Looking Forward to Season 4

I finished watching Attack on Titan season 3 last week.
I should have seen it ages ago, but it has become my habit over the years to have a select few shows that I will only watch whilst exercising on my home trainer. The strenuous exercise tends to banish everything outside my immediate vision, shoving aside trouble and concern, while giving me a deeper investment in whatever I'm watching. It also necessitates me to actually get off my lazy ass if I want to go and watch that show I really like. I can also watch only 1 of these shows at a time, because I'm compulsory that way, which is why I had to wait this long before continuing Attack on Titan as I was still watching HunterXHunter, which has 148 episodes in total. HunterXHunter is decent, and I had a good, although quite a drawn-out, time with it, but it still doesn't hold a candle to Attack on Titan.

Every show, bar one, that I've watched this way I've become deeply emotionally invested in.

Black Sails, Attack on Titan, The Walking Dead, HunterXHunter, Doctor Who, the re-watch of Penny Dreadful, Taboo, assorted movies of which the only ones I can remember right now are Atomic Blonde and Hardcore Henry. The one show I hated, though I did see the cleverness of (the ending at least) was The Shield.

     When Season 2 of Attack on Titan came out I went and re-watched the phenomenal first season also on home trainer (one episode at a time, because the show really is that good) before moving on. Before I began watching season 3 I didn't do his, because at the time I was feeling ambivalent about the whole thing.
You see, season 2 had had a difficult task going forward as it needed to begin revealing many of the setting's more tantalizing secrets.
And, sad to say, it didn't do it all that well.

     The most significant revelation came so out of nowhere that I at first hadn't realized what had been said. I imagine it must've looked like one of those scenes from a movie where a character does a double-take; all of a sudden: a few seconds staring at the screen failing to connect, a vacant stare as I slowly began to realize what's just been said. Bewildered moments where I tried to make sense of it, pausing, checking the episode number and title, replaying the scene, shaking my head in absolute bewilderment.
     It was such a bombshell of a reveal.
I have since heard that the manga did it a bit different, for that specific reveal at least, and that it also shortened a particular arc a little. It's a bizarre scene because it completely breaks the viewer's immersion, and though the ideas behind it; the psychology of the characters in the moment, and in that it establishes a common ground in the responses of us, the audience, and Eren as the protagonist privy to that particular revelation, it didn't really work, or at least I didn't feel satisfied with the way in which this was done. But in any case, the secrets revealed were merely the tip of the veil being lifted, and they didn't much impact our knowledge of the Titan enemies our protagonists fight against. On the contrary, it added more mystery to them, and made them more dangerous than ever.

     Season 3 then, must have had an even more difficult task, as it pretty much would be revealing everything the fans might have been curious about.
Yes, that's right; Season 3 of Shingeki No Kyojin serves up the goods, all of them: The nature of the Titans, the truth behind the '100 year peace' (which had always sounded like a very dubious bit of propaganda), everything concerning Grisha Jaeger, the Titan powers and so much more. It's a barrage of information and, given the track record of the show's past revelations, you might be surprised to hear that season 3 does it pretty much perfectly.

     The big revelation is one that had the potential to sink the show completely, and though there is definitely an adjustment period needed because of the magnitude of the thing, the whole opening up of the world, the story, all the new different elements; as these all completely change the show; it is in effect a paradigm shift, it nonetheless works just perfectly.
It mainly works because the themes and ideas, seemingly so vastly different, introduced at this point in the show aren't actually new to the story at all. They've been here all along, but they've been upturned, inverted, and made more vast. It also helps that we've known that this revelation has been coming since day one, with the basement, and the revelations within it, having been Eren's goal from the outset. The knowledge of the titans, the truth about this world; they were always going to be big things, reshaping our perception of the story going forward.

And now the truth is out. The world has altered and the story cannot be the same.

It must be said: not everyone would have been, or is going to be, satisfied with it, because the show is almost going to be an entirely different beast going forward.
And since Season 4, coming out in 2020, will be the final season there's no real telling how it is going to go. It is likely that the story will conclude in some sort of stalemate or tragedy, because it honestly is almost impossible to wrap it all up in just one season. The revelations have shed new light on the world, the convictions and perceptions of our characters have altered, and there doesn't seem enough time left to explore it all.

I've grown very fond of the show, its music and style. The characters have become familiar friends and I'm going to be sad when their story comes to an end. But, I'm looking forward to Season 4 anyway. I'm dreading it and anticipating it in equal measure.

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Over the past few days I've also checked out several of the Attack on TitanOVA's which were all absurdly awesome, with the Ilse Langnar episode in particular being quite affecting, and I've even blazed through Attack on Titan: Junior High, which seems like such a stupidly ridiculous idea with no hope of succeeding, until you start watching it and you find yourself laughing out loud at its humour and its cleverness. It also manages to give some much needed depth to a few of the side characters that have become mainstays in the main series, even though they don't always have much to do over there.

I still need to track down the Lost Girls OVA, and the A.O.T. Wings of Freedom game is waiting for me on my PS4, but after that I'm going to have to avoid spoilers and wait until season 4 releases.
Depending on how good that the anime ends, I might pick up the manga, but for now I'm still good with just reading Berserk.

Exquisite Corpse, Poppy Z. Brite

*Wide-Eyed Stare*

I had loaned this one out to The Ink-Stained Beard a while back, immediately having realized it would be right up his alley after skimming through the first few pages. The Beard has a rather disconcerting fascination with serial killers and the like. Anyway, afterwards, he gave it a short review wherein he stressed really quite alliteratively just how dark, debauched and depraved the book was. At the time I did not yet know just how much the man was fond of a good old understatement.

Because really, calling this book debauched and depraved does not do it an inch of justice.

I normally try to hide a lot of the story but I'm afraid I really gave up quite a bit on the plot here.

I'm going to leave it as is, because it's not a conventional novel, structure and plot-wise, and conventional cover blurb is almost impossible. Spoilers.

Convicted serial killer Andrew Compton wiles his days in solitary away by ruminating on pleasant memories. Dubbed the 'Eternal Host' by the sensationalist papers, after his tendency to eat the men he took home with him, and with his cannibalistic and necrophiliac proclivities known and feared by the world at large, it is unlikely that Andrew will ever see the light of day again. He has nothing to look forward to but an endless stagnation and a lonely death. But as he writes down his experiences, as he looks back on his joy, his exaltation in committing acts that society would condemn him for, Andrew comes to the realization that he would do anything to be out in the world again. And so, Andrew begins to plot his escape.

Half the world away, on the neon-soaked streets of New Orleans' French Quarter, the wealthy Jay has been hiding his dark cravings for flesh and blood by being quite selective in his male liaisons. Though the gay men in the neighbourhood know to be cautious, or that at least they feel that there's something 'off' about the muscular pretty boy and that they shouldn't stray too close, the frequent tourists, the intransigents and vagrants that wild New Orleans inevitably attracts have no such presentiments to save them, and so Jay is kept happy and content, knee deep in warm quivering flesh.

But recently a local Vietnamese teen has caught his eye, has thrilled his heart and loins and Jay is finding it quite hard to keep his distance.

Tran spends his days trying to forget the pain of a relationship turned hateful, selling drugs, and seeking comfort and solace on the neon-soaked streets of New Orleans, away from his traditional family home, but his ex-lover's voice hounds him from every radio, blaring in anger and hate, warning him of the doom that could befall any gay man, and he finds that solace and comfort are hard to find. But one of his clients could possibly provide a cure for the sickness in his heart, and as circumstance propels him out from under his parents' roof, Tran inevitably seeks his refuge with Jay, who himself has just met a dark and dangerous stranger recently arrived from the shores of the old world.

And on the radio, and in the throes of aids and the corrosive knowledge of impending death, Lush Rimbaud talks on and on about hate and despair. But is there still room for love in the dying man's heart, and is he still willing to become a part of humanity to save a doomed ex-lover?

     I have never read any single book that gave such lovingly graphic descriptions of such a wild variety of upsetting things: Necrophilia, murder, torture, cannibalism, rape... sometimes even all of those at the same time. To put it simply; think of the most depraved shit a human being can do to another of its kind and it's likely in here.
I've said it before; the subject matter is one that is chosen by the author and if you can't stomach it then you better get off the bus. But this one is pretty extreme though.
This is alleviated, or rather this one has the impact of its shocks diminished, occluded, by the artistry of the author, and even the most ghoulish scenes have a sort of glamour surrounding them, as if its all unreal, or as if you can't really take it in.
     I'm not sure that makes sense, even to myself, but the truth is that even though I can objectively see that the stuff in here was way more shocking than anything I read in Palahniuk's Haunted last month, it never actually felt that way.

It's a compelling little novel. Gore, horrible sex and violence, and it's... niiiiice?

It's a novel that only has gay characters, and said gay characters also have a lot of quite gay sex, frequently depicted graphically, so if you can't take that, best stay away. Since it was written in the nineties, its story has a marked focus on the whole Aids- scare. When the men in the novel have sex there's a heightened awareness of the possible consequences of that act, and a few of them, at the novel's beginning have already come face to face with their impending death from the disease, and the disease itself is almost another character in the story, its shadow almost always present.

That all being said. I did quite like this one. Don't know anyone I could recommend it to myself. But, if you're still reading, then maybe you would like to give it a go? I guarantee you'll be horrified.

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MASSIVE SPOILERS

So then, on my overly expansive blurb: The title, Exquisite Corpse, might come from the artistic idea of crafting a story from one point to the next, not being aware of the end result at the novel's outset.
This is probably why, even though we start the book with Andrew Compton, his incarceration and subsequent escape from prison, quite soon the story is taken over by Tran, Jay and Luke, their relationships and the inevitable direction that will take.
Upon reflection, this really seems undeniable, as it seems clear to me that regardless of how the novel ends, Andrew Compton didn't actually have much of an influence on its ending. He's someone that just coasts into town, sees the sights, and then leaves again for greener pastures.
It's why devising a blurb was such a hard thing to do, and why I was so unimpressed by virtually all of the book's previous blurbs; they mostly all focus on Andrew Compton, despite him having no real bearing on the plot.
Take him out and you can't quite prove that for our three principal characters, things wouldn't have ended up the same way. There's a strange horrendous beauty to that ending too, that haunting finale.

Belated Birthday Book Batch

   

Behold The Pile of Pleasure, which I got for my birthday, which was the third of november.
Yes I'm very late this one.

From the top:

After finishing Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's seminal masterpiece From Hell I decided that Moore had really by now become one of my favourite authors, and that I really should begin gathering more of his stuff. So, quite a few of the things I asked for had Moore's name on them, but, as it turns out, there happen to be more Moores than expected; to whit:

You can forgive me for thinking that Alan Moore is ubiquitous enough that the man has earned the monopoly on the name but apparently there's others going about calling themselves Alan and/or Moore. The From Hell Moore started out writing poetry so I assumed that there had to be a volume collecting those efforts and I thought that Opia was it, as it was under 'similar suggestions' on the Book Depository (good prices, yes, but pretty much everything else about it sucks.)
Obviously Opia wasn't that volume, but that doesn't mean that it was a bad gift.

 I've read over half of the poems in here by now, and though they haven't swayed me towards making poetry a more frequent go-to, reading-habits-wise, I did end up enjoying some of them.
Most touching of these (so far) I found The Taxman poem.

I can't profess to completely understand what it all means, but I found I was quite touched by the sentiments here; the yearning to reacquire something lost.

Alan Moore (not that one) frequently imbues his poetry with a disarming directness bordering on the crass, which can be quite charming.

 If you love poetry, you can do a lot worse than picking this one up.

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I gave a list of the Warhammer Chronicles Omnibi I still needed and it's Warlords of Karak Eight-Peaks that I got.

     Before anyone says or asks anything: Yes, I have heard the news concerning the Old World, and all I can say is that despite having pined for it ever since it got destroyed, its return (in a few years) leaves me cold. Though I was excited at first, that excitement swiftly turned to annoyance. There is nothing sacred to Games Workshop, and I don't have much interest in whatever they're going to present us with.

     I was only ever here for the novels, in any case; and unless they do away with the End Times novels entirely, or re-write them to something way less rushed, I won't... hmm. No, I can't say I won't pick anything up, but right now I'm still a little ambivalent about the whole thing.

     In any case, this nonsense is going to involve a whole lot of retconning, and I loathe that type of stuff. Retconning is something that only comes about because of franchise considerations; it's something that is dependent on an audience, and as such, it puts into question the artistic merit of that property. If art is dependent on an audience, and when it is changed to suit that audience's reception, then it's not art any more. In some form or other it will become homogenized, it has to be suited, after all, for mass consumption. Bah, I'm talking bollocks. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Anyway, Warlords of Karak Eight-Peaks collects the Skaven heroes novels Skarsnik and Headtaker, and the Dwarven novella Thorgrim plus a few short stories. 

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Here are some different editions of novels I've already read in some form or other. They were both on my 'Slow Collecting' Page on the side there *points*, and it was quite a surprise when they came in through the mail.

Someone's been keeping up with the blog. Thanks, mate :)

IDW's Dracula was on the list because it came with Ben Templesmith's art, and it didn't disappoint, at least Art-wise, because IDW has a weird lay-out to their text that dor some reason easily makes me lose track of where I'm at. It's okay though, as this one's not for reading and instead is simply for looking pretty on the shelf.

The Warhound and the World's Pain is here because I simply love the novel, and I wanted to have the edition with Rowena Morril's devil on the cover. I'll be giving the novel a re-read next year, and am looking forward to it.

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To Rouse Leviathan is Matt Cardin's second collection of religious horror stories, which in fact also collects all of the fiction from his first collection Dark Awakenings. It doesn't collect Dark Awakenings' essays concerning Isiah, zombies and demonic and angelic history in fiction, so if you want to read those you'll still have to pick that one up.

I still haven't gotten around to finishing off Dark Awakenings, even though I've felt a hankering lately to read some more religion-based fantasy and horror. Reading as a whole has been a really difficult thing to do lately. Been having some problems is all.

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Then we arrive at the comic books.

The Battle Chasers anthology I asked for mainly because it is Joe Madureira's stab at Swords and Fantasy comics.

     Though you might not recognize the name, the unique art style might be a little more familiar.

Joe Madureira's the artist responsible for the design of the Darksiders franchise, which I used to love. The story of Darksiders is basically that the apocalypse has happened, even though it shouldn't have.

Humanity is now dead and gone, and one of the four Horsemen, War, has been found guilty of bringing this about. Of course, there's more going on here, and we follow around War as he tries to clear his name. It's quite a rocky series, the first game being a bit hit and miss, the second one being basically unfinished, the third one (continued after the publisher went belly-up) being remarkably uninspired, and the latest game going on to become a top-down affair. There's a few books too, though I only read the first Death one.

So, based off of nothing but the art I went and asked for this one.

And. It was pretty crap.

Phenomenal art, as was expected, And almost 2000 Ad style of storytelling, but that could've been forgiven if, it just had been finished. Jep, this one is basically not complete.

I felt a lot of annoyance reading this one.

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Next up, extremely pretentious, is Alan Moore's Hypothetical Lizard.

I have no idea what this is going to be about.

All I know is that this one was adapted from one of Moore's short stories and that it is also included in this volume.

Though There's usually too much packed into Moore's work to be able to give a quick opinion on any of it, I'll try to write a little bit when I finish any of his comics. I tend to stall blogging whenever I feel that the book or comic I'm writing about deserves more, and so, nothing gets done. I really need to start remedying this.

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Here's the only Bear on the CIA's hitlist:

Shako.

Absolutely ridiculous.

I asked for this one mostly as a joke, trying to upset someone's delicate sensibilities, but the joke was on me as I received this one without a moment's hesitation.

It's not a great, or even is it anything close to being a, good comic book. It's 2000 AD at its most juvenile and silly.

But. I have a thing about bears.

They terrify me. And if there's something good to be said about the comic then it is that it genuinely unsettled me a few times. e.g. when the bear plays with someone before viciously mauling them to death; such an accurate portrayal of nature's most terrifying monsters. This comic would've been a genuine horror experience if they'd depicted Shako as having no fur... What am I talking about? Jesus, get back on track Levi.

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Another from the 2000 AD stable.

The Complete Future Shocks Volume 1.

This one I asked because I'm a collector and a 'Complete' edition of anything is immensely appealing, and because of the whole Alan Moore thing.

He started out writing for comics in 2000AD's Future Shocks so I thought it was a good idea to read these.

They're overall a bit hit and miss, but even the bad ones are short enough that you don't really mind them. There's at least always some sort of twist present that'll give you your euro's worth. I since then have picked up the second volume, which I keep on my nightstand so I can finish off a story or two before going to bed.

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Completing my Saga Hardcover collection, here's volume three.

I love this series.

That's all I'm gonna say right now.

You could probably subscribe to an online e-comic shop or something and get the first issue for free, that's how I got into it.

Do so. It's probably one of the most emotionally engaging stories in comics right now.

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And, lastly, another Alan Moore book, which has the dubious honour of being the first ever out-and-out superhero comic that I own. The Absolute Edition of Alan Moore's Killing Joke.

I had previously seen the cartoon movie of this one, and though it was ok, there's definitely was no need, or even desire, for the whole bat-girl has sex with batman, stuff. What were they thinking with that? 

It's quite a gorgeous edition, oversized, and apart from having the original comic release it also has artist Brian Bolland's preferred colouring, which he did himself for this edition.

He wasn't pleased with the original colouring, which, it must be said, is very very psychedelic, and which you can compare to his own preference below. It's quite a massive difference.

The original script is also included as are afterwords by the artist, some notes on the Joker's original origins, an art gallery, a retrospective by John Higgins, an introduction by Tim Sale, but oddly, nowhere is there an actual answer to the last panels of the story, nor is there any commentary from Moore himself to be found.

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There were a few more gifts, non-books and such, but as you probably have noticed it appears impossible for me to continue writing right now. Over the past month and more I have seemed to be heading back into depression or something, and I'm having the hardest time to write anything at length.

Either way. Thanks for all the support, the presents and the love.

Take care. I'll be back to writing regularly soon.