Shakespeare definition of loins

"I love "Star Trek" deeply because of its radical, aggressive optimism. It envisions a world, and a form of entertainment, that downplays conflict. Drama and power can come from elsewhere. The future, "Trek" always declared, was going to be populated by nerds, miracle tech, and egalitarianism. And what's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?"
Witney Seibold (SlashFilm)
Link:
https://www.slashfilm.com/1582617/star-trek-changed-my-life-forever-reigns-as-greatest-sci-fi-franchise-of-all-time/
Quotes:
"Like many Trekkies, I came to "Star Trek" at an early age. Throughout the 1980s, reruns of the original series would air on my local station (KCOP, channel 13 in Los Angeles), and they would serve as a periodic video backdrop to our dinnertimes. As a child, "Star Trek" was merely an action-light, horror-heavy sci-fi adventure series, and my older sister and I would gleefully yell out when Spock (Leonard Nimoy) performed his notorious Vulcan nerve pinch, or when Captain Kirk (William Shatner) got to snog an itinerant babe. We would hide our heads from the monster of the week; like many, I was terrified by the scowling face of Balok, the Ted Cassidy-voiced puppet alien from "The Corbomite Maneuver" (November 10, 1966).
Perhaps unusually for a child, I wasn't powerfully drawn to action, fights, or explosions in my entertainment. I would indeed watch the era's toyetic wartime cartoons like "Transformers" and "G.I. Joe," of course, but I didn't care deeply for the characters, nor have much invested in their dramatic stakes. I had trouble taking the "oorah" action seriously, perhaps already innately understanding that the cartoon soldiers were fictional and their triumphs were only temporary; what is the meaning of a victory when the bad guys will merely return the following week?
I only realized this in retrospect, but "Star Trek" was secretly providing an antidote to the breathless mayhem oozing from every pore of my generation's childhood entertainment. It was a series that, despite bad guys, monsters, and fights, was ultimately teaching intense lessons of diplomacy and leadership. The crew of the Enterprise weren't "violent/cool," and I liked that. Finally, I realized, here was a show about pacifism.
And, yes, "Star Trek" communicated themes of pacifism. It might have been a fluke of 1960s special effects budgets, but "Star Trek" rarely showed the USS Enterprise firing off its weapons or getting into full-scale starship battles. The common playground pop culture query of "who would win in a fight?" seemed churlish with "Star Trek." Would Kirk win in a fight with, say, Han Solo? Even as a wee bairn, I had to ask why Kirk and Han Solo would be fighting in the first place. I figured Spock would merely ask Han Solo about his ship while Kirk invited him in for a meal. Power, "Star Trek" argued, wasn't derived from one's ability to dominate and overwhelm others with tactics and weapons prowess, but to negotiate, adapt, and remain friendly.
[...]
Whether "Star Trek" taught me to be a pacifist or whether I was already a pacifist can be debated, but creator Gene Roddenberry and I were definitely on the same wavelength. "Star Trek" took place in a post-war universe at a time when humans had outgrown the need to kill each other for resources, and petty political grievances were a thing of the past.
[...]
Star Trek is for nerds, and that's a good thing
While it may be a cliché, I still maintain that "Star Trek" is for nerds. That is, I should hasten to add, a high compliment. With the release of "Next Generation," I was given my clearest, most refreshing draft of action-antidote. I began to realize that the rest of the American viewing public longed for conflict and war and action in their entertainment, with boys my age constantly raving about the latest 'splosion-fest that evoked the word "awesome."
Meanwhile, over on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," the universe had already graduated, moved into the stars, and gave up on action altogether. Oh sure, Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) was handy with a phaser, Worf (Michael Dorn) could murder you with a bat'leth, and the USS Enterprise-D needed to employ some sneaky battlefield tactics to outgun the Borg (or any number of other opponents), but one always got the sense that weapons and fights were a last-ditch tactic, a formality that must be seen through before an understanding could be reached. War was to be avoided at all costs.
What's more, there were classical references! Whenever Picard quoted Shakespeare, my heart would sing. By the time I turned 13 (when NextGen had just finished its fourth season), I too was getting into Shakespeare and Picard emerged as a teacher, a fictional professor that you didn't want to disappoint. I finally realized that the nerdy sci-fi technicalities of "Star Trek," along with its classical obsessions, workplace propriety, devotion to diplomacy, multicultural mindsets, and ability to brainstorm open-minded solutions to complex problems ... these were all aspirational states. Scoop in a few ethical dilemmas — racism, euthanasia, gender politics — and "Trek" gave me everything.
Star Trek obsession is healthy, actually
Like with the original series, the peacefulness of "Next Generation" could easily have been a product of its budget; without the money to stage massive phaser battles, fights and scrapes rarely rose above the skirmish level. This, by necessity, required the show to de-emphasize violence. The makers of "NextGen" also couldn't afford to visit alien worlds regularly, forcing them to shoot on the same six or seven sets week after week.
The limitations, however, allowed Trekkies to enjoy our time on board the Enterprise. "Star Trek" is, after all, a workplace drama above anything else, and we loved seeing the characters do their jobs on an day-to-day basis. We lived with the Enterprise crew long enough that we started to get a sense of how the ship worked. That, in turn, led directly into fantasies of living in "Star Trek," knowing we could operate the machinery if asked. It also didn't seem so terrible to live in a world that was devoted to science, peace, and diplomacy.
[...]
When J.J. Abrams' 2009 "Star Trek" reboot film came out, the franchise was altered to be one of the usual action flicks that "Trek" previously eschewed. It appealed to a mass audience. Conversations began as to what constituted "real Trek," leading directly into additional conversations about gatekeeping, fandom, and franchise evolution. Is "Star Trek" for nerds, or can it appeal to — for lack of a better term — jocks?
Conversations between Trekkies in the 1990s were impassioned, but rarely caustic (at least in my experience). In 2009, however, notions of fan toxicity were more openly acknowledged among pop obsessives, and people became angrier about their obsessions. All of a sudden, I was an "old school" Trekkie.
I was 31 and okay being "old school." After all, decades had passed since "Next Generation," a series that responded to Ronald Reagan and flourished during the 1990s. Why shouldn't it adjust again? I didn't like the franchise's actioned-up response to 9/11, but I was still happy to have debates as to what "Star Trek" meant and what modern action films communicated.
"Trek" taught me to negotiate ... about "Trek."
What Star Trek means today
I am on record with my feelings about the Paramount+ era of "Star Trek," and I have frequently been rather critical. I want to go on record, however, that my criticisms are not based in misplaced nostalgia, prejudicial hate against new "Star Trek," nor a gradually closing mind (an unfortunate affliction that can sometimes strike people rounding middle age). Indeed, I have liked a great deal of the "Star Trek" shows that have debuted since 2017. I think "Star Trek: Lower Decks" perfectly balances humor and irreverence with notable "Star Trek" themes of growth and maturity. "Lower Decks" is about lower-ranking officers who have the crappiest jobs on a Starfleet vessel, and struggle to grow up when they have a twentysomething's instincts toward laziness and bad decision-making. "Star Trek" is about adults, and "Lower Decks" sees people becoming adults.
Likewise, "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" returns to an episodic structure, allowing for miniature dramas and handily-packaged morality plays to be presented more cleanly than the broad arcs of "Discovery" or "Picard." I only wince at "Star Trek" when it violates its own principles or lazily falls into action-based stories that (perhaps unwittingly) glorify combat, war, and aggression. And make no mistake, these kinds of stories were always part of the franchise; they didn't start in 2017.
I love "Star Trek" deeply because of its radical, aggressive optimism. It envisions a world, and a form of entertainment, that downplays conflict. Drama and power can come from elsewhere. The future, "Trek" always declared, was going to be populated by nerds, miracle tech, and egalitarianism. And what's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?
War was our awkward adolescence, "Trek" said, and our adulthood is in the stars."
Witney Seibold (SlashFilm)
Link:
https://www.slashfilm.com/1582617/star-trek-changed-my-life-forever-reigns-as-greatest-sci-fi-franchise-of-all-time/

1. Exposition:

• Definition: The introduction of characters, setting, and initial situation.
  
• Example: In Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," the exposition introduces the Bennet family and their rural estate, Longbourn.
  

1. Inciting Incident:

• Definition: The event that sets the main plot in motion.
  
• Example: In William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," the inciting incident occurs when Romeo and Juliet meet at the Capulet's party, sparking their fateful love.
  

1. Rising Action:

• Definition: The development of the conflict and building of tension.
  
• Example: In J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Fellowship of the Ring," the rising action involves the journey of Frodo and the fellowship as they face challenges and obstacles on their quest to destroy the One Ring.
  

1. Climax:

• Definition: The turning point or highest point of tension in the story.
  
• Example: In George Orwell's "1984," the climax occurs when the protagonist, Winston Smith, is captured and tortured by the Thought Police, leading to a crucial moment of submission.
  

1. Falling Action:

• Definition: Events that follow the climax and lead to resolution.
  
• Example: In F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," the falling action involves the aftermath of Gatsby's death and the resolution of the various conflicts surrounding his character.
  

1. Resolution:

• Definition: The conclusion where loose ends are tied up.
  
• Example: In Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities," the resolution brings closure to the characters' storylines, particularly with the sacrifice of Sydney Carton and the broader societal changes in France and England.
  

These examples showcase how classic literature employs the components of a plot to craft engaging and memorable narratives.

So im starting my secont week. Mind you before i started i weighed in around 235lb, (27yo Male) Mainly doing this diet because of my 9month old son. I was so lethargic, no ambition, felt like absolute garbage. I tried dieting back in 2020, but got into a pretty bad motorcycle accident. With a 7 month recovery and only one functioning hand i ended up gaining the weight back and have held 230ish since. With my son born ive been working 2nd shift so i can watch him in the morning while moms out for work. Normal scheduel is 630am to 2am. Daily drank about 600+mg of caffine, tons of sweets. Smoke weed daily
Im starting my second week and man I feel so heckin good right now it is insane. I cut it all cold turkey. I have been drinking easily 4 liters of water. As i write it ive already drank 3 liters by 11am. Its pretty hot and ive made about 6 full wheelbarrow trips about 70 yards, so ive been sweating a good amount. Ive stiill got an 8 hour shift to work and ill definitely probably kill 2 more liters of water.
For food ive been eating 3-4 eggs every meal with steak, chicken, bacon and sometimes a little ham when wife wants breakfast. All either cooked in butter or the leftover bacon grease. I smoked a pork loin yesterday and that made me feel kinda iffy but again could have been the weed. Weed feels like it makes me feel worse so it might look like ill quit that till nights when i wanna relax.
I guess mainly looking for pointers. My wifes worried im drinking too much water but i feel like i can get enough. My energy is insane. Im on my feet all day and still had a rough time sleeping the first few days. But ive been taking potassium and magnesium at night. Other than that like i said i feel amazing. I feel strong like i was back when i was a thin 155lb 17yo hitting the gym.
Can we still have a reeses down the road.. thats what i wanna know. Like when i get to a weight im looking for like 160ish (im 5, 7) can i still have a milkshake with my wife and son when we go out? Honestly haven't even cared to eat sugar but i do miss the reeses sticks and icecream.

Who would be “The Fighter” or “The Rogue” etc

Poetic Form: Sonnet

Definition: A sonnet is a 14-line poem, typically written in iambic pentameter, with various rhyme schemes. It traditionally explores a single theme or idea.
Example: William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18" ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?")
Freewrite Prompt: In the heart of the bustling city, amidst the chaos and noise, there stood a solitary figure, composing sonnets that echoed the rhythm of life around them.

Hello Pureasoiaf :) I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on this Hamlet reference in Daenerys IX (AGOT) as I know barely anything about Shakespeare, but I think its a fascinating and very informative choice. It's referring to this part of Hamlets famous "To be or not to be" soliloquy where he's contemplating suicide after being tasked with avenging his murdered dad and really severely not feeling up to all that (emphasis mine):

'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep, perchance to dream —ay, there's the rub: For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause—there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life.

To give a really butchered translation of these lines as I understand them, Hamlet is saying that death (the "consummation") sounds pretty neat right now, actually. But, using sleep as a metaphor for death, as a Christian he fears "what dreams may come", aka what if he ends up in hell. So he decides not to risk it.
Compare to this, which is almost identical (and as that's one of the most famous lines in the history of literature would definitely have been removed by Martin or his editors if it was in there on accident):

Inside the tent Dany found a cushion, soft silk stuffed with feathers. She clutched it to her breasts as she walked back out to Drogo, to her sun-and-stars. If I look back I am lost. It hurt even to walk, and she wanted to sleep, to sleep and not to dream.

This quote closes out the chapter where, after Rhaego's death, Drogo's catatonia and the collapse of the Khalasar, Dany promises to avenge Eroeh, and basically decides that it's her job fix the whole world, seeing as nobody else is going to bloody do it. But then she finds she's unable to revive Drogo using sex, aka the sole power she has been alloted, due to her position as "wife", (i.e. she is confronted with her total powerlessness), and any hope for accomplishing her promise dies with Drogo.
We're given startlingly (and skillfully) very little direct information about her state of mind during and after this, despite it being her POV, and rely mostly on surrounding context: all of those things are horrifying, but also later she gets dragons. But, particularly in light of her likening walking into the fire to an act of consummation itself ("This is a wedding, too, she thought." - Daenerys X, AGOT) I think it's worth remembering that Hamlet stuff, because in that soliloquy the "consummation devoutly to be wish'd" is not marriage, but suicide. And Dany essentially sacrifices who she was, her personhood, to take on the role of Mother of Dragons etc etc. And, in keeping with other self-sacrifices in the books, it does work, when prior to her stream of consciousness in front of the fire she had absolutely no idea how to make dragons. And also, just for fun, brings the dragons birth a lot more in line with other magical occurrences in the books too, as it's self sacrifice that seems to be the key ingredient.
My two cents anyway. I'd love to hear what others think, especially if you're more familiar with Hamlet. Why do you think that "to sleep, to sleep and not to dream" line was used? What meaning is it supposed to convey, and does it affect how you see Dany's journey, or her place in the wider story? Are there any other Hamlet references that you've noticed? Is there anything else in that soliloquy, or the rest of the play, that you think may come up in the future?

joe alwyn definitely dodged a bullet so happy for him he looks so glowy at cannes i think i really love this man.
he seems so calm and mature unlike HER who's literally showing off her fake ass pr relationship with a dumb asf guy who legit looks like a caveman💀💀 like how cringe is that? i cannot with my feed on every app with pictures of them at her tour or at a game or some club meanwhile her fans are like oHmYgOd ReLaShiOnShiP gOaLssss 💞💞💞💞💞nooooo eww that's nothing near "goalss" imagine ppl in their mid thirties acting like that one high school couple everyone avoids. i used to be her fan for such a long time but no more.
i cannot imagine the pain joe must be going through cause first she let her fans bully not just him but his costars family everyone, then revealing HIS fucking mental health struggles to the whole world in her songs only for her fans to bully him even more and mock his depression(and thats what they're doing) and then after a whole ass year of swifti@s sending him death threats and saying he cheated, she releases guilty as sin accepting that she was imagining fucking another guy (a racist nazi) while she was with joe bcs she was "bored" by his depression! girl be serious!! i was officially done with this fandom the day they broke up and these maniacs started talking shit about him like all her exes and calling him a red flag(tbh he's the greenest one it seems).
and now that joe is finally getting the time of his life at cannes for a movie that might be his biggest one yet, guess what she decides to do next? her so called ''vacation'' pics with caveman get released with no one but her own team leaking to the press that they might get engaged very soon. ALL THIS only to flip the narrative from him and get HER all the attention. so cheap. and even after all this still he's never said a word bad about her. this guy has my respect💗
the quality of taylor's music has been degrading ever since 2022 and all she ever does now is re-release the same shit in 13 different versions and act all oh so shakespeare. her idea of feminism is so fucked up she was never a girl's girl and then she dares to call her ttpd set on eras tour as FEMALE RAGE THE MUSICAL?! girl what do u even understand by the word female rage? exactly nothing. plus don't get me started on ttpd💀💀 that album-
honestly im so happy for joe he's out of it now finally. i just wish this toxic degrading fandom just leaves him alone. he never deserved any hate he received. JOE YOU HAVE ALL MY BEST WISHES ILY
(helpp i can't stop edting this post and keep adding things cause the more i dig on the more pettier she gets gawd💀)

Get your request in for part 2 right now. Because I will not do every single villain.
Joker: Wow, you're so cool and quirky and different, no one else on this planet is like you…
Harley Quinn: Hello LGBTQ community, this is not the last time we will meet!
Catwoman: Your not that picky about women, you just want them to step on your neck!
Man-Bat: You are not fighting the furry allegations. This is literally if Batman's fursona was finally given physical form.
Scarecrow: You know that stereotype of autistic boys are obsessed with trains? Well here's the trains of DC, your welcome.
Bane: God, do you guys like to be choked.
Killer Croc: “Oh I already know; this is for people with anger issues.” WRONG! Croc is for the people who's neutral state is crying.
Mad Hatter: Prison, for multiple reasons…
Poison Ivy: We reach our entry of “Please, oh please, for the love of God, keep it in yer pants”!
Deadshot: Your interpretation of this man has been permanently warped by Suicide Squad (2016)
Deathstroke: There are people who are attracted to daddy's and then there's you, people who are attracted to fathers
Twoface: Crippling gambling addiction “I don't have a problem, I can stop whenever I want!” Shut up and go to therapy
Ra's al ghul: Your friends think that you are a happy person. Your best friends know that you are a sentient sad clown painting…
Riddler: Hello LGBTQ community, you've been caught in 4K
The Penguin: Given that Batman doesn't have any elderly villains, I get that you'll take what you can get. Also yer probably gay
Kiteman: Your definitely gay
Mr. Freeze: There's 2 options: either you haven't gotten over your EX or you just like Shakespeare. There's no in between
Nora Freeze: You saw Frozen all the way back in 2014 and you have annoyed your friends by making it your personality ever since.
Victor Zsasz: For the love of God, murderers are not “cute little beans deserve the world,” THEY ARE VILE PEOPLE!!!
Baby Doll: Prison, I don't need to explain…
Baby Face: What right do you have being the first one threatening violence when you look like some sleeping hamster?!
Polka-dot Man: You just want that one villain to do something, but they always manage to disappoint you
Red Hood: I'm gonna go out on a limb and say “you do not have a good relationship with your father…
Music Meister: Your a theater kid, and I do mean that in the most insulting way possible
Black Mask: You were that one kid in middle school who constantly screamed about being in gangs, but was the first one to run away when someone checked you for it.
Clock king: In every friend group there is someone with one of these character traits: the meme lord who can't be taken to public places anymore, the STEM major who is desperate for a new family, or the gay one.
Sweet Tooth: Hello LGBTQ community, specifically the members who's sinuses have been permanently destroyed by party drugs
The ventriloquist: Your parents owned the most creepy ass dolls and you have yet to get over this Crippling fear
Hugo Strange: You put on a different character for everyone you're around and that is a problem and you need help…
Hush: You and your childhood friend had a fall out when you were teens and they definitely held a grudge. Or you're holding the grudge and in that case, seek help
Firefly: Hello LGBTQ community, specifically the ones with an obsession with pyromania and the 4th of July!
Condiment King: Hello LGBTQ community, specifically everyone with a food addiction! By the way; get help for that…

Back in 2017 i had an idea regarding how we could create actual intelligent machines, which ive then been surprised to find isnt how any AI training systems work today, and I thought I'd share either because its a cool idea, or so that someone can explain to me why its not such a cool idea. Here are the step by step basic instructions on how to create sentient machines, which, as the title states, involves evolving it in a powerful evolution simulation:
So you start by creating a detailed physics simulation of an unpopulated Earth, like as detailed as it can possibly be. The simulation is huge, it runs on a massive supercomputer. The details of the simulation are sculpted and scrutinized by a staff of hundreds. This is obviously expensive, but entirely possible.
Populate the simulation with agents. These are just basic actors with the required programming to survive, mate, etc. We create animals like this, as well as artificial humans within the simulation who have various health stats, and can hunt, but also die or reprodice with one another to maintain their population. So it's a physics simulation, and an ecology simulation, but while the agent's reprogramming is as sophisticated as we can afford to make it, it's not AI in the modern sense. Basically just a video game NPC programmed to react in various ways to corresponding triggers.
Here's where things are different from a typical evolution simulator. Typically when I've seen an evolution simulator, there is a predetermined list of traits that randomize in some way to allow a creature to adapt to its environment (I.E., the fox and the bunny can be born with a physical trait such as a speed variable which is passed down from its parents and then randomly adds or subtracts a certain number). The method here is a little different. Within the simulation, there are the agents, whose physical attributes remain unaltered throughout the simulation. Each agent has an isolated "mind", meaning all of the agent's behavioural programming is seperate from the programming of the rest of the simulation. Within this mind, there are actual mutations in the form of randomly inserted letters, numbers, and/or words whenever an agent is "born". Often, this may do nothing. Often, it may be harmful to the agent. But once in a blue moon, a mutation will occur in the agent's programming which improves its "intelligence", and thus its chances of survival, and its reproductive capacity. This is evolution in a way that more closely mimics our own evolution, other than the fact that it is only the mind of the agent that evolves and not the body.
Now the process of inducing beneficial mutations is not so straightforward, and the methods can be diverse. For example, perhaps instead of totally random numbers and letters, we randomly insert words or strings of words from a dictionary, with the appearance of words that exist within the particular coding language being far more like to appear. This also brings up the question of which language to use? Perhaps if we are serious about AGI then we should build some language purposely from the ground up? In what ways could this increase the likelihood of positive mutations? Also then, aside from just increasing the likelihood of positive mutations, how do we decrease the likelihood of negative or benign mutations? Perhaps our method is that each agent's "birth" should see a mutation per every so many lines of code, but as each mutation is inserted, it is checked in some way to see if it breaks the code (this is far more likely than not, of course), and if it does then the program cancels the mutation and tries again until it doesnt break the code. Perhaps when agents pass on behavioural programming to their offspring, it includes some kind of memory of harmful mutations. Perhaps it may be useful to have 2 genders so offspring can have more "genetic diversity", as well as to further simulate conditions similar to our own. I can think of lot of methods and tricks to experiment with, but you get the idea. I think the only way to know which assortment of methods is most efficient would be by trying each and every one, and of course pioneering new methods.
Now simply speed up the simulation. Let's pretend for a moment that we have nearly unlimited computing power, because it's possible that soon enough we will. In a flash, we have evolved intelligence within this simulation. I believe that the degree to which this intelligence will be similar to us will be largely proportional to the accuracy of the simulation. The more we can create conditions similar to our own evolution, the more likely it is to evolve into what we have evolved to recognize as sentient intelligence. I predict that with enough accuracy, this method could give rise to such complex behaviours as appreciation of art, culture, tradition, and possibly even religion, as i believe these behaviors came about due to the survival advantage they provided to their respective social groups.
Because the body of the agent does not evolve over time, we could actually build a physical robot body and inhabit it with the "consciousness" of an agent extracted from the simulation. I believe that this kind of machine intelligence is actually very much alive and conscuous in the same degree as human beings, even though certainly consciousness remains very mysterious to us. This is a creature that evolved, like we did. It has a history, and ancestors, and was molded by an environment similar enough to ours that it might fit within our narrow definition of intelligence. Perhaps it likes music and art, and feels good when it's seen as useful and respected by its community, but feels bad when it does wrong or offends its social group. To wonder if such a creature truly experiences the universe in the conscious sense like I do sounds perfectly valid to me, but then i must also think such thoughts about my neighbor, whose true consciousness i also have no proof of.
Ill conclude with a few thoughts on the wider implications of this kind of intelligence, and what its existence could mean for us, if indeed it is alive. this intelligent machine is not here to replace someone at their job. why invent a sentient robot just for it to perform a task that a non-sentient robot could be much more satisfied with. this robot will replace us though, as a species. not because it will wipe us out, but because it is simply more robust. a race of intelligent machines could colonize the stars without any need to terraform a planet. if they did decide to terraform a planet, an individual robot could live long enough to see the fruits of all its labor by actually getting to live on the planet it terraformed. they are smarter and stronger. they could survive the vaccum of outer space. in fact, it seems to me that the obvious advantages for any species of developing artificial intelligence, as well as the potential robustness of the mechanical creature, could be viewed as evidence that our search for alien life should be predominantly focused on a search for mechanical life. for the ones that come from earth, well when they spread across the universe, theyll take our culture with them, everything from shakespeare to Peanuts cartoons. And of course i do not know this... but i even believe they would likely cherish us, and wish the best for us like an aging parent. maybe even care for us. A child of the human race.
I know this last bit seems fantastical, but I think these are not ridiculous considerations to make regarding what I see as the very possible reality of evolving consciousness in a computer simulation.

━━━━━▼ TWIN 1 ▼━━━━━

BASIC INFO

Name: Thomas Matthew Hartley

• AKA Tommy. Nobody really calls him by his full name, and he's never gone by 'Tom' or anything either.

Age: 16
Gender: Male
D.O.B: 13th April 2023
Birthplace: London, England
Nationality: British
Godrent: Aphrodite
Significant family:
• Adoptive mother: Veronica Hartley, 42
• Adoptive father: Alan Hartley, 44
• Twin brother: Harvey Hartley, 16

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

Faceclaim: Art/Picrews
Features: Tommy may not look like a typical macho Hollywood hunk, but his delicately angular and distinctive features endow him instead with a uniquely pretty look. Of particular note are his eyes: big, slightly wide-set, a little downturned, and baby blue. All this, along with the rest of his unconventional style, makes for a rather striking appearance. Tommy is also blessed with a perennial smile that ebbs between relaxed and radiant.
Height: 5'8" — about an inch shorter than his brother, although this gap is often bridged thanks to his taste in shoes.
Build: Slender and lean.
Hair: Tommy's hair is probably one of his favourite things. He dedicates a great amount of care and attention to it. Though naturally brown, he's been dyeing it blond for a few years now, and will on occasion add various other pops of colour. It's currently in a stylishly tousled, layered style that just reaches his shoulders when loose.
Clothes/style: Tommy is nothing if not a fashionista. He will flit artfully between a wide variety of fashion movements, never quite committing to a single one, though he has a particular love for 2000s and 1970s aesthetics (from Y2K to glam rock and disco). He also often takes inspiration from hippie, punk, emo, grunge, and otherwise alt or vintage fashion, but he's adventurous in his style (and only getting more so with time) and he doesn't like to limit himself. Most of his clothes have been thrifted or bought secondhand, with some customised or even constructed by himself.
Accessories: Numbering many and of a great variety. A common one is makeup: frequently eyeliner, sometimes nail polish, and occasionally things like lip gloss or eyeshadow.
Necklaces, chains, scarves, hats, belts, bracelets, rings, and tinted glasses make frequent appearances in his looks. Tommy has his ears pierced and usually wears small hoops or studs, but he also owns a few pairs of more intricate earrings.
Gender expression: Androgynous. While he doesn't seek to present himself as anything but male, he doesn't shy away from incorporating more feminine elements into his appearance.

PERSONALITY

Like many of his godly siblings, Tommy is a vain creature: he's never happier than when he's prettying himself up or achieving a perfect look. This can come hand in hand with a tendency for being self-absorbed, although his selfishness comes more from a habit of forgetting he’s not the only person in the world than having any malicious intent — he's a kind person when he’s not distracted by something shiny or his own self (which is pretty shiny). Getting distracted by something shiny is a common occurrence with Tommy, whose flighty nature means he can struggle with commitment (whether to tasks, plans, interests, or people).
Tommy is admittedly a little ditzy. He's not a fan of academia, nor of thinking too hard about anything in general, tying into his carefree approach to life. He is a remarkably laidback and cheerful person whose tendency to not sweat the little things can lead to irresponsibility. He's got a habit of ignoring problems and responsibilities and shirking hard work in favour of things more enjoyable; he’d rather have a good time now than worry about whatever consequences might come later. He can also sometimes be quite naïve. Overall, he is a friendly social butterfly with a fun-loving streak.

OTHER

Theme(s): TBD
Sexuality: Heterosexual, although he's currently not 100% sure. He's only ever been interested in girls, but the way some people assume he isn't straight (and his general openness to new things) has made him consider experimenting a little.
Voice/accent: A London accent. His voice is typically quite mellow and relaxed.
Mannerisms & habits: Tommy can often be seen playing with his hair, or just idly fidgeting in general. His body language is usually playful and casual. You'll frequently find him chewing gum. Tommy is right-handed.
Interests/hobbies:
Fashion: The way to Tommy's heart is through clothes. He lives for getting new clothes, going thrifting, styling outfits, wearing them, and generally being as fashionable as possible (although his style may skew alternative/unconventional).

• Tommy is also interested in fashion design and creating his own items of clothing. He's pretty talented at sewing and can alter or modify clothes or even construct new ones out of materials.

Music: Tommy has dreams of being a pop and/or rock star. A teen idol. Admittedly, these dreams are more motivated by a desire to be famous than passion for music, but he does genuinely love music and performing it. He mostly sings, which he is quite good at (though not groundbreakingly so).

• Like his taste in clothes, his taste in music also spans genres. Ones he's particularly a fan of include indie pop, glam rock, synth pop, pop punk, new wave, disco music, and hip hop, as well as whatever chart-toppers of the moment.
  
• Music he listens to ranges from David Bowie, ABBA, and Queen to Prince, KISS, and Avril Lavigne, but he’s got a wide variety of artists he listens to and would struggle to pick exact favourites.
  

Misc.:

• Tommy has been gathering a respectably sized following on social media, mostly posting himself and fashion-related posts. Upkeep of these accounts is likely difficult with limited access to the internet, though.
• The more athletic twin, Tommy enjoys activities and sports like skating and football (AKA soccer).

Powers:

• Enhanced Beauty 

Tommy always looks perfect. It could be down to the care he puts into his looks, but it's probably also the passive power that staves off cosmetic flaws and steers his physical state in the best possible direction, no matter whatever other factors in his life: for example, his skin is always clear and glowing; his hair is always beautiful and healthy-looking; his face never looks tired, or blotchy, or puffy — he always looks as flawless and radiant and as best he possibly can.

• Alluring Aura 

When Tommy's alluring aura power is activated, all those within the area of effect will find him remarkably attractive and charming. Any existing feelings of the sort — which are not uncommon anyway, really — are greatly amplified. People within 15 feet will find him more strikingly beautiful than they might otherwise, and may also feel subtly drawn to him, or more generally inclined to like him. Different people may be affected in different ways, and some more than others; the general intensity of the effect can also vary.
This aura effect activates unconsciously, triggered by all manner of situations: feeling certain emotions, meeting someone new, seeing someone attractive, the desire to charm or win someone over, the desire for attention and validation... Tommy is not aware of the power. He thinks he's just naturally like that.

• Flower Manipulation 

Tommy can control and manipulate flowers, including flowering vines, which he can grow from seeds or existing plants and use to wrap around targets to bind, restrain, or grab.

• Glitter Generation 

Tommy has the ability to manifest glitter, including edible glitter and glitter glue but not sequins.

• Persuasion, Cosmetic and Fashion Proficiency 

Tommy is naturally adept with the skills involved in persuasion and beautification, such as cosmetics and fashion.

• Animal Affinity 

All creatures tend to be naturally friendly to Tommy.
Weapons: None yet.
━━━━━▲ TWIN 2 ▲━━━━━

BASIC INFO

Name: Harvey Bruno Hartley

• Most attempts at nicknames will be met with disapproval (as well as jokes about the rhyming nature of his name).

Age: 16
Gender: Male
D.O.B: 13th April 2023
Birthplace: London, England
Nationality: British
Godrent: Aphrodite
Significant family:
• Adoptive mother: Veronica Hartley, 42
• Adoptive father: Alan Hartley, 44
• Twin brother: Thomas Hartley, 16

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

Faceclaim: Art/Picrews
Features: Although he and his identical twin should have identical faces, Harvey and Tommy do not look exactly alike. Perhaps this is down to Tommy's beauty-related powers which Harvey lacks, or perhaps it's a result of the accident Harvey had in childhood that broke his nose and jaw. This resulted in a lopsidedness to his chin and a crookedness to his nose that disrupts the symmetry of his face and the natural delicateness of his features. He is also afflicted by acne in a way that has spared his brother, and is insistently growing a terrible moustache, which at this point only amounts to a few wispy wayward hairs.
Height: 5'9" — an inch taller than his twin, which he likes to lord over him.
Build: Less fit than his more athletic brother, although they share the same slight frame.
Hair: Harvey sports his natural hair colour, which is brown. Unlike his brother, he does not devote much energy to his hair; he's stuck with the same style for years (which Tommy has long reviled as unflattering), and it always seems to end up limp, greasy, or scruffy.
Clothes/style: Harvey is not concerned with the trivialities of fashion. His clothes are generally plain and practical, so expect basic t-shirts (usually long-sleeved), hoodies, jeans, and joggers. The most adventurous fashion choice he makes is wearing turtlenecks, because they make him feel like a writer.
Accessories: Numbering few. Harvey doesn't typically accessorise, but he usually wears a watch.
Gender expression: Masculine.

PERSONALITY

Harvey does not fit in with his cabin mates.
While many of his siblings are preoccupied with matters of appearance and fashion, Harvey rejects such frivolities, espousing a strong distaste for shallow, meaningless things and favouring matters of intellectual substance and poetic beauty rather than superficial. This, unfortunately, can make him come across as pretentious. He's secretly (well... he thinks it's secretly) desperate to be seen as an intelligent, profound, and sophisticated individual — both an intellectual and an artist — and his attempts to embody this are not always the smoothest. In fact, he can be quite awkward: socialising does not come to him as effortlessly as it does to his brother.
Harvey is a dedicated person who can be very hard-working and conscientious. He is typically quite responsible and a lot more sensible than his twin, though maturity may sometimes give way to pettiness, especially if he starts to hold a grudge. He can be rather bitter and jealous, with his insecurity and neurotic disposition at times creating a self-sabotaging vicious circle. Harvey can also be moody, with a tendency to wallow in his own feelings, as well as take things too seriously. Despite all this, he is often a thoughtful and considerate person, and remains loyal to those he is close to.

OTHER

Theme(s): Creep by Radiohead TBD
Sexuality: Heterosexual.
Voice/accent: His accent seems to be slightly more 'posh' than his brother's, although this may just be something he's trained himself into.
Mannerisms & habits: Harvey and Tommy share certain mannerisms. They both tend to fidget and fiddle with things, with Harvey typically focusing on his watch or his sleeves. Harvey is also a mouth breather (in the literal sense), and rather stuck in a cycle of chewing, licking, and picking at chapped and scabby lips, which only serves to make the matter worse. Harvey often seems a little tense and this is seen in his posture. He is left-handed.
Interests/hobbies:
Literature: This includes reading and writing. Harvey is an appreciator of classic works of literature, such as those by Shakespeare or the poetry greats over the centuries, as well as classic novels.

• He writes his own poetry and also tries his hand at prose (although his childhood aspiration of being a writer has never been achieved beyond a couple of pages — he can never come up with plots).

Music: Harvey is passionate about music and rather proud of his music taste. He enjoys the genres of experimental music, post-rock, ambient, shoegaze, progressive rock, and noise music, as well as having an appreciation for jazz, especially more avant-garde forms. He's also partial to a spot of classical music, although partly just because it makes him seem cultured.

• His favourite artist is Radiohead, though he had a former obsession with The Beatles. Further musicians include Aphex Twin, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, My Bloody Valentine, Swans, and a variety of artists who nobody has ever heard of. He's a bit of a music snob and tends to look down on mainstream pop music.
  
• Harvey plays the guitar, writes his own songs, and produces his own experimental/ambient music which he posts online.
  

Bird-watching: A self-professed 'birder', Harvey finds great satisfaction in observing birds, recording bird sightings, and learning about the ornithological.
Misc.:

• Harvey considers himself a very cultured individual, one who appreciates things such as fine art and philosophy and possesses a vast library of knowledge. To his credit... well, he definitely tries to be this way.
  
• Harvey and Tommy have always played games together, ranging from childhood inventions to board games to the more 'intellectually stimulating' ones (like chess) Harvey tries to push but for which Tommy has little interest.
  

Powers:

• Dove Transformation 

Harvey can transform into a dove (specifically, a European turtle dove). He can maintain this form for a maximum of two cumulative hours a day. Shifting too rapidly will lead to a feeling of disorientation and eventually exhaustion.

• Heartbreak Inducement 

Harvey has the ability to induce an emotional state within targets similar to the pain of heartbreak. When used, this power will leave a target feeling deeply sorrowful and distressed, as if their heart has just been broken. This can last between two and ten minutes, with shorter times being able to pack more intensity. This could stave off an attacker (including monsters) as the emotional turmoil would be distracting.

• Pathokinesis Immunity 

Harvey is immune to emotional powers and magical attempts of emotional manipulation.

• Animal Affinity 

All creatures tend to be naturally friendly to Harvey.
Weapons: None yet.

HISTORY

Tommy and Harvey were born out of a brief liaison between the goddess Aphrodite and a young man living in London. Said young man was not keen on raising a baby, let alone two, and despite his (vaguely) valiant efforts for a short first part of their lives, he ended up giving the boys up into care. They were eventually adopted by a couple when they were just under 2 years old: Alan and Veronica Hartley.
Despite periods of fluctuating financial insecurity, the boys had a fairly standard and stable childhood. They were never that much alike, as far as identicalness goes, both growing to value and develop their own individuality.
At age 15, a development in employment led to the family moving to America. Strange things started occurring with increasing intensity, and only recently have they been made aware of their true heritage and introduced to their new home: Camp Half-Blood.

NOW

"What d'you wanna do now?" Tommy asks his brother as they leave the dining pavilion, having concluded their first breakfast at Camp Half-Blood since their arrival yesterday.
"I don't know," Harvey says, after an uncertain pause. He has, admittedly, been finding it somewhat harder than his twin to adjust to their new life. It feels like he's been forced into a set of clothes that don't fit, that itch and prickle with the surreal and incomprehensibly immense truth of his and his brother's origins — and, so it has been suggested — their uncomfortably likely monster-y ends. Tommy doesn't seem as bothered by these metaphorical new outfits they've been thrust into wearing, but then again, he's always liked getting new clothes.
"Come explore with me," Tommy suggests. He, for one, finds this strange new world exciting more than anything else. This place is like something out of a movie: a training camp for kids with magical powers? Goat people? Real-life swords? Cute girls living in rivers? He wants to find out more, wants to snoop around and see what else this place has to offer, and he also wants to meet people. Conveniently enough for that last part, the excitement of it all means that, unbeknownst to either twin, Tommy's aura power has been steadily activated; so he happens to be particularly eye-catching and magnetic right now.
Harvey's not so keen on immersing himself even further into the deep end they've been thrown into, at least not until he's had a little more time to adjust. "I don't feel like exploring right now," he says.
"You're so boring. Are you gonna go back to the cabin, then?" his brother asks, gesturing in a direction that is definitely not where the cabins are. Harvey instinctively pulls a face: it would be fair to say that one of the twins has taken to Cabin 10 more than the other.
"Well, what are you gonna do, then?" asks Tommy. "Just sit out here and mope?"
"I'm not going to mope. I don't mope."
"Yeah, you do," Tommy retorts. "You mope all the time. You're so mopey. You're a moped."
"Shut up," Harvey says. "Fine, I'll come explore with you for a bit," he concedes, if only to disprove the moping allegations. He's not sure what he'll do after — maybe break out the binoculars and scope out the local birdlife, something to re-centre himself a little.
"Alright, cool," Tommy says with a grin. "Where d'you wanna go first?"
OOC: You can interact with both of the twins while they explore camp together, Tommy (by himself) exploring camp on his own when Harvey leaves him, or Harvey (by himself) scoping out the local birdlife. You can assume that Tommy's aura power will be active upon meeting your character in whichever case. Thanks for reading :)

Adaptation is a game of give and take. Especially when you're adapting something from film to the stage, you have to be aware of what you are losing by removing from the piece when placing all of it in real time in front of the actors. With film you can use close-ups, montages, quick editing, lighting tricks, visual effects etc to create your world. The suspension of belief in film can be harder to keep in tact because we expect a degree of realism from it. In the theater, we know everything we're watching is an artifice. We know the sets are made of cardboard. We know the ocean is shiny plastic. We know that's not real blood or a real knife. You're going into this with a much higher suspension of belief than in film where the goal is often to mimic real life as much as humanly possible. One bad visual effect can break the whole movie. Think of how many reviews, good and bad, couldn't help but mention the less than great visuals in the final battle in the first Black Panther film. On stage, you have the benefit of actors being able to respond in real time to anything that goes wrong and because that person is right in front of us, we have that connection with them and we can go along for the ride much easier than with film. That give and take can make or break an adaptation because for whatever you take away you have to justify that choice by adding something to it. Many adaptations, regardless of the medium, don't always do this and if they do they don't fully understand why what they removed worked. Anastasia is one such example of this because while they do try to add new elements to the story, it almost feels like an entirely different show. But to explain the intricacies of that we need to go back, all the way back.
Don Bluth made a name for himself primarily in the 80's after leaving Disney and creating his own animated films. His work was seen by many as anti-Disney because of the complexity of themes, darker subject matter and animation style that wasn't afraid to be uncomfortable or ugly. That's the general perception of his work but I'd also argue that the relationships between the characters in his films were much more fleshed out and complex than a lot of the stuff Disney was releasing at the time or after. Bluth wasn't afraid to have his characters be rude or mean or cowardly or insecure. The protagonist wasn't always a hero in the purest sense and oftentimes characters would act in a way we'd consider realistic. If they were in a scary situation, they'd run away or try to get out of it. If it was a situation that could benefit them, they'd try to profit to the fullest. Bluth placed his characters in worlds that were very mean and cruel but this only served to heighten the moments of joy and levity. As the 90's rolled on and Disney managed to climb back to the top of the mountain, Bluth did what he could to try to keep up. He didn't see a ton of success in the 90's largely because while at times he tried to ape the Disney formula, they still felt like watered down Don Bluth films.
Enter Lynn Arhens and Stephen Flathery.
In the 90's, these two were some of the biggest names in musical theater with projects like Once On This Island and Ragtime under their belts, to name a few. Lynn Arhens is actually a personal hero and inspiration of mine and oddly enough not for her theater work, although I'm a huge fan of that as well. I grew up watching Schoolhouse Rock as a kid and I actually learned how to write songs while watching those videos. Laugh all you want but you tell me how'd you explain something as complex as parts of grammar or the solar system or the revolutionary war in three minutes or less, for children no less. Her superpower is being able to explain a lot of information in a very short amount of time while having you sing along. Another thing she excels at is making songs the audience can actually leave the theater humming. That being said, it's worth contextualizing the world in which the bulk of their success was born.
Much like Democrats shell shocked by the Republican successes of the 90's, everyone not named Andrew Lloyd Webber was still in a state of awe and envy due to the massive success of Phantom of the Opera, Cats and Evita. The mega musical was born in the 80's and as we tap danced into the 90's, everyone else was trying to catch up. A characteristic of musicals from this era was that they all had that one big song they could perform just about everywhere to pull people in who otherwise may have never given the show a second glance. This was often the catchiest song in the show, oftentimes the opener, and the rest of the songs could range from equally good to songs you'd skip on the soundtrack. This is very much an approach that Arhens and Flathery would use and while I wouldn't say any of their songs were outright bad, there's often quite a bit of fluff. On the flip side, the 90's Disney animated musicals maybe had 5 to 7 songs and there was definitely an economy of time at play here. Today an animated film can be two hours, in the 90's this was far from the case. Every song needed to have a specific function within the story and character development. Rarely would you get songs that are just there to be there. Les Poissons is an example of this. The court of miracles and gargoyles number from Hunchback are also examples. But usually the stronger films like Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King etc were very careful about how many songs and where they were placed. In theater, you can cut and remove songs during previews or even during the run of the show. Outside of doing test screenings, film doesn't really afford you this unless you're early enough in production that the changes can be done in a reasonable amount of time. It's not like Disney could've released a new version of Hunchback as it was in theaters if audiences weren't responding to A Guy Like You. All of this is important because while Don Bluth was very much aping Disney's style at the time, it was clear he was trying to bring elements of the theater to the film as well.
Anastasia the film for all its flaws, and we'll get to those, is a pretty tight narrative and nearly every single song serves some sort of narrative or character based purpose. If a character is singing there is a reason why and that character is important in some way. A big part of the reason why it works is because while it's definitely inspired by The Mouse's then current offerings, it still very much feels like a Don Bluth film. The concept of even turning this story into a musical is very off-beat and in-tune with what Bluth would normally make. I can't imagine Disney making The Secret of Nimh but I can imagine Bluth trying and succeeding at making The Black Cauldron. I really don't see Disney ever making a film like All Dog's Go to Heaven but I can definitely see Bluth doing something really interesting with The Great Mouse Detective. His style is dark and evocative and isn't afraid to make you deeply uncomfortable or sad. Anastasia definitely toes the line but there's sequences in there I just cannot imagine Disney ever doing. The sequence for Once Upon a December is so haunting, melancholy, deeply sad and yet hopeful. Anything having to do with those weird demon things, especially when they try to get Anya to commit suicide, is something Eisner would never let his animators do. At the same time, the relationship between Anya and Demitri feels less like a fairytale romance but honestly like a 90's Meg Ryan romcom. They argue like normal people. They joke with each other like an actual couple would. They feel very realistic and realistic relationships between characters is something Bluth excels at. Because the worlds he creates are usually pretty ugly in some ways, it allows for the relationships to be more grounded. You wouldn't but Anya falling for Demitri in a day like Ariel did for Eric because the world the former couple inhabits feels harsher and therefore the characters have more grit. That being said the film does have flaws that become very relevant once we start talking about the stage version:
1) The villain does not feel properly integrated into the story. Most Disney villains had some kind of relationship with the protagonist that sets the main conflict into motion. Ursula is the one who conducts the spell. Scar is both Simba's uncle and kills Mufasa. Jafar is the first main character we ever see and he's the one who finds Aladdin. Rasputin is in the opening and he does set up the main conflict but there's no relationship between him and the protagonists. They don't even know he's alive until the last ten minutes of the film. He impact the narrative but he definitely could have been woven into the narrative more. I think confining him to the underworld was a mistake. With some slight reworking, you could have had him appearing as some of the randos Anastasia meets along her journey or even have the orphanage owned by him a la Mister Sinister. The setting and time period feels more like a suggestion than any sort of adherence to historical accuracy so they could've gone wild.
2) Most of the stuff in Paris feels like a completely separate movie. The last song we get is Key to Your Heart, which is also the closest we get to fluff, and there's no song within the film proper until after that. At the Beginning absolutely slaps but it should've been in the actual film. Everything after Sophie's song is fine but the film takes on a much more serious and grounded tone until Rasputin decides to remind us he's in the movie. The somewhat surreal tone and the momentum the film had comes to a screeching halt once we get to Paris. That being said, it's still a very good portion of the film but it doesn't really match with anything else in the first two acts.
3) Rasputin's motivations aren't entirely clear. He's still alive because the curse hasn't been fulfilled, I think. He wants to die forreal but that only happens if Anya is offed and even then that's ambiguous. Does he wanna die? Does he wanna be human again? Did he want power of any sort? If he wants to fulfill the curse to move on, we see he bites the dust quite literally once Anya breaks the glowing thingy anyway. It's a cartoon so you could say don't think too hard about it but the logic falls apart the exact second you analyze it. Why not have Bartok just smash the thing once he realizes it's still active? Why does Rasputin want the Romanovs dead so damn badly? His reasonings aren't explained well in the beginning so his actions feel more like an act of interia that anything else.
4) The side characters are kinda annoying. Vlad is mostly okay because he serves a definite role in the story as playing the more level headed one to Demitri's more fiery personality. Sophie starts to grate on my nerves but whenever she does they shunt her out of the film. The mandatory cute animal sidekicks range from irritating to please make it stop.
For what it's worth, the stage adaptation exercises both animal sidekicks largely be consequence of this version trying to be more historical fiction rather than a Disney Renaissance style musical. That brings us to one of the biggest and most controversial changes in the stage version, Gleb. He's a Russian officer who is torn between his feelings for Anya and his duty to the cause. He replaced Rasputin as the main threat. With Gleb, they do rectify points 1 and 3 but this is not without losing much of the energy Rapustin injects into the piece. For all his faults, Rasputin and his weird demon things move shit from Point A to Point B while also being very entertaining at the same time. Gleb has more of a motivation than Rasputin but the story comes to a screeching halt whenever we have to focus on him. He is in love with Anya because she's hot I guess and we get so many songs of this dude belting for the gods about how much he wants her but he can't pursue her. There are a total of three songs counting reprises that are dedicated to this and they're basically all the same. Gleb wants to bone, he has daddy issues and we move on. He interacts with her more but there is no reason he should be this blue balled over a chick he does not know. Anya and Demitri still have great chemistry and the plot is reworked to give them more time together. I like their dynamic more in the film but the musical does this fine but just differently. Anya doesn't really even know Gleb nor that he wants to see if the curtains match the drapes. So we're stuck in this completely unnecessary lopsided love triangle that makes Wolverine, Scott and Jean Grey's bullshit seem like Shakespeare. There is almost zero evolution within Gleb's many croons about how much he wants to bang this chick. He comes to basically the same revelation every single time so whenever he gets a song it's basically time for a pee break. Unlike Rapustin who at least gets an entertaining last fight and death, Gleb doesn't really even get that. He corners her, she goes full on Malala and tells him to do what he's gotta do, he chickens out and dips. They try to give it some weight by having Anya comfort him but she doesn't know this man and she certainly doesn't know he's in love with her. It feels even less powerful than the original ending because at least Rasputin actually killed her family so there's some connection there. Gleb is the son of the guy who was involved so his connection to any of this is nebulous at best. Why not just make him an ex-boyfriend or orphan she grew up with? Why not actually just make him the dad Gleb keeps referring to? Rasputin actually wants her dead and the story moves mostly because of his machinations behind the scenes. Gleb feels shoehorned into this narrative and he's not even entertaining while he's there. His songs are slow, repetitive and he has no real personality.
This is not the only change they made to the story. Vlad now has a mini subplot where he's trying to get back Sophie, now named Lily. This means she's in the story a lot more than she was previously and they don't succeed in making her less annoying. In film, a character can bounce in and out of the narrative without us questioning why they're not there. Theater is a bit different because you can't really have characters that just show up and never appear again. It's been done but usually they'll have the actor play a dual role in the story as well. Lily gets a lot more to do and I'm sorry but almost every song she gets besides the one from the film are also pee break songs. Land of Yesterday just feels like a Russian version of If I Knew Then from Beetlejuice but with much less relevance to the story. The Empress also gets a song now and while it's more memorable than any of the stuff Gleb or Lily get, there's no reason for it to be there. Some composers feel the compulsion to make every single emotional beat a song and while I understand that desire, you don't need it. Honestly my first time seeing the show, I started laughing when she busted out singing because it's so random. The original film got the point across without this and the musical does not expand on her character in any way so there's nothing new to communicate here. Maybe they felt the character should sing more but even without Close the Door, she gets some parts in other songs. This is an example of the fluff I was referring to earlier.
But for everything they added, they removed a lot of stuff but tried to play it down the middle. For example, in the film Rasputin tries to get Anastasia to kill herself by giving her an enchanting dream that turns into a nightmare. Demetri saves her life, she now has learned to trust him more and we move on. In the musical, Rapustin no longer exists but the scene does in a way. Now she has a nightmare about her family being killed where she Demetri comforts her as he does before but there's no narrative reason for this scene to be here. By this point, they've had more moments to build the romantic connection so it feels redundant. They also want to give us a reason to lead into the song where they realize they both know each other and that she's really Anastasia. It's a very flimsy setup and the film did this much better by having Demetri be the one who saved her life. It also undercuts his character development by a lot. There's no scene where he rejects the money. He doesn't have a personal connection to Anya or her grandmother like he did before. His character is neutered a lot in this version and doesn't come off as selfless as he did before. He turns down the money but not only does he have less of a reason to that now, that reveal feels much less powerful. His character isn't even involved in saving her life towards the end. While they do get more time to bond in this version, I just don't feel like they added enough to justify some of these changes.
I don't quite understand why they chose to go the route of realism with the musical. Maybe they're responding to people who thought the more fantastical elements were out of place but as we can see without that, the story doesn't have much of a reason to be a musical. There's an older movie version of this story with Ingrid Bergman that hits a lot of the same beats as the 90's version. That version is decidedly not a musical and also isn't that great of a film either. This isn't the easiest story to make compelling and the 90's version threaded the needle as best as it could. By using the story of Anastasia as more of a jumping off point for the type of fairytale musical audiences had become used to, it managed to make the story more removed from the actual real life Anastasia who did in fact die, although that was not known back then. The musical leans too much into the history and it just doesn't work. There are dark shows that deal with heavy subject matter. The Color Purple is basically just Beat My Ass: The Musical. But that show isn't also trying to be a romantic whimsical experience, Anastasia very much is. I wish they had just kept Rapustin, weaved him into the story more naturally and gave him a stronger personal connection to Anastasia and kept the darker non-history related elements in the show. The movie is plenty dark at times but the history and political struggle is given a passing mention in the opening and is rarely ever brought up again unless to refer to actual murders. The musical felt like Bridge of Spies set to music with how much focus they put on the political aspect of the story. That does not mesh and I think it's part of the reason why this show doesn't have as strong of a following as the film. It's not ungodly awful, but it doesn't justify its existence.

I will continue to update this post as reviews come in.
Rotten Tomatoes: Rotten
Critics Consensus: N/A

	Score	Number of Reviews	Average Rating
All Critics	52%	42	4.50/10
Top Critics	52%	23	3.90/10

Metacritic: 59 (23 Reviews)
Sample Reviews:
Megalopolis is anything but lazy, and while so many of the ideas don’t pan out as planned, this is the kind of late-career statement devotees wanted from the maverick, who never lost his faith in cinema. - Peter Debruge, Variety
I can’t say I was always engaged over its two hours-plus run time, but I was always curious about where it was going next. Is it a good movie? Not by a long stretch. But it’s not one that can be easily dismissed, either. - David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter
Once you let go of the understandable dream of Coppola returning with another masterpiece, there is much to enjoy in Megalopolis, especially its cast members, leaning into their moments with an abandon that was probably a job requirement. - Joshua Rothkopf, Los Angeles Times
It’s hard to believe the same brilliant director who made The Godfather, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now also birthed this monstrosity, which is wrong in so many ways, from its insipid screenplay and terrible direction to its bizarre casting. 1/4 - Peter Howell, Toronto Star
This is a passion project without passion: a bloated, boring and bafflingly shallow film, full of high-school-valedictorian verities about humanity’s future. 2/5 - Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
This is 138 stultifying minutes of ill-conceived themes, half-finished scenes, nails-along-the-blackboard performances, word-salad dialogue and ugly visuals all seemingly in search of a story that isn’t there. 1/5 - Kevin Maher, Times (UK)
Aubrey Plaza, whose character is a trashy TV news personality called Wow Platinum, has the measure of the thing better than anyone bar Coppola himself: she’s fantastic... 4/5 - Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph (UK)
Perhaps the kindest thing one can say about Megalopolis is that it will probably remain largely unwatched and be quickly forgotten. 1/5 - Raphael Abraham, Financial Times
Imagine a Paco Rabanne perfume ad mixed with the voyeuristic lady-gazing of a Sorrentino film and that will give you a whiff of Francis Ford Coppola’s latest – and almost definitely last – film. 1/5 - Jo-Ann Titmarsh, London Evening Standard
Ultimately, this isn’t the car crash it could have been. It is, though, deeply flawed and very eccentric. 3/5 - Geoffrey Macnab, Independent (UK)
Seconds, minutes, hours and (it seems, anyway) days assert their presence unforgivingly as the film staggers its way to nowhere worth going. If you don’t enjoy the first five minutes than gird your loins. It’s like that all the way through. 1/5 - Donald Clarke, Irish Times
In parts, very occasionally, you get the kind of soaring Shakespearean feeling that the very best dramas have, and even though no one actually spouts this famous speech, you can feel the director’s exhortation to friends-Romans-countrymen. - Shubhra Gupta, The Indian Express
It's like listening to someone tell you about the crazy dream they had last night – and they don't stop talking for well over two hours. 1/5 - Nicholas Barber, BBC.com
What does it all mean? It’s clear that Coppola is feeling some anguish over the way certain honorable American ideals—essentially human ideals—have become distorted and warped, maybe even discarded altogether. - Stephanie Zacharek, TIME Magazine
This is the junkiest of junk-drawer movies, a slapped together hash of Coppola’s many disparate inspirations. What really tanks the movie, though, is its datedness. - Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair
It is exactly the movie that Coppola set out to make -- uncompromising, uniquely intellectual, unabashedly romantic, broadly satirical yet remarkably sincere about wanting not just brave new worlds but better ones. - David Fear, Rolling Stone
Megalopolis might be the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy every single batshit second of it. - Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture
Megalopolis is stymied by arbitrary plotting and numbing excess. One can feel Coppola’s anger and sorrow over the decline of his beloved America, but narrative coherence is far less apparent. - Tim Grierson, Screen International
A work of art that actively practices what it preaches, a celebration of unfettered creativity and farsightedness that offers a volcanic fusion of hand-crafted neo-classicism while running through a script of toe-tapping word-jazz. - David Jenkins, Little White Lies
Megalopolis is stilted, earnest, over the top, CGI ridden, and utterly a mess. And yet you can picture a crowded theater shouting along with Jon Voight as he says in one key scene, “What do you make of this boner I got?” - Esther Zuckerman, The Daily Beast
With Megalopolis, [Francis Ford Coppola] crams 85 years worth of artistic reverence and romantic love into a clunky, garish, and transcendently sincere manifesto about the role of an artist at the end of an empire. B+ - David Ehrlich, indieWire
A bunch of ideas smashed together into a garish, baffling, dazzling, kind of atrocious, and totally audacious rejection of the cinematic form. It should never have been made. And yet, now that it has, we should be so grateful that it exists. - Hoai-Tran Bui, Inverse
"Megalopolis" is exactly what movies can and should be—unflinchingly earnest. - Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com
SYNOPSIS:
Megalopolis is a Roman Epic fable set in an imagined Modern America. The City of New Rome must change, causing conflict between Cesar Catilina, a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian, idealistic future, and his opposition, Mayor Franklyn Cicero, who remains committed to a regressive status quo, perpetuating greed, special interests, and partisan warfare. Torn between them is socialite Julia Cicero, the mayor’s daughter, whose love for Cesar has divided her loyalties, forcing her to discover what she truly believes humanity deserves.
CAST:

• Adam Driver as Cesar Catilina
• Giancarlo Esposito as Mayor Franklyn Cicero
• Nathalie Emmanuel as Julia Cicero
• Aubrey Plaza as Wow Platinum
• Shia LaBeouf as Clodio Pulcher
• Jon Voight as Hamilton Crassus III
• Jason Schwartzman as Jason Zanderz
• Talia Shire as Constance Crassus Catilina
• Grace VanderWaal as Vesta Sweetwater
• Laurence Fishburne as Fundi Romaine
• Kathryn Hunter as Teresa Cicero
• Dustin Hoffman as Nush "The Fixer" Berman

DIRECTED BY: Francis Ford Coppola
WRITTEN BY: Francis Ford Coppola
PRODUCED BY: Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Bederman, Barry Hirsch
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Darren M. Demetre. Anahid Nazarian, Barrie M. Osborne, Fred Roos
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Mihai Mălaimare Jr.
PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Beth Mickle, Bradley Rubin
EDITED BY: Cam McLauchlin, Glen Scantlebury
MUSIC BY: Osvaldo Golijov
COSTUME DESIGNER: Milena Canonero
CASTING BY: Courtney Bright, Nicole Daniels
RUNTIME: 138 Minutes
RELEASE DATE: N/A

I. Introduction (10 minutes) - Definition of foreshadowing - Importance in storytelling - Brief explanation of how it builds anticipation
II. Types of Foreshadowing (15 minutes) a. Direct Foreshadowing - Definition and examples b. Indirect Foreshadowing - Definition and examples c. Symbolic Foreshadowing - Exploring symbols that hint at future events
III. Examples in Literature (20 minutes) - Analyzing examples from well-known works - Shakespeare, Harper Lee, J.K. Rowling, etc. - Discussing how foreshadowing contributes to plot development
IV. How Authors Use Foreshadowing (15 minutes) a. Establishing tone and mood b. Creating suspense c. Developing character arcs
V. Foreshadowing in Different Genres (15 minutes) a. Foreshadowing in mystery and suspense genres b. Foreshadowing in fantasy and science fiction c. Foreshadowing in drama and tragedy
VI. Interactive Activity (20 minutes) - Analyzing short passages for foreshadowing - Discussing findings as a class
VII. Film and TV Examples (15 minutes) - Clips from movies or TV shows showcasing effective foreshadowing - Comparing visual foreshadowing to literary examples
VIII. Creative Writing Exercise (20 minutes) - Providing a prompt for students to create their own foreshadowing in a short piece - Sharing and discussing the results
IX. Importance of Foreshadowing (10 minutes) - Discussing how foreshadowing enhances the readeviewer experience - Reflecting on the role of anticipation in storytelling
X. Q&A and Wrap-Up (10 minutes) - Addressing any questions from students - Summarizing key points
This lecture outline combines theoretical concepts, literary analysis, and practical activities to engage students in understanding and appreciating the art of foreshadowing. Adjust the timing based on the specific needs and dynamics of the class.

Okay, I’m gonna level with you. Focusing on current events is just getting a little too fucking heavy. I’m no closer to answers than I was a month ago, none of us can sleep through a full night without waking up shaking and drenched in sweat, and there are some new downright bizarre phenomena cropping up that I just don’t have it in me to allot my energy to at the moment.
So, for today’s installment (and then also for the next one) I’m gonna tell you another good ol’ fun-for-the-whole-family pool story. Yep, you heard that right—welcome to our first bonafide two-parter.
This was quite a while ago. My measure of time is all off by a year now, but I feel fairly confident in chalking it up to post-first pool story, pre-ouija board fiasco—so however long ago that’s been now.
It was a weird, rare night, in that Matt was out. Not an unheard of occurrence, but it’s fairly anomalous, and it certainly puts the rest of us on slightly higher alert.
Obviously, he always tells us to call him at the first sign of some shit going down and to use our best judgment to determine whether it’s serious enough to lock up and head out. Better safe than sorry and all that. The night in question was no exception to the rule.
Overall, though, things were mostly quiet. Alice was in, as was I, as was Wiley. We do a lot of congregating, but we do a lot of work, too, and this night, we were all in our respective areas, doing our respective jobs.
I was in my not-office mending a finicky Shakespeare anthology, Alice was watching the desk while working on cataloging a truckload of new donations, and Wiley was replacing several lightbulbs that had all decided to call it quits after our most recent power outage (this one due to a flash-flood).
It was calm to an almost uncharacteristic degree. There was a relatively steady flow of patrons in and out of the building—I could hear Alice greeting them and wishing them a good evening—but as far as anomalous activity, there was none.
It does happen, on rare occasion, that we make it through a full night without any goings on, but there’s almost always at least the odd disembodied voice or two.
We should’ve known better than to trust a meteor shower.
See, there’s just something about natural anomalies. Not just the ones that knock our power out, either, although those are clearly included. Blizzards, thunderstorms, hail and tornados and earthquakes and all your run-of-the-mill destructive shit, sure. But the things of beauty, too. Rainbows. Eclipses, lunar or solar. And you think full moons hit emergency rooms hard? Try this fucking place.
It was just that a meteor shower wasn’t one we’d dealt with before. Does that mean we shouldn’t have known better? Fuck no. Obviously not. But perhaps our collective greatest fault is that we still have some semblance of hope.
Wiley wanted to look at it from the roof. Kid never fucking wants to do anything, and they were set to climb up and camp out alone. I couldn’t not entertain such an innocent, youthful whim.
Our roof access doesn’t have stairs—just a ladder—so Alice couldn’t accompany us, which I felt shitty about, but she assured me it was perfectly fine with her.
“The world decided I didn’t need functional legs so I could never be peer pressured into leaving the ground,” she quipped. “I’m not into heights. But y’all have fun up there. Somebody needs to be here for the patrons anyway.”
Fair and fair. So Wiley and I gathered up an armful of blankets and one of Matt’s trusty camping lanterns and headed out to scale the building.
Wiley went up ahead of me. That was my first mistake.
Really, they aren’t that much younger than I am. Maybe four or five years, and I’m too close to thirty for comfort now. But there’s something about them, even as far as they’ve come, that makes it impossible for me not to do everything in my power to protect them. I think Matt feels the same way. Maybe most of us do.
Anyway, that’s why I immediately started cursing myself when they reached the top of the ladder, pulled their way up and over the ledge of the roof, and said, “...Whoa.”
My second mistake was not immediately telling them to turn around and start climbing right the fuck back down.
I knew exactly what that tone of voice meant. But something in me just kicked into hyperdrive and I…had to see it. Whatever it was, I had to see it for myself.
“Don’t move,” I said, and then, “What is it?”
But by that point, I was at the top, too. I hoisted myself over the ledge and was met with…
…Water.
It was everywhere. Extending in every direction. There was no edge in sight—not even a horizon line. Just vast, dark water as far as the eye could see.
“Okay. This is not—let’s go.”
“Yeah,” Wiley agreed, a little breathless.
I’m sure you’ll be downright shocked to learn that, when we turned around, the ladder was gone.
The edge of the rooftop was, too.
The thing that surprised me, really, was that it wasn’t as though we were standing on some sort of island. We were somehow in the water all of a sudden, up to our waists, neither of us having taken a single step.
“Fucking…shit. Jesus. Adam?”
“We’re fine,” was my default response, because my anxiety override kicks in like a motherfucker as soon as someone else is more openly afraid than I am. “It’s okay, let’s just—let’s think for a second. Maybe it’s just, like, an illusion or something.”
“Okay,” Wiley said. “Maybe we should…try moving?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we’ll bump the ledge and then we can just feel for the ladder. Good idea.”
Wiley and I shared a look, wordlessly nodding to one another, and stepped forward in unison.
Maybe I misspoke before, when I said we weren’t on a platform. It was just that our platform wasn’t above the water. Now, though, there was nothing.
It felt, almost, like the stomach-turning sensation of missing a step walking up a staircase. The only difference was that there was no moment-too-late connection.
We plummeted.
There wasn’t any difference in temperature beneath the surface, which was, in a way, more disorienting than the water itself. The mental recalibration that typically comes with plunging into a cool lake or, adversely, a heated pool wasn’t allotted an opportunity to take place. It felt, for most intents and purposes, the same as being in the air, just that I couldn’t breathe.
It was heavy, too. The weightlessness water tends to embody was null; I immediately abandoned everything I’d been carrying, clawing my way upward frantically enough that it would’ve been mortifying, I’m sure, had anyone witnessed it.
Wiley resurfaced at the same moment I did—empty handed as well, I noted—coughing a little but not to the extent that I was worried they were choking. “Next idea?” they asked, pushing their wet hair back from their face, dark, damp lashes obscuring their eyes.
“Let’s get back on the…” I started, but trailed off when I raised my head.
A couple hundred yards out from us, there was a ship. It was a dark, hulking thing, with tattered sails and something indistinguishable affixed to the bow, glittering and glinting in the moonlight.
Wiley spun around to face it, drifting back slightly when their gaze landed parallel to mine. “What the fuck is that?” they demanded, legs kicking haphazardly beneath the water to keep them in place.
“Maybe it’s…good,” I said. I knew better than that and I knew Wiley did, too, but I said it anyway. “Maybe someone will help.”
They didn’t even humor me with a response to that bullshit.
Now, at this point in the story, maybe you’re thinking being suddenly surrounded by water and watching as an ominous ship approached us with absolutely nowhere to go and no way to escape doesn’t feel quite enough like imminent condemnation. To which I say to you: not to worry. Because the next realization we came to was that the platform we’d been standing on previously had suddenly ceased to exist.
“Shit,” Wiley said. “Shit, shit, shit. Adam.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s fine. We’re fine. We just—we’re gonna—follow me.”
I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck possessed me to swim toward the Obvious Death Ship. I guess just that there wasn’t anything else save for open water anywhere so it essentially felt like our options were paddle around until we were exhausted and drown or face a quicker, simpler demise.
“You better have a fucking plan, bro,” Wiley intoned from behind me, which I chivalrously pretended not to hear, because I did not, in fact, have a fucking plan.
The closer we drew to the vessel, the more unbelievably monstrous it appeared to become. It loomed above us, casting a shadow over everything in its direct path, and the sinking in my stomach almost convinced me to turn around. Almost.
But then something curled around my ankle. It was slick and strong, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that whatever it was could’ve pulled me under and eaten me alive in a fraction of a second.
Luckily for me, it wasn’t interested. It let go as quickly as it had latched on, almost as though it was simply using me as a handrail to move itself along. Still, though, the knowledge that it was there was all the motivation I needed to push forward ever faster. I didn’t say anything—didn’t want to add more fuel to Wiley’s panicked fire—just picked up my pace and swam up to their side.
“There’s a ladder,” they informed me, raising a hand and pointing toward the back half of the ship.
Indeed, there was a ladder. It was a tattered, worn thing, comprised of old, fraying rope and rotting, untreated wooden boards, but it looked composed enough that I figured we could likely make it up if we were swift.
“Bet,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We went.
Up close, the ladder appeared even shoddier than it had when we’d first seen it. I reached out of the water and wrapped my fingers around the rope at the bottom, giving it a hearty tug. To my slight surprise, it held fast.
“I think we’re good,” I told Wiley. “I’ll go up first and tell you what I see.”
“Be careful,” they said, but didn’t protest, just backed up enough for me to get the leverage I needed to hoist myself onto the bottom board.
I climbed warily, overly conscious of every creak of the wood bowing beneath my weight, every groan of the fibers of rope under my hands, but made it without incident to the top.
Once there, I grabbed onto the ship’s edge, lifting my gaze to take in whatever lie before me.
It was…nothing. I mean, it was a ship, obviously. But there wasn’t anything on board. No apparent crew nor cargo nor even a captain manning the helm. Granted, I couldn’t see perfectly, but the moon shone brightly enough that I was fairly confident in my observation that the deck was devoid of anything but its own shiplap floor.
“Hello?” I called, because I wasn’t about to beckon Wiley up if some fucked shit was going to pop out of nowhere the second we made a sound.
Nothing responded. Nothing moved. The ship rocked gently on the impossible water, as silent and vacant as it had been a moment before.
“Good?” Wiley questioned nervously from below me.
“Yeah,” I told them, easing myself off the ladder and down into the confines of the vessel. “Come on.”
They did so tenuously but still more swiftly than I had, climbing aboard and landing next to me with a dampened thunk.
We allowed ourselves the briefest of moments to catch our breath, silently rejoicing in the small win that was having found solace from the pool itself. Not that we had any idea what to do or where to go from here, but at the very least, we weren’t drowning.
“Okay,” I said, clearing the unease from my throat. “I don’t know what good trying to steer this thing would do us—there’s nothing but water no matter where we go. But maybe there’s something here somewhere that’ll help us figure out how to get back. So I think we just…start looking around?”
Wiley nodded. “Cool. Split halves, front and back?”
Nooo, Adam, don’t split up! Never split up! I know. I can literally hear you screaming it at me. And actually, for once in my life, I considered that something might be a horrible fucking idea before acting on it.
But then I saw something.
As I turned back to respond, Wiley’s eyes shimmered, dancing in the moonlight.
They were silver and mercurial, with no pupils or whites in sight.
Whatever had come back up from underwater, it was not my coworker.
I swallowed, forcing my expression to remain as neutral as I was able and praying whatever was standing in front of me didn’t notice I’d caught on. My entire body was instantaneously covered in chills, in a way that I understood to have the same purpose as a dog’s hackles rising. “Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll take the front.”
I headed in the opposite direction of the thing wearing Wiley’s face (at a pace that I hoped didn’t appear hurried but one that would remove me in a timely manner from the vicinity) and didn’t stop until I’d reached the front of the ship, breathing heavily and attempting to slow my reeling mind.
I didn’t know what to tackle first. I didn’t know where Wiley was, or if they were anywhere—if they were even still alive. I didn’t know what my next move should be. I didn’t know what I was looking for or where I might find it.
It’s rare that I feel utterly hopeless, to the degree that I genuinely contemplate just sitting down and giving up, but in this instance, I thought long and hard about how easy it would be to succumb. I’d let the unthinkable happen. Wiley was gone. No one else had been here with them—there was no one else to blame. Just me. Only me.
…You’ll be glad to know that the self-pity didn’t last long. Embarrassing, honestly.
If I was the only one here, it meant I was the only shot they had at making it out alive. Our version of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ had always been ‘alive until proven dead’ and I wasn’t about to turn my back on the insane streak of luck we’d had up until this point. Not a single one of our lives had been lost, and we’d been in the midst of some absolute shitstorms. There was no reason to believe that right now, tonight, was an outlier. I couldn’t lie down like a sick dog and wonder if Wiley was still out there somewhere, suffering until the bitter, bloody end. I had to find them. By whatever means necessary, as long as it took, I had to find them.
I pushed off the railing before me and spun on my heel, eyes flitting back and forth to assess my options as efficiently as possible, and after a moment, I registered that fitted flush against the large front mast, there was a door.
It was only a sliver, thin and not particularly extraordinary in height, but there was a handle carved roughly into its right side and a set of rust-riddled hinges on its left.
I took about half a second to weigh my options and then reached for it, curling my fingers around the handle and giving it a generous tug.
The hinges, unsurprisingly, complained, but not loudly and not for long. The door gave way with little resistance, and opened up to my worst fucking nightmare.
A set of stairs, descending into blackness.
I mean, I guess if I’m being fair, my first pool encounter had featured a staircase leading to the pool rather than away from it, but I didn’t feel like there could possibly be good news awaiting me below deck of a ship where I’d just encountered a fucking mimic.
Still, though, there was a niggling insistence in my brain (not that kind, come on) that it was my only lead on finding Wiley if they were, in fact, somewhere on board. So I cast one last glance over my shoulder and stepped into the dark, letting the door fall closed behind me.
It smelled different, instantly, from the open air above. Mustier, which was to be expected, but also almost sweet somehow. I tried, unsuccessfully, to shove my true-crime-podcast-addled brain’s helpful reminder that the scent of human death is said to be sweet into a mental lockbox and put my hand to the wall, easing tentatively down to the second step.
The visibility wasn’t just low—it was practically zero. If you’ve ever been on a cave tour and had a guide cut the lights and instruct you to lift your hand to your face to demonstrate the complete absence of light, it was nearly that intense. The placing of both feet on each concurrent stair was an arduous, calculated process, but finally, after approximately one (1) century, I reached flat ground. I still couldn’t see, and there was no definitive way to tell whether I was standing on the floor or just a landing without thoroughly feeling out the space around me, so I reluctantly departed from the wall, scooting my feet in small, tentative motions and keeping both arms partially outstretched before me.
After a (l o n g) moment, I determined that either this was the world’s largest landing or I’d made it all the way down. I had no idea whether I was in a singular, enormous room, or if there were individual cabins, or if I was about to run face-first into the grim fucking reaper.
And then I turned to my left.
There was a light.
It was so, so faint. Flickering. Barely discernible, its warm, gentle glow ever so shyly illuminating the cracks around what appeared to be another closed door.
Being the only visible thing in my line of sight, in any direction, it emitted the aura of both a beacon and an omen.
I headed towards it.
I was about half afraid I was stuck in a horror movie situation where no matter how long I walked it would never grow any closer, but fortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case. I actually gained on it more quickly than I felt I should have for the speed I was moving, but I wasn’t going to complain about reaching the end of the nothingness in commendable time.
I ran my fingertips along the edge of the door and, sure enough, there was a carved-in handle, just like the last.
It opened just as effortlessly, and yellow candlelight rolled dimly out to greet me, lapping at my waterlogged clothes.
“Please,” came a quiet, terrified voice from inside the room. “Please don’t. I don’t know what you want, or–or what you are, but please don’t—”
“...Wiley?”
Rather than calming, the voice’s state of alarm rose to a level bordering on full-blown panic as I took a step into the space. “Please,” the voice begged. There wasn’t anyone visible from my current vantage point, but I could hear it clearly enough to feel fairly confident that the person attached to it—the person who either had to be Wiley or yet another duplicate of them—was close. “Why are you doing this?”
This was a cabin, I thought, or perhaps a study of some sort, with a rotting wooden desk and a decaying leather chair both covered in a flurry of loose, browned book pages and a thick layer of dust. There were candles littering several surfaces, placed in what appeared not to be any intentional manner. Directly to my right, there was a shelf; its back faced me and the odd placement led me to imagine that it may have been employed to block the door at some time.
It was also, I would have just about bet, the source of the voice.
I nudged a couple of planks and a broken amber bottle out of the way with the toe of my shoe, rounding the shelf to find a crumpled, bloodied Wiley, restrained to the floor by a thick, coarse rope fixed expertly to a bolted tie and holding their bound hands up to shield their face.
“Jesus fuck,” I said. “What happened to you?”
Slowly, they lifted their head. “...Adam?”
Realization dawned on me, and I felt my stomach sink. “Look at me,” I told them. “Look at my eyes.”
They did, their own bloodshot and watery and inherently human, and I watched their shoulders deflate, the defense and terror draining from their form. “There’s someone…something…down here. Or, I guess it still is, anyway. I don’t know where it went, but I don’t wanna be here when it comes back.”
I nodded. “It look like me?”
Wiley nodded back.
“Yeah, there’s one of you upstairs. Not real sure what we’re supposed to do about them, but one thing at a time. Let’s get you up from there.”
It was a struggle, disentangling Wiley from the heavy, abrasive leads coccooning their body, but we got there eventually, and throughout the entirety of the arduous process they gave me the rundown on how, when we’d parted from the solace of the platform, something had instantaneously latched onto them, dragging them down deeper and deeper until their ears popped and their head felt like it was going to explode. They said they’d been knocked out by the pressure, and that when they’d come to, already tied in place and coughing up lungfuls of water, “I” had been standing over them, wielding a large net hook and no mercy.
“I knew it wasn’t you, obviously,” they said, “but I didn’t know where you actually were or if something had, like. Hijacked your body? I don’t know. Anyway, let’s get the fuck out of here.”
We grabbed a couple of candles (the majority had simply been melted into place atop whatever surface they’d adorned, but there was a small collection fitted into slightly-too-small brass holders) and got the fuck out.
Being able to see so little in the space around us was almost more disorienting than the pitch darkness I’d been feeling my way through before. It felt as though we were in a fragile, wavering bubble of reality and nothing existed outside of it.
“Wish I’d been awake coming down here,” Wiley remarked. “Guess I still wouldn’t have seen shit, though.”
“I could…maybe get us back upstairs?” I considered, with little to no confidence. “But I don’t really know what good it would do us. Nowhere to go. Maybe we just…look around down here for a bit? See if we can find anything useful?”
“Yeah, okay,” Wiley assented. “But we’ve gotta be quiet. I don’t want that thing to hear us.”
I certainly couldn’t argue with that.
We wandered hesitantly through the dark, shielding the flames of our candles with cupped palms and praying we wouldn’t misstep. We made it some unsubstantiated quantity of time without incident, but softly, after seconds or minutes or hours, we heard a light rustling from the shadow veiled corridor to our right, and Wiley pulled me into the nearest open room in the opposite direction.
Flattening our backs to the wall, we listened intently as footsteps echoed faintly behind us, cyclically growing closer and then further away again for several moments before disappearing altogether.
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding and uncovered my candle, easing the door of the room to a gentle, silent close. The contents of this one were different from that of the last in that there practically weren’t any. It wasn’t just that it was tidier; there was a chest shoved against the wall nearest us and a leatherbound book of some sort lying in the center of the floor, but otherwise the space was vacant.
Wiley moved first, crouching next to the journal and lifting it from the ground, a cloud of dust rising in the wake of their breath. I knelt down beside them, offering my candlelight so they could discard theirs and open the cover.
Beneath which there was a box.
It was a plain, unadorned wooden rectangle, nestled into the carved-out central pages of the book, and we learned upon extracting it that there was no lock or latch, just a seam indicating the lid’s separation from the body.
I don’t need to spell the whole situation out for you. There was a key in the box. The key opened, you guessed it: the chest. Inside the chest, there were piles of gold and jewels beyond your wildest imagination. We’re rich now. The end.
Nah, JK. But the key in the box did open the chest, in which there was, A) a pair of peeling, pleather driving gloves, and B)...
I felt my heart skip.
A bicycle chain.
I’m not going to get into the nuances of that right now, or maybe ever. But for the purposes of dramatic flair, just know that it was incredibly, pointedly relevant to me, on a level so personal it sucker punched the air straight out of my lungs.
“No,” Wiley said, staggering back a step. “Uh-uh. Nope.”
I put together, then, that the gloves must have been their ticket item. “It’s okay,” I said, on autopilot, because it was not. “There’s something—something’s carved into the bottom of this thing.” Pushing past the reaction every fiber of my being had to the sensation of the frigid metal against my skin, I shoved both the chain and the gloves to the side and could scarcely make out a host of crudely scrawled letters in the wavering light of my half-gone candle.
“What is it?” Wiley asked, making no move to come nearer again.
“Though your…hand…? Heart. Though your heart does pound and knees grow…weak,” I deciphered slowly, “Rid yourself by your… That doesn’t make any sense. Shouldn’t it be of? It says ‘rid yourself by your fear’ and…something. Drain the…clin… No. Drink. Drain the drink.”
“Rid yourself by your fear and drain the drink,” Wiley repeated analytically. “The hell does that mean? Is this shit telling us to kill ourselves with the—oh. Oh. Fuck.”
I was not following. “...I’m not following,” I said.
“It is.” Wiley returned to my side, squatting down and nudging me out of the way with their shoulder to peer warily into the trunk. “It’s telling us to kill ourselves, but not these selves. We’re supposed to use…those…to kill our fuckin’ doppelgangers, or whatever they are. That’s how we get rid of the water.”
“Oh,” I echoed. “Fuck.”
We marinated for a moment in silence before Wiley sighed, resigned, and lifted the gloves from the chest, closing their eyes and pulling the fabric snugly over their hands. “Let’s get to work.”

Okay, I’m gonna level with you. Focusing on current events is just getting a little too fucking heavy. I’m no closer to answers than I was a month ago, none of us can sleep through a full night without waking up shaking and drenched in sweat, and there are some new downright bizarre phenomena cropping up that I just don’t have it in me to allot my energy to at the moment.
So, for today’s installment (and then also for the next one) I’m gonna tell you another good ol’ fun-for-the-whole-family pool story. Yep, you heard that right—welcome to our first bonafide two-parter.
This was quite a while ago. My measure of time is all off by a year now, but I feel fairly confident in chalking it up to post-first pool story, pre-ouija board fiasco—so however long ago that’s been now.
It was a weird, rare night, in that Matt was out. Not an unheard of occurrence, but it’s fairly anomalous, and it certainly puts the rest of us on slightly higher alert.
Obviously, he always tells us to call him at the first sign of some shit going down and to use our best judgment to determine whether it’s serious enough to lock up and head out. Better safe than sorry and all that. The night in question was no exception to the rule.
Overall, though, things were mostly quiet. Alice was in, as was I, as was Wiley. We do a lot of congregating, but we do a lot of work, too, and this night, we were all in our respective areas, doing our respective jobs.
I was in my not-office mending a finicky Shakespeare anthology, Alice was watching the desk while working on cataloging a truckload of new donations, and Wiley was replacing several lightbulbs that had all decided to call it quits after our most recent power outage (this one due to a flash-flood).
It was calm to an almost uncharacteristic degree. There was a relatively steady flow of patrons in and out of the building—I could hear Alice greeting them and wishing them a good evening—but as far as anomalous activity, there was none.
It does happen, on rare occasion, that we make it through a full night without any goings on, but there’s almost always at least the odd disembodied voice or two.
We should’ve known better than to trust a meteor shower.
See, there’s just something about natural anomalies. Not just the ones that knock our power out, either, although those are clearly included. Blizzards, thunderstorms, hail and tornados and earthquakes and all your run-of-the-mill destructive shit, sure. But the things of beauty, too. Rainbows. Eclipses, lunar or solar. And you think full moons hit emergency rooms hard? Try this fucking place.
It was just that a meteor shower wasn’t one we’d dealt with before. Does that mean we shouldn’t have known better? Fuck no. Obviously not. But perhaps our collective greatest fault is that we still have some semblance of hope.
Wiley wanted to look at it from the roof. Kid never fucking wants to do anything, and they were set to climb up and camp out alone. I couldn’t not entertain such an innocent, youthful whim.
Our roof access doesn’t have stairs—just a ladder—so Alice couldn’t accompany us, which I felt shitty about, but she assured me it was perfectly fine with her.
“The world decided I didn’t need functional legs so I could never be peer pressured into leaving the ground,” she quipped. “I’m not into heights. But y’all have fun up there. Somebody needs to be here for the patrons anyway.”
Fair and fair. So Wiley and I gathered up an armful of blankets and one of Matt’s trusty camping lanterns and headed out to scale the building.
Wiley went up ahead of me. That was my first mistake.
Really, they aren’t that much younger than I am. Maybe four or five years, and I’m too close to thirty for comfort now. But there’s something about them, even as far as they’ve come, that makes it impossible for me not to do everything in my power to protect them. I think Matt feels the same way. Maybe most of us do.
Anyway, that’s why I immediately started cursing myself when they reached the top of the ladder, pulled their way up and over the ledge of the roof, and said, “...Whoa.”
My second mistake was not immediately telling them to turn around and start climbing right the fuck back down.
I knew exactly what that tone of voice meant. But something in me just kicked into hyperdrive and I…had to see it. Whatever it was, I had to see it for myself.
“Don’t move,” I said, and then, “What is it?”
But by that point, I was at the top, too. I hoisted myself over the ledge and was met with…
…Water.
It was everywhere. Extending in every direction. There was no edge in sight—not even a horizon line. Just vast, dark water as far as the eye could see.
“Okay. This is not—let’s go.”
“Yeah,” Wiley agreed, a little breathless.
I’m sure you’ll be downright shocked to learn that, when we turned around, the ladder was gone.
The edge of the rooftop was, too.
The thing that surprised me, really, was that it wasn’t as though we were standing on some sort of island. We were somehow in the water all of a sudden, up to our waists, neither of us having taken a single step.
“Fucking…shit. Jesus. Adam?”
“We’re fine,” was my default response, because my anxiety override kicks in like a motherfucker as soon as someone else is more openly afraid than I am. “It’s okay, let’s just—let’s think for a second. Maybe it’s just, like, an illusion or something.”
“Okay,” Wiley said. “Maybe we should…try moving?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we’ll bump the ledge and then we can just feel for the ladder. Good idea.”
Wiley and I shared a look, wordlessly nodding to one another, and stepped forward in unison.
Maybe I misspoke before, when I said we weren’t on a platform. It was just that our platform wasn’t above the water. Now, though, there was nothing.
It felt, almost, like the stomach-turning sensation of missing a step walking up a staircase. The only difference was that there was no moment-too-late connection.
We plummeted.
There wasn’t any difference in temperature beneath the surface, which was, in a way, more disorienting than the water itself. The mental recalibration that typically comes with plunging into a cool lake or, adversely, a heated pool wasn’t allotted an opportunity to take place. It felt, for most intents and purposes, the same as being in the air, just that I couldn’t breathe.
It was heavy, too. The weightlessness water tends to embody was null; I immediately abandoned everything I’d been carrying, clawing my way upward frantically enough that it would’ve been mortifying, I’m sure, had anyone witnessed it.
Wiley resurfaced at the same moment I did—empty handed as well, I noted—coughing a little but not to the extent that I was worried they were choking. “Next idea?” they asked, pushing their wet hair back from their face, dark, damp lashes obscuring their eyes.
“Let’s get back on the…” I started, but trailed off when I raised my head.
A couple hundred yards out from us, there was a ship. It was a dark, hulking thing, with tattered sails and something indistinguishable affixed to the bow, glittering and glinting in the moonlight.
Wiley spun around to face it, drifting back slightly when their gaze landed parallel to mine. “What the fuck is that?” they demanded, legs kicking haphazardly beneath the water to keep them in place.
“Maybe it’s…good,” I said. I knew better than that and I knew Wiley did, too, but I said it anyway. “Maybe someone will help.”
They didn’t even humor me with a response to that bullshit.
Now, at this point in the story, maybe you’re thinking being suddenly surrounded by water and watching as an ominous ship approached us with absolutely nowhere to go and no way to escape doesn’t feel quite enough like imminent condemnation. To which I say to you: not to worry. Because the next realization we came to was that the platform we’d been standing on previously had suddenly ceased to exist.
“Shit,” Wiley said. “Shit, shit, shit. Adam.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s fine. We’re fine. We just—we’re gonna—follow me.”
I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck possessed me to swim toward the Obvious Death Ship. I guess just that there wasn’t anything else save for open water anywhere so it essentially felt like our options were paddle around until we were exhausted and drown or face a quicker, simpler demise.
“You better have a fucking plan, bro,” Wiley intoned from behind me, which I chivalrously pretended not to hear, because I did not, in fact, have a fucking plan.
The closer we drew to the vessel, the more unbelievably monstrous it appeared to become. It loomed above us, casting a shadow over everything in its direct path, and the sinking in my stomach almost convinced me to turn around. Almost.
But then something curled around my ankle. It was slick and strong, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that whatever it was could’ve pulled me under and eaten me alive in a fraction of a second.
Luckily for me, it wasn’t interested. It let go as quickly as it had latched on, almost as though it was simply using me as a handrail to move itself along. Still, though, the knowledge that it was there was all the motivation I needed to push forward ever faster. I didn’t say anything—didn’t want to add more fuel to Wiley’s panicked fire—just picked up my pace and swam up to their side.
“There’s a ladder,” they informed me, raising a hand and pointing toward the back half of the ship.
Indeed, there was a ladder. It was a tattered, worn thing, comprised of old, fraying rope and rotting, untreated wooden boards, but it looked composed enough that I figured we could likely make it up if we were swift.
“Bet,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We went.
Up close, the ladder appeared even shoddier than it had when we’d first seen it. I reached out of the water and wrapped my fingers around the rope at the bottom, giving it a hearty tug. To my slight surprise, it held fast.
“I think we’re good,” I told Wiley. “I’ll go up first and tell you what I see.”
“Be careful,” they said, but didn’t protest, just backed up enough for me to get the leverage I needed to hoist myself onto the bottom board.
I climbed warily, overly conscious of every creak of the wood bowing beneath my weight, every groan of the fibers of rope under my hands, but made it without incident to the top.
Once there, I grabbed onto the ship’s edge, lifting my gaze to take in whatever lie before me.
It was…nothing. I mean, it was a ship, obviously. But there wasn’t anything on board. No apparent crew nor cargo nor even a captain manning the helm. Granted, I couldn’t see perfectly, but the moon shone brightly enough that I was fairly confident in my observation that the deck was devoid of anything but its own shiplap floor.
“Hello?” I called, because I wasn’t about to beckon Wiley up if some fucked shit was going to pop out of nowhere the second we made a sound.
Nothing responded. Nothing moved. The ship rocked gently on the impossible water, as silent and vacant as it had been a moment before.
“Good?” Wiley questioned nervously from below me.
“Yeah,” I told them, easing myself off the ladder and down into the confines of the vessel. “Come on.”
They did so tenuously but still more swiftly than I had, climbing aboard and landing next to me with a dampened thunk.
We allowed ourselves the briefest of moments to catch our breath, silently rejoicing in the small win that was having found solace from the pool itself. Not that we had any idea what to do or where to go from here, but at the very least, we weren’t drowning.
“Okay,” I said, clearing the unease from my throat. “I don’t know what good trying to steer this thing would do us—there’s nothing but water no matter where we go. But maybe there’s something here somewhere that’ll help us figure out how to get back. So I think we just…start looking around?”
Wiley nodded. “Cool. Split halves, front and back?”
Nooo, Adam, don’t split up! Never split up! I know. I can literally hear you screaming it at me. And actually, for once in my life, I considered that something might be a horrible fucking idea before acting on it.
But then I saw something.
As I turned back to respond, Wiley’s eyes shimmered, dancing in the moonlight.
They were silver and mercurial, with no pupils or whites in sight.
Whatever had come back up from underwater, it was not my coworker.
I swallowed, forcing my expression to remain as neutral as I was able and praying whatever was standing in front of me didn’t notice I’d caught on. My entire body was instantaneously covered in chills, in a way that I understood to have the same purpose as a dog’s hackles rising. “Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll take the front.”
I headed in the opposite direction of the thing wearing Wiley’s face (at a pace that I hoped didn’t appear hurried but one that would remove me in a timely manner from the vicinity) and didn’t stop until I’d reached the front of the ship, breathing heavily and attempting to slow my reeling mind.
I didn’t know what to tackle first. I didn’t know where Wiley was, or if they were anywhere—if they were even still alive. I didn’t know what my next move should be. I didn’t know what I was looking for or where I might find it.
It’s rare that I feel utterly hopeless, to the degree that I genuinely contemplate just sitting down and giving up, but in this instance, I thought long and hard about how easy it would be to succumb. I’d let the unthinkable happen. Wiley was gone. No one else had been here with them—there was no one else to blame. Just me. Only me.
…You’ll be glad to know that the self-pity didn’t last long. Embarrassing, honestly.
If I was the only one here, it meant I was the only shot they had at making it out alive. Our version of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ had always been ‘alive until proven dead’ and I wasn’t about to turn my back on the insane streak of luck we’d had up until this point. Not a single one of our lives had been lost, and we’d been in the midst of some absolute shitstorms. There was no reason to believe that right now, tonight, was an outlier. I couldn’t lie down like a sick dog and wonder if Wiley was still out there somewhere, suffering until the bitter, bloody end. I had to find them. By whatever means necessary, as long as it took, I had to find them.
I pushed off the railing before me and spun on my heel, eyes flitting back and forth to assess my options as efficiently as possible, and after a moment, I registered that fitted flush against the large front mast, there was a door.
It was only a sliver, thin and not particularly extraordinary in height, but there was a handle carved roughly into its right side and a set of rust-riddled hinges on its left.
I took about half a second to weigh my options and then reached for it, curling my fingers around the handle and giving it a generous tug.
The hinges, unsurprisingly, complained, but not loudly and not for long. The door gave way with little resistance, and opened up to my worst fucking nightmare.
A set of stairs, descending into blackness.
I mean, I guess if I’m being fair, my first pool encounter had featured a staircase leading to the pool rather than away from it, but I didn’t feel like there could possibly be good news awaiting me below deck of a ship where I’d just encountered a fucking mimic.
Still, though, there was a niggling insistence in my brain (not that kind, come on) that it was my only lead on finding Wiley if they were, in fact, somewhere on board. So I cast one last glance over my shoulder and stepped into the dark, letting the door fall closed behind me.
It smelled different, instantly, from the open air above. Mustier, which was to be expected, but also almost sweet somehow. I tried, unsuccessfully, to shove my true-crime-podcast-addled brain’s helpful reminder that the scent of human death is said to be sweet into a mental lockbox and put my hand to the wall, easing tentatively down to the second step.
The visibility wasn’t just low—it was practically zero. If you’ve ever been on a cave tour and had a guide cut the lights and instruct you to lift your hand to your face to demonstrate the complete absence of light, it was nearly that intense. The placing of both feet on each concurrent stair was an arduous, calculated process, but finally, after approximately one (1) century, I reached flat ground. I still couldn’t see, and there was no definitive way to tell whether I was standing on the floor or just a landing without thoroughly feeling out the space around me, so I reluctantly departed from the wall, scooting my feet in small, tentative motions and keeping both arms partially outstretched before me.
After a (l o n g) moment, I determined that either this was the world’s largest landing or I’d made it all the way down. I had no idea whether I was in a singular, enormous room, or if there were individual cabins, or if I was about to run face-first into the grim fucking reaper.
And then I turned to my left.
There was a light.
It was so, so faint. Flickering. Barely discernible, its warm, gentle glow ever so shyly illuminating the cracks around what appeared to be another closed door.
Being the only visible thing in my line of sight, in any direction, it emitted the aura of both a beacon and an omen.
I headed towards it.
I was about half afraid I was stuck in a horror movie situation where no matter how long I walked it would never grow any closer, but fortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case. I actually gained on it more quickly than I felt I should have for the speed I was moving, but I wasn’t going to complain about reaching the end of the nothingness in commendable time.
I ran my fingertips along the edge of the door and, sure enough, there was a carved-in handle, just like the last.
It opened just as effortlessly, and yellow candlelight rolled dimly out to greet me, lapping at my waterlogged clothes.
“Please,” came a quiet, terrified voice from inside the room. “Please don’t. I don’t know what you want, or–or what you are, but please don’t—”
“...Wiley?”
Rather than calming, the voice’s state of alarm rose to a level bordering on full-blown panic as I took a step into the space. “Please,” the voice begged. There wasn’t anyone visible from my current vantage point, but I could hear it clearly enough to feel fairly confident that the person attached to it—the person who either had to be Wiley or yet another duplicate of them—was close. “Why are you doing this?”
This was a cabin, I thought, or perhaps a study of some sort, with a rotting wooden desk and a decaying leather chair both covered in a flurry of loose, browned book pages and a thick layer of dust. There were candles littering several surfaces, placed in what appeared not to be any intentional manner. Directly to my right, there was a shelf; its back faced me and the odd placement led me to imagine that it may have been employed to block the door at some time.
It was also, I would have just about bet, the source of the voice.
I nudged a couple of planks and a broken amber bottle out of the way with the toe of my shoe, rounding the shelf to find a crumpled, bloodied Wiley, restrained to the floor by a thick, coarse rope fixed expertly to a bolted tie and holding their bound hands up to shield their face.
“Jesus fuck,” I said. “What happened to you?”
Slowly, they lifted their head. “...Adam?”
Realization dawned on me, and I felt my stomach sink. “Look at me,” I told them. “Look at my eyes.”
They did, their own bloodshot and watery and inherently human, and I watched their shoulders deflate, the defense and terror draining from their form. “There’s someone…something…down here. Or, I guess it still is, anyway. I don’t know where it went, but I don’t wanna be here when it comes back.”
I nodded. “It look like me?”
Wiley nodded back.
“Yeah, there’s one of you upstairs. Not real sure what we’re supposed to do about them, but one thing at a time. Let’s get you up from there.”
It was a struggle, disentangling Wiley from the heavy, abrasive leads coccooning their body, but we got there eventually, and throughout the entirety of the arduous process they gave me the rundown on how, when we’d parted from the solace of the platform, something had instantaneously latched onto them, dragging them down deeper and deeper until their ears popped and their head felt like it was going to explode. They said they’d been knocked out by the pressure, and that when they’d come to, already tied in place and coughing up lungfuls of water, “I” had been standing over them, wielding a large net hook and no mercy.
“I knew it wasn’t you, obviously,” they said, “but I didn’t know where you actually were or if something had, like. Hijacked your body? I don’t know. Anyway, let’s get the fuck out of here.”
We grabbed a couple of candles (the majority had simply been melted into place atop whatever surface they’d adorned, but there was a small collection fitted into slightly-too-small brass holders) and got the fuck out.
Being able to see so little in the space around us was almost more disorienting than the pitch darkness I’d been feeling my way through before. It felt as though we were in a fragile, wavering bubble of reality and nothing existed outside of it.
“Wish I’d been awake coming down here,” Wiley remarked. “Guess I still wouldn’t have seen shit, though.”
“I could…maybe get us back upstairs?” I considered, with little to no confidence. “But I don’t really know what good it would do us. Nowhere to go. Maybe we just…look around down here for a bit? See if we can find anything useful?”
“Yeah, okay,” Wiley assented. “But we’ve gotta be quiet. I don’t want that thing to hear us.”
I certainly couldn’t argue with that.
We wandered hesitantly through the dark, shielding the flames of our candles with cupped palms and praying we wouldn’t misstep. We made it some unsubstantiated quantity of time without incident, but softly, after seconds or minutes or hours, we heard a light rustling from the shadow veiled corridor to our right, and Wiley pulled me into the nearest open room in the opposite direction.
Flattening our backs to the wall, we listened intently as footsteps echoed faintly behind us, cyclically growing closer and then further away again for several moments before disappearing altogether.
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding and uncovered my candle, easing the door of the room to a gentle, silent close. The contents of this one were different from that of the last in that there practically weren’t any. It wasn’t just that it was tidier; there was a chest shoved against the wall nearest us and a leatherbound book of some sort lying in the center of the floor, but otherwise the space was vacant.
Wiley moved first, crouching next to the journal and lifting it from the ground, a cloud of dust rising in the wake of their breath. I knelt down beside them, offering my candlelight so they could discard theirs and open the cover.
Beneath which there was a box.
It was a plain, unadorned wooden rectangle, nestled into the carved-out central pages of the book, and we learned upon extracting it that there was no lock or latch, just a seam indicating the lid’s separation from the body.
I don’t need to spell the whole situation out for you. There was a key in the box. The key opened, you guessed it: the chest. Inside the chest, there were piles of gold and jewels beyond your wildest imagination. We’re rich now. The end.
Nah, JK. But the key in the box did open the chest, in which there was, A) a pair of peeling, pleather driving gloves, and B)...
I felt my heart skip.
A bicycle chain.
I’m not going to get into the nuances of that right now, or maybe ever. But for the purposes of dramatic flair, just know that it was incredibly, pointedly relevant to me, on a level so personal it sucker punched the air straight out of my lungs.
“No,” Wiley said, staggering back a step. “Uh-uh. Nope.”
I put together, then, that the gloves must have been their ticket item. “It’s okay,” I said, on autopilot, because it was not. “There’s something—something’s carved into the bottom of this thing.” Pushing past the reaction every fiber of my being had to the sensation of the frigid metal against my skin, I shoved both the chain and the gloves to the side and could scarcely make out a host of crudely scrawled letters in the wavering light of my half-gone candle.
“What is it?” Wiley asked, making no move to come nearer again.
“Though your…hand…? Heart. Though your heart does pound and knees grow…weak,” I deciphered slowly, “Rid yourself by your… That doesn’t make any sense. Shouldn’t it be of? It says ‘rid yourself by your fear’ and…something. Drain the…clin… No. Drink. Drain the drink.”
“Rid yourself by your fear and drain the drink,” Wiley repeated analytically. “The hell does that mean? Is this shit telling us to kill ourselves with the—oh. Oh. Fuck.”
I was not following. “...I’m not following,” I said.
“It is.” Wiley returned to my side, squatting down and nudging me out of the way with their shoulder to peer warily into the trunk. “It’s telling us to kill ourselves, but not these selves. We’re supposed to use…those…to kill our fuckin’ doppelgangers, or whatever they are. That’s how we get rid of the water.”
“Oh,” I echoed. “Fuck.”
We marinated for a moment in silence before Wiley sighed, resigned, and lifted the gloves from the chest, closing their eyes and pulling the fabric snugly over their hands. “Let’s get to work.”

Okay, I’m gonna level with you. Focusing on current events is just getting a little too fucking heavy. I’m no closer to answers than I was a month ago, none of us can sleep through a full night without waking up shaking and drenched in sweat, and there are some new downright bizarre phenomena cropping up that I just don’t have it in me to allot my energy to at the moment.
So, for today’s installment (and then also for the next one) I’m gonna tell you another good ol’ fun-for-the-whole-family pool story. Yep, you heard that right—welcome to our first bonafide two-parter.
This was quite a while ago. My measure of time is all off by a year now, but I feel fairly confident in chalking it up to post-first pool story, pre-ouija board fiasco—so however long ago that’s been now.
It was a weird, rare night, in that Matt was out. Not an unheard of occurrence, but it’s fairly anomalous, and it certainly puts the rest of us on slightly higher alert.
Obviously, he always tells us to call him at the first sign of some shit going down and to use our best judgment to determine whether it’s serious enough to lock up and head out. Better safe than sorry and all that. The night in question was no exception to the rule.
Overall, though, things were mostly quiet. Alice was in, as was I, as was Wiley. We do a lot of congregating, but we do a lot of work, too, and this night, we were all in our respective areas, doing our respective jobs.
I was in my not-office mending a finicky Shakespeare anthology, Alice was watching the desk while working on cataloging a truckload of new donations, and Wiley was replacing several lightbulbs that had all decided to call it quits after our most recent power outage (this one due to a flash-flood).
It was calm to an almost uncharacteristic degree. There was a relatively steady flow of patrons in and out of the building—I could hear Alice greeting them and wishing them a good evening—but as far as anomalous activity, there was none.
It does happen, on rare occasion, that we make it through a full night without any goings on, but there’s almost always at least the odd disembodied voice or two.
We should’ve known better than to trust a meteor shower.
See, there’s just something about natural anomalies. Not just the ones that knock our power out, either, although those are clearly included. Blizzards, thunderstorms, hail and tornados and earthquakes and all your run-of-the-mill destructive shit, sure. But the things of beauty, too. Rainbows. Eclipses, lunar or solar. And you think full moons hit emergency rooms hard? Try this fucking place.
It was just that a meteor shower wasn’t one we’d dealt with before. Does that mean we shouldn’t have known better? Fuck no. Obviously not. But perhaps our collective greatest fault is that we still have some semblance of hope.
Wiley wanted to look at it from the roof. Kid never fucking wants to do anything, and they were set to climb up and camp out alone. I couldn’t not entertain such an innocent, youthful whim.
Our roof access doesn’t have stairs—just a ladder—so Alice couldn’t accompany us, which I felt shitty about, but she assured me it was perfectly fine with her.
“The world decided I didn’t need functional legs so I could never be peer pressured into leaving the ground,” she quipped. “I’m not into heights. But y’all have fun up there. Somebody needs to be here for the patrons anyway.”
Fair and fair. So Wiley and I gathered up an armful of blankets and one of Matt’s trusty camping lanterns and headed out to scale the building.
Wiley went up ahead of me. That was my first mistake.
Really, they aren’t that much younger than I am. Maybe four or five years, and I’m too close to thirty for comfort now. But there’s something about them, even as far as they’ve come, that makes it impossible for me not to do everything in my power to protect them. I think Matt feels the same way. Maybe most of us do.
Anyway, that’s why I immediately started cursing myself when they reached the top of the ladder, pulled their way up and over the ledge of the roof, and said, “...Whoa.”
My second mistake was not immediately telling them to turn around and start climbing right the fuck back down.
I knew exactly what that tone of voice meant. But something in me just kicked into hyperdrive and I…had to see it. Whatever it was, I had to see it for myself.
“Don’t move,” I said, and then, “What is it?”
But by that point, I was at the top, too. I hoisted myself over the ledge and was met with…
…Water.
It was everywhere. Extending in every direction. There was no edge in sight—not even a horizon line. Just vast, dark water as far as the eye could see.
“Okay. This is not—let’s go.”
“Yeah,” Wiley agreed, a little breathless.
I’m sure you’ll be downright shocked to learn that, when we turned around, the ladder was gone.
The edge of the rooftop was, too.
The thing that surprised me, really, was that it wasn’t as though we were standing on some sort of island. We were somehow in the water all of a sudden, up to our waists, neither of us having taken a single step.
“Fucking…shit. Jesus. Adam?”
“We’re fine,” was my default response, because my anxiety override kicks in like a motherfucker as soon as someone else is more openly afraid than I am. “It’s okay, let’s just—let’s think for a second. Maybe it’s just, like, an illusion or something.”
“Okay,” Wiley said. “Maybe we should…try moving?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we’ll bump the ledge and then we can just feel for the ladder. Good idea.”
Wiley and I shared a look, wordlessly nodding to one another, and stepped forward in unison.
Maybe I misspoke before, when I said we weren’t on a platform. It was just that our platform wasn’t above the water. Now, though, there was nothing.
It felt, almost, like the stomach-turning sensation of missing a step walking up a staircase. The only difference was that there was no moment-too-late connection.
We plummeted.
There wasn’t any difference in temperature beneath the surface, which was, in a way, more disorienting than the water itself. The mental recalibration that typically comes with plunging into a cool lake or, adversely, a heated pool wasn’t allotted an opportunity to take place. It felt, for most intents and purposes, the same as being in the air, just that I couldn’t breathe.
It was heavy, too. The weightlessness water tends to embody was null; I immediately abandoned everything I’d been carrying, clawing my way upward frantically enough that it would’ve been mortifying, I’m sure, had anyone witnessed it.
Wiley resurfaced at the same moment I did—empty handed as well, I noted—coughing a little but not to the extent that I was worried they were choking. “Next idea?” they asked, pushing their wet hair back from their face, dark, damp lashes obscuring their eyes.
“Let’s get back on the…” I started, but trailed off when I raised my head.
A couple hundred yards out from us, there was a ship. It was a dark, hulking thing, with tattered sails and something indistinguishable affixed to the bow, glittering and glinting in the moonlight.
Wiley spun around to face it, drifting back slightly when their gaze landed parallel to mine. “What the fuck is that?” they demanded, legs kicking haphazardly beneath the water to keep them in place.
“Maybe it’s…good,” I said. I knew better than that and I knew Wiley did, too, but I said it anyway. “Maybe someone will help.”
They didn’t even humor me with a response to that bullshit.
Now, at this point in the story, maybe you’re thinking being suddenly surrounded by water and watching as an ominous ship approached us with absolutely nowhere to go and no way to escape doesn’t feel quite enough like imminent condemnation. To which I say to you: not to worry. Because the next realization we came to was that the platform we’d been standing on previously had suddenly ceased to exist.
“Shit,” Wiley said. “Shit, shit, shit. Adam.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s fine. We’re fine. We just—we’re gonna—follow me.”
I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck possessed me to swim toward the Obvious Death Ship. I guess just that there wasn’t anything else save for open water anywhere so it essentially felt like our options were paddle around until we were exhausted and drown or face a quicker, simpler demise.
“You better have a fucking plan, bro,” Wiley intoned from behind me, which I chivalrously pretended not to hear, because I did not, in fact, have a fucking plan.
The closer we drew to the vessel, the more unbelievably monstrous it appeared to become. It loomed above us, casting a shadow over everything in its direct path, and the sinking in my stomach almost convinced me to turn around. Almost.
But then something curled around my ankle. It was slick and strong, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that whatever it was could’ve pulled me under and eaten me alive in a fraction of a second.
Luckily for me, it wasn’t interested. It let go as quickly as it had latched on, almost as though it was simply using me as a handrail to move itself along. Still, though, the knowledge that it was there was all the motivation I needed to push forward ever faster. I didn’t say anything—didn’t want to add more fuel to Wiley’s panicked fire—just picked up my pace and swam up to their side.
“There’s a ladder,” they informed me, raising a hand and pointing toward the back half of the ship.
Indeed, there was a ladder. It was a tattered, worn thing, comprised of old, fraying rope and rotting, untreated wooden boards, but it looked composed enough that I figured we could likely make it up if we were swift.
“Bet,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We went.
Up close, the ladder appeared even shoddier than it had when we’d first seen it. I reached out of the water and wrapped my fingers around the rope at the bottom, giving it a hearty tug. To my slight surprise, it held fast.
“I think we’re good,” I told Wiley. “I’ll go up first and tell you what I see.”
“Be careful,” they said, but didn’t protest, just backed up enough for me to get the leverage I needed to hoist myself onto the bottom board.
I climbed warily, overly conscious of every creak of the wood bowing beneath my weight, every groan of the fibers of rope under my hands, but made it without incident to the top.
Once there, I grabbed onto the ship’s edge, lifting my gaze to take in whatever lie before me.
It was…nothing. I mean, it was a ship, obviously. But there wasn’t anything on board. No apparent crew nor cargo nor even a captain manning the helm. Granted, I couldn’t see perfectly, but the moon shone brightly enough that I was fairly confident in my observation that the deck was devoid of anything but its own shiplap floor.
“Hello?” I called, because I wasn’t about to beckon Wiley up if some fucked shit was going to pop out of nowhere the second we made a sound.
Nothing responded. Nothing moved. The ship rocked gently on the impossible water, as silent and vacant as it had been a moment before.
“Good?” Wiley questioned nervously from below me.
“Yeah,” I told them, easing myself off the ladder and down into the confines of the vessel. “Come on.”
They did so tenuously but still more swiftly than I had, climbing aboard and landing next to me with a dampened thunk.
We allowed ourselves the briefest of moments to catch our breath, silently rejoicing in the small win that was having found solace from the pool itself. Not that we had any idea what to do or where to go from here, but at the very least, we weren’t drowning.
“Okay,” I said, clearing the unease from my throat. “I don’t know what good trying to steer this thing would do us—there’s nothing but water no matter where we go. But maybe there’s something here somewhere that’ll help us figure out how to get back. So I think we just…start looking around?”
Wiley nodded. “Cool. Split halves, front and back?”
Nooo, Adam, don’t split up! Never split up! I know. I can literally hear you screaming it at me. And actually, for once in my life, I considered that something might be a horrible fucking idea before acting on it.
But then I saw something.
As I turned back to respond, Wiley’s eyes shimmered, dancing in the moonlight.
They were silver and mercurial, with no pupils or whites in sight.
Whatever had come back up from underwater, it was not my coworker.
I swallowed, forcing my expression to remain as neutral as I was able and praying whatever was standing in front of me didn’t notice I’d caught on. My entire body was instantaneously covered in chills, in a way that I understood to have the same purpose as a dog’s hackles rising. “Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll take the front.”
I headed in the opposite direction of the thing wearing Wiley’s face (at a pace that I hoped didn’t appear hurried but one that would remove me in a timely manner from the vicinity) and didn’t stop until I’d reached the front of the ship, breathing heavily and attempting to slow my reeling mind.
I didn’t know what to tackle first. I didn’t know where Wiley was, or if they were anywhere—if they were even still alive. I didn’t know what my next move should be. I didn’t know what I was looking for or where I might find it.
It’s rare that I feel utterly hopeless, to the degree that I genuinely contemplate just sitting down and giving up, but in this instance, I thought long and hard about how easy it would be to succumb. I’d let the unthinkable happen. Wiley was gone. No one else had been here with them—there was no one else to blame. Just me. Only me.
…You’ll be glad to know that the self-pity didn’t last long. Embarrassing, honestly.
If I was the only one here, it meant I was the only shot they had at making it out alive. Our version of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ had always been ‘alive until proven dead’ and I wasn’t about to turn my back on the insane streak of luck we’d had up until this point. Not a single one of our lives had been lost, and we’d been in the midst of some absolute shitstorms. There was no reason to believe that right now, tonight, was an outlier. I couldn’t lie down like a sick dog and wonder if Wiley was still out there somewhere, suffering until the bitter, bloody end. I had to find them. By whatever means necessary, as long as it took, I had to find them.
I pushed off the railing before me and spun on my heel, eyes flitting back and forth to assess my options as efficiently as possible, and after a moment, I registered that fitted flush against the large front mast, there was a door.
It was only a sliver, thin and not particularly extraordinary in height, but there was a handle carved roughly into its right side and a set of rust-riddled hinges on its left.
I took about half a second to weigh my options and then reached for it, curling my fingers around the handle and giving it a generous tug.
The hinges, unsurprisingly, complained, but not loudly and not for long. The door gave way with little resistance, and opened up to my worst fucking nightmare.
A set of stairs, descending into blackness.
I mean, I guess if I’m being fair, my first pool encounter had featured a staircase leading to the pool rather than away from it, but I didn’t feel like there could possibly be good news awaiting me below deck of a ship where I’d just encountered a fucking mimic.
Still, though, there was a niggling insistence in my brain (not that kind, come on) that it was my only lead on finding Wiley if they were, in fact, somewhere on board. So I cast one last glance over my shoulder and stepped into the dark, letting the door fall closed behind me.
It smelled different, instantly, from the open air above. Mustier, which was to be expected, but also almost sweet somehow. I tried, unsuccessfully, to shove my true-crime-podcast-addled brain’s helpful reminder that the scent of human death is said to be sweet into a mental lockbox and put my hand to the wall, easing tentatively down to the second step.
The visibility wasn’t just low—it was practically zero. If you’ve ever been on a cave tour and had a guide cut the lights and instruct you to lift your hand to your face to demonstrate the complete absence of light, it was nearly that intense. The placing of both feet on each concurrent stair was an arduous, calculated process, but finally, after approximately one (1) century, I reached flat ground. I still couldn’t see, and there was no definitive way to tell whether I was standing on the floor or just a landing without thoroughly feeling out the space around me, so I reluctantly departed from the wall, scooting my feet in small, tentative motions and keeping both arms partially outstretched before me.
After a (l o n g) moment, I determined that either this was the world’s largest landing or I’d made it all the way down. I had no idea whether I was in a singular, enormous room, or if there were individual cabins, or if I was about to run face-first into the grim fucking reaper.
And then I turned to my left.
There was a light.
It was so, so faint. Flickering. Barely discernible, its warm, gentle glow ever so shyly illuminating the cracks around what appeared to be another closed door.
Being the only visible thing in my line of sight, in any direction, it emitted the aura of both a beacon and an omen.
I headed towards it.
I was about half afraid I was stuck in a horror movie situation where no matter how long I walked it would never grow any closer, but fortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case. I actually gained on it more quickly than I felt I should have for the speed I was moving, but I wasn’t going to complain about reaching the end of the nothingness in commendable time.
I ran my fingertips along the edge of the door and, sure enough, there was a carved-in handle, just like the last.
It opened just as effortlessly, and yellow candlelight rolled dimly out to greet me, lapping at my waterlogged clothes.
“Please,” came a quiet, terrified voice from inside the room. “Please don’t. I don’t know what you want, or–or what you are, but please don’t—”
“...Wiley?”
Rather than calming, the voice’s state of alarm rose to a level bordering on full-blown panic as I took a step into the space. “Please,” the voice begged. There wasn’t anyone visible from my current vantage point, but I could hear it clearly enough to feel fairly confident that the person attached to it—the person who either had to be Wiley or yet another duplicate of them—was close. “Why are you doing this?”
This was a cabin, I thought, or perhaps a study of some sort, with a rotting wooden desk and a decaying leather chair both covered in a flurry of loose, browned book pages and a thick layer of dust. There were candles littering several surfaces, placed in what appeared not to be any intentional manner. Directly to my right, there was a shelf; its back faced me and the odd placement led me to imagine that it may have been employed to block the door at some time.
It was also, I would have just about bet, the source of the voice.
I nudged a couple of planks and a broken amber bottle out of the way with the toe of my shoe, rounding the shelf to find a crumpled, bloodied Wiley, restrained to the floor by a thick, coarse rope fixed expertly to a bolted tie and holding their bound hands up to shield their face.
“Jesus fuck,” I said. “What happened to you?”
Slowly, they lifted their head. “...Adam?”
Realization dawned on me, and I felt my stomach sink. “Look at me,” I told them. “Look at my eyes.”
They did, their own bloodshot and watery and inherently human, and I watched their shoulders deflate, the defense and terror draining from their form. “There’s someone…something…down here. Or, I guess it still is, anyway. I don’t know where it went, but I don’t wanna be here when it comes back.”
I nodded. “It look like me?”
Wiley nodded back.
“Yeah, there’s one of you upstairs. Not real sure what we’re supposed to do about them, but one thing at a time. Let’s get you up from there.”
It was a struggle, disentangling Wiley from the heavy, abrasive leads coccooning their body, but we got there eventually, and throughout the entirety of the arduous process they gave me the rundown on how, when we’d parted from the solace of the platform, something had instantaneously latched onto them, dragging them down deeper and deeper until their ears popped and their head felt like it was going to explode. They said they’d been knocked out by the pressure, and that when they’d come to, already tied in place and coughing up lungfuls of water, “I” had been standing over them, wielding a large net hook and no mercy.
“I knew it wasn’t you, obviously,” they said, “but I didn’t know where you actually were or if something had, like. Hijacked your body? I don’t know. Anyway, let’s get the fuck out of here.”
We grabbed a couple of candles (the majority had simply been melted into place atop whatever surface they’d adorned, but there was a small collection fitted into slightly-too-small brass holders) and got the fuck out.
Being able to see so little in the space around us was almost more disorienting than the pitch darkness I’d been feeling my way through before. It felt as though we were in a fragile, wavering bubble of reality and nothing existed outside of it.
“Wish I’d been awake coming down here,” Wiley remarked. “Guess I still wouldn’t have seen shit, though.”
“I could…maybe get us back upstairs?” I considered, with little to no confidence. “But I don’t really know what good it would do us. Nowhere to go. Maybe we just…look around down here for a bit? See if we can find anything useful?”
“Yeah, okay,” Wiley assented. “But we’ve gotta be quiet. I don’t want that thing to hear us.”
I certainly couldn’t argue with that.
We wandered hesitantly through the dark, shielding the flames of our candles with cupped palms and praying we wouldn’t misstep. We made it some unsubstantiated quantity of time without incident, but softly, after seconds or minutes or hours, we heard a light rustling from the shadow veiled corridor to our right, and Wiley pulled me into the nearest open room in the opposite direction.
Flattening our backs to the wall, we listened intently as footsteps echoed faintly behind us, cyclically growing closer and then further away again for several moments before disappearing altogether.
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding and uncovered my candle, easing the door of the room to a gentle, silent close. The contents of this one were different from that of the last in that there practically weren’t any. It wasn’t just that it was tidier; there was a chest shoved against the wall nearest us and a leatherbound book of some sort lying in the center of the floor, but otherwise the space was vacant.
Wiley moved first, crouching next to the journal and lifting it from the ground, a cloud of dust rising in the wake of their breath. I knelt down beside them, offering my candlelight so they could discard theirs and open the cover.
Beneath which there was a box.
It was a plain, unadorned wooden rectangle, nestled into the carved-out central pages of the book, and we learned upon extracting it that there was no lock or latch, just a seam indicating the lid’s separation from the body.
I don’t need to spell the whole situation out for you. There was a key in the box. The key opened, you guessed it: the chest. Inside the chest, there were piles of gold and jewels beyond your wildest imagination. We’re rich now. The end.
Nah, JK. But the key in the box did open the chest, in which there was, A) a pair of peeling, pleather driving gloves, and B)...
I felt my heart skip.
A bicycle chain.
I’m not going to get into the nuances of that right now, or maybe ever. But for the purposes of dramatic flair, just know that it was incredibly, pointedly relevant to me, on a level so personal it sucker punched the air straight out of my lungs.
“No,” Wiley said, staggering back a step. “Uh-uh. Nope.”
I put together, then, that the gloves must have been their ticket item. “It’s okay,” I said, on autopilot, because it was not. “There’s something—something’s carved into the bottom of this thing.” Pushing past the reaction every fiber of my being had to the sensation of the frigid metal against my skin, I shoved both the chain and the gloves to the side and could scarcely make out a host of crudely scrawled letters in the wavering light of my half-gone candle.
“What is it?” Wiley asked, making no move to come nearer again.
“Though your…hand…? Heart. Though your heart does pound and knees grow…weak,” I deciphered slowly, “Rid yourself by your… That doesn’t make any sense. Shouldn’t it be of? It says ‘rid yourself by *your fear’ and…*something. Drain the…clin… No. Drink. Drain the drink.”
“Rid yourself by your fear and drain the drink,” Wiley repeated analytically. “The hell does that mean? Is this shit telling us to kill ourselves with the—oh. Oh. Fuck.”
I was not following. “...I’m not following,” I said.
“It is.” Wiley returned to my side, squatting down and nudging me out of the way with their shoulder to peer warily into the trunk. “It’s telling us to kill ourselves, but not these selves. We’re supposed to use…*those…*to kill our fuckin’ doppelgangers, or whatever they are. That’s how we get rid of the water.”
“Oh,” I echoed. “Fuck.”
We marinated for a moment in silence before Wiley sighed, resigned, and lifted the gloves from the chest, closing their eyes and pulling the fabric snugly over their hands. “Let’s get to work.”

To clarify, I now know that there are different definitions of the word “ship”, but for the purposes of this article and to keep things simple I will use the definition of “a relationship that’s rushed and/or forced with no real development.” I hope you can understand as I do not know of any other single word to describe that concept. If you do, perhaps you can tell me. Also, fair warning, this is long form content (some 10 pages), if you like it but can’t read it all at once you can save it and come back to it over a period of time, or you can stop reading whenever you get tired of it and still discuss those parts of it with me that you have read. But keep it civil if you want a civil response.
With that, to qualify the title, no, Ezra and Sabine do NOT absolutely have to be a couple, but if they were to become one, it would NOT be a ship. Ezra and Sabine’s relationship has had years of development. Could they remain as simply friends? Yes, but ironically, it was their “friendship” that felt like more of a ship. It felt like the Ahsoka show, helmed by Dave Filoni, was going out of its way to tell us: “no, they’re not a couple, they’re just friends.”
I believe that Filoni made some very poor writing choices to stress something that didn’t really need to be stressed, such that it almost felt like he was in denial. The line “I love you like a sister” was never in Rebels, Filoni essentially had that retconned in, and like many I was put off by their (largely) emotionless reunion. Even if they were “just friends” I believe there would be a great deal more emotion displayed between two people that hadn’t seen each other in some ten years, especially when one of them was in a precarious situation when they parted. I also believe Ezra would be far more curious about Sabine being Force sensitive, perhaps even offering to help train her when she told him that her training hadn’t gone as well with Ahsoka. He did help to train her with the Darksaber, didn’t he? Why that never came up is another discussion, but for now, let’s focus on shipping.
In case you think I’m desperate to have them as a couple, no I’m not. I’m about the furthest thing from it. Like many millennials and Gen-Z’ers (and perhaps some Gen-Xers and boomers) I DESPISE shipping. Absolutely DESPISE it. With a flaming passion. Perhaps for this reason, and maybe some others, like many millennials and Gen-Z’ers (and perhaps some Gen-Xers and boomers), I’m generally wary of nearly all romance in fiction, and generally avoid it in my own work. The sad reality is that romance is perhaps the most abused genre in all of fiction, all throughout history. It has been so badly abused that many people, including myself for the longest time, have equated romance with shipping, though I’m slowly beginning to see that they are not the same thing, and one does not necessarily have to go with the other.
But sadly, many writers, through time immemorial, have not been able to separate them, going back into ancient times and perhaps even into pre-history, that is before languages were actually written down. Some of what is considered great literature; classics like Romeo and Juliet, are predicated on shipping, though at least the consequences of this “whirlwind romance” are shown to be fairly stark. Star Wars itself is no stranger to shipping, resulting in a very awkward incestuous kiss when Luke was shipped with Leia, then Leia was placed with Han and Lucas made Luke and Leia brother and sister, apparently having forgotten his original ship. Later Lucas essentially shipped Anakin and Padme, resulting in some of the most cringeworthy dialog in the history of film. Many fans of the Prequels even have been somewhat critical of Anakin’s portrayal, particularly in regards to the “romantic” scenes, with many describing them as “creepy”. Some have speculated that this was intentional, though personally I think it was just the result of bad writing on the part of George Lucas, and an impatience on his part for Anakin and Padme to become a couple, hence “shipping”.
One might wonder why this is so prevalent in fiction, and tragically, one does not have to look far. Fiction is merely a reflection of reality, therefore the reason that shipping is so common in our stories is that we fall so easily into it in real life. Indeed, entire cultures may be based around shipping, or at least very heavily wrapped up in it. Throughout history arranged marriages have been the norm, and the idea of marrying for “love” is something relatively new. To be fair, I’ve actually met people in arranged marriages who seemed to be fairly happy, but those same people were very open in telling me that many despise that aspect of their culture, and that it is quite normal for those in an arranged marriage to try to get out.
People might come together for “love” without marrying, but even then it often creates expectations that might turn into a burden. Even when a marriage is voluntary and for “love”, people are often left unsatisfied, such that today in the West the divorce rate is something like 50%. Happy, stable, long term relationships seem to be the exception across cultures and across the breadth and width of time. And yet pursuit of love and some kind of relationship seems to be the highest calling for many people, both in real life and in fiction. And it could be that the accumulated disgust is finally starting to boil over.
To be fair, this may not be the first time in history that the pendulum has shifted. You may recall that in Victorian times attitudes changed drastically, as compared to the previously bawdy Elizabethan times. Looking at a play from Shakespear, if you can understand the language, you’ll see all kinds of vulgar references, as well as what I believe are fairly sappy romances like in the aforementioned Romeo and Juliet, though I can’t say for certain whether Shakespear was actually endorsing that type of attitude towards “love” or presenting it as a cautionary tale, maybe even something to be ridiculed in some of his other plays.
But regardless, Victorians as you may well know had a very conservative attitude towards anything to do with romance, and would often avoid the subject in many places, or tread very carefully around it, as if walking on eggshells. It’s not that people stopped being romantic, in fiction or real life, but it was treated as something very serious and even dangerous, with many urges repressed or even suppressed entirely. This had all kinds of effects on society, both positive and negative. On the positive side, it reinforced the ideal of people being committed to their partners, and of marriage as a sacred institution rather than a “casual hookup” as was more common in Elizabethan times. Likewise it reinforced ideals of modesty and chastity, which may be coming back into vogue, though under different names. But just as there were positive aspects to these attitudes, so were there negative ones.
Just because the urges I described were repressed did not mean that they disappeared. In fact, they often morphed into things that many would consider “unhealthy”. From one statistic that I saw, in Victorian times about one in every 60 houses was a brothel, with the modern rate being closer to one in 6000. Additionally, the rights of women were often repressed, such that they could not fully express themselves and find their own identity, and path in life, as individuals. Just as Elizabethan ideals gave way to Victorian ones, so did the Victorian ideals gradually begin to erode.
Perhaps it began with the Jazz Age of the 1920’s (the “Roaring Twenties”), or with the increased interconnectivity of people traveling to different parts of the world during World War I, not to mention the cynicism that pervaded throughout the West in response to failed old ideals leading to the deadliest war in history up to that point, but many Victorian ideals began to be seen as a joke, and even resented for their “oppression”, which to be fair was not entirely unjustified. But regardless, people gradually, and at times not so gradually, became more and more “liberated” and promiscuous. This culminated in the Sexual Revolution in the late 1960’s, when what had previously been seen as a vice and even a sin was now seen as not only “normal” but as a healthy form of expression, a virtue even. And just as these ideas were embraced in real life, so too were they reflected in our films, TV shows, and other media, often to the consternation of older people and institutions, like the Vatican. The Catholic Church even went so far as to “ban” certain films, that is to declare them immoral for good Catholics to watch. Many of the films that were banned back then, or at least controversial, like The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman, are fairly tame by today’s standards.
It continued through the 70’s, at times warming and at times cooling through the rest of the century, until you could argue it reached a kind of crescendo in the early 21st century with the advent of so-called “dark romance” and the publication of books like Fifty Shades of Grey. (Ironically, many of the themes within this “dark romance” can trace their roots back to the Victorian era, yet another indication that repressing urges without addressing them often doesn’t work out as one might hope.) But as happens all too often, just as something reaches peak popularity is when it begins to go out of style, and that is what we may be experiencing right now. As weird as it may sound, we may actually have come full circle and may be on the cusp of a “New Victorian Age” (complete with “dark romance”, even). Web sites like Porn Hub and OnlyFans, as well as other similar sites, may be the new “brothels”, and what was once openly celebrated may be going underground, to an extent. The effects of this on society have been interesting to say the least, and at times I would even say bizarre.
Whilst many younger people seem content with these changes, many older people are concerned. I’ve seen a number of books, films, and other media receive positive reviews for example based specifically on their lack of romance. Many of these books/films, etc. fall into the “young adult” category, meaning that it is young adults obviously who mostly consume them. At the same time I’ve heard a number of older people, mostly boomers and Gen-Xers, criticize these same books/films for their lack of romance. Even some older millennials seem upset by the changes, as perhaps evidenced by Jennifer Lawrence’s latest film No Hard Feelings (though to be fair that film may be lampooning the older generation’s frustration as well as the younger generation’s frigidity). So just as in the past older people were concerned about the promiscuity of the youth, now it actually appears that many older people are concerned about the youth’s lack of promiscuity.
Who could have seen that coming? But to be fair, the younger generation hasn’t gone completely frigid. As stated earlier, much of the promiscuity has gone “underground”, or online, which many would argue is not very healthy as it might undermine actual relationships, whether they are romantic in nature or simple friendships. And speaking of that, friendships within stories nowadays often aren’t portrayed in a very authentic or compelling manner, perhaps because in ditching romance modern writers haven’t quite yet learned how to replace it with something else. In other words, the “New Victorian Age” may not be an exact repeat of the previous one, but may have its own twists and turns, for better and for worse.
This may all essentially be a manifestation of the Human Condition, in that we just can’t seem to find a happy medium, neither in real life nor in fiction. Thus we keep swinging from one extreme to the other, apparently getting wilder with each swing.
So where does all this leave us? What is it that we really want in our lives, and in our stories? Especially in regards to relationships? I think at some level we all want to see good and healthy relationships between people and/or characters, whether romantic or platonic. I believe at some point we would like to see good examples of both friendship and romance, and I would argue that the best examples of romance have them combined. Even a toxic relationship, if well portrayed or documented, can be instructive and serve as a good example of what to avoid in our lives that we might be happier and relate better to each other. A good relationship, by contrast, can give us something to aspire to and inspire us to not only look for the right kind of person to complement our lives, but to make ourselves worthy of that person. And here I’ll add that I’m perfectly aware that in real life (and thus in fiction) relationships can be very complicated and heavily nuanced, with elements of both “good” and “bad” in them. Just as people change over time so can the relationships between them change, at times getting better and at times worse, sometimes breaking entirely and sometimes growing stronger. Relationships can have just as many layers and dimensions as characters, more even perhaps, and a skilled writer should be able to reflect this complexity. At other times a relationship can be fairly straightforward, simplicity sometimes being the best approach. But regardless, the audience should be able to relate and identify with what they are seeing, such that hopefully they can incorporate the lessons from it in their own lives.
Where can we find good examples of relationships to study? There may be a number of them in the real world, but the trouble with studying real world relationships is that they’re often much more complicated than fictional ones (just as real people are more complicated than fictional characters), and for many of them it is almost impossible to know all the details and nuances because they are often kept private, understandably so, and even if they aren’t it can still be difficult, due to unique circumstances, to see how to relate them to our own lives. Additionally there may be far more disagreement about a real life situation than a fictional one, with many more points of view. To keep things simple, for the purpose of this article I would like to focus on fictional relationships. (And fair warning, there will be some spoilers.)
One of the best places to look, I would argue, would be the films of Hayao Miyazaki. (And this is pretty significant to Star Wars as you will see in a bit.) A film of his that stands out to me the most is Princess Mononoke. Like many of Miyazaki’s films it has elements of romance, and yet subverts them in a way that makes complete sense and feels very genuine, without taking away from any of the accompanying charm. It starts with two young people, San and Ashitaka, and as soon as they encounter each other there is a kind of expectation of romance. This may be inevitable to some degree when you have a man and a woman of about the same age encounter each other in a story, especially if they happen to be adolescents. The expectation may not be inherently bad, and Miyazaki does play with it. Both characters are thrust into dangerous situations, at various points end up saving each other’s lives, and at a certain point I think it is obvious that they have feelings for each other. I was certain that at the end of the film, they would be together, and if things had gone that way, it would make complete sense. Instead, they go in different directions, but remain good friends, and considering their backgrounds and differing worldviews, this ends up making even more sense to the story.
Essentially, Miyazaki could have gone for the more conventional, tried and true “love conquers all” narrative, where the characters’ feelings for each other would negate everything that comes between them, they would somehow find a common ground in spite of their differences, the romance would not only take over the narrative but somehow also solve all the problems in the story, and then the couple would live “happily ever after”. Such an approach is not inherently bad or wrong, and is fairly common in Western media and storytelling. We can see it in films like Fern Gully, and more recently James Cameron’s Avatar, both of which have been compared to Princess Mononoke. As you can probably guess, the problem is that at a certain point such a narrative can become fairly simplistic, and lack nuance.
Miyazaki’s films, by contrast, are very heavily nuanced, and are anything but simplistic. In Princess Mononoke the characters San and Ashitaka don’t help each other simply because they are “in love”, but because it is the right thing to do, regardless of how they might feel about each other. Yes, romantic feelings are certainly alluded to, but they are not essential to the plot, for it could have worked just as well without any romantic allusions. And ironically, this makes those allusions even more valid, even if they are unrequited. How so?
Consider that if love is essential to a given narrative, is it not relegated to being nothing more than a plot device? Again, this is quite common in Western media and storytelling, and is not inherently bad or wrong, but when it becomes a trope or cliche, I believe it is the essence of where shipping comes from. Many storytellers get caught up in this, usually without realizing it, and while a story can still work even with shipping, I believe that it usually works that much better without it.
This extends not only to Miyazaki’s handling of romance but also to other things like environmentalism, the conflict between man and nature, and the contrasting ideals of human progress vs. preserving the natural order. Movies like Fern Gully and Avatar, as already mentioned, handle these themes in a fairly simplistic and I would even say hamfisted manner, whereby all progress and technology is shown as being inherently “bad” and in service to “evil”, while everything that’s “natural” is shown to be inherently “good”. Even our notions of good and evil, and right vs. wrong, are challenged by Miyazaki, with nearly all of his characters having complex motives and multiple dimensions to them, as well as understandable reasons for doing the things that they do. Rarely can any one of his characters be branded as a simple “villain”, and rarely is any one individual the source of conflict in his stories, again in contrast to most Western narratives.
I’ll reiterate once more, a simple, straightforward narrative is not inherently a bad thing, whether the themes being dealt with are romantic or anything else. Sometimes it is in fact the best approach. But the best stories in my opinion are usually the most nuanced, that challenge our notions of what we believe to be true, and that force us to think about what we do with our lives and what we could do differently. To that end Miyazaki introduces all manner of themes and motifs within his films that are familiar to us but shows them in a light most of us might not have considered, thus giving more dimension to our understanding of things.
“How is any of this related to Star Wars?” you might ask. It is quite related, and you don’t even have to look all that closely to see it. A very influential figure within Star Wars was very heavily inspired by the works of Miyazaki, and that figure is Dave Filoni.
This video shows the connections in some detail:
https://youtu.be/Q_4L0BbSpHo?si=04jDo6qFCnZT135w
But to summarize if you’ve seen any of Miyazaki’s films, especially Princess Mononoke, I think the callbacks in Filoni’s work will be all too obvious, especially in Star Wars Rebels. Some of the scenes in Filoni’s work look like they were taken directly from Miyazki’s films, and many of the same themes and motifs often come up. The relationship between San and Ashitaka I would argue is very similar to the relationship between Ezra and Sabine, and not just because both couples rode wolves together.
Incidentally, Dave Filoni was also heavily involved in Avatar: The Last Airbender, which I would also argue was at least to some degree inspired if not by Miyazaki then by Japanese anime in general. The relationship between Aang and Katara was developed with great care and was allowed to build very slowly, as opposed to simply shipping them. Likewise other characters very gradually developed as individuals and in their relationships, at times stumbling as they did so, and making mistakes, before finding their way back to the right path.
All of this is in stark contrast to George Lucas, whose character development is often very rushed at best, and at times some might say almost non-existent. So essentially, even though Lucas has said that Filoni has been “like a son” to him, and I believe referred to Filoni as his “padawan”, I would argue that Filoni is ultimately as much a student of Miyazaki as he is of Lucas.
Again, you might ask, “What does all this mean for Star Wars?” It means a great many things. It means that Dave Filoni has taken Miyazaki’s lessons to heart, and can handle things like romance, as well as other kinds of relationships, quite well most of the time. Like Miyazaki he can play with romance, tease the audience with it at times even, leave the romance unrequited, and yet still have it feel satisfying. A prime example of this is the love triangle that Ahsoka was involved in with the young Separatist Senator, Lux Bonteri, and Steela Gerrera. As wary as I am of romance and as much as I despise shipping, love triangles I normally despise even more, but this one seemed to actually work. It never took over the main story, and even though Ahsoka’s feelings were ultimately not reciprocated, she still learned from the experience, and grew and developed further as a character because of it. The other characters involved in this triangle also grew and developed from their involvement, though unfortunately not all of them made it. All in all it was a good bit of storytelling and gave the audience something to consider.
When a relationship in one of Filoni’s stories does bloom into a full blown romance he also generally handles it quite well. For one Filoni is sparing with actual romance, so that when it does occur, it can be that much more appreciated. And rather than rushing or shipping it, Filoni normally takes his time to build it up. An example of this is the relationship between Kanan and Hera. Some might argue that this is perhaps the best developed romance in all of Star Wars, at least in Canon. Built up over four seasons, at times it wasn’t certain whether it was a romance or a friendship, or perhaps even a professional partnership. Perhaps even the characters themselves were not certain, though it was hinted all throughout the narrative that something was going on. To this day I don’t believe anyone can say definitively when it became an actual romance, and I believe Filoni did this intentionally because he wanted to be subtle, rather than making things too obvious and having the romance take over the narrative, as it usually does. When it finally did become obvious as to what was happening, it felt very much earned, in a way that is seldom accomplished in other works of fiction, including Star Wars.
The relationship between Ezra and Sabine was also fairly well written, for the most part anyway, at least in Star Wars Rebels. Ezra was almost immediately smitten with Sabine, but being a young teenage boy, it was understandable that he would feel that way about an attractive girl. Over time he learned to see her more respectfully, as a colleague and even as part of his adopted family, not just as a pretty face. Sabine for her part found Ezra annoying at first (c’mon, what teenage boy isn’t?), but as he matured and she found out more about him she came to understand and respect him more, and see him as a friend and almost a brother, with there being potential for something more.
There were times when the relationship could have been better written, like in the episode “Blood Sisters”, where Ezra was written to be a bit too immature to make Sabine look wiser. But overall, the bond between them developed fairly well; both saved one another at various times, and took risks and made sacrifices for each other’s sake. Both reassured and comforted the other when they needed it, and it was endearing to hear their banter when they became more familiar and trusting of each other.
So why then was I so disappointed in how they were portrayed in the Ahsoka show? The thing is, after how well their relationship was built up in Rebels, as I’ve already mentioned it was strange to see how lackluster and uninspired their reunion was.
Within the Ahsoka show itself Sabine was shown to be almost obsessed with finding Ezra, living in what used to be his home, watching a recording of him over and over again, and calling out his name as she woke up in the middle of the night. She even risked bringing Thrawn back into the Galaxy, which ultimately happened, just so she could see Ezra again. After all that, when she finally does encounter him, her reaction seems fairly casual, as does his, as if they’ve been apart for no more than a week, rather than 10 years. Not too much happens between them afterwards either. Like I said Ezra does not appear all that curious about what happened with Sabine, how she found him, and how it was that she was now Force sensitive. Sabine likewise did not seem curious about what had happened with Ezra, and how he had gotten away from Thrawn. And with Ezra rescued and returned home, suddenly it didn’t seem as though Sabine was all that interested in him anymore, nor he all that concerned with her, though they were just as far apart as they had been at the start of the show. To be completely honest it made me wonder what the point of the whole show was. Were they just working to set up Thrawn’s return to the Galaxy? As some have said, Ezra felt like nothing more than a Macguffin in the show. Was Sabine and Ahsoka’s search for him just a plot device?
Considering how skillfully Dave Filoni had written his stories in the past, what happened in this latest project of his does not make much sense. Was he so concerned about “shipping” and so desperate to avoid it that he inadvertently “shipped” them in the other direction? Was there some sort of external pressure on him about how to write this story to have more of an appeal to “modern audiences”? Maybe some combination of those factors?
And here I’ll add that when I say “modern audiences” I don’t mean that in a contemptuous sense, though you may think I do. If there is any contempt on my part it is for those in charge of telling our stories, or those in charge of those telling our stories, who do not seem to grasp these basic truths. The truth is that audiences at their core don’t really change throughout the ages, only superficially so. Trends come and go but certain truths and ideals are eternal, and universal. How people relate to each other fundamentally does not change, whether they are friends, or more than friends. And deep down, I believe everyone (or nearly everyone at least) wants the same things. Nearly everyone at some point wants some kind of a connection with another human being, to know that they are not alone in the world, and to know that there is someone else who sees and understands things as they do. While this desire can certainly lead to abuse, and absolutely has, it is still innate to us and is not inherently wrong. Finding ways of connecting and relating to other people is one of the great challenges of life, but many would argue it is the most worthwhile of challenges. It may be the whole point of life if you think about it. As complex as it may be, many would argue it is what makes life worth living, and likewise makes for the best stories. Just as it may be the whole point of life many would say that is what most stories are about at their core: people trying to relate to one another.
Sadly, just as in real life, most stories unfortunately don’t quite get it, and the Ahsoka show in my opinion was an example of this, made all the sadder by the fact that Dave Filoni had done quite well with these characters up to that point. We may never know for certain what exactly went wrong and why, or if it can ever be “fixed” at this point, but I can’t help but feel curious. Maybe in the future Filoni will find a way to make it make sense, but I’m not sure how. And to be completely honest I don’t feel quite as enthusiastic to find out as I used to.
Also for the record I would like to add here that there are other factors that put me off from the show, such as Sabine’s Force sensitivity, that came about without much build up. But in this article I specifically wanted to focus on shipping because there seems to be so much misunderstanding around it.
I hope that I was able to clarify some, if not most of this misunderstanding, so that people could better appreciate what shipping is, where it comes from, as well as what it isn’t. Many people today are understandably sick of shipping characters, myself included. But I hope people realize that in overcompensating for something, we often come back around into the very thing that we are overcompensating for. Or sometimes, into something even worse. This may apply to nearly every facet of life, by the way, not just shipping. Finding a happy medium in how we portray our fictional relationships may help us to better understand relationships in real life, as well as how to navigate them. Neither fictional nor actual relationships can ever be perfect but they can always be better. To this understanding then I hope that I was able to give my own modest contribution, and if nothing else I hope we can connect on that.

This is my attempt at a re-submission due to some misunderstandings on the first attempt. I now know that there are different definitions of the word “ship”, but for the purposes of this article and to keep things simple I will use the definition of “a relationship that’s rushed and/or forced with no real development.” I hope you can understand as I do not know of any other single word to describe that concept. If you do, perhaps you can tell me. Also, fair warning, this is long form content (some 10 pages), if you like it but can’t read it all at once you can save it and come back to it over a period of time, or you can stop reading whenever you get tired of it and still discuss those parts of it with me that you have read. But keep it civil if you want a civil response.
With that, to qualify the title, no, Ezra and Sabine do NOT absolutely have to be a couple, but if they were to become one, it would NOT be a ship. Ezra and Sabine’s relationship has had years of development. Could they remain as simply friends? Yes, but ironically, it was their “friendship” that felt like more of a ship. It felt like the Ahsoka show, helmed by Dave Filoni, was going out of its way to tell us: “no, they’re not a couple, they’re just friends.”
I believe that Filoni made some very poor writing choices to stress something that didn’t really need to be stressed, such that it almost felt like he was in denial. The line “I love you like a sister” was never in Rebels, Filoni essentially had that retconned in, and like many I was put off by their (largely) emotionless reunion. Even if they were “just friends” I believe there would be a great deal more emotion displayed between two people that hadn’t seen each other in some ten years, especially when one of them was in a precarious situation when they parted. I also believe Ezra would be far more curious about Sabine being Force sensitive, perhaps even offering to help train her when she told him that her training hadn’t gone as well with Ahsoka. He did help to train her with the Darksaber, didn’t he? Why that never came up is another discussion, but for now, let’s focus on shipping.
In case you think I’m desperate to have them as a couple, no I’m not. I’m about the furthest thing from it. Like many millennials and Gen-Z’ers (and perhaps some Gen-Xers and boomers) I DESPISE shipping. Absolutely DESPISE it. With a flaming passion. Perhaps for this reason, and maybe some others, like many millennials and Gen-Z’ers (and perhaps some Gen-Xers and boomers), I’m generally wary of nearly all romance in fiction, and generally avoid it in my own work. The sad reality is that romance is perhaps the most abused genre in all of fiction, all throughout history. It has been so badly abused that many people, including myself for the longest time, have equated romance with shipping, though I’m slowly beginning to see that they are not the same thing, and one does not necessarily have to go with the other.
But sadly, many writers, through time immemorial, have not been able to separate them, going back into ancient times and perhaps even into pre-history, that is before languages were actually written down. Some of what is considered great literature; classics like Romeo and Juliet, are predicated on shipping, though at least the consequences of this “whirlwind romance” are shown to be fairly stark. Star Wars itself is no stranger to shipping, resulting in a very awkward incestuous kiss when Luke was shipped with Leia, then Leia was placed with Han and Lucas made Luke and Leia brother and sister, apparently having forgotten his original ship. Later Lucas essentially shipped Anakin and Padme, resulting in some of the most cringeworthy dialog in the history of film. Many fans of the Prequels even have been somewhat critical of Anakin’s portrayal, particularly in regards to the “romantic” scenes, with many describing them as “creepy”. Some have speculated that this was intentional, though personally I think it was just the result of bad writing on the part of George Lucas, and an impatience on his part for Anakin and Padme to become a couple, hence “shipping”.
One might wonder why this is so prevalent in fiction, and tragically, one does not have to look far. Fiction is merely a reflection of reality, therefore the reason that shipping is so common in our stories is that we fall so easily into it in real life. Indeed, entire cultures may be based around shipping, or at least very heavily wrapped up in it. Throughout history arranged marriages have been the norm, and the idea of marrying for “love” is something relatively new. To be fair, I’ve actually met people in arranged marriages who seemed to be fairly happy, but those same people were very open in telling me that many despise that aspect of their culture, and that it is quite normal for those in an arranged marriage to try to get out.
People might come together for “love” without marrying, but even then it often creates expectations that might turn into a burden. Even when a marriage is voluntary and for “love”, people are often left unsatisfied, such that today in the West the divorce rate is something like 50%. Happy, stable, long term relationships seem to be the exception across cultures and across the breadth and width of time. And yet pursuit of love and some kind of relationship seems to be the highest calling for many people, both in real life and in fiction. And it could be that the accumulated disgust is finally starting to boil over.
To be fair, this may not be the first time in history that the pendulum has shifted. You may recall that in Victorian times attitudes changed drastically, as compared to the previously bawdy Elizabethan times. Looking at a play from Shakespear, if you can understand the language, you’ll see all kinds of vulgar references, as well as what I believe are fairly sappy romances like in the aforementioned Romeo and Juliet, though I can’t say for certain whether Shakespear was actually endorsing that type of attitude towards “love” or presenting it as a cautionary tale, maybe even something to be ridiculed in some of his other plays.
But regardless, Victorians as you may well know had a very conservative attitude towards anything to do with romance, and would often avoid the subject in many places, or tread very carefully around it, as if walking on eggshells. It’s not that people stopped being romantic, in fiction or real life, but it was treated as something very serious and even dangerous, with many urges repressed or even suppressed entirely. This had all kinds of effects on society, both positive and negative. On the positive side, it reinforced the ideal of people being committed to their partners, and of marriage as a sacred institution rather than a “casual hookup” as was more common in Elizabethan times. Likewise it reinforced ideals of modesty and chastity, which may be coming back into vogue, though under different names. But just as there were positive aspects to these attitudes, so were there negative ones.
Just because the urges I described were repressed did not mean that they disappeared. In fact, they often morphed into things that many would consider “unhealthy”. From one statistic that I saw, in Victorian times about one in every 60 houses was a brothel, with the modern rate being closer to one in 6000. Additionally, the rights of women were often repressed, such that they could not fully express themselves and find their own identity, and path in life, as individuals. Just as Elizabethan ideals gave way to Victorian ones, so did the Victorian ideals gradually begin to erode.
Perhaps it began with the Jazz Age of the 1920’s (the “Roaring Twenties”), or with the increased interconnectivity of people traveling to different parts of the world during World War I, not to mention the cynicism that pervaded throughout the West in response to failed old ideals leading to the deadliest war in history up to that point, but many Victorian ideals began to be seen as a joke, and even resented for their “oppression”, which to be fair was not entirely unjustified. But regardless, people gradually, and at times not so gradually, became more and more “liberated” and promiscuous. This culminated in the Sexual Revolution in the late 1960’s, when what had previously been seen as a vice and even a sin was now seen as not only “normal” but as a healthy form of expression, a virtue even. And just as these ideas were embraced in real life, so too were they reflected in our films, TV shows, and other media, often to the consternation of older people and institutions, like the Vatican. The Catholic Church even went so far as to “ban” certain films, that is to declare them immoral for good Catholics to watch. Many of the films that were banned back then, or at least controversial, like The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman, are fairly tame by today’s standards.
It continued through the 70’s, at times warming and at times cooling through the rest of the century, until you could argue it reached a kind of crescendo in the early 21st century with the advent of so-called “dark romance” and the publication of books like Fifty Shades of Grey. (Ironically, many of the themes within this “dark romance” can trace their roots back to the Victorian era, yet another indication that repressing urges without addressing them often doesn’t work out as one might hope.) But as happens all too often, just as something reaches peak popularity is when it begins to go out of style, and that is what we may be experiencing right now. As weird as it may sound, we may actually have come full circle and may be on the cusp of a “New Victorian Age” (complete with “dark romance”, even). Web sites like Porn Hub and OnlyFans, as well as other similar sites, may be the new “brothels”, and what was once openly celebrated may be going underground, to an extent. The effects of this on society have been interesting to say the least, and at times I would even say bizarre.
Whilst many younger people seem content with these changes, many older people are concerned. I’ve seen a number of books, films, and other media receive positive reviews for example based specifically on their lack of romance. Many of these books/films, etc. fall into the “young adult” category, meaning that it is young adults obviously who mostly consume them. At the same time I’ve heard a number of older people, mostly boomers and Gen-Xers, criticize these same books/films for their lack of romance. Even some older millennials seem upset by the changes, as perhaps evidenced by Jennifer Lawrence’s latest film No Hard Feelings (though to be fair that film may be lampooning the older generation’s frustration as well as the younger generation’s frigidity). So just as in the past older people were concerned about the promiscuity of the youth, now it actually appears that many older people are concerned about the youth’s lack of promiscuity.
Who could have seen that coming? But to be fair, the younger generation hasn’t gone completely frigid. As stated earlier, much of the promiscuity has gone “underground”, or online, which many would argue is not very healthy as it might undermine actual relationships, whether they are romantic in nature or simple friendships. And speaking of that, friendships within stories nowadays often aren’t portrayed in a very authentic or compelling manner, perhaps because in ditching romance modern writers haven’t quite yet learned how to replace it with something else. In other words, the “New Victorian Age” may not be an exact repeat of the previous one, but may have its own twists and turns, for better and for worse.
This may all essentially be a manifestation of the Human Condition, in that we just can’t seem to find a happy medium, neither in real life nor in fiction. Thus we keep swinging from one extreme to the other, apparently getting wilder with each swing.
So where does all this leave us? What is it that we really want in our lives, and in our stories? Especially in regards to relationships? I think at some level we all want to see good and healthy relationships between people and/or characters, whether romantic or platonic. I believe at some point we would like to see good examples of both friendship and romance, and I would argue that the best examples of romance have them combined. Even a toxic relationship, if well portrayed or documented, can be instructive and serve as a good example of what to avoid in our lives that we might be happier and relate better to each other. A good relationship, by contrast, can give us something to aspire to and inspire us to not only look for the right kind of person to complement our lives, but to make ourselves worthy of that person. And here I’ll add that I’m perfectly aware that in real life (and thus in fiction) relationships can be very complicated and heavily nuanced, with elements of both “good” and “bad” in them. Just as people change over time so can the relationships between them change, at times getting better and at times worse, sometimes breaking entirely and sometimes growing stronger. Relationships can have just as many layers and dimensions as characters, more even perhaps, and a skilled writer should be able to reflect this complexity. At other times a relationship can be fairly straightforward, simplicity sometimes being the best approach. But regardless, the audience should be able to relate and identify with what they are seeing, such that hopefully they can incorporate the lessons from it in their own lives.
Where can we find good examples of relationships to study? There may be a number of them in the real world, but the trouble with studying real world relationships is that they’re often much more complicated than fictional ones (just as real people are more complicated than fictional characters), and for many of them it is almost impossible to know all the details and nuances because they are often kept private, understandably so, and even if they aren’t it can still be difficult, due to unique circumstances, to see how to relate them to our own lives. Additionally there may be far more disagreement about a real life situation than a fictional one, with many more points of view. To keep things simple, for the purpose of this article I would like to focus on fictional relationships. (And fair warning, there will be some spoilers.)
One of the best places to look, I would argue, would be the films of Hayao Miyazaki. (And this is pretty significant to Star Wars as you will see in a bit.) A film of his that stands out to me the most is Princess Mononoke. Like many of Miyazaki’s films it has elements of romance, and yet subverts them in a way that makes complete sense and feels very genuine, without taking away from any of the accompanying charm. It starts with two young people, San and Ashitaka, and as soon as they encounter each other there is a kind of expectation of romance. This may be inevitable to some degree when you have a man and a woman of about the same age encounter each other in a story, especially if they happen to be adolescents. The expectation may not be inherently bad, and Miyazaki does play with it. Both characters are thrust into dangerous situations, at various points end up saving each other’s lives, and at a certain point I think it is obvious that they have feelings for each other. I was certain that at the end of the film, they would be together, and if things had gone that way, it would make complete sense. Instead, they go in different directions, but remain good friends, and considering their backgrounds and differing worldviews, this ends up making even more sense to the story.
Essentially, Miyazaki could have gone for the more conventional, tried and true “love conquers all” narrative, where the characters’ feelings for each other would negate everything that comes between them, they would somehow find a common ground in spite of their differences, the romance would not only take over the narrative but somehow also solve all the problems in the story, and then the couple would live “happily ever after”. Such an approach is not inherently bad or wrong, and is fairly common in Western media and storytelling. We can see it in films like Fern Gully, and more recently James Cameron’s Avatar, both of which have been compared to Princess Mononoke. As you can probably guess, the problem is that at a certain point such a narrative can become fairly simplistic, and lack nuance.
Miyazaki’s films, by contrast, are very heavily nuanced, and are anything but simplistic. In Princess Mononoke the characters San and Ashitaka don’t help each other simply because they are “in love”, but because it is the right thing to do, regardless of how they might feel about each other. Yes, romantic feelings are certainly alluded to, but they are not essential to the plot, for it could have worked just as well without any romantic allusions. And ironically, this makes those allusions even more valid, even if they are unrequited. How so?
Consider that if love is essential to a given narrative, is it not relegated to being nothing more than a plot device? Again, this is quite common in Western media and storytelling, and is not inherently bad or wrong, but when it becomes a trope or cliche, I believe it is the essence of where shipping comes from. Many storytellers get caught up in this, usually without realizing it, and while a story can still work even with shipping, I believe that it usually works that much better without it.
This extends not only to Miyazaki’s handling of romance but also to other things like environmentalism, the conflict between man and nature, and the contrasting ideals of human progress vs. preserving the natural order. Movies like Fern Gully and Avatar, as already mentioned, handle these themes in a fairly simplistic and I would even say hamfisted manner, whereby all progress and technology is shown as being inherently “bad” and in service to “evil”, while everything that’s “natural” is shown to be inherently “good”. Even our notions of good and evil, and right vs. wrong, are challenged by Miyazaki, with nearly all of his characters having complex motives and multiple dimensions to them, as well as understandable reasons for doing the things that they do. Rarely can any one of his characters be branded as a simple “villain”, and rarely is any one individual the source of conflict in his stories, again in contrast to most Western narratives.
I’ll reiterate once more, a simple, straightforward narrative is not inherently a bad thing, whether the themes being dealt with are romantic or anything else. Sometimes it is in fact the best approach. But the best stories in my opinion are usually the most nuanced, that challenge our notions of what we believe to be true, and that force us to think about what we do with our lives and what we could do differently. To that end Miyazaki introduces all manner of themes and motifs within his films that are familiar to us but shows them in a light most of us might not have considered, thus giving more dimension to our understanding of things.
“How is any of this related to Star Wars?” you might ask. It is quite related, and you don’t even have to look all that closely to see it. A very influential figure within Star Wars was very heavily inspired by the works of Miyazaki, and that figure is Dave Filoni.
This video shows the connections in some detail:
https://youtu.be/Q_4L0BbSpHo?si=04jDo6qFCnZT135w
But to summarize if you’ve seen any of Miyazaki’s films, especially Princess Mononoke, I think the callbacks in Filoni’s work will be all too obvious, especially in Star Wars Rebels. Some of the scenes in Filoni’s work look like they were taken directly from Miyazki’s films, and many of the same themes and motifs often come up. The relationship between San and Ashitaka I would argue is very similar to the relationship between Ezra and Sabine, and not just because both couples rode wolves together.
Incidentally, Dave Filoni was also heavily involved in Avatar: The Last Airbender, which I would also argue was at least to some degree inspired if not by Miyazaki then by Japanese anime in general. The relationship between Aang and Katara was developed with great care and was allowed to build very slowly, as opposed to simply shipping them. Likewise other characters very gradually developed as individuals and in their relationships, at times stumbling as they did so, and making mistakes, before finding their way back to the right path.
All of this is in stark contrast to George Lucas, whose character development is often very rushed at best, and at times some might say almost non-existent. So essentially, even though Lucas has said that Filoni has been “like a son” to him, and I believe referred to Filoni as his “padawan”, I would argue that Filoni is ultimately as much a student of Miyazaki as he is of Lucas.
Again, you might ask, “What does all this mean for Star Wars?” It means a great many things. It means that Dave Filoni has taken Miyazaki’s lessons to heart, and can handle things like romance, as well as other kinds of relationships, quite well most of the time. Like Miyazaki he can play with romance, tease the audience with it at times even, leave the romance unrequited, and yet still have it feel satisfying. A prime example of this is the love triangle that Ahsoka was involved in with the young Separatist Senator, Lux Bonteri, and Steela Gerrera. As wary as I am of romance and as much as I despise shipping, love triangles I normally despise even more, but this one seemed to actually work. It never took over the main story, and even though Ahsoka’s feelings were ultimately not reciprocated, she still learned from the experience, and grew and developed further as a character because of it. The other characters involved in this triangle also grew and developed from their involvement, though unfortunately not all of them made it. All in all it was a good bit of storytelling and gave the audience something to consider.
When a relationship in one of Filoni’s stories does bloom into a full blown romance he also generally handles it quite well. For one Filoni is sparing with actual romance, so that when it does occur, it can be that much more appreciated. And rather than rushing or shipping it, Filoni normally takes his time to build it up. An example of this is the relationship between Kanan and Hera. Some might argue that this is perhaps the best developed romance in all of Star Wars, at least in Canon. Built up over four seasons, at times it wasn’t certain whether it was a romance or a friendship, or perhaps even a professional partnership. Perhaps even the characters themselves were not certain, though it was hinted all throughout the narrative that something was going on. To this day I don’t believe anyone can say definitively when it became an actual romance, and I believe Filoni did this intentionally because he wanted to be subtle, rather than making things too obvious and having the romance take over the narrative, as it usually does. When it finally did become obvious as to what was happening, it felt very much earned, in a way that is seldom accomplished in other works of fiction, including Star Wars.
The relationship between Ezra and Sabine was also fairly well written, for the most part anyway, at least in Star Wars Rebels. Ezra was almost immediately smitten with Sabine, but being a young teenage boy, it was understandable that he would feel that way about an attractive girl. Over time he learned to see her more respectfully, as a colleague and even as part of his adopted family, not just as a pretty face. Sabine for her part found Ezra annoying at first (c’mon, what teenage boy isn’t?), but as he matured and she found out more about him she came to understand and respect him more, and see him as a friend and almost a brother, with there being potential for something more.
There were times when the relationship could have been better written, like in the episode “Blood Sisters”, where Ezra was written to be a bit too immature to make Sabine look wiser. But overall, the bond between them developed fairly well; both saved one another at various times, and took risks and made sacrifices for each other’s sake. Both reassured and comforted the other when they needed it, and it was endearing to hear their banter when they became more familiar and trusting of each other.
So why then was I so disappointed in how they were portrayed in the Ahsoka show? The thing is, after how well their relationship was built up in Rebels, as I’ve already mentioned it was strange to see how lackluster and uninspired their reunion was.
Within the Ahsoka show itself Sabine was shown to be almost obsessed with finding Ezra, living in what used to be his home, watching a recording of him over and over again, and calling out his name as she woke up in the middle of the night. She even risked bringing Thrawn back into the Galaxy, which ultimately happened, just so she could see Ezra again. After all that, when she finally does encounter him, her reaction seems fairly casual, as does his, as if they’ve been apart for no more than a week, rather than 10 years. Not too much happens between them afterwards either. Like I said Ezra does not appear all that curious about what happened with Sabine, how she found him, and how it was that she was now Force sensitive. Sabine likewise did not seem curious about what had happened with Ezra, and how he had gotten away from Thrawn. And with Ezra rescued and returned home, suddenly it didn’t seem as though Sabine was all that interested in him anymore, nor he all that concerned with her, though they were just as far apart as they had been at the start of the show. To be completely honest it made me wonder what the point of the whole show was. Were they just working to set up Thrawn’s return to the Galaxy? As some have said, Ezra felt like nothing more than a Macguffin in the show. Was Sabine and Ahsoka’s search for him just a plot device?
Considering how skillfully Dave Filoni had written his stories in the past, what happened in this latest project of his does not make much sense. Was he so concerned about “shipping” and so desperate to avoid it that he inadvertently “shipped” them in the other direction? Was there some sort of external pressure on him about how to write this story to have more of an appeal to “modern audiences”? Maybe some combination of those factors?
And here I’ll add that when I say “modern audiences” I don’t mean that in a contemptuous sense, though you may think I do. If there is any contempt on my part it is for those in charge of telling our stories, or those in charge of those telling our stories, who do not seem to grasp these basic truths. The truth is that audiences at their core don’t really change throughout the ages, only superficially so. Trends come and go but certain truths and ideals are eternal, and universal. How people relate to each other fundamentally does not change, whether they are friends, or more than friends. And deep down, I believe everyone (or nearly everyone at least) wants the same things. Nearly everyone at some point wants some kind of a connection with another human being, to know that they are not alone in the world, and to know that there is someone else who sees and understands things as they do. While this desire can certainly lead to abuse, and absolutely has, it is still innate to us and is not inherently wrong. Finding ways of connecting and relating to other people is one of the great challenges of life, but many would argue it is the most worthwhile of challenges. It may be the whole point of life if you think about it. As complex as it may be, many would argue it is what makes life worth living, and likewise makes for the best stories. Just as it may be the whole point of life many would say that is what most stories are about at their core: people trying to relate to one another.
Sadly, just as in real life, most stories unfortunately don’t quite get it, and the Ahsoka show in my opinion was an example of this, made all the sadder by the fact that Dave Filoni had done quite well with these characters up to that point. We may never know for certain what exactly went wrong and why, or if it can ever be “fixed” at this point, but I can’t help but feel curious. Maybe in the future Filoni will find a way to make it make sense, but I’m not sure how. And to be completely honest I don’t feel quite as enthusiastic to find out as I used to.
Also for the record I would like to add here that there are other factors that put me off from the show, such as Sabine’s Force sensitivity, that came about without much build up. But in this article I specifically wanted to focus on shipping because there seems to be so much misunderstanding around it.
I hope that I was able to clarify some, if not most of this misunderstanding, so that people could better appreciate what shipping is, where it comes from, as well as what it isn’t. Many people today are understandably sick of shipping characters, myself included. But I hope people realize that in overcompensating for something, we often come back around into the very thing that we are overcompensating for. Or sometimes, into something even worse. This may apply to nearly every facet of life, by the way, not just shipping. Finding a happy medium in how we portray our fictional relationships may help us to better understand relationships in real life, as well as how to navigate them. Neither fictional nor actual relationships can ever be perfect but they can always be better. To this understanding then I hope that I was able to give my own modest contribution, and if nothing else I hope we can connect on that.

This is my attempt at a re-submission due to some misunderstandings on the first attempt. I now know that there are different definitions of the word “ship”, but for the purposes of this article and to keep things simple I will use the definition of “a relationship that’s rushed and/or forced with no real development.” I hope you can understand as I do not know of any other single word to describe that concept. If you do, perhaps you can tell me. Also, fair warning, this is long form content (some 10 pages), if you like it but can’t read it all at once you can save it and come back to it over a period of time, or you can stop reading whenever you get tired of it and still discuss those parts of it with me that you have read. But keep it civil if you want a civil response.
With that, to qualify the title, no, Ezra and Sabine do NOT absolutely have to be a couple, but if they were to become one, it would NOT be a ship. Ezra and Sabine’s relationship has had years of development. Could they remain as simply friends? Yes, but ironically, it was their “friendship” that felt like more of a ship. It felt like the Ahsoka show, helmed by Dave Filoni, was going out of its way to tell us: “no, they’re not a couple, they’re just friends.”
I believe that Filoni made some very poor writing choices to stress something that didn’t really need to be stressed, such that it almost felt like he was in denial. The line “I love you like a sister” was never in Rebels, Filoni essentially had that retconned in, and like many I was put off by their (largely) emotionless reunion. Even if they were “just friends” I believe there would be a great deal more emotion displayed between two people that hadn’t seen each other in some ten years, especially when one of them was in a precarious situation when they parted. I also believe Ezra would be far more curious about Sabine being Force sensitive, perhaps even offering to help train her when she told him that her training hadn’t gone as well with Ahsoka. He did help to train her with the Darksaber, didn’t he? Why that never came up is another discussion, but for now, let’s focus on shipping.
In case you think I’m desperate to have them as a couple, no I’m not. I’m about the furthest thing from it. Like many millennials and Gen-Z’ers (and perhaps some Gen-Xers and boomers) I DESPISE shipping. Absolutely DESPISE it. With a flaming passion. Perhaps for this reason, and maybe some others, like many millennials and Gen-Z’ers (and perhaps some Gen-Xers and boomers), I’m generally wary of nearly all romance in fiction, and generally avoid it in my own work. The sad reality is that romance is perhaps the most abused genre in all of fiction, all throughout history. It has been so badly abused that many people, including myself for the longest time, have equated romance with shipping, though I’m slowly beginning to see that they are not the same thing, and one does not necessarily have to go with the other.
But sadly, many writers, through time immemorial, have not been able to separate them, going back into ancient times and perhaps even into pre-history, that is before languages were actually written down. Some of what is considered great literature; classics like Romeo and Juliet, are predicated on shipping, though at least the consequences of this “whirlwind romance” are shown to be fairly stark. Star Wars itself is no stranger to shipping, resulting in a very awkward incestuous kiss when Luke was shipped with Leia, then Leia was placed with Han and Lucas made Luke and Leia brother and sister, apparently having forgotten his original ship. Later Lucas essentially shipped Anakin and Padme, resulting in some of the most cringeworthy dialog in the history of film. Many fans of the Prequels even have been somewhat critical of Anakin’s portrayal, particularly in regards to the “romantic” scenes, with many describing them as “creepy”. Some have speculated that this was intentional, though personally I think it was just the result of bad writing on the part of George Lucas, and an impatience on his part for Anakin and Padme to become a couple, hence “shipping”.
One might wonder why this is so prevalent in fiction, and tragically, one does not have to look far. Fiction is merely a reflection of reality, therefore the reason that shipping is so common in our stories is that we fall so easily into it in real life. Indeed, entire cultures may be based around shipping, or at least very heavily wrapped up in it. Throughout history arranged marriages have been the norm, and the idea of marrying for “love” is something relatively new. To be fair, I’ve actually met people in arranged marriages who seemed to be fairly happy, but those same people were very open in telling me that many despise that aspect of their culture, and that it is quite normal for those in an arranged marriage to try to get out.
People might come together for “love” without marrying, but even then it often creates expectations that might turn into a burden. Even when a marriage is voluntary and for “love”, people are often left unsatisfied, such that today in the West the divorce rate is something like 50%. Happy, stable, long term relationships seem to be the exception across cultures and across the breadth and width of time. And yet pursuit of love and some kind of relationship seems to be the highest calling for many people, both in real life and in fiction. And it could be that the accumulated disgust is finally starting to boil over.
To be fair, this may not be the first time in history that the pendulum has shifted. You may recall that in Victorian times attitudes changed drastically, as compared to the previously bawdy Elizabethan times. Looking at a play from Shakespear, if you can understand the language, you’ll see all kinds of vulgar references, as well as what I believe are fairly sappy romances like in the aforementioned Romeo and Juliet, though I can’t say for certain whether Shakespear was actually endorsing that type of attitude towards “love” or presenting it as a cautionary tale, maybe even something to be ridiculed in some of his other plays.
But regardless, Victorians as you may well know had a very conservative attitude towards anything to do with romance, and would often avoid the subject in many places, or tread very carefully around it, as if walking on eggshells. It’s not that people stopped being romantic, in fiction or real life, but it was treated as something very serious and even dangerous, with many urges repressed or even suppressed entirely. This had all kinds of effects on society, both positive and negative. On the positive side, it reinforced the ideal of people being committed to their partners, and of marriage as a sacred institution rather than a “casual hookup” as was more common in Elizabethan times. Likewise it reinforced ideals of modesty and chastity, which may be coming back into vogue, though under different names. But just as there were positive aspects to these attitudes, so were there negative ones.
Just because the urges I described were repressed did not mean that they disappeared. In fact, they often morphed into things that many would consider “unhealthy”. From one statistic that I saw, in Victorian times about one in every 60 houses was a brothel, with the modern rate being closer to one in 6000. Additionally, the rights of women were often repressed, such that they could not fully express themselves and find their own identity, and path in life, as individuals. Just as Elizabethan ideals gave way to Victorian ones, so did the Victorian ideals gradually begin to erode.
Perhaps it began with the Jazz Age of the 1920’s (the “Roaring Twenties”), or with the increased interconnectivity of people traveling to different parts of the world during World War I, not to mention the cynicism that pervaded throughout the West in response to failed old ideals leading to the deadliest war in history up to that point, but many Victorian ideals began to be seen as a joke, and even resented for their “oppression”, which to be fair was not entirely unjustified. But regardless, people gradually, and at times not so gradually, became more and more “liberated” and promiscuous. This culminated in the Sexual Revolution in the late 1960’s, when what had previously been seen as a vice and even a sin was now seen as not only “normal” but as a healthy form of expression, a virtue even. And just as these ideas were embraced in real life, so too were they reflected in our films, TV shows, and other media, often to the consternation of older people and institutions, like the Vatican. The Catholic Church even went so far as to “ban” certain films, that is to declare them immoral for good Catholics to watch. Many of the films that were banned back then, or at least controversial, like The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman, are fairly tame by today’s standards.
It continued through the 70’s, at times warming and at times cooling through the rest of the century, until you could argue it reached a kind of crescendo in the early 21st century with the advent of so-called “dark romance” and the publication of books like Fifty Shades of Grey. (Ironically, many of the themes within this “dark romance” can trace their roots back to the Victorian era, yet another indication that repressing urges without addressing them often doesn’t work out as one might hope.) But as happens all too often, just as something reaches peak popularity is when it begins to go out of style, and that is what we may be experiencing right now. As weird as it may sound, we may actually have come full circle and may be on the cusp of a “New Victorian Age” (complete with “dark romance”, even). Web sites like Porn Hub and OnlyFans, as well as other similar sites, may be the new “brothels”, and what was once openly celebrated may be going underground, to an extent. The effects of this on society have been interesting to say the least, and at times I would even say bizarre.
Whilst many younger people seem content with these changes, many older people are concerned. I’ve seen a number of books, films, and other media receive positive reviews for example based specifically on their lack of romance. Many of these books/films, etc. fall into the “young adult” category, meaning that it is young adults obviously who mostly consume them. At the same time I’ve heard a number of older people, mostly boomers and Gen-Xers, criticize these same books/films for their lack of romance. Even some older millennials seem upset by the changes, as perhaps evidenced by Jennifer Lawrence’s latest film No Hard Feelings (though to be fair that film may be lampooning the older generation’s frustration as well as the younger generation’s frigidity). So just as in the past older people were concerned about the promiscuity of the youth, now it actually appears that many older people are concerned about the youth’s lack of promiscuity.
Who could have seen that coming? But to be fair, the younger generation hasn’t gone completely frigid. As stated earlier, much of the promiscuity has gone “underground”, or online, which many would argue is not very healthy as it might undermine actual relationships, whether they are romantic in nature or simple friendships. And speaking of that, friendships within stories nowadays often aren’t portrayed in a very authentic or compelling manner, perhaps because in ditching romance modern writers haven’t quite yet learned how to replace it with something else. In other words, the “New Victorian Age” may not be an exact repeat of the previous one, but may have its own twists and turns, for better and for worse.
This may all essentially be a manifestation of the Human Condition, in that we just can’t seem to find a happy medium, neither in real life nor in fiction. Thus we keep swinging from one extreme to the other, apparently getting wilder with each swing.
So where does all this leave us? What is it that we really want in our lives, and in our stories? Especially in regards to relationships? I think at some level we all want to see good and healthy relationships between people and/or characters, whether romantic or platonic. I believe at some point we would like to see good examples of both friendship and romance, and I would argue that the best examples of romance have them combined. Even a toxic relationship, if well portrayed or documented, can be instructive and serve as a good example of what to avoid in our lives that we might be happier and relate better to each other. A good relationship, by contrast, can give us something to aspire to and inspire us to not only look for the right kind of person to complement our lives, but to make ourselves worthy of that person. And here I’ll add that I’m perfectly aware that in real life (and thus in fiction) relationships can be very complicated and heavily nuanced, with elements of both “good” and “bad” in them. Just as people change over time so can the relationships between them change, at times getting better and at times worse, sometimes breaking entirely and sometimes growing stronger. Relationships can have just as many layers and dimensions as characters, more even perhaps, and a skilled writer should be able to reflect this complexity. At other times a relationship can be fairly straightforward, simplicity sometimes being the best approach. But regardless, the audience should be able to relate and identify with what they are seeing, such that hopefully they can incorporate the lessons from it in their own lives.
Where can we find good examples of relationships to study? There may be a number of them in the real world, but the trouble with studying real world relationships is that they’re often much more complicated than fictional ones (just as real people are more complicated than fictional characters), and for many of them it is almost impossible to know all the details and nuances because they are often kept private, understandably so, and even if they aren’t it can still be difficult, due to unique circumstances, to see how to relate them to our own lives. Additionally there may be far more disagreement about a real life situation than a fictional one, with many more points of view. To keep things simple, for the purpose of this article I would like to focus on fictional relationships. (And fair warning, there will be some spoilers.)
One of the best places to look, I would argue, would be the films of Hayao Miyazaki. (And this is pretty significant to Star Wars as you will see in a bit.) A film of his that stands out to me the most is Princess Mononoke. Like many of Miyazaki’s films it has elements of romance, and yet subverts them in a way that makes complete sense and feels very genuine, without taking away from any of the accompanying charm. It starts with two young people, San and Ashitaka, and as soon as they encounter each other there is a kind of expectation of romance. This may be inevitable to some degree when you have a man and a woman of about the same age encounter each other in a story, especially if they happen to be adolescents. The expectation may not be inherently bad, and Miyazaki does play with it. Both characters are thrust into dangerous situations, at various points end up saving each other’s lives, and at a certain point I think it is obvious that they have feelings for each other. I was certain that at the end of the film, they would be together, and if things had gone that way, it would make complete sense. Instead, they go in different directions, but remain good friends, and considering their backgrounds and differing worldviews, this ends up making even more sense to the story.
Essentially, Miyazaki could have gone for the more conventional, tried and true “love conquers all” narrative, where the characters’ feelings for each other would negate everything that comes between them, they would somehow find a common ground in spite of their differences, the romance would not only take over the narrative but somehow also solve all the problems in the story, and then the couple would live “happily ever after”. Such an approach is not inherently bad or wrong, and is fairly common in Western media and storytelling. We can see it in films like Fern Gully, and more recently James Cameron’s Avatar, both of which have been compared to Princess Mononoke. As you can probably guess, the problem is that at a certain point such a narrative can become fairly simplistic, and lack nuance.
Miyazaki’s films, by contrast, are very heavily nuanced, and are anything but simplistic. In Princess Mononoke the characters San and Ashitaka don’t help each other simply because they are “in love”, but because it is the right thing to do, regardless of how they might feel about each other. Yes, romantic feelings are certainly alluded to, but they are not essential to the plot, for it could have worked just as well without any romantic allusions. And ironically, this makes those allusions even more valid, even if they are unrequited. How so?
Consider that if love is essential to a given narrative, is it not relegated to being nothing more than a plot device? Again, this is quite common in Western media and storytelling, and is not inherently bad or wrong, but when it becomes a trope or cliche, I believe it is the essence of where shipping comes from. Many storytellers get caught up in this, usually without realizing it, and while a story can still work even with shipping, I believe that it usually works that much better without it.
This extends not only to Miyazaki’s handling of romance but also to other things like environmentalism, the conflict between man and nature, and the contrasting ideals of human progress vs. preserving the natural order. Movies like Fern Gully and Avatar, as already mentioned, handle these themes in a fairly simplistic and I would even say hamfisted manner, whereby all progress and technology is shown as being inherently “bad” and in service to “evil”, while everything that’s “natural” is shown to be inherently “good”. Even our notions of good and evil, and right vs. wrong, are challenged by Miyazaki, with nearly all of his characters having complex motives and multiple dimensions to them, as well as understandable reasons for doing the things that they do. Rarely can any one of his characters be branded as a simple “villain”, and rarely is any one individual the source of conflict in his stories, again in contrast to most Western narratives.
I’ll reiterate once more, a simple, straightforward narrative is not inherently a bad thing, whether the themes being dealt with are romantic or anything else. Sometimes it is in fact the best approach. But the best stories in my opinion are usually the most nuanced, that challenge our notions of what we believe to be true, and that force us to think about what we do with our lives and what we could do differently. To that end Miyazaki introduces all manner of themes and motifs within his films that are familiar to us but shows them in a light most of us might not have considered, thus giving more dimension to our understanding of things.
“How is any of this related to Star Wars?” you might ask. It is quite related, and you don’t even have to look all that closely to see it. A very influential figure within Star Wars was very heavily inspired by the works of Miyazaki, and that figure is Dave Filoni.
This video shows the connections in some detail:
https://youtu.be/Q_4L0BbSpHo?si=04jDo6qFCnZT135w
But to summarize if you’ve seen any of Miyazaki’s films, especially Princess Mononoke, I think the callbacks in Filoni’s work will be all too obvious, especially in Star Wars Rebels. Some of the scenes in Filoni’s work look like they were taken directly from Miyazki’s films, and many of the same themes and motifs often come up. The relationship between San and Ashitaka I would argue is very similar to the relationship between Ezra and Sabine, and not just because both couples rode wolves together.
Incidentally, Dave Filoni was also heavily involved in Avatar: The Last Airbender, which I would also argue was at least to some degree inspired if not by Miyazaki then by Japanese anime in general. The relationship between Aang and Katara was developed with great care and was allowed to build very slowly, as opposed to simply shipping them. Likewise other characters very gradually developed as individuals and in their relationships, at times stumbling as they did so, and making mistakes, before finding their way back to the right path.
All of this is in stark contrast to George Lucas, whose character development is often very rushed at best, and at times some might say almost non-existent. So essentially, even though Lucas has said that Filoni has been “like a son” to him, and I believe referred to Filoni as his “padawan”, I would argue that Filoni is ultimately as much a student of Miyazaki as he is of Lucas.
Again, you might ask, “What does all this mean for Star Wars?” It means a great many things. It means that Dave Filoni has taken Miyazaki’s lessons to heart, and can handle things like romance, as well as other kinds of relationships, quite well most of the time. Like Miyazaki he can play with romance, tease the audience with it at times even, leave the romance unrequited, and yet still have it feel satisfying. A prime example of this is the love triangle that Ahsoka was involved in with the young Separatist Senator, Lux Bonteri, and Steela Gerrera. As wary as I am of romance and as much as I despise shipping, love triangles I normally despise even more, but this one seemed to actually work. It never took over the main story, and even though Ahsoka’s feelings were ultimately not reciprocated, she still learned from the experience, and grew and developed further as a character because of it. The other characters involved in this triangle also grew and developed from their involvement, though unfortunately not all of them made it. All in all it was a good bit of storytelling and gave the audience something to consider.
When a relationship in one of Filoni’s stories does bloom into a full blown romance he also generally handles it quite well. For one Filoni is sparing with actual romance, so that when it does occur, it can be that much more appreciated. And rather than rushing or shipping it, Filoni normally takes his time to build it up. An example of this is the relationship between Kanan and Hera. Some might argue that this is perhaps the best developed romance in all of Star Wars, at least in Canon. Built up over four seasons, at times it wasn’t certain whether it was a romance or a friendship, or perhaps even a professional partnership. Perhaps even the characters themselves were not certain, though it was hinted all throughout the narrative that something was going on. To this day I don’t believe anyone can say definitively when it became an actual romance, and I believe Filoni did this intentionally because he wanted to be subtle, rather than making things too obvious and having the romance take over the narrative, as it usually does. When it finally did become obvious as to what was happening, it felt very much earned, in a way that is seldom accomplished in other works of fiction, including Star Wars.
The relationship between Ezra and Sabine was also fairly well written, for the most part anyway, at least in Star Wars Rebels. Ezra was almost immediately smitten with Sabine, but being a young teenage boy, it was understandable that he would feel that way about an attractive girl. Over time he learned to see her more respectfully, as a colleague and even as part of his adopted family, not just as a pretty face. Sabine for her part found Ezra annoying at first (c’mon, what teenage boy isn’t?), but as he matured and she found out more about him she came to understand and respect him more, and see him as a friend and almost a brother, with there being potential for something more.
There were times when the relationship could have been better written, like in the episode “Blood Sisters”, where Ezra was written to be a bit too immature to make Sabine look wiser. But overall, the bond between them developed fairly well; both saved one another at various times, and took risks and made sacrifices for each other’s sake. Both reassured and comforted the other when they needed it, and it was endearing to hear their banter when they became more familiar and trusting of each other.
So why then was I so disappointed in how they were portrayed in the Ahsoka show? The thing is, after how well their relationship was built up in Rebels, as I’ve already mentioned it was strange to see how lackluster and uninspired their reunion was.
Within the Ahsoka show itself Sabine was shown to be almost obsessed with finding Ezra, living in what used to be his home, watching a recording of him over and over again, and calling out his name as she woke up in the middle of the night. She even risked bringing Thrawn back into the Galaxy, which ultimately happened, just so she could see Ezra again. After all that, when she finally does encounter him, her reaction seems fairly casual, as does his, as if they’ve been apart for no more than a week, rather than 10 years. Not too much happens between them afterwards either. Like I said Ezra does not appear all that curious about what happened with Sabine, how she found him, and how it was that she was now Force sensitive. Sabine likewise did not seem curious about what had happened with Ezra, and how he had gotten away from Thrawn. And with Ezra rescued and returned home, suddenly it didn’t seem as though Sabine was all that interested in him anymore, nor he all that concerned with her, though they were just as far apart as they had been at the start of the show. To be completely honest it made me wonder what the point of the whole show was. Were they just working to set up Thrawn’s return to the Galaxy? As some have said, Ezra felt like nothing more than a Macguffin in the show. Was Sabine and Ahsoka’s search for him just a plot device?
Considering how skillfully Dave Filoni had written his stories in the past, what happened in this latest project of his does not make much sense. Was he so concerned about “shipping” and so desperate to avoid it that he inadvertently “shipped” them in the other direction? Was there some sort of external pressure on him about how to write this story to have more of an appeal to “modern audiences”? Maybe some combination of those factors?
And here I’ll add that when I say “modern audiences” I don’t mean that in a contemptuous sense, though you may think I do. If there is any contempt on my part it is for those in charge of telling our stories, or those in charge of those telling our stories, who do not seem to grasp these basic truths. The truth is that audiences at their core don’t really change throughout the ages, only superficially so. Trends come and go but certain truths and ideals are eternal, and universal. How people relate to each other fundamentally does not change, whether they are friends, or more than friends. And deep down, I believe everyone (or nearly everyone at least) wants the same things. Nearly everyone at some point wants some kind of a connection with another human being, to know that they are not alone in the world, and to know that there is someone else who sees and understands things as they do. While this desire can certainly lead to abuse, and absolutely has, it is still innate to us and is not inherently wrong. Finding ways of connecting and relating to other people is one of the great challenges of life, but many would argue it is the most worthwhile of challenges. It may be the whole point of life if you think about it. As complex as it may be, many would argue it is what makes life worth living, and likewise makes for the best stories. Just as it may be the whole point of life many would say that is what most stories are about at their core: people trying to relate to one another.
Sadly, just as in real life, most stories unfortunately don’t quite get it, and the Ahsoka show in my opinion was an example of this, made all the sadder by the fact that Dave Filoni had done quite well with these characters up to that point. We may never know for certain what exactly went wrong and why, or if it can ever be “fixed” at this point, but I can’t help but feel curious. Maybe in the future Filoni will find a way to make it make sense, but I’m not sure how. And to be completely honest I don’t feel quite as enthusiastic to find out as I used to.
Also for the record I would like to add here that there are other factors that put me off from the show, such as Sabine’s Force sensitivity, that came about without much build up. But in this article I specifically wanted to focus on shipping because there seems to be so much misunderstanding around it.
I hope that I was able to clarify some, if not most of this misunderstanding, so that people could better appreciate what shipping is, where it comes from, as well as what it isn’t. Many people today are understandably sick of shipping characters, myself included. But I hope people realize that in overcompensating for something, we often come back around into the very thing that we are overcompensating for. Or sometimes, into something even worse. This may apply to nearly every facet of life, by the way, not just shipping. Finding a happy medium in how we portray our fictional relationships may help us to better understand relationships in real life, as well as how to navigate them. Neither fictional nor actual relationships can ever be perfect but they can always be better. To this understanding then I hope that I was able to give my own modest contribution, and if nothing else I hope we can connect on that.

This is my attempt at a re-submission due to some misunderstandings on the first attempt. I now know that there are different definitions of the word “ship”, but for the purposes of this article and to keep things simple I will use the definition of “a relationship that’s rushed and/or forced with no real development.” I hope you can understand as I do not know of any other single word to describe that concept. If you do, perhaps you can tell me. Also, fair warning, this is long form content (some 10 pages), if you like it but can’t read it all at once you can save it and come back to it over a period of time, or you can stop reading whenever you get tired of it and still discuss those parts of it with me that you have read. But keep it civil if you want a civil response.
With that, to qualify the title, no, Ezra and Sabine do NOT absolutely have to be a couple, but if they were to become one, it would NOT be a ship. Ezra and Sabine’s relationship has had years of development. Could they remain as simply friends? Yes, but ironically, it was their “friendship” that felt like more of a ship. It felt like the Ahsoka show, helmed by Dave Filoni, was going out of its way to tell us: “no, they’re not a couple, they’re just friends.”
I believe that Filoni made some very poor writing choices to stress something that didn’t really need to be stressed, such that it almost felt like he was in denial. The line “I love you like a sister” was never in Rebels, Filoni essentially had that retconned in, and like many I was put off by their (largely) emotionless reunion. Even if they were “just friends” I believe there would be a great deal more emotion displayed between two people that hadn’t seen each other in some ten years, especially when one of them was in a precarious situation when they parted. I also believe Ezra would be far more curious about Sabine being Force sensitive, perhaps even offering to help train her when she told him that her training hadn’t gone as well with Ahsoka. He did help to train her with the Darksaber, didn’t he? Why that never came up is another discussion, but for now, let’s focus on shipping.
In case you think I’m desperate to have them as a couple, no I’m not. I’m about the furthest thing from it. Like many millennials and Gen-Z’ers (and perhaps some Gen-Xers and boomers) I DESPISE shipping. Absolutely DESPISE it. With a flaming passion. Perhaps for this reason, and maybe some others, like many millennials and Gen-Z’ers (and perhaps some Gen-Xers and boomers), I’m generally wary of nearly all romance in fiction, and generally avoid it in my own work. The sad reality is that romance is perhaps the most abused genre in all of fiction, all throughout history. It has been so badly abused that many people, including myself for the longest time, have equated romance with shipping, though I’m slowly beginning to see that they are not the same thing, and one does not necessarily have to go with the other.
But sadly, many writers, through time immemorial, have not been able to separate them, going back into ancient times and perhaps even into pre-history, that is before languages were actually written down. Some of what is considered great literature; classics like Romeo and Juliet, are predicated on shipping, though at least the consequences of this “whirlwind romance” are shown to be fairly stark. Star Wars itself is no stranger to shipping, resulting in a very awkward incestuous kiss when Luke was shipped with Leia, then Leia was placed with Han and Lucas made Luke and Leia brother and sister, apparently having forgotten his original ship. Later Lucas essentially shipped Anakin and Padme, resulting in some of the most cringeworthy dialog in the history of film. Many fans of the Prequels even have been somewhat critical of Anakin’s portrayal, particularly in regards to the “romantic” scenes, with many describing them as “creepy”. Some have speculated that this was intentional, though personally I think it was just the result of bad writing on the part of George Lucas, and an impatience on his part for Anakin and Padme to become a couple, hence “shipping”.
One might wonder why this is so prevalent in fiction, and tragically, one does not have to look far. Fiction is merely a reflection of reality, therefore the reason that shipping is so common in our stories is that we fall so easily into it in real life. Indeed, entire cultures may be based around shipping, or at least very heavily wrapped up in it. Throughout history arranged marriages have been the norm, and the idea of marrying for “love” is something relatively new. To be fair, I’ve actually met people in arranged marriages who seemed to be fairly happy, but those same people were very open in telling me that many despise that aspect of their culture, and that it is quite normal for those in an arranged marriage to try to get out.
People might come together for “love” without marrying, but even then it often creates expectations that might turn into a burden. Even when a marriage is voluntary and for “love”, people are often left unsatisfied, such that today in the West the divorce rate is something like 50%. Happy, stable, long term relationships seem to be the exception across cultures and across the breadth and width of time. And yet pursuit of love and some kind of relationship seems to be the highest calling for many people, both in real life and in fiction. And it could be that the accumulated disgust is finally starting to boil over.
To be fair, this may not be the first time in history that the pendulum has shifted. You may recall that in Victorian times attitudes changed drastically, as compared to the previously bawdy Elizabethan times. Looking at a play from Shakespear, if you can understand the language, you’ll see all kinds of vulgar references, as well as what I believe are fairly sappy romances like in the aforementioned Romeo and Juliet, though I can’t say for certain whether Shakespear was actually endorsing that type of attitude towards “love” or presenting it as a cautionary tale, maybe even something to be ridiculed in some of his other plays.
But regardless, Victorians as you may well know had a very conservative attitude towards anything to do with romance, and would often avoid the subject in many places, or tread very carefully around it, as if walking on eggshells. It’s not that people stopped being romantic, in fiction or real life, but it was treated as something very serious and even dangerous, with many urges repressed or even suppressed entirely. This had all kinds of effects on society, both positive and negative. On the positive side, it reinforced the ideal of people being committed to their partners, and of marriage as a sacred institution rather than a “casual hookup” as was more common in Elizabethan times. Likewise it reinforced ideals of modesty and chastity, which may be coming back into vogue, though under different names. But just as there were positive aspects to these attitudes, so were there negative ones.
Just because the urges I described were repressed did not mean that they disappeared. In fact, they often morphed into things that many would consider “unhealthy”. From one statistic that I saw, in Victorian times about one in every 60 houses was a brothel, with the modern rate being closer to one in 6000. Additionally, the rights of women were often repressed, such that they could not fully express themselves and find their own identity, and path in life, as individuals. Just as Elizabethan ideals gave way to Victorian ones, so did the Victorian ideals gradually begin to erode.
Perhaps it began with the Jazz Age of the 1920’s (the “Roaring Twenties”), or with the increased interconnectivity of people traveling to different parts of the world during World War I, not to mention the cynicism that pervaded throughout the West in response to failed old ideals leading to the deadliest war in history up to that point, but many Victorian ideals began to be seen as a joke, and even resented for their “oppression”, which to be fair was not entirely unjustified. But regardless, people gradually, and at times not so gradually, became more and more “liberated” and promiscuous. This culminated in the Sexual Revolution in the late 1960’s, when what had previously been seen as a vice and even a sin was now seen as not only “normal” but as a healthy form of expression, a virtue even. And just as these ideas were embraced in real life, so too were they reflected in our films, TV shows, and other media, often to the consternation of older people and institutions, like the Vatican. The Catholic Church even went so far as to “ban” certain films, that is to declare them immoral for good Catholics to watch. Many of the films that were banned back then, or at least controversial, like The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman, are fairly tame by today’s standards.
It continued through the 70’s, at times warming and at times cooling through the rest of the century, until you could argue it reached a kind of crescendo in the early 21st century with the advent of so-called “dark romance” and the publication of books like Fifty Shades of Grey. (Ironically, many of the themes within this “dark romance” can trace their roots back to the Victorian era, yet another indication that repressing urges without addressing them often doesn’t work out as one might hope.) But as happens all too often, just as something reaches peak popularity is when it begins to go out of style, and that is what we may be experiencing right now. As weird as it may sound, we may actually have come full circle and may be on the cusp of a “New Victorian Age” (complete with “dark romance”, even). Web sites like Porn Hub and OnlyFans, as well as other similar sites, may be the new “brothels”, and what was once openly celebrated may be going underground, to an extent. The effects of this on society have been interesting to say the least, and at times I would even say bizarre.
Whilst many younger people seem content with these changes, many older people are concerned. I’ve seen a number of books, films, and other media receive positive reviews for example based specifically on their lack of romance. Many of these books/films, etc. fall into the “young adult” category, meaning that it is young adults obviously who mostly consume them. At the same time I’ve heard a number of older people, mostly boomers and Gen-Xers, criticize these same books/films for their lack of romance. Even some older millennials seem upset by the changes, as perhaps evidenced by Jennifer Lawrence’s latest film No Hard Feelings (though to be fair that film may be lampooning the older generation’s frustration as well as the younger generation’s frigidity). So just as in the past older people were concerned about the promiscuity of the youth, now it actually appears that many older people are concerned about the youth’s lack of promiscuity.
Who could have seen that coming? But to be fair, the younger generation hasn’t gone completely frigid. As stated earlier, much of the promiscuity has gone “underground”, or online, which many would argue is not very healthy as it might undermine actual relationships, whether they are romantic in nature or simple friendships. And speaking of that, friendships within stories nowadays often aren’t portrayed in a very authentic or compelling manner, perhaps because in ditching romance modern writers haven’t quite yet learned how to replace it with something else. In other words, the “New Victorian Age” may not be an exact repeat of the previous one, but may have its own twists and turns, for better and for worse.
This may all essentially be a manifestation of the Human Condition, in that we just can’t seem to find a happy medium, neither in real life nor in fiction. Thus we keep swinging from one extreme to the other, apparently getting wilder with each swing.
So where does all this leave us? What is it that we really want in our lives, and in our stories? Especially in regards to relationships? I think at some level we all want to see good and healthy relationships between people and/or characters, whether romantic or platonic. I believe at some point we would like to see good examples of both friendship and romance, and I would argue that the best examples of romance have them combined. Even a toxic relationship, if well portrayed or documented, can be instructive and serve as a good example of what to avoid in our lives that we might be happier and relate better to each other. A good relationship, by contrast, can give us something to aspire to and inspire us to not only look for the right kind of person to complement our lives, but to make ourselves worthy of that person. And here I’ll add that I’m perfectly aware that in real life (and thus in fiction) relationships can be very complicated and heavily nuanced, with elements of both “good” and “bad” in them. Just as people change over time so can the relationships between them change, at times getting better and at times worse, sometimes breaking entirely and sometimes growing stronger. Relationships can have just as many layers and dimensions as characters, more even perhaps, and a skilled writer should be able to reflect this complexity. At other times a relationship can be fairly straightforward, simplicity sometimes being the best approach. But regardless, the audience should be able to relate and identify with what they are seeing, such that hopefully they can incorporate the lessons from it in their own lives.
Where can we find good examples of relationships to study? There may be a number of them in the real world, but the trouble with studying real world relationships is that they’re often much more complicated than fictional ones (just as real people are more complicated than fictional characters), and for many of them it is almost impossible to know all the details and nuances because they are often kept private, understandably so, and even if they aren’t it can still be difficult, due to unique circumstances, to see how to relate them to our own lives. Additionally there may be far more disagreement about a real life situation than a fictional one, with many more points of view. To keep things simple, for the purpose of this article I would like to focus on fictional relationships. (And fair warning, there will be some spoilers.)
One of the best places to look, I would argue, would be the films of Hayao Miyazaki. (And this is pretty significant to Star Wars as you will see in a bit.) A film of his that stands out to me the most is Princess Mononoke. Like many of Miyazaki’s films it has elements of romance, and yet subverts them in a way that makes complete sense and feels very genuine, without taking away from any of the accompanying charm. It starts with two young people, San and Ashitaka, and as soon as they encounter each other there is a kind of expectation of romance. This may be inevitable to some degree when you have a man and a woman of about the same age encounter each other in a story, especially if they happen to be adolescents. The expectation may not be inherently bad, and Miyazaki does play with it. Both characters are thrust into dangerous situations, at various points end up saving each other’s lives, and at a certain point I think it is obvious that they have feelings for each other. I was certain that at the end of the film, they would be together, and if things had gone that way, it would make complete sense. Instead, they go in different directions, but remain good friends, and considering their backgrounds and differing worldviews, this ends up making even more sense to the story.
Essentially, Miyazaki could have gone for the more conventional, tried and true “love conquers all” narrative, where the characters’ feelings for each other would negate everything that comes between them, they would somehow find a common ground in spite of their differences, the romance would not only take over the narrative but somehow also solve all the problems in the story, and then the couple would live “happily ever after”. Such an approach is not inherently bad or wrong, and is fairly common in Western media and storytelling. We can see it in films like Fern Gully, and more recently James Cameron’s Avatar, both of which have been compared to Princess Mononoke. As you can probably guess, the problem is that at a certain point such a narrative can become fairly simplistic, and lack nuance.
Miyazaki’s films, by contrast, are very heavily nuanced, and are anything but simplistic. In Princess Mononoke the characters San and Ashitaka don’t help each other simply because they are “in love”, but because it is the right thing to do, regardless of how they might feel about each other. Yes, romantic feelings are certainly alluded to, but they are not essential to the plot, for it could have worked just as well without any romantic allusions. And ironically, this makes those allusions even more valid, even if they are unrequited. How so?
Consider that if love is essential to a given narrative, is it not relegated to being nothing more than a plot device? Again, this is quite common in Western media and storytelling, and is not inherently bad or wrong, but when it becomes a trope or cliche, I believe it is the essence of where shipping comes from. Many storytellers get caught up in this, usually without realizing it, and while a story can still work even with shipping, I believe that it usually works that much better without it.
This extends not only to Miyazaki’s handling of romance but also to other things like environmentalism, the conflict between man and nature, and the contrasting ideals of human progress vs. preserving the natural order. Movies like Fern Gully and Avatar, as already mentioned, handle these themes in a fairly simplistic and I would even say hamfisted manner, whereby all progress and technology is shown as being inherently “bad” and in service to “evil”, while everything that’s “natural” is shown to be inherently “good”. Even our notions of good and evil, and right vs. wrong, are challenged by Miyazaki, with nearly all of his characters having complex motives and multiple dimensions to them, as well as understandable reasons for doing the things that they do. Rarely can any one of his characters be branded as a simple “villain”, and rarely is any one individual the source of conflict in his stories, again in contrast to most Western narratives.
I’ll reiterate once more, a simple, straightforward narrative is not inherently a bad thing, whether the themes being dealt with are romantic or anything else. Sometimes it is in fact the best approach. But the best stories in my opinion are usually the most nuanced, that challenge our notions of what we believe to be true, and that force us to think about what we do with our lives and what we could do differently. To that end Miyazaki introduces all manner of themes and motifs within his films that are familiar to us but shows them in a light most of us might not have considered, thus giving more dimension to our understanding of things.
“How is any of this related to Star Wars?” you might ask. It is quite related, and you don’t even have to look all that closely to see it. A very influential figure within Star Wars was very heavily inspired by the works of Miyazaki, and that figure is Dave Filoni.
This video shows the connections in some detail:
https://youtu.be/Q_4L0BbSpHo?si=04jDo6qFCnZT135w
But to summarize if you’ve seen any of Miyazaki’s films, especially Princess Mononoke, I think the callbacks in Filoni’s work will be all too obvious, especially in Star Wars Rebels. Some of the scenes in Filoni’s work look like they were taken directly from Miyazki’s films, and many of the same themes and motifs often come up. The relationship between San and Ashitaka I would argue is very similar to the relationship between Ezra and Sabine, and not just because both couples rode wolves together.
Incidentally, Dave Filoni was also heavily involved in Avatar: The Last Airbender, which I would also argue was at least to some degree inspired if not by Miyazaki then by Japanese anime in general. The relationship between Aang and Katara was developed with great care and was allowed to build very slowly, as opposed to simply shipping them. Likewise other characters very gradually developed as individuals and in their relationships, at times stumbling as they did so, and making mistakes, before finding their way back to the right path.
All of this is in stark contrast to George Lucas, whose character development is often very rushed at best, and at times some might say almost non-existent. So essentially, even though Lucas has said that Filoni has been “like a son” to him, and I believe referred to Filoni as his “padawan”, I would argue that Filoni is ultimately as much a student of Miyazaki as he is of Lucas.
Again, you might ask, “What does all this mean for Star Wars?” It means a great many things. It means that Dave Filoni has taken Miyazaki’s lessons to heart, and can handle things like romance, as well as other kinds of relationships, quite well most of the time. Like Miyazaki he can play with romance, tease the audience with it at times even, leave the romance unrequited, and yet still have it feel satisfying. A prime example of this is the love triangle that Ahsoka was involved in with the young Separatist Senator, Lux Bonteri, and Steela Gerrera. As wary as I am of romance and as much as I despise shipping, love triangles I normally despise even more, but this one seemed to actually work. It never took over the main story, and even though Ahsoka’s feelings were ultimately not reciprocated, she still learned from the experience, and grew and developed further as a character because of it. The other characters involved in this triangle also grew and developed from their involvement, though unfortunately not all of them made it. All in all it was a good bit of storytelling and gave the audience something to consider.
When a relationship in one of Filoni’s stories does bloom into a full blown romance he also generally handles it quite well. For one Filoni is sparing with actual romance, so that when it does occur, it can be that much more appreciated. And rather than rushing or shipping it, Filoni normally takes his time to build it up. An example of this is the relationship between Kanan and Hera. Some might argue that this is perhaps the best developed romance in all of Star Wars, at least in Canon. Built up over four seasons, at times it wasn’t certain whether it was a romance or a friendship, or perhaps even a professional partnership. Perhaps even the characters themselves were not certain, though it was hinted all throughout the narrative that something was going on. To this day I don’t believe anyone can say definitively when it became an actual romance, and I believe Filoni did this intentionally because he wanted to be subtle, rather than making things too obvious and having the romance take over the narrative, as it usually does. When it finally did become obvious as to what was happening, it felt very much earned, in a way that is seldom accomplished in other works of fiction, including Star Wars.
The relationship between Ezra and Sabine was also fairly well written, for the most part anyway, at least in Star Wars Rebels. Ezra was almost immediately smitten with Sabine, but being a young teenage boy, it was understandable that he would feel that way about an attractive girl. Over time he learned to see her more respectfully, as a colleague and even as part of his adopted family, not just as a pretty face. Sabine for her part found Ezra annoying at first (c’mon, what teenage boy isn’t?), but as he matured and she found out more about him she came to understand and respect him more, and see him as a friend and almost a brother, with there being potential for something more.
There were times when the relationship could have been better written, like in the episode “Blood Sisters”, where Ezra was written to be a bit too immature to make Sabine look wiser. But overall, the bond between them developed fairly well; both saved one another at various times, and took risks and made sacrifices for each other’s sake. Both reassured and comforted the other when they needed it, and it was endearing to hear their banter when they became more familiar and trusting of each other.
So why then was I so disappointed in how they were portrayed in the Ahsoka show? The thing is, after how well their relationship was built up in Rebels, as I’ve already mentioned it was strange to see how lackluster and uninspired their reunion was.
Within the Ahsoka show itself Sabine was shown to be almost obsessed with finding Ezra, living in what used to be his home, watching a recording of him over and over again, and calling out his name as she woke up in the middle of the night. She even risked bringing Thrawn back into the Galaxy, which ultimately happened, just so she could see Ezra again. After all that, when she finally does encounter him, her reaction seems fairly casual, as does his, as if they’ve been apart for no more than a week, rather than 10 years. Not too much happens between them afterwards either. Like I said Ezra does not appear all that curious about what happened with Sabine, how she found him, and how it was that she was now Force sensitive. Sabine likewise did not seem curious about what had happened with Ezra, and how he had gotten away from Thrawn. And with Ezra rescued and returned home, suddenly it didn’t seem as though Sabine was all that interested in him anymore, nor he all that concerned with her, though they were just as far apart as they had been at the start of the show. To be completely honest it made me wonder what the point of the whole show was. Were they just working to set up Thrawn’s return to the Galaxy? As some have said, Ezra felt like nothing more than a Macguffin in the show. Was Sabine and Ahsoka’s search for him just a plot device?
Considering how skillfully Dave Filoni had written his stories in the past, what happened in this latest project of his does not make much sense. Was he so concerned about “shipping” and so desperate to avoid it that he inadvertently “shipped” them in the other direction? Was there some sort of external pressure on him about how to write this story to have more of an appeal to “modern audiences”? Maybe some combination of those factors?
And here I’ll add that when I say “modern audiences” I don’t mean that in a contemptuous sense, though you may think I do. If there is any contempt on my part it is for those in charge of telling our stories, or those in charge of those telling our stories, who do not seem to grasp these basic truths. The truth is that audiences at their core don’t really change throughout the ages, only superficially so. Trends come and go but certain truths and ideals are eternal, and universal. How people relate to each other fundamentally does not change, whether they are friends, or more than friends. And deep down, I believe everyone (or nearly everyone at least) wants the same things. Nearly everyone at some point wants some kind of a connection with another human being, to know that they are not alone in the world, and to know that there is someone else who sees and understands things as they do. While this desire can certainly lead to abuse, and absolutely has, it is still innate to us and is not inherently wrong. Finding ways of connecting and relating to other people is one of the great challenges of life, but many would argue it is the most worthwhile of challenges. It may be the whole point of life if you think about it. As complex as it may be, many would argue it is what makes life worth living, and likewise makes for the best stories. Just as it may be the whole point of life many would say that is what most stories are about at their core: people trying to relate to one another.
Sadly, just as in real life, most stories unfortunately don’t quite get it, and the Ahsoka show in my opinion was an example of this, made all the sadder by the fact that Dave Filoni had done quite well with these characters up to that point. We may never know for certain what exactly went wrong and why, or if it can ever be “fixed” at this point, but I can’t help but feel curious. Maybe in the future Filoni will find a way to make it make sense, but I’m not sure how. And to be completely honest I don’t feel quite as enthusiastic to find out as I used to.
Also for the record I would like to add here that there are other factors that put me off from the show, such as Sabine’s Force sensitivity, that came about without much build up. But in this article I specifically wanted to focus on shipping because there seems to be so much misunderstanding around it.
I hope that I was able to clarify some, if not most of this misunderstanding, so that people could better appreciate what shipping is, where it comes from, as well as what it isn’t. Many people today are understandably sick of shipping characters, myself included. But I hope people realize that in overcompensating for something, we often come back around into the very thing that we are overcompensating for. Or sometimes, into something even worse. This may apply to nearly every facet of life, by the way, not just shipping. Finding a happy medium in how we portray our fictional relationships may help us to better understand relationships in real life, as well as how to navigate them. Neither fictional nor actual relationships can ever be perfect but they can always be better. To this understanding then I hope that I was able to give my own modest contribution, and if nothing else I hope we can connect on that.

So, all the discussions about the pacing and the amount of episodes in the new series, it got me wondering how the other RTD series might have been if they were only 8 episodes. Which episodes would you have cut out and why? And can you make a coherent series out of what is left? Here's what I *think* I would do (and I ignore Christmas specials for the purposes of this list).
Series 1

1. Rose – It's perhaps not the best opening episode the show could have had, but I've always had a soft spot for it, so I'm happy it's here.
2. The Unquiet Dead – I think there needs to be a low stakes episode in which Rose and the Doctor just travel together, and this fits the bill perfectly. Although the introduction of Gwyneth is not vital for Torchwood, it does help.
3. Dalek – Of course, it had to be here. No questions asked.
4. Father's Day – I love this introspective little character episode, and as it sets up all the drama surrounding Pete and Jackie in Series 2, I feel it needs (and deserves) to be here.
5. The Empty Child – One of my all time favourites! Also needed for the introduction of Captain Jack.
6. The Doctor Dances – Same as above!
7. Bad Wolf – I think this two parter is probably the best of RTD's concluding two-parters, so I'm happy this one is here.
8. Parting of the Ways – This is a brilliant conclusion to Nine's arc, and I think it rounds out the season perfectly.

I think this series works fairly well with 8 episodes, but there is a lot of time lost building Rose and the Doctor's relationship, and I feel the show gets to the dark content of Dalek too early. I don't think the series loses much by the Game Station being introduced for the first time in Bad Wolf, but the Adam story does get a little messy without Long Game. I think we are just meant to assume the Doctor and Rose threw him into a black hole or something. The Slitheen also make absolutely zero appearances in this series, but that's not necessarily a bad thing!
Series 2

1. Tooth and Claw – I'd move this one to being the series opener, because I generally enjoy it more than New Earth, and it is needed to exist to set up Torchwood.
2. School Reunion – I love this episode so much, and given that Sarah Jane becomes an important part of the Tennant era, I think it's vital that she has her moment.
3. The Girl in the Fireplace – I personally love a historical episode, so I wanted to keep this one here. Although it is not my favourite of Moffatt's episodes, it definitely deserves it's spot.
4. Rise of the Cybermen – This absolutely would not be here unless it was vital to the plot, and I feel I had to cut out much better episodes so it could be here.
5. The Age of Steel – See above!
6. The Idiot's Lantern – I know a lot of people hate it, but I've always quite enjoyed it for campy fun reasons. I also think this series needed a little bit of lightness to balance out all the heavy-going episodes. Also, the other choices were Love & Monsters and Fear Her, so this absolutely had to stay.
7. Army of Ghosts – Again, here for plot reasons. I am sad I had to kick out much better episodes for this!
8. Doomsday – Genuinely enjoyed Doomsday, and a fitting end to Rose's arc.

I feel this 8 episode Series 2 would have major pacing issues just because of the two parter in the middle, and I am *gutted* that I had to cut out Impossible Planet/Satan's Pit, but otherwise it would have just been a run of two parters. I feel this is the series with the most weak episodes of all the RTDs, and so some of them were easy to chop.
Series 3

1. Smith and Jones – This is the best RTD opening episode in my opinion, so it deserves its place on the list.
2. Gridlock – I toyed between Gridlock and Shakespeare Code here, but then I realised this series didn't have a trip to the future/alien world, so thought Gridlock would be the best option. This would of course be the first time New Earth is visited, as New Earth got the cut in S2.
3. Human Nature – One of my favourite episodes of Doctor Who of all time, so it absolutely had to be in here.
4. The Family of Blood – See above. I just love this two parter, and I would be happy to ruin the arc of this season just to keep these two in here.
5. Blink – Of course it needed to be in here.
6. Utopia – Absolutely stellar episode, with a brilliant performance by Derek Jacobi. Needs to be here!
7. The Sound of Drums – Good episode, but if it wasn't needed for plot purposes I would have probably junked it for something else.
8. Last of the Time Lords – Same again, but this time its plot purpose is even more relevant given everything it builds up in the Specials.

I feel Series 3 really suffers from only being 8 episodes, and lot of the dramatic tension is lost from not having episodes like the Lazarus Experiment, which set up Mr Saxon and Martha's family's involvement with him, and Shakespeare Code which builds the Doctor and Martha's relationship. Also, the inclusion of really popular but dark episodes from later in the season (like the Human Nature two parter and Blink) means that besides Smith and Jones, there are no fun, light hearted episodes left. The pacing would definitely feel off.
Series 4

1. Partners in Crime – We need the DoctoDonna reintroduction episode and our reminder of Rose's existence, so this has to stay.
2. The Fires of Pompeii – Donna begging the Doctor to save someone was really a high point of the series, and probably deserves its place just because of that.
3. Planet of the Ood – The Ood are an important part of Tennant's swansong, so their origin story is needed.
4. Silence in the Library – This episode is okay, and is absolutely not my favourite of this series, but River will be important so it needs to stay for plot purposes.
5. Forest of the Dead – See above.
6. Turn Left – This is an absolute brilliant episode. It showcases Catherine Tate, and sets up the finale perfectly.
7. The Stolen Earth – It's a solid episode, but I don't think it would make the list if it wasn't important to the plot.
8. Journey's End – Again, solid episode but nothing special. Only here for plot purposes.

So, for Series 4, I cut out the entire arc with Martha, as well as Unicorn and the Wasp and Midnight. If the River Song two parter didn't need to be in there for plot purposes, I would have dropped them for Unicorn and the Wasp and Midnight. However, I do think this series is probably in the best shape out of all the "shorter" series, and while the tone is definitely darker than the full Series 4, I don't think it would suffer from pacing issues in the way Series 2 and 3 (especially) do.
Which episodes would you cut out?

Let’s do it again, friends: get stoned and listen to my thoughts on season 2, episode 2!

• Anthony and benedict are getting shaved and all i hear is the sweeney todd pipes
• kate in this beautiful jewel-toned bridgerton blue 💙
• Anthony obviously in love with kate while actively trying to court edwina. His cocky little smile kills me
• Lmfao “i cannot think of any cleverer way to say this, but noooo”
• Pen: goddamn it eloise i did exactly what you wanted and you still criticize LW
• The look colin gives pen 💗 theyve done a great job building up the polin romance
• I also hate guns and hunting and would be pissed as fuck if some dude comes in my home and starts hanging that ugly shit
• I’m honestly really happy phili gets a love match with finch
• Lord lumley seems sweet honestly. And he’s right, poetry is better read aloud. Its a type of song really. I hate that poetry is usually taught to kids by reading it silently or reading it aloud in class for the first time without any idea how to intonate or understand what theyre expressing. I had the opportunity to see a shakespeare play performed before i had read or even heard of the story and i was shocked that i was able to understand it and enjoy it. I was like why isnt this how we do it always??
• sorry i have half an english degree and i’m a real pain in the ass about it
• Also btw has anyone read the book much ado about mean girls? Its mean girls but written in shakespearean style. Its a hoot if you’re also a nerd like me
• Ok sorry back to bridgerton. I paused it for so long to type all that my tv went to screensaver mode
• Was mr dorset earnest in trying to meet with kate or was it actually orchestrated by anthony?
• I also prefer a warm spicy chai to a milky black tea
• Benedict to mondrich: sorry anthony’s an ass, I am not tho, please tell me more
• Eloise has another ribbon hat contraption. This one is like a straw beret
• I think its a bit of a weird styling choice for eloise to wear these ribbon head things. They dont offer any practicality: they dont keep her hair up or out of her face, they dont keep her head warm or shield her from the sun. they seem to be purely decorative and i feel like eloise would just rather nothing than something simply pretty
• I liked the look she had in colins return scene when it was just pinned to the side. I feel like that would be her go to
• Edwina trying so hard to hook kate up and get her off her back
• Pen is so clever. Eloise literally tells her, look i figured out where you print your LWs and pen just smirks and el goes oh your right im acting silly
• A & K arguing about the horses and once again the chemistry is so damn oobvious i’m surprised the whole of the stands isnt shouting get a room
• Lol i just noticed lumley brings back 2 cups (presumably for edwina and kate) and anthony takes kates
• The look he gives her when she whistles…boy is S M I T T E N
• Stop hollerin like a newsboy - i say this to my dog when hes outside barking at the neighbor
• Eloise finding a locked door in a place she’s not supposed to be, knocking on the door, and then immediately bothering the first person she sees is just a perfect example of her character lol
• The new lord featherington is like fuuuuck i thought this was m lucky break but i’m screwed
• Love QCs colorful wigs. Were the ornate wigs back then different colors? I can only picture them in white
• This is the first time kate’s not in blue. We’re coming out of our bridgerton blue and into our purples era. Purple represents royalty, opulence, ambition, and power. Edwina is in pink almost exclusively. Pink represents young love, girlhood, innocence
• “You are the one who is always right” benedict is good with the quick comebacks
• “Why should i be the one to admit defeat??” aka her sister hates me but i love her so im not giving in
• Zeh-bruhs
• anthony showing up with that horse is like mentioning you liked curious george and him showing up with a chimpanzee. Never gift a pet/live animal
• I like that mondrich is like fuck that snobby other club, i’m opening my own place with blackjack and hookers
• Anthony doesnt get invited to one party and he’s like WOW rude
• Time for the loser suitor show
• Surprised none of these losers did a stand up act
• Poor pen so sick of yellow. We’re gonna add that bridgerrton blue soon and see you in beautiful greens 💚
• Colin being the corniest: I really got to know someone i didn’t know at all: me
• colin to pen: you’re not a woman, youre my friend. I dont find you worth loving or fucking
• Lady F would have been happy to scheme with jack and get the cowpers money. Shed probaby end up killing cressi somehow
• Lol i love what a critic of the arts benedict is. a true artist
• i read somewhere once that its a staple of the regency romance to diss byron because he was a very popular poet at the time, so its kind of like yeah i'm a corny romantic type but i'm a cool corny romantic type. i dont like whats on the radio, i have good taste
• Anthony to benedict. Write that shit down write that shit down
• Anthony was definitely the “can i copy your homework” kid
• Anthony: you forgot to invite me. That was your mistake right? Im obviously supposed to be here??
• Literally speechless when he sees kate
• Anthony: I might not be able to give you romance, but i can take care of you and give you a happy life. Kate: you hear that shit? He’ll never love her what a pig
• Kate is treating the ton the way i treated my last job. I dont care if they like me, i’m here for the money
• Penelope once again being a shrewd business woman. Give me the discount to keep me away lol
• QC literally has no idea who pen is lol