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iscribble · 3 years

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pairing | youtuber!renjun x student!reader genre(s) | fluff, slice of life, strangers to potential lovers, college au word count | 1.8k summary | you’re always the type to be punctual, so it takes you by surprise that you’re willing to give up your time for something else - someone else, rather; a stranger. author’s note | havent written in so long that i just had to put something out there. im really sorry for being so inactive! :(

An extended but lonely crack slithers down the bathroom mirror, grazing your reflection on the glass that is opaque with moisture. Through the corner of your eye you perceive one-fourth of the aged, spreading tree outside your apartment whenever the old creaking door swings open with the wind. The quiet—but prominent—plop of the water that leaks through the apertures on the pipe hits your ears, and it is only after a while that you find it fills the little space between your toe and the tip of your shoe. The leak doesn’t bother you though. Neither does the crack, nor the random wind gusts. A yellow lip balm bounces in your palm, cap greasy from applying too much on your finger. You would exchange a mere lip balm for a heat pack, but you put it on anyway. The harsh cracks on your lips are now tucked away underneath a tacky layer of cream, and you find it amusing how easily it wears away.

You are late, for the first time in months. Nothing really bothers you as much as glancing at the clock and seeing its hands where you least expect them to be.

In your defense, it was an afternoon class. You don’t usually have afternoon classes unless your professor needs to reschedule, which, inevitably, resets your agenda for the rest of the day. You, on the other hand, are not used to rescheduling. So when you can’t feel the warm shaft of sunlight skim across your eyelids, instead, only the feeling of cold air brushing past your skin and the faint sound of your alarm, you jolt awake, guilty of sleeping in. You try not blame yourself though—this doesn’t happen everyday and you are still not used to it.

The station is disposed with a boring facade and a duller interior. The giant vintage clock shows 15:18. The three seater bench still holds too many people. There is that man with the navy-coloured down jacket behind the counter, uninterested in the regulars who flock to their respective platforms. These are the same sequences, the same faces, like people are helpless boats going with the current. You scrunch up your nose, admitting you are one of them too.

You make your way inside the train, opting to sit near no one else. It takes a while for you to settle down, but when you do, you catch someone looking at you. Harbor gray coat, brown hair, black mask. You don’t recognise him anywhere on campus. You think maybe he attends one of the afternoon classes, but you don’t assume further.

15:29.

You leave the train with a spring in your step, but not out of enthusiasm. The familiar crisp white frontage of the building comes into view, your heart skipping a beat as you think of the worst that could happen upon stepping inside the lecture hall. One strap of your tote slides down your shoulder, and just as you are about to pick it up, the other strap goes loose and drags your bag down with it. A couple of coloured pens roll out, you grumble to yourself and crouch down to stop them from rolling any farther. You fail at this, when you turn around to pick up a blue pen and realise that someone else beat you to it. The stranger from the train.

“Got it,” he chuckles, and you feel embarrassed. He returns your pen, but his eyes don’t stop at your hands. His gaze lowers a short distance, you’re almost sure he’s looking at the brick road beneath you, but you’re not really sure why. When you stand back up he vaguely shakes his head, like he’s been thinking about something else, but you don’t miss it.

“Thank you,” you say, too fast that it almost sounds insolent.

“Don’t worry about it,” he returns with a smile behind his mask. “I’m Renjun, by the way.” He extends his hand for you to shake. What’s he doing? Why's he acting like he’s about to proceed with an interview or something?

You learn that he really does want to “interview” you. “I’m a youtuber,” he informs. It is only then that you realise someone else is standing behind him, occupied with a camera.

“Oh,” you eventually reply, but nothing else. He waits for the typical “that’s cool!” but you are too quiet, Renjun can practically hear someone making a fuss about her peppermint hot chocolate being too hot in the distance. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions? It’s for a youtube video.” He speaks up. You say nothing at first. Your fingers that hide underneath the rib-knit cuff curl into a ball. You feel the crack that litters your lower lip flaunt itself, the thick lip balm that conceals it long gone. You seem even more conscious of your worn out shoes that somehow feel damper than they already are. Putting your weight on one leg, you try your best to decline him in the most mannerly way possible.

“I’m really sorry but I’m actually late to class.”

You can’t see his smile but you know it falters. His glasses droop a little, you see the red marks on the bridge of his nose. “I see.” Is all he says. He looks back at his friend and shrugs. “Thank you, anyways.” Your stomach churns. You don’t want to be the reason he leaves empty handed, yet he is leaving, empty handed and all. Somehow, your concern for punctuality slowly withers away.

“No, wait,” you catch his fingers just before he turns the other way. He winces. Not because of the sudden swell of your voice, but because your hands are a little too cold. You steal a glance at the watch on your wrist. 15:32. Renjun finds your eyes. He doesn’t say it, that your hands are too cold, but he takes them in his own, warming them up. Strangely enough, your whole body heats up at the gesture.

“Class can wait, whatever. What’d you want to ask me?”

Renjun’s eyes all but light up. He signals for his friend to start filming. “Alright, a few questions about college, I’m going to try and guess your major.”

“Oh, that’s new,” you raise an eyebrow. “Did you come up with the idea?”

“Nah,” Renjun laughs, he brings up a hand to push his hair back. “Just following a trend.”

15:33. You nod. “Alright, go on.”

You notice a few things about Renjun. The way he speaks, like you’ve known each other for a long time. The way his hair isn’t exactly brown, rather russet, a little red. When you look closer into his eyes, you see they match his hair. You wish you could see his lips, see if they’re as cracked as yours, if he puts lip balm on a little too much, but the black mask he wears that almost reaches his eyes tells you it’s too early for that. Perhaps, if he lowers the article just a few inches, you’ll understand that the circles beneath his eyes mean that he’s equally as tired as you. He asks you questions, not rushed, and though you are definitely late to class, you couldn’t bring yourself to care anymore.

“Might have an idea,” he looks to the camera tentatively, then back to you. “Chemistry?”

“You’re good,” your compliment reaches his ears. “How’d you guess?”

Renjun punches the air in glee as if he won the lottery. “Honestly, couldn’t get a single clue from what you said. But I saw your Analytical Chemistry book peeking out from your tote when it fell.”

“Whoops, my bad.” You share a laugh.

“And as a thank you for the—” he scrutinizes his watch, “—five minutes I just took from your time, this is for you.” A heat pack. You didn’t know how much you needed one until your hands reach for the item almost immediately.

15:38. You squeeze the pad as heat begins to radiate from it. Renjun’s friend lowers the camera as soon as you’re done filming, and it is then that Renjun seems like he has something else on his mind.

“Uhm,” he half-whispers. You look at him, confused. “Your shoes.”

You know what he means. Your shoes leave ambiguous trails of dirt, just slightly. Renjun notices it though. Your shoes are rather soggy, like they were deliberately dipped in water. Traces of soil scatter the outsole, centimetres up and you’ll see a small patch of fabric, sewn on to cover the hole that’s exposing your toes. You tremble slightly, bringing your right foot behind your left in an attempt to hide it from him. No one has ever pointed it out.

“Oh. They’re old, but, they work.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he scoffs lightly. “Let me buy you new ones.”

“No.” You realise that comes out too abruptly. “Please, that’s really unnecessary.”

15:39.

“You’re late to class,” he reasons with you. “At least let me make it up to you.” The obscure rift on your bottom lip bleeds a little. You like to bite it whenever you feel nervous. Renjun reaches for his phone in the pocket of his ivory trousers and hands it to you.

“We can go over the details through text,” he subtly looks at his friend, wanting to know if the gesture is okay. “If you don’t mind, of course.”

15:40. You give in. Your fingers are stiff—you realise you’re giving your number to a stranger, so you take some time to secretly ponder over the situation, although you hate to admit Renjun feels more like a new friend. He sends you a message once you give him his phone back just to make sure you get his number.

“Thank you,” you smile at him. “That’s really kind of you.”

15:41.

You hesitate before a hand comes up to wave at him and his friend, though the heat pack is still crushed between your fingers. Renjun pulls his mask down for the first time, and it would be weird to say you were waiting for it. For his smile. You can perceive through the white fabric whenever it shifts that he is smiling underneath there, but now it’s irrefutable, the evidence that he actually is smiling, and you’re glad that’s the last thing you see before the customary sight moulds into view, once again.

If someone had told you this morning that you’d be willing to sacrifice your punctuality for a stranger, you’d knock some sense into them. But as you stand before the doors to the lecture hall, phone in your grip as you stare at the cerulean waters you fancy as your lock screen, no, rather, the notification that overlays it “let me know when you’re in class, i feel responsible lol”, the unusual feeling that blooms inside your chest reminds you that you could live a little less orderly and a little more self-willed.

15:43.

You’re thirteen minutes late. Though now, nothing really bothers you as much as not being able to concentrate in class because he’s all you can think about.

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spaceskam · 4 years

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it’s smarter to be lucky than it’s lucky to be smart

for @malexweek day 1: meet ugly! warning for mild violence

ao3

"How'd you like to make some money?"

Alex looked up over his drink to the set of pretty eyes across from him. They belonged to a face Alex knew well, a little older and a little more hardened than he remembered, but the eyes were the same.

"You sure know how to rope a guy in," Alex said, putting his drink down and smiling. Kyle rolled his eyes.

“I know how to rope you in,” he said, sitting down and leaning back, “So, you wanna?”

“I’m gonna need more information.”

“There’s this guy, he’s a collector,” Kyle said, looking around before leaning forward and raising his eyebrows, “You know, a collector.” Which was Kyle’s not-so-subtle way of saying he collected alien artifacts.

“Okay, and?”

“And I think you would benefit from him,” Kyle said. Alex snorted a laugh.

“No one’s listening, just spit it out,” Alex prodded. Kyle narrowed his eyes at him which just made Alex even more amused. He missed Kyle. You know, even if he was always scared of taking risks or getting his hands dirty. “Alright, I’ll do it, whatever it is. You clearly need help.”

Kyle took a deep breath to bury his annoyance.

“Tomorrow, 6 PM, I’ll text you the coordinates. Wear a suit.”

“Always.”

“A pen? You went through all this trouble so I could steal a pen?”

Alex’s day job was working IT for a big, boring office building. His hobby was stealing from the guys who owned big, boring companies. He was a good con man, always had been. He hadn’t gotten caught since he was six and didn’t understand the concept of security cameras. So Kyle bringing him to an alien dinner party to steal a pen felt like a waste of his talent.

“It’s not just a pen,” Kyle hissed, grabbing him by the elbow and tugging him to the front door, "It's made of alien technology, it can help translate the thousands of pages we can't read."

"Why do you want to translate it? You sound like those guys who want to blow up the Sphinx of Giza to see what's inside," Alex told him, "Gotta have what's not ours, right?"

"Wrong," Kyle said, squeezing his arm. Alex grinned.

"I like it when you get all rough."

"Stop," Kyle groaned, "I need it because those papers are the last thing I have that might tell me where my dad is." Alex very quickly got serious.

"Okay," he agreed, "I can get it, don't worry."

"Thank you," Kyle breathed, letting him go before knocking on the front door of the large house that was already bustling with humans and aliens alike.

Shockingly, the owner himself, Michael Guerin, answered. He was just like the pictures: slightly tamed curls, a specially tailored paisley suit, and a charming smile tying it all together. A martini glass was in one hand, resting in a fist full of expensive rings. Alex knew those rings. He'd stolen some just like them from another rich alien with an ambiguous job. It was like their calling card. But this alien was much more attractive and his eyes immediately landed on Alex.

"Forgive me, I would know if you were in my invite list," he said, voice smooth and fitting.

"Well, I know who you are, Jay Gatsby," he said and Michael smiled wider, "Oh, sorry, Freudian slip."

“He’s my plus one,” Kyle interjected. Michael reluctantly gave him his attention. “You didn’t specify if there was anyone off-limits.”

“There isn’t,” Michael said, eyes drifting to Alex again, “And if there was, he would not be on that list.”

“Alex,” Alex introduced, deliberately excluding his last name. Michael nodded, looking him up and down slowly despite Kyle saying he was his plus one. Alex raised an eyebrow and Michael just hid his grin behind his glass as he took a sip.

“Come in,” he said after a few seconds of staring.

They walked into the house and Alex’s mind immediately started to calculate when would be the best time to sneak up the stairs and to his office where the pen was. Kyle had shown him a map of the place that he’d gotten his hands on. Up the stairs, hang a right, fourth door on the left. The pen was on his desk, probably, blending in with regular ones that looked just like it.

“So, Alex,” Michael said, leading the way towards the main room. Alex didn’t let his eyes linger on the stairwell or the balcony from the second floor that overlooked the large dining hall. It’d be harder than he wanted to sneak up there without someone noticing. “What do you do?”

“I work in IT at Pryze Inc,” Alex answered. Michael gave him an impressed look. “It’s just IT.”

“That’s where it starts, though, just IT. Give it a few years, you’ll be something great,” he said. Alex hummed, stepping past him to steal two champagne glasses from a caterers tray.

“I’m already something great.”

“I can believe that,” Micahel breathed.

“We all can,” Kyle agreed, accepting the second glass from Alex’s hand. They both took a sip and Michael looked between them.

That’s sort of how it went for the next hour. Alex made small talk and tried to find a good way to slip away. Michael eventually had to make nice with other people, but his eyes did stay on Alex for most of the night. It was a little more than infuriating. Did he know why he was here? Was that why he was watching him?

“I’m gonna go to the bathroom, watch my drink,” Alex said, tilting his head at Kyle. He seemed to understand well enough and grabbed the glass from him. Alex dragged his hand over his arm as he passed, heading for the bathroom.

There were two options, he figured. Either the bathroom excuse would make Michael go the fuck away for long enough to let him get upstairs or, if it didn’t, make he could get Michael to show him upstairs himself. The man was clearly interested.

Alex checked himself in the mirror before pulling out a flask from his suit jacket pocket. He poured a little bit of acetone over his fingers and then dragged them over the underside of his jaw and then dabbed some on his lips. If Michael wasn’t going to leave him alone, he might as well distract him some other way.

When he stepped out of the bathroom, he saw that he made the right decision because Michael was still fucking lingering. He either knew exactly what Alex was here for or Alex was hotter than he even realized. Both were entirely plausible.

Alex walked right up to him.

“You’re not subtle,” Alex said. Michael grinned, his eyes drawing towards his lips and his jaw. Alex decided not to let his smug smile show.

“I’m rich, I don’t have to be.”

“Yeah, well, rich is boring,” Alex responded.

“You really believe that, Robin Hood?”

“I do.”

“Right,” Michael said, enunciating the word deliberately. Alex tilted his head.

“Why don’t you show me upstairs?” Alex asked.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Michael led the way and Alex looked over the banister to wink in Kyle’s direction. He gave a small smile of encouragement and Alex absorbed it, ready to woo this rich alien for long enough to steal the pen. Then he could leave and never deal with him again.

Alex became more sure than ever that Michael didn’t know why he was here whenever he took him directly into his office. It was pristine and well put together, something out of a movie set that didn’t factor in that most people left shit out on their desks in real life. There was a pen cup in the right corner. Four of them looked identical, but only one of those four had that distinct blue tint to the metal clip.

“Have you ever modeled?” Michael asked, “Because I think you would be fantastic at it.”

“Funnily enough, I never was interested in that,” Alex said, turning his back to the desk to make it seem like he hadn’t spotted the pen, “I’m more about brains.”

“So am I,” Michael agreed, stepping closer.

“Are you? I would never have assumed that. It seems you like the show of being rich,” Alex said easily. Michael shrugged.

“Maybe it’s just the best way to meet new people when you’re in my position,” Michael said. Alex eyed him.

“Maybe.”

He got closer and Alex waited for him to go in for a kiss. He knew he would. They always did. And, inevitably, he fell right into that trap.

He pressed into Alex’s space as he kissed him which made him stumble a step back against his desk. Perfect. Alex grabbed his jaw, holding him in place as he let him get a little intoxicated off the taste of his lips. It was just too easy.

Alex used that hold to switch places, pushing Michael into his own desk. He stepped between his thighs, all but holding him in place with one hand on the back of his neck and one on his jaw. Michael seemed to enjoy being manhandled which worked for Alex on more than one level.

It was a slow process. Alex kissed him, drawing out little, pathetic sounds. Alex grinned against his lips and slowly let go of his jaw. He kissed him harder and Michael grabbed his hips, pulling him in closer. Honestly, if he wasn't on a mission, he'd probably let himself get carried away. But, Alex was on a mission and he opened his eyes through it all, checking that Michael was completely distracted before memorizing where the pen was on the desk. He slowly started to edge his hand in that direction, pulling on Michael’s hair for good measure. He groaned in response.

It was a slow process, but Alex managed to slip the pen up his sleeve and hook the clip onto the little armband he had beneath his shirt. Too easy. Way too easy.

Alex kissed him for a few more seconds, but he stopped it when Michael’s hand started to wander.

“Probably a bad idea,” Alex breathed, “We should get back downstairs.”

Michael nodded, reluctantly letting him go. Alex was halfway to the door when he felt an outside force wrap around his arm and the pen was taken from him. Alex snapped his attention to Michael who was still leaning against the desk. He no longer had that kissed-out look on his face.

“You should know who you’re dealing with,” Michael said simply as the pen hung in the air between them. Alex stared for a moment before he dug his hand into his jacket pocket, putting out a little vial of yellow powder. He unscrewed it and tossed it in Michael’s direction easily.

“And you should know who you’re dealing with.”

In the few seconds that it took Michael to get over his shock, Alex dove forward and caught the pen before it hit the ground. Then he turned and quickly exited the room, slipping it in his pocket. Michael was right behind him.

Instead of heading down the stairs, Alex decided to save them both the troubles of making a scene and took a right. He ran down the hall, grinning with satisfaction, and Michael ran after him, decidedly less giddy. Sure, this technically was him getting caught, but Alex knew he was still going to get away. He always did. This was no different. Simply a temporary setback.

The last door in the hallway was a closet that apparently had a secret little latch that led to a set of stairs that led outside. The house was old enough to be built in a time where servants were commonplace and that was a nice way to make sure they didn’t directly interact with your company. Alex was going to use it as a getaway.

He quickly closed the door behind him once he got in there and shoved a conveniently placed umbrella beneath the doorknob. Alex was smiling ear to ear as he found the latch and ran down the steep staircase, taking them two at a time. Kyle would be outside with the car running, waiting for him to just jump in and they’d peel off. He just knew it.

However, when Alex busted through the door, Michael was standing in the way.

“How the fu‒” Alex started to ask without thinking. There was no way any human could make it all the way down the winding staircase and out the door and all the way to the side of the house in the same time it took Alex to get down those stairs. But, then again, he wasn’t human. So, instead, he stopped talking and just threw a punch.

“Alex!” Michael exclaimed, somehow shocked again, and Alex broke into a sprint towards Kyle’s car.

But the car wasn’t started. And Kyle wasn’t in it. He was outside of it, sitting on the hood.

“What the hell are you doing?! I got it, let’s go!” Alex said. But Kyle just gave a smile and shook his head. A feeling of dread slowly started pooling in his gut. Did he really let his childhood fondness for Kyle distract him from a fucking trap? Was that what this was?

Alex turned and saw Michael coming closer, wiping his bloody lip with his thumb.

“You have good instincts,” Michael said as he neared them. Alex was already trying to figure out how he could get out of this. He could run down the street, maybe hide in the shed of one of the other rich people he lived near until the next morning and people wouldn’t be looking for him. “You think fast and you trust yourself. That’s a good quality to have.”

“This was a setup,” Alex said, whipping back around to face Kyle, “Why the hell would you set me up?!”

“Just listen to him,” Kyle urged, nodding his way, “You’re not in trouble.”

“You still set me up!”

“Yeah, set you up for an interview, one you clearly passed,” Kyle said. Alex’s eyebrows furrowed.

“An interview?” Alex asked. Kyle again gestured towards Michael. Alex slowly turned to face him again, feeling more confused than he cared to admit.

“I run a little underground business, so to speak,” Michael said, “I have a collection of alien artifacts, but it’s harder to get my hands dirty, so I have other people do it for me. Whenever I needed a new face, Kyle suggested you. And he was right. If I didn’t know exactly what you were stealing, I probably would’ve had no idea. And you still almost got away. I could use someone like you.”

“Sorry, I’m freelance,” Alex spat, feeling betrayed as he looked back to Kyle, “You could’ve told me what was going on.”

“If you knew it was a test, you would’ve gotten too cocky. I wanted to show him what you’re actually capable of,” Kyle said, “Don’t be mad.”

“You could quit your day job,” Michael said, “You could make this your full-time gig.”

“You’re a piece of shit, I don’t want to work for some guy who collects artifacts,” Alex said.

“Better than working for Pryze,” Michael pointed out.

Alex stared at him and then Kyle. He didn’t know what to say or how to feel about any of this. He still felt wronged, but also…

“So what do you say,” Michael asked, “How’d you like to work for me?”

if you’re interested in this universe, it’s expanded a little more here :)

#malexweek20 #malex20 #malex #malex fic #michael guerin #alex manes #roswell new mexico #my fic

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jcogginsawriter · 3 years

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Hand to Hand: Mark Waid’s Flash

I have been a fan of comic book characters for a long time. I started with the cartoons, and as I got older, I began doing deep dives into wikis, reading fanfiction, and participating in that shallowest of internet past times, the vs debate. I dabbled in writing fanfic for myself, but I spent far more time thinking about writing fanfic instead. I would come up with all these ideas about what I would take from the various different versions of the characters, and don’t get me started on the idea of Crossovers. The point is, I knew a lot of what happened in the comics, but I never read many comics. I didn’t know where my local comic shop was, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have had the money to spend on them. The comics that I did read were usually fan translations of manga. I did read a few comics, big name stories like Death of Superman or Crisis on Infinite Earths, but they were few and far between.

Recently, I’ve begun to change that. I now follow several comics as they come out, most notably the current X-line. This change sprang in part because I began reading a lot more comics criticism. In particular, I followed the blog of a certain Superman fan, and began to eagerly digest his various takes. I wanted to be able to ask him questions about new comics without looking like an idiot (This is how 90 percent of my interactions on comics twitter go, BTW) and that was a kick in the pants for me.

After getting into a steady habit, I decided to look into reading some of the classic runs I’d read so much about throughout life. To go from knowing them second hand, to knowing them first hand. After a bit of hemming and hawing, I’ve settled on Mark Waid’s legendary run of Flash Comics to start off with.

(Spoiler Warning for some 30 year old comics, by the way)

As of this writing, I have read up to the final issue of his story arc Dead Heat, wherein Wally does battle with the speed cultist Savitar. Before we get into things like plot and characters, I want to discuss the art, because no discussion of comic books is really complete without talking about the art. Unfortunately, the art in this run hasn’t done much for me, but that’s not really it’s fault. I read this comics in manner that they were not created to be read, digitally and zoomed in. These comics were drawn with physical issues in mind, and I don’t doubt that they’re good in that format. It also doesn’t help that I’ve read far more manga than I have American comics. American comics have never clicked with me the way manga does. Even now, I still find the layout of manga more legible than the layout of an American comic. That’s not a value judgment, it’s just my personal experience.

I do distinctly recall thinking that the art was better up to issue #79 (The conclusion to the Return of Barry Allen storyline), than it was after. I prefer the less exaggerated character designs, and lighter inks, though it could very well be a case of me having gotten used to the initial style and not liking the change. One thing that thing I can say about the art is that it helped me grasp how Wally’s costume differed from Barry’s. Before this, I was incapable of separating them in my mind, but seeing them side by side made it clear to me how different Wally’s Costume was colored and shaded.

Now, onto the writing of the run, we’ll start with the lead, Wally West. My previous touchstone for Wally was the Justice League series from the DCAU, which I watched a lot as a kid. The Wally in these comics comes off as more serious that his DCAU incarnation. Not too serious, he still cracks jokes, but he’s more on the ball. He takes his adventures as seriously as any hero would, rather than the more carefree attitude I recall his DCAU version having. This is not unsurprising, Wally here is the lead whereas there he was part of an ensemble cast, and here we get his internal monologue which gives us a much more thorough sense of his headspace. Not to mention, the DCAU version was voiced, so we know with no ambiguity what tone his dialogue’s in. In text, tone is more up to interpretation.

Perhaps the biggest thing that set Comic Wally apart from DCAU Wally is that the Wally in the comic was more consistently angry and frustrated. While his DCAU incarnation had hidden depths, I can’t recall a time when he got seriously angry. This Wally is frequently irritated, usually by things which are enitrely understandable. On occasion, his irritability causes him to be rougher with the bad guys than he could be, and that feels uncomfortable sometimes, though thus far he hasn’t gone too far.

Going into this, I knew that one of the issues that Wally had to overcome was his mental block about surpassing Barry, and to my surprise, it wasn’t as much of a through-line as I expected. I was expecting it to be a reoccurring issue that was solved by the Return of Barry Allen storyline, but in reality there are only one or two times something like it comes up, usually in the context of him not being able to do the vibrating through walls trick. In the Return of Barry Allen, it feels more like an issue introduced in that story than a long running plot line. Granted, it may only feel this way because I’m solely reading Mark Waid’s Flash. I didn’t read the issues prior to his take over, so that storyline could have been more apparent there for all I know.

Moving on, starting with Waid’s run had another knock on effect, that being that the character introductions aren’t introductions. I came into this expecting to see when Wally met Linda, when he met Jay Garrick, when Pied Piper redeemed himself, but all of that happened before Waid took over the book, so they’re already part of the cast from the start. Again, not a flaw of the work, it’s just a result of my personal experiences. Now, let’s take a look at some of these characters.

I’ve heard a lot about Linda and Wally’s romance, and so far it’s not bad. I wouldn’t rate it as one of the best of all time, but I haven’t gotten to most of the major moments yet, so that’s not a huge surprise. One thing that’s very apparent is the Lois Lane DNA in her character. Some of that is to be expected, which the love interest to your superhero is a reporter, but I see a lot of similarities in their personality as well. There’s a lot of the same fire in her. Fortunately, the fact that Wally’s identity is public lends a very different arc to their relationship than what you see with Lois and Clark, so Linda doesn’t come off as a Lois rip-off. Linda’s concerns that there’s no place for her in Wally’s wild superhero life is the kind of relationship hurdle that isn’t present in Lois and Clark’s Relationship.

Next, let’s take a look at the first Flash, Jay Garrick. Within this series, Jay is perfectly pleasant, and by no means unlikable, but he also comes across as...kind of superfluous? There are three elderly male speedsters in this comic, and of all of them Jay is by far the least defined and has the least role. Max Mercury is the Wally’s mentor in the ways of speed, the one with the most knowledge of the Speed Force. He’s basically what I expected Jay Garrick to be going into this. The third of the group is Johnny Quick, a speedster who is the father of another speedster, Jesse Quick. Jesse is also very skeptical of Max Mercury’s teachings, which veer from the scientific into the mystical.

Because Johnny takes the role of skeptic, Jay is left without a role in the narrative because being the nicest of Wally’s friend group. Veering over to Hollywood for a second, whenever a book gets adapted into a movie or TV Show, minor characters get lost in the transition. Either they get composited with other characters, or they get cut entirely. Game of Thrones is the most prominent example in recent memory. I bring this up because, if Waid’s Flash were to go through that process, it’s hard to argue that Jay wouldn’t get the ax. Despite being the most important of them in the context of the universe at large, Jay is the least important Speedster in this narrative. Of course, Jay’s importance in the context of the larger universe means that in this hypothetical adaptation, he probably be composited into either max or Johnny. More likely Max, since mentor is the logical position for the first Flash to take in the Third Flash’s narrative.

I mentioned Jess Quick there, so let’s talk about her. Thus far, her most prominent role in the narrative has been to call Wally out and be his critic, though she does have very good reasons to be angry. In the Terminal Velocity storyline, Wally believes he’ll die soon, and tells the Flash Family that Jesse will be his successor, but it turns out to be a lie in order to motivate Bart Allen to take things more seriously. Jesse has remained angry with Wally since then, though it hasn’t seriously impacted her hero work. That’s good, because her continued competence lends legitimacy to her anger within the narrative. She’s not being punished for being mad at Wally for mistreating her. Hopefully it stays that way going forward.

Now let’s take a look at the character Wally chose over Jesse, Bart Allen AKA Impulse. I’ll say up front that I’m not reading Bart’s solo series during this read through, as I didn’t want the hassle of going back and forth between books. As such, the only issues of it that I’ve looked at are the ones that tie into the Dead Heat arc. I feel it’s important for me to say this, because I’m basing my opinions of Bart primarily on his showings in Wally’s book, not his own. In Wally’s book, Bart’s character flaws are more on display.

Bart is a character deliberately designed to be obnoxious, and such characters are a hard tightrope to walk in fiction. Gotta be annyoing enough to get the point across, but not annoying enough to turn people off from the work. Bart in Wally’s book isn’t perfectly balanced, and tends toward the too much pile. Not to an egregious extent, but a little bit. I found myself echoing Wally’s frustration with Bart more than a few times. In Bart’s defense, Wally does share some of the blame here. He doesn’t do a very good job as a mentor, and handing those duties off to Max is probably for the best.

I find it interesting, that a character like Wally who is so defined by inheriting a legacy is a poor mentor, to both Bart and Jesse. He makes different mistakes with both of them, but he still fails both of them. I’m eager to see how that plays out in the future issues.

Now that we’ve discussed the supporting cast, let’s discuss some of the book’s villains. We’ll start with the one who is most infamous, Eobard Thawne. Thawne’s spends the majority of his time in this book thinking he’s Barry Allen, and if I’m being honest, he’s more effective under that guise that he is as Eobard. The scenes where what appears to be Barry Allen turns evil out of jealousy of his successor are powerful, more so than the more traditional villain Eobard displays after the reveal. Not that it would have been a good idea for it to actually be Barry, of course. Much as I prefer Wally to Barry, having Barry go full supervillain would have been very out of character. In any case, this run had a profound impact on Eobard’s character going forward, solidifying him as an agent of toxic fanboyism, making him a dark mirror of Wally West.

The next major villain of the run is the cult slash terrorist organization Kobra. That might bring thoughts of GI Joe to your mind, and you honestly aren’t far off. So far as this run goes, the biggest differences between DC’s Kobra and Hasbro’s is A) DC’s version prefer green over blue, and B) Hasbro’s version has more in the way of distinct characters. Kobra thus far is more of a plot device than anything else. They’re generic terrorists with little to make them distictive. Their storyline, Terminal Velocity, is more notable for it’s introduction of the Speed Force, Wally preparing for his upcoming ‘death’, and Linda going on a revenge quest after said ‘death’. All things that Kobra is incidental to, any villainous organization would have sufficed.

The final, as of my current point in the run, major villain is Savitar. Savitar was formerly a soviet test pilot who gained a connection to a the speedforce, gave himself the name of Hindu god, and started a speed worshipping cult. It says a lot about my mind that my immediate thoughts upon reading Savitar’s origin were. “Huh, an AU where Hal Jordan became a Speedster the same way would be neat.”. Savitar is in some ways an improvement on the Kobra Cult from Terminal Velocity. This time the Cult has a more direct connection to the Flash and his mythos. Dead Heat is by no means a retread of Terminal Velocity, but if you wanted to mesh them into one story, it wouldn’t be hard. And it’d improve on both, in some ways.

One of the things I like to do in my fanfic ideas is connect the other speedsters to Thawne’s theme of Toxic Fandom, and it wouldn’t be hard to do that with Savitar. His entire motivation is to deprive those he considers unworthy of their speed, and that can easily by played as a metaphor for gatekeeping.

Over all, while the run is far from perfect, I must say I’m enjoying these comics a good deal, and if you’re like me and have read a lot about comics without actually reading them, I don’t think you’d regret jumping into them.

#opinions #personal experience #dc comics #The Flash #wally west #mark waid

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lokiarsene · 4 years

Text

Goro Akechi Confidant - Rank 8 (ENG.)

breathes heavily in “enemy lovers romance dynamic appreciation” glee

y’all i’m not fucking kidding when i say this is a the love confession rank. i am NOT.

Note: I unfortunately lost my notes where I translated some of the alternate answers at the end of this scene. If anyone has the script or screenshots of those answers, please send them to me!

Goro’s Text: Are you free? I have something important to tell you.

Ren’s Text: I’m on my way.

Goro’s Text: Thank you. I’ll wait for you in Kichijoji.

If you do not answer his text and go to Kichijoji:

Goro: Good evening, Ren. I was waiting for you. There’s something I’d like to discuss with you, if you have the time? I’d prefer it if we went to a place without other people. How about Mementos? We don’t want anyone to disturb us.

(Ren travels to Kichijoji)

Goro: I’m all prepared... All I can do is wait for the day we send the calling card (lit., “wait for the notice day.”).

Goro: Hah... why is my heart pounding like this? That’s unusual for a detective...

Goro: I have something to tell you. Do you have time to talk? I’d prefer if we go to a place without other people... How about Mementos? ... We don’t want anyone to disturb us.

Mona: You two will go to Mementos alone? ... Well, it should be all right since you two can take care of yourselves... I’m not sure what’s going on here, but be ready for anything.

Ren: Let’s go.

Goro: Then let’s go to Shibuya.

(Screen fades to black. Fades back in, Ren and Goro are in Mementos alone.)

Goro: This spot should do just fine.

Ren: Answer #1: What did you want to say? (lit., Speak.) Answer #2: Why did we come to Mementos? (lit., Why to Mementos?)

Goro: For this.

(Goro turns around, takes out a gun. He’s holding it in his left hand.)

Goro: Don’t you remember what I said? If you beat me when I use my right hand, then I’ll become your true opponent.

Note: The word he uses for opponent is literally the same word for “companion/partner”--相手。See what I mean when I said love confession and that these two are all about layered meanings?

Ren: Answer #1: You mean in billiards? Answer #2: So you want a fight? Answer #3: What’s the point of this?

Goro: I truly do regret this... But it is your fault. (lit., absolutely insufficient/regrettable.)

Goro: You saw through me when I switched hands, you're quick and resourceful (lit., quick-wit/perceptive/clever), and above all, you can adapt and change (lit., growth potential)... You exceeded all of my expectations. And so I’ve decided: I want to have a true competition with you. (lit., I want to compete with you for real/true.)

Ren: Answer #1: I understand. Answer #2: Let’s go.

(Note: The verb he uses here is the same way he responded to almost all of Goro’s previous texts to go out (付き合う). The implication is that they’re truly going to “see/meet/go somewhere” with each other. And again, this is the same verb that, depending on the context, you can use to say you’re dating/going steady with someone).

Goro: Thank you for indulging me. Don’t hold anything back.

Goro: Let’s begin!

Note: He actually yells 来い! here, which, if you know your animu or Yakuza games, basically is a command to “come [over here]”. I could not for the life of me think of either a non snooty or a non ridiculous way to say it in English (”HAVE AT YOU” or “COME AT ME, BRO”) so I had to adjust it a little. Also, here’s the cut in for y’all to enjoy:

(Boss battle begins.)

Goro: You can’t beat me if you don’t intend to kill me.

Goro: Don’t hold back; show me how serious you are.

(The fight progresses. When you do enough damage, Goro says:)

Goro: Ah yes--this is fun! (lit., How nice, interesting)

(When you get Goro’s health low enough to win the fight, he says:)

Goro: Hahaha! This is better than I expected!

(The fight ends.)

Goro: ... As one should expect from the leader of the Phantom Thieves... Have you truly surpassed me already?

Ren: Answer #1: Do you want to stop here? (lit., Take a break?) Answer #2: Is it that serious? Answer #3: Does that still bother you?

Goro’s Answer to #1: Never. But if we take it any further, we might do something we regret... (lit., hold nothing back).

Goro: I want to keep going, but we still have an important mission to complete. And until then, you and I are true partners.

Note: He uses the words 大切な仲間, which when broken down means “important, beloved, dear, cherished, etc.” “colleague, partner.” Another alternate translation might be “you are an important part of my life.” I tried to go with the one that’s more subtle and layered, as that’s how Goro always talks to Ren.

Goro: ... We’ve done what we came to do. Let’s go back.

(Screen fades out. Screen fades back, and they’re standing outside in Shibuya, near one of the stairs leading to the subway.)

Goro: Once again, I understand more about you. (lit., I knew you today too.) As your teammate fighting at your side, I find your strength truly inspiring. To tell you the truth, I find myself even relying on it.

Ren:

Answer #1: I feel the same way. Answer #2: I rely on you too.

Goro: Is that so? That makes me happy.

Goro: Sorry I dragged you out with me today. I’m feeling a little better now.

(I feel like my relationship with Akechi has gotten deeper...)

Goro: ... By the way, about the fight we just had. Do you think you would have won if we continued to the very end?

Note: “the end” as in, if we fought to the death.

Ren: Answer #1: I wouldn’t lose. Answer #2: I don’t know. Answer #3: Maybe.

Goro’s Answer to #1: You would say that.

Goro: To be honest, I hate you.

Goro: The way you’ve stayed true despite everything, the way you work to surpass me, all the ways you’re nothing like me...everything about you is infuriating. If there’s one person I never want to lose to, it’s you.

Ren: Answer #1: I feel the same way about you. (Note: Another ambiguous line. This can be translated as “we are like each other”, “we like each other,” or “we feel the same way.”) Answer #2: I hate losing.

Goro’s Answer to #1: You really...? ... Well... that’s...

Goro: I accept that you were the winner, but next time, the victory will be mine. (lit., I will give you the win today, but next time I will win.)

Goro: ... And this is the proof of that.

(Goro takes the glove off his right hand, pulling on each finger, and throws it at Ren.)

(... It’s the glove Akechi usually wears.)

Goro: In the West, it is customary to challenge someone to a duel by throwing down your glove. If the opponent accepts the glove, then they agree to the duel.

Ren: Answer #1: I accept. Answer #2: I’ll have to think about it.

Goro’s Answer to #1: Don’t ever forget this: I will always be the one to beat you.

(Note: Alternate translation: “It is this me who will defeat you.”

Please note that he threw his right hand glove at Ren, instead of his “true” hand. Meaning that the “false” him will win, or that the one who will betray and kill Ren is not the real him [as in, once again he doesn’t want to kill Ren in order to win against him. This also means that since it’s not a “true” victory, Goro intends to have another competition against Ren in the future--basically promising that he will go for a rematch, which is what the glove represents. The ending of P5R confirms that it’s proof of their promise to each other.)

Goro: I think it’s best if we end it here for today.

---

So. The whole “dominant/true hand” thing here is obviously symbolic of both a card game and hidden truths. The card game stuff fits with P5′s penultimate boss theme (”Last ace in a lost hand”), as well as Sae’s Palace, the Casino, being the place where the betrayal happens. It also ties into one of the overarching themes of Goro and Ren’s Confidant, which is what they have between them is like a game (a meta choice on the devs’ part, as they are literally in a game).

Right from the start, Ren knew that Goro wasn’t showing a true side/his “true” hand, and the game showed this as Ren noticing the smallest details about Goro from the moment they met. This did not escape Goro’s attention, which is why he gets so fixated on the whole “dominant hand” issue as well as how perceptive Ren is. This is also why he panics and gets frustrated with how much he shares with Ren. Ren already sees so much, and Goro can’t seem to help himself and reveals so much of himself whether he intends to or not.

So basically both boys knew the other one had a secret that they were not telling each other (playing in their “off hands” so to speak). “Dominant/true hand” here can also be symbolic just in a narrative sense for who has the upper-hand.

This is why this Rank goes the way it does. In this Rank, Goro pulls a gun on Ren and tells him that now, because of Ren, he is Ren’s true opponent. Which, yes, he is. But the wordplay with “opponent/partner” cannot be overlooked because it was deliberate. Because again, Goro and Ren and their relationship is never just one thing. So it being Ren’s “fault” is like... Yeah thanks you to I wanna fight you. Replace “fight” with the romantic or saucier word of your choosing.

#akeshu #shuake #persona 5 royal #p5r spoilers #persona 5 royal spoilers #meta #mod krist translates

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tiesandtea · 4 years

Photo

SUEDE – now with humour

Suede featured in the Danish free music magazine GAFFA shortly after A New Morning came out, October 2002 (no. 10). An interview with Brett and Mat, short comments on the album tracks, and a review.

Photos by Casper Helmer and Morten Larsen. The magazine can be downloaded as .pdf here (look for pages 22-24 and 50).

Translation of the interview by Peter Albrechtsen under the cut. Own work.

OUT OF THE DARK

Brett Anderson and the rest of Suede have acknowledged that the substance that dreams are made of can neither be ingested nor inhaled. It has to come from the heart. And it does on their new album A New Morning, which was one of the topics of conversation when GAFFA met a transformed band in Copenhagen

FIRST HE TURNS LEFT, TAKES A FEW STEPS FORWARD and looks towards the mirror in front of him. Then he turns right, but keeps looking at himself. Everything is taking place in sliding movements, and there is evidently some satisfaction with what the mirror shows: The black leather jacket with a retro cut and a white back label sits tight around the slender, yet top-trimmed body.

If you didn't know better, you would think that Brett Anderson was practicing for a catwalk. The 35-year-old Suede frontman is hardly going to throw himself into that kind of thing for the time being, though he would be guaranteed to do well with his obvious expertise in hip twists, affectations and flirting from the edge of the stage. Right now, though, Brett is in a Copenhagen luxury hotel, where he's trying on a jacket just purchased by the band's British make-up artist, Nicci Welsh, who eagerly watches Brett's shameless poses. Brett is satisfied, but he has a twinkle in the eye at the same time, which reveals that something is hiding behind the charismatic singer's wide smile and chalk-white teeth.

–What do you say, Mat? Isn't it cool? Brett asks and looks over to his childhood friend, bassist Mat Osman, who understands well the look Brett's sending: Now, Mat must nod affirmatively. So he does. Brett looks over at Nicci with "thank you – yes, he would like to take the leather jacket home with him to London". But Nicci has also noticed Brett's hidden agenda and politely but firmly points out that "if you just thought to give it to a friend when you get back to London, then you can easily forget that."

Oops. Brett is exposed and quickly hands the jacket back to Nicci, but his now even cheekier grin shows that he certainly does not feel guilty, but simply perceives the whole scene as a bit of a show-off. As he himself puts it, a few minutes later: –Had it been three years ago, I would have kept the jacket for fun and given it to a friend 14 days later – simply to take advantage of my position as a pop star.

In other words, Brett Anderson has undergone certain changes over the three years since Suede's previous album, Head Music, and their brand new, fifth opus A New Morning. And the changes apply not just to his relationship to leather jackets, but simply to his whole lifestyle. In fact, the whole band's lifestyle.

Breakdown

Ever since the ten-year-old debut single, The Drowners, Suede have been heavy consumers of drugs all over the world, and they have never hidden that. Right from deliberately ambiguous song titles as Heroine and The Chemistry Between Us for opinions on the benefits of narcotics in provocative interviews, which the sensationally horny British press has lapped up themselves. "Coke is good for sex", "it's great to hear music on ecstasy" and "it's better to take drugs than to drink, because then you have a better next day" – all immortal quotes from Anderson.

But now it's over: Suede is clean – or something like that – and Brett clearly states that "I have become a happier person. My life on hyperspeed is a chapter over. I've even gotten into a good shape!"

–You start taking drugs because you want to feel good. It's that simple. And at some point, you do not feel good any more. It's that simple, too. That's what happened to us, Brett states in a dry and declaratory way.

Since Head Music, Suede had to say goodbye to keyboardist Neil Codling, who collapsed due to overexertion on Suede's tour in Australia in the autumn of 2000 (actually 1999). Half a year later, he quit completely because he suddenly had a relapse after having been recovering otherwise, and was about to break down completely. Neither Brett nor Mat clearly want to talk about it, but then admit that "it made them reflect on some things around both the band and themselves“. Brett, however, insists that “It was many different elements that led to what has happened with our lifestyle in recent years. Both the band and I myself have entered a new stage."

The changes around both Brett and Suede have also taken place over a longer period. First, Anderson started with giving the critics right who had complained loudly that he repeated himself on Head Music. Then he moved from the hectic London into his newly acquired country house in the peaceful natural area of Croydon (somewhat similar to when he moved into a monastery to write the texts of Suede's eight-year-old masterpiece Dog Man Star). He totally isolated himself, lived without a telephone and television, "buried" himself in literature and wrote the first lyrics for A New Morning.

–Oh, now it's starting to sound like I've gone and became boring, Brett chuckles, but hurries to add: -This is certainly not the case. In the old days, I deliberately avoided literature because I was terrified that literature would spoil my pure language. I would not be a sexless secretary who clapped on a typewriter. But now, I have found out that it doesn't necessarily have to end that way, and I read like an obsessed now. I read like a motherfucker. In one of the new songs, Obsessions, I refer to Bret Easton Ellis, but my favorite author is Albert Camus.

Actually, my paranoia about literature just says all about how far out I once have been. I was so afraid that my mindset would be infected by everything possible, but honestly, I must have had a hysterical tendency to pump everything up to pretentious heights. After all, both love and music are in fact very basic emotions, Brett says, who, however, admits he let out a roar when he went as far as to get his hair bleached last year ("it looked like crap, for God's sake," he sighs with one head-shaking laugh). However, it was an obvious sign that Brett felt the changes coming. And enjoyed it to the fullest drag.

Producer problems

In fact, Brett enjoyed being away from the big city so much that he persuaded the others to go to Iceland for a while and work further on the material that gradually became structured. In Iceland, the band briefly collaborated with Sigur Rós producer Ken Thomas, who, however, should turn out to be the first in a series of failed attempts to find the perfect producer.

–The magic was missing, Mat explains, but the creativity did not fail, and the band engaged in vastly different concepts around the upcoming album – "we considered making both a pure acoustic pop and an electronic folk record."

A New Morning became none of those. After leaving former Beck producer Tony Hoffer, Suede ended up slipping into the studio with Stephen Street, who is best known for his collaboration with The Smiths and Blur, and with Street behind the mixer, a renewed focus was there. The opening number Positivity took only three hours to write, and Brett describes it as "one of those magical moments in a band where everything melts together in the most beautiful way."

Those kinds of moments are, of course, the result of the fact both I and the rest of the band are dedicated to the music in a different way than before. Every single moment in music is important to me now. Every single moment in my life is important now. I have rediscovered both myself and the music, proclaims Brett, who hasn't changed in one aspect: He is still extremely talkative, well-worded and energetic – even when he explains it new album title:

–It's not so strange if A New Morning sounds as a religious quote – the last few years have truly felt as a bit of a revelation. We have chosen to see life from a new perspective. We have pretty much spent the 90s on an insanely exalted search for success, fame, money and all that sort of thing. Of course, music was the starting point, but it was all about consuming, savouring and worshipping life excessively. For me, this record is about having a completely different approach to life: Life is something small, fragile and completely unique. Something to watch out for. The new record is simply more intimate, human and much more honest.

This shouldn't be perceived as if Brett is now taking distance to his characteristic textual universe populated by the sad fates of the big city. On the contrary.

–I still have a great sympathy for people who are left in the lurch by the system and politicians, and I will continue to have that, he emphasizes, adding that "it's very much my self-understanding that has changed recently – not my worldview". Osman nods approvingly at Brett's side and adds with no hidden allusion to the title Dog Man Star, that "if you were born in a pigsty, you have so much to achieve, so much to flee from" – both Brett and Osman originally come from the unglamorous London suburb of Haywards Heath.

–Our songs have always been about ordinary people who achieve extraordinary things, and that's how we have been as a band as well, I think. You can easily be something special, even if you come from the pure nothing, and we have stuck to it, even though we have personally driven it too far into the extremes. We are still very much real people who have lived very real lives, and our songs are still about very real feelings, Brett points out.

–We will always fight for all the people who are trying to cope against all odds, and who try to maintain pride in adversity and frustration. Now we just have more surplus, passion and energy ourselves to fight the battle. Now we can really do it with an open heart.

Photo descriptions: "I HAVE RE-DISCOVERED BOTH MYSELF AND MUSIC" Brett Anderson "I HAVE BECOME A HAPPIER PERSON. I'VE EVEN GOTTEN INTO A GOOD SHAPE!" Brett Anderson

A New Morning

– according to Suede themselves

Positivity

Brett: –In many ways our programme statement: It really strikes a new, more cheerful tone. As I said, it was written in no time, and that's pretty incredible for us, because we're really perfectionists when it comes to songwriting.

Lost In TV

Brett: –Probably my favorite track on the album. The melody is based on backing vocals, and in that part, the song is more related to the Beach Boys and the Beatles than to old Suede. Why is there no one doing that kind of thing anymore?

Obsessions

Brett: –This is the last piece we wrote for the record. That's my favorite text. The fun of it is that the lyrics are in a way very personal, but at the same time guaranteed incredibly universal. I will undoubtedly receive many fan letters about that song.

Lonely Girls

Brett: –One of the first songs we wrote. A lovely lullaby-like groove. We even use bongo drums on it. A really nice number, which probably comes from the fact that I originally wrote the melody while I was in the countryside.

Beautiful Loser

Brett: –One of those songs where I really sing in a different way than usual: Harder, raw, dirty. In many ways, it's the album's ultimate live number: The energy is fearless, and the chorus is silly.

Streetlife

Mat: –It started as krautrock: The same groove that ran and ran and ran for eight minutes – it was totally Germany in 1971 – but it changed radically when the chorus appeared purely out of nowhere.

Ashtray Girl

Mat: –Ashtray Girl and Beautiful Loser are perceived the most as “old-school Suede”, but actually, they were both written by Alex Lee, who is our brand-new keyboardist. Funny, right? Another funny thing is that the lyrics are totally meaningless.

Untitled

Mat: –My favourite along with Streetlife – right complex and yet a simple song. Originally a very folk-like song, but our producer Stephen Street made it more electric. Suddenly we began to sound like a whole band.

...Morning

Mat: –It's about getting up in the morning, and we discussed a lot how we could underpin that with sound. Several weeks later, we ended up sticking a microphone out of Brett's kitchen window. So simple. So difficult.

One Hit To The Body

Brett: –It's our attempt to make an I Will Survive. It's about me having to pull through, no matter how smashed I am. Actually an old song we rediscovered in the studio. Reminds of Bruce Springsteen, oh.

When The Rain Falls

Brett: –Believe it or not: it was originally a spoken-word number in the style of Serge Gainsbourg. I sat down and breathed heavily into the microphone. Now it has become something else after all, for I had to admit that I sounded neither French nor sexy.

Suede: A New Morning

Reviewed by Jan Opstrup Poulsen

After the very electric Head Music, Suede landed soft and comfortable in the poetic corner of A New Morning. Brett Anderson still sings about beautiful losers and self-created troubles of youth, but melodically, A New Morning is a luminous and optimistic album. As on the masterpiece Coming Up, it’s the individual songs that are in the centre, like little stars in the night sky. But Suede doesn’t have the usual tempo of melodies at all. A New Morning is distinctly an album of ballads, and in Brett Anderson's most captivating moments, the album hits sublime moments. There are more typical Suede songs on the album, like the excellent Beautiful Loser, that we have heard from them before. A ballad like When The Rain Falls doesn’t change the state of affairs either, although one has to indulge in a grumpy admiration how Suede fabulously handle these ballads. On the other hand, great things happen in the opening song Positivity, which is a proudly towering pop song. This magnificent approach to pop songs fits Suede's finely tuned melodies like a glove and is well followed up on several songs on the album like Lost In TV and Astrogirl. Brett Anderson hasn’t become less affected, and guitarist Richard Oakes balances, as always, on the edge of disruptive, to end up in a harmonious melody line. But on the more ordinary songs, Brett Anderson sings with the desperation of an angry rock singer and to that extent, he reaches beyond the edge of the stage as a performer. A New Morning therefore has all the ingredients for a good Suede album that will divide the record people between rapture and contempt for these assumed excesses, respectively. But it's just too sour to be negative when the world can be so bright and inviting.

#brett anderson #richard oakes #mat osman #simon gilbert #alex lee #suede #a new morning #mine*#enjoy some exclusive non-threatening Blonderson ANM content : )#Suede in other languages #suede in denmark

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tatticstudio55 · 4 years

Text

Dany, ghosts and mythical figures

Pasting it under the cut because it’s a bit long. I wrote this for a colloquy that’s currently scheduled for the end of May, and I try to be optimist but it’s in France, I live in Canada, all our borders are currently closed and it doesn’t look like things are about to get better anytime soon, so... I though I’d try translating it into english (warning: it might not come off as too polished) and share it here, at the very least 😔. Que sera sera. Aaaaand tagging you @tomakeitbeautifultolive

The term "ghost" used here therefore refers to this role of intermediary, or passer, between the worlds concerned – Cécile Sakai

The loss, the mourning and the reality of the in-between, or intermediate states, occupy a fundamental place in Daenerys’s story. She was born in mourning, exiled from birth and leads a wandering existence from an early childhood. No matter where she goes, she’s seen as a stranger. She exists, but does not really belong anywhere. Her story is shaped by the reality and experience of the intermediary.

The first thing we notice about her, and from her first appearance in the novels, is the way in which the author uses the character's physical appearance to indicate a symbolic proximity to the ghostly, or the surreal: her pallor, her small size, her typical Valyrian features. Even the dress, chosen for her by Illyrio Myopatis, seems to enhances Daenerys’s “immateriality”:

Dany touched it. The cloth was so smooth that it seemed to run through her fingers like water. She could not remember ever wearing anything so soft. It frightened her. She pulled her hand away. "Is it really mine?" – AGOT, Dany I

The dress is meant as a reflection of the wearer. Daenerys’s eyes are the same color as the dress, (or a close match – amethyst and plum), her hair the same liquidity (“The girl brushed her hair until it shone like molten silver”), her body the same ethereal characteristics ("She is a vision, Your Grace, a vision," he told her brother. "Drogo will be enraptured." "She's too skinny," Viserys said.). Beyond the matter of the body itself, Daenerys shows some parallels with vampirism, ritually “absorbing” elements which quite clearly symbolize life forces. Pregnant, she eats a stallion's heart "raw and bloody", in accordance with the Dothrake custom that believes it will give the child strength, swiftness and fearlessness. The scene takes place in a nocturnal environment and the text very much emphasize the "bloodiness" of the ceremony. Daenerys later receives, and in more dire circumstances, her first “initiation” to blood magic with Mirri Maz Duur (blood magic resting on the vampirical tenet that only death can pay for life). And when Drogo's funeral pyre burns –

The flames writhed before her like the women who had danced at her wedding, whirling and singing and spinning their yellow and orange and crimson veils, fearsome to behold, yet lovely, so lovely, alive with heat. Dany opened her arms to them, her skin flushed and glowing. – AGOT, Dany X

Here she appears not quite “human”, glowing and feeding from the fire, whereas the flames are depicted in a very anthropomorphic way. The "dancers" spin, twirl and whirl in a vision that celebrates sensuality and physical vigor. Daenerys merges with the flames and is reborn from them, but her own body is no longer able to give life.

Subsequently, the books bring forefront the foils between the ever-growing physical presence of the dragons and the frail-like body of their mother. Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion fall into every physical extreme: extreme size and strength (getting there), the extreme amount of food they eat and the heat they give off. They "steam" in the cold, at night, while around them the khalasar disintegrate, Daenerys' flesh "falls away" and she becomes "lean and hard as a stick" (ACOK, Dany I). Drogon’s fire saves Daenerys from actual vampirical beings (the Undyings). The foils between mother and dragon(s) reaches a climax in Dany IX, ADWD, when Daenerys confronts an unleashed (and much larger) Drogon in the arena of Daznak:

In the smoldering red pits of Drogon's eyes, Dany saw her own reflection. How small she looked, how weak and frail and scared. – ADWD, Dany IX

Where Drogon is the “body” and Dany the “ghost”, the overwhelming physical presence of the former emphasizes and amplifies the stark opposite of the latter. Dany, like the first dress she was given, is akin to water and keep slipping through people’s fingers: those who hunt her, those who want her dead, those who want to marry her and those who want to use her.

Laughter erupted all around them. Even the old man joined in. "You saw her, then," said the redheaded boy behind them. "You saw the queen. Is she as beautiful as they say?"

I saw a slender girl with silvery hair wrapped in a tokar, he might have told them. Her face was veiled, and I never got close enough for a good look. – ADWD, Tyrion XI

Here, for instance, those who speak are on the hunt for stories, tales and rumors about the queen. Evasive, Tyrion withholds what he knows. At the same time, he is himself in the position of the frustrated chaser (she was veiled, she was too far away). The losses and bereavements already experienced by characters like Jorah Mormont and himself add an additional angle to the matter: Jorah sees Daenerys as a second Lynesse Hightower (the wife he lost) and Tyrion, while on his “grand travel” to Meereen, asks left right and center "Where do whores go?” (in reference to Tysha, the wife he also lost.) They are both haunted by the ghost of beloved women, which Daenerys gradually comes to replaces, as "perfect" and "ideal" as the first ones, but no less out of reach. Her geographical location in ADWD - Meereen is under siege by sea and land, boats no longer pass through Slaver’s Bay - reveals and hides a more metaphysical gap between Daenerys and her "pursuers": Jorah, Tyrion, Aegon, Euron, Victarion. Quentyn Martell is the exception, not that it ends well for him.

Orpheus and Persephone

-Orpheus

Dany is established very early on as a type of “psychopomp” (for lack of a better word) character: a character who passes from one metaphysical space to another (typically the "world of the dead" and the "world of the living"). Despite her belonging to the "living" world, Dany is pushed into spaces that are heavily associated with death, as well as in roles bearing resemblances with at least two psychopomp figures from Greek mythology: Orpheus and Persephone. Her overall narrative has an orphic tone ("If I look back, I am lost"), but the myth first really appears when Dany plea with Mirri Maz Duur to save Drogo's life:

Mirri Maz Duur tossed a red powder onto the coals. It gave the smoke a spicy scent, a pleasant enough smell, yet Eroeh fled sobbing, and Dany was filled with fear. But she had gone too far to turn back now. – AGOT, Dany VIII

The one rule that Orpheus must follow (to not look back at Eurydice) is meant to keep humans from witnessing directly god(s)’s doings. Mirri Maz Duur imposes the same rule on Dany:

"I will stay," Dany said. "The man took me under the stars and gave life to the child inside me. I will not leave him."

"You must. Once I begin to sing, no one must enter this tent. My song will wake powers old and dark. The dead will dance here this night. No living man must look on them." – AGOT, Dany VIII

Like Dany, Mirri is a psychopomp figure with an ambiguous characterization (the author hints more directly of her ties to the supernatural than he does with Dany). The Lhazarean occupies two realms simultaneously, both intertwining and merging in her presence: a mythical realm from an immemorial time/space, and the realm of the ordinary:

Mirri Maz Duur chanted words in a tongue that Dany did not know, and a knife appeared in her hand. Dany never saw where it came from. It looked old; hammered red bronze, leaf-shaped, its blade covered with ancient glyphs. - AGOT, Dany VIII

The knife’s unknown origins can be interpreted in two ways. Dany does not know where and when it was made - the only conclusion she can draw is that it must be "very old" – nor does she know how (or where) Mirri managed to conceal the weapon. As a result, Mirri comes off as a symbolic embodiment of the mythical realm that’s intertwining with the “normal” space (the tent):

The tent was aglow with the light of braziers within. Through the blood-spattered sandsilk, she glimpsed shadows moving.

Mirri Maz Duur was dancing, and not alone. – AGOT, Dany VIII

The mythical space, however, ends up overflowing its confines - the walls of the tent - onto the ordinary realm, and effectively swallows it. The scenes inside and outside the tent, “bruised-red sky”, Qotho "dancing”, “arakh dancing with arakh”, the Dothraki shouting; Mirri’s “inhuman wails”, the dancing shadows, the brazier, the "bloody bath" inside, are all in perfect symmetry with each other. Then,

No, she shouted, or perhaps she only thought it, for no whisper of sound escaped her lips. She was being carried. Her eyes opened to gaze up at a flat dead sky, black and bleak and starless. Please, no. The sound of Mirri Maz Duur's voice grew louder, until it filled the world. The shapes! she screamed. The dancers!

Ser Jorah carried her inside the tent. – AGOT, Dany VIII

Here, for instance, the text really insists on the ever-growing presence of the mythical space. The last sentence of the chapter ("Ser Jorah carried her inside the tent") deliberately draws a foil between the reduced space of the tent and the immensity of the sky, somehow making the tent appears much bigger than it really is. And the more it grows, the more it pushes the boundaries of the ordinary space. When Dany open her eyes, the sky itself is remindful of the Asphodels. This is an initiation, i.e., Dany passing from one realm to another for the first time. The "behavior" of the mythical space (the tent) also bring up the question: is Dany the one moving towards said space, or is it the expanding space that’s moving towards her? The tension between the mythical and the ordinary is projected onto its two main actors, Daenerys and Mirri. There’s an underlying, thematic reciprocity established between them, one projecting a distorted reflection of the other, the first even going so far as to assume the role of the second after thanking her for her “lessons". Roles, identities, functions, times and spaces interpenetrate and repel each other, and Dany passes fairly fluidly from one state to another. We talked about how Mirri seemed to have a foot in an ancient, mythical time, but in her next chapter, it is Dany who finds herself trapped in a feverish dream filled with ghosts (her deceased brothers) and mythical figures. The dream is essentially a retelling of Orpheus in the underworld: chased by a cold shadow, Dany runs across a stone hall lined with specters, towards a tiny, faraway red door that’s presumably the only way out. She must reach the door at all costs without looking back, even as the ghosts of loved ones, dead or alive (Drogo, Jorah, Rhaego), appear and vanish before her eyes.

After the tent comes the Red Waste in ACOK, another hardly disguised “underworld” landscape:

“That way lies the red lands, Khaleesi. A grim place and terrible, the riders say."

The rivers they crossed were dry as dead men's bones. Their mounts subsisted on the tough brown devilgrass that grew in clumps at the base of rocks and dead trees.

The Dothraki began to mutter fearfully that the comet had led them to some hell.

The next pool they found was scalding hot and stinking of brimstone. – ACOK, Dany I

Not faring too well, the Khalasar soon turns into a procession of deads (the sick, the starving, the dying and those who died for real). In proper ghost fashion, travel is generally done at night. When they finally reach "Vae Tolorro", Irri ironically worries that the place might be haunted, while in fact they are most likely the “ghosts” there. The place is nicknamed "gardens of the dead", but no one dies there, except for a woman bitten by a scorpion. Coincidentally, Eurydice also died of a poisoned bite.

Seemingly, there’s a pattern with the underworld-coded spaces visited by Dany: each one is larger than the previous one. First a tent, followed by the Red Waste (and a brief “halt” in the HotU), then by Slaver’s Bay. Meereen is a grotesque look-alike of the greek underworld: located in desertic lands, rich in precious stones, with its own brand of Styx ("the slow brown Skahazadhan”), walls topped with “rows of harpy heads with open mouths”, peoples inside worshiping the gods of Ghis with blood sacrifices in the fighting pits. In ADWD, thousands of fleeing astaporian, crippled by hunger and illness, many of them on the brink of death, are crowding under the walls of Meereen. And Dany happens to be this underworld’s queen.

-Persephone

In ACOK, on the day the Khalasar reaches Vae Tolorro, Jorah Mormont visits Dany in her tent and gives her a peach. Then, at her request, he ends up telling her the sad story of his marriage to Lady Lynesse Hightower:

My home was a great disappointment to Lynesse. It was too cold, too damp, too far away, my castle no more than a wooden longhall. We had no masques, no mummer shows, no balls or fairs. Seasons might pass without a singer ever coming to play for us, and there's not a goldsmith on the island. Even meals became a trial. – ACOK, Dany I

The Hightowers are established in the Reach, the most fertile and greenest region of the Seven Kingdoms, and Jorah meets Lynesse in Lannisport smack in the middle of grand festivities. Lynesse is taken from her “flowery kingdom” to be the lady of a gloomy, dead-looking island. Jorah tries to coax her with various luxuries, including the food (“I lived for her smiles, so I sent all the way to Oldtown for a new cook”), but three seeds of pomegranate won’t do. Every now and then Lynesse must be brought back “up”:

I built a fine ship for her and we sailed to Lannisport and Oldtown for festivals and fairs, and once even to Braavos, where I borrowed heavily from the moneylenders. – ACOK, Dany I

Of course, the money runs out and they’re forced to set sail for Bear Islands. Not that it prevents them from leaving again later:

When I heard that Eddard Stark was coming to Bear Island, I was so lost to honor that rather than stay and face his judgment, I took her with me into exile. Nothing mattered but our love, I told myself. We fled to Lys, where I sold my ship for gold to keep us. – ACOK, Dany I

Their marriage eventually dissolves, but the story starts again with Dany in Lynesse’s position. We get an inkling of it with a simple scene (he brings her a fruit plucked from "in the gardens of the dead"), but which also harbors a predatory tone ("The lion pelt slid off one shoulder and she tugged it back into place. "Was she beautiful?" "Very beautiful." Ser Jorah lifted his eyes from her shoulder to her face. " / “Dany shivered, and pulled the lionskin tight about her. She looked like me. It explained much that she had not truly understood. He wants me, she realized. He loves me as he loved her, not as a knight loves his queen but as a man loves a woman.” – ACOK, Dany I). We spoke above of metaphorical “underworlds” visited, occupied or conquered by Dany: Mirri’s tent, the Red Waste, Slaver’s Bay. Not trivially, it is Jorah who carries her inside the tent, Jorah who advises her to go through the Red Waste, Jorah who persuades her to sail to Slaver’s Bay. Persephone’s myth being anchored in the duality of the fertile seasons (the summer months, when Persephone is reunited with Demeter) and the dead seasons (the winter months, which she must spend with her husband), its underlying presence in Dany’s narrative also evolves accordingly, here in relation to Dany’s fertility, here in her role as “Demeter” in Meereen (when she plants bean crops, olive trees), at a key time where Jorah (Hades) isn’t by her side. Hints pointing to Persephone and Demeter are all the more revealing because there seems to be a direct link between plant fertility, mother / child union and human fertility:

"I am the blood of the dragon," she told the grass, aloud.

Once, the grass whispered back, until you chained your dragons in the dark.

"Drogon killed a little girl. Her name was … her name …" Dany could not recall the child's name. That made her so sad that she would have cried if all her tears had not been burned away. "I will never have a little girl. I was the Mother of Dragons." – ADWD, Dany X

This "exchange" takes place in the Dothrake Sea, "paler than she remembered, a wan and sickly green on the verge of going yellow”. Dany, distraught by the death of a little girl, by the conviction that she herself will never conceive, and guilt-ridden for chaining her own "children" in a dark pit (another metaphor of Persephone chained to the underworld during winter), expresses her sorrow at the dying grass. Then, Jorah’s “ghost” returns to her:

Never, said the grass, in the gruff tones of Jorah Mormont. You were warned, Your Grace. Let this city be, I said. Your war is in Westeros, I told you. – ADWD, Dany X

The dying of the grass, crops and vegetation is always presented as the prima facie of the end of summer and the return of Persephone to the underworld. This is why the grass speaks with Jorah’s voice, and why Daenerys mourns her lost, forgotten or dead children in a dying grass sea.

Appearance and resorption of myths

We’ll try to tackle the character's role in a more general context here, because her narrative impact is currently limited to Essos. It’s through Tyrion that Dany and Westeros really intersect for the first time. From the fighting pits, Tyrion sees a veiled, “slender girl with silvery hair wrapped in a tokar” in the tribunes. This is not Jorah or Barristan, or even Quentyn Martell who, although tied to both sides of Planetos, do not play a significant role in what’s currently happening on the West side. Tyrion is another matter. He is the in-narrative eye of Westeros.

They’re about to unleash lions on Tyrion and Penny. As soon as she hears of it, Dany puts the breaks. Tyrion's memories of her make her akin to an apparition, or a mirage: veiled, indistinct, distant, soaring in a whirlwind of smoke on her dragon. It also happens in a place sharing glaring resemblances with the Red Waste:

“She had seen the fighting pits many times from her terrace. The small ones dotted the face of Meereen like pockmarks; the larger were weeping sores, red and raw.”

“The red sands drank his blood”

“Running, she could feel the sand between her toes, hot and rough.”

“He beat his wings again, sending up a choking storm of scarlet sand. Dany stumbled into the hot red cloud, coughing.”

“Black blood was flowing from the wound where the spear had pierced him, smoking where it dripped onto the scorched sands.”

“The black wings cracked like thunder, and suddenly the scarlet sands were falling away beneath her.” – ADWD, Dany IX

In ACOK, Dany and her Khalasar also encounter a mirage-like city in the desert:

"A city, Khaleesi," they cried. "A city pale as the moon and lovely as a maid. An hour's ride, no more."

When the city appeared before her, its walls and towers shimmering white behind a veil of heat, it looked so beautiful that Dany was certain it must be a mirage. – ACOK, Dany I

Vae Tolorro and Dany are not mirages, however. Vae Tolorro really saved Dany’s Khalasar from a certain death in the desert. Dany really saved Tyrion from the lions. The repercussions of her actions are too real, her physical impact on the story is too great for one to put her among the true "ghost" characters, such as Lynesse or Tysha.

Only, here’s the deal: Daenerys Targaryen is a character of exceptional circumstances, of one-time deals, and exceptional circumstances, 1) do not last, 2) do not happen again, and 3) are not recoverable. Circumstances such as these create myths, and myths are reproduced, or imitated, or preserved as legends, but they will never happen a second time like they happened on the first time. Vae Tolorro did exist once, but withdrew from the story once his function was filled, and Dany will likely never return there. Drogon did appear in the Daznak arena, causing an “unusual” disaster, but the incident is unlikely to happen again. What remains afterward of Vae Tolorro, of Daenerys and Drogon in the arena, are mirages, imitations and imitators. Dany is not at this stage. She is at the archaic stage of the first time (Mircea Eliade, The myth of the eternal return), where the gap between the mythical and the ordinary is the deepest, and where the resorption of the myth is the most brutally felt. Dany, a very human character in and of itself, suffers from these effects more than anyone. Immediately after the birth of her dragons (the mythical event), she must undertake a difficult journey in the desert, that leaves her physically worn out and, in a way, physically diminished (the resorption):

Dany hungered and thirsted with the rest of them. The milk in her breasts dried up, her nipples cracked and bled, and the flesh fell away from her day by day until she was lean and hard as a stick - ACOK, Dany I

And following immediately her first flight on Drogon (the mythical event) she gets lost in the Dothrake sea, which once again takes a physical toll on her –

It was afternoon by the time Dany found the stream she had glimpsed atop the hill. It was a rill, a rivulet, a trickle, no wider than her arm … and her arm had grown thinner every day she spent on Dragonstone. – ADWD, Dany X

- almost to the point of literally being resorbed into the earth:

My flesh will feed the wolves and carrion crows, she thought sadly, and worms will burrow through my womb. – ADWD, Dany X

There are therefore two fundamental elements one should consider with regards to Dany: the authentic myth, and the nostalgia of the lost myth. It’s part of what makes Dany’s narrative so compelling. The authentic myth belongs to an immemorial past. The memory of the myth belongs to the present. And Daenerys belongs to both. Should she reconcile these two parts? If so, is this reconciliation supposed to play a role in the outcome, not only of her own story, but of the entire series? We raise the issue because the myth / memory dichotomy is not exclusive to Dany; see, for example, the "Others" (the myth) and the three-eyed raven (the memory). It all remains to be seen. In any case, I’m intrigued by this tendency to bestow ghost-like characteristic to a character who’s frequently moving from one realm to another, whatever these realms are supposed to be: the world of the dead and the world of the living, the past and the present, the mythical and the real…

#asoiaf #asoiaf meta #valyrianscrolls #daenerys targaryen

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invertedfate · 4 years

Text

Random Ask Dump - Anniversary Edition (50+ REALLY OLD ASKS!)

Going through OLD AND CRUSTY ASKS to try and chip away at the inbox. HERE WE GOOOO...

That’s an interesting idea, and I could run it by Cake, but I think it would honestly be a LOT to track from a programming perspective. Especially ‘cause killing Sans is gonna result in a “bad ending,” so to speak.

An attempt was made by Undyne to have all three hang out at the same time. Papyrus was SUPER EAGER. ...but one thing led to another and there were many messy explosions of chemicals and lots of smoke. Alphys had to step in before things got out of hand. It was all very daunting for her. Pap and Undyne are VERY LOUD, VERY AMBITIOUS PEOPLE.

I actually have some ideas of some side comics I may do at some point! :o It’s just that right now there’s a lot going on.

I need to poke Carni about that at some point. He’s just been very busy with other projects!

Clearly he’s standing on the “out to lunch” sign.

I wanna say that it’s very possible in theory. :o It probably affects them differently since monsters’ emotional state affects their magic and their physical state.

I do like little easter eggs like that, though I’m not sure where I’d fit it in atm just ‘cause I already showed Pap’s room, haha.

I made the chase theme for Mad Dummy as well as Mad Mew Mew’s battle theme. @pinewsun made the battle theme for Mad Dummy, and @thomasthepencil made the Season Dude battle theme and MD’s overworld theme. :o

That’s a really fascinating conundrum! You’re absolutely right- if IF was a standalone game, then from a writing standpoint, having more subtle implications would make sense! The reason I chose a different approach for IF is because it’s set after Flowey’s already known to be evil and I like to give different POVs rather than stick to just Frisk’s.

That’s an interesting thing, actually- both fights lean heavily on the fourth wall. Both are treated as climaxes for their given routes. It’s funny because Asriel’s fight is a lot more straightforward and less meta by comparison.

I agree! The thing with Papyrus is that he’s extremely powerful- he just doesn’t want to kill. But it’s a deliberate choice not to kill- he’s able to force his attacks to do next to no damage. He’s also pretty darn crafty, as he made the Gauntlet himself. It really is just a case of Undyne’s personal biases and concern for him.

That was a deliberate choice. :O Papyrus is very influential toward Frisk. He is best skeleboi.

Papybot loves you, anon! He just wants to feed you WHOLESOME SPAGHETTI!!!

It is possible to whistle through teeth. ...alternatively, magic. As for the music, Undertale implies that the music is heard! Maybe it’s just... a thing that exists in this world. Or it’s just meant to be a silly meta joke. I try to keep it somewhat ambiguous other than occasional nods to it. Chara’s pants are lighter because I just... felt like it, I guess? Haha. I wanted their feet and pants to stand out more from each other, so they have khaki pants. As for the Undyne fight being animated, well, this ask is old by now, but Sparks was the one who was down for it.

Well, the teaser’s been out for a long time now, but that’s the idea! It’s also why this has been in production for so long. The Determinator has some really over the top attacks (that weren’t even shown in the teaser), and Sparks animated in Photoshop. That’s how hardcore he is.

Shhhhh. Don’t give me ideas. I’m already slacking on Tem Village. :P

Sometimes I do have slumps and burnouts (see Antipode’s lengthy hiatus), but breaks lead to me being refreshed and coming back with even more enthusiasm than before!

Oh, there are a lot of these throughout the comic. For instance...

Flowey appears in a few background shots in the Ruins!

When Sans says “or maybe...” he looks at the empty flower pot. This was one of the earliest bits of foreshadowing about who created Flowey, and nobody noticed it at the time!

The MTT vending machines initially look like this but have helpful items.

And then they look like this, with an angry face and pose- Mad Dummy has possessed them!

As of Part 38, it’s been revealed that he did first meet Asgore as “Santa.” As for whether or not he knows the truth, time will tell. :o

Oh, these are excellent suggestions for calls! I’ll try to keep these in mind.

So, I believe Glyde uses the Mysterious Door motif. Jerry uses the motif in its battle theme- I believe it’s a mix of original motif and Wrong Number song?

Sans is a master of power napping. He probably gets a decent amount of sleep, though.

There are a lot of ways to interpret Pap’s lack of sleep! In IF, he can get by without it, but he also has a lot of reasons to avoid sleeping. Some reasons include productivity but also due to a looooot of heavy baggage. More on that later.

I think sleep can definitely make monsters healthier. Rest = better mental health as well as physical health, and with how important mental and emotional help is for monsters, that’s very important!

They just really like socks. Socks are warm. Socks are slinky. And googly eyes are the best. So they took on the form of a really eccentric sock puppet and sock collector. Scandalous.

It also has Alphys’ motif, as the two are the leaders of the royal guard!

I would say the lack of Asgore as an influence has left Undyne slightly less grounded? Like, she had Toriel and Gerson in her life, but her relationship with Toriel is... definitely not quite as close? Like, Toriel by that point kept people at an arm’s length due to losing multiple children (including one from old age). So, while they were on friendly terms until the aftermath of the DT experiments and the tapes’ release, it was more like mutual respect and a sorta professional relationship with Undyne admiring Toriel and wanting to spare her from more heartache.

That is a really interesting idea. While that didn’t happen, I do need to maybe revisit the grumpy dog at some point or another. He’s still a lil’ salty.

I think in terms of layout it won’t change much, but there will be new/different content for sure. :O

Mad Dummy’s base design is mostly original, but she has a wig + headband from DIO from Jojo Part 3! Fun fact: While MTT has Kamina shades, Papyrus’ goggles are loosely based on Simon from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in terms of color. :O

So basically, when Asriel defeated Frisk, he had the power over the timeline to reset it as he pleased- in theory. However, that power was overwhelming for him, and due his lack of understanding OF said power and one last ditch attempt at resisting from Chara, things went wrong.

There is a track that takes some inspiration from Rage Awakened. It’s not released, and it’s not exact, but it won’t be released for a WHILE. Like until the part comes out.

I think it’s just the fact that tacos are so random. Like, my biggest beef in that regard was that OG Underswap had a lot of arbitrary replacements for things in UT and not all of them made sense. Like, if Sans was to make a foreign food, ramen would’ve made more sense due to Alphys being weeb trash, haha.

Okay, so the rough timeline iiiis... Falling: - Cyan - Green - Orange - Blue - Purple - Yellow Dying: - Cyan - Orange - Blue - Purple - Yellow - Green

You know, it’s funny because this ask is super old, but that’s basically sorta what happened. :O It became a beach-themed resort.

Never forget MTT fangirl Temmie’s pool escapades.

I think Forgespring for me because I had to make the tileset myself (it took a few months, I think?), but Aquarius was definitely in the works for a while. But once I had the tileset from Fours, the rooms were very easy to design!

That woulda been pretty rad! Maybe I can find another spot for it one day, haha.

I think for Dohj, I’d have to check with Fours, but I’m certainly not opposed at some point? Right now, the following chars can take questions: - Frisk - Papyrus - Sans - Undyne - Alphys - Napstablook - Mettaton - Asgore - Chara - Flowey

Cyan appears in Part 45! :O No answer about orange for now, tho.

I do have vague ideas for Tem village. I just haven’t had time to go back and do it.

Stay tuned and you may find out! :O

Hmmmm... I had a lot of fun with MTT SPIRAL and the Determinator, tbh. They were both very time consuming, but I love how they came out! Also, buff Jerry.

Turnabout Storm. :)

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It’s a really awesome fan crossover that works way better than it should. :P

None taken! We know that with headcanons, everyone is gonna have their own interpretations. These are just the voices we liked for Fireglobe Production, but everyone has their right to their favored interpretations!

Yeah, Knight Knight is one of the coolest CORE mercs in the original game. It was fun to repurpose them for Inverted Fate as royal guards. :o It made room for unique encounters in the CORE in the form of them robots- as Undyne would rather use machines than other monsters to do her work.

Personally, I see it as an Asriel motif, but I also acknowledge that at one point it WAS gonna be an Asgore motif. Toby has a habit of just using whatever music works for a scene (see sans. at the snail farm.)

I do have a few ideas, though I won’t say for what yet. :o

He’s likely made blueprints for that train. :P

It probably would just have different flavor text/progression!

So basically, I treat the starting motif for BAaTH/Power of NEO is just a “true hero” motif.

MTT is definitely major in IF! As for whether or not he’ll have a hangout, time will tell. There’s definitely more to resolve with him, though.

I’m gonna remake at least a few of the older tracks, including Regret. My goal is just to bring the OST to a similar standard of quality.

So, animated parts coming up: Part 47, Part 49, Part 50. There may be some other parts, but we’re gonna wanna scale things back for a little bit for the sake of all our sanities.

I go with both. ;)

Honestly, probably fairly similar to the bully fight in the Ruins- which is why I ultimately decided not to do one. Both fill similar archetypes, though I think if I did do a battle, I woulda still had Flowey interrupt at the end and scare them off.

It’s a very emotional scene. Far more tragic than her geno death, IMO.

Well, the main goal in that regard is the remasters (Part 9 is in progress). Otherwise, I do think these hiatuses are good for working ahead. I’ve still gotta do more work, though, because my buffer this time around is a lot smaller from the trial-hiatus buffer. Alas!

Honestly, the website is the best thing to happen to IF. It’s allowed us to do so much with the comic’s presentation that would be impossible with imgur. NORIX IS THE BEST...

#inverted fate #ask dump #asks #undertale au #behind the scenes #undyne #frisk #papyrus #asgore #sans #alphys #lore #toriel #fallen humans

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unproduciblesmackdown · 4 years

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also i’ve been mulling over the “we’re Living ex machina!!!!” line and like, it still doesn’t make sense Really, but here’s my Afternoon Musings i guess

i’ve only actually seen ex machina once like 3 years ago but as i remember it goes a little something like This: some rando white-collar programmer guy has like, won a contest where the prize is to go hang out for maybe a few days or a week or so with this ~visionary genius~ tech dude played by oscar isaac at oscar isaac tech dude’s off-the-grid reclusive mansion or whatever.......i thiiiink the Protag Programmer won b/c his programming submission was Really Good but also maybe there’s a [randomly selected] element to it, or maybe we Think it was partly random selection but then learn it was actually All “yeah i chose you b/c your coding was the Best,” idk. doesn’t really matter but anyway yeah protag guy gets helicoptered in to the oscar isaac genius bro’s secret mansion

oscar isaac soon reveals he has this advanced ai android whomst he wants the Protagonist to study / turing test, and the protagonist does that, but during one Conversation Session with this android (who is named ava i think? and designed to Look Like a Woman oo) like the lights turn off and ava-i-think informs the protagonist she’s found a Weakness in the mansion’s security system and hackt it so that the power (and thus the Security / Monitoring Systems) shut down for a minute like this but could feasibly be thought of as a glitch and anyways she’s like yeah i have feelings and thoughts and i want to Not Be Trapped here, ya gotta help me out here buddy, and then yknow ooh the systems come back on, oscar isaac can Observe them again, intrigue.....tl;dr protag and ava keep having these short secret convos and Do plan to break her out, there’s this dramatic moment where oscar isaac (who’s natch been acting weirder and more erratic as the plot unfolds) confronts the protag after the protag has just like, tried to get him blackout smashed by Hanging Out With Him lmfao and oscar isaac is like “ooh i knew you were planning to break her out, i’m gonna stop you guys though haha pwned” but then oh further twist, turns out ava and protag Knew that was the case and were thinking one step ahead and idk but yeah they break her out and oscar isaac dies but ooh further twist!!! ava locks the protag (or well, just Does Not Unlock, As Planned) in some room and leaves the mansion and gets on the Helicopter meant to take the protag back to wherever after the planned end of his stay. and the protag is just stuck there b/c everyone else is dead and presumably he dies as ava gets to exist in the outside world now, idk, we don’t need ex machina 2 where he’s escaped or smthing lmao

and i do NOT get what winston is comparing their situation to lmfao. like, oh rian is like an advanced ai android??? if anything, her being the more like ~true believer in High Finance as a means of socially beneficial effect~ vs winston like, having the supposedly cutthroat and cold Math approach would make Him more of the ~oh no more a robot than a person~ (though i think it’s Ambiguous whether we wanna judge ava as more Scary Bad or Sympathetic).........you can’t even really make the connection that “oh no we’re being deliberately Replaced!!” b/c if winston is [protag programmer rando] and rian is [ava] and wendy is, i guess oscar isaac then, uhhhh oscar isaac most definitely did Not intend to ~replace~ the protag with ava, he very much wanted her trapped in his mansion still........and the protagonist Only got “replaced” by ava in the sense that she took his place on the helicopter out of the reclusive secret mansion. i really doubt she planned to, or would even be able to, like take over his identity/life beyond that.....certainly not his job lol like, coworkers are gonna notice you’re a different person, there was no implication the androids can like oh shapeshift their appearance or whatever, and no implications about what ava even intended to do in the Outside World which is kind of bemusing b/c like, what of the Practical Questions of being an android and needing whatever Fuel Source a robot does, idk that might’ve been addressed or smthing like “oh yeah they can just Eat,” also she clearly does not Trust People considering her only company was evil oscar isaac creator and she wasn’t interested in bringing the protag along, plus yknow the fact that she Did deliberately manipulate the protag into thinking that she wanted to escape into the world With him........but not like i guess she has any choice for any other world to escape into but the one with all the people where she pretends to be an organic human

like there is just NO point of comparison where these situations line up unless you get soooooooo like broad strokes about ex machina that you’d do better to compare your experience to Anything else lmao. like, does winston think she’s some like, ideal advanced version of him?? like you might consider a crafted AI android to be?? i don’t know but i mean i think we have a more feasible explanation for why he’s so Insistent about this totally being Ex Machina, if only b/c as a straightforward comparison i swear to god it doesn’t work lmfao None of these points line up at all with any significance that’s worth insisting on

given that winston’s Apparently Canonically meant to be crushing on rian, and we have his example of ribbing her by calling her “gal gadot’s quirky sister” which is like, okay so the dunk is “you look similar to this famous a-lister who everyone thinks is pretty” and “also you’re quirky, boom” like, i think that could easily be meant as like, a Tell that winston already ~likes~ her.............aaaand it’s also somewhat ~ambiguous~ but i mean i think it’s safe to say that in Ex Machina you may understand the protag as having Fallen For the ai android lady. so maybe we can Understand this invocation of ex machina as being like “ooh person meant to replace me is Attractive but ultimately i think this Overall Situation is a bad thing i shouldn’t feel this way i resent it” like, a bit of a Reach, but honestly it’s way more of a reach to think about applying anything else about this scenario to ex machina, so i could v much believe that the thought that went behind writing this is once again, like, “okay winston’s invoking one thing on the surface level here, but simultaneously he’s already (inadvertently probably) acknowledging like oh also i have a crush on her already”

between this episode seeming to be Setup and the [winston has a Canon crush] and the fact that it probably seems like They Will Fuck A Nonzero Number Of Times or Make Out At Least But It’s Billions So, Might Get A Humorous Cut To [Postcoital] Or A Scene Where They Arrive At Work Together Short Of Breath With Messy Hair And Hickies And Winston’s Got A Hoodie W/ “Property Of Rian” On It Until He Goes "Oh Shit Woops” And Hands It To Her And She’s Like “Oh Btw You Forgot Your Glasses.....Uh You Left Them Here On Your Desk Yesterday I Mean Of Course” And Hands Them To Him And An Unnamed Character Stands Up And Asks “Daily Poll: Who Had Sex With A Coworker Last Night” And Rian And Winston Raise Their Hands Before Going “Oh Wait” And Lowering Them With A Shake Of The Head And A Nervous Cough and i’m exaggerating but you know, the equivalent of the billions writing saying “wwinnnk” at us. i am fine with them having an unsolemn like, quasi-rivals-to-lovers (or -And-lovers) dynamic, even with it being a bit messy in like, still an overall Fun way, where yknow it doesn’t have to be peak epic romance cuz a) that’s just Always true and yet it can still be overall an okay thing even if they don’t quite get it together / mostly just trade sparks and sometimes hook up and b) idk seems like mayybe rian’s character isn’t meant to go beyond this season, so, an inherent limit there if true

i’m like Apologetic for being like “already i like their dynamic even as Romantique and it’s kinda cute and fun and i’m willing to continue to be engaged w/ this as long as the writing doesn’t completely fuck it up” lmao like, i guess i Did inadvertently give myself time to prepare for this exact eventuality b/c of wondering if this exact character would have A Thing w/ winston whenever she showed up and even if i was like “haha the character could show up Anywhere and do Anything and what are the odds, right” i was also like “hmm but i’m going to really think about it though” like, as always, didn’t think i was cassandraing that hard, but truly did do it 4x03 style where everyone else can be like “you never [made the text post or gave any indication you were thinking about “what if whoever she plays and winston have some kind of romance thing going on”]” and i can go “i only thought it but didn’t say it....doesn’t count” but well. i did think it lmao and why would i make it up.......sorry i had such a head start on Getting More Used To This Notion.......some crimes can never be forgiven.meme.......

anyways natch “intense horrible passionate” seems a little foreboding but maybe she was talking about it relative to [any Normal show] rather than the standards we’re used to on billions, where this was all but a Meet Cute, and a kind of quasi coworker rivalry where nobody’s taking it *that* deeply seriously and they also seem to mutually like each other by the end of 5x05 already so how not-amicable can it get. and re: Intense like, maybe the writing in future episodes will totally upend this, but i’d say rian and winston in 5x05, even when “clashing,” was like damn near laidback and chill. neither of them seem at all that pressed, but maybe even a sorta-playful Friendly Rivalry is more “intense” than, say, a dynamic that involves no rivalry at all. imo “Passionate” is just like, okay, so they’ll fuck or at least make out? sure. not sure what to make of “horrible” lmfao maybe again it’s addressing like “this is a lil messy and they’re kinda rivals!!!” like, certainly not an ideal start, except by billions standards it IS weirdly great. rian seeming good-naturedly amused by winston is something we didn’t get from his longtime-coworkers until like, now, sort of, and still not to the degree that anyone has smiled at him as many times as rian did in like that course of [1 min long First Scene Together] wherein also winston always gets off to a way worse start with people lmao............like everything about this seems Way Better And More Dialed Back And Grounded than usual, actually. but it’s that like, point of reference of “what’s Usual for winston and, more broadly, Billions” that maybe explains this weirdly strong language when all in 5x05 seemed chill actually

anyways like i said Sorry For Already Liking Rian/Winston This Much with my head start and all where like, i’m even tentatively looking forward to seeing where this goes, by “tentative” i also mean going [”i’ll kill you” the office.jpg] at billions where i am fully aware that maybe where this goes *is* a mess and not in like, just kind of a fun, non-melodramatic, not-treated-like-a-total-joke-but-also-not-that-big-a-deal way, where 5x05 could seem like Those Halcyon Days b/c everything from here out just devolves into an unappealing disaster.......but this is an unexpectedly solid start imo and like. even if this doesn’t become like this epic romance where they officially date and if rian does eventually depart the show by the end of the season, it can still just be Enjoyable and Fun for the characters and, god forbid, the viewers, where like, you don’t have to demand we be desperately invested with our entire life in this deadly serious heartwrenching epic romance, they can just kind of mess around and enjoy having a mutual attraction w/ this mathy rivalry and etc and it’s neither a tragedy of “the greatest love story of all time torn asunder” Or, truly god forbid,” this is a Whole Mess In A Bad Way b/c winston’s involved and ugh who could Really like him, being at all romantically entangled is an embarrassing mistake surely, ew cringe we hate him............like, cautiously optimistic in how like i always say that a Romantic Arc is just an easy/efficient way to develop both characters and it could certainly humanize winston an ounce in a show that treats him more like a walking algorithmic plot device and the thoughts of any viewers but us are limited to “winston annoying” basically........the show doesn’t seem to treat rian as a joke, so it seems possible that their mutual Romance in whatever way it unfolds could also be Not A Joke, which means winston’s part in it isn’t a joke, so that’s Some aspect of him for people to take seriously, for once..........like, the way his apparently-already-official crush played out in 5x05 *was* funny but it also didn’t seem like oh it’s a joke b/c his feelings are a total joke......it might seem that way if this *was* totally unrequited and going nowhere, but i somewhat get the sense that the interest is mutual even by the end of the ep, that didn’t strike me as a “shove off, it could Never Happen” shutdown from rian there, just like, hold off on that for rn maybe cue to rein it in a little, not just yet........anyways lmao i’m like “oh yeah i started this post about the baffling ex machina thing” but yeah the point is i think so far it’s pretty solid and i like it and am cautiously but [relative-to-billions level of Hopeful] about whatever developments we’re surely gonna get b/c it def sounds like this has Not ended with 5x05, but seriously @ billions i swear to god. yes so far the approach to winston’s crush here and even their unfolding mutual dynamique and dare i say, romantic interest, is being handled with an encouraging level of “this is Humorous but the characters / their feelings are not what’s being treated as A Total Joke or anything,” but who knows what will come next, this is billions and you can’t predict anything. fingers crossed about it all, though

#winston billions #i'm enjoying what we have so far anyways While I Can #still billions-grade Hopeful that it will continue to be enjoyable.......#i can imagine that things could continue to unfold in a fairly cute & fun way. i am already somewhat Doing So b/c i like them enough already #have enough gentle optimism that i absolutely can be let down by next week's developments...........We Shall See #seriously just tl;dr i'm not the least bit sure what the ex machina thing means. tentative ''it's as much a Clue that winston already kinda #is crushing as much as idk.....meaning anything else at all'' lmao.........like okay whatever it's billions just roll w/ the weird refs #like the seeming nascar-or-whatever related one whomever taylor was talking about tony womsthever from 2005?? i didnt research too much into #that like i don't need to know cuz idc and Why Would They.....maybe it's like wendy making the unnecessary metallica reference 4 sec later #where everyone's just automatically in [unnecessary references] mode.........#riawin

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tracingdreams · 4 years

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“Zettai Nakasu” (I’ll definitely make them cry) - Translation: Part II

Miyuki/Kuramochi Unofficial Fanbook (Doujin) (2015 PIXIV/Kinakorondo)

Disclaimer: Translation and thus all errors are my own. I do not have the capacity to scan the pages without damaging the book. I will include occasional images where I can get them to work, but this is a text translation.

This doujin translation and content is safe for work.

It is chiefly Kuramochi Miyuki but it is a shade bittersweet and also includes hints of Kuramochi Ryousuke, Miyuki-Chris and even maybe Chris-Sawamura vibes in it.

Part II

Back in the middle school Edogawa Dragon days. Miyuki returns home from practice in his uniform.

“I’m home!” he calls out, but there is no response. He turns on the light, and heads up to change into his casual clothes. He cooks his meal, turns on the television and sits down at the table to eat. The television commentary echoes into the room.

“And the game enters the final moments. It’s the bottom of the ninth, with two outs. Will the game be decided on this one pitch? A moment of tension…”

His gaze is fixed on the screen as he eats.

Nighttime. It’s black outside and he draws the curtain.

“He’s late again tonight,” he reflects. Looking at his reflection in the mirror, he yawns. He says ‘goodnight’ to himself, into the silent darkness.

I never once felt that I was lonely.

The twelve year old Miyuki at the table, slippers dangling from his feet, is now the second year in high school, pen in hand.

I’ll definitely make them/you cry. (Note: This could equally mean, “They’ll/You’ll definitely make me cry” and “He’ll definitely make you cry” and any other possible combination of pronouns…because Japanese doesn’t require them to be stated. Deliberately ambiguous, this is also the title of the doujin)

“What are you drinking?” he asks Kuramochi, seeing him with a carton in hand, straw in mouth.

“Cola flavoured milk.” Came the reply.

Kuramochi’s in a good mood today. How good a mood?

Kuramochi eyes Miyuki pensively, then asks,

“Do you want some?” He grins, a big smile that reveals fang teeth. “I’ll give it to you!”

That good a mood.

I understand the reason only too well.

In the last game, he was praised by Ryou-san. (Even though right after that he got a ton of criticisms as well).

Kuramochi is shown talking to Ryousuke. Ryousuke’s face is hidden, but Kuramochi is all sparkles and smiles.

“It probably tastes horrible,” Miyuki says out loud. Kuramochi dumps the carton on his head.

“Shut up,” he shoots back.

“Don’t use me as a rubbish bin,” Miyuki objects. “What’s with that challenging spirit?”

“Well, I wanted to know,” Kuramochi replies. “Hey, you got praised as well, so be a bit happier about it, will you?”

“Of course I’m happy about it,” Miyuki answers. “Sawamura was also in good form, after all. But I need to play at that level as a matter of course.”

As the Captain. As the main catcher. As the fourth batter.

“Ah!” The carton falls off Miyuki’s head and onto the ground.

***

Room five. Sawamura is present, looking hugely emotional. His cheeks are red, his eyes wet with tears, his teeth gritted. Miyuki stands in the doorway, dressed in his tracksuit. His expression is troubled, then impassive.

“Tsk, that’s no good, Kuramochi-kun,” he says lightly. “Bullying your kouhai.”

“It’s not me!” Kuramochi is annoyed at this.

“What’s that?” Miyuki notices the books. “Manga?”

“Yes!” Sawamura announces. “A currently popular one! There’s even a movie!”

Kuramochi, still looking frustrated, grabs a towel and starts forcibly wiping Sawamura’s tears away.

“Are you his mother?” Miyuki asks.

“If he gets them dirty, I’m the one who Jun-san will kill!” Kuramochi exclaims.

The door of Room Five opens to reveal an angry looking Kanemaru, who enunciates Sawamura’s name ominously. Miyuki shoots him a startled look.

Ah-ah…

Kanemaru has plenty he wants to get off his chest.

“You idiot! Why are you sitting there reading manga?! You said you were studying for the test, didn’t you?!”

“I’m finishing, I’m finishing!” Sawamura protests hastily.

“When you’ve finished with the revision stuff, then you can read it!” Kanemaru is unamused. “The next time you do this, I’ll give you manga spoilers!”

“What kind of evil demon are you?!” Sawamura is horrified. Toujou pokes a smiling head around the door.

“Sorry for the disturbance!” he chirps cheerily.

Sawamura is taken away, and the door shuts behind them. Kuramochi and Miyuki are left alone in the room.

“They’re energetic,” Miyuki observes.

“You don’t really seem to be, though,” Kuramochi remarks in return. “You came to ask me about the test subjects, right?” He taps Miyuki on the head with his textbook. “The next time you sleep in class, I won’t tell you.”

His back is to Miyuki, who clutches the book tightly. Still without turning around, Kuramochi adds,

“You’re clearly still thinking about a bunch of stuff, but right now you need to just heal up your body.”

“You’re being too nice to me, it’s kind of scary,” Miyuki replies.

There’s nothing amazing about it or anything. I just pushed myself that far for the sake of my own selfish desires. I wasn’t able to think about doing it for the team, or about being Captain, or even thinking about how all of you felt. I thought that, for my own sake, if I trampled on the concern all of you felt for me it didn’t matter. I certainly wouldn’t have given up that place…even though to achieve that dream, I needed all of you as well.

But no matter what, I couldn’t stop myself.

“It’s not that,” Kuramochi replies. “I still don’t know myself if that was the right call.”

He still has his back to Miyuki.

“I tried to think about a bunch of things – what was best for the team, your own feelings…but at the end of the day, I really just wanted to win with a Seidou team that included you. So when you were able to keep standing there, I was happy. Even though I had no idea how much worse your injury could get from continuing to play…”

“The same is true for me,” Miyuki replies.

Please don’t lump us together like that so easily.

“Sorry for not stopping you.” Now Kuramochi turns. “The next time it happens, don’t hide it, okay?! You’re so annoying.”

“I get it, already!” Miyuki beams at him. He recalls that hand being placed on his head, and adds, “I’m used to doing stuff by myself, after all.”

“In that case, you need to get used to this,” Kuramochi grabs Miyuki by the lapels of his shirt. “To the fact the rest of us are here with you, too.” He looks serious. “Me, Zono. Don’t think you just have to do it and it can’t be helped. Although being you, I knew you would do it.” The shot pans out, showing them facing each other, both huddled on their knees.

“It’s annoying but the rest of us can’t get by any more without you.”

He gets to his feet.

“Right, I’m going to return this (manga volume).”

“Right now?”

“Well, it seems as though he wants it back soon, so…”

Kuramochi leaves, and Miyuki is alone in the silence of room five.

I never once thought of myself as being lonely.

“It’s really quiet…” he reflects. He looks around the room. “Seems like he’s added some more new games.” He starts poking through Kuramochi’s stuff, and finds an old magazine. “This one’s pretty old…”

He shivers.

“It’s cold in here.”

He glances around him, seeing a blanket on the floor, which he grabs with both hands and pulls towards him.

“Just what I need right now.”

He wraps it around himself.

“I’m sure this is Kuramochi’s…”

A flashback memory darts into his head, of banter between the two of them.

“That thing’s so old and ratty it’s falling apart,” he had teased, and Kuramochi, blanket defiantly over his shoulders, had retorted, “Does it matter? I feel relaxed with it!”

Miyuki eyes the blanket.

“He said he brought it with him from home, I think.”

He reflects on his conversation with Kuramochi. Kuramochi is shown, smiling and sparkly.

“I’ll never forget being praised today!” he announces, and Miyuki thinks this over.

If Kuramochi says that, probably, he won’t ever forget it.

Kuramochi has a ton of things he likes.

There is an image of Kuramochi, surrounded by an array of things – food, games, television, books, baseball, and his teammates; the image shows Ryousuke, Eijun and Jun.

I’m a little jealous of how he can add to those things and treasure them so much.

The panel changes to a big empty one of Miyuki sitting, wrapped in Kuramochi’s blanket, surrounded by grey. An inset shows a young Miyuki, alone, peering out of the window of his apartment, presumably down to the steel workshop and Toku below.

The door of the room opens and Kuramochi returns. He’s surprised.

“Oh! You’re still here.”

“Still? Seriously, you. Sawamura’s not here either, I didn’t want to just leave the door open like that with nobody else here.” Miyuki replies, still wrapped in the blanket.

“Right. Well done, taking care of things in my absence,” Kuramochi rubs his hand over Miyuki’s head playfully. “I’m back now.”

“Welcome back,” Miyuki answers him. “Did you go borrow another volume?”

They are wrestling over the blanket, Kuramochi wanting to retrieve it and Miyuki wanting to keep hold of it. Kuramochi demanding he give it back, and Miyuki not yielding.

“The next volume,” Kuramochi replies at length. “Why don’t you read it?”

“No. To begin with, that’s a middle volume. And I’m not interested. Not in shoujo manga.”

Kuramochi still has his hand on the blanket. He fixes Miyuki with a look, then,

“It’s because you’re like that that you make the girls cry, you know.”

Miyuki is taken aback. “Wha? Why do you say something like that now?”

In his moment of distraction, Kuramochi pounces and takes back the blanket. Miyuki protests, “unfair!”. Unrepentantly, Kuramochi reminds him that it’s his blanket in the first place.

“You poor thing.”

“Hey, that’s pretty merciless…”

There are some images of Miyuki in flashback, over which he explains,

“The thing is that I played baseball because it was fun, right from the start. But right now it’s even more fun. Well, because of that, in the past, I got scolded because I only played baseball and did nothing else but that.”

“So that’s why you strike out with the girls.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Stupid.”

“So are you, most of the time.” Comes Miyuki’s retort.

“Hey!” Kuramochi is annoyed. “That’s not what I meant! The girls! I meant the girls!”

He glances down at the manga.

“Those are your good points, after all.”

Miyuki looks at him. Kuramochi is reflected in the lens of Miyuki’s glasses.

“Well, it is pretty much your only point as well.” Kuramochi adds.

“Hey!”

Nevertheless…if for some reason, baseball was to disappear from me…I feel like you’d still call my name in exactly the same way as you do now.

An image of Kuramochi, calling Miyuki’s name, follows.

Maybe that’s just my wishful thinking, though.

Out loud Miyuki says, “Hey, Kuramochi…? Did you ever have a girlfriend…?”

There is a moment of awkward silence between them. Miyuki looks at Kuramochi, then retreats, as though he’s suddenly realised he’s hit a sore point.

“Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

Kuramochi slams shut the manga volume, looking angry. He clenches his fist.

“I swear, if I don’t make you cry at least once, I really won’t be satisfied…” he growls.

“Take care of the things you borrowed!” Miyuki chirps in a quiet voice. He tries to back away as Kuramochi grabs his baseball bat, letting out a squeal. “Hey, I’m against violence!”

“Don’t be stupid,” Kuramochi has the bat in one hand, and he pushes open the bedroom door. “I’m just going down to do some private practice. I’m going to lock the door, though, of the bedroom.”

“Hey! I’ll come down with you!” Miyuki decides. Kuramochi fixes him with a look, as he’s still injured.

“You…”

“I’ll just watch! I’ll just watch!” Miyuki says hurriedly.

“I guess you’re restless,” Kuramochi thinks.

They head out. It’s cold enough to turn breath to clouds of condensation. Kuramochi shivers.

“It’s cold,” he says.

“It’s winter,” Miyuki replies.

“And when you mention winter,” Kuramochi began.

“The winter training camp,” Miyuki finished.

“Scary! Don’t! It’s already pointlessly cold!” Kuramochi protests.

Miyuki let out his breath in a rush, and a cloud of white air comes from his lips.

You shouldn’t underestimate the ability to make this baseball idiot cry.

There’s an image of Koushien stadium.

All we can do now is go there.

The panels show the members of the team. Eijun yelling, and Kanemaru in pursuit. Haruichi practicing with Zono. Asou with Seki and Higasa. Then them all gathered around Miyuki, Zono looking stern, Miyuki grinning, an arm around Sawamura’s shoulders.

Until I reach the top with these guys, I’ll definitely make them cry.

To be continued...

#Daiya no Ace #Ace of Diamond #Doujinshi #Doujin #Translation #Text translation #Miyuki #Kuramochi #Kuramiyu #Kuraryou #Miyuchris #PIXIV 2015

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multimetaverse · 5 years

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Quick Thoughts on the New UK Promos

Still wild to see how much more willing Disney is, both in the USA and the UK, to promote Tyrus now that the series is almost done. It’s clear that they’re deliberately trying to hype up the portion of the audience that knows about Tyrus and ships it and are now willing to clue the large portion of the audience that doesn’t know Tyrus is a thing that it in fact is. Disney including a clip of the bench scene in one of their previous promos was probably a real eye opener for the kids watching who think TJ is straight.

It’s funny that watching these promos you’d think that TJ was in the show more than he actually is; even with the cut ep he’s still getting less screen time than Amber and Marty. They’ve largely given away most of TJ’s plot line in 3x18 and with the bench scene already being teased that most of his plot line in 3x20 as well. Someone in Disney PR must have noticed that TJ’s character interests enough of the audience to be worth heavily featuring him in the promos.

TJ and Cyrus both as a couple and as characters are the biggest winners of the cut ep and these promos further that point. It’s unlikely we would have seen so much of TJ or Tyrus in these promos if the original wedding was still happening since it would get the audience wondering why he wasn’t there and as a practical matter there’s would have been one more ep’s worth of footage to use in promos. But since the show inadvertently became more equal in regards to Tyrus it looks like Disney decided to take the lemons the FBI gave it and make lemonade.

We’re getting several TJ scenes spread out over 3-4 days in universe, most of them with Cyrus, which likely means we’re looking at 4ish minutes of TJ screen time rather than his usual 3 minutes or less. Cyrus asking if it’s that serious is probably after TJ steals the golf cart to help Buffy and is when Cyrus agrees to be his lawyer and the trial is over two days with the verdict given the same day of the basketball game, looks like Cyrus wins just as the Spikes beat the Spartans. It’s no surprise that they’re making the most of TJ’s time this ep; there simply isn’t any other choice. The finale will be too crowded for TJ or any other recurring character to get more than 3-4 minutes of screen time, if that.

Looks like they have some sort of moment at the gym where Cyrus pulls away from TJ who’s holding on to his arm, maybe Cyrus stopped himself from getting too into the moment as he doesn’t want to get his hopes up. I have no doubt the transition from subtext to text will be messy but something must happen in 3x18 that makes Cyrus feel like he was deluding himself that TJ could like him back in the finale but also enough to clue in the casual audience that Cyrus has enough of a ‘relationship’ with TJ to have woes over.

Josh answered an ask and said that we’ll see what Cyrus meant when he called TJ oblivious and I’d guess that after seeing Cyrus act weird in 3x15 and possibly again in 3x18 and almost certainly again in 3x20 after seeing Kira apologizing to TJ that TJ realizes why Cyrus was getting so upset and then finds him on the bench to talk about it. Certainly, no one is getting outed on this show and they’ll stick with what Andi told Cyrus in 3x11 that it’s his choice who to tell and when so TJ figuring it out on his own or with a little prompting fits with that.

We’re clearly seeing a TJ more comfortable with his sexuality in his interactions with Cyrus and he must have gotten out from Kira’s manipulation. This whole internalized homophobia story line was a huge mistake on Terri’s part especially since we’re never going to get any kind of full explanation of what it was or how he overcame it other than some coded reference to not wanting to hide anymore or something like that. It makes for a sharp contrast with how his dyscalculia was handled but the difference is that the learning disability plot was meant to be shown on screen while the internalized homophobia plot was meant to keep TJ off screen.

I just hope that Terri used TJ’s screen time wisely in 3x18 and that she was able to push the boundaries a little bit. The more that is still left to happen in Tyrus’ story after 3x18 the less we’ll actually get in the very crowded finale and vice versa.

Another reason 3x18 looks promising is that this is likely around when Terri got final permission to actually go with the bench scene and the set up required for it. I think Disney had committed early on to some sort of Tyrus endgame in the finale, they wouldn’t have let the cast so openly talk about Tyrus during their press tour after 3x13, but how loud and textual that endgame would be would only have been decided much later. Just like how S1 was building to Cyrus realizing his crush on Jonah but permission for Cyrus’ look back was only granted shortly before it was filmed and with it permission for Cyrus to come out to Buffy.

As of 3x15 there’s nothing in the show itself that would have had the audience expecting anything more than Cyrus just pining away for another straight jock and TJ not being at the farm wedding would have confirmed that for the audience. And even that is just implied which would have made it very easy for Disney to have Cyrus end up ambiguously single if they had so chosen. Luckily, it looks like Terri was able to get the best possible ending that Disney is willing to allow at this time.

So SAVA is an art high school which fits with the casting call for art school high school students our friends at Yun Casting put out back in the fall. However, that complicates things as Andi would only be going there next year and it doesn’t seem like the finale takes place any later than December of 8th grade in universe. Bowie and Bex hug Andi and Bowie says he’s happy for her while Andi looks sad, which is likely her getting in to an art school. Is it SAVA though or an art school that would require her moving away or at least transferring her to another middle school?

Little more of Muffy at the bowling alley. Buffy is definitely going to have to confront her feelings for Marty and Marty will have to confront his feelings for Buffy. Still no sign of the new Muffy plot involving the semi pro basketball players visiting the school but it has to happen sometime in eps 3x17-3x19.

Surprised they straight up showed Jonah singing You Girl, I wonder how much of the audience even remembers that song from S1.

Looks like they’re calling back to the first Jamber breakup with this second one which is likely in 3x19, which is messy because it was a really important moment for Jonah to be able to break up with Amber and call her out on her manipulation. Whereas Jonah hasn’t been a great boyfriend but he hasn’t manipulated Amber or cheated on her so to compare those two situations is not a good look on the show’s part. Really not sure what Terri was thinking dedicating this much time to Jamber, we get a kiss, a date, an I love you, and a dragged out breakup and for what? Just to keep Jonah from getting back with Andi? I really don’t think this story line has much appeal for any part of the audience.

These various promos have really given away quite a bit of 3c which I’m fine with since I like spoilers but it’s odd that Disney just didn’t put together one 30 second promo to release.

#Andi Mack #Tyrus #Cyrus Goodman #TJ Kippen #Muffy #Buffy Driscoll #Marty from the party #Jonah Beck #amber #Jamber #Bexie #andi mack meta #Andi Mack Season 3

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hannigrammest · 4 years

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The Story of How Hannigram Became Canon to Those Who Are in Doubt

This post is mostly meant for the casual viewers who I noticed have joined Hannibal Subreddit after the news about the S4 negotiations. It is great that we are growing in numbers, but there seems to be a misunderstanding in regard to Hannigram (the romantic relationship between Will and Hannibal) and people who ship this pairing.

Hannigram is not a fanon pairing. It is not ‘just in the heads’ of silly girls or overly-romantic viewers. It is a canonically acknowledged couple that is supported massively by the cast and Bryan Fuller. Furthermore, this romance is the essence of the show, because Will and Hannibal find everything in each other. No, their relationship is not based merely on romance or sexual attraction. But also no, a more explicit romance in S4, which seems very likely and has been hinted at many times, will not destroy the complexity of the relationship. It will add to it.

The first part is canon evidence of Hannigram season by season. The second part of this huge post is tweets, quotes, and photos with Bryan and cast in regard to Hannigram. (Sorry, I can't seem to break the post in parts for easier reading, the formatting links don't work here for some reason.)

THE SHOW ITSELF

Season 1 is obviously the most ambiguous one in this regard because the relationship only starts to develop. And yes, the majority of scenes can be interpreted as the blossoming friendship, because it is a friendship first and foremost. Even several rather romantic moments can be technically classified as such — but only if you ignore the looks that Will and Hannibal give each other and the later narrative. Still, this is all ambiguous at this stage.

When Hannibal offers Will to take care of Abigail, he repeatedly calls them her “fathers”. Not “uncles” or “caretakers” or any other option — fathers, and while this word by itself might not mean much, it is clearly supposed to hint at what kind of relationship is going to unite Will and Hannibal in the future. In 1.07, Will doesn’t come to the appointment and Hannibal is pining. It is a very powerful and explicit scene, with Hannibal slowly walking to his chair, checking his calendar to make sure Will had to come, touching the phone longingly, then abruptly making a decision and going to look for him. All of this is accompanied by the corresponding music. Is this scene romantic? Some may see it this way, some may disagree. But I think most will agree that such obvious pining is a common romantic trope that's often shown in media. The focus and the way the scene is presented are everything: they didn't just show that Will didn't come and that Hannibal decided to find him. No, we had a slow focus on all his hesitant actions and his longing for contact. In any way, at this stage, it is no longer a mere friendship. It goes deeper, to the point where Hannibal can’t stand not knowing where Will is and craving contact enough to drive for hours in the search for him.

Once again in 1.07, Will brings Hannibal a bottle of wine out of blue and acts awkwardly and shyly when declining the invitation to join the dinner party. We don’t know why Will did it and it is never addressed again, but I think everyone will agree that bringing a bottle of wine to another person for no reason and just for him has a rather romantic shade.

Then, in that same scene, Will claims he can’t stay because he has ‘a date with a Chesapeake Ripper’. It is a joke, of course, but once again, it’s fiction. The word choice is very deliberate, and Bryan loves to foreshadow the upcoming events.

In 1.08, Will drives an hour in the snow to tell Hannibal about the kiss with Alana and Hannibal exhibits a very controlled jealousy, making a snarky comment about the long drive and telling Will that he had been motivated not by attraction, but by the need to find a balance.

In 1.09, Hannibal calls him and Will Abigail’s fathers again and touches his shoulder. Yes, it is ambiguous, but when (especially) you know what’s coming, you can’t help but notice how this touch is too hesitant and fragile for a mere gesture of friendship and unity. I’ll just say, even my father caught up on it right away, which is saying something.

These are the most explicit things I recall from season 1. Now, season 2 is way more direct.

Many scenes of Hannibal pining, sitting with a glass of wine and staring at Will’s chair at his time of appointments is a common romantic trope. Yes, it can be interpreted in different ways — for example, Will has already become a part of Hannibal and Hannibal misses him as the person who has the power to understand him. However, I feel like I have to emphasize the fact that it cannot be the only reason. Hannibal has already met people with extreme empathy before, such as Pazzi. He has also met people who were happy to join him and who had similar mindset, as Tobias Budge. Hannibal wasn’t interested in them, but he’s interested in Will. Will is special because he is himself, and like Hannibal will say later, love either pays you a visit or it does not. It clearly did with Will.

Soon after Will is released from prison, he goes to Hannibal to start the implementation of his and Jack’s plan. What does he choose to do? He dresses up and polishes himself up, presenting himself to Hannibal in the way that we have never seen him before. The first thought that comes to mind is ‘seduction’. Consciously or unconsciously, Will makes himself look as attractive as possible.

In 2.08, Hannibal touches Will’s face and holds it, staring into his eyes. This is romantic. It is one of the most popular romantic tropes that ever existed. ‘Transcendent’ love doesn’t require this kind of very intimate touch to be displayed. More than that, things become very dangerous here because if there had been no explicit follow-up, Bryan would have been accused of queerbaiting. Fortunately, it wasn’t the case.

In 2.09, Will has a dream where Hannibal directly calls him his ‘beloved’ several times. In 2.10, Hannibal treats Will’s hands very gently and we get camera focusing on it thoroughly. It is a deliberate depiction of eroticism that's often used in romances to create and underline romantic and/or sexual tension. In the same episode, we have a beautiful sex scene, seemingly between Hannibal and Alana and Will and Margot. However, it is there to show a very intimate and all-encompassing connection that is developing between Will and Hannibal, and it is structured this way specifically. Will reaches orgasm when he sees the Wendigo, a reflection of Hannibal. The words used before, like Hannibal's words about "never touching", are said to Alana but put on the image of Will.

Alana notices the shift in this relationship and asks Will and Hannibal about it. They talk about “crossing boundaries” and the fact that they “know where we are with each other”, and Alana clearly remains suspicious. In the end of the episode, Will and Hannibal have an intimate dinner full of lingering glances.

In 2.11, the episode starts with the eating of ortolans, which has being pointed out as an allusion to blowjob by the creator) If you have missed it, just re-watch this scene again with this in mind. It is very explicit, to the point of being uncomfortable. Hannibal’s reaction to learning that Margot is pregnant from Will is to hint Mason about it, thus endangering her and her child. Granted, he seems to genuinely regret it, but the deed is done. It is a jealous and possessive reaction, which has been further confirmed by Mads. During the con, he said: "If Margot had Will’s baby, it would be very hard for Hannibal to get over it. He’d be jealous and very grumpy." In this same episode, Alana looks at the burnt ‘Shiva’ that Hannibal has left for Will and calls it a ‘courtship’. So, we get the explicit confirmation that Hannibal is courting Will. And no, he isn’t courting an emerging killer in Will because at this point, he thinks that Will has already embraced his potential by killing Randall and Freddie and eating her. To Hannibal’s mind, Will is almost ready, but he is too lovesick to stop. Can you imagine him digging up the corpse of ‘Freddie’, decorating it, and displaying like that? It’s hilariously romantic — in a dark way.

In 2.12, Will chooses Hannibal by freeing him from the trap and then not giving him up to Jack after he mutilates Mason. Hannibal draws a fanart (!) of himself and Will as Achilles and Patroclus. For those who don’t know, these two are popular examples of lovers. This isn't just friendship. The reference to Achilles and Patroclus is often used to hint at a romance, it's a popular trope as well.

In 2.13, Hannibal talks about ‘imago’, an image of a loved one, and then says that he and Will have an image of each other and offers him to run away. Two men running away together to reunite with their daughter is romantic. Will chooses Hannibal once again by calling him, but it is too late. We get a heartbreakingly tender and intimate touch between them before the stabbing. As Mads said, "Will is the light of Hannibal's life and Hannibal killed Abigail to break Will's heart the way he broke his." Just as he said that "Hannibal was blinded by love."

Season 3 is where all subtext is taken into text. Hannibal has chosen Bedelia as a substitute to Will, and note how many people believe they become lovers. So, why Will and Hannibal running away is platonic, but Hannibal doing the same with Bedelia is not? Even though when the only person he does love is Will. We see that he is dissatisfied with Bedelia and is growing restless.

In 3.01, we get a flashback to Gideon who teases/mocks Hannibal by saying, ‘If only that company could be Will Graham’. So, in the very limited interactions, even he managed to glimpse the attraction, because let’s be honest, he didn’t have time to understand all deep layers of this relationship, but his phrase has been included deliberately.

In this episode, Hannibal meets Anthony, practically a Will mirror. He looks similarly, is smart, sassy, and he is even enthusiastic about Hannibal’s crimes. Ideally, he is everything Hannibal has wanted. But what does he do? He kills Anthony and turns him into a Valentine heart for Will. Before that, he makes an example of the heart from Da Vinci’s ‘perfect man’. In 3.02, Will recognizes it as such and calls it a Valentine and a ‘broken heart’. He asks himself, “Do I still want to go with him?”, and answers, “Yes”.

In 3.03, we get the first ‘in love’ confirmation. Hannibal is shaken after seeing Will and hearing his words of forgiveness. When talking about him with Bedelia, Bedelia says, “Betrayal and forgiveness are best seen as something akin to falling in love”, and Hannibal replies, “You can’t control with respect to whom you fall in love”. The longing for Will has made Hannibal reckless, and Bedelia notices it by mentioning that he is going to get caught with this kind of behavior. In the end of the episode, Hannibal once again says that Will makes him feel love. He adds, “Love. He pays you a visit or he doesn’t.” Which love can either come to a person or not? Technically, these words could be interpreted as platonic love, but in the beginning of this very episode, we got a confirmation that the nature of this love is romantic. Will, in turn, is still reverent about Hannibal and even travels to his home to find out more about him. His attitude changes when he sees Chiyoh, who he sees as another toy abandoned by Hannibal, and it brings back the insecurities. We see it through how often Will compares himself and Chiyoh and how he is filled with anger and bitterness again (which were absent before this meeting). Chiyoh sees right through him and repeatedly states that Will is wrong to compare them, but Will persists.

In 3.04, we see that Will spends a lot of time sitting in Hannibal’s house, which is yet another romantic trope. Even Alana knows where to find him. Will admits to Jack that he “wanted to run away with Hannibal”, which also has a romantic connotation. Before that, Will was making the boat that he later uses to come and find Hannibal. This scene is intercut with his Mizumono memories, namely, with Hannibal's face that emerges every time he moves yet another part of the engine. This is a vivid demonstration of Will trying to repair what is now broken. He also literally sails after Hannibal, which is considered extremely romantic by many tropes at once. Chilton calls Will and Hannibal’s interactions a “flirtation” in this episode.

In 3.05, when discussing what to do with Hannibal, Chiyoh says, “I told you, there are means of influence other than violence” and kisses Will, thus showing him what others means exist. It is yet another direct allusion to the romantic part of Will and Hannibal’s relationship because Chiyoh basically offers him to kiss Hannibal instead of trying to kill him.

In 3.06, Hannibal says the famous, ”If I saw you every day, forever, Will, I would remember this time”. He said the same words to Clarice in the books shortly before having sex with her. It is an utterly romantic phrase that just cannot have any other meaning, especially when you count the narrative and the source material. Will adds some more romantic phrases, like “We are conjoined, I wonder if either of us can survive separation.” Such level of love is incredible, but you don’t say things like that to a person who you feel can just understand you. Nor to a simple friend or a spiritual mentor. It’s everything at once, especially when coming from Will. Things go badly after that and we get a knife and a drill. Scenes in Mason’s house are great and show that Will and Hannibal could be a great team. Hannibal saves Will and carries him home bridal-style. He changes his clothes, puts him into bed, and waits for him to wake up while writing down formulas that could change the time and erase some of the events. When Will wakes up, Hannibal admits that he has discovered Will in his Mind Palace, victorious, thus giving the power into his hands. When Will rejects him (by saying he’s not going to miss him), Hannibal gives himself up, knowing that chances are, he will never get back to freedom and he will never see Will again. Prison is the ultimate act of love because Hannibal is helpless there, completely on Will’s mercy. As Mads said during the con, "Will forgetting him was the last thing Hannibal wanted to hear, so that’s why he surrendered. The only way Will would see him again is if he’s in jail, and he would eventually visit. He was afraid he’d never see Will again otherwise."

3 years pass and we see that Will has a family. But — surprise! He is unhappy. He doesn’t even go fishing with them to have some time for himself. He hides the letter from Hannibal and goes to read it in the middle of the night. He never returns Molly’s ‘I love you’, never attempts to touch her, can’t even keep up a conversation with her, and literally sees himself falling to pieces. At the earliest opportunity, he jumps at the chance to see Hannibal. He didn’t have to do it. We are shown that he has recreated the crime scene perfectly, better than ever before, but Will lies to Jack about it and asks to see Hannibal.

In 3.09, we have a very powerful scene of Hannibal and Will reuniting, exchanging long sorrowful and heartbroken gazes. Hannibal says, “I gave you a child”, which puts him and Will in a category of parents again. He says that Will has chosen a ready-made family and Will doesn’t argue. We get a “Murder Husbands” reference from Freddie.

In 3.10, Will seeks Bedelia out. He acts catty and jealous. Bedelia calls him “Hannibal’s bride”, and calls Will out on visiting Hannibal just because he missed him, which Will doesn’t deny. He is confident and snarky at those scenes, using every opportunity to cut into Bedelia for having a relationship with Hannibal and surviving it in even better shape than he did. Bedelia says, “My relationship with Hannibal is not as passionate as yours”, and then adds: “You are here visiting old flame. Is your wife aware of how intimately you and Hannibal know each other?” They literally place Hannibal on the same level as Will’s wife. Then we have, “Your experience of Hannibal’s attention is so profoundly harmful yet so irresistible, it undermines your ability to think rationally.”

In 3.11, Hannibal sends Francis after Molly and Walter. Will doesn’t really comfort them, we see clearer than ever what a wedge exists between them. Hannibal asks, “How is the wife?”, which is another display of blatant jealousy. Will gets it, and he can’t deny the truth any longer.

In 3.12, we have the exchange that should have settled the debates about romantic part of relationship once and for all. Bedelia compares herself and Will to Hannibal/Bluebeard’s wives, and mentions how she would have preferred to be the last — the one that Will is. Will asks, “Is Hannibal in love with me?”, and Bedelia replies, “Could he daily feel a stab of hunger for you, and find nourishment at the very sight of you? Yes. But do you ache for him?” Will’s look and his silence speak volumes as everything fades to black slowly. This is it, the textually explicit confirmation. Fans didn’t come up with the idea that Will and Hannibal are in love, it was stated directly on screen, several times.

Shortly before the confession, Bedelia says, "It excites him, knowing that you marked in this particular way." Personally, I always felt some sexual subtext in this phrase, and it is confirmed when we regard the similar scene in the book. Clarice gets sperm on her face and these same words sound. Granted, the situations are very different, but it proves that the phrase does indeed have sexual connotations, and it was deliberately planned like this.

Will devises a complicated and deadly plan after this. He sets up Chilton, which can be seen as courting gift to Hannibal, and in 3.13, he lies to everyone to break Hannibal out of prison. Bedelia calls him out on it once again, saying, "Can't live with him. Can't live without him." Will doesn't deny it - he confirms it. When Hannibal says he'll agree to the plan if Will says 'please', Will does it - in an obviously flirting way. Hannibal calls him a 'cunning boy', which is once again obvious flirting, especially considering the way he says it. His plan results in the deaths of numerous officers, but Hannibal is free. We have another romantic trope where Hannibal pretends that Will is a hitchhiker and asks if he’s going his way. In the house, they have another loaded conversation where Will admits that he doesn’t think he can save itself, and that it’s fine.

Predictably, Will can’t handle seeing Hannibal killed, so he reaches for his gun. We know the rest. At the cliff, Will finally accepts the truth, and he gives the fate a chance to stop both of them or to set them free. They fall into the ocean under the Love Crime song, and since the water symbolizes reborn, we can guess what happens after that.

Post-credits scene indicates that Will and Hannibal have paid a visit to Bedelia and are in the process of eating her while she’s hiding the fork to stab one of them as he approaches. The deleted epilogue to the series shows that they are in perfect harmony now.")

Who's too lazy to read all of that, you can just check the quotes below and watch some fan videos where direct lines from canon are presented. My two favorites:

Reciprocity

Crazy in love

QUOTES

Initially, during S1, Bryan said he wanted to explore the idea of “heterosexual male friendship”. However, he later admitted that he was worried about negative homosexual stereotypes surrounding the imbalance in power in the relationship between Will and Hannibal, and in the podcast due to the beginning of American Gods, he confessed that he “wanted to approach “Hannibal” from the angle that no one has explored before — the angle of romance”.

During the airing of S2-S3, and beyond, Bryan was the one who pointed out romantic and even sexual subtext, and promoted Hannigram further. The cliff scene is officially labeled as "Kiss_alts".

Their love is queer

A collection

Canon. Original tweet is deleted, so only Bryan's is left. The person asked him to say whether Hannigram is canon.

Falling

Last wife

They Flip

Always

Will and Hannibal survived the Fall

Mere teasing, but it shows that Bryan does acknowledge sexual tension between Will and Hannibal: They did change clothes as well as Their lips were busy (to the question of what Will and Hannibal were doing in the car in TWOTL).

Bryan's favorite quote from the show: Is Hannibal in love with me?

Finally, the shirt Bryan wore at one of the latest meetings

Hugh on why it took Will so long to realize Hannibal is in love with him

Hugh on Will's reaction to Bedelia's answer about Hannibal being in love with him: ‘Oh crap, maybe this thing I’m feeling is love’

Hugh: Relief from loneliness

Hugh: It's romance

Mads: It was love at the first sight

You know better than to breed

Will Graham is covered in Hannibal’s body fluids

Bryan: I feel one is omnisexual and one is heterosexual and there's a lot of influence going back and forth, who knows with a six pack of beer what would happen: http://uproxx.com/sepinwall/hannibal-creator-i-wanted-to-be-sure-we-had-an-ending-for-the-story/

To the question of whether explicit Hannigram was a part of the initial plan, Bryan Fuller stated: "No, it naturally evolved because I guess I was absorbing so much of Mads and Hugh's performance, which felt like it was growing in intimacy, and it would have been inauthentic not to address it. Because all of these characters, and particularly Bedelia, was able to call out what she had witnessed [between Hannibal and Will], it seemed like a natural conclusion. I remember when I turned in the rewrite pages where Will asks Bedelia if Hannibal is in love with him, I got a note from Don Mancini, one of our writers who was always pushing for more homosexual text – not just context or subtext but text, text, text – and he was like, "I'm so glad you put that in there! They said it! They said it!" http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/hannibal/interviews/a667077/hannibal-bryan-fuller-talks-season-4-sexual-fluidity-and-how-will-became-clarice-starling/

Discussing what motivated him to verbally acknowledge the romance between Will and Hannibal, Fuller mentioned: "It felt like we had to s–t or get off the pot, ultimately, because there had been so much going on between these two men that when Will asks, "Is Hannibal Lecter in love with me?" it is very much about death and the romance between these two men. There is a quality to connections that go above and beyond sexuality. You can have this intimate connection with somebody that then causes you to wonder where the lines of your own sexuality are. And we didn't quite broach the sexuality. It was certainly suggested, but the love is absolutely on the table." http://tvline.com/2015/08/29/hannibal-series-finale-will-lecter-cliff-bryan-fuller-interview-season-4/

Remembering how the song for the finale of the series was created, Fuller said: "It was interesting. She [Siouxsie Sioux] was like, "I want to write this song, and what are the things I should really be thinking about?" And I was like, "this is a love story. A love story between a full-fledged psychopath and someone who has nascent psychopathic abilities." Actually, Hannibal Lecter is not a psychopath; he's something else entirely. But it's a love relationship between two men: one of them is a cannibal, and one of them understands those cannibalistic instincts all too well." http://uproxx.com/sepinwall/hannibal-creator-i-wanted-to-be-sure-we-had-an-ending-for-the-story/

Bryan Fuller: "Clarice never, until the end of Hannibal, submitted to that romance, whereas Will seemed to be on a slippery slope right from the beginning, so there's a contrast to be drawn between them." http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/hannibal/interviews/a667077/hannibal-bryan-fuller-talks-season-4-sexual-fluidity-and-how-will-became-clarice-starling/

Bryan in the commentary: "“After killing Francis Dolarhyde with Hannibal Lecter, he realizes this is exactly what Hannibal Lecter has wanted all along. He has wanted a partner in crime - a murder husband, as it were - and the sad truth of it all is that Hannibal was right. Will did enjoy it. Will thought it was a beautiful, powerful thing." https://omnisexualhanniballecter.tumblr.com/post/134099645797/after-killing-francis-dolarhyde-with-hannibal

Hugh during PaleyFest 2014 (prior to S3): "They are in love or they love each other, that's unquestionable. I think it's a platonic love... but it's rich in... (audience and cast laughs) Ok, we've done two seasons so far... so platonic love and they recognize each other as unique in the world, they reflect each other in a way, it's like profound recognition and relief that comes with it. And they are good looking guys." Mads agrees: "Exactly. Losing him or what Hannibal did with him in the two seasons is probably the closest he has ever been to loving anyone. And what love means in his universe we have to see later on. But it's heartbreaking everything that happens to poor Will is also heartbreaking for Hannibal."

Hugh: You could say that during the second half [of season three]-I mean, obviously we’re jumping ahead here, but Will comes back to Hannibal. He’s now got this family, and Will, independently and pretty quickly, starts coming to the conclusion that it’s not sustainable for him to have that family. Like, he’s not the guy. He’s not the right person to be able to look after them, to live with them. It’s not compatible with who he really is. And you could argue that Hannibal is just driving him more quickly to come to that realization. So in that sense, it is kind of brutal, tough love. His love is saying, “Know thyself.” Mads: As Hugh is saying, it’s unavoidable. It’s going to happen sooner or later. Might as well happen sooner, before he’s stuck. [Interview http://oh-dr-lecter.tumblr.com/post/129331180920/theyll-say-were-in-love-fangoria-august-2015]

Mads Mikkelsen on ‘Which scene has been the defining moment?'

"Probably one of the moments early on, maybe mid first season, where I spend some quality time in therapy session with Hugh and he’s flying away thinking about something and I have the chance, Hannibal has the chance, to watch him. And he becomes very warm watching him. He sees not only this brilliant person but he sees something he loves. I think that is the definition of Hannibal." [https://twitter.com/noforts/status/1071952333221888000]

Bryan and Hugh discussing Will's motivation in TWOTL at the cliff and beyond (in the commentary to S3):

Hugh: The point was that it wasn't the horror that drove Will to do this, the horror was secondary, it was a horror in reaction to how much he loved what happened between him and Hannibal. We have seen so many moments of Will is covered in blood and shaking and horrified and this moment he suddenly realizes it is his true self.

Bryan: I remember the day you shot the closeups, you both came running to me and I remember Mads was particularly giddy, giddy as a schoolgirl, he said we really went for it, we really went for the love story, we almost kissed and it's all there and you can use it.

Hugh: We had to push in that direction so that there is no point pretending otherwise.

About Bedelia's leg:

Bryan: The false interpretation is she cut her leg which is a crazier version of Bedelia than I understand. Of course the intention is they survived and there are three place settings."

Hugh, answering the question what is happening to Will and Hannibal now: "Let's just say they're on a beach somewhere. [Interviewer] Just chilling on a beach? [Dancy] Yeah, just chilling on a beach. Drinking something out of a coconut."

Also, the reports from people who visited one of the cons mentioned the following."Today at Red Dragon Con it was announced by Mads that Hannibal and Will are now married, have dogs which he calls “the ugly carpets” of the relationship, and live in seclusion for 4 years before hunting together." Regardless of whether it is going to come to fruition or not, this is how Mads imagines Will and Hannibal's life Post Fall.

Mads in May 2018:

"“I think that Hannibal and Will… they’re not really alive without each other. They are a piece of the puzzle for the other one’s soul.”

A great video where Mads talks about Hannibal and his feelings in S2 final.

Question: Was Hannibal suspicious of Will before he smelled Freddie Lounds or was he completely clueless about it at that point?

Mads: Hannibal doesn't have a masterplan. He's living from day to day and he's seeing possibilities and opportunities, and one of them is Will Graham, who he is obviously in love with, in a certain way - that way. But I think at that time, Hannibal has been blinded by Will Graham. He believes truly that he will walk down the path with the light, hand in hand, with Will - and Abigail. That's his dream, that's what he wants, and I think it does surprise him and it does break his heart. It is a turning point for Hannibal when he becomes the cleaning man instead of the man who loves. Until then, he'd been a man full of love, and after that, I think he is... slightly angry. It was a surprise for him. He was tricked.He got blinded by love.

Interesting interview bit:

IGN: Reba’s final scene was another where you got to really pull direct quotes from the book. But here, I was reading it as Will can also be projecting about himself, as he talks about what it might be like to have a serial killer in love with you. Was that in your mind too, given you had these great quotes from the book but that it could definitely be maybe be a bit more of an echo here, given the situation.?

Fuller: Oh, absolutely. It was a great synchronicity of events where everything that Will was saying to Reba in the novel actually applies to Will Graham in the television series. So there was the want of seeing that scene because I haven’t seen it in any of the adaptations where we get to see Reba, post all of this, and have a quiet moment between the two people who were in love with serial killers.

Bryan: "My ship is canon" (https://twitter.com/BryanFuller/status/1072599788581998593)

Bryan about Will and Hannibal's relationship: "Will accepts who Hannibal is. It’s also narcissistic, in the way that we fall in love with people who make us feel better about ourselves and who make us feel like we’re a better version of ourselves. That makes us feel more secure in our bodies, in the dysmorphia of who you are on the inside versus who you project on the outside. That disconnect narrows dramatically when somebody sees you, understands you, accepts you and loves you. It’s transcendent." (http://collider.com/bryan-fuller-hannibal-silence-of-the-lambs-interview/)

Bryan about Will's reasons for jumping, surviving, and attacking Bedelia with Hannibal: "I think one of the reasons it seemed so organic for Will to go over the cliff with Hannibal at the end was that, in his mind, as he understood the universe in his world, he had peaked. It’s also stopping a monster and stopping himself from becoming a monster, but I think part of him was thinking, “That was beautiful. I don’t think I can do that again and feel as high as I do now.” Everything overwhelmed him and he went over that cliff because there was an apex to his experience, in a way that was poetic and dramatic. ... The kind of suicide where somebody jumps off a bridge, part of them hopes they survive and part of them wants to be over. I think a lot of people are hoping for some percentage of survival that may change them because they’re looking for change within themselves. So, I think there was some bit of that. For the ending with Gillian [Anderson], there are two place settings for a reason." (http://collider.com/bryan-fuller-hannibal-silence-of-the-lambs-interview/)

Bryan about Will and Hannibal's relationship in S1: The relationship between Will and Hannibal in this first season is the seduction. It is Hannibal Lecter recognizing in Will Graham for the first time in anyone that he has ever encountered in his life the opportunity for a friendship, a real friendship, because he sees something in Will Graham that he also sees in himself. They are both unique in their crazy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzU7O7Q0R5U)

Hugh about the start of Will and Hannibal's relationship: "It’s an instant love between them, it is as if Will met not the best chess player in the world, but the only absolute, the only person he can play with, that enters in the room - or rather, in his life - with a chessboard in hand, and this provokes in him a pleasure and an incredible relief. When we find Will at the beginning of the second season, he was betrayed and thrown in jail, so he is not in a really enviable situation, but the connection he had with Hannibal has remained unchanged, it is something which he can not get rid of. This time, however, he manipulates their connection because Hannibal still needs him and their friendship, but beyond the practical utility must be said that the bond with Hannibal is, even for Will, a source of uncontrolled, involuntary pleasure.”

Mads about the start of relationship: "Hannibal sees an opportunity in this young man. And so he can hopefully, one day, walk hand in hand down the road of life." https://k-s-morgan.tumblr.com/post/187266698258/hannibal-sees-an-opportunity-in-this-young-man

Mads during S1: "When he sees Will, he recognizes himself to a degree. [Hannibal] has empathy, but [he] uses it as a tool; Will has empathy, but he doesn’t know what to do with it. Lecter sees an opportunity to open this man’s eyes and see his full potential realized. And he also sees the opportunity for a friend, which is probably not what he’s had too many of. Even though Hannibal is the puppeteer, he really loves Will." https://screencrush.com/hannibal-lunch-preview/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral

Bryan: "The tricky thing with this show is that it is a story about two men and their relationship. But if it were just about male point of views, it wouldn’t be interesting. I feel like we haven’t done as good of a job, in Season 2, of representing the female characters and their point of view of the world. I think there’s a greater opportunity in Season 3 to do that, and do more of that. In Season 2, we knew the story was about these two guys, and everybody else around them were pawns. Jack Crawford was a pawn. Alana Bloom was a pawn. It was all about what was between Hannibal and Will Graham." https://collider.com/hannibal-season-3-details-filming-europe/

Bryan about S4: I'm still hoping for more Murder Husband adventures!

source: https://www.reddit.com/r/HannibalTV/comments/72bk89/the_story_of_how_hannigram_became_canon_to_those/

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tangent101 · 5 years

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Max vs. Rachel: worst friend ever

I recently came across an article where someone defended Rachel by bashing on Max and they actually brought up some valid points. But rather than stir up a hornet’s nest by trying to repost their argument, I figure I’d keep things over here instead and examine both girls.

One of the arguments about why Rachel is better than Max is that Max not only vanished from Chloe’s life soon after William’s funeral but didn’t get back in touch with Chloe until after Chloe nearly ran her over with her truck. Rachel was “with Chloe” at a point in Chloe’s life where Chloe was at her lowest and let’s be honest: Max wasn’t there. And we never truly know what happened to Max in those five years. We have hints but nothing concrete. Thus it’s up to the player to decide on Max’s motivations or reasons.

If we go for a fact-based game, here is what we know:

Max left Arcadia Bay five years ago with her parents, after William’s death.

Max has an unidentified disorder that has resulted in her having an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) and notes in her student file. (Do note, girls don’t usually get IEPs, so for Max to have one says this was something significant in her past.)

Max is not scientifically-minded or interested in medicine. She’s more into the arts and her grades are adequate... but her photography skills are why she is at Blackwell Academy.

Max actually knows what the medication in Joyce’s bathroom drawer is for and hopes Chloe doesn’t have to take this. Do note, Max doesn’t express an interest in science or medicine thus her knowing what a medication is says she has been exposed to it in some way in the past.

Max considers herself to be inadequate and doesn’t take the initiative unless other people push her. That said, when it comes to protecting and helping Chloe she actually starts taking the initiative for herself and growing as a woman.

This is what we know about Rachel:

Rachel was an important part of Chloe’s life to the point Chloe calls Rachel “her angel” and states outright that Rachel saved her life. It is implied this is an actual event that is not spoken of but could very well have been more psychological.

Rachel and Chloe were close, to the point that Chloe felt it was a betrayal of trust (to the level of being cheated upon) when she found hardcore evidence that Rachel had been sleeping with Frank Bowers.

Rachel was hiding an “intense” relationship (that was not with Frank) from Chloe and wrote Chloe a letter and left it in their hangout. The letter was crumpled up and thrown in a waste bin (that was otherwise not used) and it was strongly implied that Rachel wanted Chloe to find the letter. In the letter, Rachel outright stated that Chloe was jealous of Rachel flirting with other people (the whole “stink eye” comment in the letter).

Rachel very likely was in a relationship with her teacher, Mark Jefferson, to the point that a number of students believed it was sexual. This includes Victoria Chase who was trying for something similar, so it seems unlikely to just be sour grapes or trying to smear Rachel’s name.

Rachel still cared very much for Chloe, but Rachel had moved on. At the very least Rachel cheated on Chloe while concealing her infidelity with more than one partner. Rachel didn’t want to lose Chloe’s friendship but was not interested in anything more than friendship at this point.

This is just from the core Life is Strange itself. With Before the Storm the waters become muddier. You have Max and Chloe having texted and emailed initially and then Max, for some reason, stopped talking to Chloe. This honestly was handled poorly by Deck Nine, almost as if the writers wanted to deliberately break the relationship between Max and Chloe so that fans would be more invested in Deck Nine’s interpretation of Rachel. This behavior becomes even worse after you see the ending of Farewell with a tape to Chloe that I have to suspect Chloe listened to until it finally broke.

Similarly, Rachel herself started out as a manipulative ambiguous character who did some unethical things. One thing that she does in-game if you chose to have Chloe offer Victoria well-wishes for the play is drug Victoria’s tea which, given we see Victoria taking a couple relaxants due to being anxious before the play’s start, means Victoria suffered a drug overdose and then was ignored while Rachel steps in and “saves the day” while at the same time refusing to listen to Chloe insisting she didn’t want to be in the play and giving her no choice at all.

In fact, Before the Storm frequently robs Chloe of her agency. She cannot refuse Rachel in every major decision. She can’t say “no” to the two-truths-and-a-lie game. She can’t refuse to jump off the train (and is pushed off the train - not a safe thing to do to her!) and has to help Rachel rob the couple of their wine. She has to do the play, she has to get money for Rachel to run away, she has to basically do event after event. Now, there were a couple instances of this in the first Life is Strange (like having to search for beer bottles) but after that Chloe gives agency to Max (telling Chloe where to shoot). Even when Max is taped up by Mark Jefferson, she still has agency and her own actions to free her leg is the only reason that David Madsen is able to stop Mark Jefferson.

Unfortunately, Before the Storm falls off the rails the moment Damon Merrick shows up in the junkyard to stab Rachel. Rachel vanishes from the game as an active part, Chloe is forced to become a potential felon to find information Rachel wanted despite the fact Rachel could have used this same combination to have broken into her father’s office herself once she was out of the hospital, and the ending is a twisted mess of stupidity, white knighting from NPCs, and a “twist end” that pissed off the entire fandom.

The irony is that Chloe in Life is Strange keeps comparing Max to Rachel. But when you talk to Joyce, Joyce suggests the opposite was true: Chloe was constantly talking about Max to Rachel. Now, Joyce may have been lying through her teeth. This is a woman who allowed her daughter to be abused for years so she’d not be alone... and who within two months of William’s death was flirting with some strange guy at the diner she works at and left a very flirtatious note (to the point that Max, dear wallflower “I don’t want to make waves” Max, said “she might as well proposed to him.” Max knew when William died. She saw the date of the receipt so... yeah). It is entirely possible that Joyce said “Chloe was talking about you always” to try and convince Max to stay and help “calm Chloe down” (while knowing she could easily shut Max up if Max got uppity about the abuse because Max doesn’t like to make waves).

One other thing to realize about Max is this: Max is only as manipulative as you, the player, make her out to be. (Similarly, Chloe can be a nice, snarky but otherwise polite girl to nearly everyone in BtS... or be quite unpleasant to folk.) But even at her most manipulative, she only Rewinds a conversation with Chloe a couple of times - one to make Chloe feel better about Max’s life in Seattle, and those times she is trying to save Chloe’s life and needs to choose a specific option (or even to keep her from killing Frank). In short, Max doesn’t lie to Chloe or manipulate her to fall in love with her, she treats Chloe with respect and as an intelligent young woman.

With Rachel? In BtS she is manipulative and refuses to take “no” for an answer while keeping her own cards close to her vest. I actually like Rachel in the original LiS better, seeing that we had a young woman depicted who obviously cared for Chloe and was trying to avoid hurting Chloe even as she was having relationships with other people.

Personally, I don’t find either to be a “worst friend ever.” Max wasn’t there for Chloe when Chloe really needed someone... but Rachel was. Rachel helped Chloe in a number of ways even as she apparently also enabled some of Chloe’s more antisocial tendencies. And while Max dragged her heels on getting back in touch with Chloe when she returned to Blackwell, when push came to shove she moved Heaven and Earth to try and protect Chloe and help Chloe find the truth about Rachel.

Nor did Rachel “deserve” to die, and anyone who suggests that should step back and take a long look at why they think that way.

But if Rachel had lived? Then I honestly think Chloe and her would have broken up. Rachel had moved on. She had things she wanted to do, places she wanted to be, and Chloe was too scared to leave Arcadia Bay (and leave her mother alone with Chloe’s abuser). I have to think Rachel would have done her best to stay as friends with Chloe... and who knows? Maybe she would have been good friends with Max. And when Max returned, it may very well be Max who fixed the rift that might have grown between the two so they could be friends again at the very least. Because that’s a very Max sort of thing to do.

#lis #life is strange #max caulfield #chloe price #rachel amber #life is strange: before the storm #life is strange: farewell #lis: before the storm #lis: bts #lis: farewell #william price #joyce price #david madsen #frank bowers #mark jefferson #victoria chase #arcadia bay #my posts

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marginalgloss · 5 years

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the end and the way

‘The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.’

It’s hard to know what more there is to say about The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin. There are probably theses enough out there to fill whole bookshelves. Gender, politics, class, the occult; this is in many ways a modest sort of novel but it is rich with thematic portent.

I mean ‘modest’ in the best possible sense. But some of it has not aged especially well. It is a bit dated now, but then so is almost any cultural product from any period you care to name — for a thing to be ‘dated’ is simply to wear the outward marks of the society that formed it. This was published in 1969, at a time when pop culture was beginning to encroach on the territory of art; science fiction in particular would become the genre of choice for novelists with a tendency for blending philosophy with action and politics. This book is full of at least two of those things.

The political threads aren’t subtle, but if the novel is shot through with them, they aren’t easy to untangle. The competing nations of the homeworld portrayed here seem like an obvious parallel for the USSR and the West in the late 60s, but we are given no clues as to which is which. Often the novel seems to take what a contemporary reader might expect from science fiction and deliberately invert it. Technological fetishism goes out the window. There are no flying cars on Gethen. The natives have vehicles, but they simply cannot conceive of why anyone would want to travel above 30mph — and they find the idea of flying machines horrifying. The most sophisticated item of Gethen technology in this novel is a portable stove that can last for fifteen months without being refuelled.

Think of those planets of sexed-up humanoids in the original series of Star Trek, which would have been just about finishing up its original run when this book was published. Think also of that show’s idea of a Federation of enlightened souls, spreading their will across a galaxy via a combination of negotiation and gunboat diplomacy. All of that is neatly inverted here. There’s a Federation of sorts, but it is vast, ponderous, and comparatively toothless. Its ambassador has no crew behind him, no weapons of any kind. He is the opposite of a hero. And the aliens are not aliens at all. They are simply another version of humanity.

For almost every day of each month, the Gethenians are androgynous and effectively asexual. It is only for a few brief days that they enter a period of ‘kemmer’, in which each individual temporarily becomes male or female, and intensely fertile. They regard human sexuality with a combination of suspicion and amusement — to them it is akin to a state of constant perversion. From this situation the author draws all kinds of conclusions about the nature of their society. Encountered today, some of these conclusions seems questionable. I wondered about the seeming lack of taboo, and the absence of sexual assault on Gethen — since life must stop for kemmer, there can be no repression, but such an absolute form of compartmentalisation seems a little too ethically neat. And more broadly, I’m not sure it is really convincing that their world has never developed the same impulses towards mass conflict, organised religion, nationalism and fast travel simply because of the absence of a constant sex drive in both genders.

And then there’s the curious issue of the pronouns. The novel’s insistent use of ‘he’ for the ambigendered people of Gethen reads oddly today. China Miéville has provided a new introduction to my edition in which he anticipates this question, and provides a little context — apparently LeGuin later agreed with those critics who argued that ‘he’ is a long way being a neutral signifier, but she chose to leave the text of the novel unchanged. I feel like that was probably the right decision, even if it’s one that requires a disclaimer that a similar novel wouldn’t be written in this way today.

I suspect that readers approaching this book might be disappointed if they are expecting to be enlightened about what it feels like to belong to an androgynous or ambiguous category of gender. There isn’t much of that here. It is mostly an exercise in political speculation, written from the point of view of an outsider attempting, and mostly failing, to come to terms with the essential differences between him and the people around him. And that’s fine. But it is for the most part a novel of cold, dry understatement. I say ‘for the most part’ because, after quite a few chapters of elusive political backtalk comes the most memorable sequence in the whole book: a long, long trek across the frozen Gethen wilderness.

The narrator has been rescued by his friend Estraven from a labour camp in the middle of nowhere. Together they trek over eight hundred miles across the frozen wilderness, pulling a sledge on skis, and surviving off meagre rations. It is probably the most intense sequence in the whole novel, made all the more stark because of its featureless quality. There is a certain amount of action — accidents, falling in ravines and the like — but the action is somehow besides the point. It is the relationship between the two that makes the pages fly by at this point. And does anything happen between them? Of course. But it is so understated as to defy any expectations we might have as to what would constitute a romance. In its way, it is extremely moving, and again: this is what I mean by ‘modest’. The most dynamic, expressive relationship in this book is between two lonely souls trudging through oblivion, for week after week, for no reason other than to go on living.

#books #Ursula Le Guin #the left hand of darkness

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sanrionharbor-blog · 5 years

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Thoughts on Sansa S8 Endgame

Speculations galore! Long post ahoy!

Let’s run through every possibility I can think of for the end of show-Sansa’s story (and yes, there will be many more possibilities besides these because GOT is layers upon layers, man, I’m still new to the fandom, and there’s probably a lot I’ve missed).

At the very least, let’s do this categorically.

Dead, Alive, or a Fate Worse Than Death?

1. I’d bet money that Sansa survives the whole dang thing

2. But if she does die…it could be A) Sacrifice to save Arya, Jon, and/or Bran, B) in a possible collapse of Winterfell, C) after ensuring the demise of Cersei or a similar threat, D) something worthy of a song

3. Crack Theory: Sansa Becomes the Night Queen?

Shipping...

1. Let’s start with the most popular ship: Jonsa. While I’m not personally a Jonsa fan, I neither hate it nor see it as a complete impossibility. And while I’m not personally a Jonerys fan, I neither hate it nor see it as a no-brainer. Jonsa makes sense practically (uniting Targ and Stark, North & South; they already trust one another; cousin marriage isn’t considered incest in-universe, etc.), though I’m not entirely convinced if the show goes this direction that it would be the most romantic ship ever. The best I see is that it has vibes similar to Ned/Cat when they were first married to one another; they didn’t love each other romantically at first, but it would come with time. As for political!Jon Theory making this ship possible, while I wouldn’t completely put it past the GOT universe to make Jon that cold, it honestly doesn’t jive with what I think is at the core of Jon: which is a hardscrabble sort of nobility, decency, honesty. I mean, if he was politcal!Jon, wouldn’t he have come up with a smoother way to handle Cersei in their first meeting? Anyhoot, the ship isn’t hateful. I think the biggest obstacles are the fact that, even though they are technically cousins, they were raised as brother and sister. You don’t just erase that. This is somewhat “remedied” by the fact that they were never close and Sansa pretty much treated him as a whole-lot-less-than-a-brother for most of their childhood. But GOT has never shown incestuous relationships (again, I don’t really consider historically based cousin relationships as incestuous, but it is a close family bond never-the-less) as a good thing. At all. The Targ’s went mad; Dany’s brother was creepy as fudge; UMM Jaime x Cersei dear Lord; Craster and his Merry Brood, etc. (But this mainly just spells doom for Jonerys, IMHO). So, as with anything in GOT--it’s possible, it’s also not possible, there’s undertones, but there’s undertones for the complete opposite thing happening, etc. Lastly, as for the “romantic framing” of S7, I think it falls under that same maybe/maybe-not. I LOVE Jon and Sansa’s dynamic, even if I don’t see it as romantic, even if does or does not end up romantic. It is certainly one thing: intimate. And the framing (forehead kiss, bittersweet reunion, worrying for one another’s safety) supports that at the very least. If they don’t end up romantically, Jon is the last real strong male relative that Sansa has. That’s not to diss Bran, but D&D have made him a remote magical old man stuck in a teenager’s body. In some ways, he’s dead to Sansa too (as Meera said, “You died in that cave.”). The poetry, the irony, is that the people Sansa had the most problems with in her family (Arya and Jon) are all that Sansa has left now (yes, yes, I love Bran, but again he’s acting more like a solo unit than a family unit at this point)--and she realizes how much they’ve always meant to her. Jon, and Arya for that matter, are different sides of Sansa, just as she is a different side for each of them. The parallels are lovely, and this ship could very well set sail.

2. My personal favorite: Sanrion (Sansa x Tyrion, Tyrion x Sansa, whatever the preferred parlance is). Yes, I’m biased, so this entry will be the longest--BUT, let’s remove my shipper goggles. This, to me, is just as possible as Jonsa. That is, I don’t see it as guaranteed at all, but there’s plenty to read from the text. Let’s get the trouble spots out of the way: 1) the build-up has been few and far in-between since S4 (though they did throw us a bone in S7). 2) the 50/50 chance of Tyrion dying in S8 (no, I’m not basing this on “leaks,” interviews, or what-not--I’m just using this as a baseline guess, given that this is GOT and given that Tyrion is at the center of a very dangerous web of relationships), 3) the show possibly not wanting to ask a twentysomething actress and a nearly 50-year-old actor to act out anything deliberately romantic (however, I don’t expect an on-screen ship to be anything but unconventionally romantic--I very much see it being done with subtle dialogue, color theory, ambiguous looks, an epilogue, etc), and 4) Tyrion may or may not be in love with Daenerys. None of these trouble spots spells doom for me. The greatest “doom” is simply Sansa ending up alone (thematically possible) or with someone else (also thematically possible). Let’s break down counter-points to the trouble spots, then I’ll list my reasons why this ship could sail. 1) Almost all relationships in GOT are troubled and/or unconventional, built up over one season, hidden underneath layers of symbolism, or suffer from the fact that one or both partners are either dead or seperated (by this same token, Sansa’s other popular ships, Jonsa and Sansan, also suffer the same dearth of “development” or copious screen time. Arguably, Jonsa’s foundations were mostly built over the later seasons), 2) yeah, Tyrion could die (and I would be heartbroken but not blindsided) or Tyrion could live (but I would bet money that Sansa lives through the whole thing), 3) the show already put them through the most awkward phase of their “relationship” (i.e., their wedding night, though it was toned down compared to the books) and they can still sell this relationship in any number of ways (again, dialogue, color theory, looks, just holding hands again geez Louise), 4) Tyrion’s “love” for Daenerys is incredibly debatable and may only be used as fuel for a soap opera plot that I really hope doesn’t happen, but even the director of the S7 finale said Tyrion’s main concern was political and Dinklage proposed the idea that Tyrion only “think he’s in love” with Dany, that what most people feel for Dany is awe (I’m neither a Dany fan or hater, but it’s hard to deny that she’s shocking, enthralling, powerful, attractive, a force, for lack of a better term). Now, on to the practical/thematical reasons why I think this ship would work. Let’s use letters for this, haha. A) Fairy Tale parallels/Turning Tropes Upside Down: It’s easy to read inversions of fairy tale archetypes into Sansa’s storyline, as that is what her character is naturally drawn to: songs, princesses, true love, beauty. So far in the story she has learned that looks can be deceiving; life is not a song (though I wouldn’t be surprised if GRRM turns this on its head again, and Sansa simply learns that all great tales involve sorrow and darkness as well as joy and light--i.e., bittersweet vs. simply sweet); people are not black and white (Tyrion shows her that the Lannisters aren’t necessarily all evil and Littlefinger shows her that allies, even someone who loved her mother, are not necessarily all good); etc. Just some of the fairy tales/tropes that play into Sansa’s personal storyline and the subtext of Sansa x Tyrion include: Beauty and the Beast, Psyche and Cupid, Hades and Persephone, The Princess in the Tower archetype, and many, many more (I’ll meta about it one of these days--and there are already many excellent posts under the Sansa tag that expound on these). B) The Queen Elizabeth Theory: So Sansa has parallels with two remarkable historical Queen Elizabeths: Elizabeth of York and Queen Elizabeth I. Since this has been said by so many before, here’s a quote and link to the article as summary: “The show is based off the War of the Roses, the real-life family feud between the Lancasters and Yorks that ended with the two broods combining their houses. Since the storyline happening at the end of season seven is extremely similar to this moment in history, we can infer that GoT will follow that path...” Link C) Character Actions Written Especially For the Show: Just to name a few: GRRM purposely changed a moment in the books to where Sansa hands Tyrion a cup instead of him having to crawl underneath a table to do so; Tyrion remains loyal to his wedding vows (and this is probably inspired by his trauma for having killed his father and lover as well) even when it was very possible that Sansa had left him high-and-dry and the marriage was, in Tyrion’s own words, a “sham marriage”; Sansa and Tyrion both stick up for one another’s character, etc., and D) Also, aren’t they technically married? :-p [There’s a lot more, but again, I’ll save that for a future meta]

3. Sansan: While there may end up being a slight possibility in the books, I don’t think show-Sansa and show-Sandor are heading in this direction. However, the same fairytale motifs play into play here: Beauty and the Beast, Hades and Persephone, etc. Also, bridge4 over on Youtube has a fabulous analysis of the “unKiss” over on his channel, which I think could pop up in some shape or form in S8. Here’s the link

4. Sansa Alone: Also supports the Queen Elizabeth theory. Specifically, Elizabeth I “the Virgin Queen.” This would a different form of poetry/irony: Sansa, the one who wanted most to be a queen consort and be married to a handsome king and have babies, ends up as a queen (full-stop) but leverages her power as a single lady. Not my favorite ending for Sansa, as I’m Teh Unabashed Romantic, but it’s plausible, thematic, pragmatic. Only time will tell!

The Fate of the North, Night King, Direwolf Theorizing

Just spitballing various takes:

1. The war is “won” (as in mankind survives), but Winterfell or possibly the entire North is compromised. As in, perhaps they have to trade the North to the Winter King at the promise he won’t invade the rest of Westeros. Or Winterfell explodes, so the North and all of Westeros is saved but the Starks lose their home

2. The Starks deliberately blow up Winterfell, for any number of reasons. Perhaps a bunch of wights or what-nots ended up there. Perhaps the dead in the Crypts were resurrected, and this was the only way to neutralize that threat. Or something deeper and darker lurks in the Crypts, something worse than the Night King. In fact….

3. Maybe the true enemy ends up being something awoken within the Crypts of Winterfell, and the Night King is not what he seems….

4. The old gods play an unexpected role

5. The godswood is burned or ends up in splinters or is used to create a new throne (ending the age of iron, fire, blood and making this a “time for wolves”)

6. Sansa’s direwolf Lady is resurrected (of course, poor Lady is headless…) and manages to wound Cersei (if she gets her arse up north, which seems unlikely) before Cersei’s killed by whoever the heck the Valonquar is

7. Speaking of, could Ghost be the Valonquar? I mean, he was the runt, the littlest brother of the brood. Eh, dunno. I just don’t expect the Valonquar to be anything close to what we think he/she/it/them is.

8. I like the idea of parts of the ocean being permanently frozen over because of something the Night King does. Dunno why. I don’t think there’s any foreshadowing to that in the show; it just sounds cool, and represents a permanent consequence to the land. Because I do not expect there to be zero consequence for the landscape of Westeros itself. The Greyjoy’s are already kinda sorta doomed (with eunuch Theon being the last male of that line, unless Euron’s got a kid somewhere and he ends up surviving to take the throne and not be a dick about it), so it’d be a bit of tragic poetry if their islands, their seas were frozen and lifeless but thanks to their efforts the rest of Westeros is safe and their people will have to make a life on land

9. One or both remaining dragons are frozen for all timez

10. Sansa becomes Queen in the North or Queen of the Seven Kingdoms (is there really an in-between?)

Bonus

Lastly, here’s just an observation on an important part of Sansa’s storyline and character development: Arya Stark. I believe Sansa and Arya adopted different pieces of the original storylines in GRRM’s book proposal outline--not that I put much stock in the outline. Sansa was created, at first, to add tension to the Stark family. GRRM says he was surprised by Sansa’s developments; he also says he empathizes with whichever character he is currently writing, so I think he just naturally found things that he liked in Sansa that made her more than a complication device. Because his original vision included Arya as the sole Stark daughter, I wouldn’t be surprised if Sansa and Arya aren’t the result of this once singular character being developed into two very different ways. The archetypal Amazon Wild Child and the Princess in the Tower. Two sides of the same coin--or, in Ned’s words, Sansa is the sun to Arya’s moon and vice-versa. For this reason, I don’t put it past Sansa to continue developing her personal brand of Brave Northern Lady and Arya developing her personal brand of Brave Northern Lady. Because that is what they both are: brave, northern, ladies. Will Sansa find herself at the center of a love triangle? I really, really hope not, but at this point if it is gonna happen I find it much more likely with Sansa than with Arya.

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