#too many unanswered questions about the fucking conflict
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I was mulling over Harry Potter recently and I think one of the reasons it doesn't really appeal that much to me is the worldbuilding is not my cup of tea. In the context we are given wizards and witches are far too powerful to be hiding from Muggle nations. Wizards have the capability to mind control, memory wipe, easily create Muggle-repelling charms over entire locations that confuse and disorientate, as well as have teleportation, portkeys, Floo powder, spatial magic, invisibility, etc. Wizards sharing a planet with Muggles is positively Lovecraftian, like Cthulhu being just next door and closer.
With basic evolutionary patterns, Darwinism, the fact wizards can be disappointingly human and their leanings to fascist elements in their history (so many Anti-Muggle Dark Lords), they'd have wiped Muggles out by the BCE period, or at least not be hiding from them in a way that's the equivalent of the United States hiding from Monaco. It wouldn't take that many wizards, and in the book we are provided no evidence of our Muggle tech being able to withstand something as dynamic, tricky and reality warping as magic.
Power Dynamics
"They can strike anywhere at any time before anyone knows it."
The power dynamic from what we are shown in the books are very wonky and infinitesimally so unequal one begins to wonder if owls hide from slugs. Perhaps if JK Rowling had depowered wizards more by incorporating clearer weakness and faults in the magic system, such as perhaps no apparition (I mean, they already have portkeys, Floo powder, brooms, greedy wizards), more limits to the mind control like showing Muggles can fight it off, made wards and Muggle-repelling charms more fragile (maybe have that they can only be set up in certain geographical places either choking with magic or idk related to runic stuff and ley lines), as well as perhaps indicate that the average shielding charms can't withstand heavy kinetic onslaught from a heavy duty weapon like an AK-47, etc., it might have felt more understandable why the Muggle World and Wizarding World have the relationship they do.
Because, in the canon, we are given no concrete reasons why the wizarding world chooses to hide other than Muggles being a bother, probably asking for cures to cancer or something. In the canon, we are never presented with any Muggle technology that justifies the Wizarding World being under threat if the Statute of Secrecy breaks. We can speculated, but we can speculate either way depending on our mood. You'd think this would be more defined since the conflict centralises on Wizards and Muggles (including their offspring) existing.
Ethical Concerns For Mugs
"With this rep, I guess we deserve to be mindwiped whatever our consent."
Regarding certain implications in the books, there are a number of ethical concerns that don't feel they're given the weight and attention they deserve considering the themes. One is the overuse of memory charms, a mental violation which are hinted to cause brain damage. Considering how much wizards obliviate and violate Muggles' minds as well as cover up their deaths, that's practically fridge horror. Wizards, both good and bad, also often subvert Muggle democracy and freedom of information, and are quite authoritarian and devil-may-care about this. The Harry Potter narrative never really fully tackles this or shows any real critiques or changes in regards to the Statute of Secrecy and Muggles.
Considering the over all message of the books is anti-authoritarianism, anti-fascism, freedom and even saying Muggles aren't 'lesser' beings, these actions contradicts the themes and kind of makes all the wizards look pretty morally bankrupt when they continue to do this even after the 17 Years Later epilogue. In all honesty, this actually impacts the characterisation of our protagonists in a way I don't particularly like, especially since Hermione is Minister For Magic for a period of time.
Muggles & It's Just Fantasy
"Hi boring people we're fighting an entire conflict over, just passing through."
Suspension of disbelief is a tricky thing and so is the way a writer earns it. I think it would be more okay if Harry Potter was a purely separate fantasy world similar to Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, but the author has Muggle society (aka our 'logical' world) develop the exact same way despite sharing the planet with the logic-breaking magical world since the dawn of time and evolution. With all the factors shown in HP, these powerful, reality-warping wizards would fuck up our history and society so much we Muggles would either be dead or coughing out live elephants every time we ate a salad on a regular basis.
Over all, I feel the Muggles need to be more of a threat and have more going for them to explain why the wizards are hiding from them. Otherwise a wizard could teleport around the land of Muggles and just put Muggle-repelling charms on the British Parliament, all the nation's hospitals, police stations, banks, etc. and just watch the chaos. Okay, next stop, the Nuclear power stations and missile silos. By the Muggle world existing it intrinsically forces reality into a fantasy that doesn't want it.
#anti harry potter#harry potter critical#muggles#muggles are written as inferior#read the books but they ain't for me#will we ever learn hermione's parents' first names?#can muggle technology do anything?#can a shielding charm protect against radioactive particles and an atomic blast?#major canon gaps#anti hp#worldbuilding#bad writing#too many unanswered questions about the fucking conflict
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unpopular opinion: with beyond the spiderverse being delayed indefinitely because of the strike, i honestly, unironically hope spiderverse 3 is just cancelled entirely.
i like the way spiderverse 2 ended. it's an open ending. so many things can happen from it. the fact it ends in a way that can spawn so many timelines is just such a perfect way to wrap up the story. because honestly, what would a spiderverse 3 have to offer but one definite ending?
Gwen gathering the Spider-People has the same vibe as the Bolivian Army Ending, where the heroes charge into insurmountable odds and...it just ends there. It's just so perfect, for a film that revolves around an infinite multiverse full of potential. Anything can happen now. Let the audiences' imagination run wild. How does it end? However you imagine it to.
Me putting this into sections isnt to be condescending this is just how I talk. Also I wrote this at like 12am and am just posting it now so bear with me
1.) the point of the story isn't "multiple timelines." It's about focusing on saving one person. It's about your loved ones around you and how your lives intertwine and effect each other. So an open-ending like at the end of atsv would conflict with the core theme of the series. Since SEEING how Miles is able to/not able to save his dad is important. Seeing how Miguel's perception of the multiverse changes based on whether that happens, is important.
2.) dawg do you think that it's gonna be "happily ever after" at the end of btsv ?? I see where you're coming from, but this just completely misses the whole point of Spider-Man. The point is that Peter always has a life beyond the mask, and how Spider-Man always has a life beyond Peter Parker. After every Spider-Man ending, it's never been "closed book, shows over." He's lives beyond the story.
2.a.) it's not an open ending, it's a set-up. Those are 2 different things with 2 different narrative build-ups and narrative purposes. The reason that so many people hated the ending of tasm2 is BECAUSE it was a set-up that never got followed through. That's exactly what would happen with atsv. There's too many questions unanswered to constitute an (at least well-written) open ending. A set-up and an open ending are two different things
2.b.) it's a spider-man trilogy, come on man (lighthearted).
Now the most important one:
3.) THE ARTISTS WANT TO WORK ON THE MOVIE. THE ARTISTS WANT TO WORK.
the strikes are NOT because the movie shouldn't happen. They are NOT because people don't want to work. They are happening as a last resort, because every other plea for better working conditions haven't worked. There is probably and ENTIRE history before the strikes the neither of us even know about.
Although the Spider-Verse movies, and movies in general, are created on the broken backs of workers, the movies are not the problem. People want to make movies. Especially movies with so much obvious passion going into them. The problem is executives who REFUSE to use even a penny to pay their workers fair wages. Or REFUSE to give good working conditions, to the people making their fucking movies.
Every artist I have seen talk about this movie (it's a lot. See spiderverseconceptart) has spoken about how much they LOVED IT. the artists love to create art. That's why they're artists. But it's the mistreatment that makes it a taxing, traumatic experience.
The point is that artists should be treated fairly while doing what they love. Not that they shouldn't be doing what they love.
BTSV getting cancelled would be heartbreaking for both the audience and the people creating it.
TLDR; you're allowed to have your opinion. But I believe it both fundamentally disagrees with the core of the movies, and the point of the strikes. Or at the very least the feelings of many people working on Spider-Verse
#jonahs lemonade stand#Leo txt#🍓🦋#it's late as fuck I only read over this twice so gl#spider posting#<- tags added last night#spiderverse
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Lets be honest, if it wasnt for walter, we could have more mistynat, and we could hvae more tai if it werent for the editors to be cutting alot of her scenes this season
I don't think we would have had more MistyNat without Walter. Hot take, I guess.
Misty would have just gone searching for Natalie alone. The season was 7 days and 4 of those days were Misty investigating where Natalie could be, 1.5 were road trip days, and then the last day and a half was cult days.
We could have had more adult!Taissa if the season wasn't a week long, because she was actively trying to outsmart her sleepwalking (poorly) and people can do that for like 3 days in a row without any resting breaks, so she had the first few days of getting the dog and eating caffeine pills like candy & discovering biscuit, where we saw her trying not to fall asleep but she probably did for a little bit, the fourth or fifth day was the car crash, the next day was hitch-hiking to Ohio and she slept that night when she got to Van's, then it was a road trip and they got to Lottie's.
Honestly, most of the issues I have with the adult timeline are directly related to the fact it was only a week long. Because we really couldn't delve into too much Taissa without leaving so many cliffhangers/unanswered questions. Whereas right now a lot of the questions people have about Taissa's plot can be answered with: it's not even been a week. "Why hasn't she called her wife" it's been two days. "Where is Sammy" with Simone's family like was stated in season 1. "Why isn't she trying to get Sammy" she is not safe, she told Simone and Sammy to leave. She knows she's unwell.
I do think they shafted teen!Taissa this season which sucks hard. Her role was seriously downgraded and they left a lot to be desired, she became support for her white gf and white best friend which is pretty fucked up considering there was a lot of space in the teen timeline that could have been dedicated to Taissa and Van having conflict over Lottie's "leadership". They sort of dropped that storyline which, imo, also sucks because I think this would have been a good place to have Taissa struggling with supporting Van's newfound spirituality and Lottie's whole group therapy stuff while leaning on Shauna for support! It also would have created a great conflict point for season 3 of: why isn't Taissa okay with Lottie's power but when Lottie hands it over to Natalie, who Taissa views as a rational peer, it's okay to have a "leader" or "chosen" one? Especially since she considered herself to be a leader and in line to be picked as queen, y'know?
Lots of thoughts, lots of thoughts.
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The greatest unanswered question remains, "Why the fuck did I subject myself to TBB S2?"
I unfortunately do not even mean that in a, "Wow this broke me forever Star Wars is so tragic" kind of way, I just mean every narrative decision made from start to finish was cheap and offensive (ableist, among other things) and reminds me of that particular wave of indie movies that were popular a few years back where the douchiest most unsatisfying endings possible were the only goal.
I'm not even categorically against unsatisfying endings when there's a coherent and worthwhile theme being delivered. Sadly TBB is not thematically coherent, nor is Bury Your Autists a worthwhile theme.
In light of all this, what was the fucking point of Tech's romance with Phee? Just to make his death an even more cheap shot than it was? What was the point of exploring his neurodivergence just to have him die the way so many autistic people live- putting the group above themselves at all cost? Why bother with the thematic conflict outlined in the interactions between Hunter and Echo if ultimately the Batch just gets (and clones as a whole get) the worst of both worlds either way?
In general I'm really tired of Disney Star Wars not being able to decide on an audience and stick with it. You can't be a kids' show and an edgelord show and a show about family and whatever else TBB is going for all in one. I'm less annoyed that it's not for me and more that there's nobody it's actually FOR, because Disney execs are too greedy to settle for appealing to any consistent sense of a target audience at all.
This is, of course, par for the course of whatever stage of capitalism we're in, and while it may not be killing people the way social policies that would make Ayn Rand wet and our hostile built environments are, it stands as yet another example that the profit motive is ultimately not for humans.
Yes I am this salty over a kids' show. And you should be too.
#tbb spoilers#the bad batch spoilers#tbb tech#tbb echo#tbb omega#tbb crosshair#tbb wrecker#tbb hunter#phech#techphee#shitty representation
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My Brief Review of Alien Dice (Day 1 to Day 27)
When I first started reading this comic, I thought it was going to suck, but now that I've reached well past the halfway point after riffing it nonstop for almost 3 years, I feel that the comic is probably the most objectively well made comic in this blog. It has likable protagonists, cool worldbuilding and this comic knows how to have stakes, that being said I'd be a fucking liar if I said this comic had nothing bad in it, and sadly I'm afraid the bad outweights the good, let's get into it.
PLOT & WRITING
The comic starts with our protagonist, Chel, spending the night at her home when she meets a strange two-tailed cat and a blue alien named Lexx who is hunting for the cat. Chel then nurtures Lexx after he gets injured and learns that Lexx is an Alien Dice player, who has come to Earth to hunt for dice animals. Chel t´hen ends up in his spaceship, where she learns about Lexx's origins, the true nature of the game, the true nature of the dice, and soon is taken into an adventure of a lifetime as she meets Lexx's friends and foes. She also has to tolerate Lexx's unstable personality problems, ends up having her fed family go after Lexx, learns about the horrible society ADC has created in the galaxy, and finslly is taken through countless twists and turns, half of which make no sense.
In terms of writing, Alien Dice is probably the only comic in my blog that can create a good balance of comedy and very grimdark stuff. Comedy is often saved for lighter moments and not in the middle of a serious event. Granted, there is one aspect that can ruin the seriousness of a scene, but that has nothing to do with writing, more on that in the Art section. While Alien Dice has good balance, it often can sometimes take FOREVER for stuff to progress. At the beginning the pacing wasn't bad, sometimes there would be a scene that'd go way too long here or there, but once Chel gets kidnapped we spend an ungodly long amount of time in Riley's spaceship, where we see too many scenes of Lexx training and his pets arguing. It gets even worse after Trasik's incident, once the Greys come and reprogram Lexx and get rid of his evil side, we spend an entire year without conflict. It's like this comic is looking to do everything but progress the plot, we have long scenes of Lexx and Victor having repetitive conversations, we have a pointless subplot where Keith tries to get relay and Zaile teaches him how to use it, we have ANIMAL ROMANCE, we have scenes where Lexx learns what light soup and salad tastes like and more animals playing and fighting. It's really tiresome when you're waiting for shit to get serious, and there are many unanswered questions. We don't even see a glimpse of many of the central cast, like Riley or Damian during these segments, not that it's a bad thing, but it shows you how much comfort Tiffany likes to put into the comic sometimes.
Another thing I'm not a huge fan of is how characters have tendency to flip their plans over several times. For example, Lexx doesn't want to live with Chel, but then someone says something to him which immediately makes him state "oh I want to live with Chel now", and then several pages later he is suddenly like "I don't want to live with Chel" again. It's very annoying and happens a lot throughout this comic, it makes you question just what is the future of Chel and Lexx. And it seems other characters are very easily convinced over anything.
Then we have the technology of the Dice world, the usual sci-fi tropes and such are often left unexplained, but when this comic introduces something unique, such as the concept of relays and dice animals, or even non-living dice, things get confusing. The nature of the Dice Animals is explained early on that they're living entities that take over another animal, as it seems to have happened with Chel's former cat Mittens, who was replaced by Stealth. However, Stealth shares Mittens's memories but still remembers Lexx from the past, and then it's later implied she always was Mittens, as opposed to always being Stealth. There is also the question of sentience for the Dice animals, they're like Digimon at first, technological creatures with sentience, but then you get into the fact they're capable of breeding, and can also "go feral" and turn back into animals with no speech or human-level intelligence. At some point Keith even calls them not quite human or animal. Then you add in the fact Zeta talks like a caveman while other dice talk normally, and Zeta is dumber than most dice as he has no concept of parenting according to Riley, and if I started talking about whether or not him impregnating Epsy was done with or without her consent, I'd be here all week. The point is, a lot of shit regarding dices is murky.
Relay starts off as mysterious, and Stealth putting it inside Chel is the main reason why Chel and Lexx have to be close, but overtime TIffany expands on it, and reveals the reason Lexx and Chel's relays are less advanced is because they have certain features disabled. But also apparently relay can even store "mind creatures", such as soul echoes, which are basically ghosts inside people's minds, and even creatures created by nanites, which can somehow possess people to the point of manipulating their physical strength, and it's never made quite clear how these creatures exist, and I feel Tiffany sort of regretted how confusing she made them, because "Evil Lexx" was eliminated from the comic as soon as his big moment came. If you're confused by all these words, I don't blame you, because I was just as confused by all of this when I read the comic.
Lastly there are the plot twists. The way how this comic treats plot twists is rather odd. For the first half of the comic, the audience knows big plot twists before the characters do, these are "Chel has relay", "Zaile is Lexx's brother", "Kane is NOT Lexx's sister" and so forth. But there are also whole bunch of plot twists that are implied but never followed upon, like Lexx possibly being an advanced form of dice animal himself (granted this is not abandoned, just never outright stated, and the further evolution of this twist - dice players with animalistic abilities being treated as slaves by other dice players - is eventually abandoned) or the secret role humans have in Alien Dice. When the big plot twists that do happen are stated, they often happen off-screen. Probably the most bizarre example of this is when Lexx tells Chel she has relay, we see Lexx open his mouth, but we see no words, then we see Chel's reaction and then she leaves and we see her crying. It's such a bizarre moment, you don't think Lexx told Chel anything and she just left, but no.
Then we get to the second half of plot twists, which are just ass pull after ass pull after ass pull. We got two big comic-changing plot twists back to back which had virtually no foreshadowing, first we learned that Lexx's mom was alive this whole time, and then it was revealed that Trasik, who had kidnapped Chel, was actually a mimic all along, and she didn't find out until after killing her. It was just a really stupid attempt at making Chel not look like a murderer. Sometimes murder is okay.
Overall, the writing is competent but has it's own issues as well.
CHARACTERS
One of the first things about Alien Dice's cast is that it has something no other comic riffed so far in this blog has, likable protagonists. I would actually argue Chel is the best character in this entire comic. Although she first is in Audience Surrogate role and doesn't do much besides follow Lexx around and nurture the dice animals, she eventually starts doing more and more things, she starts calling out other characters for being assholes, we slowly start to get a good view into her psyche and we also see that she is not a helpless damsel who needs Lexx to save her. Her biggest highlight is killing Trasik, she just goes and stabs her to death without hesitation. If it didn't turn out to be a mimic, I would be praising that scene so much more.
But yeah, Chel doesn't really have any moments where she does stupid things, if she does a mistake it's on purpose, the stupidest thing she probably has done is blurt out to Lexx that his mom is alive, but it seems Lexx forgets about it as soon as it's mentioned. Granted, she does have the indecisiveness I talked about in the writing section, but that's not a problem unique to her.
Then we have Lexx, the other main protagonist, Lexx has a really sad backstory and he is a more mysterious character who really needs someone like Chel in his life. Sadly, he is more of a mixed bag than Chel. He often does stupid things and acts like a complete idiot at times, which I'm not sure is intentional, as sometimes he will suddenly get psychosis and try to kill one of his dice, sometimes he just acts like an asshole to Chel for no reason, sometimes he makes justifications for his asshole friends (we'll get to them later) and sometimes he is acting like a creepy simp. It could be argued Evil Lexx is influencing him during some of these moments, but just talking about Evil Lexx gives me a headache, so let's say Evil Lexx has only influenced Lexx's actions once and that was when he possessed him. Lexx becomes a better person throughout the comic, but sometimes reset button is hit which makes him lose all his development, but eventually he regains his development out of nowhere. I would still argue Lexx is a protagonist worth rooting for, because the world he lives in, his predicament and his own friends are much worse than he is.
Then there's Lexx's pets, the Dice animals. I feel like these characters purely exist for merchandising reasons, because during my riff I saw a ton of pictures of posters, totebags, pins and stickers with these guys all over them. Tiffany however does try to give them development with mixed results. The main Dice is arguably Stealth, she starts off as a decent character, and she acts as a good conscience to Lexx at the beginning of the comic. Unfortunately as soon as she turns into her white puma form, not only does she look more and more ridiculous, she becomes a massive dick who is always ANGRY. Both her backstory and motivation are also quite confusing, like I said it's never really established if she has the mind of Stealth or mind of Mittens, and she wants freedom but also she wants to protect Chel and Lexx. She hates other dice animals for "stealing Chel/Lexx" but doesn't also like it if Chel/Lexx disrespect her independence. Eventually she stops hating other animals, but continues being kind of a dick throughout the rest of the comic with occassional moments of decency, but she's probably easier to listen to than look at, more about that on the Art section. Then there's Sirius, Sirius started off as creepy dog energy dice we nicknamed Dog Sothoth, but he somehow evolved into a dopey dragon thing. Sirius also starts wanting independence from Lexx, but outside of arguing with Stealth he doesn't really develop any of this, and soon becomes horny for Serenity, the random hyena who wasn't used at all until that point and then she suddenly turns into a palette swap of Sirius, and every page from then on looks like they're coming close to fucking right then and there.
While Tiffany generally keeps away from writing blatant romance, the ANIMAL ROMANCE segments make me feel dirty, and I don't think that would be the case if it wasn't for the original main dice of the series, Zeta. Zeta talks like a caveman unlike other dice, and it is eventually implied that he raped Epsy off-screen because he tells her "Zeta sorry. Zeta not know what he did". And it's justified because Zeta did not have the ability to think? Meanwhile this whole event causes Epsy to go feral, and this is all Epsy's fault because she laid Zeta's eggs. The consent on this entire thing is never cleared up, and I feel like Tiffany should've had second thoughts about this whole arc. So yeah, that's why I'm not fond of any other romances the chinpokomon in this comic have.
The only other dice with any sort of personality are Dash, who eventually becomes Stealth's lover after being a prose-spouting, Zeta-mauling, MURR HELLOIng idiot who Lexx once wanted to kill, as well as Swiftpaw. He is a winged fox who eventually develops fondness for Keith, and he does whole bunch of cutesy shit. There's also other dice but they have one note gimmicks, and rest are just straight up gone, like Lexx catches them and then we never see them again, remember the giant bat? Drunk kangaroo? The weird raccoon thing? Yeah, the less dice-focused this comic becomes, the more their presence feels like an afterthought outside of Stealth, Sirius, Zeta and the rest.
And then there's Lexx's so called friends, these assholes are the reason Lexx's understanding of certain social issues are so warped, to the point some of his flaws may be almost justified. First we have Damian, he went from a supportive friend of Lexx's into a greedy partyloving womanizer with a Pinocchio nose who didn't contribute anything, then there is Claudia, she straight up wants to rape Lexx at first. However, Claudia seems to eventually just go from a wannabe rapist to a desperate lover, but she doesn't get any better as a character. Claudia and Damian want Lexx to be their comfort doll, and while they're willing to protect him, they really dislike Chel and don't want her to be around. But they're the most likable characters in the world compared to the one who I think is not only the worst character in this comic but also the worst character in this entire blog, RILEY.
Where do I begin with Riley? He is Lexx's best friend and soul brother, but he has never done one good thing for Lexx or Chel. In his first appearance, he first tries to hit on Chel and then tries to use her to get chicks? After that, we learn that Riley is working for Lexx's brother Zaile, who hates him, and Riley knows a whole bunch of shit Lexx doesn't know, which we learn throughout the whole comic, he also knows that LEXX'S MOM WAS ALIVE THE WHOLE TIME. He is the brother of Trasik, the crazy child trafficking psychopath who wants to kill Lexx because she is racist against rishans, and a whole bunch of other siblings AND THEY ALL PLAY. Riley also belittles Lexx and reads his mind by force but doesn't let Lexx read his mind, victimblames and insults Lisaan for being a slave and a prostitute, drugs both Chel and Lexx in their sleep, calls Chel's breasts "deformed", enables his sister's child trafficking business, the list goes on and on. He is a manipulative piece of shit fucktard that might as well be the main antagonist, because almost all the problems in Lexx's life are his fault.
Speaking of let's move on to the ACTUAL antagonists. We learn slowly that ADC, which stands for Alien Dice Council if I remember correctly, controls the whole galaxy except for greys and Earth, they monitor Lexx constantly and try to kill him. They have destroyed semantics around the word "parents" so that anyone who doesn't have a caretaker qualifies as an orphan and thus can be sentenced to play the game, and the game itself is a hellish meatgrinder that is impossible to win, you can't kill yourself because nanites take control of your body and create unstable mutations within your mind, but you can easily be killed at any time, and ADC might as well kill you solely because you're popular, and they can also send mimics that can easily impersonate your loved ones.
Sounds like a pretty good case for a hateable antagonist, right? Unfortunately, whenever ADC appears on screen, it's two people, an orange haired loser who loves to be evil and a purple rishan woman who also loves to be evil, and she wants to kill off Lexx for whatever reason. These two are bland and rather than being portrayed as a dark shadow totalitarian despot government they're just two rich assholes who do the ohohohoho anime woman laugh when they see children starving. In a similar train is Trasik, the secondary antagonist of the comic, she wants to kill Lexx for some reason and eventually we learn she one day decided to become racist, because her father liked to go out with Lexx's mom. Bigotry really isn't part of her character though, she just loves to traffic children and try to kill Lexx for her own amusement, and then when Chel finally kills her we learn she has been replaced with a perfect mimic. I feel that Trasik and ADC both work better off as antagonists when they're off-screen. When we actually see them, they're bland and not complicated enough to be part of this universe. An antagonist who does work better is Saign who runs an Alien Dice slave ring, she has a grudge against Lexx so she wants to recruit her into her ring. However she never shows up again so what's the point. Riley should be the main antagonist of the comic more than anyone else.
As for the rest of the noteworthy characters, we have Keith and Victor, the most prevalent earthlings after Chel to appear. Victor is Chel's father and a determined Alien hunter who goes from hating Lexx and wanting to dissect him into respecting him as a living creature. The problem is we have to run in circles several times before he starts showing his more humble side, but other than that he is not an awful character, and he is right about Lexx's "friends" treating him like shit. Keith is a friend of Chel's, and he is okay when he isn't being a manchild or when Lexx isn't getting green eyes in his vicinity. And the subplot about him getting relay is completely pointless.
Really the last character worth talking about is Maenae. I usually dislike kid characters, but Maenae not only is likable but also she has a pretty sad backstory, and I wish she was used more as opposed to Lexx's asshole friends. Just, make sure she has clothes on.
There's one more thing that I want to talk about in this comic and that is the background characters. Often in crowd scenes we see a wide variety of different Georgelucasian aliens going out and about, but most major characters and many of the background characters outside of large public venues are just humans with another skin color. I feel like it's odd that there are fantastical aliens and also humans with wacky colors and let's face it, just regular ass humans with few quirks to make them "alien" among the aliens. Lexx's first opponent is a donut head crab alien which was pretty cool to see, but outside of that we never get any major character that are non-humanoid outside of greys and the Dice animals. I blame that on the lack of risks in the art department, and boy I've got a lot to talk about that one.
ART
I am not an art critic by any means. That being said I am aware that I can point out when certain art looks bad, weird or goofy. And I can safely make the statement that the worst thing about Alien Dice is the art. The art is a gigantic ball of inconsistency, and I don't know why. It seems that Tiffany isn't drawing characters based on existing references, and instead she is trying to desperately find an artstyle to stick to. This is demonstrated best with the evolution of main character herself, Chel.
Just look at how much she has changed over the years, at first you'd be like "yeah this is natural character evolution", but the third row is literally the character's design changing within the span of a year. I know constant redesigning of characters is a webcomic tradition by now, but the fact her design can just change in the middle of a page is ridiculous.
I would argue that the current iteration of Alien Dice has the most decent art, it has been up and down though, sometimes the artstyle has been good, and other times it has been shit. The weird thing is Lexx, Victor and Riley don't have this issue. They can sometimes look weird, but they also keep most of their facial structure, like I can buy them having refs for them that Tiffany comes back, unlike Chel whose skull's shape has probably changed 35 times by now.
And what happens when you combine inconsistent artstyle with a design that is not good at all? You get Stealth. More specifically Stealth's fourth form.
Stealth is just a sleep paralysis demon, there are times she looks decent but it depends entirely on the angle, the size of her face and whatever random artstyle Tiffany is going for that week. I genuinely think she needs to evolve into something that looks less like a realistic cat with human hair. If Sirius's fourth form can be based on a made up animal, why not Stealth?
I've bitched enough about the artstyle itself and how certain characters are affected by it, let's talk about another universal problem this comic has that has something to do with art, the chibi faces.
I don't hate chibi but it needs to be used in moderation, and mainly in comedic stuff. However Alien Dice tends to use chibi faces whether or not they're appropriate for the scene. They're not your typical anime faces though, many of them are instead unique exaggerated expressions, that have a lot in common with chibi. The most notorious one is the "Riley Eyes", where characters eyes turn simple and oval shaped, and Riley gets them a lot which is why they're named after him. There's also moments when characters get huge pillow mouths or their nose and mouth turns invisible. I feel like Tiffany didn't have talent to give characters exaggerated expressions so she struck to chibi faces. However over time the chibi faces are used less and less, but they don't disappear completely. Lexx's eyes losing their sclera seems to be something he does everytime he is angry, to the point I'm questioning if it's not a chibi face but rather anatomically part of his rishan expression.
There's also times when characters are drawn with chibi proportions, mainly in Relay, and this comic can't seem to make up just how chibi they are. They might just have big eyes and chibi proportions, sometimes they just look like literal children, sometimes there is no chibi proportions, but characters just do chibi faces. It's so damn confusing and I think Tiffany just gave up trying to be consistent on that department.
Yeah, the art is very inconsistent as a whole and on top of that has it's own issues. The layout of the pages is often very short but outside of few questionable page placement and speech bubble decisions, I didn't have any major issues with it.
FINAL WORDS
Alien Dice is the best webcomic on this blog, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't an avid reader of webcomics. The most you're gonna get out of it is a pairing of likable and rootable protagonists, some interesting but also confusing concepts and good worldbuilding, but it's all hidden behind a sidecast of horribly unlikeable assholes, terrible plot twists, pacing that can drag at times and insanely inconsistent art style that never really goes above mildly decent. I only riffed up until 2014 though and it's possible some of the issues in this comic may have been fixed, but also not really.
I feel like both the comic's good and bad parts helped to keep my interest going. At one point I actually considered abandoning riffing this comic because it was getting too boringly decent, but then the whole Saign scene happened and the comic regularly kept my attention since. I think I'm going to miss Chel the most because I doubt we're going to be running into a protagonist that is as likable as her for a while.
Tiffany herself is somehow able to regularly update 5 webcomics at once, which I find highly admirable. If you check out the story and enjoy it, I recommend supporting her. Alien Dice will come back from hold once it's over, but until then I may check out those other webcomics she did.
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STRANGER THINGS SEASON 4 VOL 2 SPOILERSS!!!! dont read if u havent watched it yet
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!?!?!???!!???!!
we all readlly though eddie was safe…god i was crying so hard when he died in dustin’s arms. now he is never gonna graduate. and when dustin talked to his uncle- i hate the fact that the entire town thinks he is a murderer and cult leader when in fact he is a hero and a hell of a guitar player. when he said “chrissy this is for you” i was so proud. but tbh i wished he would’ve ran this time and not be the hero. i really hoped it was a joke and he would somehow make it to the portal and to a hospital like i was literally thinking EDDIE WAKE UP I DONT LIKE THIS EDDIE WAKE UP the whole time
and now i cry when i think about the fact that eddie told dustin to never change. but guess what he changed now he is more traumatized by your death!!!
when i thought max died too i was ready to never watch the show again but now im still worried about what is gonna happen to her. like those arms and legs dont look good ngl
and dont get me started on mike and will!! if mike wheeler would’ve paid more attention he would have remembered that el said in a letter that will doesnt want to show her the painting she thinks is for a girl. then he would have realised that el couldn’t have asked will to paint that exact painting and tell him what to do. but mike bought it bcs it was what he wanted to hear. the entire speach will gave (wich was beautiful) touched mike to much and pushed him to say i love you to el. BUT IT WASNT ABOUT EL YOU IDIOT IT WAS ABOUT WILL!! like cmon why else would he cry. it was so clear he was talking about himself. jonathan noticed, i noticed, god i think even argyle noticed, but mike didnt cause he is am oblivious little bastard. i was so excited about will showing him the painting and mike’s monologue but ofc they still made them about eleven. its just cause will is so selfless. but it got me thinking, if mike figures out that it wasnt about el, and it was about will, does he finally realize he has feelings for will or is at least a little conflicted between el and will?? and what was that thing about his life starting when he met el i though the best thing he did was befriending will. beyond disappointed michael..
i like eleven i just think she is better off alone like there is no chemistry no flavour in mileven it was cute when they were kids now its boring
im also a little a disappointed that will didnt het vecna’d. dont get me wrong i dont want him in any danger and nothing close to what happened to max but i just wanted him to have some more relevance to the plot again cause i miss the times he was connected to the upside down. believe when i say i waiting for that neck thing that he does. and maybe i kinda wanted mike to go into helicopter mode if vecna got will and smack some sense into him and remind him how he felt when will was missing.
now im also disappointed in steve and nancy. just leave it behind you no need to bring back the old romance nancy is supposed to be happy with jonathan and steve is good alone now that he cant be with eddie.. got i wanted them to flirt some more at least they had so much chemistry!! i really hope steve still had eddie’s vest as a reminder of him. still hoping he is his bisexual awakening and he will get talking to robin or dustin about him in the future and say he missed him too
and im glad nothing happened to robin protect the gays
its just that there were so many theories and we expected so many things to happen and they didnt and there are so many unanswered questions left and i cant wait another 3 years for season 5. im a little disappointed tbh
#stranger things#season 4#vol 2#eleven#mike wheeler#will byers#max mayfield#lucas sinclair#dustin henderson#steve harrington#nancy wheeler#robin buckley#eddie munson#jonathan byers
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I feel like the only way for me to let go of my conflicted hatred of kagepro is to discuss it in depth with multiple people, people who have never seen it and people who have and people who are into it/know a lot about it, and all these people need to be as critical about it as i am (not in a "i hate it too" way but in a "thinks a lot about things" way) so i can finally say all the long long long rants i have about it. So i can finally talk at length about how fucked up its treatment of those traumatized kids is, and how poorly Shintarou's depression and anxiety were handled, and how Kido hitting Kano was always treated as a joke, and how much Seto was sidelined, and how poorly Hibiya was characterized and how little attention him and Momo got, and how the Tateyama family wasn't explored nearly as much as it deserves, and how important it is that Ayano is not a perfect angel, and how Hiyori was misunderstood (i just love Hiyori orz), and how the story split characters into smaller groups that interact more with each other than with the rest of the cast, leading to the friendships of the Blindfold Gang feel less sincere, and how little the themes of family were explored for a story that is ABOUT FAMILY, and how needlessly convoluted the story is and how difficult it is to get into it because of that, and how it breaks the worldbuilding it establishes, and how the Daze is underutilized as a storytelling tool to say more about the characters, and how many questions are left unanswered in the end and how the manga and anime fucking suck, and how the absolute best medium for this story, OBJECTIVELY, is a videogame, WITH a timeline tree and friend events and different endings and puzzles and rhythm games and quests and a map of the city and and. I have SO MANY FUCKING THOUGHTS ABOUT IT and I've kept them inside for the most part for 5 LONG YEARS and i occasionally start thinking about it again and feel myself losing my fucking mind. That franchise broke me bro
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i think looking back at the whole thing my main problem with ipytm is that it packed too many plot points into five short episodes and it didn’t go all the way on any of those points (except jai which ofc makes it a sore spot for a sequel with many other potential directions 🙄), and that really detracted from our ability to feel/connect with the story and it especially feels jarring when we compare it to itsay, where p'boss let every scene run its course no matter how slow or silent, which then made us feel everything.
also, pet peeve: why were the ipytm episodes so short, when there was so much more dialogue and context needed for everything they were throwing at us?? we were robbed of some necessary background/explanation.
at the end of the day it was probably not a good idea to cram five years of their lives into five episodes and that kind of fucked over ipytm in a big way. there was a lot of potential that felt somewhat subdued to me, like they could have pushed it further. i would have loved a deeper dive into the commentary about gender expression and sexual orientation: oh-aew being called girly in the casting, and mangpong saying he and plug were "girly" friends (the "girly" part wasn't translated) and he didn't expect them to fall for each other. in some ways it's nice that this was subtle, but in other ways i kind of wish it was more out there. meanwhile all the details about the entertainment industry and comm arts ended up taking way too much screen time relative to its role in driving the central conflict, which really comes down to teh once again not knowing himself.
we needed to see the jump between the end of ep2 and the start of ep3, how did teh go from crying in oh-aew's arms, to no longer wanting to invite oh-aew to plays with him? i can put the pieces of the puzzle together, but i shouldn't have to. we needed to see more of what oh-aew was going through this whole time other than having the time of his life and being the perfect partner to teh. (though i kind of get it in a way, since oh-aew and teh have always represented the expectation vs. reality meme to me).
and despite how much i love oab and how well he did here, we needed to see way less of jai. i'm honestly not even mad about the cheating plot itself but knowing how unpopular they are, and how risky they are, it's the kind of thing where you really gotta nail the execution to pull it off and with only five episodes, they couldn't do it justice. i see the parallels between teh/tarn and teh/oh-aew here, i really do. and i see teh giving his everything to perform well to make jai's dreams come true, the way teh gave up his spot in itsay to make oh-aew's dreams come true. but the fact that so many of us were left thinking "what the fuck, teh??" means there are unanswered questions about how he arrived at that point, which is not something we want to feel about the major breaking point in their relationship.
anyway, i love the central messages of ipytm, even if i think they were too mean on teh in bringing him here. i know the middle part was kind of a mess but i love where teh and oh-aew ended up. it felt real that teh had to date airy to figure out that he was wrong about what he thought he wanted, and it felt real that oh-aew had to be alone for a while to figure out how to love himself without teh and be okay without him, so that oh-aew can choose teh again freely this time. i love that this episode was all about oh-aew, after everything, CHOOSING to love teh because he knows that that's what makes him happy. and teh just being the absolute luckiest guy in the world to have fallen in love with someone who is that perceptive, patient, and understanding. and i hope he’s learned his lesson and is ready to be the partner oh-aew deserves.
#ipytm#i promised you the moon#ipytm spoilers#textpost#i'm sorry i'm high these aren't my best thoughts#i'm going to bed now#but i'll be thinking about it all weekend#tl;dr could've been better but didn't ruin itsay for me#there's more to say about a lot#but i'm sleepy byeeeeeeeee
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How season 11 outlined the romantic endgames.
I understand fear of disappointment, I understand, believe me. But this season (along with all the Dabb and Carver era) pointed out perfectly and outlined the romantic endgames for our boys, and the obstacles.
Endgames? Found family, Sam with Eileen, Dean with Cas. Freedom. Peace.
Obstacles? Their own inhability of moving on, of changing, of acknowledging traumas and pain, and healing. Chuck.
As I pointed out on a different post about Season’s 13 THE ROAD SO FAR, they decided to use “Nothing else matters” to start the whole season. In the moment Hetfield sings “Forever trust in who we are” we see Sam hugging Eileen and Dean hugging Cas.
Ring any bells?
I think that speaks for itself. At that specific moment of the show Eileen was dead, and Cas too.
Why would they ‘show us Eileen in season 13′s opening if they didn’t plan on bringing her back later? Same with Cas?
(Eileen was gone until the last minute of episode 19, that Jack bring her, and everybody, back...)
FOREVER TRUST IN WHO WE ARE.
Forever is just the future word for ALWAYS.
They were ALWAYS real. Always.
(btw, I will NEVER stop talking about that road so far cause I love Metallica and ir brings me to tears)
On a season where the most important thing is what’s real and what’s not they decided to canonize both couples. Bring Eileen back from the dead, finally use Cas’s empty plot to show us that his happiness is loving Dean inconditionally.
An amazing example of how Season 11 outlined the endgames is one of my favorites: “Into The Mystic”. They introduced Eileen on an episode where Castiel was possessed by Lucifer, pretending to be Cas to talk to Dean.
Too many bells, halp.-
(HEHEHE! pain is my middle name)
In that episode we meet Sam Winchester’s perfect woman, badass, smart, planning to go to law school, lost her parents when she was a baby too, and she’s a MOL legacy.
(Dude, first episode with her! THOSE HEART EYES!)
But this . . . this.
Ring another bell?
“What the hell are you talking about, man?”
(That’s what I thought you’d say, you dumb fucking Dean)
At the end of the episode, Dean was left with a burning desire of following his heart and the pressing matter that he’s pining for someone (who’s not Amara, like he said in that same episode, he’s not in love with her), and we see Sam saving a pamphlet of the retirement home, showing us he still sees that light at the end of the tunnel.
It’s made clear Dean was frustrated by the whole Amara situation but also seeing Cas not giving a fuck about it, not feeling the slight sign of jealousy, saying his bond with Amara is a good thing that can help them draw her out aka using him as bait.
In the end of this very same episode Sam apologizes to Dean for not searching for him when he was in purgatory (4 years later!!) and Dean shrugs him off cause that’s not really important for him anymore. What’s important for both of them is what happened during purgatory. Dean searched for Cas inceasently, praying to him every night, refusing to leave without him, and willing to die to get him out of there. In that very same moment, Sam gave up hunting to stay with the woman he loved (and a dog!!). He literally gave up, he wanted retirement. The same thing Mildred talked about with Dean in Into The Mystic. Just like Dean wanted it on season 13′s finale.
To be honest, we can clearly see how Sam was certain of what he wanted for his future way before Dean did. That’s why he stayed with Amelia in season 8, that’s why he asked his brother 7 episodes before meeting Eileen if he ever thought about settling down with “someone who gets the life”. why he tried to give his number to “Piper” on that same episode. He’s been ready for settling down with someone for years now. And now he has his finally ever after with Eileen cause Chuck’s finally out the board.
Dean on the other side is so repressed with his feelings and wants that well, he cannot allow himself to let the sun shine on his face, and finally “Being”... finally “Say It”.
What convinces me that Cas is coming back for a last episode, is that he’s the first step for Dean to accept what he wants for his future, he’s the only one who’s left for Dean to take the decision of being finally happy. He’s a constant in Dean’s life, and Dean loves Cas just as much as Cas loves Dean. He cannot function without Cas. He’s been forever saved and changed thanks to him.
Also because he fucking deserve to end up with the man he loves so fully.
Dean’s arc is still open, Cas’s too. Sam’s not. He already have what he wanted, he can finally retire and be with the woman he love.
---
The whole plot of season 11 is connected directly to season 15. Amara, Cas’s depression and the look for his own faith/sense of purpose, Dean’s romantic conflict with Cas (He literally’s been screaming “Cas” the whole fucking season), Sam in look for what’s real and not, thinking he was talking to God when he was being manipulated by Lucifer (The gun wound that connected him to God, the visions, The Devil In The Details, a very very important episode for Sammy’s overall story), Rowena’s redeption arc, Chuck revealing he’s God. Don’t Call Me Shurley. Billie and the Empty being introduced into the storyline!
I invite you guys to watch Dabb’s era again, it’s a plethora of unanswered questions (who finally found it’s answers this season), search for the sense of self, purpose, beating depression, redemption arcs for the villains, forgiveness. Family. Family. FAMILY. FA M I L Y .
#Supernatural s15#Supernatural s11#Into the mystic#spn 11x11#spn 15x18#despair#spn 15x19#inherit the earth#destiel#saileen#Castiel#cas winchester#dean winchester#sam winchester#Eileen leahy#endgames#destiel meta#saileen meta
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Ok ok, sorry for the long ask
I normally just lurk, but I was writing out a whole thing in the tags about how much I appreciate George's lore and the questions it raises (how they answers are sort of given but they require analysis and a deeper understanding and then in turn when answered provide a further deeper understanding, of both geogres character and the server itself (I was also comparing it to the unanswered questions of sbi/beeduo lore but that's not important) (yourmykitten's post about the lore made me think)
and then I was wondering "why does he act that way even though he doesn't realize it's a dream until he wakes up". and then I wondered, why doesn't he act the way he does when he's wakes up from the dream? especially if he thinks he's fully awake and interacting with the world when he is asleep. and when he woke up and looked around he seemed disappointed that his destruction didn't carry over. does the dream mess with his psyche that gives him the desire (or confidence/motive? physical ability?) to do what he wouldn't otherwise do? or is it something else. Is it just the adrenaline that gets to him while he's asleep and then it's died off when he's awake?
but my bigger question is what would he do if while awake he encountered dream and something similar to the bit at the start went down, would he go down a similar path? (villain arc?) there's so many questions I have but all of them are good! I have so much appreciation for George (and dream, he's heavily involved) whether or not he's doing lore
anyway, sorry for the long ask, I know you're not much of a lore blog anyway, but I was just thinking and wanted to share my thoughts with a wider audience. the lore tonight was fun! (and also I enjoy making fun of fans who think that an exile or burger vans and syndicates with a bunch of "what?? I'm confused?? something happened and we'll never know what, it was all shock value!" is the epitome of good lore)
ur good don’t apologize i love long asks and i keep up w lore bc if i dont let my opinions out i will Die ^_^
IT IS SO INTWRSTING i lovee georges lore it’s so Him it also isn’t just fucking around it’s the way he tells his characters story ! he gets his friends involved and has special coding for stuff like the bed he wakes up from and it’s less Formal like he seems to prefer IDK !! like it has his personalized touches all over it and i feel like disrespecting it is rude to him too ☹️ like quackitys niche is doing prerecorded sequences and ccs like dream enjoy writing huge complex plots that wont take place for months and months and karl made tftsmp like !!! it’s HIS don’t speak on it unless it’s nice things to say 🙄🙄
AND YAASSSS it does raise a lot of questions like the ones ur talking about ! those r so interesting and 100%, his style of lore expands on his character’s morals and values and relationships w the ppl in his life and worldbuilds on stuff like the deities in universe and their powers and shines light on the types of personal conflicts he’s facing and the choices he’d make (or not make) and how his actions while dreaming will affect how he’ll approach real life decisions later on while awake it’s COOL george lore is s tier
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i think users 2 and 3 didn't get along with the rest and that could be for several reasons.
1. they were evil/AFO followers
2. they recognized that OFA was a cursed power that inevitably ended in death because you either became AFO's target and he killed you, or OFA itself started eating u up. basically they saw that this power would keep going to self-sacrificing people whose powers would be exploited for the sake of the first user's battle against AFO, and didn't want to keep transferring the quirk, which caused a conflict with first's vestige. first won this conflict which is why 2 and 3 are in time out and banned from the main user circle.
3. it's been established that while OFA can't be taken forcibly, it can be given without consent, so it's possible that 2 or 3 were given the quirk without wanting it in the first place. i think it's a wasted opportunity to have that non-consensual transfer as a possibility and not use it at least once between 9 users. if this is the case maybe they chose to stay away from the main user circle as a sort of protest.
i think it's interesting + important that the two users we know least about are the two right after first, who, especially 2, would be the ones to have the best idea of how AFO/Lil bro conflict played out, and how first figured out he had a transfer quirk in the first place.
With Todofam story ending up much more complicated and nuanced than we initially thought, ive also started to belive sonething similar will happen between AFO/LilBro, and that it's not gonna be as clean cut black and white as it's been so far.
The OFA lore is super interesting imo, and still has a ton of unanswered questions and mysteries, none of which need time travel to be explained amazingly.
Yes!!!
Personally I like 2 and 3 options. It would be a wasted opportunity not to include at least one of them here. Maybe one for second user, one for the third?
Bc somewhere along the way it seems only natural that knowing the consequences of being the ofa holder someone would question the morality of willingly giving it to the person you deem trustworthy, strong and reliable and probably somehow dear to you.
But did they know? If the 4th one was the one suffering the outcome of this power, maybe before they weren’t aware of its killing potential.
point three seems logical enough. The first holder found out his power can be transferred so he desperately needed to save it, bc only this one in his eyes could stop his bro. Or he was on the edge of death. So maybe the consent of the second user was just a little bit off the top of his priorities?
And bc these two realize how fucked up is this whole process, they just face the wall, no desire to be a part of it. No desire to see one more selfless idiot is gonna suffer and maybe go for a suicide mission.
And yeah I kinda expect a big reveal, connected to afo/his bro relationship. Too many black spots there.
Thank you for this ask anon, really. A lot to ponder about...it’s so detailed and thoughtful🖤🤩
#bnha#boku no hero academia#mha#my hero academia#bnha spoilers#mha spoilers#manga spoilers#ofa secret#bnha 304#mha 304#niks bnha ask#bnha ask#mha ask#bnha speculation
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The Witcher: The Games vs The Books
Coming to the fandom this late, I can only assume the relationship between the Witcher games and the original novels has been long since talked to death by others. But I'm far too fascinated by the whole glorious mess that is this canon not to want to get down some of my own thoughts about how it all fits together.
See, on the one hand, the games (Witcher 3 especially) are arguably only too dependent on the novels to stand alone. They do a wonderful job of picking up a number of unresolved plot points the books left hanging, and a woeful job of explaining so much a player coming in cold would really like to know – Ciri's history with Geralt, Yennefer, her powers and the Wild Hunt itself just to begin with. This is an issue that only increases as the games go along: cliche as Geralt's amnesia may be, it's used to good effect to introduce the world to the player in the first game. By the third, Geralt has all his old memories back and two extra games worth of new experience, and good lord is it all alienating to the newcomer.
On the other hand, so much about the games (again, the third especially) contradicts the novels in painfully irreconcilable ways. That wouldn't necessarily bother me – adaptations are allowed to rework and reinvent, stories can and should evolve in the retelling – except, well, see point one above. So you're bound to come out of the games with a lot of unanswered questions if you haven't read the books, and just as many if you have.
Spoilers to follow, of course, for both the books and the games.
Here's one of the big ones: just how did the world – Ciri included – discover that one of her long-presumed-dead parents was actually alive and well and now ruling the entire empire of Nilfgaard? Fucked if I know. Neither the games or the novels have any explanation. In the novels, in fact, the world at large believes Ciri is married to the emperor of Nilfgaard. Naturally, this 'Cirilla' is a fake, but the scandal were the full truth ever revealed would redefine Emhyr's reign. Yet somehow, in the games, everyone seems to know he's Ciri's father, and that whole awkward incest angle is never mentioned. Continuity has been tweaked pretty significantly, and it's left to the player to guess how. If that wasn’t bad enough, the games apparently still included a Gwent card of the fake!Cirilla (artwork above) just to ensure maximum confusion.
Before I get too sidetracked with all that stuff that doesn’t add up though, there really is a lot to be said for what does work about how the games expand on the plot of the novels. The Wild Hunt itself is the big one. The spectral cavalcade appears several times through the novels and hunts Ciri across multiple worlds in the final book before apparently losing her trail and vanishing to make way for the 'real' big bad, never to be mentioned again. While TW3 left me pretty underwhelmed by the revelation that the spectral Wild Hunt were just a bunch of dark elves in skull armor, the books had introduced the Hunt and let us spend some time on the dark elves' world before we get the reveal that the two may be one and the same. So for all the ranting I could do about missed opportunities regarding the Wild Hunt, they're the natural candidate for the games to pick up on as their new big-bads.
To my surprise, Geralt and Yennefer's "deaths" and subsequent recovery in pseudo-Avalon also comes straight from the novels. That everyone thinks Geralt dead at the start of the first game isn't, as I'd first assumed, a convenient excuse to have him reappear with amnesia, but simply how the novels end. Why Ciri leaves them and goes world-hopping isn't clear, but "because the Wild Hunt was after her again" is as good a theory as any. So, another point to the games there.
And there's so much more. The Catriona plague has only just appeared at the end of the novels, but we know it's posed for a major outbreak – one that’s in progress by the time of the games. The second game in particular does a terrific job of taking the ambitions of the expansionist Nilfgaardian Empire and the still-relatively-new Lodge of Sorceresses and building an entirely new conflict around them – even taking two of the least developed members of the Lodge (Sabrina Glevissig and Síle de Tansarville) and expanding them into major players. Dijkstra similarly ends the novels on the run from those in power, and having already taken the same assumed name 'Sigi Reuven' he's using in the games – while the books assure us that prince Radovid will grow up to pay back his father's assassins (ie. Phillipa) and become Radovid the Stern.
The twisted fairy tale origins of the novels are something the games actually seem to have gotten better at as they went on: the 'trail of treats' to the Crones is the great example, the monster-frog-prince and the land-of-a-thousand-fables of the expansions are two more, and many more are hidden in sidequests. And I'd be remiss not to mention that in again asking Geralt to pick a side in the conflict with the Scoia'tael, the first two games not only recreate a scenario Geralt repeatedly deals with in the books, but a major theme. It's interesting too how much the broad structure of the third game feels like an homage to the books, with Geralt searching for Ciri, interspersed with sections from her POV. You can nitpick the detail of any of these examples, but the intent is unmistakable, and a lot of credit is due for it in the execution too.
Some of the detail that's gone into translating the world of the Witcher books into the games is just insane – not just in the geography and history of the place, but right down to the names of the wine you can pick up. There's the fact the Cat potion makes Geralt see in black-and-white, or the fact the basilisk and cockatrice monsters are clearly based on the same model, but the basilisk is reptilian where as the cockatrice is more avian – which is exactly how Geralt describes the difference between them in The Lady of the Lake. There's a point where Book!Regis recounts a detailed list of all the lesser vampiric species, ending with the only two violent enough to tear apart their victims: almost all can be encountered in the games, and the last two (Fleders and Ekimma) are indeed the most animalistic. This kind of thing is everywhere.
My favourite examples tend to be those that blend into the background if you haven't read the books, but will get a grin from those who have, such as a peasant in Velen who will call out to Geralt (paraphrased from memory, alas) "Sir, sir! We be up to our ears in mamunes, imps, kobolds, hags, flying drakes... oh, and bats!" – which is a lovely little reference to a couple of conversations from Edge of the World wherein Geralt explains that most of the monsters the locals want him to take care of don't actually exist. Or all those soldiers chanting "Long live King Radovid!" – natural enough, but it takes on a whole new life if you've read the passage in Lady of the Lake where the young prince Radovid grumbles internally about having to sit and listen to the city chanting 'long live...' to every other notable figure present except him.
Really, it would be faster to list the things the games introduced that don't come from the original source material in any obvious form, because it's a struggle to come up with very many. The villainous Crones of Crookback Bog and Master Mirror of the Hearts of Stone expansion are the biggest ones that come to mind, along with a great deal of the vampire mythology from Blood and Wine. To the witchers themselves, they’ve added mostly game mechanics: the use of bombs and blade oils, the names of most of the potions, and three new witcher schools (all with their own specialised gear). There are a number of new creatures and monsters – Godlings, noon-and-night-wraiths, botchlings, shaelmaars and so on – and though trolls are mentioned in the books, the games take credit for giving them so much character. Obviously, there are new characters, like Thaller and Roche – but not technically Iorveth, because a Scoia'tael commander of that name is mentioned in the books, if only in passing. And already, short of just listing off every new character the games introduced, I’m running out of ideas. Credit where credit’s due on that front: most of the new characters and locations they’ve created feel authentic enough that Kalkstein or Thaller would be right at home in the novels’ world.
But for all their dedication to the detail, it's hard to feel like the games have really managed to capture the spirit of the books in their storytelling: the mundanely corrupt bureaucracy that does so much to bring the world to life, or their cheerfully cynical sense of humour, or the flamboyant wonder that is book!Dandelion, or their enthusiasm for putting women in positions of power, or the bigger themes about the differences between the story that gets sung by the bards and what really happened – or so much else from the novels that came as such a surprise to me when I started getting really sucked in.
And if we’re going to talk about all the little things they got right, it’s only fair to point out there are just as many little things they got wrong, and sometimes pretty glaringly at that. "I thought you bowed to no-one" says Emhyr to Geralt – almost as if book!Geralt doesn’t happily bow in most every situation where it would be polite or diplomatic to do so. "This would never have happened if the council was still around!" says Geralt upon finding a sorcerer's lab full of human experiments – as if none of his experiences with Vilgefortz or the wizards of Rissberg ever happened, back when the council was very much still around. In TW2, he mocks the idea of a woman like Saskia leading a rebellion – almost as if women like Falka and Aelirenn haven't led some of the most storied rebellions in history (and we can't even blame the amnesia, because Geralt himself mentions Aelirenn later – oh yeah, this one annoyed me particularly).
Book!verse 'Lady of the Lake' is basically just Ciri being surprised while bathing
Yennefer's studious aethiesm and willingness to desecrate Freya's temple is entirely in character – but only if we forget that she had her own personal religious experience with the goddess Freya herself in Tower of the Swallow. And then there’s the fact the Lady of the Lake is now a literal lake nymph who distributes swords to the worthy, as if no-one writing for the games ever got past the title of that particular Witcher novel (let alone got the joke). And the list goes on. It's easy to get overly caught up in contradictions like this – it's hardly as if Sapkowski's novels don't contradict themselves in places, as almost any long-running series eventually will – but it's going to stick out to those who’ve read the novels nonetheless.
While we're talking about how the games pick up where the books left off though, the big contradiction that has to be touched on comes in bringing Geralt back at all, at least in any public capacity. There's plenty to suggest that Geralt survives the novels' end and even goes on to have further adventures, but it's also pretty explicit that the history books record his death in the Pogrom of Rivia as final. The last two novels by order of publication (Season of Storms and Lady of the Lake) go so far as to feature characters far in the future with an interest in Geralt's legacy, and they discuss the matter in some depth. As far as the world knows, Geralt is dead.
Book!Geralt fanart by Diana Novich
But it's hard to blame the games for ignoring this – true, thanks to Geralt's longevity, they could have set their conflict many more years after those future scenes – maybe even used Ciri's established time-travel powers to let you pop quietly in and out of the past (and, okay, now I've thought through all that, I'm kind of sad they didn't). But there comes a point where that kind of slavish devotion to preserving the source material really doesn't do a story any favours, and I'm not sure I could name any other successful adaptation that's bothered.
Besides bringing Geralt back at all, most of the bigger changes pertain to Ciri. In fact, as much as I'm about to get deep into the nitpicks below, you can make a surprisingly good case that the games have made only one really big change, and that's in simplifying the prophesies surrounding her. See, in the novels, all those world-saving prophesies aren't technically about Ciri, they're about her as-yet-unborn child. Who gets to impregnate her is the big driving force behind most of the villains of the books – one that all the main contenders seem to see as more of an awkward necessity rather than the inspiration for violent lust, but even so. To Emhyr, having to marry his own daughter is a bug, not a feature – but he's willing to do it to become the father of the savior of the world. But if Ciri is capable of fulfilling those prophesies herself, then Emhyr is already the father of the savoir of the world, and the revisions to his relationship with Ciri start to make a lot more sense.
Ciri's history with the Aen Elle elves seems to have been similarly revised – if not quite so cleanly. Avallac’h and Eredin are, naturally, both book characters – in fact, a lot of personality has been left behind in the books, since Avallac’h originally had a rather camp flair, and Eredin is less the power-hungry kingslayer you might imagine. When Geralt meets Avallac’h in the books – which happens briefly in Toussaint, for one of those "everything you're doing is going to make everything worse because prophesy" conversations – he's busy decorating a cave with fake prehistoric paintings in the hope of confusing future explorers. (Surprisingly, there does seem to be official art of this moment on one of the gwent cards – see above – though the Avallac’h who jokes about adding erect phalluses to the picture and admits his vanity won’t allow him to resist signing it hasn’t entirely survived the transition to the new medium).
We also meet the former Alder King, Auberon, whose death we see in flashback in the game. (Fun fact: Auberon is actually blowing bubbles through a straw in a bowl of soapy water when we first meet him in the books, hence the straw in the illustration below. The books just have more whimsy than any of the games would know what to do with.)
Ciri spends some time in the final book as a prisoner on the world of the elves, who are as keen as everyone else for their king to father her unborn child. Avallac’h eventually convinces her that this is all for the greater good: her child will be able to open gates to allow the people of her world to escape when the apocalyptic White Frost arrives. But their king, like most older elves, is impotent, leading to multiple nights where Ciri allows him to take her to bed (in some of the frankly more disturbing scenes of the series) to no result. Eredin, moreover, doesn't appear to have intended to poison the king: the vial that kills him was supposed to contain some sort of fantasy viagra, and even Eredin seems genuinely shocked to learn its actual effects.
Regardless, Ciri eventually discovers that Avallac’h and the Aen Elle have deceived her, and intend to user her child's powers to invade her world, not save it. Neither world is threatened by the White Frost for at least several millennia, it's just a pretext to make her cooperate. And so she flees, and Eredin (already leading his Red Riders aka The Wild Hunt long before he was crowned king) pursues her.
With the books as context, why Ciri would ever trust Avallac’h is very hard to understand. It's a little easier if that whole awful episode with her and the former king is subtracted out – Ciri's child is no longer necessary for Eredin's goals. So it's odd that the game still references the deadly vial Eredin gave to the king. Are we to suppose the vial genuinely contained poison in this version of continuity? I'd rather it didn't – Avallach's ruse is far more interesting if he underwhelms Eredin's support by revealing a half-truth – but the games aren't telling us.
And then we have to factor in that one last detail I'd forgotten when I originally started playing with this theory: TW3 does contain one last, dangling reference to the time the old king spent trying to impregnate Ciri, when Ge'els very reasonably asks why on earth Ciri would ever trust Avallac’h now. It's a damn good question, and the game offers no real answers. So in Avallac’h, we're left with a character who is vital to the final chapters of the games, who comes out of nowhere without the books as context, but whose role makes no sense with that backstory in mind. Frankly, the writers would have been much better off avoiding the whole mess altogether and inventing some new character to take Avallac’h's place.
The treatment of the White Frost is even more confusing. The books are ultimately fairly explicit about just what the White Frost is: a ice age, most likely caused by the same mundane climactic factors that produced the real ice ages of our history. The only escape is intergalactic emigration, as Ciri (or her children) might some day enable.
In the games, the White Frost has instead become some sort of nebulous, free-floating apocalypse which will eventually reach all worlds, which is basically fine – up to a point. We briefly visit a dead world that the Frost has decimated, and even the Aen Elle are now supposedly planning to invade Ciri's world because it threatens theirs as well (I mean, apparently – their motivations are so underdeveloped you could miss them by accidently skipping just one or two lines of dialogue). When the Wild Hunt appears, it's always in a haze of cold. Their mages can invoke its power still more dramatically through portals which can freeze you in your tracks. So obviously, the Frost has already reached their world, and time is running out, right?
Well, no – you visit their world too (again, briefly – to meet a character who has never been mentioned before and won't be again, for reasons which have also never been mentioned before if you haven't read the books) – and there's no Frost in sight, apocalyptic or otherwise.
So why does the White Frost follow the Hunt around? No idea. It's never explained.
At the very end of the game, a second "Conjunction of the Spheres" occurs (possibly because of the Wild Hunt's appearance?), and the Frost begins to invade (or possibly Avallac’h summons it, so Ciri can go into it and destroy it?) It's all painfully unclear. The game is too busy pulling a bait-and-switch over whether Avallac’h's betrayed you to tell you what's actually going on instead.
But if Ciri could destroy the Frost completely (at great personal risk, but still) why is this not more clearly set up? Why did the Aen Elle think that escaping to another world (which will ALSO eventually be destroyed by the Frost) was a better solution than sending Ciri to face the Frost directly? For which matter, why do the Aen Elle need Ciri at all if sending enough ships to carry an army is no problem? Why does Ciri spend so much of the game questioning Avallac’h's true intentions, if they were ultimately so noble? When did he tell her the truth? If Avallac’h did summon the Frost, why did he pick that particular moment? And if he didn't, and it all just happened spontaneously, we're back to questioning why invading that world ever seemed like a good solution to Eredin – it all collapses in on itself.
None of these questions couldn't have been answered with a little creativity, but then the game would've had to dedicate some real time to explaining its backstory and developing its core conflict – something it's bizarrely reluctant to do. And if you think I may be drifting from the point a bit in the name of getting all my gripes about the ending down in one place, you're not wrong, but I feel Avallac’h and everything surrounding him is pretty much the ur-example of what doesn't work about the way The Witcher 3 depends on the novels: the backstory the writers are building on doesn't actually exist in any format available to the rest of us.
There are plenty of ways TW3 could have incorporated its backstory into its own narrative (yes, even excluding the method "by expecting people to read many many more pages of text from in-game documents", because that's bullshit and always will be). There are times it does this brilliantly, such as in the quest ‘The Last Wish’: everything you really need to know is covered in Yennefer and Geralt's conversation in the boat, and without ever making the dialogue sound unnatural. In fact, TW3 has even more options here than many works with the same problem, because Geralt is famous and people already think they know his story. You could have bards singing Dandelion's ballads, you could have characters confronting him with misunderstandings about his past to force him to correct them. You could also have Geralt visiting people and places he knows Ciri remembers fondly because of the time they spent there together, or include playable flashbacks similar to the time you spend playing as Ciri. You could stick chunks of backstory in optional sidequests or scenes old-school fans can skip through quickly. So many of my questions (how did Ciri get so close to Yennefer if they were never at Kaer Morhen together? Why has no-one tried training Ciri in her powers before? What does the Wild Hunt even do while it's not hunting Ciri? Why is Ciri princess of Cintra if her father is Emperor of another country altogether?) could have been answered so easily.
Seriously, summarising the Witcher books is not that hard. Lots of things happen, but only a fraction of it is really relevant in retrospect, and you could hit all the major plot beats in a handful of paragraphs. (Heck, I’d do it here if this post wasn’t already ridiculously over long.)
But then, TW3 has a bizarre problem with leaving so much of its best material off screen, even from its own story. It's criminal that we never get to see any of Geralt's time (or Yennefer's) with the Wild Hunt, even in flashback or dream sequence. This is material that directly sets up the relationship between the main hero and the main villain, and the most we ever hear about it is a few vague allusions to it being like a strange nightmare. Really? That's it? What was it like? Was Geralt in a trance, unable to control his own actions – was he brainwashed into believing he belonged there, or was he merely unable to escape? What atrocities might Eredin have forced him to commit? Did he visit other worlds? Was he paraded among the Aen Elle as a captive? There is no way this isn’t a part of the story worth talking about!
We never see the moment Ciri rescues Geralt from the Wild Hunt. We never see how Avallac’h convinces her to trust him, we never see the moment he was cursed, or any of her efforts to save him – all these big, story-defining moments are left off-screen, to be vaguely recounted to you later in dialogue. Then there's the entire political situation in Nilfgaard – you hear about it second-hand, and it's all resolved off screen. And the list goes on. Yet you and Ciri still have time to run around Novigrad so she can thank a bunch of throwaway characters you've never even heard of before, nor will again. The priorities on display here are baffling.
The Witcher 3 was such a wildly successful game that it’s obvious these sorts of issues didn’t seriously hold it back, and it’s such a big game that I could have sat down and written just as many words focusing only on the parts that do work without much difficulty. It boasts stunning visuals, addictive gameplay and some truly wonderful characters, and so many parts of the story work brilliantly in isolation that it’s strange to come out of it feeling that it ultimately adds up to so much less than the sum of its parts.
I’m glad TW3 exists – if it hadn’t been such a runaway success I doubt I’d ever have discovered Sapkowski’s universe at all, but for myself, TW3 will probably always be remembered as a somewhat-overlong introduction to the really good stuff, in the expansions and the original novels it came from. I looked up the novels after finishing TW3 in large part because I’d been left with so many unanswered questions – and I’m glad I did, but I’m honestly surprised more people weren’t turned off by TW3′s scattershot approach to its own narrative. You’re allowed to change and rework in moving to a new medium, but I can’t imagine it would’ve hurt games’ success to tell a complete story in the process.
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Hello all! It’s been a few days (okay it’s been a whole ass week) -- I’m sorry for the wait, but I had a surprisingly hard time starting this wrap up. Part of that was just being busy with life, but I also just… felt like I didn’t know what to say. Or maybe I didn’t know how to say it. These books are deeply complex, which is part of what makes them so captivating, but it also can make it hard to describe or respond to or explain. So much is left unanswered or unexplored or unknown. How can I sum up something so multi-faceted, that I know I’m only scratching the surface of understanding?
So, Harrow the Ninth. I want to preface this post by saying I did enjoy this book a lot, and I’m glad I read it. Tamsyn Muir is a very talented writer, I love the characters and the world, and the story is really cool. But although I liked the reading experience as a whole… I seem to have a lot of things I wasn’t totally happy with in the book itself.
Tamsyn Muir’s books are fascinating, but they are also challenging. I’m sure that description doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has read them. It is both a strength and a weakness, part of what makes these books so intriguing and surprising, but also something that I know can turn off potential readers. I remember shortly before I started reading Harrow the Ninth, someone told me that the book itself is really hard to read, especially at the beginning. I remember that during the book, someone else told me that they had read Gideon the Ninth and started Harrow the Ninth, but wound up not finishing because the second person was too confusing.
Neither of those was my experience. I didn’t mind the second person, or the confusing nature of the first sections. It was what I expected from this book at this point, and while it was unusual, it worked. The world they exist in is incredibly complex, the writing style is quite unique, but none of that really fazed me. For me, the ending was what felt... a lot of things. Confusing, incomplete, unresolved… and for me at least, a little unsatisfying. Again, I get that it’s kind of the point, but I just… 😒 is the best way I can describe the emotion. Like, okay I guess, but also no.
The good news is, this book as a whole answered a lot of my questions from the previous book. Not all of them, but a good few. We know a lot more about this universe, about the history leading to this point, about who and what they’re fighting against, about what Lyctors are and how they work and what they do. And we know why Gideon didn’t die from the gas 🤯
This book also hit a lot of the themes I was hoping for, many of which are concepts I’m quite interested in. In my opening post, I guessed that we’d be seeing a lot of focus on the ideas of: identity, duty, loyalty, morality, and truth. Granted those are kind of generic and open-ended, but I think they were all pretty on the nose. Harrow’s identity shifts with her memory, with her sense of who she is and what she is supposed to do and be. We explore duty and loyalty through her relationship with Lyctorhood and especially with the other Lyctors’ actions. Morality is a constant undercurrent, never really brought to the surface by most of the characters (well, I guess with regards to becoming a Lyctor it’s explicitly explored, but with regards to killing planets and the BoE and such it isn’t really touched much) but always there and very intentionally so. The narration doesn’t engage with it because the characters don’t question it, but it’s clear that we the reader are supposed to. And truth -- well, there sure are a lot of lies on that ship. I was even spot on that truth circles back to identity, though granted not in the way I initially expected.
But while this book answered a lot of the questions from last book, it of course introduced many more of its own, and many of those weren’t resolved either. Some of those I expect to be answered later, like: How did Mercy and Augustine connect with the Blood of Eden? Why did they want to break open the Locked Tomb? What’s up with Original Gideon (OG) and did he (or someone else) fuck with his brain? Some of these it makes sense to leave unresolved to heighten the drama, like: What exactly is God and why and how? What exactly is the Blood of Eden and what do they want and how much should I trust or distrust them? What exactly is up with the Body? Some of these are small but still bother the heck out of me, like: What was up with Ianthe’s arm after all? How did the Commander get into that sword? Did Harrow hallucinate before she became a Lyctor, or was that a false memory too, part of the dreamscape?
But some of them are big. Some of them matter. Some of them feel like I’m supposed to think they’re answered, but I just… don’t. Like, why did Mercy and Augustine break with God? I get the surface level reason that they’re talking about, but it doesn’t make sense to me, there has to be more to God or Lyctorship or the Resurrection or something. Or at least, I have to believe that, because honestly if there isn’t, I think that would be more unsatisfying to me. I’m also deeply curious about how all the different souls and ghosts inside of Harrow interacted -- did they fight each other, layer with each other, influence each other, braid each other’s hair? For instance, who told Harrow to keep the two-handed sword close -- was it Gideon or the Commander or Harrow or some other reason?
And then there was the scene with Camilla and Judith and Coronabeth. Like, I get that this scene served quite a few purposes -- introducing the idea of a River Bubble, letting us (sort of) meet the Commander, getting to see some of Harrow’s letters, setting up the next book (as per the epilogue), and let’s not ignore the value of getting to say hi to some favourite characters, but at the same time it just… it feels so out of place. Like a weird crossover, except these characters actually do go here? But they’re not supposed to? They show up once, their presence is not explained, and then they disappear into the plot of the next book. A cameo within their own world.
There were of course plenty of things I liked. This world is fascinating and we got to know a lot more about it, about history and necromancy, about how this society views death and destiny, about their conflicts and challenges and triumphs and fears. We got to see a lot of new party tricks. Like in the previous book, we got plenty of unapologetic queerness and enjoyment of titty fiction. The writing style is engaging and makes me laugh at the most unexpected moments. I love a lot of the characters and seeing how they think and interact. I want to know more about this world and these people and this story.
But if I’m being completely honest, I’m not sure I’ll read the next book. Not because it’s challenging to read, but just… I don’t know if it’ll give me the payoff I want. Especially given the amount of effort and brainpower these books do take. I want to know I’ll get something back for my investment. Not eventually, when the series ends, but in the book I’m actually reading. Maybe the incomplete ending is supposed to cliffhanger me into desperately wanting the next book. But I don’t want to jump. I just want to land. And with this book, I guess I just don’t feel like we stuck the landing here. I don’t feel like we landed. I feel like we’re still in freefall. I’m definitely not ruling out reading it, I’m sure I’ll be drawn to it and like I said I do want more from this universe. But I just don’t know.
I feel like this is one of my more critical wrap up posts, and I feel a little bad for that because I know so many of you guys love these books. And I’m glad for you! They’re great books! Well worth loving! If someone asked me if I recommended them, I’d absolutely say yes. I enjoyed them a lot, and my lukewarm response to the conclusion doesn’t take away from all that I did love. It just means I’m wary of that happening again with the next book.
But that’s a problem for next year! In the meantime, I’m going to have to read something else :) The contenders for our next read are An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green, Most Likely by Sarah Watson, or Wild Magic by Tamora Pierce -- any of them are still in the game, so let your voice be heard! I hope to start reading on Saturday, so see you then!
And as always, thank you for joining me on this journey. It means the world to have you along, and you guys make it so much fun. I love doing this, and I love sharing it with you. Thank you. I hope to see you on the next journey :)
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Promises, Promises
Request: 11 and 13 angst with Tommy? 🥺❤️
Requested by @jenepleurepasbaby
Thomas Shelby x Reader
Word Count: 2.7k
Warnings: language, angst, not edited
A/N: I’m kinda happy with how this turned out. Like always, I rushed the ending because I got bored. But I think it’s still pretty good. So, when reading this you guys may be confused by the “workhouse howl”. It’s a term related to the workhouse that poor families worked at throughout England. I don’t know too much about it, but it was referenced in Call the Midwife and when I watched the scene it was in I wanted to cry because everything surrounding that is super sad. I also might do a fic that has more to do with the workhouses, I’ll just have to do a little more research first.
Masterlist
The deal they had made upon getting married was that work wasn’t to come home. As soon as either of them stepped foot in the house, all business, all work-related talk, was to be dropped. Shelby Company Limited, the Peaky Blinders, neither of them had a place in their house. Tommy had agreed to deal for one reason and one reason only; as Y/n didn’t work for him, it kept her out of the business and danger. It was the perfect safety net. Perfect until it wasn’t.
“Where’s Tommy?” Y/n asked Esme as she walked through the empty betting shop in search of her husband. Taking her hat off, she set it on the table and took a seat in front of her sister-in-law.
“He’s not here.” Her curt answer caused the woman across from her to frown.
A sigh escaped her lips as Y/n leaned back in her chair. She had walked all the way from her mother’s house, feet sore from the shoes that were only meant show, for nothing. “Do you know where he is?”
Esme quickly glanced up at her, “No.” When asked where her own husband was, she said, “With Tommy.”
Y/n shook her head, loose curls bouncing with the action. She knew better than to trust a word Esme said. John told her everything, if he was with Tommy, she would know where the two were. “Alright, then,” she drawled and got to her feet. Leaving the woman behind her, she entered the kitchen to find Finn sitting at the table. It was a surprise to see him away from his brothers that he admired so much, but a welcome one. “What are you doing here?”
The boy looked up from the deck of cards in front of him, a smile appeared on his face upon seeing the woman who had become much like a mother to him. “Playing cards.”
She nodded and pulled out the chair next to him. Taking a seat, she asked, “Why aren’t you with your brothers?”
Taking a card out of the deck, Finn flipped it over. the woman beside him had no clue what card he was looking for, but the one that was pulled out clearly wasn’t the one when his lips turned down in a frown. “Tommy said he doesn’t need a kid fucking up his meeting,” he mumbled, either upset at his brother’s words or the card that he couldn’t find.
“Finn! Watch your tongue,” Y/n scolded before she wrapped an arm around his shoulder and pulled him close to her. “He’s just trying to protect you, okay?” What she wanted to say was, ‘You don’t fuck things up, you’re brother does,’ but she held her tongue. No one needed to know how much the man had been pissing her off lately but her. “Where is he anyway?”
“At your house.”
Y/n raised a brow, trying to put the puzzle together. How could he be at their house if he was in a meeting? “Where’s the meeting at?”
Going back to his game, Finn couldn’t see the dangerous mixture of anger and fear in his sister-in-law’s eyes when he answered. “Your house.”
“You have fun, okay?” Y/n ruffled his hair, earning a groan from him as she pushed herself up and was out the door before he could even respond.
How dare he!
Y/n wouldn’t have been angry, she probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought if it weren’t for the fact that she knew her husband kept everything from her. What started out as a simple agreement to leave work at the office had turned into something much more. Y/n was kept in the dark about everything. Every little thing. She didn’t work for the company, so when secrets were shared between his family, she thought nothing of it. If she were meant to know, then she would know, right? Wrong.
She was to know nothing.
The first clue was when her questions would go unanswered. Polly was the best at dodging her questions. The woman was a master at weaving a sentence that made Y/n feel as though her question had been answered. Any word that came off her tongue was done so with confidence and kindness, how could anyone believe it to be a lie? John and Arthur always played dumb when she asked them anything. To Y/n, it made sense. There were many things that Tommy even kept from his family, so it was no surprise to his wife if his own brothers didn’t know what was going on. But then there was Esme. She was the worst about, not even bothering to concoct a decent lie. The gypsy didn’t care whether she was believed or not, she did what her husband and her boss told her to. If she was told to keep her mouth shut about business matters, it would be shut and she would do her best to make sure everyone knew they would never get an answer out of her. Her replies were the opposite of Polly’s in that way. They were curd and short. Esme didn’t care if Y/n believed her, it wasn’t her job to make that happen.
The only one that hadn’t gotten the memo not to say a word to Y/n, was Finn. Not like he would have listened anyway.
Knowing her husband had deliberately kept things from her stung. And knowing that, it wouldn’t surprise her if this kept his family from fully trusting her. God, it was like adding salt to the wound once the thought crossed her mind. They probably wondered why he would marry her if she couldn’t be trusted with simple matters of business.
Y/n couldn’t pick an emotion as she walked the streets of Small Heath. Rage bubbled inside, encasing her heart, feeling as she had been betrayed. Pelting her like rain, sadness landed on her exposed skin, quickly being absorbed and running through her blood street. Fire and ice, what she felt was burning and cold. A heartache that she never could have predicted.
The people on the street must have seen the conflict inside her as they gazed at her with pity and sorrow. None of them wanted to feel the pain the young woman was experiencing, that they knew. So, they parted like the Red Sea, allowing her a swift route to her front door. They dare do anything to cause any more grief. The people of the area knew too well what grief could do to the soul as everyone was familiar with the sound of the workhouse howl.
Arriving on her doorstep, Y/n forced herself to take a deep breath. Was she ready for what was behind the door?
No.
No, she wasn’t. She wasn’t ready to be hit by a brick wall. Wasn’t ready for every truth the family had ever told her to be brought under questioning. For every lie to be raised from the dead. Y/n wasn’t ready for the world she knew to fall apart like a crumbling building.
Instead of reaching for the handle, instead of opening the door and facing her problems head-on, Y/n did the only thing she could think of. She ran. Her mother would scold her for such a thing, abandoning her problems on the doorstep, but it had to be done. She wasn’t in the proper headspace to deal with what Tommy had done.
People weren’t fast to move as the young woman weaved between them. She was left to dodge women and their small children, carts being pulled by men that had seen better day, children that smiled at her behavior. Step after step, stride after stride, Y/n let her feet carry her to the part of the city that had been left to decay. Small, broken, wooden factories that were left to the past once the brick ones over towered them. They knew her pain, whether anyone would believe it, they knew her pain. The abandoned buildings knew what it was like to be stabbed in the back by those they trusted. They knew what it was like to watch the world go on without them and no one bat an eye that they had been left behind.
Y/n slowed her pace as she neared the canal that ran near a few of the buildings. Standing on the edge, she closed her eyes and screamed. It was blood-curdling and matched her sorrow. The screams echoed down the empty street. She screamed and screamed, knowing that no one would come rushing to her aide, until she could scream no more.
Voice hoarse, she collapsed against the cement belong, the skirt of her dress falling around her legs. Tears finally escaped, racing down her cheek like a river after a heavy storm. She didn’t bother to wipe them away, letting them fall against the material of her skirt. Y/n didn’t have it in herself to care, not with what she’d have to deal with once she returned home.
“Why does he do this?” she muttered between the sobs. “Why?”
Oh, yes, why did Thomas Shelby always find ways to fuck things up? It was a mystery to everyone, even his own wife. Y/n wanted to believe he trusted her, she wanted to believe that his family trusted her, accepted her, but that couldn’t be done with the hole that had been dug for her. What could bring her to the same level as everyone else? What could keep them from burying her alive? Y/n didn’t know, the answers had been taken from her by the one person she trusted the most.
“I’ve do-done nothing!” She fell onto her back, the cloudy sky above greeting her. “Nothing…”
She stayed like that for what must have been hours. Letting her heartbeat slow to normal and her tears dry up. Letting the burning, the fire inside her become nothing but warm embers. When she felt calm, when the sun was starting to sink below the relics of around her, Y/n got to her feet. Brushing off the dirt, she slowly made her way back home, her legs screaming at her for what she had made them do.
It was almost dark when Y/n opened the door to the house she shared with the last person she wanted to see. Before shutting the door, words traveled down the hall, catching her ear. They couldn’t be made out, but it was clear Tommy wasn’t alone. When the door hit the frame, there was silence.
“Y/n?” Tommy questioned, stepping out of the kitchen to see her figure in the shadows of the unlit hallway. There was no answer as his wife walked past him, not even a glance his way, as she headed to the parlor. “Where have you been?” he asked, voice laced with worry. “No one has seen you in hours.”
The words fell on deaf ears. With her back to him, Y/n opened the liquor cabinet and, bypassing the whiskey, pulled out a bottle of vodka. Her husband’s choice of drink wouldn’t be strong enough to numb everything. Grabbing a glass, she filled it almost to the rim. Arthur, John, and Polly appeared in the doorway behind Tommy just in time to witness the polish remover to be downed in a few seconds. Y/n set it back down forcefully, the sound of glass against wood left her unfazed. She didn’t care if the delicate glass were to break. Hell, she wanted to throw it and the bottle against the wall, watch it shatter.
“Y/n,” he said gently as he approached her much like he would a wild horse. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” she answered, pouring herself another glass. A hand grasped the bottle, stopping the clear liquid from filling her glass. Y/n did nothing as the lid was put on the bottle and moved from her reach.
“Why are you lying?”
A harsh laugh escaped her lips. “Why am I lying?” Y/n violently turned towards him, wondering why a liar would ask such a question. “I should be the one asking that question! Asking why you all are lying to me, keeping things from my, and doing business in my own home without my knowledge!” she screamed at all the people in the room.
Tommy sighed as Y/n stormed past him, heading for the refuge of their room. “Is that why you didn’t come home?” he asked, angry that she would worry him over this.
“Yes,” she spat as Arthur and John moved for her. “I was going to go back home, but then I remembered that you live here too!”
Silence once again filled the house, Y/n ascending the stairs, while her family, in shock, past glances around the room. Polly was the first to speak up, disgust evident when she looked at her nephew. “Now, look what you’ve done,” she hissed, moving to stand by the fireplace. “I warned you that she would be hurt by this, but you never listen.”
Tommy gave no reaction, instead focusing his eyes on the vodka he’d placed in front of him. He didn’t need the harsh words of his aunt’s to make him regret his decisions. He knew good and well that he’d gone too far, he always went too far.
All the man wanted was to keep the woman he loved out of danger. That was easier to be done if she were kept out of the spotlight. If she weren’t present at meetings, working in the betting shop, or accompanying her husband to different business arrangements, there was little chance that she would be caught in the crossfire. But with that mindset, Tommy had done the one thing he knew dreamed of; he broke her heart and caused her to question his trust.
No one in the room needed to tell him that he may never mend what was broken, he wasn’t foolish enough to believe there would be no consequences for his actions.
Y/n was spread out on the bed, staring at the textured ceiling, when the door creaked open, exposing her husband. Tommy made sure his steps were soft, he’d waited for her to calm down, not wanting to cause a raging fight where words would be said that couldn’t be taken back. “I’m sorry.” From where he stood, he could see Y/n roll her eyes. It hurt that she didn’t believe him when he wasn’t one to throw around apologies. Sighing, Tommy made his way to the bed, the mattress sinking against his weight as he sat beside her. “I am sorry that I’ve hurt you, love. I never intended to do that.”
Feeling his gaze, Y/n tried to keep her tears at bay as she said, “Then why’d you do it?”
“I wanted to… I wanted to protect you,” Tommy admitted, a hand grazing over the one that laid beside him. It was taken as a sign of progress when Y/n didn’t move her hand out of his reach.
She scoffed, “And that meant living in a house full of lies? All I asked was for the workday to end once you come home.”
“I know, I know.”
There was silence as Y/n pushed herself into a sitting position. Finally meeting his eyes, Y/n could see the regret that contoured his features and the sadness that pooled in his eyes. A hand went to cup his cheek, the man melting against her touch. “This will not continue, do you understand me? We will be equals in knowledge.” He nodded as her fingers rubbed circles on along his skin. “I don’t want to be apart of the business, but I don’t want you to hide it from me.”
Lips turning up in a smile, Tommy wrapped his arms around her waist, resting his forehead against her’s. “Are those all your demands?” he teased, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. When she nodded, he continued, “Then you will get all that you ask for and more.”
“I’m still mad at you even with these promises,” Y/n admitted, “And you break them, you will have to find yourself a new home and a new wife.”
Tommy simply nodded, he knew there would be consequences and he fully accepted them. He had cut a deep wound and it would take time for it heal. If Y/n didn’t wish to see him or be near him, let him touch or speak to her, he would understand that. Any punishment given would be understandable.
*~~*~~*
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Why I Think Sk8 the Infinity Deserves More Than One Season: An Essay
So as many of us in the Sk8 fandom know, after episode 10 of Sk8 drops in roughly 12 hours or so (it probably varies depending on timezones and shit, but for us Americans, it's around there.), there are only going to be two more episodes of Sk8. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, really. Madoka Magica lasted for a single 12 episode season, and while I've only seen one episode of the show, it's got an 8/10 rating on average according to Google, which I think is pretty good for an anime that was released in 2011. But I am really pissed if this is all that we're going to get in terms of Sk8. I got into it about a day after episode 5 released on Funimation, and me and Jitters have been hooked on it since. And for the past few days while waiting for what has seemed like several years at this point, I have not only cranked out several Sk8 fics, I've been thinking for ages about all the things I love about this anime, and also what the second season could focus on, if we do ever get it, hence why I'm infodumping it on all of you, my dear followers. If you followed me for non-Sk8 things or literally anything else, sorry, but I'm not sorry.
Anyways, as for the subject on what the focus of a potential s2 of Sk8 could be, I see three possibilities; Renga, Matchablossom, and Miya. Stick with me, this is not just rambling on about how much I love those three things, I swear.
Let's start with Renga, since it's been a main focus of the fandom. Personally, I'm not really looking forward to Langa confessing to Reki in this episode, since Reki is still going through a lot mentally, and Langa just confessing to him in episode ten would just probably make things so, so much worse.
But I am pretty sure that Reki and Langa will make up in this episode, and while I'm not 100% sure about this, I can see the Renga confession/kiss coming in episode twelve. But if the fucking palm trees come before we see the aftermath I will fly my nerdy ass to Japan and personally fistfight every single person at Studio Bones, I swear to God.
With this in mind, this next season could showcase how Reki and Langa's relationship changes once things take a romantic turn, but it could also showcase the conflict of wondering if they should make their relationship public to their families and peers. Remember, Sk8 takes place in Okinawa, a city in Japan. I did some research on LGBT rights in Japan a while ago, and while Japan's culture and whatnot doesn't really have any history of being hostile towards homosexuality and such, it doesn't really recognize same sex couples, and gay marriage isn't legal there either. And there are always some people who are against LGBT rights/are homophobic, etc. So there's a chance that Reki and Langa could deal with that, but honestly, it feels like there's a real slim chance of that. But we probably would get more Renga in a s2 of Sk8.
Next up, Matchablossom. In this past season, we've seen glimpses of what Cherry and Joe were up to as teenagers, but it's been confirmed that Cherry and Joe are childhood friends. Not "we've been friends since we were teens". They've known each other since they were children, most likely around elementary/grade school. We might get a deeper look at Cherry and Joe's relationship from their past, maybe even revealing how the two met, that is if it's not revealed before the last two episodes air. We might be able to see the reason why the two of them fight like an old married couple, maybe the two of them had some sort of big fallout after their friendship with Adam fell apart. Or maybe an event of some sort could cause them to become closer than they were before. I'm not sure what that sort of event would be, but I feel it'd be rather interesting.
And last but not least, Miya. He hasn't really gotten too much focus in Sk8, which is honestly fair, since he's a supporting character for the most part. But I'm curious about a lot of things involving Miya. For example, why'd he start skating competitively? How did he get involved with Adam? And is Adam a reason Miya got involved with S? There's a lot of questions that I have about Miya that have been left unanswered, and I hope that maybe we'll get answers to those questions.
Anyway, that's just my theory/take on things. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk
#sk8 the infinity#sk8#long post#sorry for the ramble#just wanted to get out some thoughts i've been thoughting lately
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5 Unsolved Webcomic Mysteries
Webcomics and unanswered questions go as well together as webcomics and lesbians, webcomics and furries, webcomics and dragons, webcomics and extreme lack of nuance, you get the idea. Most of the time it's because of bad mystery mongering, other times it's because the creator makes such a baffling choice, you question what is the reason behind it all, a hidden Modus Operandi. We here at GW love to speculate so I compiled some old webcomic mysteries into one article. This both includes mysteries in-universe as well as more meta mysteries.
5. Was Colonel Glass really Marilyn's father?
Spinnerette doesn't have that many unanswered questions, aside from "What happened to Mecha Maid's ALS?", mainly because that would imply that there is a linear narrative, when at this point it's just Kraw making bunch of oneshots meant to satisfy his ego, his bank account and his penis. There however was a time there was some semblance of continuity, there was a world, there was fucking conflict, and that was Colonel Glass arc. I've told time and time again how this arc was sort of the end of old Spinnerette, and while it wasn't treated as a major mystery, there was one intriguing question that really only came up once during the whole trilogy, Mecha Maid at one point speculates that Colonel Glass was her biological father. This is because Glass has been around since Marilyn was just a baby. Later when the two koreans meet again, Glass shows remorse and agreement when Mecha Maid expresses her hatred of war. This bizarre moment could be a clue that Glass knows that he is in fact Mecha Maid's father but this is just a theory because quite frankly that moment came out of nowhere and was just contradictory for the sake of MYSTERY OOOO BETCHA DIDN'T SEE THIS COMING VIEWERS. Now, Colonel Glass is pretty much persona non grata in the main comic. Of course, there is the White Heron sidecomic, but I doubt that comic will bother to answer this question.
My personal theory is that Colonel Glass isn't Mecha Maid's father because that would be stupid. Mecha Maid doesn't have any special powers of her own, she got her ALS because she got bumped on her head as a baby, and Marilyn's adoptive dad was a tech guru so he probably helped Marilyn to learn how to build her suit of armor. Considering that Kraw has forgotten all about Marilyn's ALS, I don't think he remembers this plot point either.
4. Was Randall supposed to be gay?
Soulkat is probably the only webcomic writer in this blog whose brainlessness and lack of any talent gives Kraw serious competition. Now with Las Lindas having too many cooks in the kitchen, it's certain that there are a lot of contrasting visions regarding the comic. Characters often debut real quickly and become part of the unlikable cast in a matter of minutes. Randall was like this, he just appeared during the harvest festival and kinda stuck around, only later we got the whole ordeal with him being childhood friend of Mora and the rushed love interest for Taffy. Randall had potential to be one decent character in a cast of assholes, but then he was rushed into a relationship with Taffy and that's it. The reason for this rush was because Soulkat was pissed when people assumed that Randall might be GAY! GASP! EVERYBODY KNOWS LESBIANS ARE MORE HOT I MEAN PROFITABLE I MEAN RELATABLE.
So yeah, if Randall wasn't supposed to be gay, then why was he so, I hate to use this word but everyone uses it nowadays so I have to use it too and I can't think of a better word, gay-coded? I mean he was a good-looking dude who had affinity for shopping, dancing and fishing. Not saying every gay person is into that, but back in those days, "gay-coding" was known as "stereotyping", wait, I should've used that word instead. Either way, Randall was a really well-written character but once again, he was pretty much molded into yet another Mora asskisser with no personality as soon as he and Taffy locked eyes. So, was he meant to be gay but Soulkat's homophobia eventually won out so he was quickly rushed into a relationship because godforbid NOBODY in this comic is allowed to be single???
My personal theory is that, I hate to say it, Randall was always meant to be straight. Randall is not the only character who was decent at first but then got ruined almost immediately as soon as he stepped on that fucking farm. There were many characters who started out as likable, Miles, Rachel, Alejandra and so forth, only to get ruined overtime. The entire reason Randall was rushed into relationship was definitely because of Soulkat being afraid that people thought he was gay. Maybe if he is gay, maybe make him gay, or even bisexual. That being said even if he was gay he definitely would have been ruined anyway. He certainly wasn't gonna be Burke.
3. Did Tiffany change her mind about Chel killing Trasik?
While far from being a talentless hack, Tiffany has sometimes made some very questionable decisions. And sadly, she did two massive plot twists that permanently damaged Alien Dice within a short timespan. We'll talk about the second one today, the one I consider to be the worst plot twist I've encountered on this blog. It's a real shame too because it ruined probably the best scene in the entire comic. After seeing Trasik get away with her bullshit for too long, Chel grabs a spear and impales Trasik just when she is about to stab Lexx. However, we get our first sign that something isn't right when suddenly she loses her pupils and injects Lexx with lethal poison as her final move before passing away. Then few pages later we learn Trasik was a mimic ALL ALONG until this point, and the real Trasik disappeared at some point before Chel was kidnapped. We will not talk about real Trasik's whereabouts as I feel this comic will provide an unsatisfying answer to that, but instead let's talk about what drove Tiffany to do this plot twist. I've reread this arc, and there is virtually zero foreshadowing unless it's extremely subtle. Literally any hints of Trasik being a mimic only pick up AFTER Chel stabs her. That leads to only one conclusion, Tiffany might have wanted Chel to originally kill Trasik here but changed her mind at the last minute, likely she was afraid that Chel killing someone would make readers hate Chel. I can safely say that anyone with a brain would see that Chel didn't kill a person, she killed a monster.
Yet Tiffany, afraid of a backlash, went ahead and did the "she was a mimic all along" plot twist anyway, giving us another pointless mystery and not even bothering to address the other questions like what happened to the kids Trasik trafficked? How has Trasik not found out about Lexx's family living next to her for all these years? Why didn't Riley tell Lexx and Chel ANYTHING about Trasik being a mimic despite knowing it all along? Whatever, all of those questions are irrelevant, the only question that matters is, did Tiffany come to a last second decision to change the scene?
My personal theory is, abso-fucking-lutely she did. While I can see her wanting to not foreshadow Lexx's mom being alive all along just for the sake of a shock, there is NO reason for this twist to happen without any hints of Trasik's true identity. Writing webcomics is a careful job. It's a real shame that even after she worked so hard to make Trasik so goddamn hateable, she still regretted having Chel kill someone so she pulled that bullshit twist to avoid imaginary backlash. It's not too late to pull a doubletwist that Riley only claimed Trasik was a mimic to not get ADC on Chel's ass for murder or something, but that would only cover half the damage.' ass for murder or something, but that would only cover half the damage.
2. What was the original plan for Siegfried?
Whether it's Siggy having more fangirls than Deegan or people wanting Luna dead over him, the decision of making Siegfried Derek Chauvin of Dominion will always be one of the biggest Character Assassinations in this blog's history. I've talked about Siegfried's sudden racism buff so many times, let's just talk about something that DIDN'T happen. Let's say that Dominic Deegan's fans don't piss Mookie off, what was originally going to happen to Siegfried during War In Hell arc? Was he still going to be the one that was supposed to die? Were his noble acts in Battle of Barthis genuine instead of motivated by Jayden's pussy? And most importantly, was he going to still be racist against orcs?
My personal theory is, I want to believe Siggy wasn't going to die because it would be unnecessary. I don't think Deegan would've vomited if someone who was a racist piece of shit was going to die. Remember this was the arc when Klo Tark inexplicably returned with his angel brother form? I think him vomiting was about his second death all along, because he and Deegan were really close. Maybe too close.
As for what happens to Siggy, I think he would've had some bias against orcs but it would be established his racism is because of his father, but eventually learns about his father's atrocities, which horrifes him. it's not an instant redemption, and the other orcs don't want to talk to him because of his daddy's lynchings, but he might actually go as far as leave his position as a knight in protest of his position. I believe he was going to play the role of Rembrandt in March Across Maltak. He ends up falling in love with an orc, and completes his redemption arc as he learns how the suffering of orcs is his father's fault, and ends up staying in Maltak as the guardian of the Crone.
While not exactly a perfect redemption arc I still think it's way better than what Mookie did in the actual comic.
1. How was Gene Catlow going to end?
This will be a mystery that will never get an answer, due to the tragic passing of Albert Temple. We do know that Gene Catlow was likely going to conclude very soon after the current arc, with one last arc. The only major events that would've happened before the end are Mason's stupid redemption, Michelle's birth, Forzoi's punishment of Matt, Gene and Catwhis's son's birth, battle against CGI Cats and possibly everyone answering the call of Friendship Island. But other than that, even when you read 16 years of his comic, Albert continues to be unpredictable. Nobody can just connect the dots and claim this is what Albert would've wanted. For example, I have no idea if Forzoi would've actually redeemed Matt or just punished him, and what would've become of Cydnee. And that's not even getting into the rest of the cast, and if Family Too Stupid to Live was gonna go global. It's a real shame honestly.
My personal theory is, I have none. I can hypothesize but I can never truly figure out how was Albert Temple going to conclude his life project, and just how many more years was it gonna go on. Not to mention Albert was still going to write one-offs focusing on other characters after the end of main comic. Hell, it's possible World of Friends wouldn't have happened at all, but instead was implied to be a thing that would happen eventually. If someone were to take over Albert's site and write the ending themselves, I would be against it and not consider it the official ending. Some questions are better off left unanswered.
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