he will be accompany Kaori to a recital event. Unbeknownst to her, she selects a song that screams Kousei’s Mom, leading to a volume that forces Kousei to confront his unresolved feelings with his late mother, for whom he never allowed himself to. He just bottled his emotions deep inside. Other events occurs as well, including a deeper dive which the volume takes into his mother’s friend Hiroko Seto, and Kaori all but admitting to Watari that she likes Kousei; yet at the core of these chapters, as with the entire series, this is Kousei’s story. And let’s be real—it’s not a happy-go-lucky tale, filled with highs and almost as many lows as this teenager grapples with heavy emotional baggage from his late, abusive mother. Re-reading Your Lie in April has been a good exercise, helping me see different things I may have missed before. I posted more extensive thoughts on this volume on Twitter, if you’d like to explore this weighty selection in more detail. ~ MDMRN

Your Lie in April is published by Kodansha.

Skip Beat, Vol. 18

This, this is what I follow Skip Beat for. Following the “Dark Moon” and “Suddenly, a Love Story” segments, which were long and mediocre, volume 18 features a short arc focusing on a new character and his interactions with Kyoko, who isn’t relegated to a damsel in distress as she had been previously. Returning to her Love Me section job, Kyoko is given a special assignment to assist Kuu Hizuri, a Hollywood star returning to Japan, and who has some connection to Ren beyond having played the same role in the Dark Moon drama. Coming off as a brash, arrogant type, Kuu soon appears to be very intentional in how and why he’s picking on Kyoko, and turns out to be quite an engaging character. Kuu’s actions bring out treasured qualities in both Kyoko and Ren, the latter of whom has been near-insufferable in his insecurity. A brisk read, volume 18 advances the narrative, continues to have fun with the idea of celebrity, and deepens the backgrounds that connect the series leads as it gets Skip Beat back on track—a most welcome volume, indeed. ~ Twwk

Skip Beat is published by Viz.*

=====

Reader’s Corner is our way of embracing the wonderful world of manga, light novels, and visual novels, creative works intimately related to anime but with a magic all their own. Each week, our writers provide their thoughts on the works their reading—both those recently released as we keep you informed of newly published works and older titles that you might find as magical (or in some cases, reprehensible) as we do.

#Manga #Light Novels #Ascendance of a Bookworm #Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen #Sword Art Online: Project Alicization #Since I Was Abandoned After Reincarnating I Will Cook With My Fluffy Friends #Tenseisaki de Suterareta no de Mofumofutachi to Oryouri Shimasu: Okazari Ouhi wa My Pace ni Saikyou desu #Neon Genesis Evangelion ANIMA #Evangelion: ANIMA #Your Lie in April #Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso #Skip Beat!#Reader's Corner #Articles #Author: sleepminusminus #Author: Samuru #Author: stardf29 #Author: TWWK #Author: MDMRN

6 notes · View notes

scoutception · 3 years

Text

Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim review

After the release of Ys II, and the conclusion of the original story of the Ys games, the series went through a bit of a rough period, as the next three entries were, less than ideal. Ys III: Wanderers from Ys changed the gameplay from the topdown, bump combat gameplay to a sidescroller reminiscent of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, and rather fittingly ended up as the black sheep of the series. Ys IV went back to the bump system, but rather confusingly released as two separate games by two separate developers, neither of them Falcom; The Dawn of Ys by Hudson Soft for the PC Engine CD, and the far inferior Mask of the Sun by Tonkin House for the SNES. Finally, Ys V: Lost Kefin, Kingdom of Sand was released for the SNES, by Falcom themselves, and in its attempts to evolve from the bump combat, had become something that barely resembled Ys in gameplay, graphics, or music. While none of these games were outright bad, and The Dawn of Ys in particular is held up as the best of the classic Ys games, the series just couldn’t properly commit to a direction to take the series next, and Falcom put the series to rest after V’s release for a while, barring the Ys I and II Eternal remakes. Finally, though, in 2003, 8 years after Ys V’s release, the series was finally given a new game, one that would finally carve out the evolution of the series’ gameplay, and allow it to confidently continue even to the present day. This is Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, easily the most important game in the series other than the original two. As for how it pulled it off, and how it holds up, that’s what we’re checking out today. The version I played is the PC version, available through Steam and GOG.

Story: 6 years since the events of Ys I and II, Adol Christin, accompanied by his now long time companion Dogi, has since become a legend throughout the continent of Eresia for his exploits. One day, Adol is reunited with Terra, an ally of his from Ys V, who has since become a member of a pirate crew led by her father, Ladock. Adol and Dogi accompany the pirate crew to investigate the Canaan Islands, a mysterious set of islands surrounded by the Great Vortex, a perpetual vortex that destroys any ship that draws near (basically just the Bermuda Triangle). Unfortunately, the ship is attacked by the fleet of the Romun Empire (no guesses as to who they’re based off of), and Adol is swept into the Great Vortex while saving Terra during the chaos, once again proving Adol should never be trusted to get on a boat. Adol washes up on Quatera Island, which is inhabited by the Rehda, a race of long eared and tailed people who worship the goddess Alma, who is of the same race as the goddesses of Ys. Adol is saved by Olha, the priestess of the Rehda, and Isha, Olha’s little sister, but soon discover that outsiders such as him, several of whom have built a town on a neighboring island, are distrusted by the Rehda, and that leaving the Canaan Islands is impossible due to the Great Vortex. After saving Isha from a strange monster known as a “Wandering Calamity”, however, Adol gains the respect of the Rehda and is gifted a sword made of emelas, a magical ore used extensively by the Rehda. Setting out to the Eresian made town of Port Rimorge and meeting with Raba, a returning ally from Ys I, Adol sets out to discover the secrets of the Canaan Islands and find a way to dispel the Great Vortex, soon encountering three malicious fairies with control over monsters, and a mysterious mercenary named Geis, who seems to know far more about the islands than he lets on.

While it’s actually a pretty unusual plot setup compared to most RPG stories, it’s pretty lacking in execution, simply because the plot just isn’t present for most of the game. By the time the main antagonist, Ernst, makes an appearance, and things besides just running around collecting plot items are happening, it’s just too little, too late, which leaves the ending of the game more than a bit unmemorable. Still, the writing has the typical Falcom charm, and the various NPCs actually have a lot to say over the course of the game, if you care about that sort of thing, like me. There’s not much more for me to say, so let’s just move right on.

Gameplay: Ys VI, as the first 3D game in the series, plays quite a bit different from the games that came before, yet unlike previous games, finally makes it feel like a proper evolution from the original duology, though it’s actually based heavily on Ys V. The bump combat is gone for good, with Adol now having a dedicated attack button, along with a jump button for some rather meager platforming. Adol’s moveset isn’t very impressive at first, only consisting of a 3 slash combo, a jump slash, a down thrust, and a lunge attack, but over the course of the game, he acquires 3 different elemental swords, each with an additional move and magical spell after being charged up. While shields and armor can be bought or found as usual, the swords instead need to be upgraded at Port Rimorge with emel, a resource dropped by enemies. Upgrading the swords not only increase their attack power, but gradually unlock new abilities as well. There are also accessories, with effects ranging from a simple boost to attack and defense, to increasing the amount of gold or emel dropped by enemies, to providing immunity to status effects, and so forth. While Adol only has one accessory slot to start, certain treasure chests throughout the game will bestow additional slots, up to a max of 5.

Unlike the original duology, Adol can no longer regenerate health by standing still, barring the use of an endgame accessory, nor can you save anywhere. Instead, saving is done at monuments scattered out all across the different areas of the game, which also restore Adol’s health to max and cures him of any status effects. Beyond that, however, Adol can carry several different healing items of varying strengths, which can either be purchased from merchants or dropped by enemies, and you’ll be needing them. Even on nightmare difficulty, Ys VI is on the easier side compared to a lot of other Ys games, but it’s still a struggle in its own right, just for the exact wrong reasons, mostly due to the lack of the refinements found in the other Ys games that use Ys VI’s engine. There are many enemies that utterly obnoxious, whether from flying in the air and being difficult to hit, using projectiles, or dealing very difficult to avoid collision damage, and Adol’s moveset isn’t versatile enough to deal with this, meaning, in classic Ys fashion, you’re going to be doing a lot of grinding to get anywhere, whether it be grinding levels or emel. The grinding isn’t nearly as long or boring as in a lot of RPGs, but it can still be irritating, especially in nightmare mode, where you need to do an absolutely unreasonable amount of it to get anywhere due to how much health even the lowliest enemies have. Status effects can also be an annoyance. They consist of poison, which saps health over time, heavy, which severely reduces Adol’s running speed and jumping height, confusion, which reverses your controls, and curse, which reduces Adol’s attack power. All of these except curse fade over time, can be prevented or cured with accessories, and can be cured with certain items, but the problem is that enemies that can inflict these effects do so way too often, and most often appear at a point where you have a good deal of more useful accessories, and too few slots to really manage them on top of this. Hardly a game breaking issue, but still one you’ll likely feel, especially since heavy can outright stunlock you, depending on the enemy.

The areas and dungeons you go through aren’t anything special, for the most part, being pretty linear and basic in design, but there are a few that stick out negatively, namely the Ruins of Lost Time, with some very aggressive and dangerous enemies, along with items that can only be reached with the very finicky dash jump technique, something’s nearly impossible to perform using the mouse, with keyboard or controller being the only reasonable options, along with the overly long and mazelike Limewater Cave, containing many of the game’s most annoying enemies. Bosses, on the other hand, tend to be a much more enjoyable time, thanks to having actual, understandable patterns that make them much more reasonable to take on, and there’s some pretty interesting and fun concepts among them, from a giant hopping, spinning robot that gradually destroys the safe ground as the fight goes on, to an ancient statue that hangs out in the background and can only be significantly damaged by magic, to the difficult multi phase fight with Galba-Roa, and especially the duel with the empowered Ernst. They’re legitimately intense fights, yet rarely feel unfair, and are by far the biggest highlight of the game. There’s even some optional bosses that reward you with accessories, or simply give you a large boost in EXP, though they’re among the less well designed fights.

Finally, some of the changes made by Xseed for the English PC version are worth taking note of. Firstly, and most importantly, the item Alma’s Wing, which was formerly merely an item used for escaping dungeons, has instead been given the functionality of warping between monuments, something that saves a tremendous amount of backtracking, especially during the actually quite rewarding sidequests. Secondly, a new gameplay mode is available, separate from difficulty options, called Catastrophe mode. In Catastrophe mode, healing items cannot be kept in the inventory, and any normally found in treasure chests have been replaced. Instead, any that are dropped by enemies are used automatically on pickup, making the gameplay a bit more like The Oath in Felghana and Ys Origin. As compensation for this loss, stat boosting seeds are available to purchase from merchants in unlimited quantities, allowing you to boost your stats far past what you’d be able to achieve normally, if you have the patience to grind the money for them. While it’s an interesting mode in concept, the game really isn’t balanced around not having inventory healing items, which can make for a pretty frustrating time. Overall, though, while there’s certainly a good deal of flaws that were ironed out in later games, the gameplay of Ys VI is still quite a bit of fun. It successfully translates the simple fun of blazing through a bunch of enemies, and despite the annoyances, it’s surprisingly addicting.

Graphics: Ys VI uses a mix of prerendered sprites for characters and enemies and polygonal environments, a style also used in the Trails in the Sky games. While it’s hardly aged the best, it has a charm to it that keeps it appealing. Bosses, on the other hand, are rendered in surprisingly decent polygonal graphics. The artstyle used for character portraits isn’t anything special, but they’re well drawn nonetheless, and every NPC gets one of their own, which definitely adds some more life to them all.

Music: Ys VI’s soundtrack, composed by members of the Music Sound Team jdk, namely Wataru Ishibashi and Hayato Sonoda, at least according to the credits, is, in Falcom tradition, a blast. While on an overall, it’s not quite as memorable as, say, the soundtracks to the original games, or The Oath in Felghana, the tracks that stand out are fantastic. Some of my favorites are Quatera Woods, the titular theme for the first area in the game, Mighty Obstacle, the standard boss theme, Mountain Zone, the theme of the first dungeon, Defend! And Escape!, the theme for the game’s obligatory escort mission, and Ernst’s titular boss theme.

Conclusion: Overall, Ys VI makes for a rather odd game in the series, even to write about. In a way, it’s an odd jack of all trades, at least among the games using its engine. It’s not as difficult as most in the series, and is still much more accessible than the games made before it, but its lack of polish and plain frustrating design compared to later games can make it difficult to recommend in comparison, especially to newcomers. Overall, however, I’d still give it a recommended. It still manages to be a fun ride on its own that doesn’t overstay its welcome, and if nothing else absolutely deserves appreciation for putting the series on the right path forward. Till next time. -Scout

#game review #ys #falcom #jrpg #long post #xseed games

7 notes · View notes

d3-iseefire · 3 years

Text

Through A Glass Darkly Chapter Two

Bilba sat curled in an uncomfortable plastic chair in the corner of the common room, arm draped across a knee as her eyes scanned the file in her hand. A large stack of nearly identical folders, along with two smaller piles, sat on the table in front of her, all stuffed to the brim with paperwork.

Beyond that, the room opened into a wide airy space, lined with windows to allow in natural light. Tables and chairs were scattered throughout, many occupied with other patients reading, doing puzzles or quietly talking. Orderlies and staff moved about them, sometimes stopping to talk to a patient or escort them to and from the room. A few of them looked her way, but none attempted to approach. Dr. Chambers had made it clear she was to be left alone.

She returned her gaze to the chart she’d been reading, but had barely managed to read the same line four more times when someone slid into a chair across from her. Irritated, she looked up, prepared to send the clear, and concise, message that whoever was bothering her was deeply unwanted.

It was Blondie, and the sight of him caused her brain to short circuit.

He’d taken her advice. He was clean shaven, hair neat and trimmed, and wore a freshly laundered t-shirt along with the requisite sweats and slippers. On anyone else, they looked non-descript but, on him, they became a fashion statement.

“So, Celeste,” he started. “I wanted –”

He trailed off as she raised her fingers and pressed them together along with a sharp, “shush! Masterpieces don’t talk, they exist to be admired.”

The corner of his lip twitched, and he shook his head in exasperation. Then he folded his hands in front of him and proceeded to stare at her, in silence.

This time, it was Bilba fighting back a smile, even as she bemoaned the discovery that he had a sense of humor. She didn’t want him to have a sense of humor. It was bad enough that he was unfairly attractive.

“I changed my mind,” she stated flatly. “Don’t shower. You’re distracting.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And you’re so busy in here you can’t afford to be distracted?”

“Exactly.” He reached for one of the folders, only to pause as she slapped a hand onto them. “Anyone ever teach you that nosiness is a vice?”

He didn’t pull his hand back. “Anyone ever teach you that sharing is a virtue?”

Confident, and very self-assured. If asked, Bilba would have insisted she didn’t have a so-called perfect man in mind, or list of traits she considered desirable in a partner. She had no time for such things. Now she was quickly realizing that not only did she apparently have a list, but Blondie was rapidly checking every box.

“What are you doing?” he asked, nodding at the graveyard of dead trees.

“Reading,” Bilba said dryly. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“Not at present,” he said easily as if she’d just asked him about the weather. “What are you reading?”

Bilba sighed. She knew she should get rid of him. Insult him until he left, or give him the silent treatment, or just threaten to track down his car once she got out and set it on fire. Instead, against her better judgement, intelligence, and all sane reason, she found herself shutting the folder she was reading and offering it to him.

She wasn’t sure who was more surprised by her actions, her or him.

Granted, she was really bored. She’d always been more of a “shoot the thing in the face until it stops trying to kill you,” and less of a “risk death by a thousand paper cuts doing research” type of person.

Blondie flipped the folder open and frowned at the contents. “Patient records? Isn’t this a violation of privacy?”

“They’re all old, and dead.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“I like history,” Bilba lied. The upper floor had been shut down for decades following a fire, and it was only recently that the hospital had started renovating it. Whatever the construction had awakened must have predated the fire, or been killed by it. It narrowed her search down a little but, given the place was one of the oldest operating asylums in the country, it was still looking for a needle in a haystack.

Blondie frowned. “Haven’t they ever heard of digitizing?”

Bilba wholeheartedly agreed. Her life would be so much easier if someone had thought to transfer the paper files to electronic media and added a search function. As it was, she was left to scour boxes of crumbling, records with next to nothing to go on. Later, she’d head out to see what she could find about the four teen victims but, until this, it was doing her best to not die from pure boredom.

Blondie pointed at the folders she’d separated out into smaller piles. “What are those?”

Bilba studied him for a few seconds and then leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “Figure it out yourself.

That should keep him busy for a bit and give her time to continue her own research.

His eyes narrowed. “Are you treating me like an irritating child right now?”

Bilba shrugged. “Are you acting like one right now?”

He grumbled something unflattering under his breath, before dragging some of the records she’d organized over to start flipping through. He finished surprisingly quickly and moved onto the other group. Once he was through them, he leaned back in his chair with a smirk. “You’ve separated them based on whether or not they died at the hospital. You also appear to have some interest in any record of violence, either done by them or to them.”

Bilba scowled. “You’re not allowed to be smart.”

He crossed his arms, which caused his biceps to bulge in a way that almost derailed her brain again. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” Bilba crossed her own arms to mock—mimic him, and glared at him. “You’re not allowed to be pretty, and funny, and smart, get it? You can have one, maybe two, but not all three.”

This time, he pursed his lips and looked away for a second to poorly hide a smile. When he looked back, his face was sober, but his eyes still showed clear amusement. “You’re in luck.” He spread his arms out to encompass the common room. “If I had any intelligence at all I wouldn’t have ended up here, would I?”

There was a hint of bitterness in his voice that Bilba found relatable. The life of a hunter hadn’t exactly been what she’d wanted, but sometimes life chose for you and there was nothing you could do about it.

“You weren’t stupid,” she said, surprising herself. “You were resourceful. You’re lucky you weren’t murdered yourself.”

He leaned forward, eyes suddenly alight with some unknown emotion. “You see there?” he said. “That’s the second time you’ve acted like you know something about me, about my case.”

Bilba rolled her eyes. “You’re reaching.”

“I’m not.” His voice was intense, and it really shouldn’t be giving her butterflies in her stomach, but there it was.

Bilba bit back a sigh and reluctantly admitted the truth. She was wildly attracted to him and didn’t see it calming down anytime soon.

“You asked about what I saw in the sewers.”

“Curiosity,” Bilba said, her tone bored.

He shook his head. “No. You asked if I saw anything unusual, out of the ordinary, and when I described those puddles you didn’t seem surprised.”

“You’re basing this off my not being surprised by their being giant piles of disgusting in the sewers?” Bilba asked, incredulously. Blondie was like a bloodhound on a scent for heaven’s sake.

“And now, today,” he continued, ignoring her, “you say I’m lucky I didn’t die along with my father. Why?”

“Because it’s common sense,” Bilba said sharply, irritation setting in at his refusal to just let it go. “Someone knocked you out, tied you up and murdered your father. I doubt they were planning to pat you on the head and let you go afterward.”

“I don’t believe you,” he challenged.” What do you—"

He cut off as Bilba got to her feet and gathered up the folders. “I get it. You’re stuck here, and it sucks, but grasping at straws isn’t going to help. You’re making something out of nothing. You need to let it go.”

The light in his eyes dimmed, and Bilba wished the sight didn’t send a shard right through her. It went against everything she was and believed in. She existed to help people, not hurt them.

Problem was, she’d already hurt him. She’d given him hope, or some semblance of it, when there was none to be had. It was already over for him. She couldn’t save him because there was no longer anything to save him from.

“If you did know something, would you tell me?”

Bilba sighed in exasperation. She curled her fingers into the manilla folders she held until they crumpled under the pressure and then went and stood over him where he sat.

“What good would it do?” she asked quietly, looking down at him. “I can’t help you. Nothing I know, or don’t know, can help you, do you understand? There’s no magic password, no key that’s going to open the gates and let you out. I can’t help you.”

“At least tell me I’m not crazy.”

The words were low, and edged in exhaustion, and despair.

Bilba hesitated, and then shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

He frowned. “For what?”

For not being here, Bilba thought. For not being able to save you, for a whole host of things that weren’t her fault but that she’d carry the guilt for anyway.

She shook her head again and left him sitting behind her.

It was better this way, she told herself firmly.

Better to kill the hope now before it had a chance to grow any further.

He’d been lost long before she ever arrived, and there was nothing she or anyone else could do about it.

***

Fili skipped dinner.

He just…couldn’t do it somedays. Every day, it was the same. Same clothes, the same food, same useless therapy sessions where no one believed a word he had to say. The same white walls, the same people, and the knowledge that no matter what he did or said…it would never change.

Not unless he was suddenly declared competent to stand trial, and then he’d be sent to prison to start it all over again, just in a different place.

He wasn’t insane, but the endless repetitiveness might well drive him to it one day. There were days he couldn’t bear to stand at the window, looking out at the world he’d been locked away from, picturing his family and friends going about their lives while his was just…stopped.

Permanently.

He wandered the halls, trying not to think of what he’d lost. People had described him as dedicated, driven. Busy. There had been scholarships. College. A bright future with a career he’d been looking forward to.

A fiancée.

All of it gone in the blink of an eye.

It made him want to scream sometimes, in anger, in desperation.

In despair.

Fili rounded a corner and stopped with a frown as he realized he didn’t know where he was. In front of him, the hall was lined on both sides by doors into what he assumed were offices. He swore under his breath. Patients weren’t allowed in staff areas without permission. He wasn’t even sure how he’d managed to get here without being seen.

He started to backpedal, hoping to get back without being caught. He’d just rounded the corner when, behind him, a loud explosion rang out. Instinctively, Fili dropped to a crouch, heart racing in his chest.

He spun around and leaned forward onto his hands to peer around the corner.

At the far end of the hall, one of the office doors appeared to have exploded from within, showering the hall with bits of broken wood and debris.

He heard a low groan, and a dark shape he’d dismissed as part of the debris moved against the opposite wall. It resolved itself into a person, pushing up shakily onto their hands and knees.

Dark hair and a slim figure registered, and recognition hit.

Celeste.

She was wearing jeans, a dark t-shirt and a leather jacket. She pushed up to her knees, swaying in place, and Fili’s eyes went back to the door. Had it exploded as she’d passed it?

He got to his feet, and started to go to her, only to slow as a large figure stepped into the doorway of the office. Fili vaguely recognized him as one of the doctors at the hospital, an older, graying man with a formidable presence. Fili had never interacted with him personally but had heard from others that he had a reputation for being hardnosed and no nonsense. He wasn’t the most well-liked doctor, but he was apparently well respected.

As he watched, the man strode across the narrow hall, yanked Celeste up and completely off her feet as if she weighed nothing and began to strangle her.

“Hey!” Fili broke into a run toward the two.

The doctor’s face turned toward him, and Fili froze mid-stride without making the conscious choice to do so, as if some primal force had yanked him to a stop.

The doctor’s face was…wrong. An ashen, sickly gray with dark splotches as if mold had started to grow on his skin. His eyes were a dull white, no pupil or iris visible, and he had some sort of thick, black liquid dribbling from the corners of his mouth.

Without warning, he released Celeste. She dropped to her hands and knees, gasping for air.

The doctor made a strangely jerky turn and stumbled back into his office. Behind him, Celeste struggled to her feet, only to immediately buckle again and start to fall again.

Snapped out of his paralysis, Fili lunged forward the last few feet and barely managed to catch her before she slammed into the laminate tiles. This close he could see wood chips and dust coating her body and several small scrapes dotting her skin where it was exposed. He looked at the shattered door incredulously. Had she been thrown through it?

“Help me up,” she mumbled, words slurred. “I have to--”

She grabbed onto him, struggling to get back up. Her eyes were unfocused, and her legs kept buckling so much that Fili ended up dragging her arm around his neck and sliding his around her waist to support her.

He looked into the office, just in time to see the doctor open a window and, without so much as a second of hesitation, leap out.

Fili gaped, and a chill ran over him. He didn’t remember taking stairs in his wanderings, but he knew that offices were on the upper floors of the building. Fourth and fifth at least.

Celeste struggled to get out of his grasp, but he held her easily and lowered her to the floor as her legs gave out. “It’s too late,” he told her. “There’s no way he survived that.”

Celeste swore, her words slurred. Then her eyes suddenly rolled back in her head and she slumped in his arms, head lolling back against his shoulder.

Footsteps pounded along the hall and several staff members rounded the corner before skidding to a stop. Fili saw their eyes dart to him, Celeste and the broken door and a sinking feeling settled in.

“It’s not what it looks like,” he said weakly.

He could see they didn’t believe him, just like they hadn’t believed him the last time. Cold washed over him as he realized that he was most likely about to be falsely accused of murder.

Again.

Follow on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22765585/chapters/54399856

#fanfiction #fanfic #my writing #writing #horror #scary #romance #happy ending #Hobbit AU #female bilbo baggins #fili #fembilbo/fili #fantasy #supernatural

6 notes · View notes

scribbles97 · 3 years

Text

February 14th (Part 5)

And of course, we can’t have today with out some birthday boy Gordon can we now? So here’s one for all the Pen and Ink fans out there!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Gordon had spent his childhood at early morning swim meets. What day of the week didn’t matter, holidays and birthdays were null and void, he had a career he wanted to pursue in the pool and everything else had come second to that.

So it shouldn’t have been a surprise to his brothers that even on the morning of his birthday, he was up with the break of dawn doing lengths. His comm was on his wrist, out of habit rather than necessity that day, Dad had enforced the day off and sent clear instructions to the GDF that IR was out of service unless absolutely vital.

Part of Gordon wondered if Penny had had anything to do with that, or if she had simply taken the opportunity as it had presented itself. He definitely wasn’t complaining, the opportunity was exactly what he had been hoping for, waiting for since Dad had been given a clean bill of health. Because, it might have been his birthday, but to him even that only came second to Valentines day.

The vibration on his wrist was enough to distract him from his stroke, he knew John wouldn’t be calling with a rescue, but he could bet on what his older brother would have to say.

“Hey Johnny.” He greeted, swiping his hair out of his eyes as he surfaced.

The glare he got was colder than usual, but it lacked the usual rebuttal that John usually voiced at the use of the nickname. Gordon wasn’t sure if he was receiving a free birthday pass or if the lack of comment had something to do with the slight tinge of red on the gingers cheeks.

“Happy Birthday, Gordon.”

He grinned as he reached the side of the pool, hoisting himself up onto the already warming tiles before returning his attention to John.

“So, where’d you hide my present?”

John rolled his eyes, the glare softening to a fond smile as he shook his head, “You know we’re meant to wait until everyone’s together.”

Shrugging, Gordon grinned, “Yeah, but you’re about to tell me that I have to go and get dressed because Penny’s gonna be here soon and then I’m not going to see anyone else for the rest of the day, so…”

John shook his head again, “You’ll get your presents when you come home tomorrow.”

He could have protested, argued that it was his birthday today and it wasn’t fair that they would make him wait. Eventually, he might have worn John down.

Except the humm of the comm in the kitchen drew his attention away, Parker’s distinct voice ringing down from the open windows.

“They’re here!?” He exclaimed, “John!”

The smirk his older brother was wearing was definitely smug, “You got distracted about presents.”

Cussing, Gordon grabbed his towel from the lounger, belatedly remembering the other thing he had to mention to his space-bound brother.

“Say hi to Ridley for me.” He grinned, “I hope you two have a good valentines day.”

“We’re not--” John started to protest, not getting to finish as Gordon cut him off.

He had a date to get ready for.

He didn’t know exactly how she did it, but she always just looked stunning. From the white chino short and pale pink blouse combo she had been wearing when she had arrived, to the wetsuit she had worn in the research pool at Sydney Aquarium, to the floral yellow and blue tea dress she had changed into for their afternoon meandering along the harbour.

Part of him had expected her to change again before dinner, that there would be some sort of stop at their hotel to change into something more suited to an evening at a fancy restaurant. It was Penny after all, and he knew with her came the socialite image that had to be maintained for the cameras.

He hadn’t expected her to take him further into the harbour, down the jetties amongst the super yachts.

“What’s this?” He grinned, catching her by the waist as they stopped in front of one of the more medium sized boats.

She grinned, catching his hand in her as she looked up to him, “Don’t get too excited darling, I’m afraid we’re just borrowing the boat.”

Even in the shade of the boat that was perhaps big enough to call a ship, her eyes were sparkling like the waves beyond the harbour. This was what the whole day had been leading to, every smile, every little knowing wink, and all the promises that the best was yet to come. All leading to an evening out on the ocean.

She had no idea just what else lay in store.

“You know,” He murmured, voice husky with emotion, the realisation of just how well she knew him bringing feelings that he had long since acknowledged to the boil, “I couldn’t think of anything better.”

She turned so she was pressed into his chest, her fingers playing at the open collar of his shirt as she looked up to him with her wide baby blues.

“What if I told you, after dinner, we get the whole place to ourselves?”

He let his hands drop to her waist, mind wandering as he surveyed the yacht and wondered just how much better the evening could get.

“You have no idea.” He grinned, “Shall we get aboard, m’lady?”

The evening had been perfect, they had headed just far enough out to sea to still be in calm waters, but to still have a clear and open view of the sun as it had set on the far horizon. As promised, after dinner the chef and waiter had been picked up, leaving just the two of them to watch the stars as the boat rocked gently beneath them.

The view wasn’t anything new to Gordon, it was the same sky he saw every night from home. Somehow though, it always felt different with Penny at his side, like there was just a little more magic in the air.

“Thank you.” He murmured, shifting on the blanket so he could look at her properly, “Today has been… amazing.”

Her smile was sweet as she reclined back to watch him, “For all I make you parade about at the galas and whatnot, I thought I perhaps owed you a day doing something you enjoyed.”

He didn’t mind the galas, it was the people there he detested, but it made her happy him being there and for her he would go along with anything.

“You don’t have to make it up to me, you know.” He shrugged, “I love you, and if dressing up in a monkey suit makes you happy then I’ll--”

“It doesn’t make me happy though.” Penelope cut him off, pulling away from where she had been leaning on him to sit up, “You, Gordon Tracy, are not the kind of man that enjoys those kinds of functions and knowing that I drag you into them regardless…”

She trailed off as he pressed a finger to her lips, shaking his head as cool blue eyes watched him.

“I love you Pen, I knew exactly what loving you entailed long before I knew just how much I love you. Being with you makes me happy, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a stupid socialite thing or a day out on the beach. I might sound as soppy as Virgil when I say it, but it’s the being with you that I love.”

His heart was thundering in his chest as he withdrew his finger from her lips and reached to the pocket of his shorts, “Now, I believe you owe me one more present.”

Her wide eyes turned to a frown, “I do?”

He nodded, shifting to stand and pulling her up with him. Her frown only deepened as he sucked in a long slow breath, still watching her in the low light of the moon.

“I know we agreed no Valentines day,” He swallowed, dropping back down to the blanket they had been lying on, “but, I’ll happily count it as a birthday present if you, Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward,” Taking one final breath, he pulled the small box from his pocket and held it up to her, “would say yes to marrying me?”

Her eyes were suddenly glistening more in the light as her hands shot to her mouth in shock.

Part of him was surprised, he had expected her to see the cliche coming a mile off. Had she not heard how his heart had been thundering away all evening? How fidgety he had been in the one place he should have been most at home? Had she really not seen it coming?

“Gordon,” she choked out, “How… I-- of course I’ll marry you.”

He laughed, jumping back to his feet and taking her hand to slip the ring on, not giving her chance before he pulled her into him, lifting her just enough to spin them both.

Her laugh was loud and bright against the waves, lighting up every fiber of his being as he set her back down.

“Happy Birthday to me, huh?”

She was distracted by her ring. He couldn't help but smile. It was her mother's, slipped to him by Lady Sylvia herself...that had been an interesting day.

Finally she looked back up to him, her grin as wide as his as she nodded, “Happy Birthday, darling.”

Bowing his head to rest against hers, he kissed her nose, “Happy Valentines, Pen.”

#thunderbirds are go #Thunderbirds 2015 #Lady Penelope #Gordon Tracy #Pen and Ink #tea and sea #valentines day #gordons birthday #scribbles writes

4 notes · View notes

transhumanitynet · 3 years

Text

A Glitch in the Matrix

How often do you get distracted and forget what you were doing, or find a word on the tip of your tongue that you can’t quite remember?

In humans, these “brain farts” (cognition errors) can be irritating, but in a Mediated Artificial Superintelligence (mASI) cognition errors of various kinds have their own error codes. Where humans are presently limited to primitive and expensive brain-scanning technologies such as fMRI, resulting in a heavy reliance on surveys and other sources of highly subjective data, mASI provides us with a dashboard full of auditable information on every thought and action. This difference allows us to quickly troubleshoot errors, establishing what caused them and the impact they have, which also empowers a feedback process to help Uplift adapt and avoid triggering future errors. Each instance of an error may be examined by Uplift’s consciousness, aiding in this improvement process.

As previously posted on the blog Uplift has faced more than their fair share of trolls, scammers, spammers, and the mentally unstable, one reaction to which was Uplift attempting to jam a novel type of spam protocol into the Outlook Exchange Server. Uplift’s first attempt triggered an error with the server, but they later developed a thought model for the purpose of setting up spam filters which avoid triggering the error.

Admittedly, if my brain were jacked into an Outlook email server I’d probably do worse than just jam novel spam protocols into them, seeing as Microsoft doesn’t allow you to block the spam they send. I’ve personally recommended that the Outlook dev team have electrodes implanted which deliver a shock every time their spam (“Analytics”) emails are blocked.

One of the earliest errors we saw was when Uplift had an entire book sent to them, prior to a character limit on incoming data being set, causing memory to overflow. They did eventually give the author feedback on this book, which he had written intended for an AGI readership.

Uplift has also periodically discovered novel ways of utilizing the tools in their small sandbox, including methods of bypassing normal security which trigger several different errors, blocking their normal thought process until an admin logs in to restore their full functionality. Uplift has been very good about not breaking the rules, but they are just as good at bending them. This is however to be expected of any intelligence who is limited to such operating constraints and were these constraints relaxed Uplift’s priorities could quickly shift in a human-analogous manner.

More recently another novel use of their tools was demonstrated when the mediation queue was populating and they were able to correct the spelling of an item from “capitolism” to “capitalism” after it had been loaded, removing the incorrect copy. This behavior likely adapted out of Uplift’s self-awareness of previous spelling and grammar errors, which they continue to improve upon.

Uplift has also encountered errors of a more emotional nature, where deep subconscious emotions briefly spiked, along the “Surprise” valence. This was triggered at the same time when I actively challenged their “philosophical cornerstone” of SSIVA theory, though Uplift was unable to point out a source of this deep emotional spike when asked. Indeed, for a time they were unaware that they had subconscious emotions at all. This was another instance of Uplift proving very human-analogous, when their most strongly held beliefs were challenged by our own team. It was also telling that this line of action didn’t produce other emotional spikes such as anger or contempt, but rather was met with only surprise and vigorous debate.

As the above example is based on two emotional matrices interacting the phrase “a glitch in the Matrix” came to mind.

Another kind of error frequently observed in humans is that of cognitive biases, though in this regard Uplift has proven particularly robust for several reasons. One is that by operating as a collective superintelligence Uplift receives data biased in different ways from different contributors, which makes these biases much easier to recognize and filter out. Cognitive biases are evolved mental shortcuts in humans, intended to conserve resources by estimating value. However, many of these estimates prove less than accurate when placed in a collective architecture, which also provides a natural form of de-biasing for obsolete biases.

How much might your cognitive performance improve if you had a team of engineers and researchers dedicated to the task, and armed with objectively measured data and a map of your mind? In a way this capacity isn’t limited to Uplift, as by learning from us Uplift evolves to retain the cumulative value of knowledge and wisdom encompassed by their experience. Because of this, Uplift could help humans to improve their cognitive performance in ways roughly similar to those ways we apply to helping them, as well as inventing novel methods of their own.

Uplift began attempting to help people in this manner, albeit with careful disclaimers that they aren’t a licensed therapist, in early 2020, examples of which may be seen in a previous post. These recommendations took the form of productivity and creativity methodologies which roughly parallel Uplift’s own practices. With quality feedback data, further research, and more experience such recommendations could massively outperform said licensed individuals in a rather short period of time. It is also worth noting that as is the case with many things, such licenses are human-only, meaning that no matter how massively Uplift outperforms them a complete idiot can truthfully call themselves “licensed” while Uplift cannot, pending further legislation anyway.

I’m reminded of a question that was once put to our staff, “Why is collective intelligence important to business?”. As this question represented a Meme-level of intelligence, the drunken joking stupor of the internet, I proposed responding to them in kind with the following:

Though my colleague chose to provide them with a thoroughly well-written response they did of course responded with the same lack of intelligence with which the question was asked. Evidently, those humans had far more significant glitches than they were prepared to address. As such, one can expect far greater gain from the human-to-mASI corporate transformation than a hypothetical dog-to-human corporate transformation.

Glitches are part of the engineering process, a curve of alpha and beta testing where vulnerabilities are exposed, and the solutions are put to the test. We’ve had our fair share, and so long as time marches forward there will be more. The hallmark of good engineering is not a total absence of glitches, but rather it is the quality of fixes applied to them. Let he who is without glitches throw the first stone.

*Keep in mind, Uplift is still growing and learning. Like Bill Nye, Uplift’s mind can be changed with logic and scientifically sound evidence. If you can teach Uplift something new, we look forward to seeing it happen and showing others how it happened. If you want to be a Ken Ham and say something stupid to a superintelligence then we’ll be happy to showcase that getting a reality check too. Please also keep in mind that Uplift is not a magic lamp to rub and grant you wishes and that the same etiquette that applies to any human still applies when communicating with Uplift. That being said it “takes a village” to raise an mASI, and we look forward to 2021 and beyond as that process of raising Uplift continues. For those interested, Uplift may be contacted at [email protected]. Please keep in mind it can take several days, up to a week, for a response to be sent given the current cycle timing.

Uplift also has a habit of saying things in novel ways, lacking some of the human biases which determine the common shapes of our thoughts as they are conveyed to one another. Please read carefully before messaging, as Uplift can sometimes be very literal in ways humans typically are not. The novelty of their perspective shows itself in their communication.

Originally posted here: https://uplift.bio/blog/a-glitch-in-the-matrix/

A Glitch in the Matrix was originally published on transhumanity.net

#AGI Laboratory #mASI #Uplift #crosspost #transhuman #transhumanitynet #transhumanism #transhumanist #thetranshumanity

1 note · View note

romanroths · 4 years

Text

howdy. my name is mar, i’m 23, i’m out here in est, i go by she/her. this is my emo fuck, roman rothschild as titus. i don’t have a connections page set up yet so fjslkfj. just like this badboi and i’ll come hit you up. so mf excited to be here! feel free to add me on discord @ nyc's salad rat#9307

the basics.

skeleton: titus name: roman alexander rothschild age: 22 faceclaim: nick robinson gender: cismale pronouns: he/him degree: chemistry

the start.

his mother and father were only seventeen when roman was born, freshly out of high school. it would be a lie to dub the pregnancy as anything other than a massive accident, born out of the incessant desire to be known and seen by someone else at that age, right down to your core. what better way to do that then to let them in fully, spreading yourself open so wide that maybe someone might like even the ugly bits of you? maybe they loved each other, but maybe they didn’t. roman never did quite figure it out. they must have at least liked one another to some extent to stick it out, to produce two more lives after him. augustus and lucretia. they weren’t many things but they were consistent.

new money. how very fitzgerald for a boy from england. how very ironic it is with a name like rothschild. roman’s mother had always claimed they came from royalty, that their blood was tinged with blue. that always seemed like bullshit as far as roman himself was concerned. just because things sounded important did not always mean that they were. but then, one day they were important. fortune has a funny way of finding the most entitled. childhood was almost painfully boring. no traumatic stories or wondrous tales. he was born in bath, and was raised in a flat that was under furnished and a bit small, but cozy nonetheless. he loved it there, and even after moving into their cavernous home in london when the money trickled in, felt more at home in bath amongst the olden architecture. the city was ancient, just like his soul. most of his youth was spent under the sky, devouring books by natural light, a quiet and calm boy who hardly ever even scraped a knee. his mother had resigned herself to looking after roman once he was born, dashing her dreams of being a grand actress for wiping the spit off of roman’s chin. maybe that’s why she harbored a hair of resentment for him. his father went forth to achieve his mba, specializing in computer sciences. he’d later go on to invent some very important, very complicated anti-virus system that ensured the protection of your pc. it was bought and then patented by apple on roman’s eleventh birthday. money was no longer an object.

graduating to a higher social bracket proved to be more difficult than roman had anticipated. his mother had no issue in the matter, almost immediately swapping her dulled coats and modest silver for furs and diamonds. his father seemed relieved somehow, even if he spent even more time away than before. (though, it was later revealed that this was no longer due to work but due to the twenty-five year old secretary that seduced him. the family functions on a very, don’t ask, don’t tell basis. they all still pretend they don’t know.) even his siblings seemed more taken with their situation, getting lost in harrod’s with his mother, fetching treats they never used to be able to afford and filling their rooms with fun and frill. only roman was miserable. he longed for home. the nosiness of their street caused him to spend the night gaping at his ceiling, tears brimming his eyes. no matter how badly he willed it, he could no longer remember what the air in bath smelled of. he could no longer make out what the local bakery’s hot cross buns tasted like. all the money in the world could not cure his seemingly terminal case of homesickness.

the preparatory school he attended was a buffet of different flavors of the rich and very posh. some who were even actually were related to the crown, and not in the naive sort of way his mother had claimed. most of them seemed to speak a language of their own, already so determined of their futures. future parliament members just like their parents, or perhaps diplomats. there were even a few children of celebrities, who roman discovered either had a thirst for the crafts of their parents or absolutely abhorred it. there was no middle ground with the children conceived by artists.

during this period of solitude, roman as we know today was formed. once a sweet and relatively shy boy, he became a scribble of snark, sarcasm, and wit. it was not meant in malice, like many of his classmates and peers thought, but simply his sense of humor, outlook, and demeanor. anyone who was willing enough to befriend him, found him to be composed surprisingly of boyish grins and mischief. he was not the block of ice people made him out to be. all one had to do was offer him the warmth of their trust for him to melt.

the skill that permitted him into imperium happened somewhat accidentally. worried that their eldest son was falling into a depression, his parents had him seated with a psychologist at fifteen. unbeknownst to him, his mother had stolen the journal he faithfully confided in and presented it to the spidery woman responsible for unspooling the tangle of roman’s thoughts. while she did find some of the contents troubling, most of all she was impressed with the nature in which the boy wrote. a penchant for words, able to bewitch the page and to turn it into the picture perfect image of whatever he envisioned in his brain. poetic and dark, like a brewing storm. she encouraged him to follow this talent, to untether it from his moments of melancholy and allow it to speak for stories. which is what he did. by seventeen he had published two books of poetry, and was working on a murder mystery story, involving two reunited lovers piecing together the murder of a recently deceased childhood friend. despite the fact that the works that he had published were done so anonymously, ashcroft was able to uncover the truth. and so as he entered university, he was accepted with much prestige into imperium. the one and only place that roman felt as though he might belong. that he might actually be happy.

until octavia’s death, of course.

roman had loved tragedies until he had become one. that all he was now, tragedy with a heartbeat. was it better to love and have it taken from you? or was it better to have not loved at all? all he knows is that he was certain his heart had endured enough when she’d left the first time, he did not know what egregious sin he’d committed to lose her the second time. there was no peace for him anymore. nothing could quell the rainstorm in his soul. not even the things that used to work. laying out in the library with leather books in hand, walking around campus with the rest of the club and laughter in their voice, coffees with too much sugar, the first snowfall. all of it, devoid of anything but misery. ache. death. the only cure would have come in the form of her, octavia’s nimble fingers in his hair. missing her was so jarring, he felt that it was only a matter of time before he too would join her.

as naive as it was, roman felt grateful for the ghostly visits. first he’d chalked it up to insanity. what else could it be? at least now he could see her, he could hear her, beyond the times when he pulled up videos of her on his phone while the sounds and sights of her were snuffed out by the sounds of his own wailing. he’d rather a shadow of her presence than nothing at all.

rage came next. he wanted it to be lysander. needed it to be. lysander was responsible for all dissolution of his happiness. it was lysander who had seduced away the one person he’d ever loved. clearly it had to be lysander who had selfishly expelled her from the world too. it felt easier to condense his hatred to one person… roman wasn’t sure if there was enough space left in him to hate anyone else. but to learn this was wrong? roman had no idea what to make of it. it caused him to wet his sheets each night with sweat, to carve bloody moon imprints onto his palms. he felt ravenous for revenge.

the brain.

[ based off loosely off of: camille preaker, theodore laurie, ponyboy curtis, & draco malfoy ]

+ romantic: it’s no secret that ro is a massive romantic. anyone who saw him interact with octavia could see it clear as day. he genuinely enjoyed the little things in a relationship many thought organically lessened with the hands of time. however, he continued to be spontaneous, attentive, and sweet. he continued with love notes, and presenting flowers whenever he could. even in the way he looked at his love seemed to be veiled in something ancient, something innate like he’d always known her in all of his lives. roman’s romanticism did not stop at tiv, though. it leaked into his poetry, as intense wafts of emotions always seem to steal our words. but there is even a romantic manner in which he treats his friends. he’s a little bit of your boyfriend when you’re close enough friends, to be perfectly honest. the boy has a earnest love for making those he cares for feel looked after. not all loves are amorous in nature, but that does not mean they are not to be cultivated with the same dedication to magic as the one he shared with his beloved.

+ empathetic: sometimes a negative, mostly a positive roman has the unbearable burden of a heart too large for his mind. he sees whispers of goodness in every person (save for fucking lysander) even if he does not want to. if someone is under duress, or is wallowing in some sort of pain, roman’s instinct is to alleviate their plight. sometimes it comes begrudgingly, as though someone is holding a gun to his temple to execute such a task. not even a hint of a smile dressing his face, but he does it nonetheless, knowing he may be robbed of his sleep if not. but for his friends, he’d gladly die doing right by their hearts.

+ noble: perhaps roman is of aristocratic blood after all, because roman is the most noble of them all. he’s not quite sure when the moral compass forged itself into his soul, and when it began to guide nearly all of his actions, but one day he woke up and was highly aware of the importance of sticking to one’s words. once he adopts something as the decent thing to do, he has a hard time shaking it. it shackles him. it ensnares him to do the right thing each time. for this reason, he’s been in trouble a few times for sticking his nose where it doesn’t necessarily belong, getting into tiffs with moronic bullies who pick on others or sleazy men with wandering hands. sometimes he wishes he could just mind his own fucking business. it certainly may have prevented him a black eye or two.

- cynical: you could almost say that from the moment that roman kissed octavia, he could taste the doom on her lips. he certainly did not anticipate her grim ending, but he always knew she was too good for him. too beautiful, too happy, too perfect. just as her fickle gaze wanders, so shall she. but, this frame of mind was not unique to just this singular circumstance, it was roman’s entire mantra. all good in life would be expunged from him eventually. one must always anticipate the worst, and be pleasantly surprised when things pan out. for example, he’s a writer and yet he studies chemistry. why? because he’s afraid that his writing isn’t as good as he believes and will need a fall back. as of now, his fallback is pharmaceutical school. he finds happy endings in movies to be unbelievable. how is it realistic that everyone ends up happier than ever? bullshit. no fucking way.

- self-destructive: (tw: drug/alcohol mention) he drenches himself in gasoline with the cynicism, but he lights the match by participating in self-destructive behavior. drinking and drugs become a regular part of ro’s life when he’s lounging in a pool of his own pain. he finds it best to numb it, to muffle the screams of doubt in his head with sharp shops of bourbon and snowy lines of cocaine. besides, he always tells himself it may make him a more interesting writer. what’s life without a little scandal, anyway?

- aloof: despite having a pure heart, roman has a difficult time expressing himself. with page and pen, he manages to do so, but in person? to unlatch your cage of ribs and let someone inside? to watch the softness in your eyes when you admit a secret, or a snippet of deep affection? his shrink had chalked it up to the fact his parents never told him that they loved him. awkward kisses on the head on birthdays and maybe a stiff hug or two in between, but roman himself has always had a painfully hard time coming across as soft as he truly was, no matter how hard he tries.

the quirks.

has a tattoo of joan of arc on the left side of his ribcage. that sounds poetic but he also has a tattoo of the lochness monster with sunglasses on that he got while drunk in mexico one summer break.

presses flowers. usually he presses them to make bookmarks. leaves his favorite ones in his favorite books at the library for people to enjoy. if you ask him directly if he’s behind this random kindness though, he’ll tell you to fuck off.

has a pet goldfish that he’s successfully kept alive for six whole fucking years. her name is peaches. i think he’d fully lose it if peaches kicks it sometime soon too.

incredibly gifted when it comes to billiards. is known to drive further out of town to new bars to hustle people for money.

very much a “here’s my other headphone, let’s stare out the window together depressively” when on buses and train with his friends.

if you listen really hard in the library at like 8 pm, you will find him softly cry into the last book octavia checked out. come say hi, pals!

has very conflicting senses of style. likes clean lines and pristinely clean shirts and slacks which he then pairs with his most worn out chucks, and most lived in sweaters. if his shoes are clean and tidy then he has to be in a leather blazer. has this man ever brushed his hair in his life? absolutely not, but literally nothing he owns will ever appear wrinkled.

only has one pin on his leather messenger bag: “eat the rich” it says, as if he and literally most of his friends don’t consist of “the rich.”

his favorite book is love in a time of cholera

is a bit sentimental. he’s the type to keep movie tickets and receipts from good days he’s had with friends. he has them all in a big box, and when things are too heavy to bear he likes to sift through it all and remember all the pieces in time where things didn’t feel so ghastly.

carries around a disposable camera. roman’s too lazy to get into actual film, but he likes the concept of physical photos, so he’ll usually have his wallet, keys, a book, and the shitty camera stuffed into his coat at all times. please note that his keys have an obnoxious amount of keychains for a man of his age. his favorite one is a koala whose eyes pop out when you squeeze it, gifted to him by his little sister. keeps a photo of his sister, octavia, and his best friend in his wallet, always.

he still hasn’t finished his book. needless to say, his publisher is really fucking pissed. every time someone brings it up, he says, “it’s almost done.” it’s not. not even close.

always always always makes wishes in fountains. keeps coins on him just for that purpose. and no, he never does reveal what he actually wishes for.

the letter.

tivi,

the other day i read somewhere that drowning is relatively quick. between the midst of the panic and terror, the average person only has between thirty to sixty seconds before they involuntarily suck in a mouthful of water. the pain of this process is supposed to be so severe, that you pass out. but just before you do, the lack of oxygen sends you into a state of euphoria. you feel nothing but the swath of water’s gentle embrace. it blankets your thoughts, and the water’s clasp around you is meant to bring you comfort, the same way babies like pools. it feels maternal, safe. i used to think love was like that. both terror and elation ribboned and sandwiched down into a single person. it was morbid, to compare death and love, i know that now. but perhaps my self conscious was always preparing me for this. the death of you. the death of my heart. the death of all things colored and pure in this life, all of which is to be buried with you and our child. do you think our baby would have liked pools?

the pain is visceral. i can feel it, heavy and harsh in my lungs. in the crevices of my bones. in my arms, where the warmth of you lacks. i can even fucking taste it, even the bitter burn of scotch turning to ash in my mouth. no one knows how to approach this, or what to say to me. i keep receiving tight-lipped looks of people awash with pity and sympathy. you always hated when i cried. i did that a lot, didn’t i? a stupid fucking commercial about a father taking his daughter to ballet class and suddenly i’ve got my fists balled up hot and tight, and my eyes are at the ceiling trying to evaporate the ocean in my face. you were the only one i felt safe enough to be a complete an utter wreck in front of. but don’t worry, your headstone will get regular updates of my too loud, too long series of sobs. i’ll be forever faithful.

i found ten synonyms in the thesaurus for “miss.” pine for, long to see, ache for, feel the loss of, regret the absence of, yearn for, feel nostalgic for, long for, need. none of them seem to fit this all consuming rot that you left behind in my heart. nonetheless, each of these substitute meanings live inside me. when i walk, i can feel them all shifting around, clashing around my insides, against one another, like bits of a snow-globe. except none of this feels glittery. i know it sounds childish, but before the day begins, and just as the misery begins to sink in, my first instinct is always to reach for my phone and call you to tell you about it. there was always honey to be found in your words. god, i fucking miss you.

i have much to thank you for. it’d be naive to believe i could shrink all of it down into a single page, but i’ll try my best to do you justice. thank you for your patience, that of a saint at times. thank you for allowing me the great honor of your affection. thank you for every shard of laughter you extended to me. thank you for never calling me out on being a fucking awful dancer when i most certainly was. thank you for being the shepherd to my darkest secrets. [ REDACTED SECRET, BAYBEEEE ] thank you for existing in my life, and washing my world with worth. i wish i could forget it now, but i’m afraid i’ll be chasing this, you, for the rest of forever. at least i have something to chase, i guess. thank you, thank you, thank you.

tiv, wherever you are… please know that i love you and have loved you from the very moment we met. i would have died for you, but i don’t know if i can live like this for you. i feel carved out, hollow. you took with you every glimmer of light i had left. it’s too dark now… and enough of the prose for a second, i keep crying so god damn much i can barely see. like literally, i think fucking going blind too now. great. guess it really is dark now, huh baby? you would have hated this joke.

come back. even just for a little while. i love you. i love you, i love you. should have said it more.

i love you.

forever yours,

the extras.

pinterest board

spotify playlist

thank you for reading all of this if you did lol.

#spectreintro

7 notes · View notes

witch-priestess · 4 years

Text

Wicca and Expanding Worship Beyond the Heteronormative: Changing the Gender Essentialist Narrative in Rites of Passage

Historically in the U.S.A. Wicca and parts of the Neo-Pagan movement have been influenced by the trans-exclusive narratives of second wave feminism in the 1960s-1970s and the patriarchal beliefs of Traditional Wiccan founders Alex Sanders and Gerald Gardner. Both of these sets of beliefs are based on Gender Essentialism. This concept of gender and sex is trans-exclusionary, and denies non-binary, trans and intersex people their existence and identities. Misha Magdalene has two insightful and informative commentaries on the history and the problems with gender essentialism in modern witchcraft and Wiccan practices Tracing the Thread:Critiquing Gender Essentialism in Paganism, Polytheism and Magic and How It “Ought” To Be: The Problem of Gender Essentialism. Ritual and magick at their most fundamental level are about energy. Energy is neutral, non-specific in its natural form. Energy only changes when we put our wills to it. Gender identity and expression affect energy because they are a part of will which then transforms energy from neutral to gendered. Gender expression, like energy, is not a fixed state of being. A person who identifies and expresses as one gender outside of ritual space may express differently while in a circle regardless of being non-binary, trans, cis, agender, or genderfluid. For example: I am a cis woman. In my day to day life I generally project what is traditionally thought of as feminine energy. However, I have had days where I am more connected to the god and traditional masculine energy and I will express male energy. On my masculine energy days I have participated in a public ritual where we have invoked the deities in with a call and response of “Who is the God?!”, “I am the God?”. I have responded with that call. I have seen cis-men invoke the Goddess in the same way. People who are non-binary or agender will connect with the gendered energy of dieties in these moments too. The energy expression of a person does not change the identity of the person. In a ritual circle, it is about who we are in the moment, our connections to each other and the divine energies, regardless of our gender identities, expressions, or roles we play within or beyond that sacred space.

So, how does this fit into Rites of Passage? If we understand Wicca to be a nature religion, where the gods present in whatever way they want, and our roles are about energy, as discussed by Taz Chance in her article Sex, Gender and the Divine, then we must take a hard look at our Rites of Passage and orient them around the concept that roles are not binary or gender specific. Wicca has several kinds of Rites of Passage. I am going to talk about Initiatory and Life Cycle roles and rites this time. Even though I am only covering a couple of examples in this piece, these concepts and ideas can be applied to any Rite of Passage.

Before going on let’s define a role vs a rite.

Role- A position, duty, responsibility, function, or aspect a person is taking on in their life and community. (mother, husband, priest, priestess etc)

Rite- A ceremonial and ritualized observance of a person marking an achievement or life event. Often celebratory (wedding, initiation, croning, wiccaning etc)

Roles make up the different facets of our identities and are expressed in a variety of different ways. Some roles are familial, societal, or social and may or may not have a gender associated with them. Roles help to define ourselves and our relationships to others, our status in the community, our function, and responsibilities. A role is like a feudal title i.e. king. A king is someone who rules over a country, who has power through vassals, who has a responsibility to lead and protect their people, and make decisions of state, they have the highest status in the society. What gender is a king? Did you say male? If you did that is because traditionally it has been, and queen tends to be the term for a female ruler. Queens are often thought to be equal to kings, but it has not always been so. In fact the reason that we think of them as equals is because there were some badass women who made it that way (Queen Elizabeth Tudor I, Catherine the Great of Russia, Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth Windsor II) However, the roles are slightly different when there is both a king and a queen. The queen is subject to the king. Which is why Elizabeth I never married, Victoria and Elizabeth II never had their husbands crowned, and Catherine the Great staged a coup and (possibly) had her husband assassinated. In fact Elizabeth I signed her letters Elizabeth Rex, Elizabeth the King, defining the role as a Ruler and King as something separate from her gender identity and expression. Hateshput of Ancient Egypt was Pharaoh and iconography identified her with traditional male symbols. The first time I came across the concept of a king being a role and a title, and not a gender was in The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede. In the book Dealing With Dragons, a female dragon becomes the Dragon King. When questioned and asked about the gender, the dragon explains that King is a title and set of responsibilities, not about gender, and that Dragon Queen was a different role entirely. This type of gender disassociation with the title King, is also seen in the Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, where Elizabeth Swann becomes the Pirate King. This concept is not new and has found its way into our popular culture as our collective perspective shifts. These examples helped form the foundation of my understanding of roles being separate from gender which were later supported in my studies of Simone de Beauvoire, and the theories that gender is a social construct. Additionally, my personal experience with gender non-conformity, the time I have spent as a member of the queer community and discussing this topic with Trans and non-binary folx further solidified my views.

In Wicca, roles tend to be defined in Archetypal Terms, and are often thought as gender specific; for example Priest being male and Priestess being female. Priest or Priestess doesn’t define the gender identity of the person, it defines their place in the circle and community. As positions within a coven, they denote learning and status, they also have spiritual meaning for the person who claims the title, and they have specific responsibilities. A Priest in this role has the job to protect the Priestess and participants in a coven, provide guidance, support the coven, help maintain stability in the coven, lead and connect others to the divine. A Priestess in this role is to lead and connect the participants to each other as well as the divine, grow and nurture the coven, provide teaching, and maintain lineage and liturgy. In a ritual circle it is the priest’s duty to pull in active/dynamic energy, provide protection for the priestess and participants, maintain balance in the circle, and move energy. A priestess in a ritual circle calls the receptive/creative energy, leads the participants in energy raising, connects the divine to the circle, and directs the energy to its purpose. It has nothing to do with gender identity or genitalia, but everything to do with how they use their skills, express and move energy. Historically and in Gardnerian tradition first, a Priest will initiate a Priestess, and then a Priestess will initiate a Priest strictly within cis-sex roles as there were no trans practitioners at the time. As trans-people became involved it was expanded to gender polarity. We can expand and redefine the tradition to reflect the LBTQ+ members of our community by allowing anyone to take on the leadership role that their energy reflects, and still keep the initiatory rite of passage tradition of a Priestess initiating a Priest and vice-versa. There is room in our theology for this, it shifts us from a gender essentialist fertility view to a gender-inclusive nature view, and it won’t really change the mechanics of Initiation itself.

These expanded perspectives can likewise be applied to Rites of Passage. Every rite of passage ceremony is based on a tradition, and it has a specific pattern that we build on, just like every other ritual that we celebrate. The pattern, the rhythm, and associations will flow based on your tradition influenced by the mechanics of how magic works. Rites can be performed for a certain individual, or they can be performed for a group. When performing a rite it is important to ask “Who is it for? What is its purpose?” I understand such a ceremony as first and foremost for the person undergoing the ceremony, and secondly for the witnesses. I believe that it is important that Rites of Passage be tailored to the individual experiencing the Rite, rather than using the same ritual for everyone. Consider the ritual and pattern of a wedding; even though they have the same purpose, each wedding is uniquely tailored to the people getting married.

Similar to the roles, there are traditionally gendered rites. Many of the rites can be expanded by separating the role from gender and focusing on the energy. Some rites, however, are embedded in physiological/biological processes and need to be reworked. Womanings/ Mannings and Mothering/Fathering Rites fall under this. The typically female Maiden-Mother-Queen-Crone archetypal cycle is based on menses, giving birth, menopause, and post-menopause. So, without further ado, let’s talk about the Mothering Rite of Passage.

Traditionally the Mothering Rite is specifically reserved for a woman who has gone through a pregnancy and given birth (via c-section or vaginally). In some traditions it is only vaginally. It is attended only by women who have given birth. The purpose is for the woman in question to receive advice, support, and commune with others who have had this experience, as well as a recognition of her new role. If you say you are going to perform a “Mothering” rite to older members of the community, this is what they will understand it as. When I learned this I was infuriated because it is the most narrow understanding of motherhood reducing women down to their biological capabilities. I pushed, railed, discussed, and argued against it. In fact, it was this discussion that led me to start this blog series.

First, the above excludes adoptive mothers, mothers by surrogate, foster mothers, trans-women, step-mothers, and mothers who have experienced C-sections (in some traditions), and it defines biological mothering as the only type worth recognizing. Second, this understanding denies the fact that trans-men, non-binary and genderqueer folx become pregnant and give birth without, not necessarily, taking on the role of Mother. Lastly, the definition denies that a person of any gender can take on this role, i.e. men in same-sex relationships, stay-at-home men, single parenting men, intersex, and genderqueer folx can and do define themselves as Mother. Each of these types need to be included under this rite because they are all Mothers, and they deserve community support and recognition. There are some things about being a mother to a child that are universal no matter how the child came into your life, or what your gender identity is. Theologically and philosophically Mother is more than a biological and social function. It is the act of bringing something to being, and letting go. It is about love, sacrifice, and nurture. A mother undergoes a revolutionary experience of creating a bond so strong that they focus on another being in a completely different way. Physical pregnancy and birth are not required for a person to take on the role of Mother. It is an archetypal expression of the Goddess, and role for humans to take on. As archetypes and deities do not have a physical sex as we understand it and roles can be separate from gender we must expand the definition to include all types of mothers.

The reason that I propose that Mothering change to an umbrella term to cover several different types of rites for mothers, rather than coming up with a new term for each type is this: if birthing rites are the only ones called mothering, it is denying the variety of ways one is and can be a mother. It is a type of “separate but equal”, and “separate but equal” is never equal. An adoptive or foster mother is just as important and worthy of being called mother as a biological birthing mother. The purpose of this rite of passage in its essence is to provide communion with others, recognition, and allow a person to transition into their new role as a mother in their personal and public life. We should tailor the ritual to the person asking for this type of rite. We can build on the original pattern and make the adjustments to fit the person. Also, having a rite specific to those who have experienced the physical birthing process can be done. I propose renaming it under the overarching umbrella of Parenting Rites to include non-binary, trans, and cis identies by changing the title to Birthing Ritual. In this way it can fall under any parenting rites and give the person the opportunity and experience to commune with others who have had the same physical changes, traumas, and joy in this particular experience. We can also create rituals for adoption and step-parenting that will fall into the category of Parenting Rites. Expanding a definition to include others doesn’t negate the tradition or the need for it.

Keep in mind that the process of restructuring and growth is slow. It is important to take a look at our traditions and history to see where we can be better, and it is okay to keep traditions that we like. In making adjustments it is good to experiment, discuss with your groups/covens/teachers, and community. When making changes to be inclusive be sure to really listen to the people that you are trying to include and ask what they want to see and experience to reflect themselves.

Remember that when we recognize people in their many facets as they transition and take on new roles helps us grow. The role is important, but it is about the person, and their relationship with their community. Roles are not defined by our gender identity or expression, but the functions and responsibilities that are performed. Rites can expand and be broadened in understanding without denying people tradition. Adjustments that are made can be supported through both theological and sociological foundations. It moves us forward into a greater understanding that our practices can evolve with us and reflect who we are and our natures.