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misscammiedawn · 1 year

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Charmed! Recap Day 3 (Friday)

As before all stories and name drops are done with consent.

Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 (You're reading it) Day 4 Day 5

I woke up and got myself quickly ready. Today was Presence Class Day! I needed to get SUITED because I wanted to be SPECTACULAR…

Do you think I succeeded?

Charmed! Outfit 3: The Dazzling Miss Dawn's Sleazy Vegas Magician look.

For when a Fae needs to teach a class in a few hours and found out it *is* in fact being streamed for Zoom audiences.

While getting dressed I discovered Precious was in fact just hiding under my outfits.

It was time for Daja to get dressed too and—

This was also pre-negotiated before the con!

With a finger to her forehead, she was compelled to get dressed in the outfit that she had packed for the day and forgot about.

And thus Miss Dawn’s lovely assistant was ready to be shown off… after a few classes.

The first of which was Nath’s consent class. - Though on the way to the class we bumped into a certain member of the community who was absolutely *stunned* by my attire. He said that there are three things he finds hot. British ladies, red heads and women in suits.

I am still not used to the sheer gender euphoria of overtly and only being regarded as a woman these days. That would not have happened at my last visit to Charmed!

I’m a butterfly. I’ve escaped my chrysalis. I’m gorgeous now. My admirer is very good people and he and Mazirian are the only two guys (I am not in a relationship with, anyway) in the whole community I am convinced actually find me physically attractive. I am sure that number is higher, but my brain cannot deny. It tries. It fails. Those interactions were sought by them, unprompted and sincere.

Hell, to give this new compliment some credit, the one being kind wasn't even fixing to have a scene with me.

Sadly we couldn’t stay and chat and my silly brain’s snark would have to wait for another opportunity to brat at me for having a brief moment of bliss; if you’ve ever had a brain before you may be aware of how it attempts to prevent those bright and positive moments from being accepted. Luckily, I am getting better about these things <3

First (non-PreCon) class was starting!

Daja and I sat in the front row for support and the room had a modest attendance for a 10am class. Though the intelligence play audience next door were far more charged, which meant both Daja and Nath had to deal with an abundance of distracting noise.

As expected from the Discord, a certain person showed up to the class. This person had been a big source of discussion on the Charmed Discord before the event. He came from the perspective of a street hypnotist and his consent models were outdated.

(Camden edit: This person has been banned from the event)

To his credit, he showed up and attended the class. It’s a little exhausting for the community to act as educator to a person who was not really making the leap to understanding.

But his question in the class, though misguided, was not in bad faith and my trust of him went up a little bit. Not enough to approach or anything, but enough to not fear or snark.

During the lesson I asked Nath to illustrate the differences and pros/cons of Informed and Emotional Consent. Bit of a softball there but I am legitimately interested in that info.

Also Nath elucidated upon her fetish for hypnosis being inherently sexual and that she is incapable of separating hypnosis from erotic intimacy. That the act in of itself is a sex-act. Though I do not share that outlook, I understand it. For me it is a malleable thing, emotionally intimate, physically intimate, spiritually intimate. It’s all these things and more and yes, sometimes, sexually intimate. Though physical arousal is always a detriment for me due to plumbing concerns and– baggage.

It kind of explains something I’ve always read about her, a certain confusion I have that my brain tends to be mean about, which is my fault and not hers.

Thanks to BPD I have heightened awareness of emotional energy oddities but I am not always capable of understanding why, which causes those little whispers of “she hates you, she only puts up with you for the sake of Daja.”

Which the other, less emotional, voice replies “people don’t think about you as much as you think they do, sweetheart. Perhaps you should stop projecting your insecurity onto other people.”

Turns out the odd energy is just a note that as a sex-repulsed asexual, she does not feel comfortable engaging in hypnosis around me and certainly not with me.

I feel kind of bad that I negotiated a scene with her without understanding that. Perhaps it is fortunate that nothing came of that discussion. I never want to be the source of someone else's discomfort.

Once the class was over it was time to move next door for a round table discussion on being a hypnotee. But not before bumping into the exact two humans I needed to bump into…

On Twitter I have a pair of writer friends who ADORE Lady In Suit energy and it was my mission to ensure they both got to experience mine.

I hope it adequately impressed.

I'd have stayed to enjoy my earned praise but the class was starting and I needed to be there.

Glitter Spiral was waving for me to sit with them. Copper was by the door and I had pre-arranged to spend this class with Copper. Plus as much as I wanted to talk to GS, and I did, I felt having Daja around was a requirement to prevent weirdness. There was weirdness, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

I knelt next to Copper and let him pet me while I watched the presenter. Two of the four most famous and talented ace educators. The third would have been there too if not for the fact she was missing this convention and the fourth is stuck in New Zealand for a while.

Don’t worry, I’m technically number 5 now.

Daja brought up a number of Our Stories during the lesson and I found myself blushing as she showed me how much she appreciated our work together and how much she was learning and how well she took care of me. I felt deeply loved and cherished.

There was a joke about Daja not knowing if MCStories had a .com or .net address. Someone suggested “just click it on your favorites tab”, which is a god damned mood. Though I wish ROM were more adopted.

Daja made another joke about stealing scenes from stories and that they need not be from hypnoporn. A Chris Claremont story is just as good for inspiration and that is SO valid.

During the class there was a point of which Tenn and Daja were discussing the fact that negotiation is a flexible thing and that even contracts should leave wiggle room for negotiation. That there are no hard and fast rules inscribed on stone tablets to be passed through the community.

Glitter Spiral, lovely kinky Jewish kinkster that she is, took this opportunity to yell “Let my people cum!” And I just about lost it with laughter.

Daja once again told the story about me flopping during the Beguiled scene and when she told it she gave me the patented Daja!Wink. It always makes me turn in to a puddle of blush x.x;

I was also a snarky bitch. There was talk about “Trance vending machines”. It was brought up as a negative. A way that hypnotees can be abusive to hypnotists by not treating them as people with agency, emotions and wants/needs of their own. We do not want to treat people as Trance Vending Machines.

Someone on the other side of the room asked, jokingly, where can one find these Trance Vending Machines. I said that if you found one then they’d be like an individual in the Welsh hypno community who should not be named, who collects and discards people constantly.

Copper was petting me the whole while and I clinged to his wrist. I do not often get tender moments with Copper in a hypnosis context.

It was nice. I liked it. We needed to do more of this. We *would* do more of this…

But right now, at that moment? It was time for My Class @.@

Daja needed to do some last minute prep, so I got myself comfortable in the room. Dolly was there and approached me. Apparently Daja had asked for her to help me find Dawn space. I was still remarkably somft and Sunrise from being petted.

A few moments with her and the transformation happened seamlessly. Just a gentle graze on her cheek and a firm look in her eyes. With every little eye flutter of that pretty dolly, who obeys me so perfectly, drew that dominant streak from my heart. Oh how I adore those swooning sighs as she sways helplessly to my hypnotic presence. She gave me a massive boost by reminding me just how powerful the tool I wield and wished to teach could truly be.

As if I required confirmation, a Panda approached and in an awe filled voice says “I know you told me about it but I get it now. You’re not Cammie, are you?” I did not even know that my pre-show display had attracted an audience, but it was such a treat for Panda to see me in my element.

When it saw me during coffee service I was a sweet soft Sunrise in a green dress, bouncing with giddy excitement and jingling my ankle cat bell with delight. Closed body language, shy expressions. A contradiction as no matter how withdrawn and shy her body language seems, she is explosively reactive and so full of emotion.

Instead we had a seductive tsunami with wide gestures and a firm seductive grin. Panda recognized the difference instantly.

She had met Miss Dawn.

With that set, my microphone attached and my iPad script ready to go… I launched into the routine.

For future reference, I am fast spoken when nervous and need to pace myself. Both classes I taught ended 20 minutes early because I raced through the content.

But Daja was there, sitting pretty with her hair in a bun- a bun held by a keyblade hairpin. A special tool we’ll need later. With a dramatic flair I peeled through my introduction and explained the finer points of what my concept was. I explained that in 2020 I had watched a demo with Sleepingirl that had taken everyone’s breath away and that I wanted to focus on why their induction was able to captivate the entire audience.

2020 Camden wrote:

I'm not going to lie, reader.

I want to say that I witnessed magic. That I witnessed the unspeakable beauty of a silent induction of two women matching their breathing and entering trance, in inducing subspace, in the slow and loving rotations of the rope mixed with the harsh tugs that emitted hisses that could be heard across the room. I was enchanted watching it for sure. Oxygen was sucked out of the room, only the two of them existed.

I am pretty confident we were literally entranced. People use that as a metaphor in prose, but there was no sound at all spare 2 hyp girls breathing. If someone place a hand to my forehead and told me to listen closely to every word they said while I watched the top crawl directly up to the sub's face and touch lips in the most heated display of rushed and yet hauntingly delated tension--- well. I'd never have known. Fuck, for all I know that did happen.

With sleepingirl’s permission and encouragement, I shared that story with the class and explained that I intended to teach. My dearest hope is that there were moments of my demos where I was able to weave a little of that magic for myself. Though I had told my lovely assistant that during the class our attention would be rapt on one another. The audience did not need to have our attention. They could linger on the outskirts of perception.

Though a certain Dolly in the front row was likely to get caught by the splash.

The class taught the way to utilize different emotional contexts. Seductive, Dominant, Comforting, Detached. I did this first by repeating a stock hypnotic phrase in those distinctive tones and then repeating them with an air of physicality about them. I drew attention to the way that some modes pull a partner in, seductive and lulling draws a partner in while soft and soothing guides a person down.

All the while I took as good care of Daja as I could given the constraints. I am oh so glad that I had taken the time to run the routine with her on Thursday to ensure everything went off as seamlessly as possible… and to be fair, there were some rough edges. But enough that I could do this again at another convention and perform just as well. If not better.

Some moments elicited spontaneous crowd reactions like the moment I mentioned that for leverage and leveling you could dip your partner and stare down into their eyes, but I was far too frail to do that to Daja, so would need her to do it for me. As I surrendered to gravity and let Daja catch me, for the first of two times, members of the audience gave a muted applause. Such attention simply feeds my powers.

We went over eye contact. Environmental proximity. Teasing and taunting. Placement of tools. Scents.

I was on top of the world.

For the hypnotee side I was running out of steam and showing off hypnotee expressions and tones was messing with my performance presence a little bit.

Sleepyhead even asked me later if I exited Dawn space during the last 10 minutes. It humbles me to know that the Dolly is becoming increasingly aware of my headspaces and how they externally present.

The third moment of spontaneous applause came as Daja and I choreographed an example of Cammie’s ragdolling and she caught me as I dropped. I had hoped that it would have been my crowning moment, but the climax was actually the second moment of spontaneous applause.

The one that happened at the end of the hypnotist segment.

“Sometimes these modalities can be taken to their full potential when you mix things up.” I boldly exclaimed, beckoning Daja in close.

“I could start with something soft… romantic… delicate…” I cooed, my microphone picking even my gentle tones for both the in person and internet audiences, my hand brushed her cheek, the left one secured her shoulder.

“Drawing her eyes and pulling her down…” Daja’s lovely wide pupils glistened as she stared, fractionation from the classes’ numerous demonstrations already having had their toll, “until I start to change the tone…”

My hand reached in and plucked the keyblade from her hair. Silky strands blossomed free and cascaded down shoulders. My hand snaked in to her scalp, pulled in close and made a fist.

“And DOMINATE her.”

She sank to her knees staring at me adoringly. I pulled in close, eyes locked on hers and spoke with a firm striking voice, “And she falls to her knees and *LISTENS* as I **COMMAND** her, with each of my words sinking DEEPER under my spell.”

That moment was a very last minute addition and one I had practiced with Sleepyhead a few times before the convention and once on Thursday with Daja.

The class ended after the hypnotee segment, but I am a dramatic lady and needed the climax of the class to be the climax of my retelling. Chronology be damned. It means nothing to the Fae.

There was however one other moment I wanted to bring forth with the hypnotee segment.

When I was talking about the open and inviting body language, the allure of a hypnotee, I joked that Daja made a great demo for bratting. Her body language folded closed, her arms folded and she gave me a The Look. A wonderful example for that mode of hypnotee, but I needed to display the soft and open type.

I bemoaned that Sleepyhead was not my demo for this part.

So Sleepyhead hopped to her feet and stood before me. I raised my eyebrows and took a step towards her. Her arms instinctively raced behind her back, her chin tipped downwards, so she could look up at me even while we were standing at the same level.

“See, I don’t even need to get her prepared. She naturally slides right into it. That’s a perfect demonstration of the submissive and inviting body language I wanted to teach.”

I moved in and did the seductive style kinesthetic induction, let her eyes flutter as I know they tend to. I grinned deviously. For an unscripted moment within the class, Sleepyhead was perfect. Absolutely perfect.

And with that the class ended. A little earlier than expected, but I received a final applause and started to feel completely overwhelmed by the adrenaline high.

I was approached by several people following the class. A Twitter friend who was overjoyed to see me in person and was blown away by what I was capable of, one of Daja’s partners who I spent some time with at Beguiled who asked if I did theatre in school, which I had not. I am told that another of Daja’s partner seems to have seen me in a light that she had never seen me in before and another member of the audience had developed a crush on me.

Said member of the audience actually has something in common with me that would have been a good “in” for talking. Goddess even encouraged me to do so, after this person posted on Twitter how impressed they were by my class and how they desired a scene.

I am a little disappointed I failed to open up that discussion. Not for the idea of playing in with that crush, after all it is unethical to use the awe generated from that class as leverage to arrange play, the power dynamics are messed up. But it was a reason to approach someone and talk about things a little more grounded and close to home and create an actual bond and connection.

I wanted that. It’s a shame I didn’t get it.

Maybe next time.

The final person to say hello to me after the class was Copper, my boyfriend.

Copper praised me for my performance and told me that he wanted to grab lunch with me, so I rushed back to my room to discard the jacket from my outfit and be ready to share a meal.

Puppet and Sleepyhead were just about grabbing lunch for themselves and asked if I wanted anything. I told them I was going to go out with the rental car, Cyclonus, and grab coffee and food with Copper.

Unfortunately some snags prevented that from happening but Daja, beauty that she is, DMed me noting that I’d skipped coffee in the morning and that she was at Panera Bread. Did I want anything.

I PayPal’d her $40 and got lunch for myself and Copper, but noted that I needed some time to myself afterwards because the adrenaline high of the class was messing with my head and I was completely off-balance.

When I grabbed the food from Daja she noted I sounded like I was in “Get shit done mode”, her words not mine, so her winning streak of recognizing my facets remains unbroken.

The entire sequence of events had me run across the hotel no less than 3 times, but eventually I was sealed in my room with a flatbread pizza and could let some of the tense energy dissipate. Puppet was watching some AGDQ and I decided to make good use of the hotel facilities and put some of Melissa Tiers’ anxiety textbook to use. I ran an overly hot bath, placed my coffee on the side and began to write elements of this very journal.

As I write now, Tuesday January 17th at 11:45am, I can scroll up to the recaps regarding the Mind Melting Machine and know they were written in the afternoon of Friday the 13th.

The bath helped a lot. Though I know from experience that the maelstrom of the moment is simply the foreshock.

Saturday was going to be a bitch.

Buuuut there was time to enjoy the con and slip back into a fun and happy space. So I did just that and got dressed up again…

Charmed! Outfit 4: Date Night w/corset

For those who have nightmare visions of a lounging blue hedgehog commenting on their Friday night plans.

I was going to start jumping into classes. At this point of the convention I had been hoping any time not spent with Daja would be in classes. I didn’t enjoy hiding out in my room for the entire convention; though not masking in private spaces was quite nice.

But fate threw me a little bit of a pleasant curve ball.

Prior to the event I had pre-negotiated scenes with 2 people who were not my immediate partners. Nath was one, for the Sunday event, and the second was someone I had briefly played with at Beguiled.

Mazirian.

Mazirian and his partner, have the distinction of being Very Important People within the Daja/Camden alliance. His partner is my oldest IRL contact in the hypnosis community, beating out Lady Ru’etha by just under a year. Mazirian is said to be one of Daja’s oldest too.

The pair of them make us each happy and more importantly, the pair of them have earned trust within me.

Maz is the *king* of hairplay. To quote my 2020 Charmed journal again:

I should note, the next class at 4pm is the hairplay class [run by Maz, partner and a 3rd person]. I have been WAITING for this.

So yeah, I got a hair stroking induction. My first time going into trance for a human interacting solely with me during the convention. It was a down and up and she admitted that her ring caught in my hair. I was so so so so so embarrased. I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

Did earn my demo brain scout badge though.

---so

Hairplay.

Ever seen the Community gif where Dean Pealton says "I hope this doesn't awaken something in me?"

Ummm.

I think I have a thing for hair play now?

At Charmed I got a brief taste of hairplay and was addicted.

At Beguiled I got a personal demonstration, as noted in my Beguiled 2022 journal:

I had already supplied with a “Ask Me About Hair Pulling” ribbon, which he commented on and he added a hypnoscouts badge adding me to Mazirian’s Hairem.

I will treasure this with my Kept It Trancey With Secret Subject badge.

We agreed to go mid-level roughness. He didn’t feel comfortable letting someone he didn’t work with going for the Heavy Stuff. I would have, though. I would have.

He told me that he had a weakness for red hair. And green dresses. And dresses that had sheer fabric that showed skin underneath. So right now I was doing a number on him.

I begged him for a quick demo.

He gave me 5 rounds.

While I was still in a post-Daja bliss.

Oh how I sighed in bliss. Cammie loves hairplay so much.

So Maz was one of the few people I actually took the time to reach out to and say “Hey, can we do something at Charmed please?” Because he’s charming, an endless flirt and *loves* my hair.

I love that he loves my hair. He knows *how* to love hair.

Our negotiation was handled remarkably smoothly. I explained where my comfort and/or pain thresholds were. I requested the claws he had used at Beguiled. He asked for ways to gauge my comfort and what my goal was. I just wanted to have lovely hairplay experience, scritches, fractionation and be made all somft.

He also had a electro module to attach to the scritching claws. If nothing else, I wanted my electrolysis tech to know that I tried this, so I asked for low setting test.

Maz connected and pressed the claw to scritch my head an—

Oh!!!

OH!!!

I made a sound that would make me blush to recall and instantly melted, kneeling as Maz sat on a hotel armchair and leaned forward and gently scritched. It didn’t take much. I was butter and he was able to tug my hair and draw me into trance and make me nod along with him and then bring me up and tug me right back down. Over and over.

The 30 minute session was a very quick affair. Maz had a dinner date and his partner came in to rest a bit. But heavens it was such a lovely little encounter.

I was kind of awkward after the session ended. I was a melted puddle and knew time was against me and I needed to leave but had never really done this kind of thing before, so just presented shy and embarrassed, hoping I was not thought poorly of for my etiquette.

I returned back to the lobby and was rewarded by a tiny little marshmallow who smelled pack.

Timbit was in the back lobby and with her, Goddess. Timbit, the small pomeranian puppy who lives at Oikos, was decked up with a little vest and her own little name badge with a tiny puppy pocket watch. Everyone sat around the sofa Goddess was on and adored the lil’ fur.

I knelt before Goddess and updated her on my weekend to this point. She praised my class, which she had indeed seen and could talk about freely now we were in conspace. She praised me for pick-up play and reiterated her approval of all my stated plans for the weekend, including the Maz encounter which had just happened.

To make her happy made me happy. I was glowing.

While I sat with Goddess I saw HypnoBunny walk into the area. Pick up her phone and type something and walk off. My Twitter pinged a reply to my thread on the Presence Class that read:

So I keysmashed like hell. Goddess grinned her approval but also stated that she was running low on spoons and would need to retreat.

I was still feeling a little wibbly wobbly from the earlier stuff that had happened and so pulled myself to the room. Sleepyhead was there too and wanted to rest. I cannot recall the circumstances or how we ended up doing this, but we passed one another chocolates Daja made.

Sleepyhead and I are both hypnotically compelled to sink deep when we taste chocolate dosed with our special flavors.

Sleepy is Mint. Mine is Orange.

Daja, knowing this, home made doses for both of us. Mine are shaped like hearts <3 Sleepy’s are shaped like spirals.

We snuggled up on my bed and fed one another chocolates an—

ALARM CLOCK.

I bolted up screaming. My heart was racing. I didn’t know where I was. What year it was. Why was there an alarm.

"Ground yourself, Camden. Stop the alarm. There is a lady with you… okay. That’s Sleepyhead. We’re at Charmed. It’s 2023. The alarm was for medication. It’s 8pm."

I get this sometimes. Waking up completely and utterly displaced. For a moment I was pre-transition Camden and lived in Illinois, a place I hadn’t lived in since 2012.

I hate it when it happens while I have company because they just got rudely awoken by a panicking British lady who didn’t understand what the hell was happening.

After having meds I cuddled Sleepy briefly and checked my phone. Puppet was wanting to get dinner sorted and Daja wanted to return items I had left in the room overnight.

So we decided to stick to the room and go with that. Dinner was due to be from a diner in the area which has an impossibly large menu. I settled for a loaded burger because I was in the mood for that.

Turned out to be a sloppy and disintegratey mess, but decently filling.

Daja came in with my items and sat on the floor. Utilizing the amnesia laden summoning trigger she pulled me across the room and I (after recovering my momentary confusion) huggled her tightly and began to nuzzle her… lulling myself into a trance.

It turns out pretty much any time I was trance I woke up filled with joy and affection and began to nuzzle out of sheer bliss… and thanks to my new trigger that nuzzling would make me trance myself again and then forget that I had done it at all.

A lovely way to auto-fractionate a silly lady.

Also a nice way to make her accidentally cut her hand from having floppy limbs crash against sharp edges. Poor Daja, she’s so protective of me and wants to keep me safe. I felt bad for letting myself get hurt but she took such good care of me. Puppet and Daja got the first aid kit and set me up with some first aid, though we had to steal from the Sleepy Happy Quiet Time Face Tape, for its advertised purpose. Sorry Sleepy.

Daja Notes: *raises an eyebrow* Excuse me, sweetling? I'm the one with the hypervigilence who should have had the situational awareness to know better. You don't get to feel bad about not being careful of sharp edges when I'm the one who both gave you the nuzzle trigger *and* summoned you to that position

With wound cared for, and love and kisses all dished out, Dawn wished to show off a little bit to Sleepyhead and Puppet.

With a finger to Daja’s forehead her eyes rolled up and she succumbed to the blue flame of Perfect Obedience.

I asked her to put water in the fridge. Such a frivolous abuse of great power. It would not be the only time I did that for the weekend.

With that power rush and Daja having moved over to the fridge, she had noticed something sitting on the counter.

Sleepyhead has just celebrated two big events this week. A birthday and a 10k Twitter followers achievement. The latter isn’t important, I just wished to note it while I am praising Dolly. Counterpart wrote in her journal recap that “everyone is a little in love with Sleepyhead” and it is *so* very true. Daja took the time to craft a bag for her to keep her hypnotic trinkets with a pair of colorful faun charms. Inside the bag, because there must be things *inside* bags, was a pack of Sleepy Dust.

A Lush product that is to be sprinkled on pillows, scented like lavender. A sleep aid for those outside of the convention, perhaps, but within these walls it was a weapon that could be lovingly blown into a cutie’s face like Uma Thurman’s love dust in an abysmal Batman movie.

Daja offered me a dusting and I got to turn on my adequate charm and inform her of what lavender scent does. It is my scent, after all. We all know what happens when you breathe in my scent…

That happens.

Satisfied for the moment, I retreated to my bed and embraced my sweet lass again.Given that we were deciding to stay in for the night and skip the gallery of living art, I switched into my “break in case of gallery of living art” outfit…

Charmed! Bonus Online Only Outfit: The Blake.

For girls who like to stare at coins of gold and do as they are told.

As I got all Daphne Blake’d up, two of Sleepy’s friends arrived and joined us for lowkey hangouts.

Daja, happy to get to show off all the little tricks she had worked into her sweetling’s silly little head. Everything from the amnesia fueled summoning and nuzzle triggers, the Susan Snaps that make me pause and obey anything said in between the frozen time, being dominating enough to control me and… I remember a sword on my chin at some point, even though there was no swords at the con?

Daja is so very good at what she does and I love letting her show off. I glow when she glows.

Then with an unexpected bit of delight… Goddess and Copper! They came to visit. I was so happy, especially that Copper was up and moving again.

Copper, ever self-sacrificing, sat on the floor and I, while in somft and fractionated Cammie space, marched over to the hotel room’s office chair and slid it over and poutily commanded “SIT.”

Daja and Goddess were equally stunned by how forceful I was being in that state, but seeing my boyfriend pushing his body and then trying to sit on the floor was not going to fly. Not in this or any other country.

Goddess wanted to show off a little more and put me in kitty space, which bounced lovingly into Daja’s court to show what happened when I nuzzled her. Goddess had me look her in the eyes and repeat mantras and I knelt and obeyed and sank and flooded with pride that I was doing sso well and everyone was so happy with me. I was a super super happy Cammie Kitty!

Daja had prepared a specific thing to show to Goddess in particular, the Drop Spindle, something she had used on Sleepy and I during her prior trip to Minnesota. Taking tufts of cotton and firmly spin into a single thread. Daja had me stare at the spinning of the wooden spindle and had me imagine all my thoughts were the cotton and the single thread was a command/thought they were being gathered tightly into. I recall being glassy eyed at that.

Daja then handed me the mirror ball and told me that there was a secret in the center, which itself was a reference to a Jukebox story. I was completely and utterly gone by this point and through being gone time became a dilated mess. I do not remember how everything ended. I think Puppet and Sleepyhead left for a karaoke party? I don’t recall Goddess and Copper leaving.

I do recall Daja tucking me in and feeding me a chocolate as I slipped in to a deep and powerful sleep.

Part 4

#charmed 2023 #charmed recaps #hypnokink #hypnocons

22 notes · View notes

tomatograter · 3 years

Note

Could I ask for your thoughts on Rose and her connections to the other kids? I think that Rose is one character that many people just boil down to "goth alcoholic lesbian" and it bugs me a lot, so I would like to see a different and nuanced analysis on her.

I've gone back and forth in answering this (or rather HOW to answer this) for a long while. I think Rose is one of the most crucial characters for Homestuck as a narrative, and she's incidentally always been one of my favorites. What i mean by this is that explaining rose is hard, in the way that 'summarizing every other HS subplot' is hard. Objectively, I can’t tell you why rose is good, much in the same way i can’t force you to like pineapple on pizza, but i can try to explain why *i* like rose.

So I'll try to start with a statement: Rose is a difficult little girl. She’s not sweet or compliant or naturally inclined to be motherly or comforting or even KIND, broadly speaking. She’s a cynic, a hater, and a proto-intellectual who wants to feel like she has already figured out everything that has to be ‘figured’ about the world. (Spoiler alert, the conclusion is “it sucks. Blow it to bits.”)

The things that upset her the most are the things she doesn’t know or cannot make sense of. Why does her mother act in such erratic ways? Why does she constantly debase herself in shameful displays of negligent rationality and responsibility? Is it all a game to her? Is this how all adults are, messy and unkempt and deranged? (According to Freud, whose’s name is certainly mentioned enough by Fellow Online TruthSeekers Of The Human Psyche to be considered the utmost authority in just about everything there is to know, no questions asked, the response is “i guess?”) What the fuck even happened to her cat, anyway? Anybody got a baseline 101 on mortality? Does anyone know what the fuck is going on, ever? Is humanity fated to an automated cycle of dull incompetence??????

Rose hoards and utilizes even the most esoteric forms of knowledge as her shield, sword, and building blocks against the fog of uncertainty most people describe as ‘reality’. To truly know something is to rob it of its power and make it your own, ensuring you are not only safe, but impervious to any harm it could possibly cause. Her ambition and defiance set her apart even from the other betas, who wanted to follow the rules and invest in teamwork. Where jade is whimsical and vaguely helpful in a informative tutorial pixie-like way, rose’s advice is delivered via sarcastic remarks and looking for cheats by conversing with the devil. She antagonizes the patronizing questline she's been given in favor of ripping SBURB a new one. Rose is firstly concerned with improving herself, and then maybe sort of (kind of, nothing is settled on stone, what happens, happens) pass it onto her own if they REALLY cant figure it out. There’s a sense that she would sacrifice just about anything to granted the ultimate form of knowledge, the appropriate response and middle-finger to anything, and she hungers for it, which proves to be a little self-destructive.

Except as much as she wants to put up a veneer of detached, individualistic intellectualism, she still cares far too much for the simplest human accomplishments. She cares for her friends. She envies the lives they've led, and they sound so intriguing when compared to her sterile routine. Her pet cat was once her biggest companion and source of comfort, and finding him dead crushes her. She legitimately would've liked to have a good relationship with her mom, which as we all know ends up more or less the same way. (I tend to disagree with most people who treat rose's living situation as 'pretty good/dramaticized', having a guardian who's almost never sober isn't a comedic or easy experience.) Her quest is borne out of insecurity, uncertainty, and stubbornly trying to prove herself right. Because somebody has to be.

Her faults are just as interesting to me as her qualities, for all the 'mean goth lesbian' talk the way she misses her mother and tries to reverse-engineer a connection with her beyond the grave by dabbling with the same poisons is incredibly compelling, and speaks to a side of rose's many people take for granted: she doesn't have all the answers. She's improvising. She's, like, 15 years old and trying so hard to come off as a badass but she can barely contain her wondering babble long enough to show up for an important date in time. Even in her self-sabotage rose is earnest.

This isn't the sort of narrative you usually see applied to women in fiction, or even when it IS applied, it is only to admonish their efforts and promptly slot them into a love-interest shaped hole. (Because yeah, rose being a lesbian and not falling for any of the assumed important guys does matter very much actually.) Even her turn to grimdarkness pulls from tropes reserved to epic gritty brooding male heroes- avenging her family, wrecking anything and everything in her path, Frank Castle Punisher style. I like rose because she's like matilda, if matilda went wretched sick at age 11 and took the first chance she saw to pierce an ogre through the eyes and ride its corpulent cadaver down a waterfall. She's an unrepentant monstress, cloaking herself in mythos that justify the existence of the unknowable and unjustifiable when rationality predictably falls short of truth, and a snooty little know-it-all who wants to create something so raw and important people will have no choice but know her name, and most importantly, she gets away with it.

#meta #rose lalonde

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firelord-frowny · 3 years

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honestly like!

i HATE!!!! the very CONCEPT of guns. and i’m theoretically SO fundamentally opposed to violence.

but that opposition is based on an idealist assumption that no one is doing anything that they need to be stopped from doing.

and there are obviously a fucking hell of a lot of people doing a fucking hell of a lot of vile shit, and no amount of ~peaceful protesting~ or litigating or campaigning or Reaching Across The Aisle is going to stop them, and it’s fucking RIDICULOUS that anyone at all thinks people should just wait patiently for The Powers That Be to spontaneously manifest a conscience and finally quit trying to maim and murder people For Funsies.

i would LOVE it we could just hug them into submission and invite them over for tea and chit chat and take their ugly ass hand and smile at them and show them that I’m Just A Normal Person Like You and have them finally decide to stop wanting me to die. and honestly, some people REALLY CAN be reached through those kinds of methods. and i don’t think people should stop trying to do that. and if anything, i think MORE people need to be trying to do that.

but i ALSO think that more people need to start punching some bigots in the fucking face.

if self proclaimed conservatives and right wingers and proud wimpy boys get to go around committing terroristic acts against other peoples, and if the politicians and ceos they stan for refuse to take any actions to stop them at best, and at worst go out of their way to FACILITATE the suffering of all but bigoted, well-off white people....

then we should get to punch them in the fucking face and not have anyone say WORD ONE about it.

they wanna be all big and bad and parade around threatening and committing violence against teachers and health care workers and black people and asian people and jewish people and indigenous people and women of all backgrounds, then they should be fucking tough enough to cope with a goddamn punch in the face every now and then. they should WELCOME every fist that ever collides with their flesh.

if they want a fucking fight, we should GIVE THEM A FIGHT! and make sure they fucking lose. make sure the pathetic little ~civil war~ they’re begging for is HUMILIATINGLY short. chase their fucking asses into the most barren, useless parts of the world where they can be vile all by themselves.

bc i SWEAR TO GOD, the only reason why these people have any power at all to impact anything or anyone is because people LET THEM. not because they’re soooo smart, or they’re soooo dangerous, or there are sooooo many of them. it’s STRICTLY because an enormous majority of bare-minimum-decent people care more about Taking The Moral High Ground than about actually doing what’s necessary to disable evil people from doing evil things.

This is a hella problematic way to put it, buuuut

black people know not to do or say certain things to a cop because we’ve been conditioned to fear the consequences of even the most benign ~infractions.~ We swallow our fucking pride and whip out those “yes sirs” and “no sirs” and we move slowly and we try to keep our hands visible at all costs because we’ve seen, over and over again, for DECADES (centuries, really) what those people might do to us if our hand isn’t totally visible for a fraction of a second. And sometimes it doesn’t even work. Sometimes we do everything in our power to demonstrate that there’s no need to hurt us, and we get murdered anyway.

WOULDN’T IT BE NICE if those wack ass bigots could learn to fear the consequences of being disgusting out loud and in public?

Imagine if, over the last several decades, malicious bigots were met with SWIFT physical consequences every time they did some fucked up shit.

do you think they’d be so bold now?

i don’t.

i think if they thought for one second that whoever they pull a gun on might pull one out back at them, then they would keep their fucking mouths shut and behave. i think if they LEGITIMATELY thought that they’re actual lives and their actual freedom were at stake, they wouldn’t say SHIT. Because they know that whether or not they have to wear a mask or get vaccinated or whateverthefuck has absolutely NO real impact on their place in the world. there is NO. WAY. that they would be all up in arms over something so fucking absurd if they thought anyone would actually try to hurt them in response.

they don’t think anyone is going to show up at their dumb lil protests with tear gas. they don’t think an angry BLM activist is going to shoot up their country club in retaliation against the oppressive policies they support. they don’t think anyone is going to stop them on the street and start screaming in their face and threaten to kill them. they don’t think they’re going to lose a damn fucking thing. they think they’re literally going to just waltz into some of the most secure buildings in the world and wreak havoc, and that NO ONE is going to do shit about it.

that’s the problem :) :) :) :) :) :)

the problem isn’t that these people exist. i mean, it fucking sucks that they exist and if they could somehow cease to exist, whether by alien abduction or some sort of freak simultaneous lightning strike or WHATEVER, i would be THRILLED. but just existing doesn’t hurt anyone. Having a stupid belief doesn’t automatically make someone dangerous. It just makes them a shitty person.

But to have a stupid belief and to feel SO ENTITLED to acting upon those beliefs???

those motherfuckers need to fear for their safety. those motherfuckers need to be SO PETRIFIED that they dig themselves underground and bury themselves alive and NEVER resurface.

i don’t understand how, at this point, with over half a million people DEAD because of the actions of these assholes, and with thousands of people CONTINUING to drop dead over it every day, the so-called “good guys” still don’t see fit to resort to drastic measures to render these people INCAPABLE of causing further harm.

so many people have died. not just in the time of covid, but decades before that. so many people are murdered in the name of carrying out the pettiest whims of the most wretched people on earth. People get injured. People get poisoned by their own water supply or the very air they breathe. People get sick because they’re forced to live under unhealthy circumstances, and then they DIE because they can’t afford treatment for the illnesses they developed because of the unhealthy circumstances that made them sick in the first place! Children starve. Global warming sets people on fire and drowns them and destroys homes and lives and landscapes.

literally, at WHAT point does it become acceptable to finally just declare war on these fucking demons? WHEN do we meet them where they’re at and start punching back instead of just curling up and trying to survive the attack?

i KNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW that there are groups out there who are taking direct action in some form or another. but CLEARLY it’s not enough.

and i ALSO know that there are MANY PEOPLE who have the actual skills and resources to stage a legitimate countereffort, and they’re just. not. doing it.

we’ve got all these vile-ass ~ex military~ types boasting about their arsenal and how they intend to use it to reign terror upon innocent people. these fuckfaces who are LITERALLY HOLDING PUBLIC OFFICE and saying Out Loud that they want to attack us. and their peers exalt them for it.

you CANNOT tell me that there are 0 ~ex military~ people who are sympathetic to the cause of resisting these malicious bigots. you CANNOT tell me that there aren’t people in public office who know that something MUST be done, and who have the POWER and ACCESS to do something - even if it’s “unlawful.”

but they’re not doing it. :) because they’re weak. :) and they fear for their lives in a way that ~the right~ has NEVER had to contend with. A democratic state senator knows someone might hunt them down and try to kill them if they say anything ~too radical~. a republican state senator is confident that he could literally call for the public execution of someone and be met only with a pathetic verbal reprimand from some spineless liberal congressman who bends over backward to be Respectful And Fair as they gently try to explain why it’s not okay to facilitate mass death in every demographic but their own.

can somebody with the actual power and means to do so PLEASE start doing ANYTHING to terrorize these people back to the bland, tasteless, spiritually bankrupt cesspit they congealed in? When one of these american terrorists brandishes a gun in someone’s face, can someone PLEASE brandish their own gun right back at them? THEY should be the ones who are too terrified to speak up. Not us. THEY should be the ones compelled to look over their shoulder.

im so sick of a world where mass suffering and exploitation are accepted as Just The Natural Order Of Things. instead of a harrowing dystopia that should be burned to the ground quick, fast, and in a motherfucking hurry.

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crystalelemental · 4 years

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So I finished Ephraim’s route in Sacred Stones for the first time since the game came out.

When I was young, I remember saying the same thing: I don’t like Ephraim’s route. It just didn’t seem as strong as Eirika’s. And I could never articulate why, to a degree where most of my friends would insist it was because I just played Eirika’s first so the complete deviation felt weird, even though Ephraim’s route was just as solid. But I’m an adult now, and I like to think better at articulating opinions, so maybe now I’ll finally be able to express why I don’t like Ephraim’s route.

Part of it is Ephraim himself. I don’t like Ephraim, I find him incredibly dull, and think he embodies every insult people want to throw at Micaiah. Unbeatable in battle, unnaturally good at everything contrary to what’s told to us, the plot literally revolves entirely around him. Ephraim’s just bland to me. I think the best way to express this is to use a quote from someone who really likes him, courtesy of the only Fire Emblem fandom personality that I legitimately cannot stand.

Their take on Ephraim’s route is that: "Ephraim says he doesn’t pick fights he can’t win, but then he does pick a fight with Lyon. Then the journey after that is his character arc, of accepting how to become a king. He goes back to his kingdom a loser, and learns to accept that loss to become a better person.”

Problem: not a single word of that is true. For one thing, Ephraim never lost a fight, because that would be a flaw. Ephraim won every fight he was in ever, because “I don’t pick fights I can’t win.” Ephraim, you are three guys, exiting a castle, surrounded by a moat, further surrounded by mountains. Your only backup are cavalry units, and your enemies are mostly flying units, including a general so powerful that he injured Seth, your country’s best knight. But oh no, he gets to escape. No explanation, because you cannot possibly write a believable explanation for how that happened. He just gets away because Ephraim’s just so cool. So yeah, there’s no “learning to accept the loss,” because there is no loss. To anyone, at any time. I have no idea what they’re even talking about with “his loss to Lyon.” My best guess is they just hadn’t played in a while and forgot.

If anything, Ephraim’s crucial flaw should be presented as being a fucking slacker. They poke fun at it when they’re being taught as kids, but when war broke out, Ephraim left Renais to rush into battle, got his ass stranded, and wasn’t present to help Renais at all. This is slightly acknowledged when they finally return to Renais, but only in the sense of “he’s back now and he’s better so it’ll never happen again!” But (1) it’s mentioned exactly once, and (2) it’s not brought up nearly as often as Lyon being weak-willed, or Eirika “relying” on Ephraim protecting her, as flaws go. Which is its own issue, considering we never actually see Eirika relying on Ephraim at all. She didn’t actually need his help either time he showed up. Nice to have, but far from saving an unwinnable situation. We’re just told she always needs his help, because if she didn’t then Ephraim can’t be the cool twin who’s so good at war.

And that’s all that Ephraim is, and all he ever becomes. There’s no “learning to become a king.” He accepts that he’ll take the crown, but there’s really no reason to it aside from his penis. He’s the prince, so he gets to be king. Nevermind that Eirika’s route was more about establishing diplomatic ties, and that she’s by far the better leader. Ephraim gets to lead because reasons. All Ephraim does is charge into battles. We get exactly two establishing scenes of Ephraim’s leadership qualities, both of which are around war and not actual leadership in a governing sense. And get this! They’re both with Seth, who, again, is their kingdom’s best knight. And guess how both scenes go. You’ll never guess. Ephraim’s either just as keen as Seth, or is presented as the one in the right. Seth comes along as Ephraim’s advisor, but literally never has to advise, because Ephraim’s just so capable and good at this. And remember, this is the hero who never read a fucking book. Who copied all of Lyon’s homework, and couldn’t be asked to learn shit in his life. I’m fine with him being a strong soldier. Hell, I’m fine with him even having a keen sense for combat due to practical experience. But being able to keep up with or exceed Seth, who should be one of the best minds for fighting we have, is kind of annoying. At the very least, allow Seth to have some role as an advisor, rather than just...nothing.

At no point does Ephraim really learn or develop in any compelling way. He starts out great and ends great. Any flaws the narrative presents are solely as a backdrop, they’re never reflected in the story. Him being bad at studying and books never bites him in any way. Hell, it never even comes up, save for flashbacks and a singular comment the Demon King makes about Ephraim being “poorly educated,” which was more a taunt about him not immediately guessing Demon King. Ephraim suffers from exactly no faults ever.

This leads into the other big issue. Lyon. I do not like Ephraim-route Lyon. At all. There’s a lot that goes into this, but the short version is I actually think Eirika-route Lyon is more engaging, complex, and shows greater force of will.

Eirika-route Lyon presents as fully consumed by the Demon King. His soul is actively being devoured, and the beast within is winning. However, at certain points, Lyon takes back control. Briefly, but he’s trying. He fights back as much as he can, but it’s impossible to resist the Demon King’s control. His motivations are the same in both routes, and largely comes down to a desire to save his country and his people. He’s used the arcane arts to manipulate the energy radiating from the Sacred Stone that has the Demon King trapped within. He uses it to heal people, and see into the future to attempt preventing disaster. In Eirika’s route, the Demon King expresses more of the unresolved feelings for Eirika, and his inadequacy because Ephraim’s just so good. So like...they had a compelling tragedy going. I could absolutely believe a 17-year-old has inadequacy issues around the girl he likes, and that this would be an easy mark for an ancient eldritch evil. But the fact that it has to double back to Ephraim pisses me off. But we’re talking about Ephraim-route Lyon, so that’s enough paraphrasing her route.

Ephraim-route Lyon seems to present just as himself. On the surface, this seems like Lyon is showing greater willpower and resolve, right? He’s in control! He’s going to use the Demon King’s power to save Grado from impending disaster! That’s way more impressive, right?

Well, not really. Considering that Lyon acts in control, but is ultimately just going about this like a nitwit. Complaint #1: Lyon doesn’t act as in-character in this route. Ephraim even acknowledges it. Lyon’s peaceful, he’d never instigate a war over this. Like, this is an Edelgard move, not a Lyon move. But here we are, being told that Lyon, of his own will, started this war. Why?

Complaint #2: Because Vigarde sucks, for a start. In the last flashback, Lyon is talking to his dad, and expresses uncertainty about his ability to rule. Again, great in for the Demon King. But Lyon’s actually on this one. A major disaster was foreseen, and they need outside aid for their people to survive. Vigarde says Renais would never aid them, because they need to put their people first. There’s a bit of interesting consideration here, in that Renais, a smaller nation, probably can’t take in all the refugees that Grado would have. But like...Renais is friendly with Frelia, who could be persuaded to help. Rausten is all about charity like this, as the religious epicenter of the continent. What the fuck are you on about, Vigarde? Pinning literally all of this on Lyon to find a solution isn’t just cruel, it’s stupid and wrong. Get it together, asshole. How did you manage to not lead Grado into the ground? Was it hard to teach yourself to breathe through your ass, or is that natural talent?

Complaint #3: Lyon’s motivations are all over the place. This starts because he revives Vigarde, and this breaks the Sacred Stone, creating the Dark Stone that houses the Demon King. Okay cool, this is when the possession starts. But remember, they’re presenting this like Lyon’s in control. After this point, Lyon still takes leadership. He still makes the commands, through his father. And he instigates a war. Why? Well, they never really say. One answer is envy of Ephraim, and a desire to beat him. The other is self-sacrifice. He talks with Knoll about some documents that allegedly allow him to circumvent the foreseen history, and it involves human sacrifice and great magical power. He plans to use the Demon King’s power and his own sacrifice to accomplish this. But that...doesn’t explain the war. You could just kill yourself on your own time, dude. Like, hidden motivations include saving your people, but all of this was the worst possible method. If you anticipated latching on to other nations after your death ends the royal bloodline, then your people are now reviled for being instigators in a completely meaningless war. They’re less likely to get help than ever. If it was to conquer territory for them to move to before the catastrophe, then why self-sacrifice at all? The war now has a point, but nothing else does, because you’d have accomplished your goal through the war.

So basically, if Lyon’s in control, there are two possible motives for the war: showing off to beat Ephraim, or a pre-cursor to your self-sacrifice for some reason. Either way, it’s super shitty. Like really, what’s your motivation for enacting continental warfare? Complete disillusionment regarding mankind’s right to rule, and seeking to end strife through complete subjugation by another species that (allegedly) doesn’t feel the emotions that lead men to folly? The belief that war is inevitable and that living beings cannot help but kill one another for the most banal of reasons, and thus the most just course is to re-awaken their creator to put them all to an eternal rest? Recognition that the structure of society is so bad that people are constantly suffering and dying, and decided to stand up and tear the structures out by the roots through bloody conquest if necessary, in hopes of a better tomorrow? Or because your childhood friend’s dick was too huge and made you feel inadequate/you had to kill yourself and I guess this was the best you could come up with?

The more likely reason given how fucking incomprehensible his motivations are otherwise, is that the Demon King was always in full control. That Lyon was never actually in command of things, but thought he was, even as the Demon King ate away at him from within. This makes more sense, because it’s just...Demon King killing things for funsies. But it also means Lyon has 0 actual agency, and it’s even more just the demon king. In Eirika’s route, Lyon actually fights back and wrestles control, if just for brief moments at a time. But in Ephraim’s, the only implication that makes sense is that Lyon never had anything. He was never in control, and never even put up a fight. He was just easily duped into believing that these were his conscious decisions. Which makes Lyon a lot less compelling overall.

I just...I don’t like Sacred Stones. I figure that’s clear, but it’s good to be open about it. I feel like the game just tries so hard to make Ephraim the coolest thing ever, and every male character (except Seth) who interacts with Eirika is just obsessed with this notion of needing to be better than him before she’ll love them back. It’s why I can’t stand Innes. All their supports are is him being bullheaded and insisting that no, he has to protect her, because that’s how this is supposed to go, and he will be better than Ephraim so she’ll accept him. Fuck you, Innes. Though man, Lyon’s not much better. I can at least sympathize with Lyon’s feelings of inadequacy and uncertainty about Eirika reciprocating, but the fact that it all boils back down to Ephraim again...god, neither of them even consider Eirika in this. It’s all about Ephraim and your own dick-focused insecurities. At no point do either of you consider Eirika’s feelings in the matter, everything’s about you you you, and needing to be better than Ephraim who’s just too cool I guess. May as well rename this Toxic Masculinity: The Game at this rate.

tldr, Ephraim’s route sucks. Eirika’s route is at least a decent tragedy, but sidelines its main character too hard to really feel like her route. Lyon would be better off without Ephraim’s route. The end.

#fire emblem sacred stones #boy I am not a fan of this game

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they-handed-me-the-moon · 5 years

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Okay I’m gonna do the thing and just get my complaints with the show out, if you’re not interested in reading criticisms (half of which are just being attached to the way things were in the book) please ignore this, I’m going to say all sorts of nice things in a minute. Also please don’t rb this one. If we’ve talked before feel free to comment or disagree, if we haven’t please don’t just this once—I’m usually happy to have people jump off things, but I just got back and I’m not in the mood to start any Discussions just now. Cool thanks!

1. I’m not saying that the show going in for more angst and making some of the central characters more insecure and making Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship more tenuous and uncertain was *objectively* the wrong choice. I mean I could argue that it was but ultimately it’s probably more just different than right or wrong. But it did make me realize how much I had appreciated having a fandom that was built around material that for all its angst potential (which I also enjoyed) was so fundamentally cozy.

2. Yes I am of course going to take issue with Anathema and Newt. For the record I found Newt notably more likable in the show than the book, even if watching Anathema have sex with a guy she had shown no interest in just because a book told her to was even more uncomfortable than reading it. And there was more of a sense of mutuality in the show—partly because of Adria Arjona playing Anathema as genuinely liking and being charmed by Newt at times, and partly because Newt actually does offer her emotional support and contributes to decision-making at several points instead of only with the “do you want to be a descendent for the rest of your life” line at the end. And that’s nice—mutuality in a relationship is important! The lack of it is one of my biggest issues with their relationship in the book! What really gets to me here is that they got to that mutuality not through strengthening Newt’s character but by weakening Anathema’s—by making her more uncertain and insecure so that Newt could sweep in to support her. And look—obviously there’s nothing wrong with female characters having insecurities and needing support, like everyone does. But we’ve got an awful shortage of weird-looking female characters who swagger around with breadknives and bucketloads of well-earned confidence and decide to try and stop the apocalypse without being told because it’s worth a shot, and the fact that they seem to have undercut her confidence and independence specifically so that she would have to lean on the sub-par dude she’s saddled with as a love-interest reeeally rubs me the wrong way. (Shoutout to my brother for pinpointing this before I was able figure out exactly what was bothering me).

3. Okay and while I’m on the topic of Anathema, the way they played up the whole ‘professional descendent’ thing? Hmmmm, not a fan. I think I kinda get why they did it, (it makes her fit more neatly into the ‘people breaking out of their prescribed roles’ theme), but they make it into a sort of ‘chosen one’ storyline where she was ‘fated’ to help stop the end of the world, which is fine, I guess? But to me one of the central appeals of the book is a motley crew motivated not by duty or predestination but instead by love of the earth and plain old selfish, stubborn attachment to the lives they had built there going ‘okay realistically there is no way we, of all people, can keep the world from ending, but I guess we’re just gonna try anyway!!!’ Making Anathema some sort of prophesied savior sort of removed her from that narrative, and reduced the strength of that narrative thread overall.

4. Oh and I think I’m in the minority here but I also did not enjoy the kids getting stabby with the horsepeople. There were some great elements to the scene for sure, but that just didn’t feel good to me. The children felt a little more ... protected from enacting that kind of violence in the book, and while there could be legitimate reason for changing it, on a thematic level it also took attention away from the whole ‘power of human belief’ thing, so it felt unnecessary and weaker as well as harsher.

5. I’m not ... actually particularly bothered by any of the changes to Aziraphale? I mean don’t get me wrong I do miss him being a much more overt bastard who is comfortable in his own skin, who collects blasphemous Bibles and is rude to customers and still walks around with his sanctimonious Holier Than Thou convictions because he is THE WORST. But tv Aziraphale is still a proper bastard, even if you’ve got to pay attention a bit more to see it, and I do rather like the way his softness is in itself framed as a rebellion against Heaven. So yeah, I think the changes they made worked and were compelling, and I don’t really have comprehensive complaints about his character. HOWEVER I did not like him indirectly killing the executioner. Having a scene where he indirectly but intentionally causes a death was a good idea in concept, but to my mind it was the wrong circumstances, wrong target, and wrong tone for the scene. Still, it doesn’t bother me that much because it just felt SO off that it feels kinda laughable and my mind just cheerily decided that the filmmakers were misinformed and that did not actually happen.

6. Crowley’s changes I’m having a bit of a harder time reconciling myself to, although I’m having a bit of a hard time pinpointing why? Some of the changes are of the ‘I don’t prefer the change but that’s more personal preference and attachment to my initial vision of the character than critique’ variety, like the ways in which his fear manifests less as anxiety and more as anger in the show. But if I had one central complaint (and this might sound weird at first) I think it would be the way that his world is reduced to Aziraphale. And okay, let me explain—I’m not complaining that their relationship was more emphasized in the show, which I actually loved, and also this is probably a bit hypocritical coming from me when 80% of my posts are about their relationship. The thing is, I find romances more interesting and compelling and moving when both parties have defined personalities and interests and attachments and character arcs outside of one another. And Aziraphale did have that—arguably he has a more defined and complete arc than in the book, in fact. And Crowley definitely has a defined personality. But besides the Bently, what does he love? What are his interests? How does he feel about humanity and the earth? Why does he prefer the earth to hell beyond ‘hell sucks’? How does he feel about his fellow demons? Why does he want to save the earth? Does he care about saving the earth, or is it really only about saving and being with Aziraphale? Idk, I’m exaggerating a bit here, and certain answers to these questions can definitely be inferred. But I miss the Crowley who loves humanity in all its mess, who finds in it an alternative to the restrictive roles demanded by heaven and hell alike, and who has his own arc of going from knowing that he is harming humanity but not doing anything about it, to facing Satan with a tire iron because Aziraphale convinces him to face up to the harm he has caused and do something about it, even if the odds are impossible.

7. I cannot BELIEVE they took out Tim.

8. And I’m running out of steam here so I’m not fully going into it, but it did feel like the show lost a bit of its sense of the earth in all its disastrous glory. I mean, there are plenty of stories that compare Heaven and Hell, but part of what set Good Omens apart for me was the particular way it triangulates Heaven vs Hell vs earth. I haven’t read enough similar fiction to know if it does this in an especially complex or unique way, but what comes of it is this gloriously defiant optimism. The show goes further into Heaven vs Hell (which I enjoyed) but it felt to me as if the earth was a little (although certainly not entirely) lost in the mix.

9. Also definitely not a fan on how hard Crowley pushes for child murder as long as he’s not the one doing it, but so far as I’ve seen the fandom has chosen to collectively forget those lines in favor of ‘you can’t kill kids,’ ‘I’m not personally up for killing kids,’ and THE LULLABY, so I’m the end those lines aren’t anything like the disaster they could have been. Good going, folks.

10. There are of course big-picture things like racism and sexism and homophobia that are. there in varying degrees. Not necessarily more than average, though that’s an even more depressing sentence. But for some of those things I’m not the best person to dissect them, and for the rest I’m tired and I don’t wanna.

11. In conclusion I have a pithy line that encapsulates what I’m having a hard time adjusting to in the show, but I’m pretty sure the first clause would annoy one half of the fandom, and the second clause would annoy the other half, so I’m gonna to cut my losses and shut up now.

#don't rb #if people start reblogging this i will just delete it #also this is very long i don't actually expect people to read this #i'm just exorcising my annoyances all at once #because talking about them day-to-day makes me anxious

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akatokuro · 5 years

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The Inevitable StS Rewatch, Episode 36

One of the most truly pressing issues in Saint Seiya canon: why the fuck is Milo like this?

- I SEE THAT SAGA SENSED THAT AIOLOS WAS TAKING A BATH, SO HE FELT THE NEED TO JUMP IN TOO! and thus a meme was born

- Uhhhh, Saga? I know you probably had a crush on Aiolos at all, but... really, dude? ????????

- AND HEEEERE HEEEEE ISSSSSSSS

- Milo's ridiculous ego is on full display the second he opens his fucking mouth. No "what's going on, Pope?" or "How may I serve you?" but "WOW, POPE, FOR YOU TO SUMMON A GOLD SAINT! (DID I MENTION I'M A GOLD SAINT, BECAUSE I AM.)

- MILO. ALL HE FUCKING DID WAS ASK IF YOU KNEW ABOUT THE SITUATION. What is the need for you to add "heh, not that I care, since I'm so awesome, just so you know!" Yes, a lot of Gold Saints have pretty overinflated egos - yume and I actually thought about it, and we're pretty sure Camus is just about the ONLY one who doesn't pull some form of smug "heh, a Bronze trying to fight a Gold? lmao, and also, rofl" but Scorpio Milo is... something else.

- Ikki working for Sanctuary at first still feels really weird and ill-fitting. Well, fortunately, it's not really dwelled on that much, so it's easily ignored! That's one of the good things about there being no real Saint Seiya canon... <_<

- In a way, though, it is certainly fitting that Milo's scene here is our first proper introduction to a "Gold Saint", because Milo certainly thinks he is THE Gold Saint in a lot of ways. It drips from the way he responds to everything. "Measly Bronze Saints, they must be crazy, lol!" It's actually really interesting to think he was originally planned to be Hyouga's master. Like, in some ways that really fits - Smugswan had to get the smug and the overinflated sense of ego from somewhere, and it sure as hell wasn't Camus!

- It's also sort of interesting because Kurumada pulled the switcheroo on the basis of "oooh, ice/water themed signs, oooh!" But even at this stage, Milo definitely has a very, very different personality than Marshmallow Saint Camus. What would he and Hyouga's hypothetical encounter have looked like, really...?

- I'm not trying to imply, by the way, that Milo's sense of egotism is solely about straightforwardly boosting himself up - because it's not. It's intertwined with his perception of Saint honor and what it means to him to embody that, which becomes clear in how he deals with Camus, Hyouga, and Kanon respectively later on. It's also intertwined with a negative five thousand debuff to his intelligence stat, but, you know.

- I love Saga just sort of ignoring Milo going WHAT? A BRONZE BEATING A SILVER? RIDICULOUS, I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF SUCH A THING! and continuing to exposit. Saga, why the fuck did you summon Milo of all people here to deal with this in the first place? I mean, not only would leaning on Aphrodite, Deathmask, or even Shura make infinitely more sense, but... it's fucking Milo. Did your bath-bonding with Aiolos rattle your judgment temporarily?

- And right back at him, Milo basically brushes aside poor Saga's exposition to go "ARE YOU SERIOUSLY BOTHERING THE GREAT KONO MILO WITH THIS BULLSHIT, POPE? REALLY??? KONO MILO, THE GOLD SAINT???"

- Saga begins to realize his terrible, terrible mistake and cuts off Milo in the middle of his bitching, but Milo ignores him to continue whining.

- See, it'd be one thing if Milo suggested that the situation bore more investigation, or perhaps these Bronze Saints were being misled so they shouldn't be so fast to jump to the execution option, but no. It's all about his fucking pride.

- Saga is getting so edgy and short at this point and oh my god I cannot believe Milo is still fucking trying to argue with him THIS IS THE FUCKING POPE WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU

- Like, yume and I utterly lost our fucking minds at Milo blowing off Athena to haze Kanon when we were re-watching the Hades OAVs, but oh god it is extremely fucking consistent with this characterization here

- Poor Saga. "LOOK, THEY HAVE A FUCKING GOLD CLOTH, OKAY!?!? JESUS CHRIST WHY THE FUCK DID I NOT GET APHRODITE TO DO THIS"

- okay okay i know it's because lol seat of the pants kurumada making shit up as he went along and was promptly retconned out because it makes no sense but i will never stop laughing at milo being shocked that there are twelve gold saints. WHAT??? NOT JUST SCORPIO AND SAGITTARIUS???? WHO WOULD HAVE EVER GUESSED???? THEY COME IN, LIKE, A SET????

- Kanon pretending he's Sea Dragon is the funniest moment in Saint Seiya, but Milo's spectacular intelligence debuff is also a consistent point of hilarity.

- Shaina's crush on Seiya might be, like, one of my least favorite things in StS seriously. It's so unnecessary and it IS basically a pitch-perfect example of that "behind the ruthless, frightening female warrior lies ~the soft heart of a woman~ that only the dreamy male protagonist can truly uncover!" trope that I fucking despise with all my being.

- yume and I were cracking the fuck up to discover that the Tencent version of this sequence has Seiya bringing up the Saintias when Shaina explains the mask issue. Like, my issues with Saintia Sho as a series aside, that's just really adorable.

- The mask issue in general... there are really interesting things that you could do with it, both for Sainthood in general and for Shaina as an individual (the vibe I get is that Shaina takes it unusually seriously, even though it is accepted as a general rule) since it feels like sort of a mark of sexism that would be a part of an old, traditional, religious order - but I can't say I'm a fan of any attempts so far in the series to "address" it. Omega was a thing, and that thing was Bad.

- "Kill or love" is pretty bullshit, though. How about "kill or be expelled from Sanctuary"? I also don't really like Seiya being all "what, is that the only reason?" when he thinks it's about humiliation/pride - like, what's wrong with that? It makes sense with how Shaina has been characterized...

- this flashback is so fucking stupid

- OH NO, SEIYA, YOU SAW ME PET A RABBIT WHEN YOU WERE A LITTLE KID AND I WAS A TEENAGER AND THUS YOU HAVE UNLOCKED MY SOFT WOMAN'S HEART! I bet Seiya fucking tried to jump a high bar, too, as every single woman from the Fate franchise happened to be strolling by?

- Like, Shaina, did you fall in love with this little kid who talked down to you then or... because uhhh...

- Also, like, yeah, it's Saint Seiya, and "pulled things out of my ass" and "retconned" are the name of the game, but come on, there was no indication of this kind of past in all the screentime Shaina has had up until this point. Wasn't her grudge against him regarding Marin and Cassios and being defeated by him in battle enough? Do we really have to enforce her ~femininity~ that Seiya ~exposed~ too? Ugh ugh ugh.

- Whatever, I really do like Shaina, this garbage aside. It's just a shame we fell back on this dumb trope of all things to justify her transition into one of the good guys when it was wholly unneeded.

- Aaaand we're back to Milo and Saga. I love how the framing of this episode implies that Saga has been sitting there having to explain things very slowly to Milo all fucking day. Gonna need another bath to unwind after this shit, Gemini.

- HAVE I MENTIONED, POPE, THAT I AM A GOLD SAINT, AND THUS I AM AMAZING? I'M NOT SURE YOU KNEW. LET ME MENTION IT AGAIN. I'M A GOLD SAINT, BY THE WAY.

- And Lia enters the scene!

- Okada made this an explicit issue in Episode G, but the contrast between fully-decked-out-in-his-Cloth "have I mentioned in the last five minutes that I am a Gold Saint, preen preen" Milo and Lia--who strolls in WITHOUT his Cloth, just his regular training clothes - is really striking.

- Milo's face when Lia comes in... hmmm...

- I don't think Saga, like, actively made a point of or went out of his way to play ~mind games~ with Aiolia or anything, but this is definitely a deliberate passive-aggressive diss. The kind you would give when it's like, ah yes, I ruined this kid's life, let me just innocuously twist the knife a little here...

- You really can understand why Aiolia is as fucking mad and as fucking repressed as he is, from the dressed-up hostility coming from both sides in this whole amazing shitstorm.

- This is... an amazing moment. "What if I still wanted Milo to go?" "Eh, I'd kick his fucking ass." And Milo's EXCUSE ME!?!?! reaction lmfaooooo

- You can just sense the stony bitterness coming off of Lia here, though? This is a dangerous game to play, considering the whole rule about "no duels between Saints." Just the sheer dismissiveness of it, too. Just as Saga gets in his passive-aggressive digs against Aiolia, Lia gets his in against... Milo, lol?

- And Milo starts trying to argue with the Pope AGAIN and Saga finally just tells him to shut the hell up. Saga confirmed for legitimately impressive patience honestly.

- God, and Lia just leaves once he gets the confirmation. I LOVE that Aiolia went through this whole thing since coming in without saying a single fucking word to Milo or sparing him more than a glance. Please, just ask this man about his opinion of Scorpio Milo, I’m begging you.

- MILO FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

- And Saga is the one who points out that, BECAUSE of his history and his relation to Aiolos, he has a compelling reason to work on this case in particular. Milo just stops at HOW COULD YOU RELY ON HIM HE HAS TRAITOR'S BLOOD. The intelligence debuff is real.

- But, yeah, you can tell Lia has cause to be as cold, dismissive, and passive-aggressive towards Milo as he was. They... they do not have a good relationship.

- It legitimately boggles my mind how there is a weird semi-common fanon about Milo and Lia being close friends, or Milo being this great guy who was so supportive of him. I've run across it multiple times in my hunts for cute fanart or interesting discussion, and I feel like I'm staring at an incomprehensible alien entity every time. Like. Where did you get that. How did. The characterization we get from both of them indicates the exact opposite. I would not be remotely surprised if Aiolia, as bitter and angry as he truly is, is going to hold a grudge against Milo until the end of time, long after Milo has forgotten about it.

- Rather than being his friend, Milo is literally the ONLY Gold Saint we see actually giving Aiolia shit for being a traitor's brother. Like I mentioned back in the Silver Saint scene with Aiolia, yume and I actually talked about this - since she is a raving Aiolia fan and all - about the possible sources of Lia's torment from his peers. The shitty Silver Saints, yes, and Deathmask, yes, because he's actively malicious in general, but he wouldn't be rubbing it in because he actually cares or thinks Lia having "traitor blood" actually means something. MILO sure does, though!

- Milo is prideful, often in shallow ways, and incredibly overbearing about that pride, thinking he has the right to lecture and judge and override others, including Athena herself. There is like literally no question in my mind that he is friends with Camus because Camus is basically the only person who knows him who will actually tolerate him.

- Milo: "Hmm, lots of people don't trust the Pope, and no one has seen his face. WHAT COULD IT MEAN??? welp back to my temple wonder what camus is up to"

- "Brother, I will make up for your sin, even if I have to sacrifice my life!" with a thousand-yard stare. Aiolia, you really, really need some therapy, badly...

- Man, I was gonna cover more episodes with this writeup, but it ends up I had a lot of ranting bottled up about GOD MILO WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU. Oh well. Next time, Aiolia continues to have serious, serious psychological problems! A good time is had by all!

#rewatching sts #aquarius camus did nothing wrong

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operationrainfall · 5 years

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Title Furwind Developer JanduSoft Publisher JanduSoft, Boomfire Games Release Date June 27th, 2019 Genre Action Platformer Platform Vita, PS4, Nintendo Switch Age Rating E for Everyone – Fantasy Violence Official Website

I should start this review by saying I’m a fan of games like Furwind. That is important to note, since in many ways this review will read as an autopsy of sorts. That’s not cause I hate the game. I’m a big fan of indies. But just because I enjoy them doesn’t mean I’m not critical of them. That goes double when I see all the potential a game has, and feel it’s not realized. So let’s start out with what Furwind does right before I have to delve into its many missteps.