#and from a storytelling pov such a fucking awesome character
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me to anyone who talks shit about Cas: "how could anyone know him and not love him?"
#he's such a tragic hero#and from a storytelling pov such a fucking awesome character#he's like lucifer eve jesus mary judas all blend together#i just love him so much#spn#supernatural#castiel#spn castiel#destiel
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Happy Storyteller Saturday!
I hope you’re having a good weekend💜
This week's question is: What is a popular reductive writing 'rule' that you just love to break? I mean things like 'no head hopping' but see: Dune, or 'avoid filler words and run-on sentences', but The Lord of the Rings wouldn't be the same without them.
Happy STS! Thanks for the ask!
Uhh, crap, which writing rule am I not a fan of breaking?
no head hopping
Sunset is in multiple close third-person POVs including some antagonists and I don't think it could be told in as full of a picture any other way.
limit your cast
We're working with an ensemble cast that's probably too big--but as a long-ass serial with three-ish settings, I will say in our defense that there are very few people I can think of that we could pull from the full narrative and not have the puzzle collapse. There are a lot of characters but it's a sprawling plot and they all play a part.
start in the middle of the action
Nah, this is a slow burn, baby! Is everyone's world going to blow the ever-loving fuck up? ABSOLUTELY, but we want you to see what that world is first. We want you to see what those relationships are like before they are put to the test. Does that mean it takes a little bit longer to get to the Big Inciting Event? Sure, but I think, in the case of Sunset, those events are way more impactful as a result.
Thanks again for this awesome ask, friend!
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i know you don’t take requests but do you write y/n from second perspective? which perspective do you enjoy writing in more? i think third. do you see yourself in y/n most of the times? i see you in the character, for some reason, i think you write her while thinking of yourself. a confident and sexy person. i love seeing jungkook as the submissive one, and y/n i prefer in second person but your writings are awesome however written. thank you for writing them.
I think it's about 50-50? I've never sat down and counted how many times I write in second person vs third person. I typically select the POV based on the information I want the reader to know. I'm a big fan of unreliable narrator. :D
I like writing from the members' perspectives. It's a fun challenge. Also, let's face it, most of the time Jungkook is ??? it's funny, I like writing about what's he's thinking in space-out mode kekeke
and yeah
Reader is usually just some version of parallel universe, alternate dimension me. XD I'm typically writing about my experiences, thoughts, ideas, and I don't filter the bleed-through of myself. I don't feel the need to in something like this.
also, some of you wanna fuck me as much as BTS, I'll feed the delulu, why not
It's the storytelling that dictates the POV. I slowed down on the sub!JK (slightly, I can't help my nature after all, pfft) mostly because I didn't want to become too overbearing or predominate this idea that sex has to have a power dynamic to be good.
But also I find it hard to hold myself back when they're begging and looking cute while doing it. And maybe I'm crazy, but something tells me that if a certain someone finds out my tendencies, he'll be too curious and mischievous to let it be.
The biggest peepers just has to know.
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The Mandalorian Chapter 14 reactions: HOLY SHIT THAT WAS AWESOME BUT ALSO I’M CRYING edition
- the good good din characterization is back after all the weirdness last episode!!!! that soft way he says ‘no, no, I’m not mad at you’? THAT’S din djarin, he would not be fucking impatient with his son having just been informed and seen for himself that he is terrified, go away mr filoni I know you’ve got all of canon memorized but you don’t get this lol. this feels much more right in how din being conflicted and still thinking he should give the baby away for his own good plays out too
honestly every line of dialogue for him in this one was perfect I was just whispering ‘I love this awkward clueless wonderful man just doing his best’ to myself any time he said anything. “...does this look Jedi to you?” sir I adore you more than words can describe
- we got din chuckling. asjdklfhsdkafghsdafsadhjkfsdahjkfh. fskahfksjad. side note: I can’t believe my joke post about din desperately trying to Force home school the kid with the one (1) jedi trick he knows about and the baby being delighted by it over and over anyway -- listen to his expectant excited laugh when din takes the ball and sets up the game!!!! -- was canon all along. and then the baby & mando music kicking in when he gently put the silver ball into the baby’s hands again and tells him he’s special (because he IS special. to din)? hmng. hmmmmnnnnn
they opened on the height of softness so we would all crumple under the weight of the rest of the episode and that was very mean of them in a way I sincerely appreciate
- nothing to see here... just a dad trying to walk through the literal manifestation of the unassailable underlying forces of the universe to get to his baby again and again........ the desperation in that, the love, the foolhardy devotion................... shit
- okay so I might be a dumbass, but I’d never noticed this before -- the silver ball has a blue spot on the top, like so:
and in addition we get the room where the baby goes full darth grogu (I have to laugh so I don’t cry okay) on those storm troopers, and there’s a red light in there dominating the room (and it did even more in the concept art):
in star wars blue means light side and red means dark side (it’s very sophisticated that way), meaning the visual storytelling here is that there’s a battle for the baby’s soul and gideon and all his nonsense (and the trauma bb’s been through in the wider sense) is pulling towards the dark, while grogu and din’s connection leads him towards the light. just... the image of the baby looking at his own reflection in the symbolic representation of his relationship to din? the way children find their sense of self through being safely reflected and held by their caretakers? god help meeeeeee I will go in there and fistfight gideon myself for disrupting that in any way
the smaller light seems to be blue too, like there’s still the presence of light even if it’s dimmed and small in that shitty horrible room, which is a change from the concept art!
- FENNEC SHAND SURVIVED BITCHES!!! I even called that she’d be back with new shiny robot parts back in season 1, could not happen to a cooler lady, I hope we get more backstory and interaction from her the next episodes -- sounds like she’s basically sworn herself to boba’s service in gratitude for saving her life, I wonder if that’s a cultural thing of whereever she comes from? does she live aboard slave 1 now too?? because that would be hilarious and amazing, it must be like two strange cats trying to get used to sharing the same space
- everything I could ever hope for about boba fett in this series came true, they went down the much more interesting and nuanced route with jango and boba’s identities as mandalorians, he looked cool as fuck and made din as a character shine rather than overshadowing him... amazing beautiful yesss
(I did 100% not anticipate just how ‘cool uncle boba here to help you fuck shit up’ he was going to be but I am delighted to get it anyway. uncle points deducted for getting someone to point a gun at the baby, but the main point still stands lol)
the power and brutality of his hand to hand fighting too... a w e s o m e , I enjoyed the action scenes a lot in this one
- they even recanonized him actually wearing jango’s armour. what more could I ask for. I’ve had confused parent & child feels about these two since I was like eleven and here we fucking go again. and jango fighting in the mando civil wars too!
- so I’m grieving the razor crest (and I always will be, rip you magnificent jalopy, always in my heart) but also there’s the grim satisfaction that my reading on it was sort of true -- it is (...was. oh god it’s going to take a while to sink in huh) a symbol of din’s self and life, and at this point when they take the baby it tears everything else to pieces. the only thing that’s left in the ashes is the beskar and the thing that connects him to the baby. and there’s... a strange solace in seeing that that’s all he needs to keep going? he’s fucking obliterated from orbit but he still has his love for the baby and the beskar and that can keep him going until he finds something new, everything else can be replaced?????? weirdly healing, though he is probably going to have a solid breakdown at some point after they get the kid back (shut up they are getting the kid back) and the cold distant fog lifts
also this scene/shot feels like it carries some Meaning, doesn’t it? I’m on record several times saying I never want din to be mand’alor and that’s still true, but there’s something about the framing of this and the way boba looks at him that’s like... hm. I’m not sure I have the words for it. there’s something heightened about it, anyway, for a moment he looks like something mythic there in the wreckage
(something I would be much cooler with is our clan of two growing a little bit and those new people rallying behind him, actually, that might be neat. imagine if a force user does show up for the baby and gets adopted into the clan somehow??? so many possibilities.)
- from the way he picks up the silver ball... din djarin is on his way to straight up murder some people huh
I think part of what reassures me about this scene is the music -- this mando flute is not distant, is not beaten, is not despondent, it’s clear and determined and strong.
-
I love this. I love when we get explicit baby POVs, it makes it feel so real and intimate and... like home. (I especially loved baby’s point of view inside the razor crest, which just made me tear up again. baby lost the closest thing he’s had to a home in a long long time on top of it all. everything is suffering)
-
Emotionally Significant Thumb Grabbing tm; the show
- din djarin looking for the ‘on’ switch on a magic rock fhsdakjfhsadlfhsdjah I can’t breathe
“Well, this is the seeing stone. Are you. Seeing anything?” fsafkdsajhfsa sdhfksjalhfkjsdahfkjsdhf
- the energy around the baby as he’s, in ahsoka’s words, ‘choosing his path’ is blue, and the force sort of works across time and space, right?? so there’s definitely still hope for our lil green bean to not have to come up with a really dumb unsubtle sith name for himself, as is regrettably yet delightfully tradition. darth babbu should never come to pass (I do like how they’re interrogating the normal dark/light side dichotomy in this series, seeing as this is a literal baby who can’t really be responsible for that stuff himself yet and has such capacity for both.)
- listen. listen, the way din says ‘can you please hurry up’ with no sarcasm or real impatience whatsoever, more like a harried worry, to his force-meditating son as he jogs off to make sure no one’s trying to kill them. is hilarious and also YES this is what the character is!!! weirdly and incongruously polite under stress sometimes and with a slightly odd reaction pattern to things!!! he’s not just quiet and badass, he’s a little strange sometimes and it’s so good!
- a friendly opening volley warning shot from boba there
also din uncertainly asking BOBA FETT if he’s a jedi... now this is the dramatic irony I’ve been looking for haha
I guess neither shand nor boba actually know din’s name after this either. baby you gotta start introducing yourself at some point it gets real confusing when there are two mandos on screen
oh the long weary sigh going through din’s frame when boba says he wants ‘the armour’ and he thinks it’s just someone trying to peel the beskar off his corpse again. sorry the galaxy’s so shitty dad
- “But fate sometimes steps in to rescue the wretched” is a killer line well done mr favreau. I like that boba actually offers din a good deal as well and seems to intend to deliver on it from how things are going.
- din using his beskar-covered bod to cover someone he’s fighting alongside!!! literal moving cover haha. also I love fennec’s costume design
- I don’t know where din got more whistling birds from and I don’t care, it was really cool haha
-
wow haha um so anyway --
(cue all the ‘who wore it better’ with cobb vanth’s ‘spiderman’s first home made costume’ look on one side and ABSOLUTE UNIT DADDY boba fett on the other side posts lol)
- aaaghh the music almost like a stunned desperate fluttering heart beat as din watches the razor crest be destroyed
- for someone who has willingly worked for them in the past boba sure sounds less than thrilled about having the empire back in any capacity
- oof the deadness in din’s voice when he says “The child is gone”. ooooh no that got me h e l p
- guessing next episode is at least partly a ‘gathering old allies and preparing the assault’ step before the grand finale, then! they cannot go for the season ender cliffhanger with this, I will fucking riot. anything can be up in the air except baby and dad being separated, I will not allow it
it would be very funny if the force user baby called out to comes stumbling into the middle of all this like the troy entering the room with pizzas meme too
- the music in the darth grogu scene is partially a dark mirror of the baby & mando music :’( is nothing in this world sacred
also from how he reaches out for it baby might have used a light saber before in the past with the jedi? ngl the idea of baby wielding the dark saber not when he’s all grown up but in like two episodes -- with all the chaos a toddler holding a laser sword would involve -- is all that is keeping me sane here
‘liable to put an eye out with one of these’ well gideon you sure have doomed someone to lose an eye with that one, here’s to hoping it’s you, for full dramatic payoff
he is a deliciously smug awful force with great musical cues tho, you have to give it to him
- okay so this
is obviously awful and horrible and it makes me so sad... but it is undeniably also very very very funny in how it’s framed. you know what? after all this bullshit baby grogu can have a little dark side tantrum, as a treat, we’ve all been there right
(forget finding a jedi, we need to go out there and find a child psychologist who can help him deal with this without adding the fear that he’s on the path to become a two foot tall evil space sorcerer to the mix Y_________Y)
- rip the razor crest except for the second time :’’’( gone but never forgotten
- the last thing din tells the baby is “I’m gonna protect you; I’ll be back soon”. and I hope that stays with the kid somehow and that it actually comes true, that din will be back for him as soon as humanly possible and all this pain and fear can be repaired. ggggghhhhh my emotions are too big for my dumb human body
#star wars#the mandalorian#the mandalorian spoilers#the mandalorian meta#okay I'm gonna have to. go take a calming walk or something after this haha
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Review: Please Look After Mom by Shin Kyung-sook, Chi-Young Kim (Translator)
Book 8 of 2022
Start Reading Time: 9 March 2022
Finish reading Time: 17 March 2022
Page Count: 237
TRIGGER WARNINGS: GRIEF AND LOSS OF A LOVED ONE.
This is the spoiler-free part of the review. I will put up a spoiler alert before going into the review that contains spoilers.
There are some books that you just wish would come in a package with a box of tissue and a blanket, and this book is one of them. This book feels like a heartbreak, and that's what it's given me. At the end of it, I just feel so much grief, despair and deep sadness, for almost all of the characters in the book. So, not to give any spoiler, but just a little spoiler I guess, the book doesn't have a happy ending.
I kind of feel like it's a mistake for me to read this book, at the time and head-space that I'm in right now. Don't get me wrong this book is great, however this is definitely a spontaneous read. It wasn't even in my TBR, and I wouldn't have known or read it if it wasn't for my bestie, La, who recommended it to me. I was gonna go back to reading fantasy books after the disappointment that was The Enchantment of Ravens, to convince and remind myself that I still do love this genre. I was gonna read either Jade City or The Priory of the Orange Tree, and I put up a poll on my IG to help me decide which one to read next. But then I decided to read this book instead lol, I thought since it's not too long, and I like the synopsis, PLUS La recommended it and said that she liked it, so I read it.
I don't regret reading it at all, on the contrary, I really like the book and am incredibly grateful for the awesome recommendations I kept on getting from my amazing friends. However, I do wish I had read it at a time where my mental state is much better, because right now it is at an ATL.
I think it may be because I had a similar experience as the characters in the story not so long ago, and it really is traumatizing. Reading about it in first person POV kind of just brings it all back, and all of a sudden I can feel the anxiety, the cold sweats and the weak trembling legs. Fuck, even now i'm getting light headed just thinking about it.
So yeah, that's why I needed to pace myself with reading this book. I didn't want to DNF it, because I honestly liked it since the beginning, even though it was hard to read. If the book was anything less than great I would've DNF it at 5% probably.
Anyway, even though it's kind of a bleak story, I think it's still such a great book. I think the story is believable and incredibly poignant, and the storytelling is amazing. This is the first book I've read of this author and pretty early on I can tell I really like her writing style. I think her style is unique and refreshing to read, and it's made the whole experience reading this sad story pretty entertaining and engaging.
The story is about a family who are searching for their missing elderly mother. The mother was first going missing when she and the father were coming to Seoul to celebrate the father's birthday with their adult children who are all living in the city. The mother and the father still live in the village by themselves, and even though at first the children visit them regularly, as the time goes by, the children one by one stopped visiting them, so they go to the city to visit them instead. The second eldest was supposed to pick them up at the station but, the elderly mother, was left behind by the father who's used to always walking ahead of his wife.
As the children search for the mother, they start recalling memories about their mother, and they realize how selfless and kind-hearted of a person she truly is. Each child, and the father started having all of these regrets, about the things they should have done for their mother/wife, but they didn't, and guilt about the ways they have hurt her in the past.
Along the way, they also discover some things about her that they didn't know before, and at some points, they wonder if they ever truly know their mother/wife as a person she really is, or only as the role she played as their mother/wife. And the more they discover about her, the more eager they are to search for her.
Some people called to tell them that they saw her around their houses, but she didn't look like the person in the picture they use for the Missing Person posters that they handed out to people. The woman they saw was wearing blue plastic sandals that dug into her feet that looked to be wounded and they could see the bones through it. The woman they saw was unkempt and looked scared and confused, but they recognize her because the eyes are the same, they say her eyes look honest, like a cow's eyes.
So the children and the father keep on searching for her, while keeping her spirit in them alive. But they don't even know if she's still in this world or if she has already passed on to another world, leaving them behind.
The story is told from multiple POVs. First we get the POV of the eldest daughter, who's a successful and famous author and still unmarried. Then we get the POV of the eldest child, the pride of their mother. Next, we get the POV of the husband, who's in deep guilt and regrets for all the wrong he's done to his wife. And last, we get the POV of the mother herself.
It is a heartbreaking story of the children who's missing their sickly elderly mother, of a husband who's feeling guilty for how bad he has treated his wife for almost the whole time they were married, and of a mother and the life she had and kept from her children and husband.
🚨SPOILER ALERT🚨
From this point forward in the review, i will mention spoilers, plot twist and the ending, so if you don’t wish to be spoiled, you can skip the rest of the review and come back once you’ve finished reading this book
Here are the things that i love the most about the book:
One of the things that will always get me sobbing is family (well, I mean in terms of story themes in books, but I guess my own literal family also made me sob pretty frequently lol). I think almost all of the books I read that made me cry are all about families. Especially books about parents-child relationships, it's like my kryptonite. Books like "How to Make Friends With The Dark" by Kathleen Galsgow, "Things My Son Needs To Know About The World" and "And Every Morning The Way Home Gets Longer And Longer" and "Deal of A Lifetime" by Fredrik Backman, etc. How can you not cry at these books? And, as I always say, I love books that make me cry. The harder I cry, the better the book, lol. I love how the book portrays the realistic relationship between the siblings and between the children and their parents.
This book's theme is our childhood's nightmare: losing our mother. It's not even just a nightmare during childhood only, i think at whatever age you are, it is still one of the worst fucking nightmares. I'm sure we have all experienced that feeling when we were little and got lost in a big grocery shop or a mall and dreading never seeing your mother or your family ever again, but especially your mother. I think it depends on your relationship with your mother, because I realize not everyone has a good relationship with their parents, but for me personally, my mom is the most important person in the world, and without whom I would be lost, even now. And yes, I am indeed 26 years old. I am one of those lucky people who have an amazing mother and have a good relationship with their mother. It is truly a gift, especially knowing that there are some people who don't have that. And reading this book is like living out that nightmare, and as expected it truly is heartbreaking. And reading about how amazing of a person and a mother Park So Nyo is, just makes it all the more excruciating. But I think this book helps in reminding us to appreciate our mothers more. Because most of the time we think of all the physical and emotional labor that our mothers did for us as a given and we took it for granted. I personally, definitely do not appreciate her nearly enough. When I really think about it, mothers do not get any monetary compensation for all the labor they do around the house, let alone the emotional labor, and they do it quietly. You leave for school and work and the house is a mess, the laundry piled up, no food after breakfast, but magically when you come back home, the house is suddenly clean, the laundry done and there's food on the table. And when you hire someone to do all this, you get so surprised because it costs so much, yet our mothers never charged us for anything. Not to mention the hardship they went through with pregnancy, child birth and child rearing. It's all too much, and mothers are all superheroes, although they're the unsung ones at that. This book made me think about all of this, and it made me wish that I'd done more to help my mom and let her know that I am incredibly grateful for everything she has done for me and the whole family, and that I love her the most in the world.
I love the writing style of this author. I will definitely be reading more of her works, if they're available in English. As is the case with Backman books, I wonder if this book will feel different if I read and understand it in its original language. I never want any gems in the book to be lost in translation, if you know what I mean. But I think the translator also did a great job at translating it and making it easy to read and understand in English. Maybe I'll learn Korean someday.
There's not much that I dislike about the book, I just have small complaints about the story, such as...
We never get the POV of the 2nd child (since they have 4 children, but only 3 children get their POV, or at least a letter with their words on it), and I hope it could've been included in the book.
Because the story is being told through the memories of the children and the husband, it leaves many holes in the stories about what happened in between the stories. Like, how did the mother and father reconcile after he came back to the house from running away to live with another woman. I wanna know the whole tea about his affair and the whole situation. I think it's really pertinent to the story and I wish we get that in the book.
There are a a lot of heartbreaking scenes in the book, but these are my favorite:
When the eldest daughter and the mother were taking a walk and the daughter told her about the talk she gave to these blind people who had read her book in braille and love it, and she told her mother about the train to Machu Picchu in Peru that goes backward. And the mother told her daughter to never hide her words, and that she told such good stories.
When the mother breaks the dishes to let her built-up frustrations out, without anyone knowing.
When the youngest daughter bought her mother a mink coat.
When the mother came to the school to pay her daughter's tuition so she could continue her education, her daughter noticed afterwards that her mom's gold ring was gone, and that she sold it to pay for her education.
Here are my favourite quotes from the book:
"Leaving Hyong-chol’s house, you take the subway home but get off at Seoul Station, which is where Mom vanished. So many people go by, brushing your shoulders, as you make your way to the spot where Mom was last seen. You look down at your watch. Three o’clock. The same time Mom was left behind. People shove past you as you stand on the platform where Mom was wrenched from Father’s grasp. Not a single person apologizes to you. People would have pushed by like that as your mom stood there, not knowing what to do."
"How far back does one’s memory of someone go? Your memory of Mom?
Since you heard about Mom’s disappearance, you haven’t been able to focus on a single thought, besieged by long-forgotten memories unexpectedly popping up. And the regret that always trailed each memory."
"There are moments one revisits after something happens, especially after something bad happens. Moments in which one thinks, I shouldn’t have done that."
"When was it you realized that Mom didn’t know how to read?"
"As the third of five children, you witnessed Mom’s sorrow and pain and worry when each of your older brothers left home. Every morning at dawn after Hyong-chol left, Mom would clean the surface of the glazed clay sauce-jars on the ledge in the back yard. Because the well was in the front yard, it was cumbersome to bring water to the back, but she washed each and every jar. She took off all the lids and wiped them clean, inside and out, until they shone. Your mom sang quietly. “If there were no sea between you and me there wouldn’t be this painful goodbye.…” Her hands busily dipping the rag in cold water and lifting it out and wringing it and rubbing the jars, Mom sang, “I hope you won’t leave me one day.” If you called to her at that moment, she would turn around with tears welling in her big, guileless eyes."
"After Hyong-chol had left for the city, when Mom reached the clay jar she used to hide the ramen in, she would call out, “Hyong-chol!” and sink down, her legs giving way. You would slip the rag from Mom’s grasp, lift her arm up, and drape it around your shoulder. Your mom would break out in sobs, unable to control her overflowing feelings for her firstborn."
"Either a mother and daughter know each other very well, or they are strangers."
"When Mom scolded you freely, you more frequently called her Mom. The word “Mom” is familiar and it hides a plea: Please look after me. Please stop yelling at me and stroke my head; please be on my side, whether I’m right or wrong. You never stopped calling her Mom. Even now, when Mom’s missing. When you call out “Mom,” you want to believe that she’s healthy. That Mom is strong. That Mom isn’t fazed by anything. That Mom is the person you want to call whenever you despair about something in this city."
"Her dark eyes, which used to be as brilliant and round as the eyes of a cow that is about to give birth, were hidden under wrinkles. Her pale, fat lips were dry and cracked. You picked up her arm, which she’d flung on the platform, and placed it on her stomach. You stared at the dark sunspots on the back of her hand, saturated with a lifetime of labor. You could no longer say you knew Mom."
"You don’t understand why it took you so long to realize something so obvious. To you, Mom was always Mom. It never occurred to you that she had once taken her first step, or had once been three or twelve or twenty years old. Mom was Mom. She was born as Mom. Until you saw her running to your uncle like that, it hadn’t dawned on you that she was a human being who harbored the exact same feeling you had for your own brothers, and this realization led to the awareness that she, too, had had a childhood. From then on, you sometimes thought of Mom as a child, as a girl, as a young woman, as a newlywed, as a mother who had just given birth to you."
"Most things in the world are not unexpected if one thinks carefully about them. Even something one would call unusual—if one thinks about it, it’s really just a thing that was supposed to happen. Encountering unusual events often means you didn’t think things through."
"When was the last time you’d told Mom about something that had happened to you? At a certain point, the conversations between you and Mom became simplified. Even that was not done face to face, but by telephone. Your words had to do with whether she ate, whether she was healthy, how Father was, that she should be careful not to catch cold, that you were sending money. Mom talked about how she made kimchi and sent some, that she had strange dreams, that she sent rice, or fermented bean paste, that she’d brewed motherwort to send you, and that you shouldn’t turn off your phone because the messenger would call before delivering all these packages."
"“And I thought of Mom. I wondered, How did Mom feel all those years in that old-fashioned kitchen, cooking for our big family? Remember how much we ate? We had two small tables filled with food. Remember how big our rice pot was? And she had to pack all of our lunches, including the side dishes she made with whatever she could get in the countryside.… How did Mom get through it every day? Since Father was the eldest, there was always a relative or two staying with us. I don’t think Mom could have liked being in the kitchen at all.”
You were caught off guard. You had never thought of Mom as separate from the kitchen. Mom was the kitchen and the kitchen was Mom. You never wondered, Did Mom like being in the kitchen?"
"Your mom let out a deep sigh. “But it was nice when you kids were growing up. Even when I was so busy that I didn’t have time to retie the towel on my head, when I watched you sitting around the table, eating, with your spoons making a racket in the bowls, I felt like there was nothing else I wanted in the world. You were all so easy. You dug in happily when I made a simple zucchini-and-bean-paste soup, and your faces lit up if I steamed some fish once in a while.… You were all such good eaters that when you were growing I was sometimes afraid. If I left a pot filled with boiled potatoes for your after-school snack, the pot would be empty when I came home. And there were days when I could see the rice in the jar in the cellar disappearing day by day, and times when the jar would be empty. When I went to the cellar to get some rice for dinner and my scoop scraped the bottom of the rice jar, my heart would sink: What am I going to feed my babies tomorrow morning? So in those days it wasn’t about whether I liked to be in the kitchen or not. If I made a big pot of rice and a smaller pot of soup, I didn’t think of how tired I was. I felt good that these were going into my babies’ mouths. Now, you probably can’t even imagine it, but in those days we were always worried that we would run out of food. We were all like that. The most important thing was eating and surviving.” Smiling, your mom told you that those days were the happiest in her life."
"Mom’s hands were frozen. Grasping them, he vowed to himself that he would make these hands and this woman happy, no matter what. But a rebuke tumbled out of his mouth, asking her how she could follow a stranger just because he told her to. Mom scolded him right back: “How can you live without trusting people? There are more people who are good than people who are bad!” And she smiled her typical optimistic smile."
"“You’re my first child. This isn’t the only thing that you got me to do for the first time. Everything you do is a new world for me. You got me to do everything for the first time. You were the first who made my belly swollen, and the first to breastfeed. I was your age when I had you. When I saw your red, sweaty face, eyes shut, for the first time … People say that when they have their first child they’re surprised and happy, but I think I was sad. Did I really have this baby? What do I do now? I was so afraid that at first I couldn’t even touch your squirmy little fingers. You were holding those tiny hands in such tight fists. If I opened your fists up one finger at a time, you smiled. They were so small that I thought, If I keep touching them they might disappear. Because I didn’t know anything.""
""Later, I was happy to see your fingers and toes grow every day. When I was tired, I went over to you and opened your fingers. Touched your toes. When I did that, I felt energized. When I first put shoes on you, I was really excited. When you toddled over to me, I laughed so much; even if someone had spilled out a heap of gold and silver and jewels in front of me, I wouldn’t have laughed like that. And how do you think I felt when I sent you to school? When I pinned your name tag and a handkerchief on your chest, I felt so grown up. How can I compare the happiness I got watching your legs get thicker with anything else? Every day, I sang, Grow and grow, my baby. And then, one day, you were bigger than me.”"
"“I’ll become an important person,” Hyong-chol promised.
“What are you going to be?”
“A prosecutor!”
Mom’s eyes sparkled then. “If you want to be a prosecutor, you have to study hard. A lot more than you think you do. I know someone who wanted be a prosecutor and studied night and day and never made it and went crazy.”
“I’ll do it if you come home.…”
Mom looked into his anxious eyes. She smiled. “Yes. You can do it. You were able to say Ma before you were a hundred days old. Even though no one taught you to read, you learned to read as soon as you went to school, and you’re ranked first in your class.” She sighed. “Why would I leave that house when you’re there—why didn’t I think of that? You’re there.”"
"Now he reflects on this. When she was younger, Mom was a presence that got him to continue building his resolve as a man, as a human being."
"He never became a prosecutor. Mom always called it his dream, but he hadn’t understood that it had been Mom’s dream, too. He only thought of it as a youthful wish that couldn’t be achieved; it never occurred to him that he had deflated Mom’s aspirations as well. He realizes that Mom has lived her entire life believing that she was the one who held him back from his dream. I’m sorry, Mom, I didn’t keep my promise. His heart brims with the desire to do nothing but look after Mom when she’s found. But he has already lost that chance.
He crumples to his knees on the living-room floor."
"One Parents’ Day in May, years ago, none of the children called. Your wife went to the stationery store in town and bought two carnation buds, each tied to a ribbon that said “Thank you for giving me life and raising me.” She found you standing by the new road and urged you to come home. “What if someone sees us?” You followed her home. She persuaded you to come inside and lock the door, then pinned a carnation to the front of your jacket. “What would people say if we went around without a flower pinned to our clothes, when everyone knows how many children we have? That’s why I bought these.” Your wife fastened a flower on her clothes, too. The flower kept drooping, so she repinned it twice. You took off the flower as soon as you left the house again, but your wife went around the whole day with the flower on her chest."
"You had no idea that a stranger was reading your daughter’s novel to your wife. How hard your wife must have worked to hide from this young woman the fact that she didn’t know how to read. Your wife, wanting so badly to read your daughter’s novel, couldn’t tell this young woman that the author was her daughter, but blamed her bad eyes and asked her to read it out loud. Your eyes sting. How was your wife able to restrain herself from bragging about her daughter to this young woman?"
" “Are you here? I’m home!” you call to the empty house, and pause to listen.
You expect your wife to shout a greeting—“You’re home!”—but the house is quiet. Whenever you returned home and called, “I’m home!” your wife would, without fail, stick her face out from somewhere in the house."
"You get up and open all the doors in the house. “Are you in here?” you ask at each door. You open the doors to your bedroom and the guest room and the kitchen and the boiler room. It’s the first time you’ve desperately searched for your wife. Did she look for you like this every time you left home? You blink your dry eyes and open the kitchen window, to look at the shed. “Are you in there?” But there’s only the bare platform."
" You left this house whenever you wanted to, and came back at your whim, and you never once thought that your wife would be the one to leave."
"You thought you didn’t love your wife very much, because you married her after seeing her only once, but every time you left home and some time passed, she reappeared in your thoughts. Your wife’s hands could nurture any life."
"The moment when you had to confirm that you’d left your wife in Seoul Station, that you’d boarded the train and traveled one stop away, the moment that you turned around, accidentally hitting the shoulder of the person next to you, you realized that your life had been irreparably damaged. It didn’t take even a minute to realize that your life had veered off track because of your speedy gait, because of your habit of always walking in front of your wife during all those years of marriage, first when you were young, then old, for fifty years. If you had turned around to check whether she was there right as you got on the car, would things have turned out this way? For years your wife used to make comments—your wife, who always lagged behind when you went somewhere together, would follow you with sweat beaded on her forehead, grumbling from behind—“I wish you’d go a little slower, I wish you’d go at my pace. What’s the rush?” If you finally stopped to wait for her, she would smile in embarrassment and say, “I walk too slowly, right?”"
"There was a time when the dead didn’t speak and the ones left behind went crazy like that."
"“Your mom was very proud of you.”
“What?”
“If you were in the newspaper, she folded it and put it in her bag and took it out and looked at it again and again—if she saw someone in town she took it out and bragged about you.”
She’s silent.
“If someone asked what her daughter did … she said you wrote words. Your mom asked a woman at the Hope House orphanage in Namsan-dong to read her your book. Your mom knew what you wrote. When that woman read to her, Mom’s face brightened and she smiled. So, whatever happens, you have to keep writing well. There’s always the right time to say something.… I lived my life without talking to your mom. Or I missed the chance, or I assumed she would know. Now I feel like I could say anything and everything but there’s nobody to listen to me. Chi-hon?”
“Yes?”
“Please … please look after your mom.”
You press the phone closer to your ear, listening to your daughter’s forlorn cries."
"Even if everyone in the world forgets, your daughter will remember. That your wife truly loved the world, and that you loved her."
"I followed you in the funeral procession to City Hall, and I looked for you and grabbed your hand again and again, afraid I might lose you. You told me, “Mom! If we lose sight of each other, don’t walk around. Just stand still. Then we’ll be able to find each other.”
I don’t know why I didn’t remember that till now. I should have remembered it when I couldn’t get on the subway car with your father in Seoul Station."
"My love, my daughter. Every time I went to Seoul after that, you took me out, apart from the rest of the family, to the theater or to the royal tombs. You took me to a bookstore that sold music and put headphones over my ears. I learned through you that there was a place like Kwanghwamun in this Seoul, that there was something called City Hall Plaza, that there were movies and music in this world. I thought you would live a life different from the others. Since you were the only child who was free from poverty, all I wanted was for you to be free from everything. And with that freedom, you often showed me another world, so I wanted you to be even freer. I wanted you to be so free that you would live your life for other people."
"Now, dear. Raise your head a bit. I want to hold you. I’m going to go now. Lie down, put your head on my lap for a little while. Rest a bit. Don’t be sad for me. I was happy so many days of my life because I had you."
"I don’t know who I was to you, but you were my lifelong friend. Who would have known that we would be friends all these years? The first time we met, you made me feel so despondent by stealing the basin with the flour I needed to feed my children. Our children wouldn’t understand us. It would be easier for them to understand that hundreds of thousands of people died in the war than to understand you and me."
"I will let go of you now. You were my secret. You were in my life, someone whose presence would never be guessed by anyone who knew me. Even though nobody knew that you were in my life, you were the person who brought a raft at every rapid current and helped me cross that water safely. I was happy that you were there. I came to tell you that I was able to travel through my life because I could come to you when I was anxious, not when I was happy."
"A house is such a strange thing. Everything else gets more worn when people handle it, and sometimes you can feel a person’s poison if you get too close to him, but that’s not what happens to a house. Even a good house falls apart quickly when nobody stops by. A house is alive only when there are people living in it, brushing against it, staying in it."
"Over there.
Mom is sitting on the porch of the dim house I was born in.
Mom raises her head and looks at me. My grandmother had a dream when I was being born. A cow with a shiny brown coat was stretching, having just woken, raising its knees. My grandmother said I would be very energetic, since I was born just as the cow was using its energy to get up, and said that I should be well taken care of, because I would become the source of a lot of joy. Mom looks at my foot, the strap of the blue plastic sandal digging into it. The bone is visible through the wound in my foot. Mom’s face crumples in sorrow. That face is the face I saw when I looked into the mirror of the wardrobe after I gave birth to a dead baby. “My baby,” Mom says, and opens her arms. Mom puts her hands under my armpits as if she’s holding a child who has just died. She takes the blue plastic sandals off my feet and pulls my feet into her lap. Mom doesn’t smile. She doesn’t cry. Did Mom know? That I, too, needed her my entire life?"
"If I can’t live like Mom, how could she have wanted to live like that? Why did this thought never occur to me when she was with us? Even though I’m her daughter, I had no idea, so how alone must she have felt with other people? How unfair is it that all she did was sacrifice everything for us, and she wasn’t understood by anyone?
Sister. Do you think we’ll be able to be with her again, even if it’s just for one day? Do you think I’ll be given the time to understand Mom and hear her stories and console her for her old dreams that are buried somewhere in the pages of time? If I’m given even a few hours, I’m going to tell her that I love all the things she did, that I love Mom, who was able to do all of that, that I love Mom’s life, which nobody remembers. That I respect her.
Sister, please don’t give up on Mom, please find Mom."
"Even though Mom’s missing, summer will come and fall will come again and winter will come, like this. And I’ll be living in a world without Mom. You could imagine a desolate road. And the missing woman plodding down that road, wearing blue plastic sandals."
"Maybe you already understood that Mom didn’t exist in this world anymore. Maybe you came here because you wanted to plead: Please don’t forget Mom, please take pity on Mom. But now that you see the statue on the other side of the glass, sitting on a pedestal, embracing with her frail arms all of mankind’s sorrow since the Creation, you can’t say anything. You stare at the Holy Mother’s lips intently. You close your eyes, back away, and leave that place. A line of priests passes, probably on their way to celebrate mass. You walk out to the entrance of the basilica and look down, dazed, at the piazza surrounded by long cloisters and enshrined in brilliant light. And only then do the words you couldn’t say in front of the statue leak out from between your lips.
“Please, please look after Mom.”"
I had a good cry after finishing this book. All of my sorrow and regrets that I didn't do enough for my mom overwhelmed me. And I needed that. This is a hard book to read, not just for me, i know, but to a lot of people also. However, i think that's what makes this book that great, it made us think of our mothers and made us evaluate our relationship with them and how we view them.
I read somewhere that there's this survey that asks a lot of people worldwide; what's the most beautiful English word they have ever known. And according to the survey, the most beautiful English word is "Mother". I have never agreed more with something wholeheartedly.
Now, go give your mom a kiss and a hug and tell her you love and appreciate her. Tell her I think she's amazing.
PLOT - ⭐⭐⭐
WRITING STYLE - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
PAIN LEVEL- 💔💔💔💔💔💔💔
BOOK COVER DESIGN - ⭐⭐⭐
OVERALL BOOK RATING - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
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A friend asked me to give a stab at a Tierlist Maker for Video Games Not Yet In the Video Game Hall of Fame Tier List Maker, so here's my list for it!
This is based primarily on what I considered to be overall value to gaming history as a whole, with games with greater influence or impact ranking higher than those that had less impact on those to follow, or on culture. All the entries are those that have been nominated to the Hall of Fame, but not actually inducted as of this post's writing. Games that I personally like are generally rated higher, though mostly because I'm more familiar with them and thus can judge their impact from a personal POV.
(Tier List explainations, below!)
SHOULD BE IN ALREADY
Final Fantasy: I mean seriously. How is this one not already in yet?? It is not, as my research suggests, the first true RPG; that likely goes to games like Ultima. It is certainly an incredibly influential one; FF is a name closely associated with JRPGs in general, and its diverse class system is one of the strongest things to do with it, as noted by challenges like beating the game with a party of Black Belts. FF is THE name of RPGs in general and I'm startled it hasn't made it in, though I suppose that's owing to more notable entries (Hard as that is to imagine). It doesn't hurt that the majority of my favorite FF titles are those most similar to this one, such as FF6 and FF9, in terms of approaching the general world setting and class systems. Most significantly is that this game popularized RPGs and made them accessible, in ways that previous games such as Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest did not; the field of gaming would be VERY different without it; RPGs became VERY popular, to the extent of RPG elements being almost universal among other games in the modern day. (I am also pleased and amused to see 8-Bit Theater mentioned on the actual Wikipedia page. Now THAT'S notability!)
Sid Meir's Civilization: HEY NOW HALL OF FAME JUDGES, DON'T YOU BE MOCKING CIV, ALRIGHT. CIV IS FUCKING AWESOME. Okay, jokes aside, I'm genuinely astonished as the Civ series is considered the first true main game of the 4x series, and it shows; the entire genre centers around expansion, resource usage and diplomacying or conquering your enemies, and considering the impact of this game and its sheer popularity, to the extent of the meme of the game getting people to play for Just One More Turn, I'm a bit disappointed that it's not already in the hall of fame. I also note that I am personally more familiar with the spin off Alpha Centauri, a sci fi variant, which is still one of my all time favorite games.
Half-Life: Given this game's popularity, to the point of its release alone consigning the likes of Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines to cult classic status and its engine spawning a whole THING with GMod and the usage of physics mechanics in FPS games, one thing of note is its use of scripted sequences; at the time, an unknown in most games of the time. There may be something to be said for how the entire game is spent as Gordon Freeman, behind his eyes, possibly engendering a lack of separation between self and character that would be later emphasized in games like Bioshock. It's influence on games cannot be denied, with publications using it as a bookend between eras of gaming. One consistent element of what seems to make this game so distinctive is its approach to storytelling, without simply imitating film techniques which don't always work well with gameplay.
Candy Crush: This is an example of something I don't personally play myself, or even like very much, but I'd be remiss to dismiss it out of hand. There's no denial that phone games are one of, if not THE biggest market of games in the here in now; if now in scale, certainly in quantity. You might call it the TF2 Hat Economy theory; people aren't spending BIG bucks, but they are spending a LOT of little bucks all the time. It proves that highly accessible games that are generally free to play, with optional purchases, are a legitimate means of game business, and this certainly revolutionized how games were seen by the money-makers.
Super Smash Bros Melee: I loved this game as a kid, but truth be told i have a bit of a love-hate relationship; i REALLY dislike the competitive community that has fixated hard on this game, so any thoughts on it will have a slight element of pause beforehand. Even so, I can't forget the thrilled delight I felt watching the trailer for this game in supermarkets for the first time as a kid. at a time when getting any new games at all was a HUGE deal in my family. So, there is a lot of feeling behind this one! Ultimately, I have to concede that while i have complicated feelings about this game, its worth noting that the vast majority of things that made Smash iconic, and influenced the competitive scene AND the games inspired by Smash AND shaped the course of the series going forwards, largely owe themselves to Melee in particular. 64 was far more slow paced, while Melee began the trend towards much more fast paced action (and while I doubt it's SPECIFIC to melee as a whole, it may have been a trend for the genre from then). Melee is STILL widely played, especially on the competitive scene, and this sort of longevity always bears evidence of notability.
Goldeneye 007: I have to admit that despite being a kid in the 90s, despite someone who put most of their time into gaming, and despite being someone whose favorite system at the time was the Nintendo 64, I mostly missed out on the trend of history by honestly not being that much into this game. I have to say that I DID play it, however; I just never managed to get past the first level or so. I have strong memories of triyng and failing to sneak around a snowy lair of some description; it wouldn't be until the mid-2000s, playing Deus Ex Human Revolution, that I got the hang of stealth. All the same, personal indifference really doesn't matter much because HOLY SHIT THIS GAME HAS SOME STAYING POWER. IT HAS INFLUENCE, FRIENDORITOS. Perhaps chiefly, at the time it was made, consoles were not considered viable platforms for first person shooters; Goldeneye revised that notion, and created a whole revolution in multiplayer and shooter games. We would later see the ultimate consequence of this in games like Halo, which further revolutionized the whole genre. Ironically, the stealth attributes I was so bad at were part of what made the game so unique! It's one of those games that may not have aged well, by modern standards, but its import to gaming as a whole goes a long, long way.
Guitar Hero: I expect this one might be a bit hard to justify, but on its own, this game is INCREDIBLY innovative, though its not entirely the first of its kind, having mechanics based on earlier games. The very first entry has a respectable library of 30 songs, which is impressive considered at the time it was made, its not likely people expected it to get as far as it did; bear in mind that the massive libraries of later games were the result of years of this game series being a massive steamroller of a franchise! At the time, this one was an unknown. It has an interesting history as being a successor of sorts to an arcade exclusive, and inspiring a genre of imitators and spiritual successors on its own; of great note is the sheer impact this game had. With so many of those successors, the increased value of liscened soundtracks, and the way the game's concept became so influential, its astounding this one isn't already on the hall of fame. (It's also very fun, but fun alone doesn't make for memorability, sad to say.)
DESERVES IT AT SOME POINT
Myst - an iconic and incredibly atmospheric puzzle game, I'm genuinely surprised that I haven't heard talk about this one in some respect; it bears note as a rare game with absolutely no conflict whatsoever. I actually rank this one on par with the 7th Guest in terms of atmospheric games, though their tones could not be more different. So why do I think this game deserves it at some point? It was an incredibly immersive and beautiful game, lacking in genuine danger or threat, encouraging the player to explore and tackle the puzzles of the game. This sort of open-ended lack of peril makes it an interesting precursor towards certain flavors of sandbox games around now. It's worth noting that it was a tremendous achievement, given technical limitations of things such as the CD-Rom it was stored on, maintaining a consistent experience, as well as tying narrative reasons into those very constraints. It has been compared to an art film; if so, it certainly is the sort that invited imitators and proved to be a great technical achievement.
Portal: PORTAL! What can I honestly say that hasn't already been said by other people? The amazing integration of a physics engine into innovative puzzle solving, combined with a slow burn sort of minimalist plot reveal concerning the AI proving itself to be a kind of reverse HAL 9000? This game got a HUGE number of memes back in the day, and I expect anyone reading this can probably reference a few. The cake thing, certainly, and its relevance to matters of deception. There is much discussion over the game's utility in academic circles, which is certainly quite notable, and for my part, I'm interested by the point that at first the game gives you a lot of hints towards what you're supposed to do, gradually making it less obvious for the player you're on your own entirely, using your experience with the game to get past the puzzles from there, and its excellent game design. Ultimately though, I place this below Half Life in hall of fame urgency, because while I probably like this one more, it doesn't have the same impact on other games, per say. (That's a lot of awards for it, though. Wowza.)
Resident Evil: Is it fair to call this one the major survival horror game of its era? No, because it's apparently the FIRST, or at least the first to be called such. It's certainly up there with shaping the genre as a whole, both its immediate predecessors and modern games. The flavor of a survival horror can even be judged about whether its close to Resident Evil's style of defending yourself with limited resources vs controlled helplessness. It's also worth pointing out that I quite like the restricted, cramped setting of the mansion, rather than an expansive city; Biohazard was a real return to form, even if its something I mostly watched through funny lets plays because OH NO ITS TOO SCARY I CANT WATCH.
Asteroids: It's called the first major hit of the golden age of the arcade. I'm forced to say... yeah, it absolutely deserves it. The actual implementation and hardware of the game makes for interesting reading, and so its innovative nature ought to be noted: it lacked a soundchip at all, making use of handmade circuits wired to the board. It's reception was great, beating out Space Invaders and needing larger boxes just to hold all the money people spent on it. It also invented the notion of tracking initials on the top ten score, which has implications for arcade challenges.
Ms. Pac Man: This one consistently ranks HIGH in gaming records of its time, though there is admittedly some confusion to whether it or Donkey Kong was a better seller. Interestingly it appears to shape most of the gameplay mechanics people remember most for Pac-Man, such as the improved AI of the ghosts. It's more highly regarded than the original game, and on a personal note, I remember being a kid and seeing this arcade machine at ALL the laundry places my family usually wound up going to.
Frogger: It's placing on this list is not solely because CUTE FROG. The accessibility and wide appeal of the game bears a great deal of consideration, the flexibility of its formula, and just how many dang times it's been ported in one form or another. (And also, cute frog.) It also gets points for the creator being inspired for the game when he saw a frog trying to cross a road, hampered by the vehicles in the way, and he got out of his car and carried the frog across the street. The game is also evident of broad appeal, and some money-makers resisting it, goes back a long way; it was apparently dismissed as a kid's game by some, which just goes to show that some problems are older than quite a lot of gamers alive today.
Uncharted 2: this is one of those games where I cannot honestly say I have personal experience to draw from. Of the playstation's big games, I remember the Jak and Daxter series; I remember Kingdom Hearts, and I remember Ratchet and Clank, and I remember Infamous, but the Uncharted series remains
something of a 'I don't go here?' obscurity in my personal playbook. It does look memorable and charming from what I've seen, and one consistent element I've seen in comments about it is the cinematic nature of the game; it feels very much like a fun heist movie, based on what I have seen of it, and the notable thing is how the game FEELS cinematic.. in a literal way. As in, it combined elements of cinematography with game design, and that's no mean feat: what works for movies are unlikely to translate well to the interactive side, and it shows how that can be done for other games. The extensive praise does the game a LOT of credit!
WORTH NOMINATION AT LEAST
Angry Birds: As noted before, I'm not the biggest fan of most phone games, given that i prefer a more passive experience than most provide. As such, Angry Birds isn't something I've played as of this writing, but I have to appreciate the straightforward and simple gameplay; it reminds me a bit of the Burrito Bison game series, which I HAVE played, and I'm going to go out on a limb and assume it's because Angry Birds is probably the innovation that coined that particular style of gameplay. It's an example of what made phone games profitable and worth the time of developers to work at them; its easy for casual players to get into, and there's a fun sort of impact involved. Given the popularity of phone games, this one has a LOT of influence in getting that rolling, similar to candy crush, if not as much.
FIFA International Soccer: Simulation games are a tricky business; it can be really difficult to get them right, and this game provides an example of it being done in a way that a lot of people REALLY loved, set up an entire game series, and revived the 3DO system after a very bad year. Of note, apparently it was commented that it was more of a simulator than a console game, and this is rather funny considering how simulator is its own genre nowadays! Such do things change. It seems to have been a revolutionary game and simulation; setting the shape for modern sport games of its type, and tending more towards realism (accounting for acceptable breaks in reality) than was typical of the time. This one's position is thus picked for its impact as a whole; while it may not necessarily be a household name now, the series continues on, and is popular enough that even after 20 years, it's still been going.
Elite: I nominate this game in this position for being a startlingly early entry into what we would now consider open-ended games, even with an element of exploration and trading; if one stretches definitions a bit, a precursor towards gameplay of the like scene in 4X players who strive to avoid conflict, if possible. Its technical breakthroughs are some very interesting reading and make for good game history; a vast and complex game (not just by the standards of the era, either), and opening the door for persistent world games such as World of Warcraft.
Wii Sports: A significant game, and much as how other titles mentioned above were famed for gateway entries into gaming for an unfamiliar audience, or those that would want o play on a more casual basis. It seems notable to me for being most suited as a family game, or a more casual experience of multiplayer than usually associated with games like this; this has greatly influenced Nintendo's design philosophy, and one can see elements of this all the way through the Wii U onwards. It's essentially a fliparound from Mario Party; less competitiveness, but definitely meant as a group thing. Controversy is evident, because like with Mario Party, injuries did result from it.
Call of Duty: I place this one here because, while it DOES hold a very significant role in gaming history, with countless imitators, spiritual successors, being a game-changer in ways that its modern reputation might surprise you with, ultimately it is less so than other games such as Goldeneye, Halo or Half-Life. It's development in AI pathfinding and tactics is incredibly noteworthy from a mechanical perpsective, and the sheer level of awards it won is notable. In the end this game's popularity and continuing influence means that it shouldn't be overlooked.
Metroid: You can't spell 'Metroidvania' without this game! A relatively open ended exploration-based game with further options opening as new tools were found give it an interesting vibe, and the oppressive atmosphere distinctive to the game says great things about its sound and level designs. It wasn't the first open world game, or explorer, or even the first to open new aereas based on equipment, but it had ALL of these elements in a very memorable package. (Samus Aran as a female protagonist is something I'm a bit reluctant to give it credit for, as her identity was obfuscated for most of the game, and only revealed in a fanservicey way in a secret ending. All the same, credit where it is due, I suppose!) It's music seems to endure as a mood setter, too!
Pole Position: Perhaps not the FIRST racing game, but still considered one of the most important from the golden age of gaming, and the one to codify many of the firm rules of the game series. It's three dimensional gameplay is incredibly innovative for its time, and having played it and games like it in the past, I'm struck by how smooth the whole thing feels. No wonder it was popular! It is notable for having been designed specifically as a 3d Experience, meant to execute techniques like real drivers might attempt, which makes it a different sort of beast in that it tried to do more realistic actions; in some ways, a precursor to modern trends of realism in many games, for ill or best. Ultimately I think this one is worth a nomination because of its influence towards racing games (a popular and long lived genre, to say the least) as a whole.
OUTSIDE CHANCE
Nurburgring 1: On the one hand, I feel a bit guilty putting this one so low; it is recognized as likely being the earliest racing game in history, and given that I just finished noting Pole Position's influence, it feels a bit mean to rate this one as relatively insignificant all the same. However, in terms of notability, I never even heard of this one, and it was tricky finding information about it. Accordingly, that may say something about its influence, though this position DOES make it noteworthy as the first of its kind, albeit with Pole Position refining and introducing elements that shaped the genre.
Dance Dance Revolution: It feels a bit strange, putting this one fairly low. This thing was a MONSTER back in the day; entire arcades were built around the dancing control peripherals it required, rhythm based games or mechanics specifically invoked it by name, and it was an absolute cultural touchstone for years and years. So, why place it low? Partly, its because I can't just shove EVERYTHING into the 'deserves a nomination' folder; I do think it's fairly reasonable for this one to at some point get a nomination in the future, though ultimately there's games more noteworthy on the whole. It's specific rhythm qualities continue outside of its genre, and are quite influential to gaming as a whole, though unfortunately the series seems to have lost something in notability over time; popularity is a factor, but so is the impact on other games.
NBA 2K and NBA Jam: I put these two together because they touch on similar touchstones for me, and they really did popularize basketball games back in the day. Jam in particular seems to be invoking the Big Head mode that were a big thing in games at the time, at least going from the screenshot. They were very popular and highly beloved games back in the day, though I don't know if they have much influence on later games. I note that interestingly, they take opposite approaches; 2k focuses on AI and realistic experiences, while Jam was deliberately less realistic and more actiony in its over the top gameplay.
Nokia Snake: This one really impresses me for the sheer number of releases, in various forms, it's had! Interestingly, there seems to be little consensus on the name of this game; most just call it Snake or something on that theme. I went with Nokia Snake because... mostly, it sounds funny, and that's how its done on the list. This one is fairly low, but I Have to give it credit for having hundreds of releases!
Farmville: My mom liked Facebook games, a lot. And I am certain this one was one of her main ones! I rate it fairly low, and no doubt her spirit is yelling imprecations at me across the void of time, space, and abandoned socks; all the same, this one is ranked low because of the sheer number of displeasure aimed this one's way. (And to be fair, she complained about it. A LOT.) It is thus notable for unusually negative reasons; an example of exploitation, pressuring players to pester their friends to play it in an equivalent to electronic chain mail, and microtranscations.
Tron: I'm inclined to give any game that takes place in a computer land and uses programming or mechanical terminology a free pass! Interestingly, this has some association with the Snake game, as they have similar gameplay and Snake games are sometimes called Light Cylce games, after this one. It has an interesting history; the graphical system was chosen largely because it was believed it was more likely to be achieved before the deadline.
NO BUSINESS IN THE HALL OF FAME
Mattel Football: I do feel a little mean putting anything in this category; firstly because I don't want to make actual fans of something sad, and secondly because I believe you can probably find notability anywhere you look, if you are inclined. And here is the chief difficulty with this one: I could not find any real information in this one. It has no Wikipedia page, a google search only led to undescriptive links of SALES for the game, but not any information on the game itself. Notability is my main resource for sorting these entries, and honestly? If google has nothing on you, that's a pretty poor sign. Sorry, Mattel Football, but you look like a poor man's Game And Watch. You're no Portal, Myst or Pole Position.
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Sakura having sex with other men could trigger sasusaku fans because with a story like Naruto you fall in love once or you don't . There is no oh if she died or he left they will move on that's probably why . Because in naruto , you love once or you don't . Ss is the literal definition of this
Sakura - never once gave up
On sasuke
Sakura - uchihas value love and it's that he falls in love once
However slut shaming comment for the author is so fucking disgusting
1) You are misusing the word trigger. Please look up what a trigger actually is. I mean that genuinely, not snarkily. I have PTSD so when I see the word trigger thrown around like this it’s concerning.
2) There is zero evidence that Naruto is some whackadoo universe in which it is impossible to fall in love more than once.
3) The romance in Naruto canon is sparing, depressing, and for the most part poorly developed anyway. Even if Naruto *was* such a whackadoo universe, I would dismiss it as bad storytelling. Which let’s be honest, is true for most of the romantic shit in canon. NaruSaku the ultimate red herring? Karin’s gross crush on Sasuke? Hinata’s beautiful love confession being totally ignored?? Sasuke on bippity boppity boo plot device journey for a bazillion years?? I could go on.
4) The descriptions of Sasuke and Sakura you’re providing are your view of them in canon. Which is valid! More power to you. And I agree that *CANON* SasuSaku would never love anyone besides each other. But I am not writing canon. No author on AO3 or FFN is writing canon. We are all writing fanfic! FANfic. Which means no matter how In Character or Out Of Character (which are subjective concepts) we make Sasuke or Sakura, they will never be 1000% in line with canon, because these stories are fan creations.
5) The whole point of fan works is to create something that is not canon. If you want canon SasuSaku, I can direct you to a 700 chapter manga called Naruto full of some very entertaining content. Or if you hate yourself, I can direct you to an anime of the same name created by Studio Pierrot! 😂
Somewhere along the way people have forgotten what the “transformative” part of “transformative works” means, and I am incredibly baffled by that.
As a writer, I personally find the idea of replicating canon so boring my eyes cross thinking about it. (That’s not a dig at canon compliant fics. I’ve read some excellent ones.) My wheelhouse is angsty, gritty, romantic stories in which characters don’t always make the best decisions. If that ain’t somebody’s bag, there are literally thousands of other writers in this fandom who are writing awesome things completely different from mine. So go read them and show them some love!!
For the last time y’all, I do not want to find anything else debating this subject in my inbox. If I get another one, I will just delete it. Probably should have done that with this one, but I’m hoping a detailed explanation of my POV will prevent further messages.
P.S. I appreciate your support regarding the slut shaming, but even without that, comments about the realism of Sasuke and Sakura loving or sleeping with other people… are just not welcome in my inbox or on my fics anymore. I Am Done. ✌🏻
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DANGER DAYS RECLIST
hi everyone! i wanted to organize a few of my fave fics here! i will continually update this & please feel free to send more in the comments or tags, so everyone check the notes!
DOESN’T HAVE TO BE ALL DESTRUCTION by SPELLINGBEE
@enby-partypoison / spellingbee / kir has never written a bad fic in aer life...destruction was one of the first fics i read when i was new to the fandom; it’s a superpowers au with jetpoison & funkobra, the ending is SOOOO beautiful (it will rip your heart out at some points though.) i’m also a big fan of once you go hazy, you’ll understand, playground eyes, and the alien au in particular, but everything’s worth a read!
STEADY AS IT GOES IN EDEN by DOUBLEMASTECTOMY
a SUPER angsty and terribly heartwrenching fic by my friend val @doublemastectomy. the war between killjoys and bli is over, everyone lives, and then party poison ruins everything. his other fics are absolutely wonderful, too, fading out is a fave of mine...(oh, and i wrote an alternate ending for steady as it goes.)
HOW TIME DECIDES by CALLOUSHEARTZ
a fucking AWESOME series by my friend soph @neon-rat; it is...gay. (& about how poison and ghoul met.) also one of the first fics i read in the fandom!!! poison and ghoul have the BEST fucking dynamic here, poison is goth and brooding, ghoul is punk and likes to fight, kobra is british which is really all the reason you should need to read this. mwah.
THE GREAT SHIPPING PRANK WAR by KRYPTIDKAT
do you know how hard it is to just choose one??? oh my god!!! @kryptidkat has so many solid fics but considering the amount of heavier fics on this list i thought i’d choose one that’s more fun than anything! it’s fucking HILARIOUS and i love it...aside from this, my other faves include i have loved the stars too fondly (SOFT) and star tripping (ADORABLE!!)
ART & GASOLINE by KILLTHEDJ
a&g is an absolutely amazing fic...not quite sure how to summarize it because it’s wonderful tbh, but kobra goes missing, poison has to find him, & fallacy fame is a DICK. @ruination-formation has one of the most well-developed universes i’ve come across, i also recommend return to the ashes you call and generation nothing.
THE WORLD LAYS BACK, PUTS A KID BEHIND A GUN by GOTTABEWHATTOMARROWNEEDS
well :( this fic singlehandedly destroyed my heart. no comment. tommy chow meins pov, it’s just before the sing mv takes place, it is....Yeah. say goodbye to all my friends, i fell in love with her again, is also a beautifully written fic, party poison/the phoenix witch is a pairing i never thought of but i ADORE this, the witch is a storyteller and very lonely...
COUNT TO SEVENTEEN AND CLOSE YOUR EYES by RADIOTEETH
I’M SORRY I’M SORRY my friend told me to put my own fic here don’t hurt me...However it is a ghost au and it’s very nice i promise...there is the fab four backstory...as a treat.
INSECT KING by TOAD1
tommy chow mein and doctor death defying backstory!!! u cant get much better than that tbh, there’s a fair amount of really cool worldbuilding in here too, it’s pretty unique compared to a lot of interpretations of the zones and show pony is the BEST!
DON’T STOP IF I FALL (AND DON’T LOOK BACK) by DISCOCRITIC
oh man oh man!! post-sing mv. @discocritic is an amazing writer anyways, but this...this kills me. the fabulous killjoys are captured, interrogated, & some bad shit goes down...i won’t spoiler it but <///3. i also particularly enjoy or i’ll sleep in the rain, it’s just so sweet and a lovely backstory; show pony & kobra centric!!
ALL YOUR FAILURES WILL DIE STARRY-EYED by THEELUSIVEOLLIE
honestly, all of theelusiveollie / @graffitibible‘s danger days fics are WONDERFUL. starry-eyed is jet star’s backstory, it’s a beautiful read and you can absolutely tell how much thought was put into it. don't tell me to rest in peace while you're still picking the bones of my memory is party poison’s backstory; we put the faith back in mayhem (it's important to enjoy what you do) is fun ghoul’s. i also recommend checking their tumblr as linked in the beginning of the paragraph; there’s a LOT of super interesting character building and background information.
#radiowaves#danger days#tlotfk#fics#sorry for the @s!!! i wanted people to have quick links to your alls tumblrs too
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dear creator: femslashex 2k20 edition
Hi, Hello, Hey. First of all–thank you! This is my standard you offered to write one of my fandoms, so thank you for being awesome opening spiel, full of generals likes and dislikes, I’m sure you know the drill. I’ll make sure the fandom specific stuff is up by the time assignments go out. (That said, if you already have an idea about how you want to write about the fandom/pairing we match on—wow, I’m jealous! tell me your secrets!—just skip over the fandom stuff and go forth with your bad self.)
Things I like include, but are in no way limited to: fun with POV, fun with linear vs. non-linear storytelling, fun with tone, fun with writing. I really dig character studies, stories that really get into what makes a character tick (and something porny that can get at that is wonderful too), and I like relationships that are hard and prickly and worth fighting for. I like happy endings that don’t feel tacked on or forced. I like doubt, and hope, and theology; I like actors, and directors, and I like the random deity. I like fairy tales. I like (love) romance tropes. Forced to share a bed, marriages of convenience, fake dating, friends-to-lovers, idiots-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers: it’s all like unto catnip. I like interesting turns of phrase, I like the perfect line, I like any story written just for me. If you have any questions about my taste (or lack thereof), feel free to ask @summervillen who probably knows my fannish tastes better than I do.
DNWs: noncon, necrophilia, pedophilia, incest, animal harm or death, child harm or death, pregnancy fic, A/B/O. Things that I would prefer you not include—especially gratuitously; there are obviously ways to engage with problematic actions/thoughts/etc. in fiction, but there’s such a fine line there—are as follows: non-character driven racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-semitism, etc. etc. etc. I’d prefer no high school AUs. I also have a pretty big embarrassment squick. And while I'm mostly interested in these characters in the worlds in which we meet them, if you really have an AU (non high school division) you want to write I'm there. Just, you know, grounded in the characters and their relationships and all that fun stuff.
That's basically it.
Babylon 5
Delenn/Susan Ivanova
I just ship them post-canon so hard. Later in life chances at love are sort of a thing of mine, and add to that two of my favorite characters ever, well, it’s like this pairing is made for me. That said, if you can find a way to write them during canon (maybe John doesn’t return from Z'ha'dum, maybe Delenn and John just never get together at all, maybe you can think of something I can’t) I’d love that too.
Delenn/Shaal Mayan
I’d love a story about them that’s really Minbari–that understands that neither of them is human. Something set when they were young and just figuring themselves out (and first love is rarely forever but it feels like it must be) or something set when Mayan visits Babylon 5 in season one or, heck, something set after the series ends. (I have a thing for writing on skin, so if you can find a way to fit that in more power to you.)
Last Tango in Halifax
Gillian Greenwood/Caroline McKenzie-Dawson
Oh gosh I have so many feelings about Gillian and Caroline and their relationship. How it’s grown, changed, and now they’re at a point where they see each other all the time and talk about basically everything and it’s all so beautiful. And, I mean, come on, they both have the best chemistry with the other; it’s just a fact. So what if they get drunk and kiss (or shag or something in between)? Or just deal with things like adults (I’m sure you could convince me that’s possible)? (She wasn’t part of the tagset, but I also liked what little we saw of Olga, both how she interacted with Caroline and how she befriended Gillian when they both showed up late to the play, so if you want to go the threesome route–whether it’s a V or a triad or whatever confusing mess of emotions you prefer–I’m there.) (P.S. I haven’t seen the most recent season, but I’m spoiled and have seen all the gifs and screencaps so include or don’t as you see fit.)
Lucifer
Linda Martin/Mazikeen
Their relationship on the show is a thing of delight and wonder, so basically I want that but also MORE. Maze fighting people to protect Linda! Linda, well, trying to fight people but mostly realizing that Maze loves it and is good at it so. Maze panicking again about Linda eventually dying, but also MORE SO because now they’ve been fucking and also having weird candlelight dinners and um is this romantic this might be. (Whether Amenadiel is involved (romantically with either or both, as an active parent but no longer romantically, etc.) or off doing something else stage left and never mentioned is up to you, but please no bashing, killing off somehow, etc.) Feel free to include hijinks with the rest of the gang, but I’d prefer no focus on any police work.
The Old Guard (Movie)
Andy/Quynh
Note: I haven’t read the comics, so this is strictly a movie request (I know they’re separate fandoms and listed thusly, but I just wanted to be clear). I’d love anything about them, in all honesty. Something in the past: a first time (they kissed, they said “I love you,” they refused to say “I love you,” they had sex, etc.), a fifth time, a mission gone wrong. Or something in the present/future: angst and fractured trust and fighting on opposite sides until they’re suddenly not. All too mortal Andy. Immortal Quynh. The options are basically endless. I also love everyone on the team, so feel free to include them however you see fit.
Star Trek: Classic Timeline
First of all, I don’t know book canon, so include it, don’t include, whatever floats your proverbial boat. Second of all, I am more than happy with “this character lives” stories here. Obviously. Third of all, please no bashing of any other characters (even that one).
Beverly Crusher/Laris
So I came out of Picard with an undying devotion to Laris and a burning curiosity about what the heck Bev is up to these days. So tell me more about both of them. Is there’s a longstanding affair, often at a distance? Did they start out prickly and reserved, wary? How are Jean-Luc and Zhaban involved? (I am happy with whatever you decide on the Jean-Luc and Zhaban front, other than gratuitous death or bashing of either. Feel free to have them off having their own adventures and don’t mention them if you prefer not to involve them.) Is Beverly’s French as terrible as Jean-Luc’s?
Kimara Cretak/Kira Nerys
Feel free to have Kimara escape/live/etc. I’d especially love something that recognizes that neither of them is human; play around with what we know of their cultures, about how those cultures might clash or unexpectedly mesh, how that can affect a relationship both positively and negatively. I’m always interested in Nerys’s faith and religious beliefs, and how that interacts with Romulan culture would be very much something I enjoy.
K'Ehlyer/Deanna Troi
K’Ehlyer deserved better, and who is better than Deanna? I posit no one. This is another pairing where I’d love something about the fact that they’re not fully human and the implications thereof. (Feel free to include Alexander or not, as you choose. Ditto Thaddeus and Kestra. I’d prefer they not be a focal point though.) Whether you set it during TNG or Picard or in between, I’ll be equally happy (or an alternate version of reality works too! those are just the time references I can think of right now!). (Please note that I very much also ship Deanna and Will, so please, please, please don’t bash him or kill him off for no reason or have Deanna cheating on him or whatever. I’d much rather you don’t mention him at all if you don’t want him in the fic.)
The Untamed
Jiang Yanli/Wen Qing
Is part of this my desire to have two of my favorite characters pushed together? Yes. Is it also part of my desire to have them actually live? Absolutely. (Which is to say: I’d love a “Jiang Yanli and Wen Qing live” AU here. Or at least live longer than they make it in canon?) I’d also be fine with modern AUs here, but I’d prefer cultivation be in there somewhere even if it’s set in the present (or the 1980s or basically any time period). Maybe there’s a political partnership of convenience situation! Maybe something shifts in canon and Jiang Yanli helps the Qishan Wens out and things happen and trust grows and they fall in love! Maybe they have a secret fling! Honestly, it’s all good.
#femslashex#femslash exchange#dear author letter#there will be more later#once i manage to write up the fandom specific parts#long post#(or it will be or it is idk)#the old guard#the untamed#lucifer#last tango in oh noooo#last tango in halifax#star trek: the next generation#star trek: picard#star trek: ds9#stars trek#babylon 5
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rereading aftg with my dumbass opinions pt. 2 (tfc chapters 6-10)
pt. 1 | pt. 2 | pt. 3
look guys! its the highly unanticipated continuation of my reread of aftg!
chapter 6 (aka. meet this MESS of a team)
“My mother's family is French." It was a lie that probably had his British mother rolling over in her sandy grave.”
neil really never misses an opportunity to remind readers that he fucking buried his mom on the beach huh?
“A liar who practices occasional honesty. Clever. Keeps people guessing. Very effective. I would know. I do it myself, you see. Come on, then. After you.”
have i mentioned how entertaining high andrew is? because he’s funny as hell
also rereading these are fun because Nora is incredible at foreshadowing just sayin
“Neil automatically reached for his seatbelt, but one of the brothers was sitting on it.”
how neil would be in the back of the cousins’ car if they let him:
“You?" Neil said. "You can't." Andrew's smile curved wider. "Ohhh, that sounds like a challenge. Mother may I?" "Your mother's dead. I don't think she cares what you do.”
HO HO HOLY SHIT NEIL
“Starting a fight was too out of character for who he portrayed "Neil” to be, though.”
“Consider this your official invite, you suicidal wretch. I'm bringing you to Columbia with us this Friday.”
awe suicidal wretch... glad they’re starting those pet names early
“I don't drink or dance," Neil said.
andrew: i kno u can
“Kevin doesn't dance anymore”
anymore? ANYMORE??? release the cursed events that led to him not dancing anymore Nora im begging you
“Are you bleeding anywhere?" Matt asked.
"Nowhere vital," Neil said.
gskjgnsak god i stan this little asshole so much
“She said it gently, with the hint of a smile on her face, but Neil still felt the rebuke. It was subtler but somehow deadlier”
have i mentioned how gay i am for renee? because im very gay for renee
“Allison looked ready for a photo shoot with perfect platinum curls, spiked heels, and a skintight dress.”
im also gay for allison ngl
“I can move if you want to sit here," Neil said.
"No, this is fine." She smiled, but it had a smug edge to it, probably because Seth was glaring at them like he could kill them with willpower alone. ”
lol remember how neil doesn’t think he’s attractive and yet in 0.1 seconds after meeting him allison is like “yes this idiot is hot enough to piss off the other idiot im dating”
“Personal favorite was when someone told the police we were running a meth lab out of the dorm," Dan said sourly. "Police raids are awesome.”
no offence dan but that’s fucking hilarious omg
that’s kind of like the time my residence floor had to get evacuated bc some kids hotboxed their dorm room
god i love uni
“The death threats were creative, though," Nicky said. "Maybe this time they'll follow through and actually kill one of us. Let's vote. I nominate Seth.”
pfffffttttt i love Nicky omg
also hahahahahah foreshadowing!
“It'll be fine," Andrew said. "I promised, didn't I? Don't you believe me?"
It took a while, but at last Kevin visibly relaxed. ”
again this is why i thought they were fucking for like the better part of the first two books
“The dead look Kevin turned on Andrew today was the same look Neil saw in his reflection. When Neil stopped acting, when he stopped worrying about who was watching, when he let go of the lies that kept him alive, that was the only expression he could make.”
it’s fine i didnt need a heart anyways
this kid is 18 hes A BABY
the first time i read this i was 18 too and like jfc i was a BABY at 18 and so i neil
“One of us has to make it, Mom."
It wasn't going to be Neil. It was obvious he was too stupid to survive without his mother if he let himself get into messes like this. But maybe Kevin could do it.”
sorry let me just wipe my TEARS off my fucking laptop neil honey what the fuck
“He felt distant as he watched them walk in. Maybe he was already dying, his stupid soul fading from his short body in preparation for a brutal end.”
neil we get it you have depression (me too bitch u aint special)
“Fuck running," Seth said.
now that’s a whole ass mood
“he didn't know how Renee could smile so warmly when she was speaking to Andrew.”
haha bitch just wait
“when he slept, he dreamed of his father waiting for him on the Foxhole Court.”
remember how at the end of the series his father is waiting on the court but neil wins??? god we love good storytelling
this is such a fucking wild chapter
could you imagine? coming back from the summer and your first introduction to this amateur from arizona is this neil josten level of sass? because i’d probably kill him
first years are bad enough but first years who dont care about other people’s opinions? the fucking worst
chapter 7 (aka. neil does NOT have a fun night out)
“It seemed Allison and Seth didn't believe in middle ground: either they were slinging vile insults at each other or they were making out in the locker room regardless of whoever might be around.”
that’s just how the straights are
“It reminded Neil a little of Allison and Seth, except without the desperate sexual undertones.”
i’ll just leave this gem of a line here
“His teammates held so little regard for him he didn't even have the dubious honor of being dead last.”
neil shading himself is actually hilarious how relatable
“Neil watched him do it, trying to remember the last time someone gave him a gift and coming up blank. That his first one should be from Andrew was unsettling.”
i actually love the fact that andrew bought him clothes so early on like andrew your gay is showing
“Neil debated how much damage the thick heels of his new boots would do against Andrew's face and liked what his mind came up with.”
i thank god everyday that these books are neil’s pov
“Andrew gave Neil another slow once-over and let go. "We're going.”
^andrew seeing neil w/o contacts (aka. the ‘i can’t think straight’ vine)
“Most of the men wore leather, half the women had corsets, and a good number of both genders were covered in buckles and chains.”
this... is a... gay bar
“Andrew saluted the bouncers on his way by and led the way into the club, bypassing the line entirely.”
i always forget the drinking age in the us is 21 but like this bar really dont care about their liquor license AT ALL lmao
“You think Kevin would risk his future over a night out at the club?"
"What future?" Neil asked.”
WOW NEIL WAY TO BE A BITCH
“Neil hadn't seen Aaron get up, but he was waiting behind Neil when Andrew let go. Neil reached for Andrew with lethal intent, but Aaron grabbed the back of his chair and pulled hard enough to topple it over.”
why are the twins literally this gif:
real talk nicky kissing neil like that is horrible and really reflects poorly on nicky as a character
andrew for this entire chapter:
chapter 8 (aka. a hitchhiker’s guide to lying about your identity)
“I don't know how your conversation with Andrew went, but it didn't end well. Rumor has it you paid a busboy a hundred bucks to knock you out. Way to cut our night short.”
this is probably my favourite thing neil does in the entire series ngl
“Wymack grabbed his elbow and hauled him inside. He slowed just long enough to slam the door behind Neil. "Are you stupid or just crazy? Do you have any idea what could have happened to you between here and there? What were you thinking?”
Why does Wymack literally sound like my father?
foxes: daddy?
wymack: DO I LOOK LIKE
follow up:
kevin: daddy?
wymack: uh yeah
“I don't know what the beef is between you two, but it ends here and now.”
Wymack @ neil: tell your boyfriend, if he says he’s got beef that your a vegetarian and your not fucking scared of him
“Then correct me."
"Give me a reason."
"Besides the obvious?" Andrew said. "If I can't get an answer from you, I'll get it wherever I can.”
andrew:
“I'm—" Neil didn't want to say it, but the word was already there, broken and pathetic between them, "—nothing. I'll always have and be nothing.”
“He wondered for a moment if Andrew could handle the entire truth so calmly, but that was too dangerous and stupid to consider.”
“Hope was a dangerous, disquieting thing, but he thought perhaps he liked it.”
this is such a good fucking line like i am shooketh
chapter 9 (aka. neil is, like, really horny for exy)
“Are you stupid?" Seth asked. "Yeah," Neil said.”
what a fuckin MOOD
“Neil had almost forgotten why he liked Exy so much. He did his best at practices but these days he worked mostly to keep his teammates off his back. As Neil surveyed Kevin's damage, he finally felt inspired again. On its heels was a hungry, desperate rush.”
“Seth made as if to throw his beer at Neil. "His life is not more important than mine just because he's more talented.”
sometimes i really wish seth was actually given a chance to have some character development
“ "Maybe you're not as stupid as I thought."
"Maybe I am," Neil said”
another big fucking MOOD
chapter 10 (aka. shocking: university is hard :/ )
“It's fun telling Kevin no," Andrew said with a wicked grin.”
why is andrew like this omg
betsy probably was like just looking for a chill job and was like “oh cool uni students? ill have to deal with like a lot of anxiety, sexual tension, depression and like confusion about the future, not to bad” but NOPE welcome to the fucking MAFIA WARS
“That wasn't so bad, was it? Andrew was convinced it would be a disaster. He put money on you hating Betsy."
"Did you bet against him?"
"Yes," Renee said. "It was a private bet between the two of us.”
“I hope you didn't lose much," Neil said.”
god why is he such an asshole at every opportunity i love him
“I can take care of myself," Neil said.
"Watch me beam with pride.”
wymack is the best father in the world and you cant convince me otherwise
“There was one for every fall team with schedules printed on each. Neil kept the Exy one, tossed the rest into the trash, and buried his magnet deep in his pocket where he didn't have to look at the dates.”
neil “i only care about exy” josten strikes again with his great school spirit
“Palmetto State was facing Edgar Allan on Friday, October 13th”
that’s such a cliche and i love it
“He detoured around students toward one of Palmetto State's three dining halls. Two were for the general student body. The third was for athletes only”
lmao my school literally has one dining hall and it couldnt give less of a fuck what type of student they’re selling food too as long as they’ll pay $15 for chicken fingers
what kind of money does palmetto state fuckin have
like i get us tuition is a lot but jesus so’s mine and my school couldn’t be less fucked
“It was only the first day of school and he already had three assignments: a short paper, a fifty-page chapter to read, and a page of questions about said chapter. Neil debated for a minute as to which one sounded least painful. Five minutes later he was still uninspired, so he put his head down on his desk.”
1. MOOD
2. first years are so cute thinking that’s a lot of assignments i remember in first year being like “i have to read 40 pages thats so unfair :(” and now i’m like “ah sick only 200 pgs of readings this week? im gonna have so much free time!”
upper year history sucks ngl
“I'm fine," Neil said.”
neil knows exactly two (2) words and those are it
“You say that an awful lot," Matt said. "I'm starting to think you don't know what it means.”
overall thoughts:
the plot is pickinnnng upppp
i kind of forget how much world building happens in the first book but like its good
also i love neil literally hating everyone its so funny bc like bby these going to be your best friends just wait
anyways that’s all for now
part 3 will be the rest of tfc and then we’ll move onto trk if you guys still want more of this? let me know
love u all bye
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Lotor’s end (?) in s6
i gave in to my terrible impulses and wrote a three-part essay about lotor. it's literally >9k and i ignored all of my other projects for this for over a week. rip.
in these three posts, i talk a lot about lotor from a sympathetic pov. so if that's something that makes your fandom experience uncomfortable, go ahead and ignore this post because it's not for you. stay healthy, and i can only promise you that i hold lotor accountable for every shitty thing he's done (especially when it comes to withholding info from allura because seriously, what bullshit). on the other hand, if you are a person who hates lotor as a piece of evil garbage because ???? fandom and purity culture thought it would be a great idea to hate him without looking very hard at the work the writers put in to make him more complex than the actual pure evil bastard zarkon himself that we already have... i challenge you to read on. do it. i dare you. (at the very least so you might hate him with a better understanding of why.)
so tl;dr:
this is the "in this essay i will" meme followed through, if i started talking about how lotor's not a pure evil bastard and is instead the perfect example of a protagonist gone sour through 10,000 years of poor coping choices, oppression, and a lot of actual resentment, as well as a neat talk at the end where i break down lotor's breakdown.
toc
1: i shake out some salt and talk about the altean colony | 2: i question why people keep insisting lotor was "evil all along" | 3: i talk about my favorite parts of lotor’s breakdown
i take a lot of my knowledge and inspiration from @radioactivesupersonic, who writes some awesome meta. (seriously, thank you clockie. you are amazing.) so while i might specifically cite posts of his throughout these three posts, expect his ideas to be everywhere lol. please check him out if you have the time, he's much better at this meta thing than me. (for safety purposes, i'm gonna disclaim: i did not consult with him on anything. so while i synthesize with a lot of his stuff, my thoughts are not necessarily his and i take full responsibility for that shit.)
anyway, i don't make meta posts a lot nor have any good idea of what a good structure for one would be. so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
"even after season 6, you still like lotor?"
fuck yeah my pal.
"but why? he's clearly terrible and evil! he killed thousands of alteans and said he was going to conquer the universe, destroy voltron forever, etc.!"
i mean, yeah. but i'm gonna soapbox for a second.
number one: nothing precludes me or anyone else from loving the shit out of an evil character. we're not personally invested in the story in the sense that we have real stakes involved. they're fictional characters, and we are the audience. nothing they've done has any bearing on our reality (barring general patterns that can be established by media as a whole) and therefore it's not our moral responsibility to throw down terrible judgment on a person who isn't real, even if they've done horrible shit.
i'm not saying one can't acknowledge or dislike a character who's a bad person. lotor himself has done terrible things, and if you could not give less of a fuck about him, that's highkey your prerogative and i champion your freedom to have your personal preferences.
but we're not the characters who live in that world. we're spectators to a fictional story, and one thing that means is that we have no obligation to anyone to personally hate a villain, no matter what they've done because put simply, nothing they've done is real. no one has ever been harmed by a singular fictional villain.
the purpose of the villain and their actions is not to be hated by the audience, but to help tell a story. hopefully, they're also helping to paint a picture of the variety of people, perspective, and experience in a respectful manner.
there's a strong trend in fandom now toward purity culture, where we're expected to hate anything that isn't perfect, and that's such a goddamn lie. nothing is perfect. nothing ever will be. we can't reasonably expect that level of performance from content creators.
and what does "perfect" even mean? social justice is an extremely nuanced topic, colored by individual perspective on what's right or good. there's never going to be an ideal piece of media that hits every spot perfectly because there are an infinite number of spots, and what they are changes in importance with every person.
so when it comes to storytelling, we need to focus more on what's practically possible. what's practically admirable. for me, ideally, that's "what have they accomplished? is this story illustrating the richness of human (or alien) experience? and how?"
this includes villains.
number two: i don't believe lotor is a villain in the sense that he's Evil or even necessarily irredeemable. from a personal perspective, i'll direct you to this post (link), which basically sums up my view on forgiving people who've done bad things. but from the third-party perspective as well, lotor isn't someone to find reprehensible or evil—at least, not to the level a lot of other people seem to be compelled to. let's break this down into more questions.
"lotor has killed people for his own personal gain! abused countless alteans, who already experienced a genocide!"
(allura is right there with you guys.)
yes, he did. i don't deny his crimes a single bit. the personal gain point may be arguable, but it still doesn't really make it better.
firstly: this is also addressed to those people who are stalwartly defending lotor's goodness by saying that romelle must have been lying. i haven't read any of the posts myself and only heard some of the points secondhand, and that is because the theory sounds like a load of bollocks (link).
this isn't something out of character for lotor, as much as i might want to believe so. it's really, really not, and i fully acknowledge that. we already know that lotor will do anything to survive if he finds himself caught between a rock and a hard place. that was what happened to narti.
lotor does have good morals. he has an absolute shit ton of them that, honestly, i don't know how to explain in detail without making this post twice as long as it's already going to be. he cares about individual life. he campaigns for conservation. he values people's cultures and would much rather work alongside them than dominate them. he's not cruel or sadistic like many of his peers in the galra empire, and he favors those who are discriminated against. and no, i don't believe any of these were an act. i can point to word of god for the most supportive proof—that "part of Lotor, a portion of Lotor, maybe all of Lotor, is coming from a very genuine place" (link).
(if you want deeper explanations about why these conclusions are accurate, please check out my #voltron meta tag and @radioactivesupersonic. especially him.)
but as it's been established, lotor is willing to break his morals if he feels he's faced with an ultimatum: survive, or die. victory or death.
"but that's a galra chant! he said it during the trials at oriande, and he was unworthy because of it. doesn't that prove he's really selfish at heart and will destroy anything if it means he gets what he wants?"
no. and also another no.
those two links go to really good arguments against that line of thinking. but let me sum it up: lotor has lived 10,000 years with an abusive father in an empire that considers his half-galra status lesser and despises his altean blood especially, and spent much of that in disgraced exile.
"victory or death," to him, doesn't mean that it would be better to die than to accept a loss, as when it's used by his galra peers; it means that he has to win, or else he is left to the mercies of his foes. and none of his foes have ever been merciful. he can never trust that one will ever be.
survival is lotor's most important victory in an empire that has been either apathetic to his existence or outright antagonistic. it represents his entire struggle of living—that he has to stay alive in order to win, and to a lesser extent, that staying alive in his universe is winning.
of course, lotor has larger motivations than merely surviving that he will protect just as ruthlessly. from a general perspective, one can hardly blame him for that. surviving isn't exactly living and being happy, especially in a universe that oppresses people like him, and he wants an escape from the corner he always seems to find himself boxed in. to a slightly lesser extent, he wants to create an escape for the countless societies oppressed under the empire as well. that's where his desire for infinite quintessence comes from.
"so you're telling me that he felt trapped in a corner and forced to break his supposed morals to use countless numbers of his own people as a fuel source. how the hell does that make sense? what trapped him? didn't he have other options? and how does this justify what he did?"
i'm not claiming that lotor was justified in any way. that is a fair grievance for people to have, and frankly, what he did was horrible and ugly and made victims of an already fragile colony, including romelle and her family. understanding the 'why' of what someone did is, shockingly, not the same as justifying them. (and i don't believe people look for the 'why' enough, when understanding the 'why' is an important step toward preventing the 'what'.)
maybe lotor had other options. there's not a lot of exposition that happens in this show, in-story or in interviews or otherwise. there isn't enough information about the canonical process of quintessence collection, or about quintessence in general, to say for certain if lotor could have done something less egregious in his treatment of the altean colony.
either way, he had to harvest quintessence. the likely possibility as to why? the galra empire was limiting his resources, both because he was an exile and because he knew they (particularly haggar) might be watching, and he couldn't let them piece together his plans to usurp power. he needed quintessence in which he controlled every part of the creation process, and he needed to hide as much of how he was using it as possible. the easiest way to do that was for him to get his own source.
contrary to that assertion, i don't believe lotor first created the altean colony with the intention to use them as a quintessence farm. i believe he genuinely cared about preserving what was left of altea, similar to how he cares about preserving culture in general. this would be consistent with his previous characterization as well as lm and jds's assurances that he was coming from a genuine place. most importantly, even according to romelle's story, the second colony is never depicted as an idea lotor conceived from the start. it came much later, after the first colony was well-established.
it's likely that lotor originally had other sources of quintessence, since throk mentioned his possession of multiple colonies in s3e1, or that he hadn't yet come up with his plans in their entirety. maybe haggar or zarkon caught wind of certain plots and thwarted them, destroying his sources in the process. (we certainly get the impression in s3 and s4 that lotor coming up with rebellious plots isn't a new thing to either of them.) maybe his ambitions and travels gradually revealed themselves to need more quintessence than he'd expected. purchasing quintessence from any suppliers would have required an income, a relatively time-consuming and unreliable endeavor that might not have gotten him much in exchange. any quintessence supplies he might have acquired using his identity, if he could acquire any, would almost certainly have been monitored—how much he took, where he received them—to the point where use of them would be incredibly risky. he might have also morally disliked using empire-produced quintessence, since they would've been harvested using empire methods (i.e. "caring about colonies whomst?"). at least with his methods, he would know he wasn't destroying them without regard. either way, whatever previous sources of quintessence he had became too limited an amount for his operations. he needed more.
i get a strong impression that people don't understand what he could be using quintessence for. but we see it everywhere in the empire, in voltron, and in the castle of lions—it's the primary energy source of vld's world that powers machines, fuels ships, assists in experimentation, heals injuries, even prolongs life. nothing else compares. lotor wouldn't have needed it personally for the latter purpose, but one can't exactly travel the universe on an empty tank. without quintessence, he would've essentially been dead in the water. additionally, considering that the quintessence shows up in places not explicitly related to lotor, the fact that we see galra soldiers accompanying lotor on the altean colony when we know he was in exile, and the amount of resources he must have been supplying to the colony in secret, it's also possible he was using it to bribe people into doing things for him and staying silent. it probably would've been effective; it's described as an especially powerful form of quintessence, and he was the only source.
anyway, lotor needed quintessence he could control entirely without having to fear discovery and subsequent destruction. the altean colony was his only colony that he could be reasonably certain the empire would never find. and in true lotor fashion, the first defense he asserted was that he saved what was left of altea from the empire, despite the horrendous crimes he was committing, and could now stop his quintessence farming with his access to the quintessence field. technically, we don't even know whether all of the alteans taken to the second colony are dead (link). the man romelle saw there was still in the tank, as many others must have been.
lotor might have been planning to eventually heal them by using the quintessence field. of course, even if that's true, lotor still took away years of their lives, lied to them and their families, and drained them to near-death. the experience must have been traumatizing. and who knows how well they would be able to recover, if at all. it's little comfort.
(editing, i feel compelled to plug this analysis by @radioactivesupersonic of lotor's arc and relationship with allura as a vampire story because it's interesting as hell, pounds out what i've just said further, and is something i read prior to writing this up so i may have unconsciously stolen from it. (i can only promise that i completely forgot about it until i went looking for all my links rip.))
nevertheless, lotor's first priority for the altean colony was always to preserve them—even if he eventually, essentially started treating them as a renewable resource with his farming's effects on the survival of his people and culture as environmental impacts. make of that what you will.
"if lotor is such a decent person who loves altea and wants to end the galra empire, why didn't he team up with voltron from the beginning? he was around before season 3! why didn't he show up earlier?"
that, my friend, is a good question i've puzzled over too. i have an answer.
number one: lotor has been in the habit of effectively working on his lonesome for about the past 10,000 years and canonically displays a wealth of paranoia and trust issues. teamwork isn't usually the first idea that comes to mind to someone like lotor.
number two: we get a very dramatic hint toward this in the climax of s6 (can't wait until we reach that part!), as well as during his invasion of puig in s3, but i believe lotor didn't have much confidence in voltron's capabilities during the period of s1 and s2 or for some time afterwards. he's a very cautious and careful player, learned from millennia of working against the interests and conventions of an extremely powerful empire.
and if we all remember correctly, voltron lost 10,000 years ago. granted, alfor sent the lions away rather than risk zarkon gaining control of the black lion, but it was still him and the other paladins against zarkon. victory should've been within reach, and yet they lost. so 10,000 years later, voltron appears to have returned, and none of those fears have been assuaged. who are these random newcomers to pilot the lions, and how could they possibly succeed where the original paladins didn't, when they don't even have the might of armies behind them? zarkon could still retake control of the black lion. additionally, lotor's own feelings towards voltron (and symbolically, king alfor) as a savior are extremely complicated. (you cannot believe how excited i am to talk about that. just wait.) he's not going to risk everything he's worked for on a wild card he's incredibly unsure will manage to make a dent. it would even make zarkon stronger if they lost, and therefore his father, one of the people he most wants to avoid the attention of, would be coming after them in a frenzy.
even after the s2 finale where voltron critically injured zarkon, he finds them insufficient. they create the coalition, yet he can essentially retake puig in the span of an hour with a team of five attackers.
clearly, they still weren’t well-equipped enough to stand against the galra empire. it would be in lotor's best interests to avoid voltron like the plague unless he was certain they wouldn't be crushed. so he did just that.
i suspect that before the voltron coalition grew into its own, lotor was planning to independently start a coup of some kind. it would've been pretty easy with unlimited quintessence. but after he was declared an enemy of the empire to be killed on sight, when voltron had gained significant strength and organized rebellion against the empire alongside liberated planets became a genuine and effective possibility, he joins them—right after their surprise attack liberates a full third of the empire and shocks the galra off his trail. the coalition was finally a basket he felt secure putting some of his eggs into.
(part 2)
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Review: The Savior’s Champion by Jenna Moreci
Quick Disclaimer: I was not in any form or shape paid for this review/compensated for it. I bought the book on my own initiative and out of my own pocket. No strings attached whatsoever.
However: I am influenced by Jenna Moreci’s TSC-related content such as blog posts and character portraits. I went in knowing a bit about the book and who the characters were.
Also Spoiler Warning!
Name of the book: The Savior’s Champion
Author: Jenna Moreci
Publishing House: Self-Published
Pages: 562
Formats available: EBook and Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0999735213
Prices:
E-Book: 5.99 € (EU)
7.15 $ (US)
4.79 £ (GB)
Hardcover:
21.41 € (EU)
23.164 (US)
18.99£ (GB)
Description (Amazon)
Tobias Kaya doesn't care about The Savior. He doesn't care that She's the Ruler of the realm or that She purified the land, and he certainly doesn't care that She's of age to be married. But when competing for Her hand proves to be his last chance to save his family, he's forced to make The Savior his priority.
Now Tobias is thrown into the Sovereign's Tournament with nineteen other men, and each of them is fighting — and killing — for the chance to rule at The Savior's side. Instantly his world is plagued with violence, treachery, and manipulation, revealing the hidden ugliness of his proud realm. And when his circumstances seem especially dire, he stumbles into an unexpected romance, one that opens him up to unimaginable dangers and darkness.
The Author
Jenna Moreci is a Silicon Valley native and Youtube sensation, dominating the authortube community with her straightforward and hilarious writing channel. A lifelong storyteller, Jenna specializes in crafting thrilling adventures with heaping doses of bloodshed and romance. When she's not writing or 'tubing, Jenna enjoys angry music, potent wine, and laughing until her face hurts with her goofball fiancé.
Website
Tumblr: @jennamoreci
The Review:
I’ll try to keep it mostly spoiler free, and otherwise be as vague as possible. But, you might want to read the first three chapters on Jenna’ website here.
Cover art
“Pretty nice cover,” I thought to myself. “Simple, yet fitting… if the shirtless wouldn’t be there.”
Honestly, in my opinion, the cover would have been so much better without said dude on it. I have a very simple opinion of shirtless dudes and book covers and if I wouldn’t have known what the book was about I probably wouldn’t have bought it or would have at least been very sceptical of it.
On a related note, I cracked up when Tobias asked for a shirt in later chapters which makes my complaints about the shirt even more funny to me somehow.
How did I find the writing?
It’s a fantastic writing style, that’s for sure. Also, in many points, it improved so much compared to Eve: The Awakening.
The writing itself was pretty awesome, it was written in past tense and in 3rd Person limited, which happened to be my preferred tense and POV. The only point during which it varied was the prologue, in which I was honestly not sure in which POV it was. Was it omniscient or did she switch between two different POVs? It kinda threw me off, but otherwise, the POV was pretty consistent.
Fun
Hell yes, it was fun. I read through the entire book (almost) without a break in about eight hours, give or take. I was engrossed in it. I honestly can’t remember the last time bloodshed was so fun to read about. So much fucked-up shit happened in this book and it was fun to read about. To be fair, this says a lot more about me than about the book.
Other than the bloodshed I quite obviously enjoyed, a huge part was the romantic subplot. If you followed me for a bit and read the other reviews by any chance, you know I’m not quite fond of romance. But from all that romantic subplots (or plots) I read this year and quite probably last year, this was one of the best, if not the best. Tobias and Leila are both so sweet and caring for each other, especially when you consider that those two are not what one might call nice.
But, it kinda got a bit preachy about the dehumanization of the suitors - but again, this becomes sort of a bounding point between Tobias and Leila. I would just have preferred it to be a bit more subtle.
Characters
Due to TSC having about 30 characters (and about half of them die), I will only talk about Tobias, Leila, and Kaleo in detail. I will say some stuff about other characters, but those three have to act as representatives.
Tobias is a good character, bit cynic and (and I guess starting with the latter half of the book) depressed or has PTSD-like symptoms. And that’s about it when it comes to flaws. He’s sweet, and his only bigger flaw (which went away when pressured) was that he was unwilling to fight and kill. I mean, I liked him a lot - but he’s too much of a Mister Perfect.
Leila is the main love interest, and she is my opinion better developed than Tobias.She’s very callous in the beginning to Tobias because of a misunderstanding, but softens up eventually. Due to her living in the palace her entire life, she has a very funny (and sweet) scene in which she doesn’t realize that normal people not necessarily have servants. It’s one of my favourite scenes in the entire book! Also, she is without a doubt my favourite characters. I mean, who doesn’t like a girl who can handle a knife?
Kaleo is one of the main antagonists. Let’s just say, Jenna Moreci is excellent at creating villains you love to hate. He’s despicable and absolutely sociopathic without any regards to human lives. Also, Tobias’ (and our) dislike is earned in Chapter 3. Let’s just say it involves a wall and blood. Lots of blood.
The other characters are all important, don’t get me wrong, but there are just so many of them. Let’s just say there are a lot of hateable and lovable characters in this book and Jenna makes very good hatable characters. Honestly, most of them would deserve an analysis by themselves.
Predictability
I had a few predictions, some turned out to be true, some not and some I completely missed. In any case, one of the big plot twists concerning the murder of the previous Saviour I was correct about the identity of the killer. But one came completely out of left field towards the end, and honestly, if you read it, you will know which one I mean. Also, you will see the hints that Jenna Moreci left throughout the book on the second read through and I had my mind blown by them. Let’s just say I might have said “What”. Loudly. Multiple times.
Another problem, outside of the book and technically my own fault, was the character profiles on Tumblr, so I might suggest that if you want to be surprised you should skip those until after you read the book. I was kinda spoiled because I knew that certain people would survive until a certain point because the scene in their character profiles/introduction did not happen yet. Like I said, my fault, so if you want to go in blind - don’t go to Count Blogula on Tuesdays. And stay away from the TSC-tag.
Also… since it’s the first book in a series, I do have two theories about two of the characters in the prologue. It’s a metalsmith and a midwife (?). A man who is a metalsmith also happened to be Tobias’ father who died in an accident - a bit too much of a coincidence. The other, the woman, had a child which she gave him before performing a C-Section on the Saviour’s mother. So, either she is his wife and with that Tobias’ mother, or she is Delphi’s mother who was mentioned to be a midwife. If this happens to be true, you heard it here first. Probably.
Overall impression
Loved it. I enjoyed it a lot, I could sink into this world and just shut off my brain and enjoy it. It’s definitely the best book I’ve read this year so far and it’s a strong contender for my personal Book of the Year. I’m looking forward to TSS (The Saviour’s Sister) and I can’t wait for it to come out (or even for teasers to turn up).
Some of my favourite lines:
“His skin was smooth, his chest bare - am I ever going to get a shirt? - but his nerves were piqued, stirred by the thought of the looming celebration of which he knew so little. […] You little shit, I just got this shirt.”
“’You seem like a honest man. Wear that with pride. Be true and good, and I have no doubt you’ll gain the exact favor you deserve.’”
You want to read more from Book Bloggers? Here I got a long list for you.
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Life is Strange fanfiction: All Wounds
HEY ALL, somethin different for today. I will honestly say I don't read tons of fanfic, call me picky or just, see the truth as being i don't have much spare time to read, period so I've never reviewed one.
BUT. I really want to call attention to one this time, and what better way to do that then by helping out the author with a review? I don't think people realize how much criticism is worth to writers, even taking the time to type out something small is great.
(quick note: this review contains spoilers for Lis and BtS. spoilers for the fic itself will be left to the end)
All Wounds by @destiny-smasher is a fic taking place in the Life is Strange universe, almost directly after the 'bae' ending. Throughout, it switches between Max and Chloe's PoVs, however Max is still the main protagonist here. But this is no fluffy feel-good fic (though there is some spots of fluff here and there) it's real and it's painful. It deals with the trauma and emotions that have built up in these women over that fateful week, even their teenage years - stuff that doesn't just magically disappear after the climax. That premise hooked me, because the kind of nitty gritty that often gets ignored in the fandom is exactly what tends to interest me. It actually (minor spoiler!) timeskips after a bit to when they're adults, and when things finally start crashing around their heads .. again.
I will say outright, this isn't for the faint of hearted. It's lonnnng, at 3.5 k words, which rivals many novels!! And it deals with PTSD, mental illness, suicidal ideation, and even a certain amount of psychological horror. Themes present in both games definitely come up again. And no, Max and Chloe's relationship isn't without its bumps. Or rather catastrophic crashes. Don't worry, it'll hurt you but patch those wounds up, by the end. see what i did there
Truthfully, I tried to read it in a RIDICULOUSLY short time frame for Reasons™ (unrelating to the piece) but just could not. I would continuously find myself compelled to slow down, sink into each sentence, into Max’s head or Chloe’s frustrations. I was living in their world more than mine for a few days. It was great - a piece of fresh writing hasn’t done that to me in a while.
I highly recommend taking the time to appreciate this story; it’s ups and downs, romance and time fuckery. If you loved Life is Strange (duh) there’s little reason you wouldn’t love this, too.
You can absolutely tell that this is a project woven together of heart and struggle. Art is never easy when you truly care about the outcome and the fact that this took years of the creator's time and attention stuns me. She did all that mind you, for FREE. Not for publishing, not for profit, not for fame. For a fandom she cares about. Serious writing for fandom is tough, because frankly it's not the easiest medium to sell (sell being used nonliterally here of course, and also, this applies outside of fandom too, just especially so in it) I have an INCREDIBLE amount of admiration for creators like her who dive into these characters they love - but did not create! developing them further, taking them in new directions or continuing them on paths they were already set on - and write novel length stories or comics for absolutely nothing. You have thoroughly earned my respect.
That’s not to say it’s flawless! Nothing ever is, psh. I do have criticisms here and there, but with those I’ll be more specific, which means they’ll be put under the cut. This is mostly for Destiny-Smasher’s sake, since she is in the process of turning the fic into a visual novel! I’ve read the first few chapters of that too, it’s a cool adaption.
So yeah, if ya haven’t read it, please stop here.
(Also before you go, check out her girlfriend’s art, I’m in love with that too!!)
SPOILERS BEYOND
Some of these tend to be on the side of minor and nitpicky, I feel, but I'll still go into them. Not trying to be annoying !
Okay so OBVIOUSLY the repetitiveness of certain scenes or conversations was purposeful, and a big part of how you told this story. And that's GREAT I think you used that unusual element well, certainly paying attention to details. There were some times when it felt repetitive in the wrong places though I think, and I guess I mostly mean some conversations. Or sometimes rather than being repetitive they just felt unnecessary as a whole. If I'm remembering correctly sorry its been a little while by now the conversation between Chloe and Steph in the diner before Chloe realizes she can rewind time now felt like that - just unneeded, like if you had cut or shortened it nothing would be lost. I can't think of any more examples right now, but maybe just keep that in mind?
In general there are definitely a few filler scenes but I hesitate to condemn that because like I said, this world really breaths and feels genuine, and I think those are part of why.
The addition of quotes and especially linked songs was an awesome touch I thought, since ya don't normally get auditory nods like that in writing. There were a few times it broke my immersion but for the most part it was a very appealing layer to your storytelling, so I look forward to seeing that carried out with the adaption.
One thing I didn't like much in general were Chloe's pirate dreams in the second half. I understand that there were some important nods and revelations about what was going on in her psyche, not to mention the role of dream weaving being hinted at, but for the most part they just left me pretty confused.
As far as inconsistencies, I know you were worried about that, but I really think you're fine? Like other than the stuff involving Before the Storm and what that revealed/changed (which you can't be blamed for because this story was written over yEARS) there was nothing major that I noticed. And considering the utter insanity of the timelines n shit, I'm seriously in awe you kept it relatively smooth. I have a HUGLY less complicated story in the works (no time travel) and I still managed to fuck up the timeline. Moving on. :')
I’m embarrassingly forgetful, and that’s all my initial notes on the subject had to say, so I may be missing some things? But yeah, I honestly don’t have much in the negative to say.
So let’s talk about THE plot twist. Yes that one. I remember around, chapter 16.4, the idea piecing together in my mind .. the title of the chapter, her behavior, speaking patterns, the fact that yes, this wasn’t a deviation like any of the others, it was in fact the canon divergence of timeline.... hoLY CRAP ITS OTHER MAX SHES REAL AND - yeah I fangirled a bit. (I was freaking so badly about my theory that I was so sure had to be true - and I was right, heh - that I tried to explain it to my dad. Who, FYI, has minimal knowledge on Life is Strange’s plot, and no hope of understanding the convoluted details of the fic thus far. I finally gave up and went back to reading while squealing excitedly over it in my head. And then I shut up because things got dark)
Just, gods, the details! That was the most satisfying fucking feeling, seeing all these seemingly little or random things come to be crucial. Things like Max clinging to her reality with the wedding bands on her finger, or like Other Max’s particular personality, from being aggressive and upfront more than Max has ever been, to her freaking sexual behavior. Her having red streaks in her hair to represent both sides to her, the cover of the fic and the visual novel not being a symbolic picture but an actual look at the End of Time and Other Max!!
Her falling in love with Stella was definitely a curveball I did not expect, and admittedly I was pRETTY weirded out. Cuz like.. she's engaged to Chloe in the other timeline, and obviously I ship them over anyone else.. I'm not complaining! Just, a very fresh take on Stella and their relationship. Speaking of- it did seem a little strange to me that, after the awkward start to their dating and the mention of how it was going right after, that it never came up again. Obviously things got cut short, but, how was it really working? Did Stella turn out to actually be gay? I interpreted that she was doing it out of a sort of obligation and platonic love for Max, and that she was 1000% straight. Maybe you left that open on purpose? It seemed coded that way, though..
All in all I loved what you did with Other Max. She was an edge of a concept in Life is Strange, in that confrontation scene after the nightmare of episode five - which I loved for its implications - and you took that and RAN with it. So I go in thinking "okay. she's a more literal form of this mental battle Max faces, made so much worse by death shes surrounded by after the storm" And for a while that holds up.. Max finds herself moving on, as a teenager, with Chloe's pushing, and things get better for a while. Great!! Woohoo!
Except .. the past will always find you .. especially when that past is yourself ... and not even time travel can keep it away forever.
That's the shit you don't see delved into. This power is like, a drug. A limb she's gotten used to and relies on as much as any other. I've never believed she would just, drop it. Does it go away when the storm hits / chloe dies? Maybe, I always thought. But that's so convenient. And without an explanation for why it showed up, we have no basis for why it would go away.
And why not use it, Max convinces herself. ‘I must still have the power for a reason.’ Maybe so, and you've certainly grown, Caulfield, but you are still avoiding consequences. You are still a god amongst mortals, but guess what? That immortal facade can only be contained by a human body for so long. Things start crumbling, and as a reader you see the inevitability of all, feel the hopelessness. She's keeping things from Chloe, BIG fucking things, and I want to reach over and grab her by the shoulder and shake her. "CHLOE YOUR GIRLFRIEND IS MINDFUCKED"
I literally couldn't breath for a minute when I realized the implications of the car crash scene, where Max says she's been regularly getting lost in time for months. But, no biggie. Quick weed, call, and you’re right back where you should be. Right? Just wipe the blood off your face, no one will notice.
Damn.
Anyway, enough about that. Remember earlier, when I said 'psychological horror'? Truthfully I don't know if that's the right word for it, or even if its a real thing. But whatever it is, I live for it. People's mind are their own worst enemies, and that bit is ultimately and personally relatable. Max is constantly arguing with herself. But this time, the nightmare - mine, and hers - is creeping into real life. The Other is ripping control from her shaky hands. Its twisting her into someone she never wanted to be - a literal worst version of herself, and, we find out - a real version, just from a different timeline. A broken one. A nonhuman one .. or that's what she says. But as we see this Other raise her voice, and read on in bafflement alongside Max, we get to see that her intentions, aren't necessarily evil. Has she done evil things? Yes. Did Max see her as evil? Yes, and even Chloe did for a while. But the big question I found myself asking, and Chloe eventually challenging is.. is the Other.. still Max? Is the worst reality, the worst view in the mirror, still us? All Wounds says yes. But not to give up hope, far from it - instead that we MUST confront these self made demons, we MUST accept these wounds for them to ever heal.
While spurred by a morality grounding near-death experience, that last fight at the End of Time - while a supernatural slew of symbolism, time travel, and dreamscapes - also sung to me of reality. That's what the best fantastical fiction is.
Amazing.
To top it all off, the ending chapter was perfect. I'm not gonna lie, I teared up a bit. It felt right, and more importantly, real. Not some overdone fictional fanservice crap. But still the happy ending these women MORE than earned. Through it all, the exploration of characters who didn't probably get what they deserved in LiS (I'm thinking about Victoria, but also Stella and even Joyce..) was really satisfying and ultimately shifted my perception of them.
Honestly, there are so many quotable moments throughout this thing. (I have a ton of screenshots of some on my phone, actually.) But I'll go with ..
"You Power isn't what makes you special, Max. Stop worrying about fixing. Focus on being. Yes, even those parts. That's all in the past. All I care about now is the future. And I want to share that future with you."
-Chloe
What you called experimental bullshit, I applaud. So..
Thanks for writing All Wounds.
#Life is Strange#Max Caulfield#Chloe Price#Pricefield#LiS#Life is Strange fanfiction#LiS fanfiction#fanfiction#fanfic#fanfic review#fanfic rec#fanfic reccomendation#All Wounds#destiny-smasher#Before the Storm#my post#ThisDragonisNerdy#hey i had some formatting issues while copying this over to tumblr so uh.. lemme know if thats still an issue!
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An All Phlint Rec List!
One guess which pairing I fell head-first into this time...
Need more time? No problem, I’ll give you a hint. It involves SHEILD’s #1 eye in the sky and his long-suffering, slightly anal-retentive handler. The purple Avenger and the dead-not-dead agent. You know them, and if you don’t already love them, these fics will fix that for you. Sorry in advance for how long this is, but there are so many fics and I have too many feelings.
Some of them even feature Pizza Dog, because we are a blessed fandom.
Most of these are rated Explicit, but not all! I even mention a G-rated fic, and I’m proud of me for branching out my recs. I don’t read non-con/dub-con, and I’m not usually into ABO stuff, so you won’t find any of that here, if it’s a concern. Just in case, read the tags! I also don’t read unhappy endings, becasue I’m not about that life.
Click the bold titles (sometimes the little lines indicating a link aren’t there, but the link still is) and don’t forget to leave kudos/comments on the ones you love, to spread that love to the authors! And as always, there will always be more fics that I love/bookmark/scream about in my bookmarks page on my ao3 account: megamazing
College AU
Launch Your Assault by foxxcub Words: 30k Rating: E
Phil Coulson was more than halfway through his six year plan, and everything was chugging along nicely.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t foreseen a cocky junior Art major waltzing into his life, or his floor.
So this is within the same universe as Bulletproof, a stony College AU fic, but I never read that one. Phlint College AU’s I love, but not so much with stony? I have weirdly subjective preferences when it comes to fics.
However, I will rec this one with my dying breath. It is Phil’s POV, and I have such a soft spot for college age Phil now, thanks to this story. As a college student myself, I felt that everything was really realistic and I believed everything. More than that, I want to give both the boys a hug. They need it after this.
Also, as you’ll see later on in this list, I love the “fuck buddies” trope with hidden feelings that are so not hidden it’s embarrassing. And heartbreaking. As much as I want to hug Phil, I also think he needs a swift kick or seven.
Safety Not Guaranteed by foxxcub words: 4k+ (nearly 5k) Rating: M
Phil was informed of the Sigma Iota tradition of White Elephant two weeks before Christmas break. He’d heard of other chapters on campus having holiday parties and had figured the SI’s did the same.
But he was quickly learning the SI’s didn’t do things quite like other fraternities.
Short, sweet, and funny. Of course this would happen to them, within a group of people where blatant, verbal communication is a practically a foreign notion. I laughed, I sympathetically cringed, and there are sexytimes, too. What’s not to love here, really? (Wade has a great cameo, too, so of course this was going on the list)
I'll Learn To Dance If You Promise Not To Laugh by torakowalski words: 10k+ rating: E
A College AU in which there are long distance relationships, misunderstandings, and no one actually spends any time in college.
The insecurity in this fic kills me in the best way. Clint puts on an act sometimes, acting stronger and suaver than maybe he feels. When your bf is older and cooler and smarter and too good for you, what else can you do? Naturally, that strategy works great until it doesn’t.
Thor, Darcy, and Jane are wonderful and I just want more of them! I would never have pictured them as Phil’s roommates, but it works so well and watching Clint interact with them is great.
Everyone deserves a hug: Clint for being a sweet idiot, Phil for being a well-meaning moron, and the roommate squad for putting up with their shit and making it fun.
(more torakowalski fics in the final section, because I’m in love with their work and need to throw more at you)
Other AU
Kindergarten ‘verse by soniclipstick (veriscence) total words: 38k+ Respective ratings: E, G, and E
Kindergarten teacher Clint Barton has never been in a healthy stable relationship in his life. Hell, mostly he doesn't bother leaving his house unless his best friend drags him out for 'socialising'. He's happy with his life as a hermit; he has a dog, and fifteen sticky tiny humans to teach core skills to. That's more than enough commitment for him
But that's all about to change when the new school year brings along with it some major surprises, such as Phil Coulson, the widowed father of one of his students and owner of the bluest eyes Clint's ever seen.
(summary from the first fic in the series)
I am rec’ing the whole series here, because I want to curl up and live in the world the author created. It has everyone you could think of wanting to see from both general Marvel canon and also Agents of SHIELD. Look, as I’m writing this, I want to go back and re-read the first fic. As the author states in the tags, it’s totally Fraction’s Hawkeye, aka my favorite and the best (soz MCU Clint, you’re cool too, sometimes).
This could have been so stupid. It’s a kindergarten teacher AU, it very easily could have been something I read two paragraphs of and clicked away. But it isn’t. When the author says fluff and angst, they mean it. It hurt my heart and made me giddy by turns. Also, sexytimes. But the feelings! I connected so much with Clint in this, and felt so much for Phil, and the payoff feels so earned by the time it happens.
The supporting cast is phenomenal, and it may be my favorite of this whole list, which is saying a lot because I love them all. Even the smaller cameos were hilarious and made me smile.
EVEN IF YOU READ NO OTHER FIC ON THIS LIST, READ THIS SERIES.
Pre-Avengers (mostly)
Slow and Soft by onthewaters Words: 23k Rating: E
When Coulson adds Barton to his team, he expects smartassery. Except there isn't any...
This is it. This is the story I was looking for and craving without even knowing it. That may make zero sense, but I don’t know how else to put it. The writing and the storytelling here are on another level, and I mean that in the best possible way. It shows them getting together - including the beginning of the incredible friendship between the trio (Nat, Clint, and Phil) and Nat and Clint's bond - as well as the most believable/subtle pinning I’ve read in awhile.
Phil's characterization is the best in this one. It’s his POV, and his personality just shines. This is one of the ones I really treasure, and I won’t apologize for how extra I am about it.
Operation Snapdragon by Laura Kaye (laurakaye) words: 10k+ rating: E
They’d decided to call it Operation Snapdragon, Jasper had explained, because snapdragons meant “deception” in the language of flowers.
It would be more accurate to call it Operation Rip Out Phil's Heart And Grind It Beneath The Feet Of Mobsters, but apparently there wasn't a flower for that.
The humor is on point, and I am a sucker for pining!Phil and sarcasm. It’s a fake marriage fic, where they’re undercover as a couple. Tell me that doesn’t sound perfect for these two. BUT WAIT, there’s more: they’re already a thing before the fake marriage mission, and Phil has been feeling insecure in the relationship! Voicing concerns in a healthy manner is out of the question, naturally. Idiots.
It takes place over six months, featuring flashbacks to how Phil ended up in a strip club run by the mob, smiling lovingly at his husband while a mobster talks about how great they are together.
Plenty of miscommunication on par with the trope, and you just want to give Clint a hug, becasue you know what’s going on, but Phil can’t catch a hint. It has art at the end, too, which is adorable.
The Clothes that Make the Man by orderlychaos words: 17k+ rating: E
There was something comforting in the way Clint could focus on Coulson’s dry, deadpan tone as bullets and explosions sounded around him. Come rain, hail or bursts of experimental weaponry, Agent Coulson would be there, calm and controlled in that damn suit, like the personification of order against chaos.
However, contrary to rumour, Phil Coulson was not born in a suit. This is the story of how Clint Barton glimpsed the man underneath and fell in love.
(Or five times Clint saw Phil outside of a suit and the one time he wore a suit himself).
IT’S A FIVE AND ONE, boys, we’ve made it. This my favorite trope in all of fanfiction history. It’s also pre-avengers for the first half, but then kinda after? Coulson isn’t dead and doesn’t appear to ever have been, but in the later chapters, the Avengers are a thing? I’m not sure about timelines. It’s an AU, and it’s awesome.
The important part is that there’s Clint POV and insecurity on both sides, as well as really sweet moments and pinning galore. Plus, it’s rated E, so obviously that too. It’s fairly lighthearted in general as well (meaning there are feelings and angst but there aren’t feelings and angst, if you know what I mean), and after some of the angst on this list, lighthearted fics are a gift.
Coulson Lives - Reunion
Give a Dog a Bone by Laura Kaye (laurakaye) Words: 86k+ Rating: E
What do you do when your dead best friend turns up alive after three years?
a) yell at him
b) hug him
c) ignore him to his face while following him around the Tower like a creeper
d) maybe fall in love with him a little
e) all of the above
Best summary, or best summary?
This does not have enough kudos or recognition. I know it’s at nearly 960, and that’s a great amount, but it deserves so much more! I still think about this story, and it’s another one I want to re-read soon.
When I mentioned Pizza Dog, this is one of the ones I had in mind.
And Kate!!! His friendship with Kate is everything I’ve ever wanted. And his friendship with Tony, and obviously Nat. Basically, I love Clint having friends and getting to be petty becasue holy shit he deserves to be petty after everything SHIELD has put them all through. At the same time, nothing feels like Phil!whump or emotionally beating a character down unnecessarily.
Clint does everything I want him to, and some stuff I didn’t even know I wanted him to do. There is so much pain, as you’d expect, but there is so much payoff and the balance is perfect. I connect with Clint’s characterization in general, but especially here. Just yes.
Phil’s journey with the loss of his hand and adjusting to life with a prosthetic is also really cool, and something I hardly ever see. Same goes for Clint’s hearing loss. He isn’t deal, but and is completely capable/confident in himself, but there are struggles at times that make me wonder if the author has personal experience because it’s stuff I recognize from my mom’s experiences.
doesn't matter if I bleed by t_fic (topaz), topaz, topaz119 (topaz) Words: 25k+ Rating: E
Clint's never pretended to be deep. He's just the guy who sits back and watches, the guy who makes the shot when he needs to. He's seen a lot of crap in his time, sat through a lot of fucked-up scenes to get to where he needs to be, but this, now--he can't stand another second of it.
This feels like an argument for why the pairing works, and I loved it. It really deep dives into the issues all three of them - Clint, Nat, and Phil - have in a way that feels so real and relatable to me, personally, that it cut me right to the core. I still can't get over the incredible friendship between Clint and Nat in this. I loved every minute, and every win was so, so deserved. I want to curl up and live in the world the author created, tbh. Also, there are sexytimes. Can't forget those.
Tony also has the line early on that nearly made me cry: "Someone has some serious fucking explaining to do, because you," he pokes at Coulson, "we fucking buried you." The scene is already so emotionally charged, and then this and it kills me becasue of all the off-page backstory and emotional weight it gives for the rest of the story.
I’m emo and dramatic about all of these, but I mean it when I say it feels like proof for why Clint and Phil work. Just, yes.
Coulson Lives - some point after the off-page reunion
The Best Bad Ideas by copperbadge words: 17k+ rating: M
When Clint Barton put on the Captain America costume for a mission, he didn't count on Phil Coulson's reaction. Coulson didn't count on Clint crashing his new team to do something about it.
Oh yeah, you read that right. It’s just as funny as it sounds, and all of a sudden you get hit with the angst and it works. Even so, this one is a lot lighter and it’s fun. Cap and Co’s reactions are just as funny, and the gossip sessions between the ensemble are some of my favorite bits. (side note: why have I never considered the badass-ery that would be a Nat and Melinda May friendship?)
Pine Lake Oasis by infiniteeight words: 32k+ rating: E
When SHIELD gets intel that an arms dealer might soon be receiving Chitauri technology, Fury sends Clint and Coulson undercover to establish surveillance, ingratiate themselves with the arms dealer and his right hand man, and possibly intercept the sale. The catch? The arms dealer and his lieutenant are apparently posing as a couple, which means the best way for Clint and Coulson to get close is to pose as a couple, too. The longer the op goes on, the more Clint wonders which relationship is more real.
MORE PRETEND MARRIED TROPES! We can never have too many, in my humble opinion. This one is very different from the mobster one, because it’s set in suberbia with plenty of nosy neighbors and also some arms dealers who are also posing as a couple. Frankly, I’m not sure anyone is posing as anything in this fic when it comes to feelings.
The domesticity in this story is so good and it’s so sad watching them get used to it and hearing Clint think it can’t last...but then! And everything feels earned by the end, instead of just tossed in. You watch them get closer over the course of the story and I love it.
They’re sassy and sarcastic and funny, and so true to the characters we’ve come to love that it all feels so believable.
Just torakowalski Fics
(Yes. I did add a whole section just for one author. If I hadn’t, every category would be overrun, and there are so many good fics out there! But this author gets me, and more importantly, gets Clint and Phil, so it had to be done.)
Been Looking at You Forever words: 18k+ (closer to 19k) rating: E
Clint and Phil are friends. Friends who have sex. That’s all there is to it. Honestly.
Fuckbuddies with a healthy dose of accidental relationship because whoops, who knew “casual” sex with hidden feelings would lead to complications and more feelings?? Set post-Avengers movie, and including all the main faves as side characters.
Guys, I’ll be real with you for a second. I don’t ship either stucky or Tony/Pepper, and yet this has both as background but blatant relationships. And I still don’t ship them, but I believed it within the story and I wasn’t bothered? If that doesn’t tell you how good of a writer tora is...
I am addicted to the way they write Clint and Phil, and the fact that it doesn’t look like they’ll be writing more for that pairing makes me hold on tighter to the stories we do have. Sure, the premise of this fic is a trope, but the relationships between the characters puts it on another level for me. This one will make you crave more of this trope out of all your fave pairings, trust me.
And All the Clocks Came Back to Life Words: 4k+ Rating: T
Phil Coulson isn't a big fan of birthdays, but they're better than being dead.
Pizza Dog is a character again, and so is my favorite apartment complex in Marvel Comics continuity. This is the sweetest story (it’s also the shortest one on this list *gasp*) and it doesn’t have anything explicit, which I know some people prefer, but trust me. The way tora writes these boys is so worth the read. I have the warm-fuzzies just thinking about this fic again - I dare you not to feel like smiling with this one. Naturally, there are grounded feels too, and I just want to protect Clint with my whole being. Luckily, I’m pretty sure Coulson does, too.
Both characterizations are on point.
Keeping the World at Bay Words: 25k+ Rating: E
Finding out that Phil's alive and working with a new team isn't easy for Clint, and neither is helping Captain America track down the brainwashed Hydra assassin that used to be Bucky Barnes.
This is another one where I still don’t ship stucky, but god damnit I’m here for everything in this fic. Clint gets to be fucking amazing in this one, both physically and on an emotional connective-ness level. It uses his own neuroses and backlog of problem/coping mechanisms and puts them to use in the best way. You know, if you’ve seen the movie Age of Ultron (meh movie overall but there are elements I adored) that Clint has the potential to fill the mentor position so well. He gets to do that here, or at least begin down that sort of path, and I loved it.
For all my stony babes, I urge you to give it a shot. Just this once, let me peer pressure you.
I am also always here for Clint getting to be pissed off, because HELLO, he’s got a right. And my heart went out to Phil so hard. Guys, it’s a double reunion fic, as well as the first time potential best friends meet, why are you sleeping on this??
Back to The Place You Are Words: 7k+ Rating: E
Phil Coulson was sitting two tables over from Clint and wearing his Dress Blues. This was making concentrating on anything else pretty much impossible.
Normally, I am Not A Fan of fics where they are broken up from the get-go. Or maybe I just have to be in the right mood/mind set for that brand of angst. AND YET. This fic.
It’s Tony and Pepper’s wedding, and naturally Phil has to dress the part right? Clint should have been prepared, but clearly, he was not. This one is pretty much smut with angst and feels, and like Clint, I was not prepared for how much I would love reading it.
What We've Got Here Is Enough words: 7k+ rating: E
They don’t fuck in the Avengers’ Mansion, that’s rule number one of Having A Secret Relationship With Your Ex-Handler.
This one was great, and involves how the rest of the team finds out about their relationship. Not a ton to say aside from what I’ve already said about how tora writes these two!
Want more recommendations? Let me know! Maybe I ship what you ship and we can scream about the great fanfic together.
#phlint#phlint fic rec#marvel#marvel fic rec#clint barton#phil coulson#clint barton/phil coulson#fanfiction rec#fanfic rec#fanfiction recommendation#phlint fanfic#phlint fanfiction
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What proof do we have that Eris is abusive, other than that characters have said he is? Most held a similar opinion of Rhys, what's the difference? That we have a first person narrator who is privy to the backstory of one but not the other? I'm not trying to be aggressive but I want to know your thoughts. I thought showing was more important than telling in storytelling.
Okay then, like, what ‘proof’ have we got for literally 90% of the things in this series???? Feyre is a 19 year old human girl in a world full of immortal fae. You want an eye witness account for everything in this thing, do you?
How do I know the war happened the way they said it did? Feyre never saw it, she’s only had characters tell her about it. How do I know Rhys actually hated what he did with Amarantha and didn’t just swap sides right at the end? How do I know Rhys’ dad sucked but his mother was a good person, I’ve only heard him tell me about her, I’ve seen it. How do I know Tamlin’s brothers were awful? Never seen them either. How do I know Beron is really that awful either, I mean maybe he’s wearing a mask too and all the characters are just wrong. How do I know Mor is queer? I’ve never seen her with a girl before, I just have her word for it, maybe she lied. How do I know literally anything in this entire series because WE GET TOLD MOST THINGS NOT SHOWN THEM.
This is what happens when you have a limited first person pov. The character HAS to get told things in order to tell us things like ???? A little bit of common sense please, do you want me to like, historically fact check Prythian for everything that Feyre tells us about it???
And tbh SJM has a pretty crappy habit of doing the whole ‘telling over showing’ thing anyway. See: the entirety of the Throne of Glass series, Mor’s powers in ACOTAR (she’s awesome, really, we promise, we just haven’t actually SEEN her do anything), the assertions that Rhys and co are ~the most powerful ever~ have I actually SEEN that? Can I actually see that? No. Do I really question these things? No. Because I understand that this is the only way I can actually get some information out of this story and if I only went with what I ‘saw’ and disbelieved everything else I’d have literally nothing??
And when it comes to the whole Eris thing, like, dude, it’s not just a couple of characters who’ve said he’s abysmal it’s like, wait let me make a list:
Tamlin: “His father had her put down. Executed, in front of Lucien, ashis two eldest brothers held him and made him watch.” That would be Eris. So at best you’ve got conflicting statements here.
Lucien: “Lucien crossed his arms, leaning against the back of thecouch. “I have to agree with Cassian. Eris is a snake.” M, yes, Eris, HIS OWN BROTHER. If anyone was going to know Eris was ~not a bad person~ it’d be Lucien. Lucien who lived in that court. Who knew him. Who Eris apparently cared enough to protect/save, according to him. Eris who apparently cares so much about his mother (as we have seen Lucien does SEEN that is SEEN with our own two eyes) Why the hell would Lucien not know Eris was ‘wearing a mask’. Or maybe...Eris really does suck.
Rhys: “Eris refused to marry her. Said she’d been sullied by abastard-born lesser faerie, and he’d now sooner fuck a sow. [...]Rhys said withsoft wrath, “Eris left her for dead in the middle of their woods.” Idgaf how he tries to spin it later, this is what happened.
Cassian: “You’re working with that prick,” Cassian cut in, whatevercatching-up now over, apparently. He moved to Mor’s side, a hand on her back.He shook his head at Azriel and Rhys, disgust curling his lip. “You should havespiked Eris’s fucking head to the front gates.”
Amren: “Your whole family is despicable,” Amren said to Lucien.
Mor: AtMor, whose face went white with dread. [...]Or at Eris, heirto the Autumn Court, as he strolled into the room.
[...]
And I had the terrible sense that Mor had gone somewhere far,far away as Eris set down his goblet and said, “You look well, Mor.”
The sight of him triggers actual real panic attacks and flashbacks that we can literally see from Feyre’s POV. Five hundred years after the fact and Mor is still traumatised enough by what he did to her to react like this even after all that time.
Then we have Feyre’s POV herself. Through her we’ve seen Eris laughing alongside his other brothers as Lucien was tortured and nearly killed.
“I don’t suppose your handsome brothers know, Lucien,” shepurred.
“If we did, Lady, we would be the first to tell you,” said thetallest. He was lean, well dressed, every inch of him a court-trained bastard.Probably the eldest, given the way even the ones who looked like born warriorsstared at him with deference and calculation—and fear.
Ah, yes, that would be Eris actively promising help to Amarantha in order to damn Feyre and continue her reign. Then there’s the way Eris hunts down Lucien and Feyre in the Winter Court, actively harms them both. So that’s like...Basically every single main character in this book who’s told you Eris sucks.
What’s the basis for believing that he doesn’t, out of interest? I mean what ‘evidence’ do you have that he is actually wearing a mask, what do you have that’s so strong it goes against the testimony of multiple characters? Oh I know! You have Eris’ word for it and that’s it. Wow. So unbiased. So convincing. Eris tells us he’s not really a bad guy and that outweighs the half a dozen people who tells us he is! That’s just. Damn. What logic. Can’t argue with that.
Also, like, I’m sorry, but Rhys’ arc was done properly, Rhys’ redemption wasn’t a retcon it was a followed-through on plan. There were hints UtM that Rhys was not as black as he was painted (He killed the Summer Court faerie outright rather than leaving him to suffer, he repeatedly came to visit Feyre in her cell when no-one else would, he was honest with Feyre about the treatment he received at Amarantha’s hands (a vulnerability on his part), he told her why he was making her dance every night as well as the steps he put in place to protect her, he sent music to her and saved her life, he saved her life and Tamlin’s with the kiss (which Feyre is aware of), he tried to save Feyre’s life while Amarantha was torturing her)
Rhys was a complex, morally grey character UtM and it’s possible to show a different side to him and a ‘mask’ because there were always hints of him wearing one. What if Ianthe told Feyre she was actually a secret agent working for Prythian but she was forced to act the way she did to keep her cover? What if Amarantha said she’d only dominated Prythian that way to save it from something worse and she too was wearing a mask and working for the greater good? What if Hybern said there was a bigger threat facing them and he had an ulterior motive to this war (and also, I mean, how do you really know Hybern is that awful, we’ve only ever had people tell us about him, maybe he’s misunderstood too!!!!) @valamerys wrote this out far better than I could in this post, read it too.
My thoughts are pretty simple, tbh: SJM decided to “”””””redeem”””””” Eris, likely to have him set-up to take over Autumn, now Lucien isn’t an option for that before what with the whole dramatic lost son of Day thing and she did a crap job of it. Like this isn’t some grand morality based character debate that’s going on here, SJM just handled this poorly. In order to make him seem not so bad she had to undo all of the canon that she’d set in place before hand and offer ‘alternative’ explanations for what happened that we’ve never heard about.
If she planned this all beforehand, if Eris was always wearing a mask why weren’t there hints of it before? Why didn’t she have Tamlin tell Feyre he got an anonymous tip-off the day he saved Lucien’s life from his brothers (which is what Eris claimed). Why wouldn’t Lucien defend him a little, say at least he cared about their mother/was sometimes kinder to him than the others? Why wouldn’t Rhys say that in the arranged marriage that petrified Mor, Eris was as unwilling as she was, that he argued against it? (Eris would have gone through with this marriage regardless of what it did to Mor if she hadn’t slept with Cassian) Why wouldn’t Eris stay quiet UtM or not show up to watch Lucien’s torture (which he does repeatedly)? Why, why, why, why, why would SJM not do something to show us that there might be more to Eris? Unless this was just a sloppy, last minute retcon to redeem a gross, abusive character who still to do this day petrifies his victim?
Like, if you consider showing to be of more importance than telling in stories....You’ve picked a mighty weird hill to die on here with Eris. Because this is literally the worst example of telling not showing in this entire series. There is no basis for anything that happens with Eris’ character in ACOWAR and the only thing we have stacked against the evidence of two and a half books is what Eris says and how he personally spins the story like ????
Idk dude, we can have a convoluted, let’s bend over backwards to redeem this guy and show he was misunderstood and has been wearing a mask so convincing it’s never ever ever cracked even once this entire time, to anyone! Even people who’ve known him for centuries....Or we go with the simpler: SJM really didn’t plan or execute this story very well at all. Which seems more reasonable?
#acowar#eris#rhysand#feyre#lucien#morrigan#cassian#azriel#amren#tamlin#acowar spoilers#acotar series#acotar meta#my meta#eris meta#can we put this to bed now??? for the love of god? please?#Eris is a crappy character that SJM attempted to do a crappy retcon on#literally overhauling her own canon (badly) to try and make him seem ~complex~#and it didn't work#it's really not that hard a concept to understand#lauren answers#answered#anonymous#i'm saying nothing more on this btw#you asked for thoughts here they are#they're not going to change#don't bother trying
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PAGE x PAGE ANALYSIS — ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #69 (2005) with special guest AUD KOCH
Dan Schkade and Aud Koch (right)
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #69
PUBLISHED: Marvel Comics, January 2005
SCRIPT: Brian Michael Bendis
PENCILS: Mark Bagley
INKS: Scott Hanna
COLORS: J.D. Smith with Chris Sotomayor
LETTERS: Chris Eliopoulos
EDITORIAL: Ralph Macho with Nick Lowe
Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley wrote and drew ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN for one hundred and eleven consecutive monthly issues. Can you even imagine.
(I, by contrast, drew WILL EISNER’S THE SPIRIT for twelve consecutive monthly issues and barely made it out with all my fingers still intact.)
Neither or them went into this cold — Bendis cut his teeth on a long series of hard-edged indie crime thrillers like AKA GOLDFISH and TORSO, while Bagley had been a regular Marvel Comics fixture since the eighties, with a strong history drawing Spider-Man in particular. But they both hit their stride on ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, kicking out a new version of the character that felt fresh and familiar and, in the process, creating one of the most consistently entertaining superhero comics this side of EMPOWERED. My personal MVPs: their new versions of Aunt May, Daredevil, and the surprisingly affecting mega-narrative of the Ultimate Green Goblin. And that ending — ho man, that ending.
The issue we’ll be looking at this week, ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #69: “MEET ME,” takes place more or less in the middle of their mammoth hundred and eleven issue run. And that’s part of why I chose it — the goal of this feature is to take solid, workmanlike comics from professionals who know what they’re about and see what makes them tick, but also to see what we can learn from their mistakes. Mister Bagley’s credentials are unimpeachable; I’d place him up with John Romita JR and Andy Kubert as one of my top living artists of straight-up old-school Marvel-style Super Hero Comics. But mid-run slippage is inevitable, and sometimes the shortcuts of a good artist can be just as useful to pick apart as the abject failures of a bad one.
I also picked this issue because I thought it’d be a good fit for my guest: comic artist Aud Koch, one my favorite people to talk theory with and someone whose output I’m both impressed by on a peer level and super into on a fan level. Even though this is the first time I’ve had a guest on this feature and I only half know what I’m doing, Aud was still willing to sit down and help me beta test the tandem Page X Page Analysis experience like a mensch. Now, Aud’s the nicest person you’ll meet in a year, but she’ll also tell you exactly what she thinks and damn the torpedoes. She’ll make some poor young artist cry one of these days. She’ll feel just awful about it, too. My point is: I didn’t exactly pick her name out of a hat for this, y’know?
With that, let’s go to the transcript!
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #69 and all characters contained therein are property of Marvel Comics, reproduced here solely for educational purposes.
PAGE ONE
DAN: So, Aud: are you of the opinion that a single issue should be a complete story in and of itself?
AUD: That depends on what the intention of the writer is. I think this one is fine without being that way — I mean, this whole series is set up like a teen drama show. They always have cliffhangers.
DAN: And “previously ons…”
DAN: There’s certainly a lot more boring ways you could start an issue off.
AUD: It’s definitely eye-catching, but an immediate problem is: who’s the main character? You’d think from the first panel that it’s Liz. Or Johnny, who’s the one with the big action shot. But no, it’s actually those tiny little figures in the corner.
DAN: We’re not really getting much from her expression in panel one.
AUD: Which is a problem that I had throughout a lot of the comic. The expressions felt slightly off to me.
DAN: I would have to agree. The point of this exercise is not to nitpick, but sometime small details really do go a long way towards keeping a page from working.
AUD: Later on, there’s that scene that’s entirely just Peter and MJ standing around talking to Johnny for like four, five pages, so it entirely rests on the acting that Bagely does through characters, but there’s no movement happening at all. Bagley doesn’t do the thing where he makes everything a soap opera, which is good, but he also can leave his figures rather flat.
PAGE TWO
DAN: The game’s upped quite a bit here. I feel like we get a lot more from the expressions. Bagley has a great model for the Human Torch — he’s able to suggest emotions and facial details even though he’s all flamed up.
AUD: The artistry of the flames on Johnny is really beautiful. Looking at it now, these last three panels should have been the first ones of the issue.
DAN: Mm, yeah! We’d start off with Johnny looking down at our main characters. Because it really is Peter and Johnny’s interaction that the issue hinges on — Liz’s story is a secondary thing, even though she’s the first character we see in this issue.
Bagley and inker Scott Hanna do a good job of suggesting the city in the panel one background, giving the scene a good sense of pace; They’re not in the Mojave desert, they’re on a beach near New York.
AUD: Something I found a bit distracting though is — what the hell is going on with that moon? Like, that’s not a moon! It’s a warty… mass!
DAN: Fair enough. And it’s funny because the city’s so nicely abstracted, while the moon is — I feel you there.
AUD: It’s like a giant tumor in the sky!
DAN: I also have a little problem with Liz’s motion in panel two.
AUD: Yes! She should be be running away from Jonny and off the page. That way she’d be looking back at him as she make her exit off the page.
DAN: Yeah, I think that would be better.
PAGE THREE
DAN: Here we have another juicy Human Torch splash image…
AUD: See, that’s another money shot — storytelling-wise, it would have made more sense if it was us looking up at Johnny from where Peter and MJ were standing, seeing him him shooting off into the distance from their point of view. This one looks like we’re about to follow Johnny off on some… flame adventure.
DAN: You’re right, it really does feel like we’re transitioning to his POV, when that’s clearly not what’s going on.
AUD: Bagley also didn’t take into account where speech bubbles would go. you can see that the letterer was like “what the fuck am I supposed to do?”
DAN: Yeah, they’re spillin’. He could’ve dropped the figures a little bit.
AUD: The only reason it doesn’t fit is because Bagley wanted to leave room for this image of Johnny shooting off, which again, storytelling-wise, doesn’t really work.
DAN: One thing I do really like about those bottom three panels — they’re this nice narrative unit, small and cramped and comic booky in the corner to offset the splashy sci-fi spectacle of Johnny shooting off into the night above. It makes MJ’s dialogue, which is think is pretty funny here, even funnier by comparison — it’s like a small comedy aside.
AUD: But then, they are the main characters…
DAN: They are the main characters! Good point.
PAGE FOUR
DAN: Alright, here we are back in the Baxter Building.
AUD: This is one where it was really, like, these expressions are so flat… it doesn’t carry the scene.
DAN: One art thing I have trouble with here… I don’t know if Sue is his mom or the same age as him. I have trouble placing her.
AUD: Well, the only reason you’d know that is because she says “little brother,” which I feel like Bendis might have added because it wasn’t clear.
DAN: It’s a problem when you have a character who’s supposed to be a teenager, which Sue clearly is —
AUD: Wait, she’s a teenager?
DAN: I mean, is she not?
AUD: [Laughs] She probably is…!
DAN: I mean, that’s a problem, we should know! And she’s wearing lipstick and whatnot…
AUD: It’s that hollywood syndrome! Women don’t wear makeup when they’re in let-down at home clothes. Ack.
DAN: That said, I think Bagley does a good job of moving the camera around. Even though there’s not a lot happening on this page, it’s not static. After Johnny says “leave me alone” in panel five, we cut to this nice, lonely panel with heavy shadows.
AUD: I don’t like the way they’re facing inward in that panel necessarily, though.
DAN: You’re rather maintain Johnny’s rightward positioning from the earlier panels, to maintain a sense of space?
AUD: I want his face to keep facing the bottom right corner, so if Sue’s off to the side, she’d be closer to the outside of the page, since she’s on the outside of him in the conversation.
DAN: Yeah! Johnny��s sitting still and staring in one direction, so we really should we moving around with Sue, not moving around with Johnny, who’s stationary. That’s a really good point.
Also — I like the hot pretzel line in panel four. That was something specific to them that nicely places them as siblings. Sometimes that little element of specificity can really help sell a scene.
AUD: The devil is in the details!
DAN: The devil’s in the details.
PAGE FIVE
AUD: Bagley does do really good backgrounds. That feels like a school.
DAN: Mm! What are the elements that cement that for you?
AUD: Well, it’s not generic. The front of that building is really nice. That’s a building that I’ve never seen before, and that I haven’t seen in movies, which is good because that means he isn’t doing the pruned-down, basic idea of what a school should look like.
DAN: Yeah! And it’s still got the cement walls, it’s got the low ceilings and whatnot.
AUD: All of the people in the backgrounds are doing things, which is awesome. They’re not just standing around like props.
DAN: It’s true. And then also, they’re not overacting. You’re right, he’s really good at that. A couple nice little touches — the back of this guy’s t-shirt, the Home Ec textbook. We didn’t need those details to place it as a school, but they do add some variety.
I feel like the pacing in these last three panels are not as good as the writing is. The panels three and four are setting up her reaction in panel five, so it’s weird to me that panels four and five in this sequence are sub-panels of panel three. I would rather have the first two take place in the same plane. Setup, setup, then payoff.
AUD: My major beef with the sequence is: the reason that she feels so bad is everyone’s laughing at her, right, but we can’t see the people laughing at her.
DAN: We should see them laughing! It might even be better if we switched it so we don’t see many people in the panel three, and then see them all in panel five.
AUD: Yeah, do it so it’s just MJ and Liz at first, and you get the growing sense of her being surrounded by these glaring entities.
[Aud’s edit, version 1:]
DAN: Or! Have panels three and four right next to each other in their own row, then have panel five be a wide panel along the bottom of the page. I think that would be a superior version of an already fairly solid page.
[Aud’s edit, version 2:]
DAN: The scene is also very mid-2000s, which I appreciate.
AUD: That’s another thing with his setting! It does really look like the time period it was drawn in, which is fun.
DAN: Yeah, it’s not just the stock comic book teenagers. I think that’s why this series was so popular when it came out. It really did feel like high school, despite the fact nobody working on it was… matriculating.
PAGE SIX
DAN: I like that Johnny’s car is red. I think that’s a slick color cue.
AUD: The only thing I have to say is… Bagley consistently does these weird perspectives that throw you out of following who the main characters are supposed to be. Like, I don’t like that opening panel. There’s something off about looking down on them.
DAN: Ohh, yeah. That’s a good point. The camera isn’t down with them, it’s distant, it’s above. There’s a nice line of motion where Peter and MJ in panel one lead into Peter’s position in panel two, but then Bagely breaks it immediately by switching the camera around in panel three.
That said, I do really like Johnny’s incognito-wear.
AUD: [Laughs] Talking about early 2000s…
DAN: Right? I love it.
PAGE SEVEN
DAN: So, like you said earlier, these Peter and MJ talking to Johnny pages are a little bit — well, there’s not a lot happening.
AUD: I feel like the scenes where there’s just people standing around give you the most room to, like, wander and throw in creative things. Do fun acting, have them fidget. This does not do that.
DAN: I do like that close-up of MJ in panel two. It helps us identify with her; it sells her curiosity and her sympathy. A different version of this panel might have had her farther away, in which case that line could have sounded a lot more accusatory. I feel like this averts that.
AUD: All of these pages are superficially fine. There’s a good variation of sizes of faces… I don’t look at this like, “I don’t know how to read this,” which is nice.
DAN: Being able to read the comic is very important. Yeah, the drawings are all really attractive, the coloring is good as well — it works together well as a package. I think what we’re harping on here is unfulfilled potential.
AUD: Yes!
DAN: Speaking of color, I like what colorist JD Smith did with the sky. It sells the end of the school day really nicely and avoids being just “sky colored!”
PAGE EIGHT
DAN: I like the negative space on this page.
AUD: Yeah, that is interesting…
DAN: Really nice flow of action from panels one to three. Johnny’s head turns slightly between the first and third panel, which sells this beat of silence in panel two. And I like dropping out the panel border in three; it makes him feel alone and insecure. I wish there was more stuff like this in the issue.
AUD: And I wish there was more stuff like Peter’s stance in panel five.
DAN: Yeah! One foot up on the curb, one in the gutter. That’s really nice.
AUD: Whereas in all these other panels, they’re just standing straight.
DAN: This is a very attractive final panel.
PAGE NINE
DAN: More great negative space on this page. You almost feel like Bagley started to get bored in this scene and started to change things up.
AUD: Which yeah, if only he had… done that earlier?
DAN: Same thing with Peter’s silhouette in panel three. It’s a really intelligent use of Peter’s design, indicating him by just his the line of his floppy hair.
AUD: Which, if I remember correctly, there was quite a bit of mocking of throughout every comic he appeared in.
DAN: And I like that! I like that Peter has goofy nerd hair. Because he’s a goofy nerd — that’s a big part of his appeal. When Peter Parker is too cool, he starts to fall apart, I think.
AUD: Panel six is bad.
DAN: [Laughs] Why is panel six bad, Aud?
AUD: Okay, so, once again, we’re coming from Peter and MJ’s perspective, but we’re in front of Johnny’s car. He’s driving into where we’re standing! Why would you not have him be driving away from the viewer? Bagley consistently puts the motion of action towards the viewer, and that doesn’t make sense to me.
DAN: It makes for a more dynamic image, but… it can make for muddy storytelling.
AUD: Yeah, it makes the motion come to a halt, because there’s nowhere for your eye to go.
DAN: I feel like this comic really thinks Johnny’s the main character. And I just… don’t… think he is. Maybe that’s on me.
PAGE TEN
DAN: More of that curious downward angle. Yeah, I’m with you — I’d rather have more environment shots from the ground. Because this doesn’t really tell me anything about the environment — all I get from this is that they’re still approximate to the parking lot. And as an artist, if you’re in a rush, you’re just begging to make technical mistakes if you keep shooting things from this angle.
AUD: Yep.
DAN: But, again, credit where it’s due, good job moving the camera around the characters. Nice full body acting in panel three — which is shot from the ground, and is super attractive. Maybe he should do more of that! I dunno! And Peter and MJ’s dialogue continues to be funny.
AUD: It’s delightful!
DAN: Bendis is aware this is magic, and he gives us a good amount of it.
AUD: Yes! Going back to the teen drama — what makes this so good is the personality of the characters and how much they come through. The dialogue carries it a whole lot.
DAN: This comic has a nice small cast — you understand all their motivations, they all have distinct voices and personalities. The human element is really well put together.
PAGE ELEVEN
AUD: This page — I hate this page.
DAN: [Laughs]
AUD: Okay, I don’t hate it, but I have major issues reading it.
DAN: Tell me!
AUD: The first two panels are fine, but then — where the hell are you supposed to go??
DAN: That’s a good point! That’s a very good point. Now, If I block out panel three—
AUD: It works! You don’t need that panel!
DAN: Really, all we’d need is to change Johnny in panel four, from looking around to looking up at Peter. The reason why he’s looking around isn’t super clear — since Johnny is supposed to be under wraps, I’m assuming that when he sees Spider-Man, he’s looking around to see if there’s other costumed people who’re gonna jump him. We can do without that.
AUD: Okay, other funny thing — as you said, Bagley thinks that Johnny is the main character. This is supposed to be from Spider-Man’s point of view, right? So the first shot should be from where Spider-Man is seeing him. Even if you don’t see Spidey in the shot.
DAN: Well, yeah, that would be a nice shot/reverse shot from panel two to panel three. It’s funny; in panel two, we actually WANT Bagley to do the down angle.
AUD: Yeah!
DAN: There’s an easy fix for this wonky reading order that keeps all the panels:
You drop panel three half an inch and make panel two a page-wide environment shot. It’s a subtle difference, but I think it strengthens the flow of the scene.
AUD: And also, why do we even need the time? Just to show it’s been a while since school got out?
DAN: It’s shows — He’s supposed to meet Liz at 5:00, and this shows it’s been… longer. It also shows that Spidey was allowing for the possibility that Liz would show up. He doesn’t just pop up at 5:00.
AUD: Ahhh, right. Okay. Yeah. But why is Johnny wearing the costume? Like, if he’s incognito, why is he wearing the Fantastic Four costume?
DAN; Well… I guess, in this universe, nobody knows it’s a Fantastic Four costume yet.
AUD: But he’s still obviously wearing some kind of uniform.
DAN: I dunno, maybe he just came from, y’know, street luging.
AUD: [Laughs]
DAN: Still rocking his street luge gear.
AUD: “…Street luge…”
PAGE TWELVE
DAN: Okay, so I really like the arc of Spider-Man’s movement on this page. It starts mid panel one, comes up and down in a nice arc across the top three panels. That’s really cool.
AUD: However; it would’ve made more sense to me if it started with his face pointing in some way towards the right.
DAN: I agree that would be a little bit better; even if his head was just cheated that way a little bit. I still think this works fine, but that would’ve been a slight improvement.
AUD: Even if the body was just flipped.
DAN: Ah, yeah, yeah! That’s good. Even just inverting Spidey’s position in panel one makes it that much smoother:
AUD: It still trips my letting thing. You want to read straight down from panel one into panel four.
DAN: Yeahhhh, that is unfortunate.
PAGE THIRTEEN-FOURTEEN
DAN: So, this is great.
AUD: Yes, except… okay, I do like it. But for me, it was another lettering issue. I feel like they were hesitant to put any dialogue in in panels two, four, and seven because there was so little room to the left of the fold. Maybe if those panels had been extended half an inch, they could’ve… I don’t know…
DAN: I think I disagree with you on this one. I think that they chose to make it a quasi double-page splash because Bendis wanted this moment to exist all at once, without risking it being split up by ads. I think that’s why it’s cheated over the fold this way. That said… the balloon placement in panel four is distracting.
AUD: Yeah, you can tell there’s all this space above Spider-Man’s head where the dialogue was supposed to go.
DAN: It really shoulda been there. If this were a digital comic, that would’ve been perfect. I does weirdly work quite well in panel seven…
AUD: Because they put dialogue there!
DAN: There you are, then. Even if Spidey had said “um” in panel four, just to full in that space, that would’ve been an easy fix.
AUD: So, okay, this is a big moment; but why is it a big moment? Peter’s already seen his powers. We already know that’s what Johnny does. Is it that he’s revealing his “Human Torch” name?
DAN: Well, It’s a big moment for Johnny. Again, this issue thinks Johnny is the main character. So it’s a big moment for him… Peter’s reaction is still genuine, it’s still surprising to see a person, y’know, light their hand on fire. And also, it’s the first time in this universe where The Human Torch and Spider-Man are on the same page, so there’s a little bit of a fan nod there, plus a little bit of this being Johnny’s moment to reveal himself to, he thinks, a new person. Some of it is just a nice juicy visual on which to hang the rest of the scene.
The dialogue in this scene is great. I like the idea of this scene. Johnny’s life is actively inconvenienced by Spider-Man — the way his life is set up is a direct reaction to Spider-Man’s existence. But he likes Spider-Man a lot, so they’re being friendly.
AUD: I like… I think I have a thing against power imbalances. Like, Peter and Johnny are on the same level, but with this scene, it’s like hero worship. Johnny’s like a fanboy, and Peter just allows that imbalance to continue. That’s a personal thing, I just don’t like it — except that at the end of the scene, it switches, where Peter becomes the fanboy for Sue Storm. So I did like that.
DAN: Yeah! You see it in panel five, which is where Peter and Johnny actually become friends, but it’s also where you see Peter changing the subject of him being rich, trying to protect the idea of him being rich — read, “cool.” But here in panel seven, he can’t help but reveal he’s not cool, because he’s such a big fan of Sue Storm.
AUD: I will say, throughout a lot of these scenes of pure dialogue — again, this is just a personal preference — you get these panels where there’s so much back and forth in the same panel, and I don’t like it. I like it when you get more of a focus on what the characters look like when they’re saying each individual line, so there’s more emotional hit to it. Here it’s all consolidated, so you don’t get as much personality from the characters.
DAN: Would you’ve liked if this comic had, let’s say, five more pages to it that just allowed a little more space for the back and forth between the characters?
AUD: Well, either prune down the dialogue, or… yeah, extend it, give the artist more room. But then again, I don’t know if Bagley would’ve really wanted more room — he doesn’t really seem to enjoy drawing these still dialogue moments.
DAN: Or maybe at this point he’s so used to them that he just kinda bangs ‘em out without thinking too hard. Which we could hardly fault him for.
AUD: Yeah! Issue… sixty-nine of a series?
DAN: Jeezy Petes.
I don’t know if I already said something nice about JD Smith, but the colors are real swell here. The glow on Spidey’s chest in panel one.
AUD: One detail I really like is that his coat is actually on fire in panel two.
DAN: Oh yeah! That is a nice little touch.
And now, this is an excellent final panel; an onomatopoeia leading off the page, they’re both looking in the same direction, off the page, towards the page turn, you gotta turn the page, you gotta know what’s gonna happen next…
PAGE FIFTEEN
DAN: I love this page.
AUD: Rrrrrreally.
DAN: I do! I do, and I’ll tell you why: It does the handoff of POV from character to character really effectively. So, this page is split into two equal circuits of storytelling. They have roughly the same layout; the first one is Spidey vaulting off — the webline’s going off the page in the right direction, he’s going off the panel into the negative space, it’s really dynamic. This is where Bagley’s ‘everything comes towards you’ thing really works. And then we end on Johnny’s reaction to this, which then transitions into the second circuit; this nice juicy Human Torch moment that mirrors Spider-Man’s. There’s a little joke, and then we stay on Johnny’s reaction in the last panel, a reaction that follows through from his other reactions on the page. So it’s a really effective handoff. And then, from the perspective of somebody who’s maybe meeting these characters for the first time, it’s cool to see how Spider-Man has to jump off the jungle gym and shoot a web and, y’know, he moves in THIS way, and meanwhile Human Torch can just straight up fly, he’s made of fire, he moves in THIS way… I mean, I could see experiencing this for the first time and really getting excited for these characters, the way they’re depicted on this page.
What do you think?
AUD: That’s interesting, because I really disliked this page.
DAN: Ooh, tell me! Tell me why.
AUD: Well… I guess one of the things I’m personally most concerned about is the way the lines of action move within the structure of a single page. Not just the way that the characters are moving, but all of the composition. This page feels really cluttered to me; there’s all these different directions, and there’s so many different moments happening too, and none of them are given enough space.
DAN: In a way, I think you’re sort of right… what makes this page work for me is that there’s the two complete circuits, but a page is typically only supposed to be one.
AUD: What you said about Spider-Man having to climb off the jungle gym — I didn’t even realize that that’s what had happened there because there’s such a gap. I want to see him moving onto the jungle gym. In the first panel, I want more of a pause as they look at the smoke. I would’ve preferred smaller bits of them both going off.
DAN: Maybe we coulda cut down on some money shot panels and reallocated that space to give these two moments bigger moments on their own pages. I still really like this page, but I totally agree with your criticisms.
AUD: I also feel like that last panel should have maybe been the back of Johnny’s head, so we’re following him as he’s going somewhere? As it is, it’s just a static image of his face.
DAN: Mmm, yeah, I could see that.
PAGE SIXTEEN
AUD: It’s beautifully drawn. I really like the swoop of the smoke.
DAN: Yeah, Bagley’s smoke is really cool; all whispy and tendrily. It is a little bit weird to me that Spidey’s swinging left, into the page fold. I would rather have flipped Spidey’s figure so he’s facing right, maybe just jumping down with her in his arms, or with his web attached to the roof ledge. There’s some nice contrasting movement between Spidey and the smoke, but it’s still a little muddy to me.
AUD: Once more, who’s the main character on this page? You actually think it should be Johnny this time, carrying over from the last page.
DAN: Also: modern comics artists have finally stopped drawing that high-riding underwear on women, which I personally appreciate. Nobody liked that.
AUD: That was also never, like, a real thing that happened, even in the early 2000s.
DAN: This is a type of page layout I like a lot; you’ve got a tall, scene-setting panel, and then everything that follows is sort of a detail of that main setting.
Panel two is nice; we’re clearly from Johnny’s perspective, looking down…
AUD: Except that time, it shouldn’t be! It should be focusing on Spider-Man!
DAN: Crap, you’re right! You’re totally right. The perspectives in panels one and two should be switched. We should be on the ground with Spider-Man and her looking up in panel two, and we should be with Johnny looking down on the scene in panel one.
PAGE SEVENTEEN
[Long, thoughtful shared pause]
DAN: Nice line of motion along those bottom panels… I hate this baby. I’m sorry.
AUD: That’s not a terrified baby! That’s a hungry baby opening its mouth for food.
DAN: I dunno, maybe she’s got a Spider-Man-colored bottle or something, so when he comes in the room she’s like, “oh thank god, I’m parched.”
AUD: I also don’t think panel four is entirely clear enough about what Johnny’s doing.
DAN: What if this panel were framed by the window? So we could see the fire going away from us, from inside the building, and towards Johnny.
AUD: Oh, that would be clever…
DAN: And then we can skew panel five just a little bit so it’s not just the same shot twice.
Panel six is a really good panel.
AUD: It is a really good panel, yeah. Unfortunately, it is followed by a weird baby.
DAN: Oy. Such a weird baby.
PAGE EIGHTEEN
AUD: Panel one immediately gave me the feeling that it should be flipped. The direction of motion — it doesn’t look like he’s jumping out of the building.
DAN: He’s just coming down from heaven with a baby.
AUD: That’s what this looks like. Also, it would have helped a whole lot of his suit was singed.
DAN: Or if smoke was trailing off him, yeah.
AUD: In panel two, why are we looking at this from the very above again? Do it from Peter’s point of view! Actually, wait — if you move panel four up next to panel one…
DAN: Oh, yeah, that’d work. Because the Torch panels don’t tell us… much. And Bagley and company have my sympathies here, because showing a contiguous stream of flame coming out of the building and towards Johnny? I don’t know how I would show that.
AUD: I think the flames themselves are fine, but the swoop of the smoke around the border of panel two gets me.
DAN: This is an instance where the old Marvel style of captions talking about what’s happening would really help you out.
AUD: I mean, you need to be really careful with captions… actually if he were muttering something…
DAN: Oh yeah! Like, “Oh my god, he’s drawing the flame out of the building” or something.
AUD: Yeah! Yeah, that would work.
DAN: Or a panel where the babysitter like “What’s going on” and Peter’s like “I-I-I-I think he’s drawing the flame out of the building” and she’s like “How is he doing that” and he’s like “[weird noise plus awkward shrug]”
AUD: See, and that would have been awesome, just to add more personality and some nice moments between Peter and the crowd.
DAN: I mean, sure, he’s amazed at the Torch in panel four, but this would really sell the — well, anyway.
PAGE NINETEEN
AUD: We've talked about unfortunate ad placements before; I’d just like to point out that those are DC characters in a Marvel comic.
DAN: Right as things seem at their most dire — Batman and Superman pop up!
AUD: Come to save the day!
DAN: We got this, guys, don’t even worry about it.
So, this page: I understand what’s happening here, but I wouldn’t if I hadn’t read a bunch of other comic books.
AUD: …Yes, because there’s not a sense of him getting rid of anything, it’s more like he’s channeling the energy to blow something up.
DAN: Yeah. That said, I like the sweeping top left/bottom right motion of the clouds, which adds a nice parallax to the bottom left/top right motion of the flames. And at least there, it’s popping off the the page, away from us.
AUD: And up where people are looking.
DAN: Yes! They’re following the line of action. That’s quite good.
AUD: And the colors on this panel are beautiful.
DAN: They really are. JD Smith clearly knows how to bring out the warmth and energy of the flame with these nice cool background colors. I have no idea why the cough was lettered like that —
AUD: I thought it was hilarious. It was for comedy, right, ‘cause he’s actually saying “cough?”
DAN: Oh! [Laughs]
AUD: At least that’s how I interpreted it, as a humor beat.
DAN: But then as we go on, we see that he’s actually coughing ‘cause of smoke inhalation.
AUD: Is he?
DAN: Here, put a pin in that, we’ll come back to that. That’s mostly a nitpick on what is overall a very strong page.
PAGE TWENTY
AUD: What the…?
DAN: What is happening in this first panel?
AUD: I think that’s Johnny flying off.
DAN: Oh!
AUD: To the park, to meet him again?
DAN: Yes.
AUD: But.
DAN: Maybe Johnny could have been smoldering there a little, in panel two?
AUD: You could have just not had panel one and have them just meet up again in the park.
DAN: Again, my sympathies to Bagley, because this flame stuff is… it doesn’t exist in the real world, so he’s gotta hack it out.
AUD: I do love the trails of the smoke in panel one. And that looks like a fucked up building.
DAN: Although! I think the colorist let us down a little there. This flamey bit coming out of the building should be smoke. It shouldn’t still be on fire.
AUD: That’s… definitely true!
So: who’s the main character in this scene?
DAN: On this page, it seems like they’re both the main character. And after the scene we just had, I’m cool with them being equally important on this page.
AUD: Yeah. The jump between here and the next page wasn’t clear to me, though.
DAN: No. I mean, it’s a funny bit! I get it. But.
AUD: The ending on his face at the end of the page just didn’t hit right. I do like that body movement in panel three.
DAN: Again, when Bagley chooses to do acting, he does a really good job.
PAGE TWENTY ONE
DAN: Okay, so here’s where the downward angle really works. Again, I would have liked to have a little flame coming off him in panel two to show the transition from Torch to normal. Overall, I like this scene a lot. Like, Johnny having to lose his jacket is a nice narrative device to show the sacrifice of heroism.
AUD: Plus a metaphor of the police getting him. I will say that in all the comments about the acting, all of it was passable — except for panel four.
DAN: Really! Why?
AUD: Just bad acting!
DAN: You just think it’s, what, cheesy?
AUD: It’s cheesy and it does the soap opera thing.
DAN: Ah, fair enough. The script description, I assume was “Johnny lets the moment land, feels proud of himself.” Tough to pull off. But I hear ya.
AUD: And also he’s facing…
DAN: Yeah, have him face the other direction. Although, I do kind of like him looking off, taking this moment to himself —
AUD: But that’s part of what bugs me the most! Like, look at panel three — they’re not looking at each other. They don’t seem to be in the same interaction.
DAN: I think this page is a good example of problems with placing figures in space that Bagley has throughout.
AUD: Especially scenes that are just dialogue.
DAN: The scene were MJ and Peter are talking to Johnny in the parking lot earlier is helped because Johnny’s leaning against a landmark; his car. But when they’re a little more free form like this, the figures start to drift around.
AUD: I love that last panel.
DAN: It’s a great panel. I love the lighting on Spidey.
AUD: Johnny’s… beautiful?
DAN: [Laughs] He’s very pretty.
PAGE TWENTY TWO
DAN: Final page.
AUD: Another money shot of him! How many are in this fucking issue!
DAN: [Sighs.] I guess if I were choosing to defend this, I would say the initial money shot on page one —
AUD: Was fine.
DAN: Yes, it sells the chaos and the fear of what’s happening. This next one on page three —
AUD: Nope.
DAN: — if I wanted to defend it, I would say that was, like, Johnny flying off into the sky like Frankenstein’s Monster, and then this last one is him flying into the sky like a hero. It’s a progression.
AUD: [Snort.]
DAN: Your milage may vary. More great sweeping motion of the clouds that create a contrast to him flying away at us —
AUD: Another example of things flying out of the page.
DAN: This is just a personal thing, but I would have broken the panel boarders here at the top and had his hands reach out into the bleed.
AUD: Yeah, if he’s gonna do the big moment where he comes out towards you, have him come out towards you!
DAN: And panel two is a funny final beat that undercuts this big heroic moment with Peter coughing — that’s solid. The birds are bit much.
AUD: The buildings are nice, though. He draws nice buildings!
DAN: He does! He’s really good at drawing this comic. Mark Bagley, shocker, is a really good guy to be drawing a Spider-Man comic. He’s good at buildings, he’s good at dynamic action — he is good at acting. I think in this issue, we just see him being a little bit on auto pilot. There’s not a lot we can say is really wrong with this issue.
AUD: Yeah, if I picked it up I would happily read it. The structural elements of it were perfectly passable.
DAN: Yeah! It’s well-written. It keeps moving. And the final action set piece is a nice way to get them to team up and learn about each other, but only be interacting with each other; they don’t have to fight anybody. Y’know, Paste Pot Pete doesn’t show up and they have to team up against him.
AUD: This is the exact kind of comic I would love to have drawn! Yeah. It’s good. Well written. Very well written.
DAN: You could be a hell of a lot worse.
***
You can buy a copy of this issue on Comixology, along with every other issue of ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN.
You can also pick up Aud Koch’s Marvel Comics debut, last week’s ULTIMATES 2 #7, written by Al Ewing with colors by Dan Brown -- which I highly recommend.
Check out Aud’s website, and hit her up on twitter! She’s always posting new art -- including some Spidey and Torch stuff that gives you an idea what this comic might’ve looked like if Aud had ghosted Bagley.
As always, feel free to check me on any mistakes I/we might have made, add your own commentary, or share similar examples of good comics done well. I’ll be back next week with a different comic to peruse.
Be well!
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THE SHADOW STRIKES! #13
PETER PARKER: SPIDER-MAN #13
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#Ultimate Spider-Man#Aud Koch#Comics#Educational Purposes#Brian Michael Bendis#mark bagley#Marvel Comics#The Human Torch#Spider-Man
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