#you see new ways to solve the crime you see plot holes in the murderer itself it's insane

[kyndaris]

Pray Forgive this Discourtesy of an Impression

Many of my friends - and by extension, I also include you dear readers of this blog - know, I have been a fan of the Ace Attorney series for a very long time. It began in the days of my youth, when I discovered Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney for the Nintendo DS. As someone that was interested in legal proceedings but was unsure of actually taking the step of becoming an actual barrister in court, it helped feed my very unique itch of shouting OBJECTION! and pointing at the counsel opposite me.

That and the fact that the lawyers of the franchise were also amateur sleuths, piecing together the truth of whatever crime had actually been perpetrated and denouncing the witnesses brought in to testify as the actual masterminds.

Honestly, I wish court cases in real life were this exciting.

Even back then, the idea of acting the sleuth and figuring out the intricacies behind a complex plot of murder had me salivating. It did not help that I had read Arthur Conan Doyle’s collection of stories about a world-renowned detective and hoped to emulate his ability to make rapid deductions based on simple observation.

So, when The Great Ace Attorney was first announced, I was justifiable excited. To play as the ancestor of the great Phoenx Wright? Interact with Sherlock Holmes in 19th century London? WHERE DO I SELL MY SOUL TO?

To my great dismay, however, there were no immediate plans to release the games in the West. In fact, I even pondered on whether or not I should indulge in obtaining a fan translated copy (or watch a playthrough).

As the years passed, I lost hope that there would ever be a release of The Great Ace Attorney games in the West. And so, life went on.

UNTIL OF COURSE, THEY ANNOUNCED THAT IT WOULD BE RELEASED! IN JULY 2021! AND THOUGH MY SPIRIT WAS A LITTLE CRUSHED TO HEAR THAT THERE WOULD BE NO PHYSICAL RELEASE IN AUSTRALIA, I QUICKLY PUT THE GAME ON MY NINTENDO ESTORE WISHLIST, READY FOR PURCHASE!

When release day came, I was pumped to dive into the world of finger-pointing and strange reversals where the defence attorney had to prove their client innocent beyond all reasonable doubt. The game itself begins with Ryunosuke Naruhodo, a student of Yumei University being accused of murdering a visiting professor: John H. Wilson. At his side is his best friend: Kazuma Asogi, a practicing law student.

Wishing not to dash his friend’s dreams of travelling to Britain (should the trial not be won), Ryunosuke steps up to represent himself. Valiantly, he battles against Prosecutor Auchi. And just like his descendant, fumbles his way through to the inevitable truth. That he was setup and that the actual culprit was a person hidden under plain view: an English gentlewoman by the name of Jezaille Brett. She had murdered the esteemed professor through the use of a special poison that could not be identified by the technology at the time before shooting the victim to pin the blame on our hapless student.

It was a tale as old as time for those that have played the Ace Attorney series. What I liked, however, was the fact that this time round, there were multiple witnesses in the stand and how they would play off each other. Their reactions to what someone else said were great ways to enliven up the gameplay and helped move the story along when I seemed stuck on where to present my piece of crucial evidence to highlight an inconsistency.

By the end of the first trial, however, the game sees our protagonists on the way to the United Kingdom. Having stowed away in his friend’s trunk, Ryunosuke is accused once again of murder. This time, of his friend. And by the great Herlock Sholmes, no less! Unfortunately, due to copyright infringements, the translation team was forced to change the name of the character. Still, this adaption of one of the best literary detectives served to be a breath of fresh air. He was an enjoyable and lively companion. 

I also very much liked how they inserted so many references to the actual stories that were penned by Arthur Conan Doyle: the Red-Headed League, Speckled Band, Hound of the Baskervilles, the Man with the Twisted Lip...

The reinterpretations of so many beloved characters also helped to put a spin on what I would have expected. Truth be told, I never thought I would become so protective of diver-turned-inspector-apprentice Gina Lestrade. She is a precious cinnamon roll! How dare anyone think she would actually murder anyone when it’s clear that she’s a misunderstood tsundere with a heart of gold!

After finishing the first game: The Great Ace Attorney Adventures I could not help but feel that the story was incomplete. In many ways, just like with Trails of Sky, it served as a prelude to things that would come. There were plenty of hints of what Ryunosuke, with plenty of dangling and tantalising mysteries. A few characters that were introduced, such as William Shamspeare, never got to see the limelight until the second entry: The Great Ace Attorney Resolve. 

Why have such a uniquely dressed character walk by in passing without putting them into a case? It made no sense. It was as if Chekhov’s gun, placed in clear view, remained unused.

As such, when the credits rolled, I immediately dived into the sequel. The cases that I played through in the second entry seemed much more connected and provided a more cohesive overarching plot. In fact, while I thought the first game was a good addition in its own right - what with its stereoscopic images (which was very difficult to try and make 3D on a huge television), I thought Resolve was much better at tying up all the loose ends that players were left with. 

That and we also got to enjoy the return of multi-day trials, with a mixture of investigation and court appearance, rather than ones that seemed concentrated on a single day (and were quite tiring to endure). I will say that the final episode being a continuation of the fourth was a little suspect, but didn’t mind it because of how much was revealed and discussed in those last few moments.

In saying that, the games are not without their flaws. As always, sometimes it takes a while to make the connection on what evidence needs to be presented to which statement. There were times in the first case of the second game where the hints provided to the the player once they had gone through the testimony, made me focus on a completely different area than I should have. 

I also floundered a little because the clues relied more on memory of what Ryunosuke and Susato had been discussing when they were examining the evidence, but which was not updated in the actual information. As such, it took quite a while to figure out the SS Grouse inconsistency during the fourth case in the second game.

Then, of course, there were the the inconsistencies or unexplained plot points in the games themselves. In the first case of the first game, one of the key evidences that was used to highlight who the real murderer in the John H. Wilson case was blood on a serving of beef steak. The blood was on the left of the platter. The victim however, had a bullet hole on the right hand side of the chest. Given that he had been facing the table at the time he was shot, why would the the blood be on the left side of the serving platter?

Also, how did the reporter Menimemo even get a knife to stab Jezaille Brett in the first case of the second game? Did he already have it on his person? Also, since it had been first established that the victim had been stabbed, why go through all the rigmarole of having to also prove that the reporter had both poisoned and stabbed the victim? Talk about overkill.

And someone please explain how anyone could serve as a prosecutor in a case when they have a CLEAR CONFLICT OF INTEREST! A court of law is not a place where someone can slake their thirst for vengeance. And it was clear from the start that Kazuma Asogi should have been removed because of his misguided vendetta against Barok van Zieks.

The same could also be extended to the jurors. I don’t think anyone who knows the accused or the victim personally is allowed to serve as a jury member because of implicit bias. Then again, this is a game and I should probably just enjoy the game for what it is.

Despite these little quibbles with the narrative and the fact that there seem to be a very limited number of prosecutors and defence attorneys in Britain and Japan (along with jurors), I had a fun time playing through both games. After all, never in my wildest dreams did I think that they would be released out in the West. Even the summation examinations and pitting the jury members against each other was something fresh and different. While the Mood Matrix and Apollo’s ability to perceive have given new ways to solve cases, there’s still little that’s been done to shake up the formula of cross-examining a witness.

The Dance of Deduction between Herlock and Ryunosuke was also a brilliant piece of change that made some of the investigations more fun. While I’ll miss the psyche-locks, perhaps it’s a good thing that The Great Ace Attorney has moved away from mysticism and spirit channelling to focus more on Herlock’s wacky hijinks.

And before I forget, I need to throw out a special mention to Iris Wilson, the ten-year-old child genius that puts us all to shame. Growing up in an Asian household, I’m sure my mother wishes I could have got a doctorate in medicine by that time. 

On a side note, it was fun voicing a few of the characters as I played. I’m sure my family were quite confused as to why these terrible accents were petering down to the kitchen. 

Do I have any regrets?

Some.

But it’s always fun giving voice to these wacky characters and bringing them all to life with a few flamboyant performances.

#video games #the great ace attorney #ace attorney #gina lestrade is a precious cinnamon roll!

[blackjack-15]

Are You Poe-ndering What I’m Poe-ndering? — Thoughts on: Warnings at Waverly Academy (WAC)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY, VEN, HAU, RAN

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with links to previous metas (or not links, as tumblr is freaking out with links).

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: WAC, mention of Sabrina the Teenage Witch (the OG live-action show not the horrible CW monstrosity); discussion of the Poe short stories “The Imp of the Perverse” and “The Black Cat”.

The Intro:

It’s time to go to school, y’all — and not just any school; a rich, elite, all-girls school. Welcome to the jungle.

Warnings at Waverly Academy is one of two games that I don’t sort into a category (like “Expanded” “Jetsetting” or “Odd”), the other being the game that follows it (TOT). There are a few reasons for this — the next category really doesn’t apply, but neither does the previous category, WAC and TOT both feature a gradual shift in tone and approach to the games, etc. If I really had to pick a designation, I’d say that these are the “Growing Pains” games, where the world gets a little bit more open — but not all at once, the characters get a little more fleshed out — but not by much, and a few new things are tried with our character rolls — to varying degrees of success.

On the whole, WAC tackles its efforts far better than TOT does, but it does make for a slightly less interesting meta if one was just to focus on what WAC does wrong and what it does right. Instead, we’re going to take a look at how brilliant WAC is tonally and thematically, and how its source material — not kept secret in the game — builds it up and makes it better and better upon replays.

Before I begin, it’s fair to warn you all that my thesis was done on Poe and adaptation theory (and its relevance towards detective novels but I won’t touch much on that part of it), so I might get a bit nerdy. Hopefully it’s still exciting and relatable enough to the game that it’ll make for interesting, rather than academic, reading.

WAC uses Poe’s stories — specifically “The Black Cat” (obviously) and “The Imp of the Perverse” (in my slightly expert opinion) — as thematic (what the game means) and tonal (how the game feels) touchstones, not to mention their inclusion for some of the events in the plot. A brief summary of both is probably important when looking at how they relate to WAC.

“The Imp of the Perverse” is an essay-like short story by Poe that basically states that inside of every person is the desire to do something wrong or incorrect simply because it is wrong or incorrect (not morally, but in terms of self-interest).

In the story, a man commits a clever murder and gets away with it, receiving the inheritance that he wanted from the dead man. The man cannot be caught — there is no evidence of any wrongdoing, let alone any that points to him — unless he confesses. The idea of confessing — not out of guilt, but just because it would be the wrong thing to do — plays on his mind until, driven half-mad with his preoccupation, he confesses and is imprisoned and executed. The titular “imp” is basically a devil on the shoulder who wants what would be worst for our own self-interest, simply because it is the worst.

MENTIONS OF ANIMAL CRUELTY FOR THE STORY OF THE BLACK CAT. PLEASE SKIP IF THIS BOTHERS YOU.

“The Black Cat” on the other hand is pretty much a proto-“Tell-Tale Heart” — an alcoholic man becomes emotionally distant from his cat (a rare sentence, I know) because he things the cat is judging him for being a drunk; one night in a drunken rage, he cuts out its eye and kills it. A fire catches his home, leaving an imprint of the hanged cat upon the only standing wall.

END OF DIRECT MENTIONS OF ANIMAL CRUELTY.

The man and his wife move, and he, after a period of guilt, makes friends with another cat — a cat nigh-identical to the first one, even missing an eye. When he (drunk, as per usual) and his wife are walking down the cellar stairs, however, he nearly trips over the cat and becomes enraged, trying to kill the cat, only to be stopped by his wife. He instead kills his wife, burying her behind the wall of the cellar and bricking up the hole.

When the police come by they find nothing, and the cat has disappeared, so the man feels safe. The police come back to investigate the cellar, the man taps on the wall to boast of how well the house is made — only to have horrific screeching start up behind the wall. The police break the wall down and find not only his wife’s body, but the black cat sitting on it as well. The man breaks down, overwhelmed by his own guilt, and the story ends.

END OF BLACK CAT STORY SYNOPSIS.

It’s pretty clear what influence “The Black Cat” had on WAC — not only does the villain name herself after the titular cat, but WAC is also a story of guilt, hidden crimes, and personal weaknesses that manifest in rage towards other innocents.

It’s actually really interesting that Corine takes the mantle of “The Black Cat” up when she begins targeting other valedictorian candidates; the black cat in the story is sort of a symbol of the man’s sin — a reaction to his sins and misdeeds, and sort of a catalyst of justice. This ties into how Corine sees herself — someone rejected and mistreated by those who are “filthy” themselves, and who must then show others the things they hate about themselves.

It’s Corine’s self-identification as a victim that starts all this, and it causes her to victimize others in potentially fatal ways. The black cat stands for guilt, for the sins of others, and yet it leads Corine further and further away from any justness herself.

The story of “The Imp of the Perverse” has a little bit of a more subtle tie-in to the game; in a way, each suspect does exactly what they know they shouldn’t.

Rachel and Kim are obvious — they really shouldn’t switch back and forth so regularly, nor should they be so sloppy at informing the other as to what they did and who they met that day. Leela, who should be studying if she wants to keep her spot in the race, instead passes the time by playing sports. Mel knows that the cloak-and-dagger meetings are to be an absolute secret, yet wears hair bows that she constantly loses to one. Izzy has her future meticulously planned out, yet refuses to back up an incredibly important paper (and also relies on being popular, yet pursues other girls’ boyfriends).

Even Corine falls under this; by targeting Nancy, she’s ensuring that suspicion will fall on her, as 2/3rds of the victims would then be her roommates. She’s also cutting her chances of being valedictorian by not working hard for it and instead relying on other, riskier methods. Every move she makes leads to it being more and more obvious that she’s behind them — and yet, she continues anyway, just like the man in “The Imp of the Perverse” — leading from a few small incidents to attempted murder.

Ignoring WAC’s ties to Poe renders it as a good, solid mystery without anything remarkable about it (other than the pendulum, of course). Exploring its ties to Poe not only helps set up exactly who the villain is, but also sets the tone for the mystery. This isn’t a mystery of Nancy foiling a villain through her smarts; instead, it’s a story about how guilt and a perverse desire for self-destruction leads a once-promising valedictorian candidate to more and more severe crimes, culminating in the exact opposite of what she was working for.

The Title:

It’s pretty awesome, full stop.

Warnings at Waverly Academy is honestly a great title for a Nancy Drew mystery; it gives us location, a sense of the world we’re in (scholastic), and a vague yet not too vague sense of what’s going on. The alliteration is good, the abbreviation amuses me — it’s just solid all the way around.

There’s not much else to say; sure, you could strengthen it by finding a punchier “w” word to begin with, but that’s just quibbling. It’s great, I love it, let’s move on to the Happenings at Waverly Academy (which, by the way, would have been a terrible name for the game).

The Mystery:

Called in as a professional undercover detective, Nancy’s just young enough to hide in plain sight at Waverly Academy, an upper-crust private school for those girls fortunate enough to be both rich and smart (aside from a few scholarship students, who are simply smart). Nancy’s called in due to a few near-death experiences by students, punctuated always by notes simply signed “The Black Cat”. It’s only a few days until break ends, so Nancy must work quickly to stop the sabotage, find the Black Cat, and solve the mystery before anyone dies.

Nancy, as always, finds quickly that not everything is so cut-and-dried. Each valedictorian candidate has the motive, means, and opportunity to get the other girls out of their way, and all have something to lose. Add in a secret society, the threat of demerits from an overly zealous RA, and the sneaking feeling that there might be a greater mystery behind all of these incidents, and you get a case mostly unlike any that Nancy’s had to crack before.

Oh, and Ned is on the phone, serving the player up with the single punch of testosterone in the game (aside from the hunky Mr. Harris, of course).

As a mystery, WAC is honestly super solid. Lots of characters, lots of clues, lots of red herrings, lots of mini-mysteries going on inside of the larger mystery…it’s everything you want from a Nancy Drew game, and it doesn’t really drop any of the balls it juggles. Sure, the pendulum might be a bit much for you if you’re not up on your Poe, but I think it’s a lot of fun, and for sure a very different type of ending puzzle — not drowning or running out of air or any other ending that Nancy Drew games likes to do.

Let’s go to the movers and shakers behind this mystery, then, shall we?

The Suspects:

Mel Corbalis is the fan-favorite character, so let’s start with her in this huge, estrogen-laden cast. Distinctly of the goth persuasion, Mel is a fantastically talented cello player and a Waverly Legacy, despite the fact that no one at school wants to be caught dead near her. She’s not an outcast the way that Corine is, however, because of her simple insistence on being exactly who she is, and not trying to hide or apologize for it.

Go Mel.

As a suspect, Mel is slightly more suspicious than most other girls, on account of Megan being her roommate, but otherwise sits on fairly equal standing with them all. She’s by far the most outwardly aggressive, but also comes across as simply no-nonsense (a welcome thing in any girl’s academy, believe me). She also has the least of Poe about her, despite her taste in fashion, and is in general a breath of fresh wind.

Next up is Leela Yadav, athlete extraordinaire. She sure can bounce that ball, at least. Izzy’s roommate and just as much a social climber (though in less in-your-face ways), Leela wants it all — popular, athletic, and valedictorian. It’s a lot for any girl to handle, much less one who can’t seem to keep it all together.

As a suspect, Leela’s not bad — she’s as even as (most) anyone else throughout the first half of the game, but falls off a bit when Izzy isn’t specifically targeted by the Black Cat (as most of her gripes are against Izzy, particularly). Leela’s more there to increase the number of students and throw suspicion around, but she does a darn fine job of it, and is well-rounded enough to be genuinely enjoyable.

We’d be remiss not to mention the queen bee (and my personal favorite suspect) at Waverly Academy, Izzy Romero. Snobbish, arrogant, and with apparently the smarts and people skills to back it up, Izzy is the first Waverly girl that Nancy (as Becca) meets, and boy does she set the player up for what Waverly is really like. Izzy’s smart enough to know when she should put in the effort and clever enough to delegate it when she can, and that alone endears her to me, even leaving aside her hilarious dialogue and general vibes.

As a suspect, Izzy is the sole girl who really isn’t set up to be much other than what she is — a girl with more than enough smarts to get power, and enough power to pretty much do what she wants to do. Sure, Nancy can catch Izzy doing stuff she shouldn’t do, but she’s never really a heavy-hitter when it comes to the Black Cat stuff. I love her for that, too. She’s a lot like Libby from the original Sabrina the Teenage Witch show; a bit nasty, but hilarious and effectively harmless — and I’ve always liked Libby-style characters.

And her stint in the Blackwood Society is aces too. Man, this girl does not quit.

Rachel Hubbard, is, of course, actually Rachel and Kim Hubbard, and they are the plot point that WAC is most known for. They actually have marginally separate personalities too, with one being far snappier than the other, and having strengths in different subjects.

Part of the reason I love the Hubbard twins so much is that their presence is so...Poeian. Poe was all about duplicity and mirrors, and the Hubbard twins show off both themes. It’s just a wonderful little bit of a nod to the source material (thematically speaking) of the game, and I adore it.

As suspects, the Hubbards aren’t bad at all; they’re lying, sneaking around, and blatantly “forget” what they’ve said to people, all of which adds up to be very untrustworthy. Were it not for Nancy (and Corine) sneaking around, they might have gotten through their Waverly experience without anyone figuring it out — and that’s something to respect, even if it does make them prime targets for blackmail. And speaking of blackmail…

Corine Meyers is both Nancy’s roommate and 100% our villain this time around. Obsessed with becoming valedictorian and knowing she probably won’t get it, Corine basically puts out self-assigned hits on each of her fellow candidates, attempting to get the title by violence rather than by being worthy. She’s even cunning enough to blackmail the Hubbard twins into doing some of her dirty work, throwing people off her scent. Sure, Corine is a rather pathetic (in the non-sympathetic sense) person who I have little respect for, but she does make a good villain in a Poe-ish story.

As a suspect, the game actually makes a pretty good go at not assigning the blame too quickly to anyone, so Corine does manage to hide out in the shadows. Sure, one of the girls who went home was her roommate, but the other was Mel’s, so suspicion isn’t centered right on her. I also love that she’s actually punished for what she does — no amount of sad pictures at the end of the game changes that. Corine actually has the cleverness that CUR tries (but doesn’t succeed) to give Jane, and I think it’s wonderful.

I’m not going to give Megan Vargas or Danielle Hayes their individual chunks, but they are present here as well, standing in as victims so we know that this teenaged effery very nearly had a body count. They really help to give a sense of…well, purposeful disconnection to the game, where the setting and the snow and the fact that these are high school girls doesn’t stop the crimes from being deadly.

The Favorite:

The first thing that I have to say is that I love how the tone and crimes of this game contrast so well with a lot of the games (especially, sorry, CUR). This takes place at a school, your suspects are all teenaged girls…and yet the game doesn’t shy away from how horrific things really are to get Nancy called in. Two girls have nearly died in quick succession from one another, and the girls are going on chasing acclaim. It’s a messed up situation, and the game doesn’t shy away from pointing that out.

These crimes are treated with severity, and the culprit, despite things that might have softened her ending under lesser writers, is punished with total removal. WAC in some ways is a spiritual successor to SCK, in that it takes place at a school, lives are endangered, Nancy is (mostly) undercover, and the culprit is not above killing Nancy messily solely for personal gain. The difference, of course, is that SCK is not done well, and WAC, on the whole, is.

As mentioned above, I have a soft spot for Poeian detective stories, and so I enjoy WAC probably more than I would had they modeled it after, say, Holmesian detective stories instead. The ideas of duplicity, mirrors, guilt, the Imp of the Perverse — the self-destructive tendency to do what we should not simply because we should not do it — these are all present and accounted for in WAC from different girls and facets of the plot (Corine and the secret society both represent duplicity, the Hubbard girls are mirrors, Waverly’s own guilt towards the students it failed, etc.).

My favorite puzzle has to be WAC’s resident cooking minigame, where Nancy prepares hot lettuce sandwiches and definitely underdone cookies to the delight of the gossiping horde. It’s like TRN’s cheeseburger minigame writ large, and every second of it is wonderful — the gossip, the food-making, the unexpected panic of a teacher order — everything. It also helps Nancy keep her head above water, should she be caught sneaking around after hours, and I think that’s great as well.

My favorite moment of the game is when Nancy comes out of the wall in Mel’s room and Mel isn’t having even one iota of her excuses to cut and run. It’s not often that a non-villain will press Nancy so intently when Nancy does something Inherently Untrustworthy, and I think it’s great that a 17 year old girl behaves exactly as one would, demanding an explanation and not letting Nancy wiggle her way out of it. Sheer perfection and the moment, I would guess, that Mel became a lot of people’s favorite WAC character.

I also love everything to do with the Blackwood Society. Nancy goes so…metal there and we really don’t get enough of Metal Nancy. It features one of the few moments of absolutely, unequivocally brilliant voice acting that Lani stumbles upon (the conversation about the bow), and it’s a wonder to behold.

The Un-Favorite:

While WAC certainly has great things about it, it’s not by any means a perfect game. It wouldn’t sit in my top 10, and possibly not even in my top 15, though it would depend on the day. The reasons for this?

A big one is my least favorite puzzle: taking the pictures. It’s a good idea — a gofer quest to help Nancy get to meet each student, talk to them, etc. and make sure no one gets lost in the shuffle (like with what usually happens with Guadalupe in ICE, for example) — and is also great for acquainting Nancy with the Hubbard(s). However, in practice, the interface makes it incredibly obnoxious to do, what with having to retake pictures because the pan or zoom is slightly off, and having to jump around from place to place. It’s a good idea, but could have been implemented far, far more smoothly than it actually was.

My least favorite moment in the game is actually the whole deal with Izzy’s paper being deleted. It’s a dick move — and I have no problem with that, honestly, but the fact that she has no backup is just like…girl, what on earth are you doing where you don’t back up your work.

Adding to that is the fact that even in the far-off yesteryear of 2009, Word autosaves (as did many, if not all, word processors) and a copy definitely would have still been retrievable on her computer, and that the teacher would almost definitely have a previous rough draft or at least outline…it’s a pretty shaky thing to have happen (the not-having, not the deleting), and it does break the game down a bit. I know it’s not that big a deal to most people, but it seriously hampers my ability to stay within the world of WAC and to take the mystery seriously.

The Fix:

So how would I fix Warnings at Waverly Academy?

There’s honestly not too much to do; while not a perfect game, WAC is perfectly solid, accomplishing what it needs to do properly and well, without too many little flaws to mar its reputation.

In other words, it’s a bit like an unsuccessful valedictorian candidate; well-rounded, but not a standout when compared to others that burn a little brighter.

I would, however, re-work the picture task; I’m not sure how you could make it less clunky, mechanically speaking, but it definitely needs it, along with a way to know if it’s a good picture or not before you go through all the effort of going to the library and plugging in the camera. I love the idea — just make the idea work better.

I’d also change the “deleted paper” storyline and go a little more destructive — give the computer an awful virus instead. Sure, her paper is backed up (in 2009, probably on a USB drive, or saved to her email or something), and she has her stuff, but that locks away all personalized notes, study sheets, etc. It’s something that would be pretty damning for a Valedictorian candidate, while also still being firmly in the realm of believability.

And on a smaller note, remove the ability to call Bess in this game. It always goes to voicemail and serves no purpose. Why even include it?

Where WAC really shines is its individualistic approach to each girl and in its permeation of Poeian themes; that’s what makes it special as a game, rather than any of its individual parts. Sometimes, you need to take a break from haunted mansions and carousels and museum thefts and marriage troubles and friends who are always in need of help – and you just need to play a game with gossip galore, hot lettuce bagels, and an actual death-bringing pendulum to round it out.

#nancy drew #clue crew #warnings at waverly academy #nancy drew games #WAC #nancy drew meta #long post #my meta #video games

[tarhalindur]

Higurashi Gou final thoughts pt. 1

(Spoilers go under a cut:)

Taking this by arc:

Onidamashi-hen: The best executed first cour arc by a significant margin.  Probably not coincidentally, it stays the closest to the structure of the OG arc and thus keeps more of OG’s tension ratchet than the other Gou arcs.  I have two main issues, and I’m pretty sure both of them can be firmly pinned on the anime staff rather than Ryukishi07 himself.  First, it pulls its punch on the stealth sequel aspect.  I’m not entirely sure that going for a stealth sequel was the correct decision (it’s a cost/benefit tradeoff), but if you do you’re going for the wham of the sequel reveal, and the anime undercut this by putting the Rika/Hanyuu scene at the start of episode 2 rather than the end of the arc.  Second, it overdoes the final Rena fight, making it so over-the-top that it’s difficult to take seriously.  Neither of these issues exist in the manga (which has a believable amount of stabbing and has the Hanyuu scene at the end of the arc where it should be), and in the former case we also have a Ryukishi07 interview indicating that this was a change requested by the anime staff, so this goes on them.  (Interestingly, by way of contrast I think this approach might actually work well for the Mieruko-chan adaptation that Passione has coming out later this year.)

Watadamashi-hen: The core issue here (above and beyond fridge logic after Satokowaski-hen) is the finale, which landed like a wet fart.  It both escalates from zero to 100 *way* too fast and has the worst case of “tell don’t show” in the neo-question arcs - we learn about every single dead body in the arc from Ooishi’s end-of-arc narration.  That’s relatively defensible for three of those bodies, which we only learn about secondhand even in OG Watanagashi-hen (though IIRC in OG two of those bodies have foreshadowing from rumors earlier in the arc, and unless I’m forgetting something that’s absent here), but all five?  Yes, keeping Keiichi locked away from the final showdown removes fridge logic issues, but you have prominent security cameras - you can at least have him see the aftermath of the showdown on the screens (and freak out because of it).  Adding insult to injury, the Keiichi vs. door scenes are also so over-the-top as to damage willing suspension of disbelief.  The 0-to-100 issue is harder to fix, because the one thing Watadamashi did right was put the Rika-loses-it scene as an end-of-episode cliffhanger, and “Keiichi et. al. are about to enter the Saiguden” probably wanted an end-of-episode cliffhanger as well for discussion purposes (it might have been able to get away with using the commercial break).  The simplest fix is the same one @tsuisou-no-despair​ floated: cannibalize an episode off of another first cour arc.

Tataridamashi-hen: Amusingly, I think Gou has retained OG’s tradition of having the Tatari- question arc being the weakest question arc.  As I see it there are two interlocking core issues here which boil down to the same issue.  Tataridamashi-hen goes for a very unconventional method of building tension: it doesn’t, instead relying on the viewer’s realization that something bad has to be coming to do so for it (the old “that can’t be right, we’ve still got twenty minutes left in the episode” reaction I more commonly associate with things like police procedurals).  The problem is that this runs into the Endless Eight lesson: even flawless metatext should not be used at the expense of enjoyability of the actual text.  And while the arc got some leverage out of “when exactly is this going to diverge?”, there’s a point much like Endless Eight itself when you realize where it’s going to diverge (i.e, not until the end) and that until then you’re sitting through the same events you remember from OG.  It works about as well as it did for Haruhi.  (Unless you’re a new viewer, but in that case staying too close to Minagoroshi-hen has other issues.)  Worse, unlike Minagoroshi-hen itself (which did something similar to build tension but a) non-source readers hadn’t seen it before so it wasn’t foregone the same way and b) you had several more episodes after the subarc for the main event) the arc ends almost immediately after this.  (The simplest fix here might have been cutting down on the arc time by speedrunning Minagoroshi events, reducing the amount of time you’d have to wait.  You could even have a couple of obstacles collapse faster than expected; this late in the first cour it would serve as foreshadowing for Satokowashi-hen, and would also deal with unfortunate implications concerning the village’s prejudice considering that the staff knew Satoko was going to be the culprit.  Trimming an episode would also neatly solve the issue of where to get an additional episode for Watadamashi-hen from!)  The good news is that the final confrontation is the best of the first cour arcs (it’s somewhat more realistic than the other two, actually not that far behind some of the more memetastic OG moments except for Teppei’s eyes, and not showing Ooishi’s rampage is forgivable given that they knew they would be actually showing it in Nekodamashi-hen), but that’s damning with faint praise.

Nekodamashi-hen: The best Gou arc.  The episode 15 jump cut is the stuff of legends and the best scene in the show by a sizable margin (the one thing the director does well is black humor, it seems), while the rest of the arc isn’t as good, it’s far shorter on demerits than the rest of the show.  The one really, really obvious demerit is that they really didn’t need to spend half an episode on the intestines-ripping scene (if Ryukishi07′s comments are to be believed, once again we’re pinning this on Passione), but effects on my stomach aside there are worse issues to have.

Satokowashi-hen: And here we have the other side of the coin; this is the worst Gou arc, and it’s the one spot where I’m pretty sure Ryukishi07 himself gets some of the blame.  There’s a few issues here.  First, the single most obvious dangling plot thread from Matsuribayashi-hen (Satoshi’s fate) is effectively dropped despite being directly relevant to the other dangling thread that was picked up (how Rika treats Satoko and vice versa); this includes missing an opportunity to show Satoko’s character arc through different responses to learning about Satoshi’s condition.  Secondly and compounding, Shion is also dropped along with the Satoshi thread; AIUI this is kind of understandable given final Satoko/Shion interaction in the Matsuribayashi-hen VN (which IIRC never made it into the anime), but dropping her without explanation still leaves something that looks awfully like a plot hole since a single conversation with Shion is potentially enough to stop the events of this arc from ever happening.  (”Character X had information that would have stopped the tragedy but never had an opportunity to tell anyone” is a classic tragedy trope, but you should really have a *reason* for that character never having the opportunity as opposed to just having them vanish without explanation.)  Finally, there’s just the general issue that while the ending points for both Rika and Satoko are reasonable the path they take to get there just doesn’t quite add up.  I can kind of get there via a combination of “blame the director” (the loops montage could and should have easily shown Satoko’s deteriorating mental condition as she watched - using interlaced cuts to her face with changes in facial expression is a classic method) and mind caulk (Rika was exaggerating for effect when she described her desire to go to St. Lucia’s as a long-time thing and it only really kicked in after Matsuribayashi-hen, Satoko originally only planned to suicide in Matsuribayashi-2 and only took Rika out with her as a crime of passion after feeling betrayed, hence the next few loops lacking her murdering Rika) but being mind-caulkable is not the same as actual good execution.

I mean, I’ve banged on this drum before, but... the basic concept works.  Really well.  Satoko’s abandonment issues and Rika’s treatment of Satoko are two of the major dangling plot threads from OG Higurashi (*eyes both Minagoroshi-hen and anime-only Yakusamashi-hen*).  It makes perfectly good sense that the latter comes back to bite Rika, especially in a sequel literally titled “karma”.  I already suspected Satoko was on the autism spectrum based on OG, her being ADHD in addition to or instead of that makes perfectly good sense given those conditions often overlap.  Rika’s desire to escape the well morphing into a desire to escape Hinamizawa entirely?  Sure, just present it as that.  Satoko steadily losing her support network as her friends are torn away from her by changing life circumstances, then going to a boarding school that she hates, that strips the rest of her support structure for her and starts to take even her one remaining friend (her childhood friend, no less - and one that Satoko is at this point attracted to romantically in true osananajimi fashion) away from her, and then starting to snap with some prodding from a certain witch?  That’s a compelling story idea!  But as present it just doesn’t quite work, and that’s on the execution.

(Side note: I wonder if some of what went wrong with Gou was just the kind of production issues endemic to modern anime, amplified by the pandemic.  I remember at least one comment/blog post somewhere in the wake of WEP’s issues noting some of the effects that production issues can have on an anime, and one of the things they noted was excessive slavishness to the source material as a time-saving measure; that sounds awfully similar to some of Ryukishi07′s comments about how he didn’t expect Passione to take his script quite so literally, and to my admittedly untrained eye it sure looked like there were a bunch more other animation studios than usual mentioned in Gou’s credits...)

Final score: depends on your exact rating system, but given the range I’m looking at I can’t see how I can give it any score other than 3.4/5 for obvious reasons.  (Pending Sotsu, anyways.  It’s possible that Sotsu will resolve some of these issues - in particular, Ryukishi07 always has struck me as the kind of author who would get a kick into baiting us into falling for the same twist twice; it’s not impossible that the apparent lack of unreliable narrators so far is a double bluff, and that could affect the “question arc” scores in particular.  More on this in a forthcoming solution space post.)

[jackdawyt]

Solas: “I walk the dinan’shiral. There is only death on this journey. I would not have you see what I become.”

Lord of Tricksters and He who Hunts alone, kin to His People. He who could walk on both sides of Gods without fear, they all trusted him, and all of them were betrayed. He told the Creators that a blade was forged in the heavens and the Forgotten Ones that it was hidden in the abyss, and when they went searching for it, he sealed them both in their realms forever, paying the ultimate price. He comes in humble guises but strikes those who are vulnerable, Thedas has never been in more peril than ever before, Fen'Harel will rise again.

Hey guys, Jackdaw here! Given the many revelations of Tevinter Nights, we have a lot of plot threads and teases hinting at what Solas may do next in his grand scheme to destroy the Veil and restore the Elven Kingdom. Indeed, the Dread Wolf has risen, and we’ve got a lot of theorising to do!  

So, with that said, I ask that you don your tinfoil hats, respectively, as we examine the Dread Wolf rising, and the next stages of Solas’s scheme that will inevitably destroy Thedas.  

Sandal: “When he rises, everyone will see!”  

Fen’Harel has risen as a beastly and ill-natured creature held from within, mantled in the disguise of an elven mage.  

Discovered in “Callback”, the final Fresco that Solas drafted out in Skyhold’s Rotunda before leaving the Inquisition, revealed an outline of a beast stood over a stabbed dragon; two figures painted on either side of a pane of glass with confused forms. The beast is shown to be a horrifying wolf, having absorbed the dragon’s power, stood crooked over all.

“The eighth and final panel of the fresco, meant to commemorate the battle against the blighted magister Corypheus, was unfinished. It showed only rough shapes, outlines that the mass of color crawling around the room now rushed to fill. And as detail and depth emerged, something was wrong.” (Callback, Page 121).

The depiction of the unfinished fresco relates to Solas’s embrace with Mythal at the end of Dragon Age: Inquisition. For many years, we’ve been scratching our heads about this exchange between Mythal and Solas. Thanks to Tevinter Nights, and more aptly, Solas. We have the truth.  

“But here, unfinished, was the outline of a beast that stood over both dragon and sword. This was not the battle, or the victory. This was after. And the beast was not a dragon. The outline alone might have allowed that assumption, but now, filling with black and red, it was something other. The creature was reptilian, but also canine. The snout was blunted and toothy, but edges came to a point in houndlike ears. As the mass of plaster filled the shape, it began to rise, revealing scales and tail, and paws with talons. It looked like two figures painted on either side of a pane of glass, then viewed together, their forms confused. A wolf that had absorbed a dragon, and now stood crooked over all.” (Callback, Page 122).

This fresco uncovers that Solas absorbed an unknown quantity of Mythal’s power, with her essence he can rise as the Dread Wolf. For what purpose, we’ll discuss later. However, an essence of Mythal, somewhat lives on, as she seemingly placed a piece of herself into an eluivan before Solas took the majority of her power, in order to rise.  

Mythal: “It was only a piece, but that’s all I needed”.

I certainly don’t think that’s the end of Mythal. I believe quite the contrary, I think Solas’s scheme that has been set in motion was Mythal’s idea in the first place. Without her power, Solas wouldn’t be able to rise as the Dread Wolf. It’s only because of her immolation, he can rise! I think Mythal too will rise in the future, perhaps in another body.  

Regardless, the fact that Solas engraved rising as the Dread Wolf with Mythal’s power in Skyhold, before the orb broke, proves that Solas always intended on meeting Mythal, to take an aspect of her power.

Mythal’s sacrifice was never a backup plan to Solas, regardless of his orb’s destruction. Solas always planned on paying her a visit, with or without the orb, having the same intention of absorbing her power so he could rise.  

The orb would only fulfil one purpose, and that’s to rip a hole in the Veil. Whereas taking Mythal’s power had a different purpose – to prepare for Solas’s transformation into the Dread Wolf. And, so with that power now invested, the Dread Wolf has risen.  But only willingly on Mythal’s part.

Solas: “I would have entered the Fade, using the mark you now bear. Then I would have torn down the Veil. As this world burned in the raw chaos, I would have restored the world of my time…the world of the elves.”

With the orb’s destruction, Solas will be looking for a new way to destroy the Veil. Perhaps the Red Lyrium Idol is his backup attempt, and tracking down the Idol is his current quest, so he can successfully destroy the Veil with it, as intended.  

If that solves how Solas could destroy the Veil, then what’s Solas’s plan behind rising as the Dread Wolf? He’s not rising as the Dread Wolf to destroy the Veil, so, what is the Dread Wolf’s purpose?  

Perhaps Solas needs to rise as the malicious Dread Wolf so he can vengefully deal with the many hostile forces after the veil is destroyed.  

Although there will be plenty of opposition against Solas destroying the Veil, like the Executors, Qunari, Inquisition and so on. Nothing in Thedas today can equal what lies beyond the Veil, lingering in many places like the Void and the darkest depths of the Fade.  

Ancient beings, things left forgotten, and The Evanuris.  

Solas is rising as the Dread Wolf to slay his ultimate adversaries. The next protagonist may think that we fall among that category, but nothing can measure against the insane, wicked powers of those who dwell across the Veil, and will soon be released from their shackles if Solas succeeds, and destroys the barrier protecting Thedas against the Fade.  

Inquisitor: “If you destroyed the veil, wouldn't the false gods be freed?”

Solas: “I had plans.”

Solas: “They killed Mythal. A crime for which an eternity of torment is the only fitting punishment.”

Mythal was murdered by her own people, the Evanuris, in their lust for power, they betrayed her. When the Veil is destroyed, Solas will rise as the Dread Wolf, seeking justice for Mythal’s murder, he will find and kill each member of the Elven Pantheon that wronged his queen. The deaths of the False Gods will bring forth a new elven empire ruling over Thedas, with Solas and Mythal at the top.

Flemeth: ”Mythal clawed and crawled her way through the ages to me and I will see her avenged!"

I believe that Mythal exchanged the majority of her power to Solas, so he could follow her scheme of vengeance/justice against the Evanuris. Through the ages, Mythal seeks her own reckoning against those who betrayed her, her one aim has always vengeance. With Solas waking from his long slumber, the two have since schemed an ending against the Pantheon. Solas, using Mythal’s power, and rising as the Dread Wolf will be the False God’s demise.  

Solas and Mythal will have their vengeance, and a new world for the Elven people. However, the Veil hasn’t been destroyed yet, and there’s still time to stop Solas from reaching that reality. The best lead on Solas’s plan regards the Red Lyrium Idol.  

"The Dread Wolf wants that idol, and he’s not afraid to get his hands bloody to get it." (TDWTY, Page 490).

“He intends something for the Fade, and if he wants the idol, then whatever he intends will be terrible.” (TDWTY, Page 498).

The Red Lyrium Idol is still a mystery, and I say that with exasperated lungs, because I’ve talked about this blasted relic in every lore video I’ve created since The Dread Wolf Rises trailer back in 2018. Because of that, I’m going to rush through the details on this Idol.

It’s been described as: “a couple hugging, too thin to be dwarves”, or “a god mourning their sacrifice.” However, disregarding what it supposedly looks like, this idol belongs to Solas. It’s his, and he wants it back, he has a purpose for it.  

“YOU USE MY IDOL CARELESSLY TO VANDALIZE THE SEA OF DREAMS. NOW FEEL THE PAIN OF WHAT YOU HAVE CREATED.” (TDWTY, Page 496).

For what? Well, Red lyrium is known to thin the Veil, and this idol has magical properties too. It’d be a pretty good catalyst for the Veil’s destruction.  

Secondly, when the Idol was used in a blood and binding ritual, it revealed a most intriguing ritual blade, perhaps Solas wants or needs this blade. Could this be the blade to end all wars? Does he need it to finish his ritual? Or is it just a nice sharp dagger to cut Lavellan’s heart out again?  

“It was not merely an idol, but a ritual blade. He slashed his own hand, and a wave of power pulsed through the cavern.” (TDWTY, page 495).

And my final reason for justifying Solas’s genocidal actions.... In “The Hunt of The Fell Wolf” codex, Ameridan killed a great canine beast with a mysterious ‘fade touched’ Idol. This Idol was the only thing that ‘could prove the monster’s doom.’

“The wounded knight in darkness

Found within the cavern's gloom

An idol of fade-touched stone,

Which could prove the monster's doom.”

(The Hunt of the Fell Wolf, Stanza 15)

Perhaps this Idol from Ameridan’s story is the very same Red Lyrium Idol, and Solas is looking for it because the Idol is one of the only things that can stop and kill Solas, just like the beast in the codex. So, if Solas finds the Idol before anyone else, he’s got full security over his own victory, and no one can stand against him.  

The Red Lyrium Idol belongs to him, perhaps it’s like a ‘Horcrux’, you destroy the Idol, you destroy an aspect of Solas? If that’s too far-fetched, then perhaps the Idol is just very strong with its magical properties, and Red Lyrium compound, and that’s what can defeat Solas. Or, potentially, the ritual blade released from the Idol is the ultimate blow against him? It’s really a matter of tinfoil at the moment.  

What’s unknown is the Idol’s location. Does Solas already possess the Idol? If not where is it? More apropos, who has it?  

This seemingly pre-veil artefact found in the Primeval Thaig by Hawke, which was then stolen by Varric’s Brother, Bartrand. And then sold to Knight Commander Meredith, who crafted it into a greatsword, that granted her, and the sword magically capabilities.   Apparently when Meredith went boom and almost destroyed half of Kirkwall, the sword made from the idol was also destroyed, however, the idol stayed with Meredith as she transformed into a red lyrium statue.   It lingered for a while, until the Carta extracted the idol using a potion created by a Dalish Elf. It was then sold to House Qintara in Tevinter, the house traded it to House Danarius for information, then a Magister from House Danarius took it to the Grand Necropolis for a ritual.   The ritual ended in chaos and flames as the Dread Wolf was summoned, however, the idol escaped Fen’Harel’s grasp, as a noble’s son grabbed it and fled into Tevinter lands.   At this point, the idol’s location gets a tad fuzzy, apparently the idol somehow made its way to an auction, off the coast of Rivian, on the Island Llomerynn. Supposedly, the Dread Wolf made a physical appearance and took his idol back, and that’s the end of it. However, it seems that this could’ve been framed as a lie, or bluff, so Solas could retrieve the Idol, and stop those who seek it from getting it. (TDWTY, paraphrased a lot lol)  

In short, the Idol’s whereabouts are set up for interpretation in “The Dread Wolf Take You”, by the end of the story, we don’t quite know where exactly this idol is, and even if we take a guess, it doesn’t feel concrete... Did Solas actually take the idol from an overbearing auction, with quite the hysterical crowd located off the coast of Rivian? (doubt face) Or did a Noble’s son smuggle the Idol safely back into Tevinter war-torn territory?  

While, I lean to the side; Solas lied throughout the story, so therefore he doesn’t have it, and it’s somewhere in Tevinter, in the occupancy of Maker-knows who.... That still doesn’t give us any clues.

Fortunately, we have some new information, so we don’t have to continually guess, like a dog chasing its tail. Thanks to Dark Horse, Dragon Age comic writer Nunzio DeFilippis, we have an understanding of where this idol was originally supposed to go, before the comics were reworked with Dragon Age 4’s iteration reboot.  

Nunzio recently mentioned in the Unofficial BioWare Forum that the comic characters from Deception were originally chasing the Red Lyrium Idol. The original plan for the comics would've had the characters retrieve the Idol. Only to have Solas take it back. Eluding to the idol's planned whereabouts before the plot changed.  

So, regardless of where the idol may be right now, is Solas’s retrieval of the blasted thing inevitable considering the comics would’ve had this plot solved before the next games launch? Is it a matter of time before Solas finds his idol? Or has the plot changed a lot since then? Maybe we’ll have a shot at grabbing this idol before Solas gets his hands on it in the next game?  

With that, we don’t have a solid placement for where the Idol is, but we can assume that it will end up in Solas’s hands soon enough. However, regardless of the Idol, Solas already has set-out an ominous ritual to destroy the Veil.  

Solas {He} sighed. “It was a moment of weakness. I told myself that it was because you all deserved to know, to live a few years in peace before my ritual was complete. Before this world ended.” (TDWTY Page 506).

Whatever this ritual is, beats me. Solas mentions that it’s going to take a few years until it’s complete. And then boom, it’ll be down with the Veil, and the Dread Wolf shall rise.  

This once more begs the question, if Solas had made plans to destroy the Veil, then why does he need the Red Lyrium Idol? But again, like I said, perhaps he needs to retrieve the Idol because it’s his greatest weakness if used against him. Once he has it, he can destroy it, or throw it in the rubbish, so no one can stop his plan.  

Back to Solas’s ritual. The Dread Wolf has taken residency in the Fade, where his ritual has started to affect.  

“But whatever fear the name Dread Wolf carries, he has earned. While we might visit the Fade, it is his natural home, and the spirits there serve him gladly.” (TDWTY, Page 498).

The Mortalitasi organised their own ritual to push the Qunari back home, using blood magic and binding spells. These types of magic are undoing the work Solas has set in motion, they’re a hinderance to his ritual. Therefore, the Dread Wolf made his presence known at the Grand Necropolis, in Nevarra, forbidding both types of magic, if anyone dare binds a spirit, or uses blood magic, your life is his for the taking.  

“And as clear as the Dread Wolf’s anger at what we had done— the Mortalitasi binding spirits he considered his own, the Tevinter mage using forbidden blood magic— was the feeling that we had disrupted his own work.” (TDWTY, Page 498).

“FROM THIS MOMENT, SHOULD YOU EVER BIND A SPIRIT, THEN YOUR LIFE IS MINE.” (The Dread Wolf Take You, Page 496).

So, clearly any magic that requires demons and spirits, or changes a spirit’s original purpose, is undoing Solas’s ritual. Most likely because the spirits of the Fade serve Solas willingly, they’re probably required in his ritual. Taking them away from that purpose, is undoing Solas’s work. Spirits and demons want the Veil to come down so many of them can pursue their desires to enter the physical world, so it’s no surprise they serve Solas freely.  

Regardless, what exactly is this ritual doing? It’s already affected the Fade.... So, is Solas slowly decaying the Veil over time? Is he reaching into the Black City? Does this ritual have something to do with the Old Gods? Is it in preparation for killing the Pantheon? Is Solas’s ritual going to take him back in time to restore the Elven Kingdom? So many ideas, very few answers.  

Also, to change the pace from the ritual. Let's say Solas is successful and the Veil is destroyed, how are the elves going to survive the Veil’s destruction? When talking to Charter, Solas tells her that the world will be better off for the remaining elves that survive. But how can anyone survive the Fade crashing into Thedas?

“I have no choice. What I am doing will save this world, and those like you— the elves who still remain— may even find it better, when it is done.” (TDWTY, Page 506).

Is Solas taking those he deems worthy to a safe place, so they can rebuild the elven empire once the Veil is no more? Is he building a metaphorical ark, gathering the elves, as his flood destroys all of Thedas? How can he guarantee safety to the elves? Surely, he has a plan for them to survive this calamity?  

Ultimately, more questions that we’ll need to answer for ourselves when Dragon Age 4 arrives. Although we still clueless on Solas’s ritual and the Red Lyrium Idol’s purpose, I can say; without doubt, that Solas has risen as the Dread Wolf. A lupin, evil creature that seeks the end of the Evanuris, and Thedas as we know it.  

Solas may think that his plan is for the greater good of his people, but I believe he’s naïve to the one who’s fundamentally been pulling the strings of his scheme all along. The one who has set his very purpose in motion, and that is Mythal. A Queen he would not see go unavenged, and someone he’d do anything to achieve justice for in her name.  

I believe this trust Solas has for Mythal will be the end of him, that he is nothing but a puppet to Mythal’s plan for vengeance. I believe this conquest for justice, will send Solas down a path of anger, decay, and ultimately death.  

The biggest threat against Solas is himself, as he admits, he’s foolish, prideful and doing what he must. Will we be the one to stop him before it’s too late, changing his mind?  Or will we grant him a finishing blow, silencing our once beloved friend?  

#dragon age 4 #dragon age 4 theory #dragon age 4 solas #solas theory #the dread wolf rises #the dread wolf take you #the dread wolf has risen #solas dragon age #solas dragon age 4 #solas dread wolf #the dread wolf #the dread wolf theory #dragon age theory #dragon age 4 game #next dragon age #mythal #evanuris #the veil #dragon age elves #elven gods #qunari #inquisition #solavellan #solas ritual #red lyrium idol #fen'harel #cult of fen'harel #thedas #tevinter imperium #tevinter

[chiclet-go-boom]

AND ANOTHER THING

Okay, back to insomnia for another night since this stupid fucking movie is keeping me awake with emotional trauma. So here are my highlights of pain because I have nothing else to do at 4am but try and get them out of me and into the void where hopefully they’ll rot quietly.

Long rant about The Rise of Skywalker with even more swear words.

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

PLOT HOLES SO DEEP THEY HAVE THEIR OWN EVENT HORIZON

Pretty much this entire movie, but these are the highlights that stick out: 

How the fuck did Palpatine survive his on-camera death? It’s not only never explained, it’s never even touched on. Nobody asks any questions, ever. Complete retcon for the Original Trilogy. 

How the fuck was Palpatine somehow Snoke as well? We get a brief shot of Snoke clones in a vat, and that’s it for what we know. His old ass raisin body is still around looking creepier than ever, so he’s not transferring his consciousness around into new vessels apparently. 

If he was Snoke, why the hell did he command Kylo to kill Rey in the throne room of the Supremacy “to complete his training”, when his motivation for this movie was to get Rey alive to Exogol to kill him so he could… transfer his consciousness? See previous point.

Palpatine tells Rey she has to kill him so they can “be one” in order to save her friends… only if she does that and he takes her over, he’s not likely going to save her friends. Yet Rey treats it as a serious choice. 

If Palpatine wants Rey to kill him so he can merge with her or take her over or whatever the hell transfer of sith power is suppose happen and then she turns around AND DOES IT, why is Palpatine actually really dead now? He wanted to be dead. That was the whole point. Do I trust in this? Or is the guy just mostly-dead again. This plotline whistles, it has so many holes.

Rey and Kylo Ren are equals in the Force. Rey is shown at the very beginning of the movie happily drifting twenty feet in the air while doing her best impression of an atom illustration at the same time. If you read the comics, Snoke is also shown tossing a younger Kylo over a cliff and Kylo catches himself with the Force above the rocks. Now, Kylo gets tossed into a pit at the end and just… falls to his near death? And has to climb up using his hands? Why show Rey floating if you’re not going to use it later for Kylo? Does JJ just not get the concept behind Chekhov’s Gun? 

Lightspeed skipping. Very cool. I’ll allow it in space, particularly if you have a Force sensitive pilot who might be able to sense where they’re going and not rip themselves apart by impacting something solid (hello, Holdo Sacrifice Maneuver) but you can’t jump to lightspeed in gravity wells. You’ll tear your ship apart. The fact that Han did once is an outlier and should not be counted because that asshole has the galaxy’s own luck when it comes to bending fate and consequence. Did absolutely nobody read Wookiepedia?

And now TIE fighters can do it too and have both hyperspeed and hyperspace tracking technology installed? Kylo’s Whisper is unique with its lightspeed capabilities, a cutting edge piece of technology, but the ships chasing Poe in the opening Resistance sequence are just run of the mill fighter ships. They should have been left in the proverbial dirt.

JUST GENERAL CRATER SIZES PLOTHOLES

Why did Kylo try to mow Rey down with his actual ship, when it had perfectly serviceable and oh, deadly guns? 

If C3PO wasn’t permitted by his programming to translate the dagger (because otherwise this movie would be over a lot faster), why didn’t they just go to a library on Coruscant? 

Luke and Leia knew Rey was of Palpatine blood all along? Then why did neither of them know who the hell she was when they met in the previous movies? Luke even said “Who are you?” right to her face. 

Why the hell did Rey die? She had all the power of a thousand generations at her fingertips and they’ve already shown she can heal mortal wounds. Instead she just… keels over because the script told her to.  So Ben can turn up and heal her back, because they share the same soul and he has the same power. You know, the ability to heal mortal wounds? Only now it’s his turn to keel over for no reason. And if he has to fade into the Force, why the fuck didn’t Rey do it first, leaving him no body to save? 

How the hell does a dagger that can point to an ancient Sith wayfinder artefact have an exact match to the outline of a piece of wreckage. It would only be useable from a precise angle and distance to the silhouette - the angle and distance that nobody had any way of knowing. 

Since when can Force ghosts catch material objects out of the air and lift physical machinery? 

Speaking of, how the hell does a rusted, damaged X-Wing deliberately sunk for a decade in order to strand its owner on-planet with no way off even if he changes his mind have no problems drying out and working perfectly for a hyperspace jump? 

Kylo’s Whisper had the wayfinder plugged into it when he went to Exogol. He then used his ship to try and run Rey down on Pasaana, only she damaged it and the central cockpit went up in a ball of flame, sans wings. The wayfinder should have been toast, yet it somehow turns up on a different ship, the one that Rey steals from Kylo on the Death Star. Is the wayfinder now on all Kylo’s ships? The magic multiplying wayfinder? And completely immune to blistering fire temperatures that melted a space-capable ship? 

Why is an entire fleet of destroyers, so many they dwarf the skies, just sitting idly on a planet and needing navigational guidance in order to get above atmosphere? Who grounds a star destroyer at all, let alone a murderous amount of them?

How did they get planet killing weapons on those destroyers without massive amounts of kyber? Kyber is scarce, Starkiller Base would have likely wiped out any known remaining stocks of the precious mineral. And the stuff is unstable as fuck, which is why its limited to lightsabers (tiny amounts of crystal) or huge moon-sized bases to contain it. Sticking it on a ship should be impossible. It’s never questioned or explained. 

Why was Palpatine surprised by the Force Bond? Surprised enough to completely abandon his plan to take over Rey and instead decided he’d just suck the bond dry of power to regenerate his body (well, it fixed his fingers at least). If he was Snoke or controlling Snoke as he claimed, he should have not only known all about it, he should have known how strong it was. 

Rey won by deflecting Palpatine’s Force lightning back at him and melting his body like shades of The Lost Ark. All he needed to do was… stop using lightning and I don’t know, Force push her into the pit with Kylo. Rey problem solved. If Kylo couldn’t levitate anymore, Rey sure couldn’t. 

IT TRIVIALIZES CONSEQUENCES. IT TRIVIALIZES SACRIFICE.

In one of the few cool and unexpected things, Rey destroys a transport with Force lightning. She kills her friend Chewbacca (and a bunch of redshirt stormtroopers). She screams in horror but finally runs away from the crime. We’re all devastated, poor Chewie 

But wait, no! There were two transports out of fucking nowhere apparently and Chewie is just captured. So it’s a mulligan, people. His death is erased, it didn’t happen. This also counts as a plot hole since Rey senses Chewbacca nearby on the destroyer later just fine, but couldn’t tell he was just on the other side of the rock while they were on the ground.

In order to be permitted to translate the Sith markings on the dagger, C3PO has to undergo a factory reset. He has a poignant moment saying goodbye to everyone and then metaphorically lays down and dies for the cause. But wait! No, actually he’s fine. R2D2 restores nearly his entire memory later on, we can all calm down now.

Kylo Ren/Ben Solo sacrifices himself for the love of his life and nobody takes even a second to mourn him. Even Rey just moves on with no trouble - she doesn’t even cry. If it happens, it happens off camera and therefore doesn’t happen at all. His sacrifice meant nothing because nobody but nobody will ever know about it. 

SO MUCH PANDERING IT SHOULD LOUNGE AGAINST A STREETLIGHT

C3PO, a minor character in all the movies, suddenly has a major speaking part and actual plot relevance.

Rey training with the blind helmet and the hunter drone like Luke did. 

Rey wearing a Rebel helmet as she escapes from Ahch-To. 

Lando. Again. Used as a signpost (go that way, kids!) and appears again with the cavalry later, just like he did in previous movies. 

Rey sliding down yet another dune

Ewoks cheering as something blows up in the sky

A star destroyer going down over the Jakku ship graveyard.

Double sunrise/sunset on a sand planet. (fine, I can live with this one)

Chewbacca finally get a medal

Tatooine itself and the Lars homestead. 

THE COMPLETE LOSS OF CHARACTERISATION

Rose Tico who? She has a couple of throwaway lines and a walk on appearance. What a jerk move for a great character.

Hux gets barely more significance and completely throws away his entire motivation from the first two movies (a calculated rise to power to command a galaxy wide army because he wants control of everything) in exchange for utterly petty harrassment. It’s not even revenge, he can’t affect much. He doesn’t even plot against Kylo, he just kicks the metaphorical equivalent of sand onto Kylo’s robes and mutters something about rubber and glue. Then gets himself killed because he’s stupid. This is the man who masterminded a superweapon and used it, only to get taken out with a bulky bandage wrapped around the outside of his uniform.

Finn’s decision to leave the First Order in an act of real bravery is reduced to because a “feeling” told him too. Because he has the Force. But doesn’t tell anyone all year. For reasons. He had two character arcs in the other movies, moving him away from a drone in a faceless army into a person with agency and something to offer, and he spends three quarters of this movie running after Rey and yelling her name.

Poe. Oh god, they murdered Poe. He’s the fucking son of real heroes of the Resistance, a golden child with his own legacy burdens and they instead they give him (and his Hispanic actor) a drug dealer background. Crass at best, utterly contemptible at worst. The movies are the most canon canon that it can be. Did nobody check Poe’s Wookiepedia page before putting this into the script?

Kylo Ren kills both his masters in the previous movie, only to bow to a third within the first five minutes in this one. Kylo says “I’ll kill you too” but the next thing we know, he’s got red decals on his helmet proclaiming his new allegiance. What the fuck? Then spends most of the movie contradicting everything he said in TLJ proving that yes, Kylo Ren was lying to Rey all along and it all was a manipulative dick move to consolidate personal power at the expense of everything else. Spends his time gaslighting her and telling her she has no choice but to be his queen. 

(side note on this: he TELLS her she WILL take his hand the next time he offers it… aaaaand she doesn’t. Again. Why the fuck did they put that in the script at all? So Kylo can look stupid by being so confident and forceful with his prediction only to get blown off when the moment comes around again? pfft.)

Even Palpatine isn’t consistent. He wanted to live forever, tricking Death and reigning as the supreme Sith Lord for all time. Instead in this movie he apparently just wants to be Rey. He spends 30 years grooming the scion of Skywalker and does absolutely nothing with him in the end. 

TOLD THE WRONG FUCKING STORY

This story should have pulled threads from Anakin’s fall and Luke’s failure and used them to tell a story about how its always possible to come back from the worst of your choices and that love for family, love for friends and love for each other is the one real power in the world. 

Instead all the Skywalkers died because Palpatine worked through three generations to subvert the will of the very Force so that his bloodline is the only one that remains ascendant. Rey turns out only to be powerful because her grandfather was powerful, completely negating the idea that the Force plays no favorites and anybody can be the one to turn the tide of evil. Anakin’s children are painted in the worst possible light and the entire saga ends on a horrible, desolate note because all of them died and the one who deserved it the least had to give the utmost, and will still always be painted as the villain. 

We had bad guys already. The First Order. Hux. Fuck, they could have elevated Mitaka and given the poor baby some meatier lines. We could have had a stormtrooper uprising, which would have tied beautifully to Finn and given him an arc. We had a power dynamic we cared about - Hux versus Kylo which could have gone in very interesting directions with Snoke no longer holding either of their leashes. We did not need a completely new army full of ships to fight and the complete erasure and irrelevance of the First Order. 

The decision to include Palpatine could have been a specific plot tied to Kylo-as-Skywalker-bloodline, exploring and driving his redemption as the extent of his lifelong manipulation becomes apparent. Instead, he’s got nothing to do with Kylo other than spouting a few lines at the Supreme Leader at the beginning and then tossing him into the pit at the end. What a waste of an intriguing idea.

Going by dialogue count and the amount of scenes he’s in, Poe is the protagonist in this story, except nothing changes for him. Rey wanders around angry for most of the movie for reasons that are unclear and nothing changes for her either except the revelation that her grandpa is still around which she tells nobody about so it’s never a thing that needs to be dealt with. Kylo is an unyielding, uncompromising murder bot again and is the only one where something about him materially changes, even if its kinda hamfisted. We ran around for the entire movie and nobody even SAID anything to each other for the most part, honestly. 

Han Solo’s memory was poignant, if you’re okay with rehashes of conversations we’ve already had in other movies. Kylo Ren/Ben Solo has no lines of dialogue for nearly the last hour of the movie beyond ‘ow’. How his actor managed to carry his character through that anyways is a fucking tribute to Adam Driver’s skill with his facial expressions. 

Leia crawled off into a hole to die with nobody noticing and managed to distract her son long enough to get him likely mortally stabbed by the person who was supposed to love him most. Rey did what Luke failed to do. She even regretted it right afterwards just like Luke did. (For the record, this is the point in the movie where I gave up all hope. If Rey could actually bring herself to hurt Kylo, let alone stick his own saber in his chest, I didn’t recognize her character anymore.)

Luke promised Kylo he’d see him again, but then spent all his Force energy motivating Rey, so Kylo died still hating his uncle and never forgiving his mom. 

Kylo Ren never reconciled himself with Ben Solo. The movie just treated him like he had a Jekyll/Hyde thing going on so they could throw Kylo into the sea, leaving only Ben behind. That is so fucking simplistic I could have howled. 

JUST STRAIGHT UP ‘WUT’ MOMENTS

They literally dropped on top of the dagger mcguffin that had been buried for twenty years. Just. Fell on it. 

Rey’s parents sold her into slavery to keep her safe? Say wut? 

How the fuck did Palpatine lose track of his kid and his grandkid in the first place? Palpatine doesn’t have kids in canon, he’s SITH. He doesn’t share. If he had relatives, they’d’ve been sacrificed on a Dark Altar loooong before now.

Why is Rey on Tatooine with BB8? Isn’t that Poe’s droid? Did Poe and his droid get a divorce?

Why the hell does Rey have a new lightsaber out of literally nowhere. Ben just died three minutes ago onscreen. Why are we suddenly looking at new glowing stick. Did weeks pass? Months? 

How did Leia become a Jedi and we’re only just finding out about it now? And if Leia was a Jedi, why the fuck did she send her ten year old special needs son to his uncle? Are they actually trying to paint Leia as a bad mother who dumped a problem child on her family to take care of while she carried on with her life?

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

The Knights of Ren. They just turned out to be four seconds of eye candy and completely unnecessary. They wandered around looking vaguely menacing and that was their entire function. They didn’t even actually menace anything until fighting their supposed Master for a half minute for completely ambiguous reasons. Why were they even in the film in the first place? 

Jannah could very well be Lando’s daughter per the supplementary materials, but it’s not even mentioned when Lando first pops up - that he’s living on this planet now and his young daughter was harvested by the First Order. It would have been a great “heyyyy” moment at the end when he offers to help her find her family. 

Anakin. Oh sweet biscuits and gravy, why didn’t Hayden Christensen make a cameo in this as Anakin and give Kylo hope at the end? We could have tied the prequels to the sequels so effortlessly and given our favorite character something he’s wanted for most of his life, the approval and love of his grandfather. Hell, I personally would trade Han Solo’s moment (as sweet as it was) for a moment with Vader. 

Kylo (or Rey by proxy) never got a chance to heal his kyber crystal. That should have happened, it would have been fucking poignant to mend something fractured that badly and been a much better symbol than Kylo simply throwing his saber away. It’s supposed to represent his life, his soul. Again, see previous comment about dumb Jekyll/Hyde parallel.

IN CONCLUSION

If you could care less about these characters and Star Wars and you are indeed a casual fan, this movie is pretty to look at. That’s its one redeeming feature. Finn and Poe have great banter, they should have been boyfriends. D-O was cute. Poor Snap, I guess.

Yes, I care that Rey and Kylo/Ben got their kiss, but it was robbed of nearly every iota of emotional weight by the previous two hours of near useless plot and exposition. It could have made me happy cry. Instead I was all but numb with the whiplash, and when I heard “Rey Skywalker” I couldn’t get out of the theatre fast enough.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk on how emotional trauma over fictional characters has all but derailed my Christmas. 

#the rise of skywalker #tros spoilers

[metalandmagi]

Fall 2019 Anime Worth Watching

Wondering what anime to watch now that the jam packed summer season is over? Never fear, we’re into the fall, and there’s even more great shows this season! It’s my last rec list of the year so we’re in the home stretch now!

Full disclaimer, this season is packed with great shows, but a lot of these are not available on Crunchyroll...so here’s a link to a list of where you can watch everything legally on streaming! And I’ll but an (*) by everything that IS on Crunchyroll.

And here’s my recs for every season this year:

Summer 2019

Spring 2019

Winter 2019

And here’s my master list for 2020

New shows!

Chuubyou Gekihatsu-Boy (Outburst Dreamer Boy): A comedy in which a normal girl just wants a peaceful high school life, but finds herself surrounded by a group of ridiculous, overly dramatic boys who are all part of the “hero club” who try to make her school life better by helping her make friends. This is all well and good, but all the boys are delusional in one way or another. For example, one thinks he and his friends are basically Power Rangers, and another is obsessed with fabricating dramatic fake anime backstories for himself. It’s Ouran High School Host Club without the hosting. It’s absolutely hilarious, but it’s really flying under the radar because it’s not on Crunchyroll.

Kabukichou Sherlock: A surprisingly comedic modern version of Sherlock Holmes that takes place in the seedier portions of Japan in which a bunch of the city’s quirky detectives try and hunt down Jack the Ripper. I was not expecting this to be nearly as good as it was. The characters are great, Mrs. Hudson is a transvestite cabaret singer, the soundtrack is bomb, it’s an original anime by Production I.G. AND SHERLOCK EXPLAINS HIS DETECTIVE PROCESS THROUGH MYSTERY SOLVING RAKUGO!!!! 

Babylon: NO, NOT FATE BABYLONIA! This is a mystery/thriller involving a case of illegal clinical research for a pharmaceutical company that leads down a rabbit hole full of murder, suicide, and political intrigue. IT’S LIKE DEATH NOTE AND MONSTER HAD A BABY AND IT’S FREAKING AMAZING! I haven’t been this interested in a mystery/crime anime since Erased. The first episode will definitely leave you...hanging…. The only problem is it’s not on Crunchyroll, so I have a feeling most people won’t know about it because it’s on freaking Amazon Prime!

Hoshiai no Sora (Stars Align): A coming of age sports anime in which a boys soft tennis team sucks so bad that the school will disband them if they don’t win a tournament. And the team captain is so desperate for serious members, he literally pays his childhood friend who recently moved back into town to play on the team. And said childhood friend has an incredibly interesting backstory and struggling family life that ropes you in right away. How is soft tennis different from regular tennis? No clue, but this show is awesome! You can tell by the first episode it is going to be a great coming of age story, with more mature themes of abuse and class difference.

And it’s not the only sports anime with Sora in the title...

*Ahiru no Sora (Sora the Duck): Another sports anime, in which a short, spikey haired boy wants to play basketball (yeah yeah very original) but discovers that his high school basketball team is full of punks! It’s basically what would happen if Izuku Midoriya wanted to be a basketball player. The first few minutes are basically every sports anime you’ve ever seen, BUT it really lives up to its potential by the end of the first episode. It has a likable protagonist, good animation, and the female characters all wear realistic clothes to play basketball in! If you’re a piece of sports anime trash like me, this is definitely the show for you!

No Gun Life: In a detective noir world where everyone has basically become a cyborg, a guy with a gun for a head works to uncover the plans of an evil organization.  That’s it, that’s the whole thing. It’s made by Madhouse AND IT’S A CYBORG WITH A GUN FOR A HEAD! What else do you need?!

Beastars: IT’S JUST ANIME ZOOTOPIA! I’m not even kidding. It’s a school based mystery involving anthropomorphic animals who are faced with the murder of one of their classmates and the disruption of the peaceful coexistence of all types of animals in the school. It involves the whole predator vs prey dynamic and how appearances are deceiving, all with a jarringly serious tone considering everyone’s an animal. The only thing that doesn’t sit right with me is the use of 3D animation...which I notoriously despise no matter how great the show is. But even I am willing to put aside my hatred to keep watching this anime. The characters are interesting, it’s shot really creatively, and I love how ridiculously seriously it takes itself. Apparently it’s going to be on Netflix at some point.

*Shin Chuuka Ichiban (True Cooking Master Boy): It’s Food Wars’ less porny sibling that takes place in 19th century China, where a young boy named Mao is a master chef who travels around spreading his love for cooking! This is a reboot/continuation of an anime based on a manga from the 90s so there’s a really fun retro art style that’s nice to see updated. Apparently it picks up in the middle of the original story, but I haven’t felt like it’s necessary to see the source material to enjoy it or understand it. Also the soundtrack is bomb! It’s a great shounen to watch if you want more cross-cultural cooking anime that’s not straight up porn in your life, and it will definitely make you hungry!

Next seasons and Continuations!

 And don’t forget the summer leftovers, and some shows are getting continuations!

*Chihayafuru season 3: This is an incredibly fantastic underrated sports/club anime about a girl named Chihaya who struggles to find members for her karuta club after her best friend who made her fall in love with the game moves away. Never heard of “karuta”? It’s a physically and mentally challenging traditional Japanese game involving 100 poems written on cards that the players must memorize and locate before their opponent….it makes more sense when you see it I promise. This show is goddamn amazing, with incredibly realistic characters, an amazing game that most people don’t know about, gorgeous animation. It’s hilarious, it’s dramatic, it’s sad, and it’s uplifting all at once. 

This doesn’t premier until October 23, (so you’ve got time to binge the first 2 seasons!) but this is by far my most anticipated show of the season and quite possibly the entire year! I’VE BEEN WAITING SO MANY YEARS FOR ANOTHER SEASON, AND I’M SO PSYCHED!

Kono Oto Tomare (Stop this Sound) season 2: Speaking of club related anime, in case you missed the first season earlier this year, this is an anime about a boy who tries to recruit members for his high school koto club after all his senpais graduate. What’s a koto club you ask? It’s a large Japanese string instrument that no one cares about or plays anymore of course! Their club is endearingly terrible, with literally only one competent person on the team, but they’re aiming for nationals anyway, because...of course they are. This show seems pretty textbook at first, but it really grows on you the further you get. There are great character dynamics, it’s fun, it’s sweet, and there’s cool music that people don’t hear a lot of! If you like sports or club focused anime, give this one a chance!

*Dr. Stone: An action adventure in which all of humanity is mysteriously turned to stone one day. When a genius high school boy named Senku and his….not so genius friend Taiju awaken 3,700 years in the future, the two must rebuild civilization and turn the world back to normal with the power of science! I know pretty much everyone is watching this already, but I just want to reiterate how amazing it is. It is mysterious, educational, hilarious, and it really makes you think about civilization as we know it today. It was one of the best (if not the best) new show of the summer, and I’m so glad it’s getting a full run!

Vinland Saga: THE VIKING ANIME IS GETTING A FULL RUN!!!!!!!! In case you missed this gem in the summer, it’s a historical drama about a young boy named Thorfinn and his journey to avenge his father’s death and become a great warrior. And it’s all while traveling with his enemies through Northern Europe. It’s a fantastic dark, realistic story in a historical setting that filled the void left by Dororo. Plus it’s animated by Wit, so it looks beautiful. The music is great, the characters are intriguing, the story is interesting, AND IT HAS AN AMAZING ANTAGONIST! It has hype written all over it, so I’m pumped for the rest of the season! Unfortunately, you can only find it legally on Amazon Prime, so that’s why no one’s watching it.

*Fire Force: The (unfortunately timed) action/drama where fire fighters with super powers must protect Tokyo from people who are spontaneously combusting and uncover the evil rooted within their own organization. It’s made by the same person who created Soul Eater, and it definitely shows. The animation is high flying and out of this world. It’s worth watching for the action alone. But be warned, the plot and characters are it’s biggest weakness. It will jump between gratuitous fanservice and hijinks and then rocket into moral dilemmas and disturbing situations with no warning. BUT I still like watching it for the action, and in these later episodes the plot has steered itself back on track a lot more, and I’m way more interested in where the story is going now. I’m hoping that means the second half will give us a better sense of the characters. It also has a top tier muscular waifu! 

*My Hero Academia season 4: I’m sure everyone’s already going to be watching MHA, but I guess I’d have my anime fan badge revoked if I didn’t at least mention this one. I may not read the manga, but I know this arc is going to be a good one! I firmly believe this will be a modern classic, so if you haven’t checked it out yet, it’s really worth watching.

And that’s it for this season. I’ll probably do a list at the end of the year of my top shows of 2019, but otherwise, see you in the winter of 2020!

#long post #anime recommendations #fall 2019 anime #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #fire force #dr stone #vinland saga #Chihayafuru #kono oto tomare #stop this sound #shin chuuka ichiban! #beastars #true cooking master boy #no gun life #babylon #ahiru no sora #sora the duck #stars align #hoshiai no sora #kabukichō sherlock #chuubyou gekihatsu boy #UNEDITED BECAUSE THIS WEBSITES A BITCH AND DELETED MY FINAL DRAFT

[signoraviolettavalery]

I’m new to the Roswell New Mexico fandom and I have noticed people,you, don’t really like the creator Carina and I was wondering why.

Ooooh boy. Would you like those answers in alphabetical order, chronological order, order of egregiousness, or order of how much they piss me off? 

I have a lot of issues with Carina, as do a lot of other people. Obviously, not everyone agrees with me, and some of my answers may be controversial (they’re the subject of biiiig debates in fandom). I have no intention of re-opening those debates, so what I write below is a summary of my opinions (many of which I know are shared by at least some others in fandom) for the purposes of answering your question. I’m also putting it all under a cut, because it’s a lot of negativity that some people may want to skip. 

I mention a lot of tweets and interviews in the answer below; I, frankly, don’t want to go searching for and linking to each interview and tweet (and also, Carina has me blocked, for reasons I’ll get into), but everything below has a source that I can find if you super want to read it yourself. 

So, here goes.

Firstly, Carina pisses me off because she is a white, straight woman who is writing about oppressed and marginalized minorities and, quite frankly, doing a bad job of it. She brags constantly about how progressive her show is, how much she wanted to include people of color and comment on things like immigration, how important the Malex storyline is to her, etc, etc, but doesn’t seem to be capable of (or care about) the delicacy, nuance, and care such issues require.

In a panel she did on Roswell (at ATX or NYCC, I think?) she talked about how she had qualms writing about marginalized people from identities she didn’t belong to; she said she was plagued by the question of “should I even be doing this?” Which she then immediately answered with, “but we’re doing it!” and that was that, and that seemed to me to be such a flippant way to answer the question. Like, you’re writing about people whose experiences you don’t share and your response isn’t “I’m going to do research and talk to people,” it’s “eh, I”m doing it anyway”? 

Then there’s the fact that when it comes to representation, Roswell has done a really really shitty job, engaged in harmful tropes, and thrown its characters of color under the bus. Carina insists that she consults with a lot of advocacy groups when writing about the experiences of undocumented immigrants and Latina characters, and yet. Liz simply forgives Max in the span of two episodes, even though he covered up her sister’s murder and was responsible for subjecting her family to racially-motivated hate crimes for a decade. Max, a white man, at no point acknowledges his privilege; he just pouts and whines when she rejects him until the Latina who was fucked over by his use of privilege just...forgives him. It is, in my opinion, incredibly indelicate and kind of insulting. She made the south Asian man (the only Asian character on the show, in fact) the borderline pedophile serial killer who violated Isobel for years, was creepily grooming both Isobel and Rosa, and murdered a bunch of women. She made the only black woman on the show (Maria) the plot device for an entire season: Maria had no storyline. She was there to give information to Liz when Liz was solving Rosa’s murder. She hasn’t known about the aliens all season and was thus excluded from the major show narratives. Her one defining character trait (her loyalty to her friends) was completely thrown away in order to make her a plot device for Malex (because let’s face it, Miluca won’t last and Malex will get back together). Narratively, she was thrown under the bus. 

And then there’s the queer representation, which...don’t get me started. She keeps talking about how much she loves Malex and how they’re her favorites, but she’s also very explicitly said that she finds happy relationships boring and that she uses fiction to work out her own trauma, which means that she’s essentially likely going to put the only same-sex ship on the show through an interminable amount of tragedy (because that’s what queer viewers absolutely need in this day and age). 

Plus, the idea of a straight woman using a fictional same-sex relationship to work out her own issue makes me really, really uncomfortable, because she’s made it clear that she fundamentally doesn’t understand the queer experience. She says she consults with advocacy groups when she’s writing queer characters (she won’t actually name these LGBT advocacy groups, which doesn’t make me sideye her at all), but I have doubts about whether she listens to them. I mean, she said, after the season 1 finale aired, that Michael going to Maria has nothing to do with her being a woman, even though she also explicitly said Michael wants something “easy,” and a same-sex relationship in Roswell, as it’s presented in canon, can never be easy. Roswell is canonically a homophobic, bigoted town, and Malex’s trauma stems largely from homophobia. Their relationship issues stem (not entirely, but largely) from them being the victims of homophobic abuse and a homophobic hate crime. Being with Maria means Michael never has to worry about any of those things, and the fact that Carina doesn’t seem to conceive of this is mind-boggling to me. 

Then there’s the fact that Maria...basically outed Michael to Liz, and this doesn’t seem to be a problem. Of course, maybe they’ll address it in season 2, I don’t know. But, Carina basically wrote a woman who has been best friends with a gay guy for more than a decade as casually outing someone (when she tells Liz that Michael is Museum Guy). The fact that this is a problem doesn’t seem to cross her mind for a second when she tells Liz, even though this is information Michael has never told her himself and they’ve known each other for a decade. It’s not something Carina’s ever mentioned in the numerous post-finale interviews she did. And frankly, it doesn’t matter who Maria outed Michael to; the fact that she’s capable of it when best friends with a gay guy in a town like Roswell, when Maria has been written as a loyal and understanding friend up to now, again suggests to me that Carina just does not comprehend the queer experience. 

(Also, technically, all the Isobel/Rosa hints, then it turning out that actually Noah was possessing Isobel, screams queerbaiting to me)

And then there’s the mess that is the love triangle. I’m of the camp that things that it’s complete and utter bullshit that contributes to the stereotype of bisexual people as promiscuous, though I know there’s people who think it’s good representation. It shows that she’s more interested in her particular (and frankly, kind of esoteric) storytelling preferences more than she cares about representation or continuity. The love triangle is, frankly, really badly written, and nothing about Maria developing “feelings” for Michael (or him for her, honestly) is in any way believable. Maria getting with Michael behind Alex’s back requires throwing out Maria’s only character trait (her loyalty and commitment to being a good friend). But Carina ~has~ to have her love triangle, characterization or continuity be damned. 

Speaking of storytelling, Carina is kind of...a bad writer. Look, I love the characters on Roswell, and I love the world she created, and it had some truly beautiful moments. But let’s just admit the season 1 plot was a mess. There were so many plot holes. Who knows what? Does Alex know Liz knows about aliens and vice versa? Does Alex know about Rosa, or just about aliens? Why did they spend episode 9 establishing that Alex is taking over project Sheppard to find the alien serial killer, only to have him be missing from the episode (1x11) where they find the alien serial killer? Does Alex know that it’s Noah? If Michael’s hand got broken right before he went to cover up Rosa’s murder, why did Liz think it couldn’t have been Michael “because his hand was broken then”? If Isobel is an event planner (a busy and demanding job) how did they manage to cover up her being missing for so many weeks? If Malex went straight from the museum to the toolshed, when did Alex have time to tell Maria about Museum Guy? What is Alex’s rank? (it changes from the pilot to the show). I could go on. Like, I just don’t have a lot of trust in the narrative going forward, in character and emotional continuity, in a fulfilling story for the characters I love, given that Carina seems to have a basic inability to so much as google (”my entropy changes”? that makes no sense), let alone write a story that makes sense. 

Part of the reason she’s not a very good writer, though, is because she doesn’t seem to like criticism. She insists she listens to it from people who matter and whose judgment she trusts, but, um, the mess that is the narrative suggests otherwise to me. The fact that she wrote in the love triangle suggests otherwise; it screams to me that it’s something she just had to have, regardless of whether it made narrative sense. She also literally blocks fans on Twitter who give her any kind of criticism. I don’t mean hate and vitriol, I mean criticism. She complains about how she, a public figure, a showrunner with a show that has millions of viewers, wants to log in to twitter and only see positive things and have fun interactions with friends. And I get it, criticism can be exhausting. But her job is literally to bring viewers to the CW. It is to tell a good story, and, if she wants to be as woke and progressive as she insists she is, it is to listen to different people - including fans. If she wants to shoot the shit with friends on Twitter, maybe she should get a private account. But I personally believe that she can’t use queer and marginalized characters to work out her own trauma, with no understanding of those people’s experiences, and then demand that people only ever praise her for it. It reminds me of the debate about criticism in fic comments, actually: some fic writers don’t want any negative comments. Which is fine if you’re writing fic for fun. Carina’s a professional writer with a TV show, who is getting paid. Insulating herself from literally any and all objections from the audience she’s writing for is, in my opinion, stupid, and also incredibly self-centered if she’s writing about people who’s experiences she doesn’t share. 

Honorable mentions, probably not worth getting into: 

She has like, a really creepy crush on Michael Vlamis, and even though she’s technically his boss, she’s constantly basically...thirsting over him on Twitter and Instagram in very uncomfortable ways

Max’s little speech to Michael in 1x11 about how he felt “everything,” every part of the abuse Michael suffered, and how guilty he felt about it, was just absolutely horrifying and tone deaf. Max, a character with great privilege, basically making all of Michael’s abuse about himself and how guilty it made him feel and acting like he can in any way share or understand Michael’s experience was just in every way gross, but clearly intended to make Max ~compelling~ and get the brothers to start talking and become closer and it just again shows a complete misunderstanding of the experiences of people less fortunate than her. 

Which, in short, all means that I have absolutely zero faith in Season 2. I’m not in the least bit excited for it. I think she’ll completely let us down, and I expect a lot more of the same tone-deafness and lack of nuance in relation to complex issues and marginalized characters. I think she’ll put us through the wringer, emotionally, for the sake of writing angst rather than telling a good story. 

Anyway, hope that answered your question, anon. 

#carina adly mackenzie #ask #roswell new mexico #negativity #roswell negativity #roswell wank #Anonymous

[cherry-valentine]

Winter 2020 Anime Season

Here’s what I’m watching:

Id: Invaded is easily the best show of the season. If anyone remembers the 2000 Jennifer Lopez film “The Cell”, it’s a bit like that (with someone going into a virtual reality version of a killer’s subconscious). In this series, data can be collected at crime scenes to form “id wells” (which can be formed from anyone who has “killing intent”). A person can then dive into these wells and explore the killer’s id, with the hopes of identifying the killer or perhaps finding a missing victim. When the person is inside the well, they take on the identity of a Great Detective and must work to solve a mystery, all while having no memories of who or where they actually are. The twist is that only serial killers can dive into the wells. The protagonist takes the name Sakaido when he’s in these wells (and I’m gonna keep calling him that because his real name is hard to spell). Sakaido is a very interesting character, a former cop who, we learn early on, lost his family in a particularly brutal fashion (making it easy to guess how he ended up meeting the requirements to dive into the wells). We see others exploring the wells, such as the adorable and ruthless lady cop Hondomachi and the notorious murderer Fukuda, known as the “Perforator” because he likes to drill holes into people’s heads (and prepare yourself to fall in love with this endlessly charming psychopath, because you definitely will). Many of the id wells are visually very interesting, as they represent the often warped and twisted mindsets of various serial killers. The character designs are cool and the music is fantastic, with incredibly good opening and ending themes. Highly recommended to anyone who likes crime fiction with a twist or is just looking for something fresh and new in anime.

Case Files of Jeweler Richard is this season’s pretty, soothing, low key show, following a college-aged young man named Seigi who meets and then starts working for a jeweler named Richard (who is European I guess?). Together, they solve low stakes mysteries involving jewels, gemstones, etc. The show is very pretty, with mild drama (mostly relating to Richard’s surprisingly checkered past), and fun character dynamics. Richard is calm, impeccably dressed, and well mannered; Seigi is a good-intentioned college kid who tends to speak and act before he thinks, but the two of them form a solid friendship - or perhaps more. The series definitely drops plenty of hints that their relationship could become romantic (and seems to take a progressive-for-anime approach to same sex relationships, including an episode that features a very sympathetic portrayal of a lesbian trying to force herself into a straight relationship and making herself miserable as a result). It also drops hints that Seigi has a crush on a girl he goes to college with as well, so who knows? Most of the series is episodic, but seems to be developing an overarching plot in the latter half. Not the most exciting show this season, but definitely worth watching.

Smile Down the Runway is a shounen series with an unusual topic: fashion design and modeling. It has two protagonists, one who dreams of being a top model and walking in Paris Fashion Week (but is considered too short), and another who dreams of being a top fashion designer with his own brand (but lacks the funds to go to a proper fashion school). When both are on the verge of giving up on their dreams, they meet and decide to pursue their dreams together. Ikuto, the designer, is easy to relate to. He’s talented and hard-working, but being poor, as well as family obligations, have beaten him down to the point that he’s stopped believing his dreams are possible as the series begins. Chiyuki, the model, is the more dynamic character. She doesn’t mind steam rolling her way through anyone who would get in her way, but even she has moments of insecurity, making her someone you can root for. Several of the adult characters are despicable garbage people who enjoy brutally crushing the dreams of the younger characters, which would be fine if they were set up to be villains. The problem for me is that the show seems to be trying to frame them as actually caring about the youngsters. This is especially annoying in the case of Chiyuki’s father, whom the show is trying to portray as a loving father who is actually proud and supportive of his daughter. But, see, thoroughly tearing her down, telling her she has no talent, and that her dreams are impossible (all in front of others) is NOT what a supportive, loving parent does. Trust me. I’ve had enough experience with parents who tear their children down at every opportunity to be able to tell you that is not support or love, and the show suggesting otherwise is extremely irritating to me. Otherwise, the show is a lot of fun. If you’ve ever enjoyed an episode of Project Runway, get on this immediately. The art is appropriately stylish and colorful. Overall an entertaining show.

Haikyuu!! Season Four is, in my opinion, a lot better than the previous season. As I wrote back then, my main problem with season three was that it consisted entirely of one long volleyball match. And while I do enjoy the matches/games/races/etc. in sports anime, my favorite parts are often the scenes of the characters training or having wacky hijinks and running into rival teams. Season four has so far focused a lot of its runtime on training, with both Hinata and Kageyama going to different training camps with members of different teams. Haikyuu!! as a series does humor and character interaction very well, and these episodes only reinforced that. The animation is great, and the art is still unique, with its trademark interesting character designs and warm, earthy color palette. That opening theme is pretty neat too.

Carry Over Shows From Previous Seasons: Black Clover Diamond no Ace Ahiru no Sora Boku no Hero Academia

Best of Season: Best New Show: Id: Invaded Best Opening Theme: Black Clover Best Ending Theme: Id: Invaded Best New Male Character: Fukuda (Id: Invaded) Best New Female Character: Hondomachi (Id: Invaded)

#Anime #Anime Reviews #Seasonal Anime #Winter 2020 Anime #Text #Id: Invaded #Case Files of Jeweler Richard #Smile Down the Runway #Haikyuu!!

[bakudomaster]

Pushing Daisies

Hello again everyone! It’s time for another in-depth analysis of a show that I’ve watched. This time I’ve picked a show that I have recently rediscovered - question: do you guys like pies and corpses...?

[The facts were these]

PREMISE

In the fall of 2007, a quirky little show known as Pushing Daisies premiered on ABC. Taking inspiration from all things kitsch and Wes Anderson, the story centered around Ned (no, not THAT Ned), a self taught baker specializing in pies who has the unique ability to touch dead beings and bring them back to life. As with many superheroes, his powers did not come without restriction: once touched, should Ned touch the “undeaded” once more, they would become dead permanently. Also, once Ned touches the dead, they exist consequence free for only 60 seconds before something living in close proximity has to die to balance out the cosmic scales.

A bundle of anxiety and intimacy issues on a good day, Ned uses his special skills to moonlight as a part time private investigator to help full time investigator Emerson Cod solve various murder cases and collect reward money. One day, it turns out that the case they have to solve is that of Ned’s childhood sweetheart, one Charlotte “Chuck” Charles. Ned takes a risk and resurrects her beyond the 60 second rule, meaning that someone else has to take her place in the great beyond.

Together with Ned’s waitress (and unrequited admirer), the quartet must solve mysteries, keep the secret of Chuck being alive again from her eccentric aunts and come face to face with all of their emotional issues.

Sadly, the show was cancelled before it ever took off, but more on that later on.

CAST & CHARACTERS

Lee Pace as Ned - the man with the magic touch, he owns a restaurant called “The Pie Hole”, where he makes... well, pies; what did you expect? Ned discovered his gift/curse at a young age when he resurrected his dog after being run over and his mother after she suffered a brain aneurysm. He also discovered that his powers did not come without consequence, as the cost of bringing his mother back to life was Chuck’s father dying. Abandoned at boarding school by his father, Ned grew up and opened his restaurant where he also helps Emerson Cod solve many murder mysteries for the rewards of justice and money. Due to his powers and abandonment issues, Ned has trouble opening up to anyone and carries around a great deal of anxiety. Lee Pace was previously unknown before the show, but he rightfully gained much recognition afterwards, going on to make a few bad movies before getting roles in the Hobbit and MCU franchises.

Anna Friel as Charlotte “Chuck” Charles - Ned’s childhood sweetheart and neighbor, Chuck grew up with her father, having believed that her mother died giving birth to her. Once the universe decided to claim her father as payment for Ned’s mother being brought back to life, she was raised by her shut-in aunts and never allowed herself to travel beyond the gates of her house for their sake. Deciding to break that rule, she was killed when she went on a cruise, after which she was revived the socially anxious Pie Maker Jesus. Chuck is a very optimistic and sincere girl who enthusiastically takes to solving cases. She carries around a bit of existential depression in her, what with being previously dead and all, but she cares for her family and friends very deeply. She can never touch her boyfriend again, but she’s very happy to just generally be around him. Anna Friel had a bit of a generic career before the show, but all that changed once it was cancelled. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for her work here.

Chi McBride as Emerson Cod - a jaded private investigator who believes in nothing but the almighty dollar, Emerson frequently contracts Ned’s skill to revive murder victims, ask them how they died and who killed them, solve their cases and collect easy reward money. He had a romance with one of his PI targets a few years before the series began, resulting in daughter who is now missing. He is the author of a children’s pop-up book, hoping to get it published so that his daughter will use it and come find him instead of the other way around. He does not like the complications that come with having Chuck around nor does he care for Ned’s frequent ethical dilemmas or Olive’s stubborn charms; but he does appreciate all of them in his own way. Chi McBride previously starred in Boston Public and went on to star in short lived shows such as Human Target and Golden Boy before getting a recurring role on the new Hawaii Five-O

Kristin Chenoweth as Olive Snook - a former jockey turned waitress, Olive works at the Pie Hole, lives next door to her boss and carries a very strong, yet unrequited love for our Ned. She does not take kindly to Chuck suddenly appearing and gaining the affection she had worked so hard without reward. She believes that Chuck faked her death and is locked out of the loop as to what is really going on. After some snooping around of her own, she makes firm friendships with Chuck’s aunts, Chuck herself (they even become roommates) and even Emerson. She also learns to accept that Ned will never see her the way he sees the dead girl and tries to move on. Kristin was a very well established Broadway actress before the show and won an Emmy for her role in the show’s second season. She went on to do more plays and more TV shows, with a few guest starring roles here and there.

Swoosie Kurtz as Lily Charles - a cynical and sarcastic agoraphobe, Lily was once part of a synchronized swimming duo called the Darling Mermaid Darlings with her sister Vivian. They toured all over the world before settling down to raise Chuck once her father died. She’s fond of martinis, guns and does not take kindly to strangers... or anyone for that matter. She also happens to be carrying a few secrets of her own as Olive find out and is devastated when she finds out Chuck dies at the beginning of the show. Ms Kurtz is a very acclaimed actress, having an Emmy and two Tonys to her name. She went on to star as Joyce Flynn on Mike & Molly after the show.

Ellen Greene as Vivian Charles - Chuck’s other agoraphobic aunt, Vivian was the other half of the Darling Mermaid Darlings. She’s much more compassionate and delicate than her older sister, but is lost and sad after her niece’s death. Wanting to explore the world in all senses of the phrase beyond her house, she finds herself frequently held back by Lily’s stubbornness... but is that all that’s keeping her back. She was also once engaged to Chuck’s father. Ms Greene is renowned for her role in Little Shop of Horrors (both musical and film versions).

STRUCTURE, DEVELOPMENT & WRITING

Described as a “forensic fairytale”, Pushing Daisies drew inspiration from all the 20′s right through to the 50′s. For those who haven’t seen the show, have you ever watched the Wes Anderson segment in the Family Guy episode Three Directors? You’d be surprised at how similar the setting is, even though it’s a parody. You could even say it has a very Tim Burton feel to it, and who doesn’t love Tim Burton?

Combining the murder mystery and fantasy show genres was not new at all. Medium started up 2 years before PD; whilst Missing & Tru Calling debuted the year before that. If PD was going to be different, it needed another element to make it a success, critically at least. It found that piece by embracing full on quirkiness and adding equal amounts of emotional gratification instead of the darker themes of the aforementioned predecessors, it could carve a niche for itself in the late 00′s television market. PD didn’t serve up thumping adrenaline in any of Ned’s pies, but it didn’t need to: there were other shows who could do that better. It aimed for something else entirely, making the crime element a portion of itself rather than the whole focus.

In this sense, the show followed through with the more intellectual sarcasm starting to appear more frequently at the time (thank you Tina Fey), but tempered it with sincerity. Characters were allowed to be jaded or anxious, but never at the expense of the lighthearted atmosphere. The show’s scripts were also tightly consistent with character development, often pairing very unlikely characters for humorous or heartwarming moments. Characters also took on very familiar tropes in a very unique way - instead of endlessly pining for the pie maker who could never be hers, Olive attempted many a times to get over him, finally accepting that friends instead of lovers was better than slicing Ned out of her life completely. Emerson was a hard-boiled private eye, who wanted his AWOL daughter to find him instead of the other way around.

As with many shows airing on ABC at the time, PD carried a family secret/scandal that affected almost every character, forcing them to go to great lengths to keep it buried once the truth had been discovered. It fit in well with the general theme as opposed to the other examples who used it for shock value or to prolong viewership.

Sadly, the pie maker and his friends weren’t destined to remain on TV for long. The show was one of the victims of the 2007/8 writers strike, forcing it’s first season to end after only 9 episodes. Production resumed afterwards, however the second season only premiered an entire 10 months after the first one did, with only a quarter of the viewership. ABC pulled the plug through the second season in 2008, leaving the final three episodes unaired in the US until May 2009. Pushing Daisies was... pushing daisies - eh? Eh? Ok, I’ll see myself out.

BULLSEYES & IMPROVEMENTS

What the show gets right:

The general offbeat, yet pleasant mood

Olive Snook - for a relative outsider (she’s not part of Emerson’s PI business nor does she truly know Ned’s secret), she worms her way into all mystery related plot lines, proving herself to be a badass sidekick along the way

Speaking of Olive, she is wonderfully unique. Though she sees herself as a rival to Chuck for Ned’s love, she bonds with the previously dead girl over taking care of Lily and Vivian, even rooming with her. She also doesn’t go down the tsundere route - she’s not afraid to discuss her feelings maturely with Ned and accept her defeat in amore.

Emerson and Olive frequently team up together, even though they’re as different as night and day. Olive proves herself so competent that Emerson offers her a position at his firm should she ever get tired of The Pie Hole

The sets and cinematography contribute to the fairy tale escapism mood. I wish more shows did this nowadays

Olive’s songs, especially her renditions of Eternal Flame and Hello (Lionel Richie’s version, though I’m sure Adele’s one would be equally perfect, if not more so)

Ned coming to terms with his abandonment and intimacy issues by slowly letting people in

Jim Dale as the eloquent narrator. Never have exposition and narration been so quaint

Vivian’s delicate melancholy when she realizes her boyfriend abandoned” her and now she has to take the rose colored glasses off

Digby - enough said

The show doesn’t get much wrong, but then again it couldn’t have considering the extremely short run. Had they received a full season at least once, I’m sure the tension in the various mysteries could have been a bit tiresome. Instead, here is a wishlist of sorts:

Who Dwight Dixon really was and why he was obsessed with the pocket watches

See Ned connect with his twin half brothers a bit more

What did Chuck’s father get up to after he took off

Explore Ned’s dad character, who he was and why he abandoned his two families

A slow burner of Emerson’s missing daughter plot

Emerson’s relationship with his mother (Debra Mooney is a hoot)

Delve into more of Vivian’s anger at her sister in the last episode

CULTURAL IMPACT

PD was a critically acclaimed gem right from it’s very first episode. That continued through the 22 episode run. Unlike its peers, it didn’t chop and change plot elements to see what worked and what didn’t. It chose a direction and it stuck with it.

Many fans have expressed their desire to see the show revived, claiming injustice at the fact that it was gone too soon. I think part of why it was cancelled, apart from the production troubles it faced, was that it was a bit ahead of its time. Considering it as a whole by today’s standards, it seems something better suited to Netflix rather than mainstream TV. It was a very specific show that needed a very specific mindset to watch. It didn’t have the commercial broadband appeal that Desperate Housewives or even Weeds had.

Could it be revived today? I think it’s in a very prime position to at least be considered. Creator Bryan Fuller is currently busy with Star Trek: Discovery, but I’m sure he could find time, at least in a consulting capacity. Streaming services offer a much more diverse set of original productions, something cable and network services are struggling to keep up with - it’s an environment that Pushing Daisies would thrive in. It comes down to the cast - Lee has a quietly booming movie career, but it would be nice to see him on TV again. Both Chi and Anna are busy with other TV shows, but I could see them working this in during their inter-season breaks. Kristin has just come off a cancelled TV show, so she’d probably say yes.

Let’s hold thumbs - after all, these guys are in the business of bringing the dead back to life

WHERE TO WATCH IT

The series is available on Amazon’s Prime Video service

If Amazon hasn’t licensed it in your region, you can find episodes from various channels on Dailymotion (just search for the titles)

#pushing daisies #lee pace #ned #anna friel #charlotte charles #chuck #kristin chenoweth #olive snook #chi mcbride #emerson cod #swoosie kurtz #lily charles #ellen greene #vivian charles #bryan fuller #bring back pushing daisies #literary analysis

[thebestplltheories]

PLL The Perfectionists - Season 1 Finale (and Season 1) Review

Here we go friends, season 1 of the spinoff is over and I have a lot to say. In this post I’m gonna review the finale but also season 1 in general.

Dare I say it, I think season 1 as a whole was flawless. Sure, some episodes were better than others, but no episode was down-right horrible, boring and without a purpose. All 10 episodes were great as the plot was constantly progressing. We started off with totally innocent characters, doing their best to be perfect in a high-pressure and competitive school. A person who loosely connects them is murdered and as the investigation unravels, the innocent people get pulled together by forces outside of their control. Consequently, they become best friends. Caitlin’s mother put it really well in episode 9: Caitlin got hit by a car, was dating someone who got murdered, is friends with a fugitive’s daughter and is hiding a bag of money. How did all this non-sense happen to someone who was so innocent and perfect 9 episodes ago? That’s what I love. That’s what’s entertaining for me. As Claire said, they’re trying to dig themselves out of a hole but they keep falling and the hole is getting deeper and darker. This whole plot about being almost strangers and then best friends is a plot that could have very easily been squished into the pilot, and at the time, that’s what I wanted. But now looking back, I really appreciate that they stretched this across 10 episodes. It feels organic that this friendship didn’t just happen the day after Nolan died. It happened after 10 episodes of chaos and that’s not forced. It’s realistic. So overall season 1 achieved everything a season 1 should achieve: it brought the characters together slowly over time and reinforced that bad things are going to happen to these previously perfect people.

Casting is spectacular. I’m absolutely sucked into the worlds of Caitlin, Dylan and Ava and whilst the addictive story is definitely contributing to these feelings, I need to give a shoutout to Sydney, Eli and Sofia. They’ve achieved the one thing PLL did that no other show has done for me since PLL ended: they created extremely loveable and addictive characters. Sure, I watch heaps of other shows, but there’s just something about the core cast on a PLL show that is different. 

Some quick reactions from the finale:

This whole time we were wondering what they will call this new enemy, yet it was right in front of us this whole time in the episode title! Not only was “The Professor” right in front of us, but the title literally says ‘enter’. You know... say hello to the new A. That’s essentially what the title of the episode says. Now I feel dumb for not guessing that. More thoughts on The Professor later.

"Jealous much?” was a shocker! I love Mona’s confidence. Even when Claire says “that’s not how this works”, she insists, and gets what she wants.

I’m so glad Mona is here in this show. I love the new characters and I would be watching even without Ali and Mona, but Mona just fits in so well. Like PLL, this seems to be another game, and Mona is falling back into old habits. She not only wants to win, but she wants to know who is smart enough to create such a game, and why and how such a game is created. “Dying before I find out who you are bitch!” Loved that!

Mona’s red coat... her dolls in her apartment... I appreciate that!

Blowing up the RV was unnecessary. I think they did that just to put an action shot in the promo, to attract viewers. That’s not a complaint, just an observation. 

PLL always succeeds at making the town feel like its own character. Rosewood was a town that kept attracting misery and murder, like a person. And now we have Beacon Heights; a town that demands perfection so much that you get kicked out when you fail to be perfect. 

I think the storyline with Dylan and Luke was not necessary for this finale. It’s a fantastic story that should be told, just not in a finale. I wouldn’t say it’s a filler story, but it’s definitely not central to this professor story.

As someone studying psychology, and is in their final undergraduate year, I don’t think it’ll help as much as Alison thinks it will (in terms of working out who the Professor is). She can study psychology all she wants but that doesn’t really give insight into a person’s twisted game. Anyway.

I kinda ship Mona and Mason! You could see it on Mona’s face that it was hard for her to lie to Mason like that. I guess she’s extra motivated to solve this game now so that she can go back to Mason.

Add “your lips are moving but I have no idea what you’re talking about” to Ava’s list of iconic one-liners! Everyone loves insulting Booker and I live for it. Mona’s “yes you need a makeover” comes to mind too!

I hope Booker doesn’t go away. She lost this mini game but she’s a great villain.

I hope that’s the end of the story of Ava’s father. I’m just not compelled by this one story, sorry. All I really care about is that Ava stays at BHU (because she has the money to pay). I don’t really care about her relationship with her father. Maybe this is due to the casting of the father? I don’t know, but I’m not drawn into this story like the others and I can’t pinpoint why. 

What a full circle moment, playing Poker Face in the final scene like they opened with Poker Face in the pilot! It’s a small detail but it just makes the show feel cohesive. Like a distinct beginning and end. Can’t explain it.

So season 1 is over and they STILL have not tapped into that amazing storyline they started in the pilot... “it’s exactly like you imagined it”. Surely the Professor will bring this up during the social experiment.

Beacon Guard is going to start to get annoying. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE this element that someone is always watching and listening, and that someone hijacked this system. But if they really need to find a safe spot every time they want to talk... surely the season 2 finale will be them destroying Beacon Guard!

The Professor! Wow. I’m... shook. 

With A, we were never really sure if it’s just a sick twisted game that someone is having fun with, or, if A actually chose these Liars because of a personal vendetta. But with The Professor, it is clear from day 1 that this is a game. It’s a social experiment. I fucking LOVE that idea. 

Again playing with that theme I touched on before: I love how previously innocent people are getting sucked into madness. 10 episodes ago, everyone was leading a seemingly perfect life and now they’re part of a social experiment that they’re forced participate in because they were recorded staging a crime scene and being involved in a shooting. That’s so twisted and it just really sucks to be them.

I lowkey want to cry for Ali and Mona. They went to hell and back in Rosewood and now here goes another potential 4 year mystery. Will they EVER live in peace? I mean, for the sake of this show, I hope the Professor makes this game as twisted as possible. It’s entertaining. But at the back of my mind I am crying for Ali and Mona. 

When all their phones rang/vibrated at the same time, I felt at home?? At that exact moment I had a rush of nostalgia. It’s close enough to the original series to provide that nostalgia that we all want, but it’s distinct enough to be its own show. I love this Professor storyline because I think they’ve found that perfect middle-ground.

I hope they don’t give the Professor a black hoodie, but if they really want to make this as iconic as A, they absolutely need to give this villain an outfit. 

Is the Professor a short/mini story arc? Or is this the series-defining story, like how A defined PLL? Will there be a Big Professor and Uber Professor (lack of better terms)? I’d love for this to be the series-defining story and enemy. I’m all for this social experiment. 

Did anyone notice the Professor speaking in the third person? Is that the writers hinting that there is more than one person here; the Professor AND a helper? Kinda like an A-team? Or was speaking in the third person just the way of emphasising the new name for the enemy?

So many questions about the Professor!

Tonally, this finale felt like a premiere. It raised questions rather than answered questions. It told us that there IS an enemy, rather than tell us WHO the enemy is. That’s an odd structure, but I’m totally okay with it for 2 reasons. Firstly, because I’m simply just not hungry for answers. The mystery is still new and fresh. We didn’t get our first major answer on PLL (who is original A) for 2 years. I’m not expecting an answer as to who killed Nolan within 10 episodes. Secondly, it’s fitting because the entire first season was spent establishing that friendship. That needed to happen before such an enemy was introduced. It would be awkward watching strangers get sucked into this social experiment together. Now that they’re friends and they trust each other, it’ll be more entertaining to see them respond to the Professor.

There’s so much to theorise about now! But I need to say it again: this show is suffering from a major lack of a quantity of characters. Every scene revolves around Mona, Ali, Ava, Caitlin, Dylan, Taylor, Booker and Claire. That’s literally all there is. There’s the occasional side character like Mason and Zac, but no one is really key to the mystery like Noel, Jenna, etc were in season 1 of PLL from the get-go. I like that we met Luke, and I think season 2 really needs to prioritise ASAP increasing the quantity of characters. The lack of characters makes me think that we have not met the Professor yet. It’s obviously not Mona, Ali, Ava, Caitlin or Dylan. Maybe Taylor, she was missing. That’s a theory topic. Maybe Claire. Not Zac. Maybe Mason. And my list of suspects ends there? Again, season 2 needs to increase the quantity of characters.

Now I’m just gonna sound like a broken record, but in the extremely low chances that someone at Freeform catches this post (hey, the cast reacted to Tumblr posts the other month so we know they do snoop here)... I need to say it again: it’s no secret that the ratings are low, so you’ve got a lot of work to do for season 2 to get this show the recognition it deserves. Please consider reading this post. Do not give up on this show. It has really high potential. It just needs a few tweaks in terms of promo and supply system. The low ratings do NOT correlate to low quality. 

Look at me, writing massive posts like this! I haven’t done this for a TV show since PLL ended. Only this show will get me intrigued enough to come online and talk. There’s something about the PLL universe that distinguishes it from other shows, in the best way possible!

#pll #pretty little liars #pll the perfectionists #pretty little liars the perfectionists #the perfectionists #pll tp #plltp #freeform #tp #pll finale #the professor

[tinsley-goldsworth]

band-aids don’t fix bullet holes (chapter 1)

read chapter 1 on ao3!

 summary: from the start, ricky and c.c. were the best of friends but ricky didn’t know c.c. wanted to be more than that and in the end, everything came full circle

Wc: 1633

Tw: Graphic Descriptions of a murder

a/n: this is set in the buzzfeed unsolved universe and i kind of tweaked the canon (even though it hasn’t fully been established) to fit the plot!

~

From a young age, Ricky Goldsworth and C.C. Tinsley were the best of friends. They grew up together in a small neighborhood and spent the majority of their childhood running around and wreaking havoc, in an innocent, child-like way of course. Ricky was the one who always came up with the ideas and C.C. always tagged along, glad to help out a friend. The adults in the neighborhood found their friendship endearing and never really got mad at the two friends for the troubles they got themselves into.

As they grew up, Ricky and C.C. discovered their interest in mystery books and furthermore, murders. They loved reading Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes books and while C.C. was more invested in the detective work and the forensics behind certain cases, Ricky was more interested in the creativity of the murders. When they graduated elementary school and moved onto middle school, the duo began reading about murder mysteries that occurred in real life and enjoyed watching detective shows.

In 7th grade, Francesca also joined their small friend group because she also loved murder mysteries and detective books and introduced Ricky and C.C. to the world of secret agents and spies. She explained that she wanted to be a spy one day and got Ricky and C.C. hooked on a great spy television show. During Halloween, the trio decided to dress up in loosely related costumes so Francesca dressed up as an FBI agent, Ricky dressed up as Jack the Ripper, and C.C. dressed up as Sherlock. Their costumes captured the true oddball nature of the friends.

Many people would assume that C.C. and Ricky would grow apart and branch off to find new friends in high school but they were still the best of friends in high school. Their love for murder mysteries didn’t die either and C.C. and Ricky took a forensic science class together during sophomore year. One day, when they were doing DNA analysis in class, Ricky had turned to C.C. and mused, “Isn’t ironic that as you’re learning how to solve crimes, you’re also learning how to commit a crime and get away with it? Like with all the stuff we learned this year in forensic science, I could, hypothetically, murder somebody right now and not be caught.”

“If our forensic science teacher heard that, I think she would have a heart attack,” C.C. responded and the two laughed before returning to their work, never addressing that remark again.

It wasn’t until junior year when C.C. realized that he was crushing on his best friend. He never consciously thought about how attractive Ricky and thought that wanting to hold your best friend’s hand was normal which, to his surprise, apparently was not. C.C. found himself constantly admiring Ricky, no matter where he was or what time it was. He thought that Ricky looked beautiful when he was stressed about the chemistry test when he was laughing, and even when he was simply watching television.

Because the town C.C. was in wasn’t very progressive and kind of homophobic, it was difficult for C.C. to accept his feelings. He found it difficult to accept that he liked boys in addition to liking girls and it took him about half a year to finally come out to himself. After moving on from that obstacle, C.C. had to accept that he was crushing on his best friend and that his best friend probably was unaware of this development of feelings. Even if Ricky did know, he probably didn’t feel the same about C.C., which is why C.C. never ever wanted to admit his feelings aloud.

Francesca used her abnormally accurate observational skills to quickly determine that C.C. had a crush on Ricky and C.C. knew that Fran knew, but didn’t want to admit it, partly out of shame. On a sunny afternoon, Ricky, C.C., and Francesca were studying for finals together and Ricky had to bike back to school because he left his notebook in his locker, which left C.C. alone with Francesca. The moment Ricky closed the front door, Francesca took her opportunity and excitedly asked, “So, when are you going to ask him out? You clearly are into Ricky! You need to confess your love!”

“Fran, have you been watching spy dramas that are centered around romance lately? Sorry to break it to you but love in real life is very different from fictional love,” C.C. awkwardly replied, frowning a bit as he returned to studying. Francesca pried the notebook away from his hands and continued on as if she hadn’t heard his words.

“I’m pretty sure Ricky is into you too! I can’t really read him but I think he likes you back. You should totally ask him out!” Fran was speaking a mile a minute, a habit that became evident whenever she was overly enthusiastic. She looked like a little excited puppy, clearly ecstatic about the idea of C.C. and Ricky dating.

“I’ll do it when I’m ready,” C.C. lied, hoping that would make Fran drop the subject and she did, dialing her excitement levels back down to the minimum. Fran didn’t mention C.C.’s crush on the oblivious Ricky Goldsworth but would always raise her eyebrows anytime C.C. began staring at Ricky with lovestruck eyes.

Much to Francesca’s dismay, C.C. wasn’t ready to admit his crush on Ricky even after they finished senior year. He knew that he might not ever get the chance to admit his love for Ricky after graduation but decided to bite his tongue and hold his peace forever, hoping that he would be able to move on and find a girl in college that would help him get over this dumb crush of his.

Regardless of C.C.’s remorse, graduating from high school was a sentimental experience. The three friends were going to different colleges and parting ways so they tried to make the best use of their last few days together. Fran was going to New York to study sociology, C.C. was going to Boston to study forensic science, and Ricky was going to California to study criminal psychology and the three had consulted with each other before choosing majors. They spent the last few days together up all night, going through photos and taking a stroll down memory lane. When they officially had to part ways and move into their college dormitories, Francesca, C.C., and Ricky held a party for themselves, promised to stay in touch, and went off to college.

Unfortunately, C.C. lost contact with Ricky halfway through freshman year but occasionally texted Francesca. C.C. tried contacting Ricky several times but his texts never sent and Francesca couldn’t get a hold of him either. Even Ricky’s parents didn’t know what was going on with Ricky and claimed to not have seen him for weeks. C.C. knew this was a red flag and something was wrong but was too busy with school work to take time to investigate.

It wasn’t until C.C. got a job as a private investigator when he looked into the case of Ricky Goldsworth. He searched all public records and every lead he found led to a dead end. C.C. finally gave up on the case, deciding that Ricky probably moved to a new country to start a new life.

Then, he was assigned to a new, intriguing case at 11 pm on a Monday night. The investigation agency refused to disclose the particular details of the case, insisting that he showed up to the crime scene before looking at the gathered information so C.C. drove to the crime scene. When he arrived at the crime scene, he was greeted with one of the most gruesome sights he would ever see in his entire life.

The victim’s body was sprawled on the body, limbs splayed out and bent in crooked positions. His mouth was agape and his eyes were open and devoid of any emotions. There a giant hole in his chest where the murderer tore out his heart strategically, reminding C.C. of the Jack the Ripper murder. Dried blood had formed a dark pool around the victim’s body and there was no murder weapon around. The murder was so bizarre and unique that it was almost poetic and outlandishly creative.

The victim’s name was Harold, according to the secondary, who was also assigned to this case, at the scene. He was enjoying his Monday night by watching some television when the murderer came in at around 9:30 pm and killed him. Harold was a relatively boring man and didn’t seem to have any reason to be the target of such a horrific murder but here he was, flesh rotting by the minute. The secondary also claimed to have been interviewing witnesses and neighbors to gather a list of suspects. C.C. was thankful that the secondary already did all the heavy duty work and left C.C. the most exciting part of the case.

“Who are the suspects?” C.C. wasted no time getting straight to the point. This case was the first case that had intrigued him in a while and he was itching to catch the suspect and get a confession. Solving this case would certainly look good for his reputation at the investigation agency.

“We don’t have many suspects,” The secondary frowned, glancing at his notes and circled a note. “But we do have one suspect that we should look into.”

“What’s their name?” C.C. glanced over at Harold’s corpse, wondering who could ever have the audacity to perform such a grisly murder.

“Ricky Goldsworth.”

~

chapter 2 is out!

#fics #ricky goldsworth #bfu #buzzfeed unsolved #c.c. tinsley #tinsworth #francesca norris #buzzfeed unsolved cinematic universe #high school #bfucu #pining #murder #high school au #fanfiction #buzzfeed #mentions of sherlock

[suchagiantnerd]

48 Books, 1 Year

I was just two books shy of my annual goal of 50! You can blame the combination of my adorable newborn, who refused to nap anywhere except on me, and Hallmark Christmas movie season, during which I abandon books for chaste kisses between 30-somethings who behave like tweens at places called the Mistletoe Inn (which are really in Almonte, Ontario). 

Without further ado, as Zuma from Paw Patrol says, “Let’s dive in!”

1. Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes / Nathan H. Lents

We have too many bones! We have to rely too much on our diet for survival! We suffer from too many cognitive biases! Reading about our design flaws was kind of interesting, but the best part of this book were the few pages toward the end about the possibility of alien life. Specifically this quote: "...some current estimates predict that the universe harbours around seventy-five million civilizations." WHAT?! This possibility more than anything else I've ever heard or read gives me a better idea of how infinite the universe really is.

2. The Fiery Cross / Diana Gabaldon

Compared to the first four books in the Outlander series, this fifth book is a real snooze. The characters are becoming more and more unlikeable. They're so self-centered and unaware of their privilege in the time and place they're living. Gabaldon's depictions of the Mohawk tribe and other First Nations characters (which I'm reading through her character's opinions of things) are pretty racist. The enslaved people at one character's plantation are also described as being well taken care of and I just.... can't. I think this is the end of my affair with Outlander.

3. Educated / Tara Westover

This memoir was a wild ride. Tara Westover grew up in a survivalist, ultra-religious family in rural Idaho. She didn’t go to school and was often mislead about the outside world by her father. She and her siblings were also routinely put in physical danger working in their father’s junkyard as their lives were “in god’s hands”, and when they were inevitably injured, they weren’t taken to the hospital or a doctor, but left to be treated by their healer mother. Thanks to her sheer intelligence and determination (and some support from her older brother), Tara goes to university and shares with us the culture shock of straddling two very different worlds. My non-fiction book club LOVED this read, we talked about it for a long, long time.

4. Imbolc: Rituals, Recipes and Lore for St. Brigid’s Day / Carl F. Neal

Continuing with my witchy education, I learned all about the first sabbat of the new year, Imbolc.

5. Super Sad True Love Story / Gary Shteyngart

This in-the-very-near-future dystopian novel got my heart racing during a few exciting moments, but overall, I couldn’t immerse myself fully because of the MISOGYNY. I think the author might not like women and the things women like (or the things he thinks they like?) In this near future, all the dudes are into finance or are media celeb wannabes, while all the women work in high-end retail. And onion-skin jeans are the new trend for women - they are essentially see-through. Gary….we don’t…want that? We don’t even want low-rise jeans to come back.

6. The Wanderers / Meg Howrey

Helen, Yoshi and Sergei are the three astronauts selected by a for-profit space exploration company to man the world’s first mission to Mars. But before they get the green light, they have to endure a 17-month simulation. In addition to getting insight into the simulation from all three astronauts via rotating narrators, we also hear from the astronauts’ family members and other employees monitoring the sim. At times tense, at times thoughtful, this book is an incisive read about what makes explorers willing to leave behind everything they love the most in the world.

7. Zone One / Colson Whitehead

The zombie apocalypse has already happened, and Mark is one of the survivors working to secure and clean up Zone One, an area of Manhattan. During his hours and hours of boring shifts populated by a few harrowing minutes here and there, the reader is privy to Mark’s memories of the apocalypse itself and how he eventually wound up on this work crew. Mark is a pretty likeable, yet average guy rather than the standard zombie genre heroes, and as a result, his experiences also feel like a more plausible reality than those of the genre.

8. Homegoing / Yaa Gyasi

One of my favourite reads of the year, this novel is the definition of “sweeping epic”. The story starts off with two half-sisters (who don’t even know about each other’s existence) living in 18th-century Ghana. One sister marries a white man and stays in Ghana, living a life of privilege, while the other is sold into slavery and taken to America on a slave ship. This gigantic split in the family tree kicks off two parallel and vastly different narratives spanning EIGHT generations, ending with two 20-somethings in the present day. I remain in awe of Gyasi’s talent, and was enthralled throughout the entire book.

9. Sweetbitter / Stephanie Danler

Tess moves to New York City right out of school (and seemingly has no ties to her previous life - this bothered me, I wanted to know more about her past) and immediately lands a job at a beloved (though a little tired) fancy restaurant. Seemingly loosely based on Danler’s own experiences as a server, I got a real feel for the insular, incestuous, chaotic life in “the industry”. Tess navigates tensions between the kitchen and the front of house, falls for the resident bad-boy bartender, and positions herself as the mentee of the older and more glamorous head server, who may not be everything she seems. This is a juicy coming-of-age novel.

10. The Autobiography of Gucci Mane / Gucci Mane and Neil Martinez-Belkin

Gucci Mane is one of Atlanta’s hottest musicians, having helped bring trap music to the mainstream. I’d never heard of him until I read this book because I’m white and old! But not knowing him didn’t make this read any less interesting. In between wild facts (if you don’t get your music into the Atlanta strip clubs, your music isn’t making it out of Atlanta) and wilder escapades (Gucci holing himself up in his studio, armed to the teeth, in a fit of paranoia one night) Gucci Mane paints on honest picture of a determined, talented artist fighting to break free of a cycle of systemic racism and poverty.

11. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer / Michelle McNamara

McNamara was a journalist and true crime enthusiast who took it upon herself to try and solve the mystery of the Golden State Killer’s identity. Amazingly, her interest in this case also sparked other people’s interest in looking back at it, eventually leading to the arrest of the killer (though tragically, McNamara died a few months before the arrest and would never know how her obsession helped to capture him). This is a modern true crime classic and a riveting read.

12. A Great Reckoning / Louise Penny

The 12th novel in Penny’s Inspector Gamache mystery series sees our hero starting a new job teaching cadets at Quebec’s police academy. Of course, someone is murdered, and Gamache and his team work to dig the rot out of the institution, uncovering a killer in the process.

13. Any Man / Amber Tamblyn

Yes, this novel is by THAT Amber Tamblyn, star of “The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants”! Anyway, this book is a tad bit darker, and follows five men who’ve been victimized by the female serial rapist, who calls herself Maude. Going into this read I though that it might be some sort of revenge fantasy, but dudes, not to worry - we really feel awful for the male victims and see them in all their complexity. Perhaps, if more men read this book, they might better understand the trauma female and non-binary victims go through? That would require men to read books by women though. Guys? GUYS???

14. Ostara: Rituals, Recipes and Lore for the Spring Equinox / Kerri Connor

Yet another witchy read providing more information about this Spring sabbat. 

15. Scarborough / Catherine Hernandez

This novel takes place in OUR Scarborough! Following the lives of a number of residents (adults and children alike), the plot centres around the families attending an Ontario Early Years program as well as the program facilitator. Hernandez looks at the ways poverty, mental illness, addiction, race, and homophobia intersect within this very multicultural neighbourhood. It’s very sad, but there are also many sweet and caring moments between the children and within each of the families.

16. The Glitch / Elisabeth Cohen

Shelley Stone (kind of a fictional Sheryl Sandberg type) is the CEO of Conch, a successful Silicon Valley company. Like many of these over-the-top real-life tech execs, Shelley has a wild schedule full of business meetings, exercise, networking and parenting, leaving her almost no time to rest. While on an overseas business trip, she meets a younger woman also named Shelley Stone, who may or may not be her younger self. Is Shelley losing it? This is a dark comedy poking fun at tech start-up culture and the lie that we can have it all.

17. The Thirteenth Tale / Diane Setterfield

This is my kind of book! A young and inexperienced bookworm is handpicked to write the biography of an aging famous author, Vida Wynter. Summoned to her sprawling country home around Christmastime, the biographer is absolutely enthralled by Vida’s tales of a crumbling gothic estate and an eccentric family left too long to their own whims. Looking for a dark, twisty fairytale? This read’s for you.

18. Love & Misadventure / Lang Leav

Leav’s book of poems looked appealing, but for me, her collection fell short. I felt like I was reading a teenager’s poetry notebook (which I’m not criticizing, I love that teen girls write poetry, and surprise, surprise - so did I - but I’m too old for this kind of writing now).

19. Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows / Balli Kaur Jaswal

Hooo boy, my book club loved this one! Hoping to get a job more aligned with her literary interests, Nikki, the 20-something daughter of Indian immigrants to Britain, takes a job teaching writing at the community centre in London’s biggest Punjabi neighbourhood. The students are all older Punjabi women who don’t have much to do and because of their “widow” status have been somewhat sidelined within their community. Without anyone around to censor or judge them, the widows start sharing their own erotic fantasies with each other, each tale wilder than the last. As Nikki gets to know them better, she gains some direction in life and starts a romance of her own. (It should be noted that in addition to this lovely plot, there is a sub plot revolving around a possible honour killing in the community. For me, the juxtaposition of these two plots was odd, but not odd enough that it ruined the book.)

20. Beltane: Rituals, Recipes and Lore for May Day / Melanie Marquis

Beltane marks the start of the summer season in the witches’ year, and I learned all about how to ring it in, WITCH STYLE.

21. Summer of Salt / Katrina Leno

This book is essentially Practical Magic for teens, with a queer protagonist. All that to say, it’s enjoyable and sweet and a win for #RepresentationMatters, but it wasn’t a surprising or fresh story.

22. Too Like the Lightning / Ada Palmer

This is the first in the Terra Ignota quartet of novels, which is (I think) speculative fiction with maybe a touch of fantasy and a touch of sci-fi and a touch of theology and certainly a lot of philosophical ruminating too. I both really enjoyed it and felt so stupid while reading it. As a lifelong bookworm who doesn’t shy away from difficult reads, I almost never feel stupid while reading, but this book got me. The world building is next level and as soon as you think you’ve found your footing, Palmer pulls the rug out from under you and you’re left both stunned and excited about her latest plot twist. Interested in finding out what a future society grouped into ‘nations’ by interests and passions (instead of geographical borders and ethnicity) might be like? Palmer takes a hearty stab at it here.

23. The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman’s Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay and Disaster / Sarah Krasnostein

When Sarah Krasnostein met Sandra Pankhurst, she knew she had to write her biography (or something like it - this book is part biography, part love letter, part reckoning). And rightly so, as Sandra has led quite a life. She grew up ostracized within her own home by her immediate family, married and had children very young, came out as a trans woman and begin living as her authentic self (but abandoning her own young family in the process), took to sex work and lived through a vicious assault, married again, and started up her own successful company cleaning uncleanable spaces - the apartments of hoarders, the houses of recluses, the condos in which people ended their own lives. Sandra is the definition of resilience, but all her traumas (both the things people have done to her and the things she’s done to others) have left their mark, as Krasnostein discovers as she delicately probes the recesses of Sandra’s brain.

24. Becoming / Michelle Obama

My favourite things about any memoir from an ultra-famous person are the random facts that surprise you along the way. In this book, it was learning that all American presidents travel with a supply of their blood type in the event of an assassination attempt. I mean OF COURSE they would, but that had never occurred to me. I also appreciated Michelle opening up about her fertility struggles, the difficult decision to put her career on hold to support Barack’s dreams, and the challenge of living in the spotlight with two young children that you hope to keep down to earth. Overall, I think Michelle was as candid as someone in her position can be at this point in her life.

25 and 26. Seven Surrenders, The Will to Battle / Ada Palmer

I decided to challenge myself and stick with Palmer’s challenging Terra Ignota series, also reading the second and third instalments (I think the fourth is due to be released this year). I don’t know what to say, other than the world-building continues to be incredible and this futuristic society is on the bring of something entirely new.

27. Even Vampires Get the Blues / Kate MacAlister

This novel wins for “cheesiest read of the year”. When a gorgeous half-elf detective (you read that right) meets a centuries-old sexy Scottish vampire, sparks fly! Oh yeah, and they’re looking for some ancient thing in between having sex.

28. A Case of Exploding Mangoes / Mohammed Hanif

A piece of historical fiction based on the real-life suspicious plane crash in 1988 that killed many of Pakistan’s top military brass, this novel lays out many possible culprits (including a crow that ate too many mangoes). It’s a dark comedy taking aim at the paranoia of dictators and the boredom and bureaucracy of the military (and Bin Laden makes a cameo at a party).

29. Salvage the Bones / Jesmyn Ward

This novel takes place in the steaming hot days before Hurricane Katrina hits the Mississippi coast. The air is still and stifling and Esch’s life in the small town of Bois Sauvage feels even more stifled. Esch is 14 and pregnant and hasn’t told anyone yet. Her father is a heavy drinker and her three brothers are busy with their own problems. But as the storm approaches, the family circles around each other in preparation for the storm. This is a jarring and moving read made more visceral by the fact that the author herself survived Katrina. It’s also an occasionally violent book, and there are particularly long passages about dog-fighting (a hobby of one of the brothers). The dog lovers in my book club found it hard to get through, consider this your warning!

30. Everything’s Trash, But It’s Okay / Phoebe Robinson

A collection of essays in the new style aka writing multiple pages on a topic as though you were texting your best friend about it (#ImFineWithThisNewStyleByTheWay #Accessible), Robinson discusses love, friendship, being a Black woman in Hollywood, being plus-ish-size in Hollywood, and Julia Roberts teaching her how to swim (and guys, Julia IS as nice in real life as we’d all hoped she was!) Who is Robinson? Comedy fans will likely know her already, but I only knew her as one of the stars of the Netflix film Ibiza (which I enjoyed). This is a fun, easy read!

31. Midsummer: Rituals, Recipes and Lore for Litha / Deborah Blake

After reading this book, I charged my crystals under the midsummer sun!

32. Fingersmith / Sarah Waters

So many twists! So many turns! So many hidden motives and long-held secrets! Think Oliver Twist meets Parasite meets Lost! (Full disclosure, I haven’t seen Parasite yet, I’m just going off all the chatter about it). Sue is a con artist orphan in old-timey London. When the mysterious “Gentleman” arrives at her makeshift family’s flat with a proposal for the con of all cons, Sue is quickly thrust into a role as the servant for another young woman, Maud, living alone with her eccentric uncle in a country estate. As Sue settles into her act, the lines between what she’s pretending at and what she’s really feeling start to blur, and nothing is quite what it seems. This book is JUICY!

33. Rest Play Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (Or Anyone Who Acts Like One) / Deborah MacNamara, PhD

I read approximately one parenting book a year, and this was this year’s winner. As my eldest approached her third birthday, we started seeing bigger and bigger emotions and I wasn’t sure how to handle them respectfully and gently. This book gave me a general roadmap for acknowledging her feelings, sitting through them with her, and the concept of “collecting” your child to prevent tantrums from happening or to help calm them down afterward. I’ll be using this approach for the next few years!

34. Lughnasadh: Rituals, Recipes and Lore for Lammas / Melanie Marquis

And with this read, I’ve now read about the entire witch’s year. SO MOTE IT BE.

35. In Cold Blood / Truman Capote

How had I not read this until now? This true-crime account that kicked off the modern genre was rich in detail, compassionate to the victims, and dug deep into the psyche of the killers. The descriptions of the midwest countryside and the changing seasons also reminded me of Keith Morrison’s voiceovers on Dateline. Is Capote his inspiration?

36. I’m Afraid of Men / Vivek Shraya

A quick, short set of musings from trans musician and writer Shraya still packs an emotional punch. She writes about love and loss, toxic masculinity, breaking free of gender norms, and what it’s like to exist as a trans woman.

37. The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You / Elaine N. Aron, PhD

Having long thought I might be a highly sensitive person (lots of us are!), I decided to learn more about how to better cope with stressful situations when I don’t have enough alone time or when things are too loud or when I get rattled by having too much to do any of the other myriad things that shift me into panic mode. Though some of the advice is a bit too new-agey for me (talking to your inner child, etc), some of it was practical and useful.

38. Swamplandia! / Karen Russell

The family-run alligator wrestling theme park, Swamplandia, is swimming in debt and about to close. The widowed father leaves the everglades for the mainland in a last-ditch attempt to drum up some money, leaving the three children to fend for themselves. A dark coming-of-age tale that blends magic realism, a ghost story, the absurd and a dangerous boat trip to the centre of the swamplands, this novel examines a fractured family mourning its matriarch in different ways.

39. A Mind Spread Out on the Ground / Alicia Elliott

This is a beautiful collection of personal essays brimming with vulnerability, passion, and fury. Elliott, the daughter of a Haudenosaunee father and a white mother, shares her experiences growing up poor in a family struggling with mental illness, addiction and racism. Topics touch on food scarcity, a never-ending battle with lice, parenthood and the importance of hearing from traditionally marginalized voices in literature. 

40. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay / Elena Ferrante

The third novel in Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet sees Elena and Lila move from their early twenties into their thirties and deal with a riot of issues - growing careers, changing political beliefs, the challenges of motherhood and romantic relationships, and existing as strong-willed, intelligent women in 1960s and 70s Italy. I’ll definitely finish the series soon.

41. Half-Blood Blues / Esi Edugyan

A small group of American and German jazz musicians working on a record find themselves holed up in Paris as the Germans begin their occupation in WW2. Hiero, the youngest and most talented member of the group, goes out one morning for milk and is arrested by the Germans, never to be heard from again. Fifty years later, the surviving members of the band go to Berlin for the opening night of a documentary about the jazz scene from that era, and soon find themselves on a road trip through the European countryside to find out what really became of Hiero all those years ago. Edugyan’s novel is a piercing examination of jealousy, ambition, friendship, race and guilt. And features a cameo by Louis Armstrong!

42. A Serial Killer’s Daughter: My Story of Faith, Love and Overcoming / Kerri Rawson

So Brad and I had just finished watching season 2 of Mindhunter, and as I browse through a neighbourhood little library, I spot this book and the serial killer in question is the BTK Killer! Naturally, I had to read it. What I didn’t realize is that this is actually a Christian book, so Rawson does write a lot about struggling with her belief in God and finding her way back to Him, etc. But there are also chapters more fitting with the true crime and memoir genres that I equally enjoyed and was creeped out by.

43. The Night Ocean / Paul La Farge

This is another book that made me feel somewhat stupid as a reader. I just know there are details or tidbits that completely went over my head that would likely enrich a better reader’s experience. In broad strokes, the novel is about a failed marriage between a psychiatrist and a writer who became dangerously obsessed with H.P. Lovecraft and the rumours that swirled around him and his social circle. The writer’s obsession takes him away from his marriage and everything else, and eventually it looks like he ends his own life. The psychiatrist is doubtful (no body was found) and she starts to follow him down the same rabbit hole. At times tense, at times funny, at times sad, I enjoyed the supposed world of Lovecraft and his fans and peers, but again, I’m sure there are deeper musings here that I couldn’t reach.

44. Glass Houses / Louise Penny

The 13th novel in Penny’s Inspector Gamache mystery series sees our hero taking big risks to fight the opioid crisis in Quebec. He and his team focus on catching the big crime boss smuggling drugs across the border from Vermont, endangering his beloved town of Three Pines in the process. 

45. The Bone Houses / Emily Lloyd-Jones

My Halloween read for the year, this dark fairytale of a YA novel was perfect for the season. Since her parents died, Ryn has taken over the family business - grave digging - to support herself and her siblings. As the gravedigger, she knows better than most that due to an old curse, the dead in the forest surrounding her village don’t always stay dead. But as more of the forest dead start appearing (and acting more violently than usual), Ryn and an unexpected companion (yes, a charming young man cause there’s got to be a romance!) travel to the heart of the forest to put a stop to the curse once and for all.

46. The Witches Are Coming / Lindy West

Another blazing hot set of essays from my favourite funny feminist take on Trump, abortion rights, #MeToo, and more importantly Adam Sandler and Dateline. As always, Lindy, please be my best friend?

47. Know My Name / Chanel Miller

This memoir is HEAVY but so, so needed. Recently, Chanel Miller decided to come forward publicly and share that she was the victim of Brock Turner’s sexual assault. She got the courage to do so after she posted her blistering and beautiful victim impact statement on social media and it went viral. Miller’s memoir is a must-read, highlighting the incredible and awful lengths victims have to go to to see any modicum of justice brought against their attackers. Miller dealt with professional ineptitude from police and legal professionals, victim-blaming, victim-shaming, depression and anxiety, the inability to hold down a job, and still managed to come out the other side of this trial intact. And in the midst of all the horror, she writes beautifully about her support system - her family, boyfriend and friends - and about the millions of strangers around the world who saw themselves in her experience.

48. Christmas Ghost Stories: A Collection of Winter Tales / Mark Onspaugh

Ghosts AND Christmas? Yes please! This quirky collection features a wide array of festively spooky tales. You want the ghost of Anne Boleyn trapped in a Christmas ornament? You got it! What about the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future drinking together in a bar? Yup, that’s here too! 

__

So, what were my top picks of the year, the books that stuck with me the most? In no particular order:

Educated

Homegoing

The Wanderers

Know My Name

Scarborough

[enixamyram]

Hey, guess what, I’ve found another screen rant I want to react to! I wasn’t planning to do any more but, reading through this article, I just have SO many problems with it... So Let’s do another, agree or disagree with a Screenrant article made by someone with no bias at all. (Sarcasm for the last part by the way.) So let’s see:

Agreed with this point. People act like, if the characters weren’t on screen then they disappeared or something. Maybe they were just living their own lives?

... I don’t even understand this article. Apparently this is 20 things people get wrong and this point is that the timeline can make sense, but then OP goes on to say “However, the more characters were introduced and the more worlds the characters ventured into, it became clearer and clearer that time didn't work the same way everywhere... However, in a world of fairytales, expecting anything more than that is simply asking too much. What does it matter, exactly, when some of these events took place as long as we know that they were a long time ago in a universe not at all like our own?”

Like, so that means this isn’t something people get wrong - the timeline DOESN’T make sense - so what the hell is it doing in this article? You can’t claim you’ve solved it just because you shrug and go “yeah but it’s magic so what do you expect?”

I mean the text directly conflicts the title/bullet point. Luckily I can still safely say I disagree, both with the title and the text because the timeline became f*cked, and just making an embarrassed shrugging face doesn’t change that.

I can’t even say disagree because this is just plain wrong! I don’t quite understand this writer. I can’t tell what they’re deal is, like did they just give a poor title to their article?

Season 1 - The Original Curse Season 2 - Belle and Sneezy lost their memories. Season 3 - Everyone lost a year. Season 5 - Camelot Season 6 - Emma lost her memories Season 7 - Another Curse.

Notice how I left out 4? Well this is where I’m getting confused because this is what OP had to say about Season 4: “While season four dabbled with alternate universes, memories were never wiped or reset in the way they were in every other season.”

... But their memories WERE wiped! They were essentially in a curse because their memories WERE wiped and they WERE given new identities just like the original curse. So yes, memory wipes did in fact happen every single season!

So I can’t agree or disagree because maybe some people do call Ruby a lesbian, but most everyone I talk to calls her bi... So I’ma just skip this one.

Note: She’s bi people. This is canon. If you don’t agree then tough shit.

Agreed, there’s plenty of other ways true love can be proven. TLK is probably just the most convenient, lol.

Kind of agree? I mean I think most people do know and acknowledge this but I guess it can sometimes escape people without realising in passing sentences?

This is true. It was a lame and terrible reveal that made no sense but it was revealed.

... Like, I’m getting confused again. Because this title either doesn’t fit or the writer lives under a rock because no one get’s this wrong! Everyone - rightfully - calls out Zelena for what she did. Even Zelena fans admit what she did was messed up!

... I do agree, I don’t think she made up for all the awful things she did and she definitely became “one of the team” way too quickly for my liking. (I’m hesitant because I suddenly have an idea what side of the fandom wrote this article and I can pretty much predict where it’s going.)

AND THERE IT IS!

DISAGREE.  DISAGREE. DISAGREE. DISAGREE. DISAGREE. DISAGREE.

“Nothing says good guy like being an older man who takes advantage of a young girl, impregnates her, and lets her go to jail for crimes you yourself committed.” First off, we don’t know his age. Second, he didn’t ‘impregnant’ her. She got pregnant. It takes two to tango though I doubt the writer knows this. And third, Emma went to jail for HER crimes. Sorry, dear writer, but let me just fill you in. Aiding and abetting a fellow criminal IS A CRIME! Emma did wrong and she was punished for it. I don’t necessarily agree with what Neal did but he is not responsible for where Emma ended up.

“Even further, nothing says good guy like someone who mocks the woman he allegedly loves for the years of trauma, suffering, and scars she endured as a result of your callous, selfish behavior.” ... WHEN?!

“... Neal Cassidy became more and more like the selfish, frequently malicious parents who raised him.” ... Again, WHEN?! Like seriously, selfish maybe but malicious?!

“In no world would he have been the right man for Emma or a good father to Henry because he could never accept accountability for any of his many wrongdoings.” Except, you know, Neal knew Henry all of five minutes and was already dedicated to being a great dad to him and literally was WAY better at being a father to Henry than Hook ever was to the kid. And I added the Hook part because my God, the writer of this article couldn’t be more obvious a CS shipper if they had every sentence end with swans and pirate flags.

It’s amazing how, even dead, they’re still threatened by Neal’s character.

Maybe this was true in S6, but by S7 they had clearly retconned it, making the Wish Realm a very real place. Otherwise there’s a ton of plot holes and you’ve got to be a real idiot to say you’d rather accept plot holes than that the Wish Realm might actually be real.

(Also, just saying, another terrible title because what happened to Emma and Regina when they were in the Wish Realm very much DID happen. So again, really poor titles for this article that clearly doesn’t know what it’s point is.)

... She VIOLATED everyone’s minds by erasing their memories and TRIED TO MURDER ZELENA!

She may have had good intentions but that doesn’t change the fact that she was a villain for a season! Dude, have you never heard the phrase “the road to hell was paved with good intentions”?! I’ll defend Emma turning Hook into a Dark One for sure, but trying to completely ignore the awful things she did?! Jesus Christ!

Again... What? OP... Everyone already KNOWS this. This article is meant to be things people gets wrong but, honestly, I think OP’s the only idiot who gets things wrong at this point. So I’m once again torn because I agree with the statement but I don’t agree that this is something people get wrong.

*Sigh* OP’s giving me a migraine. Not because their statement is incorrect, but because all their reasoning is!

“Regina, as we know, went back and forth to points outside of Maine many times during the preceding 28 years.” It was actually explained, by Regina herself to Hook in Season 2, that because she (and he) had no cursed memories, crossing the town line would not affect them.

“Greg and Tamara are also able to cross the town lines, with Greg even remembering the tiny town for years and years after a traumatic encounter within it during his childhood.” Again. The town line affects people who ARE CURSED! This is made very clear! Henry can also cross the town line when he went to get Emma.

The title, once again, is misleading. People are able to leave - so long as they don’t CROSS THE TOWN LINE. That’s the part CURSED people are not able to do.

I’ve given up Agreeing and Disagreeing at this point. OP’s points are making my brain hurt so let’s just move on.

You’re right OP. It did serve a purpose. It’s purpose was to be a cash grab!

Apparently OP’s excuse is that Anna and Elsa helped Emma come into her own as a magic user? Like yeah, I’m calling bullshit. Emma had no problem using her magic until they brought Frozen in, then they made a whole storyline of Emma having problems just to justify having Elsa struggle and then help her with it.

And after they left they were barely even mentioned. So, again. NO PURPOSE. (Apart from a cash grab.)

Okay, so actually, I do agree. Regina is still Henry’s mum but the fact is, his adoption can’t be legal because Regina would need to have lied on her application and all the usual checks usually done for people wanting to adopt couldn’t possibly have happened.

I was going to agree on technicality but you know what? No.

DISAGREE!

Just because the couples aren’t perfect doesn’t make them toxic. (Using OP’s examples:) “Robin's relationship with Regina results in his being repeatedly assaulted and fathering a child as a result of that assault.” Wow, dude, wait to blame the girlfriend for some of the bad stuff that happened in Robin’s life. I sure feel sorry for whoever you end up with if this is how you see it. “Hook and Emma frequently lie to one another as well,” Lying does not equal a toxic relationship! Certain lies, maybe, but general lying is just what people do when they’re embarrassed or ashamed or upset. What counts is what you’re lying about and also whether or not you come clean about it.

The only one I’ll agree with is RumBelle but even then OP completely misses the reason WHY they’re a toxic relationship. Instead they generalise it into very un-toxic details.

... Again... Like... I agree with the statement but NO ONE GETS THIS WRONG!

OP is clearly just using this article as an excuse to bash Regina. And I’m not a Regina fan, but no, dude, if you’re gonna do this then make a “20 of the worst things Regina ever did” list. Not a “20 things people get wrong” and then list a bunch of things that one in ten people gets wrong!

And now OP’s repeating. Because I’m pretty sure this was covered in the 4th one? Like, agree. I guess. But it feels like OP was running out of things and figured Regina bashing again would be too obvious or something.

Okay. Now this is something a lot of people won’t agree with but... I do.

I agree the show was intended to be Emma’s story and that it then got popular and other characters got popular and it branched out into something more.

... However OP is still a colossus idiot because they ended on this sentence:

“It's what made the concept of a seventh season without almost any of the Charmings such a laughable concept - and such a colossal failure, as well.” And while Season 7 may not be the masterpiece I pretend it is to piss of anti’s, it is also far from the worst. OP just hates it because their fav wasn’t centre stage and they’re bitter as hell.

Wow this was probably the stupidest article yet. OP either clearly doesn’t know what they were meant to be doing (a list of things people often forget about the show) or they just wanted to make a list where they bitched a few points and couldn’t be bothered to think of a catchy title or reason why. Either way, OP’s an idiot and most of these points are ridiculously dumb.

#Once Upon A Time #Screen Rant #Agree Or Disagree #Ruby Lucas #Killian Jones #Zelena #Robin Hood #Anti Regina Mills #Neal Cassidy #The Wish Realm #Emma Swan #Anti Frozen Arc #Henry Mills #Anti RumBelle #Captain Swan #Outlaw Queen

[anythingstephenking]

The Morally Grey Mile

Strap in for another grim tale. At least men are the ones getting fucked in The Green Mile, amirite ladies? No, still not cool? Ok then.

I suppose it is a disservice to call The Green Mile solely a “grim” tale, but because the core story focuses on an innocent man headed to the electric chair, it is pretty damn grim. If you haven’t read the book you’ve seen the movie but spoilers anyway - the innocent man dies and it sucks for the reader. It’s certainly more complicated than “bad wins” but a real bummer all the same.

Backing up a bit. The Green Mile was King’s first attempt at a serialized story release. In the book’s forward, King tells us it’s story of inception. Through a series of fortuitous events and a conversation with business associates about Charles Dickens, King concocted the idea to release a story in a series of “chapbooks”. Apparently Dickens released some of his stories that way, and they were so fervently popular that a band of dingdongs pushed each other off a dock and drowned while awaiting a shipment of Dickens into Baltimore Harbor. I imagine if the Harry Potter books were released that way I would have ended up in the harbor too. No judgement, zealous Dickens readers, I get it.

Logically, if it worked for 19th century Dickens, it would surely work for 20th century Stephen King, right? 

(cue Mr. Burns fingers). 

A single book released in installments monthly, garnering 3-4x the cost of a single paperback. Good for you SK, good for you. Cause turns out, the constant reader ate it up and bought ‘em like hotcakes.

Cause that’s the thing - this is a really really good story. Not because it’s beautifully written like Cujo or Firestarter or mind-bending like The Dark Tower books, but because it is a real page turner. I credit the format for that - you can tell it was written in a plot-driven, cliffhanger kinda way. In the same way serialized TV (before binging took this joy away) would leave you wanting more week to week, The Green Mile leaves each installment in a way where you can’t imagine not picking up the next one.

Per my contractual agreement with myself, I am required to reach each and every page of this story, but I’m a strange bird and the rest of the world isn’t a weirdo like me. At the end of the day, the narrative structure here really works and I plowed through all 6 installments in a day or so. Those reading in real-time (and not binging like me) waited a month between each publishing, from March through August 1996. There was no dock delivery in Baltimore in 1996 but I imagine if there was, the crowd waiting for each would be large.

So the narrative approach works, but what about the story itself? My analysis comes back slightly muddy but mostly positive despite some hard to swallow flaws.

I can’t claim to know what death row would have been like in 1932, but I’ve watched enough PBS documentaries to know what it’s like now. The group held at Cold Mountain are described as killers, yes. As rapists and wife beaters and arsonists. But they also come across like a rag-tag group of buds that should have their own reality TV show. One of the prisoners, Del, raped and murdered a young girl then accidentally killed a bunch of other people trying to cover his tracks by setting the building on fire. But he’s got this cute, somewhat supernatural mouse named Mr. Jingles that does tricks. Ain’t it cute? Then he fries and literally catches on fire in the electric chair.

I understand the intention of the tale - humanity lives in all of us. Empathy shouldn’t be reserved just for some. Death is final and it comes for all of us. What I struggled with was trying to understand if this was blatant reference to King’s personal stance on the Death Penalty (against it, obvs) or something more subtle. Should we take away that killing is wrong no matter what? Or that there is more nuance at play here?

Because there’s more happening on the green mile than just murderers dying (no matter how dramatically) in the chair comically nicknamed “ol’ sparky”. We’ve got John Coffey in chains, convicted of raping and murdering two 9 year old girls. JFC. I just can’t.

But he did, and he will die for his crimes. Here’s where the controversy around this novel begins. John Coffey is a large black man with magical powers. Spike Lee specifically calls out King publicly for this “magical negro” trope, which honestly I can’t disagree with. Dick Halloran from The Shining and Mother Abigail from The Stand fall neatly in this bucket as well. But even as I type this I know I am cherry-picking; I’ve read plenty of King stories with mystical beings and they’re mostly white (or more often other worldly). But King’s repeated use of the n-word and other racial slurs in his writing is real cringeworthy. As I move further towards his 21st century writing I keep hoping this will stop. It hasn’t yet, as of 1996. But King and writing about race is an entirely separate post for another day.

Back to The Green Mile; we learn that John Coffey has special healing powers when he cures the head guard, Paul Edgecomb of a UTI by grabbing his crotch. Normally this type of behavior will get ya thrown in the hole, but Paul’s so grateful he lets it slide.

Once we learn of the healing powers of Coffey, it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to solve the mystery. While getting arrested he cries “I tried to stop it but it was too late.” Everyone involved in the investigation assumes he means he tried to stop himself from murder but couldn’t; anyone with half a brain can deduce that someone else killed the girls; he tried to heal them. He was too late.

We’re set off to learn who really murdered the girls, but this revelation takes a backseat, at least in my mind. For me, the big mystery is; will John Coffey get executed? I’ll be honest, I hadn’t seen this movie, so I didn’t know. The phone the governor used to phone in stays-of-execution was mentioned early, so my Chekhov’s Gun senses lead me to believe it was possible. Why bother if not? Well the phone is mentioned at execution time, only to say it won’t ring. And of course it never really was a question - Coffey is a black man in the south, convicted of murdering two girls in 1932. Of course no one’s coming to save him. It’s sad. Real sad.

We’re given solace in the fact that Coffey claims he’s ready to go - his powers are too much and he’s tired. This is a nonsense cop out that provides relief to all those that understand the truth, allowing them to go on living, loving their wives and kids and casseroles. John Coffey should not have died. The end. 

Things are wrapped up in a bow with the end stories of everyone involved and their timely and untimely deaths. I guess that’s it; life sucks, then you die; death can come for you in any way, without discrimination.

I earmarked what is one of my favorite lines I’ve encountered so far in King’s work.

“We had once again succeeded in destroying what we could not create.”

Executing anyone (murderer or not) takes a toll on most of the prison staff. I just loved this so much on so many levels; they are men without the ability to create life; they are not god; they are mortals stealing mortality. So beautiful.

So, it’s no stretch to call this the brother of Shawshank, but at least we get a female character in Paul Edgecomb’s wife. I don’t remember her name so that’s not great. But she was a woman and she at least was there, so it gets knocked up a few rungs from Shawshank IMHO.

I’d have to say this is one King novel that really perplexed me. I suppose I got into the routine of enjoying typical good-vs-evil tales where the good guys eventually overcome. For me, The Green Mile wasn’t green at all but a wavering shade of grey I still can’t see properly.

(Side note: As I sat down to write this, I thought to myself “I’m not sure what I’ll say about The Green Mile.” Turns out, quite a bit, this is probably one of my longest entries. Who knew?)

8/10

First Line: This happened in 1932, when the state penitentiary was still at Cold Mountain.

Last Line: I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long.

Adaptations:

Like it’s brother Shawshank Redemption, I had never seen this movie before. It made it’s run through awards season in 1999, mostly for Michael Clarke Duncan’s portrayal of John Coffey. Who later tragically died of a heart attack with his girlfriend Omarosa (of Trump WH fame) which I didn’t know, but good golly, that is another sad story for another day.

Listen, this is a highly regarded movie that’s on many top lists, so I won’t stab into it too hard. But it is SO LONG.

Frank Darabont got his panties all in a bunch when folks told him a 3 hour running time was too long, claiming that if 2 hours was the correct length of a film that cinema classics like Lawrence of Arabia were invalidated. Well guess what? I’ve seen Lawrence of Arabia, and yes that shit is too. damn. long. As is The Green Mile.

One would think that with 3+ hours of material, the character development would be on point. It’s not really; the prisoners are mostly glossed over (even more so than in the book) as lovable murders. Wild Bill is the exception (overacted by Sam Rockwell), and he serves as the sole real “bad guy”. 

Edgecomb and his other prison guards are painted as saints (again, minus one guard who takes on the “bad guy of the good guys” role). If the book was grey the movie is much more black and white. Tom Hanks for president for sure, the guy is a national treasure. But they were one step away from giving him an actual halo. As someone complicit in the murder of an innocent man, I just can’t declare his character for sainthood. The real Tom Hanks, a million times yes. Paul Edgecomb? Nah.

The movie is fine. I approve of Darabont’s relationship with King and have thoroughly enjoyed their previous collaborations. I was sad to see that he let his film rights to The Long Walk expire last year, picked up by New Line and James Vanderbilt (of Vanderbilt fortune... old money... sigh) who penned Zodiac, which leaves me slightly hopeful but assume it’ll trickle back into development limbo for the remainder of eternity.

I’ve already finished my next read, Desperation and after I slog through the 2.5 hour ABC miniseries (UGH) I will keep trucking. New Year, more pressure placed on myself to plow through the back half of King’s bibliography.

#book review #movie review #the green mile

[lj-writes]

What is, in your opinion, the biggest battle (Republic v. Mandalore, Republic v. Separatist, Rebellion v. Empire, Resistance V. First Order) in the entire Star Wars franchise, and how would you try to top all of them in your version of IX?

What an excellent question, and it really helped me focus my Episode IX feels. I’d say the Battle of Endor from RotJ was the biggest with significant resources thrown in on both sides with a ground battle element, though the Battles of Scarif and Yavin were IMO better written with higher emotional stakes.

My Episode IX could roll all those elements together and bring the trio of trilogies full circle to… the Second Battle of Tatooine! The existence and plans of the Galactic Union have been revealed, and while it has failed to take Coruscant the worlds loyal to the Union have declared their allegiance. The Republic is split in two and turning on itself, while Mandalore faces an impossible dilemma: Must it fight its own stolen children? See also my alternate Episodes VII (link) and VIII (link).

The action would be divided into three parts: space battle over Tatooine, ground battle on Tatooine, and an uprising plot with Finn turning the Union’s Crusaders. The newly reinstated Chancellor Leia Organa together with Admiral Ackbar leads the Republic forces to Tatooine and Geonosis space, where the Galactic Union had been hiding a large part of its fleet and personnel now ready to deploy and take Naboo, Takodana, Jakku, Hosnia and more.

Leia implores Boba Fett for help, but the Mandalorians have their own problems. The part of the Republic now loyal to the Union is continuing the assault against the Mandalorians, tying them down.  The Mandalorians are also hesitant to fight the main body of the Galactic Union and the Crusaders who were revealed to be Mandalorians stolen as children. Unable to count on Mandalorian help Leia nevertheless continues to Tatooine, Lando’s fleet from Bespin joining hers. Poe and Black Squadron have scouted the area and report back that the Union fleet are close to deploying. Luke has already been on his home planet a while, brokering a peace treaty between the Republic and the various factions on Tatooine with the help of C3PO (link).

Rey is on a separate mission looking for Finn. Finn himself, imprisoned and being reconditioned, tries desperately to hang onto his sense of self. Rey senses his pain and resolve, and dives into a dangerous defunct hyperspace route in search of him. She makes it through a hyperspace storm that she barely steers the Falcon through before finding herself in a regular hyperspace route alongside the Union flagship. They drop into normal space and so does she, and is tractored on board. Taken prisoner and facing Kylo Ren with the Knights of Ren arrayed around him, she finds Finn–standing guard next to Kylo, staring straight ahead, not seeming to hear her pleas. Ren offers her a place in the Union and she refuses. Ren then orders Finn to fight Rey, and during the fight reveals to her that Finn’s father killed her parents. Rey realizes he’s telling the truth and fights back in hate and rage until she realizes she is falling to the Dark Side and, remembering her love for Finn, throws down her saber.

Ren orders Finn to kill Rey and he marches forward, seemingly about to strike her down before he turns his attack on Phasma. He had been repeating a phrase drilled into him, a Mandalorian motto that the Union had stolen and twisted around, and held onto it while he was being reconditioned. Now, with the revelation of his heritage by Ren, his memories rush back and he remembers his fathers, his sense of belonging, Mandalore in whose ways he had been brought up all along though in a way that was twisted to serve his kidnappers. He rallies the Crusaders, reminding them that they are Mandalorians even though they were stolen and bred as weapons. They are not weapons, however, they are warriors. Some of the Crusaders rally to him, others turn on them, and there is enough confusion for Finn and Rey to escape with the freed Mandalorians and damage the flagship in the process.

Back on Tatooine the Tatooine Alliance of Hutts, Jawas, Tuskens, and farmers attack the Union ships and supplies, destroying a significant number of ships before they can launch. Luke is in the thick of the fray, with C3PO complaining about how disorderly everything is and also directing a droids for espionage and sabotage.

In the space above Tatooine Leia and Lando’s fleet shoot down the Union fleet while Ackbar blocks off the perimeter with mines and bombers. The Union fleet is still an enormous force and are wearing down the Republic fleet. They need help and have nowhere to expect it from.

On Mandalore, the warriors are defending the home world from Union forces while a Union dreadnought moves into position for bombardment from orbit, a move that would wipe out all life on the surface. At that desperate hour more Union ships emerge from hyperspace and it looks like all is lost–but these are the free Mandalorian warriors led by Finn and they fall on the Dreadnought, destroying it! Finn informs the Mandalorians by comm of what happened. Watching this brave young man, Idrian Fett and Teros Kryze are gripped by the strangest feeling of recognition while telling themselves it can’t be. The Mandalorians together send the Union fleet into a route.

The Mandalorians must now decide whether to stay and protect their homeworld or go to Leia and the Republic’s aid. Finn argues that they must save the Republic’s fleet. The Union’s entire strategy consisted of sowing dissension between the Republic and the Mandalorians, and it is only together that they can win the day. Idrian, thinking of the long-ago tragedy his own anger caused, backs him up, convincing the Mandalore.

Over Tatooine Lando personally shoots down a number of ships at the head of the Bespin fleet. Leia crashes enemy starships together using the Force. Ackbar’s defense never wavers, despite great sacrifices. Droid-piloted ships crash into the enemy, leaving holes in their lines. Poe and Black Squadron bring down a capital ship. If the Republic is to fall here, they will make every death count to at least give a fighting chance to the rest of the galaxy.

That is when new Union ships arrive, alongside Mandalorian ships! There is confusion for a moment before they realize the Mandalorian cavalry is here, and the day seems to be theirs.

Meanwhile, the Tatooine Alliance back on the surface of the planet discover among the captured Union equipment some kind of regulator that is connected to one of Tatooine’s suns. Luke is stunned when he realizes that, essentially, the suns of Tatooine have been turned into bombs. The Union must have been waiting for their enemies to gather in one place and one of the suns will engulf the entire system in twenty minutes, setting off the other in a chain reaction.

Luke warns Leia to get the fleet out of harm’s way while he attempts to evacuate the planet, but when none of the ships can jump into hyperspace they realize that the Union has blocked off hyperspace travel in the area.

Then Kylo Ren’s Union flagship bursts into normal space. Ren informs his mother by comm that this system is about to be destroyed and he will take her away, installing her as the political head of the new Union to rule the galaxy as she sees fit–as she deserves to, as their family deserves to after all it has done for the universe. Leia flat-out refuses, saying she won’t be a puppet front for a mass murdering regime. She urges her son to stop the bomb and Kylo is angry with her, berating her for her ingratitude when he has paid such a high price for her. He tries to tractor and drag her ship into hyperspace, but she orders thrusters reversed and holds fast.

Ren, now panicked at the thought of losing his mother as well as his father, leads a boarding party to her ship to extract her. When the hatch opens he is greeted by Finn and his Mandalorian warriors who jump into battle with Ren and his Knights.

Meanwhile Rey is on the Falcon, having hit on a plan with Luke over the comm to try and open a hyperspace route to divert the solar flare from the first sun before it hits Tatooine and reaches the other sun in the system. Luke, with no time to join her physically, goes into Force meditation on Tatooine.

Finn and Ren have a rematch and it looks like Finn is done for when Ren disarms him. But Finn takes Ren’s lightsaber to replace his own, wins the fight, then pulls a T’Challa and captures Ren before he can kill himself. Ren needs to face a tribunal–and worse, his mother–for his crimes.

Together Rey and Luke manage to open a route into hyperspace and Rey disappears into it ahead of the flare, trapping it in hyperspace. Back on Tatooine Luke disappears in the light of the binary sunset, too much of his essence poured into the Force. Finn and the others watch and wait for Rey to emerge into normal space and contact them, but she doesn’t.

The battle won, the captured Union database gives the freed Mandalorians information of their origins and Finn reunites in an emotional scene with Idrian and Teros. Leia, unsmiling, tells an arrested Ben that he is grounded for life. A memorial is held for those lost in battle, and Rey’s name is among them.

After a time skip Finn is proclaiming the creation of a new joint force between the Republic and Mandalore to keep peace in the Outer Rim and root out slavery. At that moment a ship jumps out of hyperspace, its hull red-hot and visibly falling apart, and a giant gout of flame follows in its wake. Finn recognizes the Falcon and tells Rey through the Force to eject, which she does just before the Falcon is consumed by the flames and blows up. Told you my version of Finn solves far too many problems by ejecting people into space Finn blasts into space to catch her and they bring her in, burned, frostbitten, and barely conscious but clinging to Finn as she tells him she followed him home, his light burns so bright.

When Rey comes to she is safe and in treatment. Her right hand was damaged and had to replaced with a mechanical prosthesis. She is, little by little, introduced to the new reality and we learn it through her. The Galactic Union is in disarray, and Republic and Mandalorian forces are hunting them throughout space. Leia is working to pull the Republic back together and bring the pro-Union leaders to justice. Hearings are beginning on Ben’s trial. Rey talks about her own ordeal, how she was lost in space and time and thought she was going to die, how she found Finn’s Force signature in the maeltrom and made her way out.

Hesitantly Finn introduces Rey to his fathers, and Rey hears from Idrian himself what happened. She learns that her mother is alive, though comatose, and goes to see her in the same hospital. When Rey stands over her mother’s bed she and Finn both feel Irena trying to wake up and reach out to her daughter, and they clasp hands to join their Force powers and bring Irena back. You see glimpses of Force ghosts around the bed, Qui-Gonn, Obi-Wan, Yoda, Anakin, and Luke, helping them. Irena opens her eyes and, without a moment’s hesitation, calls her daughter’s name. They hug, camera pans out, credits.

#alternate sequel trilogy #alternate episode ix #fanfic #outline #ask #anon

[onetruesporkbot]

One or the Other...Preferably the Non-Stupid One

A website I frequent, the Outhouse, has an article pertaining to Detective Comics #980, and the potential effect it (and to a degree, Flash War) has on the lives of Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown. I’ve mentioned my problems with their reinventions before, but...well, I’m doing it again. Sue me. And yeah, this’ll be a long one, so maybe go for a walk around the block to stretch your legs first, make sure you got to the bathroom, and maybe grab a drink before reading on.

I've had my own ideas on how to fix the error of Cass and Steph’s altered histories. Mostly they involve retconning Harper Row into either non-existence or just not being an attention/glory leech on the Bat-Family’s butt-cheek, praised as a paragon of splendor. Even if someone can find evidence that editorial/executive mandates forced the spotlight on that character throughout the Eternal books, the interpretation/execution of that, vis-a-vie how she affected Stephanie's and Cass' lives, is on Tynion (and, granted, the other writers who were working off his ideas), and acts as a basis for his ‘Tec run. As is her lack of development, off-putting but still happily accepted bad attitude and generally not really doing much, but still being treated like royalty by her experienced betters. She’s a bad character, and none of the Bats or Birds, acting in their right mind, would tolerate her like they did. THAT is the core of the problem with those stories and these reinventions, and they aren't solved simply because Harper became the Mr. Wick to 'Tec's Drew Carey Show, and just isn't seen very often later on.

           Not the most fair comparison, because the depraved, abusive, lying,        cheating, over-privileged misery-mongering manager is by far more likable.

While heavy-handedly-hoisted Harper is a large part of the problem, there are others where these characters are concerned. Steph's reinvention started out well enough, but then Tynion decided to charter her a flight from "beginner" to "accomplished crime-fighter" in a mere few issues. Stephanie lost a big part of what I've seen draw her to readers (like a friend of mine): her tenacity. Instead of a girl that kept doing the hero thing after being frequently told by those around her, including Platinum-Status Crook-Scarer Batman, to quit, and publicly (off-line) actually spoiling her Dad’s schemes, training hard to better herself...she was remade into a girl running around with her mask down half the time, leaving vague hints online that are ignored or hacked away. It’s later discovered didn't really want to catch her Dad, regardless of what that meant for Gotham, a city she’s quick to abandon when the s#&t hits the fan. She could swing across the sky and fight off assassins despite little or no training (excelled in this regard only by...you know blue). So, she’s got a skill-level and bravery on par with vigilantes with years of experience...until she doesn’t.

Cassie's changes are the biggest offense to me. While Steph started somewhat strong and had any thunder thoroughly absorbed by Harper, Cass' entire EXISTENCE became tied to Row. Every movement, every action, every breath was about some unlikable wastrel with delusions of perfection. Remaking a pre-existing character's life all about a newer one’s is even worse when that newer one has all the originality of the comic Diesel (see Linkara's review for context). Their "friendship" had zero basis, other than one party's guilt and the other party needing constant attention and praise heaped upon her. It makes Cassie’s her entire motivation more about appeasing Harper, proving herself to Harper, even asking for death in Harper’s name...as opposed to realizing that, regardless of who the victim was, killing someone was wrong. I don't recall if they ever named the guy Cassie originally killed, but it was better that he didn't have some "important" connection to a character like a bad soap opera desperate for ratings. Now it’s felt more like “killing that person was wrong...because it was Harper’s Mom.” Just like the Wayne Murders, it's better and more poignant if it were left random. But again, the problems go beyond Harper. Having Cass speak so early changes her "neurologically atypical brain", or how, when you think about it, slaughtering children and piling them up (seriously, what the eff, Jimbo?) kind of defeats the whole revelation Cass has when she takes her first life. Even if she feels she has no family, Cass taking the name of a serial killer makes no sense...I would think the body count would outweigh “feeling alone” element to the name (really, Jimmy’s stretching for that one). Then there’s the fact that Tynion’s blithering idiot version of David Cain never loved his daughter, except as a passing reference in his kamikaze strike, which was mostly about Mother not appreciating him enough. And probably just an excuse to kill another characters father because some at DC has Daddy Issues. I mean, they cut Cluemaster’s throat, THEN cut Orphan-Cain’s throat...but he somehow survived...oy, now I’m remembering all the plot holes. So many plot holes. I mean, Cassie turning evil was incompetent, but not only did that give fixed in under two years, Adam Beechen excelled in other respects during Robin, and wasn’t prone to unbearable slog.

                                      This is the crap you’re making me miss, DC.

Harper Row was either the standard or the launching pad for Tynion’s versions of these characters, and much to their detriment. This vision OMAC-Tim gives Cass and Steph just proves what I've been saying, that these characters of Orphan and...Not-Quite-Spoiler...aren't "just the same" characters as before Flashpoint, despite some similarities. They haven't earned what they did beforehand, Tynion just tried rebuilding them from the ground-up, then a few issues later just wrote "it's this way now" to closer resemble their pre52 versions, with no build-up or effort put into it. Heck, after hearing 'Tec readers talk about how Steph has been acting insane, these last pages suggest that, perhaps, she was playing Achilles or whatever his name is, which...I could kind of see Batgirl-era Steph doing...not a bumbling idiot who let Gotham burn over her stinkin' parental disputes and took orders from an ego-maniacal brat.

Cassie and Steph can hug all they want when things get emotional, it doesn’t change that the versions under Tynion had one called the other subhuman, and then when they next saw each other, spontaneous group-hug-invite. That is nowhere NEAR the same as the two of them disliking each other, and their rivalry developing into a friendship.

“Remember when I said you weren’t a person only because you didn’t speak?                                     AHAHAHAHA! Good times, GOOD times...”

And really, I think fans of these characters are just so glad to have ANY version of them, they're more forgiving of Tynion's writing, whether it's error-heavy or just serviceable. They’ll excuse the problems to support the characters. Sure, Jimbo tosses in some emotional moments, hugging, crying, but given his previous work and history with them, I question if it had any real structure to it. He didn’t hesitate to have Tim bone Steph, even though that’s not something pre52 Tim would do, so why should I believe he put any effort into the Clayface/Cassie friendship, or...any character/Cassie friendship? But even if he did...how does it justify what he changed or how he changed it? I’d say it doesn’t; his mistakes aren’t better just because he and/or DC refuse to acknowledge them (hence the absence of Harper). NOTHING justifies these problems.

So, moving forward from Steph and Cass learning they had alternate, better-written lives...we don’t know how that’ll go. ‘Tec 981 could see them decide they (for some unholy reason) prefer to have started out as side-characters in their own origins if it props Harper up further, never having actually ever been the same as before (but “different” and “change”, so that makes it better somehow). Or, in a rare show of intelligence, this will lead to them ACTUALLY getting their lives back, no reinvention, no dead Dads either influencing their sociopathic negligence or wanting them dead, no stupid changes mandated by a bunch of witless baboons in charge...none of it. Because none it was good, none of it improved or equaled what was done before, and none of it is justified by long slogs in between distracting heart-string-tugs. Tynion’s changes, including but certainly not limited to the spotlighting of Bluebird, brought nothing new or good to the table, regardless of circumstances, and I fail to see why they or their effects should continue.

The characters CANNOT have both histories; they just don’t work together. Steph’s beginnings cannot be both humble AND tied to yet-another city-wide massacre. Cassie’s life cannot be about her AND someone that has no right, rhyme or reason to be associated with her. David Cain cannot be a trained assassin at odds with a daughter he genuinely cares for AND...whatever the Hell Tynion thought he was writing Orphan to be. None of this deserves passive dismissal, not after all the years of crap DC has flung our way. They’re mistakes don’t deserve the validation of continuance for these characters or their world.

We’ll see.

#Cassandra Cain #Cassie Cain #Detective Comics #980 #Orphan will never be Cass #Stephanie Brown #Spoiler #Batgirl #Black Bat #Robin #james tynion iv #retcon #comics #DC Comics #snark #Craig Ferguson #Mr. Wick #The Drew Carey Show #cartoons #The Critic #and nothing of value was lost #The Outhouse #Harper Row #Bluebird #mistakes #Flash War #Rebirth