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beevean · 8 months

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What's your opinion on clip from bumblekast from Flynn the "lord and savior of sonic shit"

https://twitter.com/candyypirate/status/1699456415008539130?s=20

https://twitter.com/candyypirate/status/1699462944440889623?s=20

I don't think the tweets embedded well, so here's the script:

What is up with Shadow's bio on the Fast Friends Forever website? According to the bio, Shadow is fighting to protect the planet, but only for the sake of Maria's memory while having no personal investment on the planet itself. I don't know how important these are to the series or characterization, but wouldn't making this aspect of his character the main reason for his protection of the planet be a regression and a contradiction to his development during Shadow the Hedgehog's final story? I know he still thinks about Maria due to the Sonic Channel stories, but we also know he decided to stand up for humanity himself while Black Doom was manipulating and pelting him with only bad memories. Assuming these bios aren't just oversimplified for marketing reasons, how come he's going back to doing everything for Maria's wish, if he already did all that without those memories, learned to move on from his past and her promise, and was written in 06 to show himself as a hero on his own terms?

F: That is a very good question, it is very valid... and I cannot talk about it right now. That is not a hand wave: there is other stuff that plays into this that I cannot get into just yet. So... hold your horses.

K Is this a... Is this a "#KnowingLook moment", like, maybe not a smile...

F: This is a "#KnowingSmile" combo :)

The implication here is that Shadow will have a major role in a future game? I... I honestly don't even care about keeping up with the FFF bios because the whole thing looks like a very simple show for kids lol. It is a little tiring to chain Shadow to Maria, but him having no investment on the planet itself kinda reminds me of the Sonic Channel story that this person is referencing.

As someone who just likes the games, barely read the first IDW issues and isn't interested in going further, what kind of potential impact on the games can I expect from the inclusion of IDW/Prime as official canon? I dread having elements from the comics/Prime directly coming into the games, thus alienating game-only fans who don't/can't read the comics. Given that comics seem to have much more going on than the games in terms of events, dialogue, character moments due to their structure, including IDW comics as canon make it seem like the canon medium where most stuff happens since Forces, thus a bit alienating to game-only fans. Especially when games nowadays don't release as often as they used to and aren't as "narratively intense" as a comic series, while the IDW comics have been releasing for 5 years and counting.

F: A fair concern, and I think to a degree it's new territory for everybody that's largely untested, because since IDW started we've had one Mainline game - that's really hard to gauge by...

K: And we still don't know when the game takes place in relation to the comics! You might, Ian but we don't, largely as an audience...

F: But I think everyone involved is aware of just that concern. So if Tangle were to show up in Frontiers 2 or whatever (that is not a #KnowingSmile, that's not me dropping a hint, that's just me giving an example), she would still need to be introduced as a new character.

Using Sonic Frontiers as the example by itself, if this was your first game with Sonic, there is a lot of deep character interaction between Sonic, Amy, Knuckles and Tails that, if you haven't played the Sonic series or kept track with 30 years of miscellaneous lore bits, you could potentially be a bit lost. But, so long as you understand the core relationships between them, the greater details aren't necessarily necessary for understanding the game. Like, you understand that Sonic and Knuckles are kind of friendly rivals, you don't necessarily need to know that they first met on Angel Island resolving the Death Egg crisis, you don't have to know that Knuckles discovered his history through a flying pink talking orb, that's irrelevant! It's that they are kinda at odds and, you know, despite that they still look out for each other.

K: And you can cut the tension between them with a butter knife!

F: You know Sonic and Amy have a very, uh, deep relationship, you don't need to understand the roller coaster of Amy's characterization from Adventure onward: you just need to know that they mutually trust and respect each other a great deal.

So, same thing if there's any crossover with the IDW material, then it needs to be presented in a context that is accessible, and that would come from in the Sonic and Tangle example, you know, they would encounter each other, and they would greet each other, there'd be like a little bit of expository dialogue to make you understand that, okay, they're friends, and she's kind of, uh, bouncing off the walls fun, and go from there. We don't necessarily have to reference that, you know, she sacrificed herself to help Sonic in the Metal Virus Plague. Is that relevant to the story that's going on? Probably not. Is it something neat for you to read later on if you want to? Sure! But I honestly do not foresee us directly referencing IDW events in the games, because I don't see that being a continuation.

Like, case in point, as of this recording... the Japanese Market is just now getting the end of Metal Virus. They haven't even been introduced to Belle, or any of Starline's personal arc. If we released a game within the next couple of years that relied on those, they'd be in the dark, never mind the rest of the global community! So, the events of the games do matter to the comics, and the comics will introduce elements that I imagine can cross-pollinate, but they will hopefully be handled in a way that is accessible to the largest audience of Sonic fans.

K: And would you say the same pretty much applies to Prime as well? There's some concern about that. I know you can't talk...

F: Prime is kind of a special case and I can't get into it without spoiling the end of Season 1 so... *disgusted tone* and none of this Season 1, 2, 3 nonsense, it's Season 1, Netflix is just chopping up into pieces.

K: Thanks Netflix for nothing.

I agree with the asker's point but not their reasoning lol

God there is so much going on here. This is why I hate the Bumblekasts lol, Flynn jumps from topic to topic and I have even less attention span than apparently he does.

So Flynn knows where the comics take place in canon, but we don't? Uh. That's a little concerning. Kyle makes it sound like they're going to drop a lore bomb soon...

"deep character interaction" just call them callbacks. That's the only thing that would confuse a newcomer, the sheer amount of pointless callbacks. Without them, you can more or less get their personalities just fine... Tails is the only one whose arc hinges on you knowing that Forces made the fandom explode lol

When he said "she would still need to be introduced as a new character", I thought he meant that Tangle will be a different version of herself in the games. I'm sorry, no, it would be so weird if I played a new Sonic game and Tangle showed up and Sonic was like "hey my good bud Tangle! Long time no see! Still chilling with Whisper?", like ??? whomst the fuck are you?

Nice dig at Amy, by the way :) thank you :) that was totally relevant to the point :)

... I completely forgot that Tangle sacrificed herself for Sonic. lol. lmao. You know she's a great character when you forget about her most heroic moment because IDW reduced her to a cute quirky ADHD babygirl.

Good point about the global marketing. Kudos to Flynn for remembering that the world doesn't begin and end with the US.

Basically his point is that it's possible that the games will reference the comics, but not in a way that will require your average fan to pick up the whole IDW series. Obviously this is just hypothetical at this point, but... I mean, I said it above. Introducing new characters as if they already belong to Sonic's friend circle feels weird to me, I would feel as if I missed something important. And if I want to understand who Tangle is, I'd still have to read IDW to get the idea, and get lost in all that mess.

Sidenote, it irks me that he says stuff like "if we released games". You're not a dev.

#good fucking god why do i do this to myself #i'm sorry but i genuinely can't follow flynn and i need subtitles #fans don't look #<- for lack of a better tag

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periwinkle--daydreams · 3 months

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Assorted thoughts about Ranni's questline

Going to bundle them all up in one post so I don't just keep spamming my thoughts en masse.

First off, I thought I was supposed to go to the Altus Plateau after beating Rennala, which apparently locked me out of the first few steps of the questline and caused me to miss out on some good interactions with Blaidd and Iji. Whoops. On the bright side, I apparently got to skip a terrible boss fight against a Leonine Misbegotten/Crucible Knight duo when I went to the Radahn Festival, so I guess that's a bit of a silver lining!

I don't know how I feel about helping Ranni, because on one hand? She's nice enough once you endear yourself to her, she gave me my wolf-bros, and led me towards one of my favorite areas in the game (the eternal cities/Siofra River) and one of my favorite bosses in the game (Astel). However, what started as me trying to help my bro Rogier escalated into me helping a Machiavellian schemer (who started putting out Lucifer vibes the further I got into her questline) commit deicide... I think. Are the Two Fingers gods? I thought I understood the lore and cosmology well enough until it turned out that the Fingers at the Roundtable Hold weren't the only pair.

I REALLY wish I did this questline the "right" way because Iji and Blaidd seemed like cool characters, but I barely got to spend any time with them. I also didn't expect Seluvis to fucking die when I told Gideon about his plan, but I wanted to punch his face in the second we crossed paths, so I can't really say I was looking forward to interacting with him a bunch.

Speaking of Seluvis, I thought he was merely an insufferable douche when I interacted with him. So imagine my shock when I googled him, discovered his secret rape dungeon, and found out what he really had in store for Nepheli and Ranni.

I didn't have anywhere near as strong of a bond with him as I could have, but giving Blaidd the Old Yeller treatment after he helped me fight Radahn was still heartbreaking.

The eternal cities and Siofra were SO GODDAMN BEAUTIFUL holy shit. The singing minotaurs, the fight against the Ancestor Spirit, exploring those ancient cities full of weird blobs and alien(?) monks with whipswords... the Lake of Rot, on the other hand, was disgusting and nightmarish. Wonderfully so, too! The Astel was also a cool boss with some interesting lore implications. Apparently, aliens are invading!

Thank god for player messages, because if those fucking ants dropped down on me out of nowhere without any sort of warning, I'd probably have had a heart attack. I definitely would have screamed. Still, it's not as bad as Fallout 3's ant queen spazzing out and clipping out of her boss room and getting right in my face out of nowhere because of Bethesda's programming.

The clay/mud guys in the river freak me out more than most enemies in this game. I don't know why because they're easy to fight and more annoying to kill than hard (at least as an astrologer)... there's just something about the way they look juxtaposed with the way they move that gives me the heebie-jeebies.

The inverted study hall was cool, but why did Miriam respawn after I killed her the first time? She wasn't hard to deal with as an astrologer, but holy crap, I am NOT looking forward to fighting her as a melee fighter.

I HATE THAT FAT FUCKER GUARDING THE WAY TO RANNI'S CORPSE. Holy shit, fuck that guy and his stupid rolling attack. I'm unashamed to admit that I just galloped past him on Torrent and never looked back after my eleventh death or so.

On the other hand, I thought it was funny that the Blaidd-looking guy that Ranni was so afraid of never even attacked me once. I assume he's much more dangerous as a melee fighter?

#elden ring #hydrox plays elden ring #ranni the witch #blaidd the half wolf #preceptor seluvis #elden ring spoilers #video games #hydrox rambles

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joyflameball · 2 years

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I just. I really need to talk about my emotional reaction to the Skip Button End because god damn it effected me.

So, a bit of context. I have this friend (it/its) who loves rambling to me about its latest hyperfixations. Usually at first I'm not too invested but loving its passion, but slowly it starts sucking me in until I'm in fandom hell with it. So one day it comes to me talking about The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe, and I'm intrigued by all the lore and mysteries and buckets. And then the first thing it really rambles to me about is an ending where you, in its words, "unintentionally force the Narrator to suffer through an eternity of nothingness and slowly watch his spirit break."

So!! I was obviously horrified!!! /pos

And it kept rambling to me about that ending, about how it was fueled by the Narrator getting a few bad reviews about wanting to create a "skip button" so they didn't have to hear him, how it was fueled by him just wanting to please the players, how it absolutely wrecked him, how he would go silent for skips at a time, before he was just reduced to saying "The end is never the end" over and over and over. I was INCREDIBLY fascinated in a horrified way.

But a key here is: I was still not totally invested. I was getting secondhand knowledge of this game about some random details, and a lot more information on one specific ending. I still did not know a lot. I did not know the Narrator.

My friend kept rambling to me about TSP, aboout random little fun details or emotional details. I didn't know a lot about the game itself, I wasn't really retaining or processing a LOT of information due to other hyperfixations, but there were two things I knew: My friend adored the Narrator, and the Skip Button End was emotionally awful.

After a bit, I started asking questions and getting invested (specifically I asked if the Narrator was a bucket which is fucking hilarious in retrospect.) I started really processing what was being said and the implications. I didn't fully know what they were, but I knew they were there. I know that doesn't make full sense, but moving on.

My friend then sent me a few clips from the game - the out of bounds song ending, the Door 430 achievement (because it sent me the transcript and i wanted to actually hear it), and a few voice lines from the Zending. And finally, I asked what the fuck was up with the Skip Button End, and it sent me a video.

(Critically, the video it sent me did not have the leadup to the Skip Button. It only had Stanley stepping into the room. This will become relevant later.)

Now, something about me. I'm really, really emotional. I get attached to characters easily, and am a very easy cryer. And I felt a lot of emotion for the Narrator in this end, it was an emotionally awful experience - the dread, the sympathy, all of it.

But I didn't... Cry at it.

And I think that's because I didn't fully... Know the Narrator. At this point, I did know quite a bit about him, I was beginning to hyperfixate on TSP, and I did find him incredibly interesting. But I wasn't fully, entirely invested in him.

This is just me spitballing here, this might be wrong, but. It's just how I think it was.

Now fast forwards a bit. I got fully hyperfixated, friend sent me more clips of TSP, we rambled about it in DMs a LOT, I played the demo and cried, then a different friend BOUGHT me TSPUD, and I played through every ending you can get without going through the New Content door. And by now, I was already more emotionally attached to Narry than I had been when I first watched the Skip Button video. But actually playing the game was... Way different.

I wasn't just watching someone else unplug a phone and unlock a very derealizing (/pos) end, I was the one unplugging the phone. I wasn't just watching someone else follow the Adventure Line™, I was following It™ myself, taking my time and exploring every nook and cranny. I wasn't just listening to Narry's desperate begging for me to go back to the Zen room, I was the one putting him through that.

It felt a lot more personal, honestly. Narry was no longer my blorbrit-in-law, no longer just a disembodied voice who will go through incomprehensible trauma, no longer even my blorbrit. He was this silly British voice who could in one end blow me to pieces for pressing a wrong button, and in another would bring me to a colorful room in hopes the conflict would end. Who would one moment lose his mind over clicking on doors, and another be incredibly, shall we say, passive-aggresive towards me for going through the wrong (or shall I say, the right) door. I genuinely cared about Narry, loved seeing him happy, saw him as not just this funny British guy, but my friend.

Fast-forwards to five days ago.

I wanted to get my other friend into TSP, so I streamed me playing the game into Discord (albeit without game audio because computers are evil). We played a few endings, fucked with Narry as much as possible, and finally went through the New Content door, both of us experiencing it for the first time.

Now, I wanna say this: I still did not know that much about TSPUD specifically. I knew about the Skip Button End, I knew about the Bucket, I vaguely knew about the tape person, I knew the Epilogue existed but didn't know what happened in it or how to get it, you get the gist. I knew most broad strokes, but not the full picture.

So we saw the vent on the floor and made Amongus jokes, lost it over the "fine you're a dork anyway >:(" "NEVERMIND! YOU'RE NOT A DORK", and finally went through the vent. We got to the Memory Zone, and I started feeling... A bit worried. I vaguely remembered, the friend who got me into TSP had mentioned that the Skip Button end happened in the Memory Zone... But hey, that end was so emotionally loaded, they wouldn't throw that at us immediately.

So we went through the Memory Zone. Poked fun at the fact that Narry had a "PERSON OF THE YEAR" poster that had Stanley on it and the fact that he had a love song in the background of the Memory Zone. Talked about how TSP could only really exist as a game first, and no true adaptation could ever really, really exist.

And then we got to the good reviews. And then the dread started to set in.

And then we got to the Steam reviews. And it fully hit me like a fucking truck.

We were doing the Skip Button End.

I started freaking out. I did not fucking know it was this early in the game, I did not realize this was the leadup to the Skip Button, and I could not go back. I was walking from review to review, hearing Narry doubt himself and his game more and more, and I was just breaking down crying even before we got to the button because I knew what happened next.

When we finally did get to the Skip Button, I pressed it once. And I felt so guity for just that. It wasn't even doing anything bad yet, and here I was, having this strong an emotional reaction, knowing what happens, dreading it so much.

So I didn't go through with it. I reset. Went to the Zending. Sat in the pretty lights. Refused to move.

I tried everything. Asked the Discord, asked my friend, asked everyone I could if there was another way to progress, if there was another way that didn't involve putting Narry through that.

And there wasn't.

I had to put Narry through unfathomable pain and loneliness.

So the next day, I booted up the game, streaming it to my friend again (recording it, hence why this is so detailed), feeling even more dread. I started tearing up earlier because I knew what was happening this time. I started really crying by around the first or second skip. The emotions were just hitting me so, so much worse - the guilt, the grief, the anger, all of it. By the time I'd gotten to the end is never the end, I was fully breaking down sobbing, and as I kept skipping, every time the room started breaking, more and more, I kept saying "Let me out of here, let me out, I want Narry back." And when I completed the Skip Button end, I was just ecstatic, still fucking sobbing as I did the Door 430 thing. I immediately went to get the Freedom End, and afterwards went back to the Zen Room and just sat there.

Playing it felt so much worse than just watching a playthrough. Actually playing it felt so bad that I was fucking dissociating afterwards. And I don't think it's just because I was the one pulling the trigger (or shall I say pressing the button), although there is something uniquely horrible about pulling the trigger yourself.. I think it's because of me completing all the normal routes.

Which, that is still in a way because I was pulling the trigger, but the point still stands: I don't think I'd cry as much if I hadn't completed all the normal routes before going through the Ultra Deluxe. Those routes gave me an emotional bond with Narry. Fuck, when he said "I can tell I am becoming less and less real," I said "You're real to me." Narry became more real to me as I played the game and got all the dialogue and endings - some of which I didn't even know existed until I got them.

When I watched the Skip Button End for the first time, I didn't know a lot about TSP. I was just an observer, mostly. Listening to my friend's rambling, having watched a few short clips, barely having any context to any of it. When I downloaded the game, I knew more about Narry and cared way, WAY WAY WAY more about him, but when I actually played the game, it gave me... A different kind of bond with him?

He was no longer my blorbo the Narrator, he was my friend Narry. This artist, who used his writing to cope with his issues. This person who projected all his derealization and loneliness onto his OC, who would put that OC through hell and back, who cared about him so much. Someone who was implied at least three times to not be human, yet who was so, so human in everything he did and said. Someone who felt like the most real depiction of an artist I'd ever seen. Someone with both full control and no control. Someone who needed to be heard to feel real. Someone who couldn't handle being alone. Someone who just wanted to be free.

And yeah, I know I'm describing my emotional bond to a fictional character who doesn't exist and how that changed over time but just... I dunno. I haven't gotten any sleep, I don't know if this is coherent or if it's just me talking into the void, this turned out longer than I meant it to.

#the stanley parable #cassie rambles #skip button ending #the narrator #side effects of playing tsp:#horrible dissociation #reading everything in the narrator's voice #the stanley parable ultra deluxe #tsp #tspud #tsp narrator #long post

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kallixti-chaossphinx · 2 years

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Knackered Movie Review; Shadow People (2013 film)

This movie was viewed through youtube's free movie selection.

This review will contain SPOILERS, if you care. A few things come to mind looking back on this movie, but I will limit this essay to 5. The first thing being there is a rare comfort in enjoying a bad movie. Make no mistake, if you have the eyes to notice green screen backgrounds, and a knowledge of lore to laugh at troupes being self-fulfilling prophecies, you may enjoy this film as a comedy. I wonder if this will make the rounds like 'The Room' or 'Birdemic'. The second thing that comes to mind looking back on this film is 'the crew has clearly consumed multi layered media'. The body of the film constantly jumps between different kinds of footage; starting with youtube reactions, jumping to recreation film of a radio station, to news broadcasts, paparazzi harassment, home movie interview footage, courtroom questioning footage, CDC debriefing discussion (which clearly takes place in a classroom); it's trying to create an illusion of reality by putting more and more layers on, but it ends up looking like a kid wearing too many winter coats rather than the documentation research of a lunatic (which is what they were going for). Before you insist I'm projecting, they literally put 'FNORD' on a random sign in the first 30 minutes of the film, and if you've ever read the Illuminatus! trilogy, you know that reference. (For those of you who haven't, it's a conspiracy theory hypnosis trigger code to cause people to ignore things out of fear. "If you can't see the fnord, it can't eat you". Hypothetically, fnord is written in every news article to make people freak out about the news. What it references doesn't exist; it's just meant to cause an effect when observed.)

The third thing that comes to mind is 'did the film makers want me to think they are trying to kill me?' The plot we follow of the movie is ultimately the declaration that Shadow People are an info hazard; the shadow people only kill believers, justified as a potential psychic phenomena, and/or a nocebo effect (improperly labeled a 'placebo' effect in the film by a CDC investigator.(which really shows just how much actual research they did.)); the film then ends with the very not subtle implication that we have been infected with this knowledge by having watched the movie itself. It even has an entire monologue about how sleep paralysis murder spirits have been a part of human society since the dawn of history. So, are the film makers Shadow People Cultists, like literal demon contractor D. H. Thorne? (Thorne's grimoire is a *very* disappointing read, get it secondhand if you even care to look.) Given how low-budget the film is, probably not, but they definitely are pouring on that 20-teens edge to try to give the illusion that they are. The 'protagonist', for lack of a better term, is a radio host who goes by the name Charlie Crowe, who wears a leather jacket, smokes and drinks coffee more as he believes more about the shadow people, and is a divorced father of a single child of whom he has weekend custody. Such a relatable white, male, down-beaten, cishet, emo, conspiracy-theorizing protagonist. (Please read the proceeding sentence with as much sarcasm as you can attribute to a voice synthesizer.)

The fourth thing that comes to mind is 'They really want me to remember this movie is filmed in Kentucky'. It's very insistent about being Kentuckian. ... Kenturkish? Kentuckee? It makes me wonder if they purposefully blew the budget on the opening scene being a Korean family (with a shadow people murder incident) just so the film would be more than only white people. After the initial scene, and one clip of a film being viewed in the film later in the movie, the Koreans are nowhere else in the layers of the film. The Koreans are also... partially blamed as a first contact incident because of a sleep experiment done on them by a white guy? This film is greasy with its cheese.

The fifth thing that comes to mind is 'I really wasted 90 minutes on that, I guess'. I saw it for free on youtube, and I guess I don't want my money back.

#knackered #movie review #film review #movie critic #film criticism #shadow people #kentucky #cryptid #sleep experiments #umbral folk #bad horror #d tier horror movie #funny bad movies

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tobi-smp · 2 years

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But... am I misunderstanding or was there a miscommunication between ccs at the time? Like, did cc!techno not know what was happening?? Was he suppose to do something different? I'm guessing there was no script for that part and it was all improvised (which is kinda weird because we know they were scripting things at that point, like Schlatt's death). I didn't watch the whole arc, did Techno miss hints of what was happening or something?

context: [Link]

I genuinely couldn't tell you ! I don't know what happens behind the scenes but it genuinely feels like cc!techno just, doesn't know the implications of basically anything he gets involved in

a clip resurfaced yesterday of techno in the bedrock bros arc describing tommy's exile as a "two week depression arc" where he tried to make everyone feel bad for him "even though he was intentionally provoking everybody" [Link]. and yeah, it was said like a joke, but like Is It?

it was weirdchamp enough coming from techno when he was the person who was supposed to take tommy in immediately after a Failed Suicide Attempt, I should hope that he'd at least know how bad the optics are with trying to downplay that as tommy being A Little Bummed Out Over A Bad Party and just actual victim blaming. but here he is, saying it anyways. and this would be Unfortunately Consistent with cc!techno continuing to have his character work off of dream both while refusing to acknowledge the Implications that has for his character And while trying to play his character as an antihero of sorts.

I have no idea what communication looks like behind the scenes, what techno was told or what he saw going into these events Or what he's seen since. but also like, it's Weird to me that cc!techno seems to be making these decisions for how c!techno should act without understanding the context that he's making them in, and then refusing to accept that context.

and it's not as if this is a techno-only issue. there are lots of cc!s that have said tone deaf things about the exile arc, there are lots of cc!s who have made lore decisions without understanding the full context of what was going on, hell cc!wilbur didn't know that c!dream escaped until he was told on stream (genuinely don't know how that one happened).

but techno is Continuously put directly at the center of arcs and story events and characters that involve very Serious subject matter, particularly with tommy and dream, and then makes decisions about what he wants his character to do and when without informing himself of what's going on around him. and then everyone else is forced to just kind of, Bend.

a Relevant example of this is the syndicate investigating snowchester. it was in the direct aftermath of tommy's death and this fact was just casually brushed off because cc!techno didn't want to deal with it. so he walks up to tubbo, mourning the death of his best friend, and starts interrogating him about whether he should get to keep his home or not.

cc!techno refuses to see the red festival as traumatizing because he doesn't want his character to be "the villain," cc!techno refuses to see doomsday as traumatizing because he refuses to think about the context his actions are happening in, and he was seemingly uninformed about c!tommy's death at dream's hands. so when he made that decision he was seemingly unaware of how that would make his character Look. he made jokes about tubbo having "nukes for self defense" and tubbo wasn't Allowed to openly address his character's trauma.

cc!tubbo didn't dig into his character's trauma with the red festival and doomsday until the cookie outpost and the burger arc, he transplanted Quackity into the role as the villain that c!tubbo was angry and afraid of with c!techno getting a pass "because he was forced into it by quackity and schlatt." and I can't say that I know what happened behind the scenes, but considering what cc!techno's said about the red festival Now I have to imagine that cc!tubbo's plans for having his character try to work through that trauma wouldn't have gone very well if techno had been in quackity's place instead.

the characters literally are not allowed to address the trauma that c!techno caused them because cc!techno won't address it. and that's Weird innit

#dream smp #technoblade #tommyinnit #tubbo #c!techno critical #cc!techno critical #meta #discourse #victim blaming

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raisans-art · 3 years

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What the Fuck Are these Characterizations: The Essay

Full warning: This is only concerning Tommy's stream made today, 4/29/2021. I know Ranboo has streamed after Tommy but I haven't watched that.

On with the essay.

A lot happened.

Tommy tried to kill Dream, Dream actually killed Ghostbur, Wilbur is back (pog). It's a lot. A lot of plot and a lot of emotions. I will preface this with the usual "holy hell these people are pretty damn good actors for having no formal training as far as I'm aware." They get their emotions across very clearly and that's kinda why I'm making this in the first place. The way some of the characters acted in Tommy's 4/29 stream is a bit odd in my opinion.

Now, I will concede that I have not been diligent with the Dream SMP lore. I've been given broad strokes and have seen various clips but I have definitely not been on top of it. I may have missed streams entirely and you all more avid fans may be able to name scenes that I haven't seen that rationalize some of these reactions that I will be criticizing. If you can, please do so! I'd love to start a dialogue over this!

So, how I'm gonna break this all up is to take a look at Tommy, Wilbur, Ranboo, and Awesamdude and how their CCs characterized them during the stream. I'll sing praises where they are due and point out my criticisms where they arise. Then, I will try to surmise some meta as to why I think these characterizations came to be in the first place.

Tommy

Tommy, to me, has the best characterization in this. CC Tommy clearly has a very good sense of what he wants from his character and has been playing into that line of thought from the beginning of this whole debacle.

Tommy is scared, paranoid, and pissed off. Ever since he left the prison he avoids taking damage like the plague, rambles indecisively, is easily sent into a panic, and is hypersensitive to the people around him. He panics when he sees weapons out and one crucial thing that he made clear from the start was that he wants Dream dead.

Straight out of limbo, Tommy concludes that Dream needs to die. From there he plans this whole mission with Ranboo, Tubbo, and Ghostbur to get in and kill Dream. He says that Dream can't keep living with this power at his fingertips, and from before his final death, Tommy clearly wants to be rid of his abuser, adding a personal layer to his plan. Tommy is stubborn and determined since the beginning, sacrificing his life and disks for L'manberg and refusing to believe that his home is gone until the place is blown to bedrock. Of course, he would stick to his plan to a T.

Now, is this a smart decision to sneak into the highest security area in the entire SMP? Fuck no. It's a stupid idea. Even if Tommy hadn't messed up, Sam would've seen Dream die to a floating axe and kept Tommy and Ghostbur in that containment cell. It would've been a one-way ticket, especially given what we see of Sam in this stream.

But this all makes sense for the character CC Tommy is playing. Tommy isn't thinking about how smart of a decision this is and he hardly ever does when he takes action. He shoots from the hip, takes his first instincts, and acts on them.

It's easy to draw a clear line of progression of Tommy as a character from season 1 to this moment in season 3 and past Ghostbur's death. His hyperventilating as he tries to get his plan to work after it failed, Trying to save Ghostbur from what he went through, lashing out at Sam, and yelling at Wilbur. All of this in line with who Tommy is as a character and how events have changed him. This is a good characterization.

Wilbur

Wilbur has changed a lot since we've seen him last, both alive and dead. Since he's been alive, Wilbur has changed his tune from "I want to die" to "hell sucks, mate." What's particularly interesting is that this sentiment that he has from being alive carried for a long time into his limbo, as evidenced by his appearance in the season 2 finale on the bench. He wanted to "stay dead" at that point. Since we've seen him in limbo, he's gone from content in his situation and understanding why he's there and that he's there forever.

Now we have Revivedbur. Revivedbur is ecstatic to be alive again. He goes from numb to embracing feeling again. The fandom once thought that Revivedbur would be annoyed with or hateful towards Dream for bringing him back turned into joy and reverence. This is quite a drastic leap. Bad characterization.

But it isn't.

I have seen one clip from Ranboo's stream on 4/29 and that is Ranboo telling Philza that Wilbur is alive. In this bit, after mentioning that Wilbur has been in limbo for a perceived 13 and a half years, Phil says "13 years is a long time to be away... he almost certainly isn't the same person... people can change quite a lot in a single year, two years, three years, four years, even five years, Ranboo."

Wilbur has been gone for 13 years. He's been in the same place with no change other than Tommy for 13 fucking years. That's 13 years where we heard from him 2 times. We know virtually nothing about what those 13 years were like for him, but from what Wilbur has said, it was torture to him. He was stagnant, stuck in a fucking tube station for 13 years, unable to leave no matter how hard he tried.

We know so little about how his time in limbo changed him because it's such a long span of time with radio silence. I dare say this is fucking great characterization.

Ranboo

This is where I start having some issues, and this is where I have the least amount of context. From what I've seen, Ranboo is little miss angst who forgets things and is constantly on the verge of having a panic attack (hyperbole). From what I have surmised of his character in various contexts, serious and dramatic scenes and domestic ones, Ranboo really cares about the people around him and is scared of himself and his mind.

So why is it that he straight up just sneers at Tommy, saying "the hell did you do?"

I'm really just focusing on this because it just seems really off to me in the context of his character. Ranboo was in on this plan. It's pretty common knowledge that the only person with revive powers is Dream. Ranboo doesn't know everything that happened within the prison, sure, but why is he so quick to assume that Tommy was the root cause? Is it because he's been hanging out with the world's 2nd biggest Tommy hater, Niki (the character for clarification)? I honestly don't know where this jump-in assumption is coming from. Given what I understand of his character, this line and the implications I'm getting are just a bit out of character. Feel free to explain why I'm wrong because I am not in this loop whatsoever.

Awesamdude

Sam is where I have the biggest issue. How does a man go from living on an isolated island in grief over a death he could've prevented if only he had been quicker, to yelling at that same formerly dead person that he was at fault for the death/revival of another person?

Now, one thing that is strengthened by this characterization is Sam's dedication to the rules. He has his strict protocol and he is not going to let that slip up for anything. He wants to keep Dream in prison and never let him out.

But I'm just having a hard time grappling with a man so quick to blame himself last time something like this happened being so quick to place blame on a child he, from what I've seen, had a good relationship with. It feels like I'm missing something here.

Yeah, Tommy broke into the prison, but why is Sam's first thought that Tommy was trying to break dream out? This harsh turn on Tommy just doesn't come across right to me.

Why Did This Happen?

I do think there could be a meta reason as to why these don't land right to me. These two characterizations are centered around Tommy. How people are reacting to Tommy's actions. Tommy and Dream are the head of the prison stuff right now. at least as far as I know. I'm not sure if Wilbur has come back on as a writer yet but last I heard it's still Tommy and Dream handling their shit. With the writers in mind, I wouldn't put it past them to decide to add more conflict with Tommy and other members of the SMP right now. The Egg is a bit busy with other things, Jack is just running the hotel, and the Syndicate doesn't really have any qualms with Tommy on any level that they would act on. It could be the writers trying to add conflict to the prison storyline by generating conflict between Tommy, Ranboo, and Sam with Wilbur being a fuckin wild card.

I don't know mate, I just wanted my thoughts out there and maybe be fucking pounded into the ground by people more knowledgeable than me.

Have a dialogue with me I'd love to debate. (All friendly debate please I don't feel like taking this too seriously it is Minecraft roleplay after all.)

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hatchetfieldtheories · 3 years

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Return to Hatchetfield-Town – The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals Part 1

Alright settle down kiddos. Get comfy, find a warm blanket and hug your favourite fwendy-wend as we start our Return to Hatchetfield-Town series.

I’ll be rewatching all the Hatchetfield scripted content (i.e. not livestreams or interviews) and jotting down what happens, explaining some concepts and delving into some of the key theories in the series (and using the word “implications” that often it will cease to have meaning).

Even though I’ll be doing the rewatch by show in order they came out, there will be spoilers for all Hatchetfield content that is available as of the rewatch.

I’ve also linked to a number of other blog’s theories here because they are amazing, but if you aren’t happy with your theory being included I will be more than happy to remove it! Just let me know.

[Part 2]

The Guy Who Really Hated Brigadoon

TGWDLM starts off with the greatest song ever to feature dancing zombies… at least I can’t think of any other notable ones.

In the title song, the cast of singing and dancing zombies explain to us that all great stories have to have a hero, someone who knows right and wrong and that the best way to do this is through singing and dancing in musicals. This with the later line of “they evoke the philosophical” make me think that Pokey took a class in Campbell’s Hero Myth in College and became that guy.

Hatchetfield Challenge: try not to shrug your shoulders along with the music at the chorus. Its impossible. No wonder the Hive spread so quickly. Literally killer dance moves.

So then they introduce us to an awful Grinch named Paul and we hit the first point in the show where I laugh out loud every single time I watch.

I know TGWDLM was not originally intended to be the first Hatchetfield show but starting this series with a song which sets up the story so well is truly spectacular. And is there anything more Starkid than introducing your main character by having other characters sing about how awful they are?

One thing I have noticed while writing, reading and collating Hatchetfield theories is that while most Black Friday and Nightmare Time theories are usually about the overall Hatchetfield lore, most TGWDLM theories are usually quite self-contained and focused on this one show. TGWDLM – while so fully within the Hatchetfield extended universe, is definitely the show that can best stand-alone without the others.

It’s the end of the world, Paul

If you don’t sing

This is the bridge, Paul

Where we globalize everything

And the words will come to you

We swear we will teach you

What it means to love

What it means to obey, Paul!

On a first watch this is very funny. On your 10th watch this is terrifying.

CCRP Technical: No-one here knows how to use their printer

Following the absolute bop of a title song we find ourselves in CCRP Technical and all feels very… normal. It’s very weird following all the revelations in subsequent Hatchetfield media, to be watching a show where there was genuinely nothing obviously fishy about CCRP. We’ll obviously discuss CCRP more when we get to Nightmare Time, but for now all we know is that Paul works in the technical department of CCRP – an unknown corporation, with some key characters, Charlotte, Bill and Ted.

We also find out more about Grinch Paul’s personality and honestly, Paul is me pre-pandemic just outright avoiding social interactions and suddenly going for coffee in the middle of the work day. (I have become a changed woman in lockdown – someone please invite me somewhere… anywhere!)

For all the dark humour and death in the Hatchetfield series, Starkid do know how to bring the joy – I love how excited the town of Hatchetfield are for a touring production of Mamma Mia.

Fake Fact: TGWDLM is actually an allegory for Europe in the 1970s, when we all became mind-controlled by Abba’s Waterloo. (Find me a better explanation for Eurovision, I dare you! The sequins were just too shiny!)

“The idea of sitting there… trapped in a musical. That is my own personal hell.”

Two words: Emma Perkins – need I explain any more?

Ah Hot Chocolate Boy. I really look forward to finding out more about him. Where does he come from? He just appears out of the ether. What’s his story? How old is he? How many hot chocolates does he have per day? I know we have since had some confirmation on who he is, but they raise more questions than answers. For now I will just point you to a gorgeous Mood Board by @hatchetfieldmoodboards which features a bit of a spoiler.

For real though – is it just me who would love a full version of “I’ve been brewing up your coffee”?

Hatchetfield Challenge: Try not to sing “Shut the f*ck up” along with Emma.

“Watching people sing and dance makes me very uncomfortable”- oh boy Paul… you’re not going to enjoy the next hour and 40 minutes. Also, Paul, you’re making me uncomfortable watching you throw your brand new coffee around as if you’ve just been given an empty cup. There’s imaginary coffee everywhere. Hopefully, HCB won’t slip on it before it’s cleaned up… he’s already having a bad day.

“Thunder and Lightning… very very frightening. But a big rock hurtling through the clouds is no biggie.” – all the residents of Hatchetfield apparently.

The next sequence happens so fast and we get introduced to a lot of characters. Notably Greenpeace Girl, Alice and Deb, Sam, and Hidgens (though we don’t find out his name until much later). This scene impresses me because they do such a great job of very quickly bringing out so many characters who nonetheless are memorable when they return later in the show.

Peanuts the Hatchetfield Pocket Squirrel is an Eldritch Being. I won’t go into Peanuts theories here as that could be a whole post in itself – and many a person more brilliant than I have written some fantastic theories on this. You can learn all about how a Squirrel took over the fandom in the following posts:

@dahlialupine : x

@frombothofmyhearts: x

@abiimaryy: x

And finally mine which is definitely a serious theory: x

It’s… A… Musical!

Now to remember we are actually watching a musical. La Dee Da Da Day is such a happy joyful song performed spectacularly by a throng of the undead.

The song is about the Hive singing about how much of a great time they are having now they are tap-dancing zombies, and trying to find ways to convince Paul he should join them too. So the grins on all their faces are not at all terrifying.

It’s worth noting also that according to the laws of the TGWDLM world, only those infected by the Hive can hear the music in the background. This becomes important later when it becomes clear some characters have started being infected before they are fully turned into zombies, but for now it just paints quite a funny picture of what Paul must be witnessing. I definitely think for him, this whole scene just sounds like this clip of Greased Lightning without the music: x

The important thing here however, besides Mariah’s singing, is that the Hive leave Paul alone. They don’t actually attempt to turn him at this point. I have a theory on the implications of this, but note this has big spoilers for the end of the show and Black Friday. It was written before we knew that the Hive (Pokey) was related to Wiggly but the content still stands: x

Charlotte, Honey, you don’t need that much sugar – you’re sweet enough

For reference:

@melchron noted that the lyrics for La Dee Dah sound very similar to the incantation for soul transferal read out in Jane’s a Car, which leads me to two possible implications.

The Freaky Furbies have a language other than English that they use for their incantations so this is why they sound similar.

There is soul transference happening to the souls of the bodies the Hive take over.

Or it’s just Starkid using similar sounding words for their content…. Three! There are three possible implications…

Paul – just print off another copy of the report

From this point on the musical numbers really do come thick and fast. We move on to the first instance of Jeff Blim encouraging Paul to talk about his feelings, which I am sure is not important and isn’t worth discussing. Paul goes through a musical rendition of a promotion interview, which is actually the Hive attempting to find out if he will be the “hero” of their story. They picked out Paul for the role from the start. That he was chosen was inevitable.

What do you see for this company? I'm looking for someone with strong ambition Someone to sell their specific vision Someone to share with precise precision their thoughts 'Cause I want you to want…To want

So it turns out these will be looooong, so I will end here and see you in part 2! I’m not sure yet what the upload frequency will be. It takes quite a while to go through the show like this but it is a lot of fun!

Hatchetfield High Homework:

Where do you stand on the Peanuts the Hatchetfield Pocket Squirrel debate?

Why do you think that the Soul Transference Spell and La Dee Dah sound so similar?

Go follow all the lovely people mentioned in this post!

Bonus points if you know the reference in the post title.

[Part 2]

#the guy who didn't like musicals #tgwdlm #return to hatchetfield town #starkid #team starkid

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duhragonball · 3 years

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Hellsing Liveblog Ch. 51-56

This is the “Seras Coming of Age” part of Hellsing, but the chapters are all one-off titles: “Last Mission”, “Get Away”, “Yaksa”, “The Man I Love”, “Ogre Battle”, and “Angelous,”

Last time, Zorin Blitz’s company invaded the Hellsing HQ, and Seras managed to kill them all except for Zorin herself, and then she used her psychic whammy, forcing Seras to relive some traumatic moment. We saw one of the Wild Geese get this same treatment, and he briefly saw his dead daughter before Zorin killed him. As for Seras, she relives the deaths of her parents. Years ago, two guys barged into their home and shot them. The circumstances aren’t entirely clear, but they must have had some forewarning, since Seras’ mom hid her in a closet and told her not to come out no matter what. But when she saw what they did to them, Seras became so enraged that she attackedthe men and stabbed one in the eye with a fork.

The other guy shot Seras, and while she must have survived, she remembers laying on the floor as the guy she stabbed decides to rape her mother. I’m not even sure “rape” is the right word, since she was already dead, but the guy doesn’t care because the body is “still warm.” You’d think he’d be too upset about losing an eye, but maybe he’s high on cocaine or something.

I don’t think you need me to tell you this, gentle reader, but hol-ee shit this dark. We knew Seras’ parents died when she was young, and it wouldn’t be hard to speculate that they died in some violent crime, but Seras watched it happen, and she stabbed a dude in the face, only to get shot herself, and she watched her mother’s body getting molested before she passed out.

And this gives us some insight into what Alucard saw in her that night in Cheddar. There, Seras was surrounded by ghouls, many of them her comrades in the police department, and a vampire who promised to rape her before drinking her blood. Alucard found it remarkable how she persevered in this horror, but now we see that may not even be the worst thing that ever happened to her. It’s not even the first time she got shot!

And from the earlier flashback we saw, Seras was hellbound to become a police officer like her father. After a trauma like this, it’s amazing that she’d want anything to do with the police, since those men killed her father for digging “too deep” into whatever they were involved in. But Seras quietly, defiantly chose to follow in her father’s footsteps, only to suffer a similar fate.

Because, let’s not forget, Seras is dead. She died in Cheddar, because Alucard had to shoot through her to kill the vampire who had taken her hostage. Then she agreed to become a vampire like him, and join the Hellsing Organization. Once more, she has quietly, defiantly, chosen to carry on in this life of public service.

But none of that matters to Zorin Blitz. She just wanted to dredge up all this trauma to keep Seras preoccupied long enough for Zorin to do this...

Oh, also she lopped off Seras’ left arm, but I liked this impalement panel better.

On top of that, Zorin slashes Seras’ eyes, which was pretty gruesome and shocking. When I started watching the Hellsing Ultimate OVA, I couldn’t wait to see what happened next, so I trawled YouTube for clips of Seras, so I had a pretty good idea where the character was headed, and noticed that late-story Seras was missing a left arm. So Zorin cutting it off didn’t surprise me much, but everything else she did to her was a surprise.

Then, just as Zorin seems to be ready to finish Seras off, Pip Bernadotte gets the drop on her and whacks her with the butt of his rifle. Machine gun? Semiautomatic? I don’t know from guns. He hits her with it, is my point. Then he shoots her with a different gun to put the exclamation point on it.

There’s two other guys left in the Wild Geese, and they toss smoke grenades to cover Pip as he tries to carry Seras to safety, but he’s wounded, and then a Millennium soldier wakes up and shoots him in the thighs. Was that guy playing possum? The Geese take him out, and Pip even makes it back to them, but I’m not sure what good that does anybody. Then Zorin gets back up and cuts him down with her scythe. I don’t think she chops him in half or anything, but he’s not getting back up again, that’s for sure.

Seras calls out to him, and he steals another kiss. I guess he forgot about the last time, because he acts like he “finally” managed to do this. Then he asks Seras to drink his blood, which will allow her to win. I guess someone must have explained enough vampire lore to Pip for him to have figured this out. Maybe Seras herself told him how it worked, which makes it doubly-meaningful for him to say this to her now.

And Seras starts wailing with grief, before Zorin finally mocks her for it, calling Pip an insect. I’ve seen a few people poke fun at this scene, because it’s kind of weird for Zorin to just stand by while Pip and Seras have this final moment together, but Zorin’s a sadist. Much of what she’s done in these past several chapters has been about reveling in her enemies’ suffering. She took her sweet time with Seras earlier, which was the only reason Pip managed to help her, and now she’s taking her sweet time again, like she’s enjoying this drama.

So Zorin uses her psychic whammy again, but this time it doesn’t work on Seras. Maybe because Seras is already in the middle of a terrible trauma in the here and now. She couldn’t do anything to avenge her parents back then, and she was powerless against the Cheddar Priest, but this time? This time she knows exactly what to do.

VENIT AEVUS ILLE, O MESSIAH, O MESSIAH

YUDULIYA-VELE YUDULIYA-VELE

EN ESE MOMENTO ZORIN BLITZ SINTIO EL VERDADERO TERROR.

So yeah, this rocks. The anime version does this cool thing where all the blood soaks up into her clothes and stains them red. Maybe the manga was going for the same thing, but it’s harder to tell in black and white. I find it kind of strange how Seras’ eyes grow back, but her left arm does not. I’m pretty sure she could reform her arm, but chooses not to. Instead, she’s got this black ectoplasm-y thing, like the same black stuff that Alucard uses when he’s not holding back as much.

Then Seras starts slaughtering Zorin’s men. Didn’t she already kill them all? Yeah, but there’s more. The anime tries to cover for this by having Zorin explain that some “late arrivals” showed up. Well, they did have to enter the building single file to get past the mines, so it makes sense that Zorin would keep some in reserve in case there were more traps inside.

Seras is my favorite character in this whole thing, and since these pages of her kickin’ ass speak for themselves, I guess I’ll talk about why I like her so much. I’m pretty sure I saw a cosplay photo of her on tumblr, and I found the design intriguing. She’s a vampire, but dressed in something like a military uniform, kind of like the “Bridge Bunnies” in Macross. I looked up Seras to find out what she was from, and I was like “Oh, Hellsing was the show Team Four Star has been abridging, I guess I need to watch that anyway so I can watch the Abridged version and get the jokes.”

Mostly, I just like the idea of a vampire with a very professional mentality, as opposed to the whole Lost Boys/What We Do in the Shadows/Buffy kind of aesthetic. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but we see that sort of thing all the time. I’ve also seen a lot of “reluctant” vampires in my time. Vampires who try to avoid doing any vampire stuff, or going about their business like the vampirism is just this inconvenient obstacle. Hellsing presents this other option, where vampires like Alucard are used for the purpose of anti-vampire countermeasures. He’s been turned into a weapon, but he’s basically just Dracula with a fresh coat of paint. Seras is more firmly rooted in the concept. Alucard was a vampire who became a sort of cop, and Seras is a cop who became a vampire.

And while I liked the idea of Seras being like “Oh, well I didn’t want to be a vampire but I’ll try to make the best of it”, I quickly found out that she wasn’t just a cop with pointy teeth. There’s moments where she can be scary and creepy too. “Sir, yes sir, my Master.” It sums her up very neatly. This is a vampire who can be polite and respectful and professional, but she can also get very deep into the more horrific aspects of this thing. She’s got layers. Zorin Blitz tried to peel them back, and look how that’s working out for her.

Once the rank and file goons are dealt with, Seras goes after Blitz, and just wrecks her shit. Blitz tries to punch Seras in the face and it does nothing. Seras just bites all her fingers off and spits ‘em out. Then she announces that she refuses to drink Zorin’s blood, not a single drop. This is important, because Seras was always reluctant to drink blood. She said she feared that drinking blood would mean the end of something inside of her, but now she’s crossed that Rubicon. One might suspect that she’d suddenly want to drink more blood, but no. She drank Pip’s as a means to an end. Zorin’s blood would serve no higher purpose, and I think there’s an implication that she doesn’t want to dishonor Pip’s sacrifice. Desperate, Zorin tries to use her power on Seras a third time, and then this happens:

Okay, so at first Zorin sees Seras’ memories, like before, but now there’s all this stuff from Pip’s memories, and then Warrant Officer Shrodinger, of all people, shows up. Zorin is confused by this, but he explains that he’s “everywhere and nowhere,” which means he can appear in this psychic vision just as easily as he can teleport between Brazil and England.

Schrodinger is here to pass along a message from the Major. See, Zorin disobeyed his orders, and he would normally punish her for this, but he and the Doctor are busy with a “most interesting toy”, so they’ll just leave it to Seras to take care of punishing Zorin.

Yesterday, I think I figured out what Zorin’s disobedience was. Before I was confused because she didn’t start attacking until Seras opened fire on her blimp, and that only happened because Seras was shooting at the rockets fired by the Major. Everything that Zorin did afterwards could be considered a matter of self-defense, but therein lies the problem. Namely, what was Zorin’s blimp doing in the line of fire to begin with?

Because once Seras shot her down, everything Zorin did next was sort of her only option. She pretty much had to attack the mansion, and brave its defenses, whatever those happened to be. And the Major knew that this was a big unknown. He warned Zorin about Seras Victoria and while he didn’t seem to know exactly what her abilities were, he regarded her as an “arch-enemy” on the same level as Alucard. That’s why he wanted Zorin to hold off and wait for the rocket attack. It was intended to probe the mansion’s defenses, and once it became clear that they had anti-aircraft guns, and that Seras was eagle-eyed enough to shoot down their rockets, then the Major could have ordered Zorin to find a different way.

But instead she was too close and gave Seras a target, which precipitated everything else, up to and including this:

Yeah, Seras just drags Zorin across the walls until her whole head smears apart. Cool!

With Zorin dead, Seras delcares her intention to take the fight to the enemy, and the last three Wild Geese salute her before she leaves. One way or another, they realize that Pip has become a part of Seras now, and they pay their last respects to him through her.

Then Seras flies toward London, using her left arm-thing to make cool bat wings. And this is a good illustration of what Seras is all about. Once, she might have been horrified at the thought of doing something like this, but now she sees it as a way to carry on with her duty. This was what Alucard had been trying to get her to understand, but sometimes you just have to work these things out in your own way. Seras is about utility, and now that she has a use for these vampiric powers, she’s finally prepared to embrace them as her own.

In London, Schrodinger reports back to the Major and informs him of Zorin Blitz’s death. He’s not surprised, and even declares “our ruin has begun”. Schrodinger points out that he’s leading everyone, friend and foe alike, into destruction, and the Major simply observes that this is war. Millennium didn’t come to London to win, they came to London to fight.

Then the Ninth Crusade shows up. Recall that, earlier, Enrico Maxwell organized a military response to deal with the Millennium invasion of London, but he hasn’t come here to save the civilian population. Instead, he’s treating them as enemies, just like the Nazi vampires. Somehow, there’s still living people in the city, and as dawn approaches, they see Maxwell’s helicopters putting off some sort of light show. I don’t know what you call this, but the people on the ground think it’s angels, and then Maxwell orders his men to open fire.

I want to point out that the newly promoted Archbishop Maxwell is riding into this battle in a special truck with a glass box for him to sit in. He’s surrounded by microphones so he can address his troops and the people below. Also the truck is hanging from a helicopter. It’s stupid and pointless and over-the-top, so naturally the Major is highly impressed with Maxwell’s style.

#2021hellsingliveblog #hellsing #seras victoria #pip bernadotte #zorin blitz #the major #warrant officer shrodinger #enrico maxwell

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rukakikuchi · 3 years

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LOONAverse Hyunjin & Choerry’s roles + OEC origins theory

Now, I'm sure if you've seen my past theories or read my LOONAverse inspired fanfiction "Story of 12," you know that I side with the theory that Hyunjin was originally a member of Odd Eye Circle and that she and Choerry switched places.

However, I'd like to bring that into question today. And furthermore, I want to question where the rest of Odd Eye Circle truly originated from? Namely, were they actually originally from Earth?

Parallel fates

We already know that Hyunjin and Choerry have a special connection in the LOONAverse as mirror twins.

Choerry, who was originally from Earth, has a connection with Haseul and Yeojin.

While helping Odd Eye Circle search for the rest of LOONA, she places a yellow cat sticker on the map. Moreover, Hyunjin made a cameo in "Girl Front".

Now you could simply wave this off as establishing Choerry's connection to Earth and OEC's mission of gathering the girls together, since Choerry also makes cameos in Yves and Go Won's solo MVs... But then Cinema Theory happened.

One of the exclusive undisclosed clips they showed during this event was a choreography video for a remix of LOONA 1/3's "Love & Live". However, Choerry took Hyunjin's place in that video. So when fans saw that, they immediately started theorizing that Hyunjin was originally "supposed to be" in OEC and Choerry was "supposed to be" in 1/3.

Key word, "supposed to be," in quotation marks here.

After that, we of course get "Hi High", where we see the two meet up and high five each other, and they are paired together again in "So What" with a twin look.

Now where does this lie with where Hyunjin and Choerry are "supposed" to be? On the one hand, it makes sense that Hyunjin *could* be a member of OEC; yellow is a primary color, like red and blue, and yellow and purple are opposites on the RYB color wheel.

(I specify the RYB color wheel because Hidye1 did an incredibly interesting theory regarding the color wheel theory in the LOONAverse: Link here.)

But here's the thing: we've only been shown Choerry taking Hyunjin's place in 1/3. We have not seen anything related to Hyunjin being in OEC, originating from the Middle Earth in the Cosmos, or having an Odd Eye.

Essentially, the "Love & Live" remix clip was simply showing us an alternate timeline, a "What if?" scenario, where Choerry took Hyunjin's place in 1/3. Perhaps, in that theoretical timeline, Jinsoul decided to give the cherry on the cake to Hyunjin instead.

However, does this automatically mean Choerry was "supposed to be" in 1/3 and Hyunjin was "supposed to be" in OEC? No. We have seen no evidence suggesting that this is the case or that Hyunjin is meant to be an Odd Eye girl; only the implication that she and Choerry *could've* been in different units if things in the lore went a different route.

Odd Eye origins

So now that we've discussed Hyunjin and Choerry's place in this theory, let's move onto Odd Eye Circle's origins as a whole.

So, did Kim Lip and Jinsoul originally reside on Earth, just like Choerry and the 1/3 members? In all honesty, it makes sense that they would.

Look at Sweet Crazy Love:

Kim Lip walking through the city streets,

Jinsoul getting an eye exam and sitting on the train.

Plus, Jinsoul was in Hong Kong in ViVi's "Everyday I Need You" and at the aquarium in ViVi's "Letter to Hong Kong" Cinema Theory clip.

It would make sense that they both started as ordinary girls on Earth, just like Choerry and the 1/3 members, who then were bestowed Odd Eyes and gained access to Middle Earth.

So, here's a new theory to add to my timeline of events:

Hyunjin, Kim Lip, Jinsoul, and Choerry are all living separate lives on Earth, all as normal human girls.

Hyunjin eventually meets the rest of 1/3, and Choerry is friends with Haseul and Yeojin.

One day, Kim Lip, Jinsoul, and Choerry feel an irritation in their eyes; Jinsoul even goes to an eye doctor.

On the train ride home, Jinsoul's Odd Eye awakens.

Meanwhile, Kim Lip's awakens when she senses Choerry pass by her.

They meet after the eclipse in Middle Earth, and find the cherry to help Choerry fully awaken her Odd Eye.

Jinsoul places the cherry for her on the cake, and once she eats it, she's transported to Middle Earth and fully gains her Odd Eye.

She then meets Kim Lip and Jinsoul, where they begin their mission to find and gather the rest of the girls to form LOONA.

...

And that does it for today's theory! Just like with my timeline theory redux, it feels good to go back and re-analyze some of my own theories, as doing so helps give a better image in my head of the lore to the story.

Hyunjin originally being an Odd Eye girl and switching places with Choerry is one of the more popular theories, but just because a theory is popular doesn't mean it's fact.

I think it's important that fans, especially new ones, and theorists not rely so much on widely accepted theories. Rather, they should examine what is officially stated or confirmed about the lore and come to their own conclusions about the story.

There's nothing wrong with using other people's theories to build off your own (that's what I did when I started getting into the lore), but don't assume that a theory is confirmed canon just because it's widely accepted by the fandom.

Regardless, I hope you enjoyed this theory! Feel free to share your own thoughts, and until next time... Stan LOONA!

#LOONA #LOONAverse #Hyunjin #Choerry #Odd Eye Circle #KPop #Music #Theory

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ask-mortarion-the-death-lord · 3 years

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some continuation i guess

this time with the emperor

we get the basic rundown, born to human parents, massively gifted, immortal, hidden among humanity and all that. It’s here where his motivation to shepherd humanities psychic awakening is really first brought up [something thats given overall more prominence in the book as well]. a much more interesting note however

now, this probably seems inconspicuous enough at first glance. Indeed even in modern canon 40k’s imperium is first actually created over ten millennia ago. However, take into consideration this little bit earlier in the lore section that i didn’t think to much off at the time

now, taking this into consideration, the implication here is that the age of strife, something that is typically thought to end right before the unification wars in modern 40k lore, is only considered to have ended after the emperor’s internment upon the golden throne, and that further the imperium seems to only officially be a thing upon the that internment. Now this suggests some things to me, two large ones possibly being

a) the unification wars and the great crusade were more so part of the same wider war, ie that the wars ‘only the emperor remembers’ were a large conflict between various warlords to determine who got the rightful rulership of the crumbling pre age of strife human civilization. or

b) the emperor started the age of strife in order to dominate humanity to control and shepherd the psychic awakening he saw humanity stumbling into.

take your pick i guess. food for thought and all that. also

in my earlier post i jumped the gun, the 1st edition emperor is still a punk who needs human souls to survive. Though in this case its not some vague need to bind his soul to the chair or anything, no, its just that he apparently cant eat or drink anything else and hes really god damn hungry and thirsty all the time. Which is hilarious and i almost feel is just a better explanation in general.

to be fair he does look like this 10 millenia later

makes sense he would need to eat unconventionally.

as well, as opposed to specifying 1000 psyker souls a day it just mentions a vague ‘hundreds dying every day’ which is still a lot but also likely less then modern emps eats everyday.

some explanation/emperor wank on why the emperor needs to be fed everyday. not much to say, just that i feel like the implications here atleast lean a bit more towards the emperor being pitiable in his own right as someone so dedicated to this vague future ideal of humanity that hes forsaken most of his own physically and mentally.

apparently humanity underwent no genetic changes over 38,000 years that werent the direct result of mutation from environmental hazards.

@ lordsofmedrengard early dark angels lore, here we can see where they got stuck with the moniker of “first legion” from in 30k modern lore, and its cause here in the first 40k book they’re noted as being ‘honored as the first marine chapter’. Guess it was something they felt needed to carry over... I like the copious more amounts of wine in the old dark angels chapter, and they seem a lot more aristocratic here then in modern 40k. Which makes an interesting contrast compared to the barbarian stocks of soldiers mentioned earlier in the book as being preferred for “legiones astartes”

we get some rundowns on the branches of the adeptus terra next, not much particularly new to note outside of them all being part of this larger governmental priesthood. some highlights though

the old school custodes uniforms are in fact the traditional uniform of the custodes in 1st edition.

custodes wielded ‘lasers built to resemble the traditional and symbolic guardian spear’ whatever the fuck that means

tech priests and the adeptus mechanicus were monastic monks who primarily lived on earth and didn’t stick metal parts into and all over their bodies. they were consequently much more boring as the echlissiarchies IT department.

arbites basically doubled in the sisters of battle’s role as the militant branch of the state religion.

arbites fashion choices and the arbites acting in a similar manner of chaplains as well really.

the more voluntary nature of the astronomican in the first edition, the trainees learn how to safely let the battery drain them but it still seems to be a demanding job with a high fatality rate

they also share monastic tendencies and a uniform with the mechanicus, though theres is a fashionable blue.

included the entire bit on the administratum cause honestly, i find it incredibly fascinating. The parallels are certainly there between modern and 1st edition administratum, but i feel how its presented here just has more teeth and intrest to it. That is to say, its not just the ‘oh what fate, administration has become even more horrid, tedious and soul draining in this grim dark future, woe be us!’ that tends to get tossed around when mocking administration. Instead its a literal organization of religious monks dedicated to tax filings, school administration, rezoning and what have you. Blessed be the regulations and all that. Is there small cults dedicated to paper clip gods? what holy rites are involved when faxing documents compared to when faxing fourms? This is shit i want to know more about.

all adeptus terra adepts carry a knife and are likely legally allowed to shiv you here as well incidentally.

the inquisitors are mostly the same, though with no mention of chaos whatsoever. less sub divisions from the looks of it too. this bit did catch my attention though.

psychic powers seemed to be a hell of a lot more common among inquisitors back then as well.

quirky inquisitors, who’d have thunk it. [its not that surprising, i just like that they took the time to mention it is all]

don’t know wtf is going on here though, especially as to whats going on with dudes armour on the left. looks like a knight crossed with an oven.

we get the usual spiel of psyker background, but then we get some interesting differences in opinions here on psykers compared to modern 40k imperium. How justified or not it is, is up to you but its definitely a shift in tone i would say.

possibly the proto servitor narrative wise? As said, 1st edition 40k readily uses robots, so servitors would be unnecessary. technomats on the other hand fall between that as menials who likely operate these things but dont full on replace them like servitors eventually will.

astropaths are basically the same, though the 90% statistic im not sure if it holds over to modern 40k. im thinkin likely but i could be wrong.

navigators outside of not ubiquitously having the third eye mutation also seem to have much more personal freedom and respect in imperial society in 1st edition. probably pretty comfy to be a navigator back then really. Aside from that, navigator families are still a thing.

space marine time!

well we get the same ‘feral world recruits as warrior god soldiers’ sortta stuff, it is mentioned and stressed that hive world criminals apparently make better stock in terms of raw aggression. Entire gangs will even be rounded up for the purpose of making new space marines.

the early process to create a space marine. no special organs, but bio-chem and the black [plastic?] carapace were there from the start, and hypno indoctrination is alluded to. Apparently this is still barely controlled chaos though. [and on a personal note, nothing that indicates it was male exclusive either, outside of general attitudes of the 1980′s]

early organization graph of a space marine chapter.

chapter markings and armour

AND THE POSSIBLITY OF SPACE MARINE BAGPIPES, WHERE ARE THEY GW WHERES MY SPACE MARINE BAGPIPERS!

iron hands apparently only had the one iron hand?

list of chapter symbols with names and colours, these keep appearing in the book. seems i was wrong on only the imperial fist symbol, its actually the crimson fists chapter symbol so thats 3 of the modern big 9 that didn’t exist back then.

we get a break down on the typical structure of a fortress monastery for space marines next, using the space wolves funnily enough who were far more normal as it were in 1st edition [and also their home world was lucan isntead]. and its got a lot, and well its all fairly interesting ill just shotgun blast some highlights

that the space wolves had an entire fuckin ship hanging in their great hall i find endlessly amusing, so thats why its there. the rest are interesting in terms of the domestic situation of space marines.

#space marines #space wolves #the emperor #mechanicus

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thetypedwriter · 4 years

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The Ruin of Kings Book Review

The Ruin of Kings Book Review by Jenn Lyons

Boy, oh, boy, was this a wild ride.

Those of you who have been following me for a while know that I occasionally delve into adult fiction here and there. I mainly stick to my vegetarian course of YA novels, but every once in a while I can’t help but pick up a slice of bacon, or in this case, an adult fiction book.

Or, even more specifically, I suppose it would be more accurate to say that it’s adult fantasy instead of fiction. High fantasy at that, which is characterized by a whole new world with fantastical elements and not just a novel in the known primary world with fantasy elements.

With that literary lesson out of the way, let me get started.

The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons came recommended by one of my favorite book bloggers, Paperfury. She counted this as one of her most recent book obsessions she couldn’t stop thinking about and in general I trust her judgement (although she was way way off on The Queen of Nothing, yikes).

This massive installment is definitely not the short and sweet page length I’m used to with YA, and neither does it have the comforting and large font that makes me feel like an accomplished reader after just an hour of skimming.

No, this installment is large and beefy and could probably give someone a concussion if you threw it at them, so just keep that in mind.

The whole fantasy revolves around a boy named Khirin. Khirin is your typical fantasy hero, equipped with the luscious blonde hair and the sparkling blue eyes and most importantly, the wickedly sharp tongue reminiscent of a male character from the Cassandra Clare universe.

He’s sharp, he’s witty, he’s charming, and he also has terrible, terrible luck.

Or does he?

When you first meet Khirin he is being sold as a slave to the highest bidder. He’s cold, he’s injured, he’s starving, and he’s broken. You, as a reader at this point, are completely and irrevocably confused.

You’re thinking: Who is this boy? What is happening to him? Why are people betting so much money for him? What’s with this necklace around his neck? Where did he come from? Where are we? What world is this? Where is he going? What the hell is going on???

To say that Lyons starts out strong would be underhanded hyperbole. You are forcibly drop-kicked into the fantasy world of Qurr and its many raging empires and states, and putting them all together is frankly daunting and largely impossible until a good chunk of the book is devoured.

Frankly, I still have trouble figuring out all the locations and gods and god-kings and factions and lore and people and how they’re all related, Game of Thrones style. But that’s part of the fun.

One of my biggest complaints with YA is that the reader is generally treated like they’re pretty stupid.

Often a YA author feels the need to explain every single iteration and modicum of interaction between their characters or spend too much time describing things, and it leaves very little for interpretation or inference on the side of the reader. Lyons is almost the complete opposite, which is as refreshing as it is frustrating.

As you are introduced to Khirin and this gargantuan universe that Lyons has created, you will feel stupid. To be fair, I enjoyed it most of the time. I relished the challenge of learning to differentiate all the different families of the Court of Gems, of distinguishing the Goddess Thaena from the Goddess Tya.

I liked when I was finally able to smugly look at the map at the beginning and recognize all of the city states like Doltar or Kirpis or Manol. I liked when I understood the different races like the Thriss or the vané and the implications of what that meant.

If that was a whole load of word vomit for you, that’s okay.

Again, it’s part of the fun.

What I do want you to get out of this, however, is the knowledge that Lyons has created an expansive universe with multiple creatures, including dragons and witches, rivaling royal families, gods reminiscent of the Greek Gods and their interference with human affairs, a rivaling world split with so many seams that you’re not even sure who to root for, an emperor, magical jewelry, demons and even a dose of piracy and musical competition.

This book honestly has a little of everything — which, to be fair, it should, considering how damn long it takes to get through it’s never-ending pages.

To make this as simplified as possible, the plot goes like this:

Khirin is sold into slavery and finds himself in the hands of a group called the Black Brotherhood. Over time, Khirin learns about this group and their intentions, learns more about himself and the Stone of Shackles (the necklace he wears around his neck), divulges his past and how he got sold into slavery in the first place-his upbringing, his musical talent, his stay at the Blue Palace, his eventual betrayal at the hands of someone he loves.

You learn over the course of each chapter what brought Khirin to his current fate and more of what he is trying to do now,: which is to return home and save the world from the likes of the two main antagonists (although not all of them by any means), Gadrith and Darzin.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that is the most bare- bones summary I have ever written. But honestly, this book is about a hero named Khirin and his adventure to rid the world of evil as he learns about himself and his past.

Like many, many, other books before it, this book explores what it means to be a hero, what it means to be a god, what it means to be involved with the fight of good vs. evil. This book is not special in that sense regarding these themes.

However, there are some really cool aspects of this novel that I thoroughly enjoyed that I’ll relay now that the summary (as condensed as it is, sorry) is out of the way.

The two things I enjoyed most about this book were the writing itself and the POV. Most high fantasy novels that I’ve attempted to read have this ridiculous notion that every character must speak in some dead medieval language rife with historical inaccuracies and banal, clipped speech. Lyons does nothing of the sort.

Her characters are creative and crass and downright funny. The dialogue is immersive and natural and oftentimes, other than the backdrop of a dragon or lizard-people, it felt like two modern-day people were having a conversation, which I greatly appreciated.

Lyons is also a very big fan of building up her writing and then smacking you down at the pinnacle. For example:

“Before us lay the Mother of Trees.

I didn’t understand what I was seeing. I couldn’t comprehend. It just seemed like a humongous wall at first, one that had been built up with palaces and verandas, graceful pavilions, and stained-glass windows glittering like jewels. Only when I looked up could I perceive the sweep of branches, the distance velvet of green leaves. This was a tree to hold up the whole world, the sort of place where Galava must live, if any place were consecrated to her. It seemed ageless and immortal, a tree that had always and would always exist.

Naturally, we were setting it on fire.”

I personally found this style of writing hilarious. Lyons often built up the tension, beauty, or conflict, and then would deliver these one-liners that would leave me gasping with laughter. This creative juxtaposition was super enjoyable and one that made the book a big success for me.

Secondly, while this book is told almost entirely (keyword almost -there are some outlier chapters) from Khirin’s perspective, it technically oscillates between present Khirin and past Khirin.

The whole book switches from one timeline to another every other chapter, with the chapter starting with Khirin being sold into slavery being the “present” and told from Khirin’s first-person POV and then switching the next chapter to his “past” and being told from Khirin’s third-person POV.

I loved this. I thought this was so creative, and up to this point, I have never seen this done in another book. The subtle shift from first to third person every chapter, but still from the perspective of the same character, was so interesting and complex.

I loved that we were simultaneously getting current-day Khirin, but also Khirin from two years ago telling us the events that led up to the present. It was imaginative and intriguing, and I loved trying to fill in the holes before the book presented me with it (which even then was difficult).

In addition, throughout the whole book are also footnotes from another crucial character that offer information, clarification, and also humor. While I’ve primarily read footnotes in academic papers to cite sources or offer commentary, these footnotes were just as fictional as the rest of the story, but offered insight outside of Khirin that was often dripping in sarcasm, irony, or humor.

I thought it was another really creative way for Lyons to get across information without boring everyone half to death or releasing a 100- page guidebook to help you along.

Bottom line, people,: This book isn’t for everyone. High fantasy in general is not for everyone. That’s okay. It’s not usually my taste either, at least not the adult fictional kind, but something about this book really intrigued me.

Moreso than the actual plot, which is confusing, I enjoyed the writing, the suspense, and the act of playing detective. It’s been so long since I’ve read a book that’s made me think this hard, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. That being said, the same praise is a double-edged sword.

If you don’t want to have to think and draw out charts and make graphs on Excel, then perhaps this is not the book for you.

If you don’t like high fantasy or made-up worlds, or very interconnected family dynamics, then this is not the book for you. This book also contains elements that can be triggering to some, like rape, drugs, character death, violence, imprisonment, slavery, etc.

When I say this book has everything, I mean it has everything. And that can be good or bad depending on the person. For me, I liked it. However, I did get frustrated at certain points at the lack of clarification more than once, just for full disclosure.

Recommendation: If you’ve been bereft ever since the Game of Thrones disaster-of-a-finale, then you are not alone. The Ruin of Kings has everything you’ve ever wanted in a high fantasy book: action, kings, queens, palaces, war, dragons, magic and so much more.

This book was creative and funny and complex, and if you’re willing to sink your teeth and time into a universe that demands attention then you’ll find yourself rewarded with a brand-new world to fall in love with and characters that you can’t seem to forget.

Score: 8/10

#the ruin of kings #jenn lyons #popular fiction #books #book blog #book review #fiction #Book Recommendations #booknerd #writing #fantasy #high fantasy

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wouldntyoulichentoknow · 4 years

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One more before bed. What do YOU think Sailor Cosmos is?

omg I’m the absolute WORST person to answer this because genuinely I have... no idea. My read-through of the manga was... hazy at best because I started like “yay more content!” and then by like the second volume was like “if I speed-run this maybe I can clip past all the uncomfortable bits” so I ended up actually absorbing very little of it dlkhgslkjf.

THAT BEING SAID if I had to theorize about Sailor Cosmos, I’d love it if she was, like, not even related to Usagi. Hairstyles are apparently genetic which makes this theory difficult, I know, but bear with me: we could make Cosmos more like Metallia to get that sense of bookending the series with “an entity who is kind of an abstract concept with a consciousness.” Usagi falls into the Galaxy Cauldron during the Chaos!Galaxia fight and Cosmos is the energy/forcefield/whatever that prevents her from immediately burning up and dying, idk, SOMETHING that doesn’t make Cosmos “probably descended from the line of Serenity” and more of an entity that can’t act on her own for the most part, because implying she’s maybe a future power-up of Sailor Moon and then admitting she couldn’t defeat the evil that Usagi then goes on to defeat as, presumably, a “lesser” power-up is?? I get grumpy trying to make sense of it :S

(also IS she actually ChibiChibi???? if we’re going with this largely nonphysical entity representation of Cosmos then maybe ChibiChibi is her best attempt at creating a flesh vessel to try communicating on a level that’s more understandable than “extradimensional thought.”)

tldr Sailor Cosmos: just a cloud of space glitter and incomprehensible thought that sometimes turns into a toddler maybe

ANYWAY. in my personal universe, the MSMU (the Mouse Sailor Moon Universe (TM)), I like to keep my focus within our solar system because the implications of the entire ever-expanding universe being full of LORE feels like way more than I’m equipped to handle lol. I got my girls, I got my technicolor alieums, I’m satisfied with my sandbox :’D

#Mouse talks!#Sailor Cosmos #kudos to the people who can do stuff with literally everything but I am Not one of those people #meanwhile I get overwhelmed trying to write a scene with more than 3-4 people in it D:#sailoreuterpe

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legionofpotatoes · 4 years

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My assorted musings/theories about Control in one post!! I am having a lot of fun dissecting the implications of all the information we’re getting tiny peeks at. This WILL be a thought torrent so I won’t make any literary-essay-level structuring promises; click through at your own risk of losing sanity over my tangents.

So the base axiom the lore stands on is that reality in Control is shaped by the collective human subconscious in unpredictable ways, causing altered world events, subsequently creating altered items imbued with archetypal properties in correspondence with their historic context, and generally having things go way out of whack.

But, as seen with the whole slide projector hubbub, we also know that other realities/dimensions exist in their own right and can, by virtue of their agenda, and not that of our thought, attempt to invade our reality through resonance-based means. Their motives can run the gamut but we know that their involvement/influence can have far-reaching consequences on our reality.

(there is an argument to be made that both the Hedron and the Hiss could have been extremely potent creations/projections of Jesse and Dylan’s minds altogether, especially since Polaris exists within one of them inherently, and that the slidescapes could simply have been an extension of the slide projector’s astral power still fully fed on human perceptions. But this theory sort-of runs everything else to the ground and makes us the center of the universe, and I don’t like that too much).

This is where the Oldest House comes in! And I love its deeply rooted historic/theological implications just as much as its impression at face value. I believe that since time immemorial, the Oldest House was a stabilizing element, a kind of ward against dimensional rifts threatening our reality. And it did that by presenting itself as a guide for human thought; a house of worship, a monument to service, whichever concept happened to elicit inherent respect and trust in that period of time, allowing the House to then control (ha) our thought through belief systems. Today, it’s a brutalist office building with no windows, which is, like, so on point. But anyway.

The Board. We know that it controls the Oldest House to an extent. Whether it represents the gods and deities we once made up is hard to tell, but its influence over the House’s functions is clear. We know that it had chosen individuals in the past to possibly represent the House’s intentions (today – the Directors of the FBC), giving them access to the Service Weapon and a direct link to the astral plane. I believe these would be our Thors and King Arthurs and Greek heroes and what have you. We KNOW that the Service Weapon is, by definition, the archetypal concept of “weapon” as shaped by human thought, and that the BFC suspects its past forms may have included Mjolnir and Excalibur among others. Today, it’s a handgun. Again, the implications. Delicious.

And I think the Oldest House is the same way; constantly shifting form, shape, and even geographical location to best fit its own archetypal concept, which I conflated with place of respect and/or worship up there, but even that can change to best fit the agenda of, what I think, is stabilizing and warding our reality against foreign resonances. It does this by presenting itself as a guidebook for human thought, tapping into our inherent astral potency, and utilizing resulting constructs – the Service Weapon, the anointed Director, and certain altered items – to serve its own upkeep. As directed by The Board.

(I believe that is also part of the reason why the FBC ended up discovering the House when it did – The Board allowed it per the alignment of the Bureau’s motives with its own. They both wanted to identify, neutralize, and contain AWEs both external and internal in order to keep the public – and by extension their thoughts – fully under control. I believe this had happened numerous times in the past, as well)

But to circle back – why does The House need upkeep at all? My guess is, it’s an extension of the initial agenda, and we KNOW it is inherently tied to (read: contains) thresholds, or dimensional rifts, or just other worlds. Let’s call them other worlds. The Oldest House is an ever-shifting place of power that both shapes and is shaped by human thought, in order to keep that very human thought – our “resonance” – the sole dominating astral force in our dimension. It focuses all incoming “traffic” within its walls and creates the thresholds as bottlenecks – while the traffic it can’t focus on itself, it contains, and brings in anyway - and finally, it uses the Director to keep all these foreign rifts and aberrations in check.

We are the House’s assistant. Familiar word? There’s one person in Control who keeps calling us their assistant despite our formal title being a peg above that definition. It is the Janitor – another very common archetype of stabilization, maintenance, fixing things up; in this case, Ahti – The Janitor – is simply a way for the House, and not The Board, to communicate its intent. The Janitor is as much part of the place of power as are its walls and rooms. They are one and the same. And a Janitor is a role that would be chosen with very particular intent. He knows the House’s innards as intimately as he knows how to keep them functioning.

So to recap, again – The House both feeds on and forms human thought constructs in order to keep other worlds at bay and is very much willing to directly cooperate with people when that agenda is mutually expressed. What if this whole entire system then, of a dimensional hub, a place of power trying to keep our resonance separate from others, is in itself a construct, an ancient expression of a basic human need? Or rather, a basic human emotional response? To go a bit meta, as a story with thematic underpinnings, that would make a sensible endgame to Control’s ideas and messaging.

The Oldest House exists because we needed it to exist, and by consequence, we saved OURSELVES from the Hiss. Among a lot of other things in the past, I’d reckon. And The Board is our “representative” in the astral plane. We made them, too. We cocooned ourselves in constructs that would protect us from all outside resonances – all outside worlds – all outside points of view.

So what am I saying? Is The Oldest House a staunch apotheosis of conservative thought given form? I’m not willing to bet my life on it, but again, it all oddly falls into place. Think about it.

TRENCH let the Hiss in. Why? We’re told the Director of the Oldest House grew irrationally scared of the Hedron’s (arguably benevolent) influence and opted to fight it with fire; with an otherworldy horror. My guess is the House made him do that. The Board, sorry, made him do it. As firm believers in isolating humanity’s resonance from all others, they feared the Hedron’s presence as a variable incompatible with that agenda, and brought the Hiss in AS A WAY of proving their point, of keeping the cycle of fear strong in humanity’s thought, by killing Hedron and then using a newly appointed, freshly brainwashed Director Faden to remove the Hiss from the equation, as well.

Status quo restored, all branches clipped, everyone agrees other dimensions bad.

The emotional response I mentioned was fear. We created The Oldest House out of fear. Fear of the unknown. And it became a feedback loop that disallowed us to ever consider anything else outside of our world as anything other than a threat.

Oh and you know what’s a real swanky way to impose fear on a willing humanity? *guitar riff* religion babyyyyyy

To wit, The Board refers to the House as a Tree at one point. We can find a scribbling of a tree in the Foundation. Ahti hands us a cassette tape from “his old friends” – and the band that starts playing call themselves the Old Gods of Asgard. So a tree connecting worlds. A housekeeper who is a friend to Odin’s pantheon. A chosen hero wielding Mjolnir. Did the House parade as the Yggdrasil at one point? Followed by some other nexus of blind human faith or a system of belief? Or just as religion itself?! And since now we all worship capitalism or some other forms of financial labor/revenue funnels and shoot each other dead in the streets, our Oldest House is an office building smack dab in the middle of Manhattan, its Director carries a literal handgun, and together they keep us safe from outsiders.

It all makes sense with a big ole asterisk that spells out “Yikes” in the end.

Except there’s a caveat here cause!!! Within Jesse lives a spark left behind by Hedron; within her lives Polaris, a remnant of the slidescape, of the outer worlds; a hope for maybe liberating human thought of the endless cycle of fear that keeps it under its own Control. Will we bring the Oldest House down in a possible sequel? Is Jesse a Trojan horse? A byproduct of the Board’s arrogance? I mean we KNOW the pyramid is a hyperfocused, almost blatantly jealous entity that downright bribed us with healthcare plans in order to steer us away from The Former, another extradimensional being that was trying to get in through altered items. So maybe the House itself can be preserved, and its agenda retrofitted, and it is the Board we will have to tear down. It still all fits.

The Board is our projection of fear, the Oldest House is the wall we built to protect ourselves, and Jesse is poised to bring it all down. That’s my theory in a nutshell!!!!

I think I’ll end here for now. I could be entirely wrong about EVERYTHING here but the JUICE in this story is too damn nourishing, dudes.

#control #control spoilers #control game #control remedy #remedy control #reference #text

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mantra4ia · 4 years

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Expectations coming in to Rise of Skywalker: Star Wars appreiation week (5/5)

Things I Want (although I will try to keep actual preconceptions low)

Get Anakin Skywalker in this movie somehow. If it’s the Rise of Skywalker, you need all the Skywalkers. He needs to be brought back into the fold. It might be interesting if Kylo could somehow see Anakin’s fall (in terms of force ghost or voice), or at the very least when he killed the Padawans, perhaps a parallel to when Luke almost cut Ben down. Or put Anakin’s essence imbibed in his helmet mask, which becomes infused with Kylo’s mask as he uses both kinds of fragments to reforge his own helmet and brings Vader back in that tangential way.

Additionally, give me Luke, Leia, Han, Lando, Yoda, Obi Wan. Their wisdom and voices at least. Bonus if you give me some expanded, in-depth Maz Kenata, not just as a narrator for theme and plot development like TFA and TLJ. I think she could have been an interesting character, but her uses so far have been vastly superficial.

Somehow, someway, bring us back to Jakku. If the new trilogy started there, it would be good to have a touchstone to Jakku somewhere in this film. If not Jakku, Naboo. Cuz if Palpatine is playing a key role, we need to the see his home, post Operation Cinder.

References to lore and legends material (ex- use it to explain Snoke’s Obsidian ring). Expand the universe, or rather shine a light on the rest of the universe that is already massive and rich with un-cinematically explored history.

Connect the dots between prequels, original series, and new trilogy. Don’t just Disney canon it.

Make a character-central story. PROBABLY MY NUMBER 1 WISH!

John Williams score. Even if I hate this movie, I know I can AT LEAST rely on the music.

Develop the friendship between Finn, Rey, and Poe. Give us stakes to lose. It doesn’t have to be the Luke-Han-Leia level of friendly back and forth bickering. But it should at least be Anakin-Obi Wan kinship. Give us emotional stakes to win or lose.

If you are going to use Palpatine, do not nerf him or OP Rey

Don’t be afraid to try something new, but use the existing laws of the Star Wars universe as your guide when you ask new questions. Regardless of the fact that I liked the energy of The Force Awakens, I didn’t like how it’s story base was like a cookie cutter remix of A New Hope. However, the parts I most enjoyed of TFA were elements of new what ifs - ie what if a storm trooper turned good? How big of a ripple could that make in a galaxy? Likewise, in TLJ, I like the idea of “what if Luke lost all hope - what would that look like and what would it take to rekindle?” Similarly with Rise of Skywalker, I hope they take the time to fully explore what was teased in the trailer. “I have been every voice you have ever heard inside your head.” If that line is Palpatine to Kylo Ren, think of and illustrate the implication it has on everything we though we knew about his influence and how he uses it to shape future probability so that his force clairvoyance is closer to perfect with each passing day by willing it into being.

Unravel the information naturally through character discovery, not through ancillary exposition.

I hope that “Rise of Skywalker,” if it’s not hinting at Anakin or immediate kin, is an allusion to Ben claiming some ownership to his Skywalker / Solo heritage. I don’t think that he needs to be ‘redeemed,’ in a traditional sense but I do think that somewhere in the course of this film, he needs to embrace who he is for better or worse.

Figure out what is going on between Rey and Kylo, and do it early in the film. I really enjoyed their relationship building, whatever it was, in TLJ. It was interesting. I liked the psychology, the meta. But I don’t want to muddle it throughout this whole new film. Bring it to fruition, and hopefully use it wisely.

Things I Don’t Want

Heavy-handed nostalgia. Yes, acknowledge the past, but don’t make it cheap fan service. I’m not a fan of killing the past, but if it’s a choice between the extremes, I would take letting it die over “same eyes, different people” again. Fans are smart, they appreciate throwbacks more if they aren’t superfluous appeasement, but rather story serving. The former is aesthetic, the latter is Star Wars.

Don’t make it a sci-fi spectacle. Ships are great, battles and lightsabers too, but don’t use the story to serve them, use them to punctate the story of the Force, the mythos. Or think of thing we haven’t seen in a battle before (like wreaking a ship with a Cruiser using hyperdrive to missile at light speed - TLJ). Don’t throw everything all at once against a wall just to get a big but short lived audience reaction

Don’t Disney-fy the villain. If the allegedly deceased Emperor is the big bad of IX, then he’s complex. Be true to the depths of his insidiousness, and do NOT just merc him with a single character.

Killing characters as an act of grand sacrifice to show your appreciation for them. If we learned anything from Luke’s sacrifice in The Last Jedi, it’s that this maneuver does not go over well at all. And while I am at peace with Luke going out that way as long as they continue to grow and use his character in IX (life after death), I would not be okay with this for another character because there’s no next installment to see the ramifications of the sacrifice play out complexly. So if they do this to Kylo (or Poe, etc), I’ll be LIVID.

Ret-conning or undoing the events of TLJ. Whether you like the execution of the plot in Last Jedi, they exist. The best way forward, I believe, is acknowledge, move forward and build. Don’t fixate or plaster over with a new facade.

Things I Expect

Too much action plot, or rather action montage, crammed into too little time. It’s the alleged ending of the core saga, give it time. But I don’t think they will.

I’m reaching for straws, but maybe we’ll see the nightcloak satellites? Maybe that has something to do with the icy clips in the episode IX TV spots. IDK.

I think if this episode pivots on a plot point from TLJ, it’ll be that dark side vision of Rey seeing herself as where she comes from and Kylo later explains as, “your nothing, no one, but not to me.” That scene is one of my favorite moments of Last Jedi visually and metaphorically, but I have a sinking feeling that JJ has rewritten it’s meaning, though I can’t imagine how. Maybe they are going to make Rey a Palpatine or Anakin clone, or some other relation to / pawn manipulated by the Emperor in an attempt to make her extraordinary.That, in my opinion, would be a shame and overkill considering how powerful they’ve written Rey to become in such a short period of time. I like the idea that she comes from nothing, in much the same way as Finn, a trooper among so many alike, could become good.

If I was a betting person, more than likely we’re going to the temple district / Imperial Palace on Coruscant some time in RoS. I’m neither here nor there about that if it serves the stories.

TBC after I actually go to Rise of Skywalker for my post-viewing thoughts.

#star wars ix #sw: the rise of skywalker #rise of skywalker #to be continued #tbc #star wars fan theories #star wars appreciation #tlj #sw: the last jedi #sw: the force awakens #tfa

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arthurs-wife · 5 years

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Cleopatra - 1/?

tigerlilywine said to arthurs-wife:Hey, been reading your drabbles. I think you capture Arthur real well. M!reader and all. You've ever thought of a... future au? They are still cowboys but they jump to worlds instead of areas. Bounty hunters in space. Reader is royalty of one alien species (close to humans) and gets kiddnapped. King hires the gang to save em? (Fluff is a must but smut is optional, though I'm sure you can work it!) It is an idea tho lol keep doing what you're doing!

A/N: because i’m extra as hell, i wrote a ton of lore for this and wanted to throw this up to see if theres interest because I can go on and on with this future shit.

Pairing: Arthur Morgan x M!Reader Words: 1.7k Summary: Working for the agency of Lemoyne Department of Defense Services in the year 2149, Arthur Morgan and his gang struggle to complete as many jobs as they can before the Terran Bureaucracy can dissolve it completely. With the promise of one final, multi-million dollar job, Arthur Morgan is sent on a mission to rescue the kidnapped hybrid child of Tavantis’ human King and angel Ruler, going head to head with the Bureaucracy itself.

If Arthur could change one thing about this bureaucratic hellscape it would be the Jump Queues.

Ten minutes to get to the damn thing, twenty minutes in the queue, another ten while the nice pre-Mars lady checked your license and asked about you and how’s that nice boy doing? What was his name?

“Lenny, ma’am,” Arthur said, hand over his eyes.

“When is he going to come back up here and visit me?” she tittered. The sounds of a mechanic keyboard could be heard in the background, painfully slow.

“Whenever I can rip him from his computer,” Arthur shrugged, staring blankly out of the cockpit’s windshield.

“And where are you heading today, Mister Morgan?” she asked.

“Chantakor,” he read from his console, “the Tavantis continent.”

Another five minutes to punch that unfortunate name in.

“Three jumps,” she declared, “the credits will be taken from your account.”

Arthur grumbled.

“You’re good to go Mister Morgan, jump safe!”

“I will, ma’am,” Arthur promised and sat up straighter as the portal ahead of him turned bright hot-purple and his engines were taken out of lock.

He cut the comms channel and another message came through immediately, buzzing in his ear like it couldn’t wait another five god damn minutes.

“Arthur?” Hosea blared through, “are you there yet?”

“Yep,” he said, pushing up on the throttle and sending his LASO into the portal. The comms cut out, but that was to be expected when you jumped through space beyond light speed.

First jump through and Hosea was back, Arthur turned his ship to face the next portal.

“You said you were there,” Hosea deadpanned.

“And I lied,” Arthur shrugged, speeding up, “you better get to your point before the next one.”

“I just wanted to s-”

Second jump and Arthur blasts through.

“You know Arthur, you’re a real piece of sh-”

Third jump and thank goodness, any more and Arthur’s head would be spinning.

“I’m at Chantakor now, Hosea,” Arthur said, powering down his drives and folding out the secondary wings.

He had never been to Chantakor before, partially due to its royal status in the Galactic System and damn was it a fine sight to behold.

Arthur leaned forward to peer out of his windshield at the whirlwind of activity near the main gate, thousands of LASOs, Chantakorian ships that dwarfed even the largest transport LASO. Humans were good at many things but apparently not at making decent ships. The Chantakorian transports gleamed in the light of the binary suns, making them shimmer like waves.

He almost missed his stop, the heavily guarded gate above the Tavantis continent that would lead him directly to the King’s quarters.

“Are you done being an asshole?” Hosea clips in. Arthur can just hear his arms crossing.

“Yes I’m done,” he said, fiddling with knobs and allowing the Chantakor fields to pull him in carefully.

“Alright listen,” Hosea started, “the King is expecting you any minute now. All you have to do is get in there, get his information on where his child is, and get the hell out of there.”

“His-” Arthur did a double take at nothing, his LASO stopping at the zero-G gate, “his what now?”

“I probably should have mentioned this is a kidnapping bounty,” Hosea said apologetically.

“Who’s the asshole now, Hosea?” Arthur blurted, tapping on his console. Apparently long queues were universal.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, son,” he said, “but it’s a lot of money and you’re our best.”

Arthur grumbled again.

“I will be getting the largest cut of this,” Arthur pointed threateningly at the comms, “and I will be taking the longest vacation afterwards.”

“Whatever you need to do, Arthur,” Hosea said, “but we need this. This job could get most of our systems back online.”

Yes, yes, the fabled systems Lenny and Karen had been working on since… forever it seemed. Arthur was ushered into the planet’s atmosphere and he banked down, heading to the private landing zone of the King himself. He couldn’t muster up any amazement.

He hit a button and the LASO unfolded its wheels as it touched the ground lightly and rolled along the tarmac towards the stupidly ornate building he assumed belonged to the King.

The angels were never a race that Arthur had been acquainted with either. The angels had a proper race name, but they had been dubbed so by the god-fearing human race due to their strikingly similar features to biblical angels. They were tall, gender neutral, majestic pillars that humanity had no business dealing with but dealt with anyway.

The LASO came to a stop in a hangar and Arthur powered it down, clambering out of the seat with some difficulty and opening the hatch. Chantakor was temperate and mild, almost a boring sort of weather if Arthur wasn’t used to the dramatic patterns of Earth.

He was met by two seven foot tall angels who ushered him to the main gate and the halls within the King’s palace. At this distance he could make out more features of the angels, they were all some variance of blue or green or grey, they had feathers all over them, and great big feathery wings that folded up neatly behind them. Their legs were like bird’s legs without all the scales and they were covered in feathers too.

They mumbled something in their native tongue, which sounded like trills and whistles, occasionally glancing back at Arthur. They reached a set of silver doors and turned to face him.

“You’ll see our Ruler now,” the taller one said, their great blackish-purple wings bustling behind them. Arthur held up a thumb to show he was ready to go, in true human fashion.

Also in true human fashion, the angel rolled their eyes and opened the set of doors, letting him in the room. All of the ceilings were cathedral style, towering up over them at almost 20 feet tall. It looked like the angels were just as fond of showmanship as humans were, as the entire room was festooned with colorful curtains and lights. In the far center was who Arthur assumed was the Ruler.

They stood a whopping eight feet tall, taller than any being had ever stood in front of Arthur, and they were bright. Their wings were massive and unfurled to their full extent, shining gold and green like old bronze in the sun. Eyes set wide in a dark face, they blinked several times and scrutinized the dirty man in their throne room.

“Howdy,” Arthur said unceremoniously.

“Are you Arthur Morgan?” they said in the same clipped accent, settling back in on their nest.

“Yes, uh, your Grace.”

“Thalia will do.”

“What’s this about a kidnapping I hear?” Arthur said, supremely indifferent to the angels and their customs.

“My kin has been taken,” Thalia mused with a face so indifferent that Arthur wondered if they actually cared or not, “and my world has shattered.” Of course they cared, Arthur, what’s wrong with you?

“When did this happen?”

“Twenty cycles ago,” they answered.

Arthur counted on his fingers for a moment to add it up.

“Alright so a couple nights ago,” he said, bringing out his comms pad and typing something in, “any ideas at all about who may have taken them?”

“I think my partner may have more information than I,” Thalia turned back and whistled something in their native tongue. The door behind them opened and a tired looking human man strode through and noticed Arthur. As he got closer he extended his hand and Arthur took it.

“I assume you’re the man here about my son?” he asked and Arthur nodded. It was the first time he had heard someone refer to an angel with a pronoun. Then a whole other set of questions popped up in his head. As if he read his mind, the King nodded and waved a hand, gesturing for Arthur to come sit with him.

“Are you familiar with the Llinovan?” he asked and Arthur sat down with him, thinking on it for a moment before realizing the Llinovan were the angels’ proper species name. He shook his head. “When humans first met the Llinovan many years ago there was an initial power struggle. Since then we have lived in harmony, myself and my wife included.”

“Does that mean…?”

“Yes,” the King nodded, “it means my son is part angel and part human.”

Arthur thought about the implications of this.

“You mean to tell me,” he started, “that humans and angels can have kids?”

“Yes,” the man replied, “and it’s not just us. There are thousands of hybrids now, all in hiding. Since they’ve grown in numbers, the human ambassadors on Chantakor have noticed, and they don’t approve.”

“I can imagine.”

“That’s who has taken my son,” the King sighed, looking straight at Arthur.

“I’m not,” Arthur stuttered, holding up a hand, “I can’t go toe to toe with the Terran Bureaucracy, that’s suicide.”

“Even with such a handsome reward?”

“Hosea never told me how much.”

“60 million credits.”

“God damn!” Arthur blurted out before hushing himself quickly. Several of the angels and the Ruler had turned to look at him. The King finally let out a little smile.

“It is my understanding that your community needs the credits,” he went on, “I intend on rewarding anyone who challenges the strong arm of the Terran Bureaucracy for what they’ve done to the human race.

Arthur thought a moment, mulling over the state of Earth, the constant rebuilding of the communities, the lush paradise of Amazonia that only the richest could afford to step foot onto.

“Alright,” Arthur nodded finally, “alright, where can I find these people?”

“The higher ups won’t have gotten their hands dirty with this,” the King said, standing up, “they’ll have sent their versions of bounty hunters to claim him and take him to another world. My guess is Niston, just a jump away.”

“I’ll get right to it then,” Arthur nodded and stood up with him, moving towards the door.

“And Mister Morgan,” the King called after him, “I’m very sorry to hear about LDDS, they have done very good work for us in the past and I’m angry to see them go.”

“Yeah, me too,” Arthur grumbled and tried not to think about it.

#arthur morgan #arthur morgan x reader #arthur morgan x male reader #my fics

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