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stellocchia · 3 years

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This is part 6 of the Comprehensive Analysis of c!Tommy and c!Dream’s relationship during the Exile Arc

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5

Here we go again. So, just to clarify: I honestly think that for the Mexican Dream stream almost only the parts where Dream is Dream and not Mamacita are canon, but I will check those other ones out as well for anything interesting. Drista’s stream however is like as vaguely canon as possible, so I will mostly give a general outline of it more so then analizing it bit by bit.

That said, a reminder that from here on out I will be only talking about the characters unless stated otherwise and that we will be talking about sensitive topics, so keep that in mind.

First stream we will be looking at is the infamous Mexican Dream stream: Tommy Speaks to Mexican Dream in Exile

Once again Tommy wakes up drowning, again just slightly further away from the coast in the opposite direction from L’Manburg. He also immediately takes off his armour.

“Wait, no, we don’t have enough friends to afford being angry at people” (by now even Tommy himself doesn’t value much his own feelings)

“So at the end of our last Dream smp stream, uh, we died [non canonically], but it’s okay because I got some of our things-” *Dream joins the game* *distressed noises* (I’m never not gonna point out Tommy’s reactions at Dream appearing)

Dream appears and immediately digs the hole for the armour. Tommy immediately gives it up actually apologizing for not doing it even before. Also right after this Dream investigates on wether or not someone visited Tommy while he was gone and he finds out about Ranboo.

“I’ve just been trying to keep you company” “Yeah, yeah, no, it’s been pretty nice” “We’ve became better friends” “Yeah, yeah, we have” (Dream and his ‘friendship’ agenda)

This is when they meet Mexican Dream who was just outside Tommy’s Nether portal. An interesting thing I want to point out is Dream immediately moving directly in front of Tommy when he notices him (probably got used by now to assuming a defensive position).

“We’ll make this place like home man...” (MD already making everything better)

“What did you [Dream] do to him man?” “No but he is my friend now, apparently- I think. You are my-?” (immediately starts questioning things with MD presence there challenging Dream’s)

“I’m your new friend man” “Oh, do you need me to put my items in a pit for you?” (...) “This is what Dream always makes me do, is this right?” (looking once again at Dream for approval in the last bit)

“Hey, wait, so now that you’re here do I even need to follow this man?” (talking about Dream here)

“Okay, wait, how do I know that this isn’t a Dream? Because I keep having Dream’s and shit. I’m like a hallucinator” (so we can add recurrent hallucinations to his ever increasing list of symptoms)

"Even though he may be naked and homeless- are you homeless? Do you need a home?” “I’m homeless man” (And this is why MD was a problem to Dream, he was more then willing to stay with Tommy)

“Oh no that guy [a squid] has committed suicide just at the sound of it! Oh that’s... I envy him” (he is now openly suicidal)

“I don’t like Mexican Dream, Mexican Dream is weird” (sure it’s not just because he admitted to wanting to move to Logstedshire permanently there Dream?)

“Alright, Thomas, come over here, come over here” *Dream starts following as well* “NO! NO! You stay the fuck away!” (this is why we love MD)

“You know actually, he is sort of actually borderline my owner” (I hate that there was a time were both Tommy and Dream thought this)

After this Dream swaps for Mamacita, so I’m really not sure how canon things are here... there is a scene where MD comforts Tommy while he’s looking at pictures of Tubbo and then Mamacita destroys all but one of them.

“I really miss my family man” “Oh I miss my- I miss my family too” (would his family be Tubbo for Tommy?)

Dream does swap back to being Dream for the last 25 minutes. And he proceeds to immediately takes one of MD’s lives. It’s technically his second life because the first one was from a creeper exploding.

“No no shoot me not them, [the pictures of MD’s friends(?)] actually shoot them. I definitely don’t have my confidence back” (Dream immediately setting him back on his progress)

Right after the kill Tommy asks if he can bodyguard Dream in hopes of keeping him and MD from fighting so that MD would be safe. It doesn’t work. Also pretty sure that Dream canonically decapitated somebody.

“Mexican Dream, I-I’ve had enough of you” (Dream immediately ging back to be terrifying right there)

Dream then takes MD’s third canon life. Of course, in true Dream style, he immediately ignores all the distress Tommy is in and moves on like nothing happened.

“You just killed my last friend” (I hate that he’s not even angry)

“So Dream, do I not have any friends left?” “What do you mean ‘you don’t have any friends left’? You have me!” (Dream is the only friend that Dream is willing to allow Tommy to have)

Also I want to point out how Dream keeps ignoring any and all accusations of having killed MD, despite having done so right in front of Tommy. And then he proceeds to try and convince Tommy that he died of a drug overdose (which is just yet another example of gaslighting there from Dream). He then proceeds to make Tommy burn his remains, despite Tommy opposing this quite a bit.

“I know I haven’t really delved into my health with you ever, because I know you don’t really care, but I don’t think I have really long left” (at least he is somewhat aware about Dream not caring)

“I thought maybe we could have someone move in with us today, no. No He doesn’t allow that. Which is fine! Which is fine because, you know, it’s his- his uh- his rules now”

Once again I want to point out that this truly is just a glorified kidnapping. Tommy not only is confined to a very small area and not allowed to keep many items, he also doesn’t get to have anyone move in his area. Dream doesn’t want him to have any company that isn’t him, going as far as to literally kill someone to insure it (not too different from what he was planning to do in the season 2 finale). Either way the stream ends on a very pessimistic note about Tommy not having the will to go on for much longer at this point.

Now let’s move on to the Drista stream: TommyInnit Speaks To Dream's Sister AGAIN

As I said I’ll just give a general outline for this one since it’s honestly barely canon as is, so here we go:

Tommy doesn’t start off drowning this time. Drista arrives and starts immediately being chaotic as usual. They mess around for a while in the Nether, start building a tower (Dream at one point tries to convince Drista that it was Tommy to have killed MD), get bored and mess around some more. Also Drista gives Tommy a bedrock block and writes “Drista” out of bedrock near Logstedshire. Then Drista convinces Dream to let them go back to the main Smp for a while (though we do see Punz trying to kill him for breaking the rules before finding out Dream had given his permission). Once in Dream Smp they meet up with Quackity for a little bit.

Also, Tommy, king of always being in character, constantly asks very uncertainly: “Are you sure that I’m allowed here? This feels wrong...”

They then spawn in a bunch of dogs and wonder around in the smp. After a while Techno gets added to the call and Tubbo starts kinda following them around (though Tommy thinks he has a hallucination). I honestly don’t think any of this is canon. Anyway after a while Techno gets a bedrock block as well and he almost manages to give a stolen Pigstep to Tommy, but it gets intercepted. After a while their time is up and he has to go back by Dream’s order.

“If you don’t see me again in this, you know, in this shape, I’m sorry. (...) Yeah, in this alive form on this server... you might see me you knoa a bit- a bit- I don’t know... maybe a bit ghostly” (foreshadowing to his death that never actually happened during the Exile Arc thankfully)

The stream ends with a promise from Dream that he’ll be there the day after.

Moving on to the last one for today, we have Quackity’s visit: Quackity Visits TommyInnit in Exile

So, Quackity decides to go visit Tommy to try (and miserably failing) to lift his mood by giving him gifts supposedly from everyone in L’Manburg (which are pictures).

“I’ve got no reason to live” (and we start off immediately in the most depressing way possible)

Also, while we’re talking about this stream I have to point out that Tommy has a lot of self-harming behaviours, mostly drowning himself and shooting himself with arrows. Which is rather worrying to say the least.

“Big Q I have very little will to live right now” (again he's very open about his suicidal thoughts by now)

“Forget about Tubbo! Listen, listen Tommy, there are so many things you can turn to when you’re depressed, alright?” “I’m not depressed... I’ve got Dream, I’ve got Dream, I’ve got Dream” “Dream?! (...) Who escorted you out of L’Manburg? Who escorted you out of L’Manburg? Who gave you 30 minutes to go to L’manburg? [In the Drista visit]” “I want Dream”

This is Quackity trying albeit clumsily, to break Tommy out of Dream’s conditioning, though by this point it was far too ingrained for anything to be effective. Also we can see Tommy asking for Dream when he is distressed, which is something that keeps happening during the Bedrock Boys Arc as well.

After a little bit they decide to build a church and a “gambling place”. Techno also joins them after a while. (Also, according to Quackity, c!Dream is canonically racist for killing MD, do with that what you will). Also why does Quackity have a flight or flirt instinct with Techno?

Tommy, sarcastically: “I’m fine, I’m okay, it’s not like I have canonical depression”. That is a fair objection in any and all conversations.

The stream end a while later with nothing else of note. It is very funny though, so do give it a watch if you feel like it.

#tommyinnit #dreamwastaken #quackity #dream smp #exile arc #tw abuse #tw self harm #tw suicidal thoughts #long post #my post #relationship analysis #character analysis #this is basically the lightest post in the exile arc series #mostly because they all have questionable canonicity #though we do know now that md was entirely canon #so there's that #anyway next one will be the last one and then I'm free #also md says 'man' as frequently as dream says 'tommy'#I don't know what to do with that information

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everlastingfable · 3 years

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a jumbled mess of my thoughts about voltron

This’ll probably be the messiest post you’ll ever read. I’m done trying to finish this and edit it into something coherent, so I’m just combining the 3 drafts I have written out into one massive post. I doubt anyone will read this whole thing, but each draft is a sort of rewrite of the last, so there’s a lot of overlap. But there’s also a lot of new thoughts too as I kept thinking about this. There’s also a lot of unfinished thoughts.

There’s mostly negativity in this btw. This fandom had/has an amazing ability in making you think that this show was utter garbage. on par with riv//erdale or s//pn, but it really wasn’t. Like many shows they had weak points, it was never perfect, but it’s much better than we’re told to remember it as.

Intro from Draft 3 because I liked the way I started it:

This is all of my thoughts about Voltron, the show itself and the fandom. I have tried to write this post out for over a year or two now, so it was originally intended to be my final thoughts about the show. Obviously, it’s evolved since then into whatever this is. There may be some things that I’ll be wrong about, because I’m not about to dig through hundreds of discourse posts and old interview videos to prove a point that I doubt anyone’s gonna care about. This will 100% be based on my thoughts, opinions, and experiences.

That said, I don’t even know how to begin to describe how much I love this show. I’m probably one of the few people who have no regrets about enjoying this show as much as I do. I’d wholeheartedly recommend watching it, because it’s genuinely a good show. Voltron did the unimaginable for me. I don’t usually enjoy sci-fi stories. I especially don’t enjoy mecha stories. Yet somehow, Voltron combined the two and made a show that I loved so much I can’t stop thinking about it even though it ended over 2 years ago.

Draft 1: thoughts about a year after it ended without rewatching any seasons since it ended

It’s been about a year since voltron ended. I never wrote my thoughts about s8/the show then so here it is now. Because I decided to wait a year I honestly don’t remember a lot of specifics. But I still have a lot to say about it. This is very long and is basically everything I have to say about this show. I love voltron. It’s been an important part of my life during college. 90% of all papers I wrote were about voltron. But as much as I love it, I won’t deny that it fell apart at the end.

Note: I tried to categorize these thoughts so I don’t get off topic and can talk about everything fully. But because they overlap so much there’s definitely some minor repeats when I connect two parts but decided to hold off talking about it all the way until the right section.

PRODUCTION

This is something I’ve expressed concern over while it was airing, but in a span of 2 and a half years, they premiered 78 episodes. That’s a lot, especially when you consider that production for s3 started after s1 premiered. There’s a lot of really good voltron review videos out there that aren’t just “oh I’m so cool I hate voltron” but there was one that talked about how the production was a mess and the writers couldn’t make up their mind for the endgame ship. And while that doesn’t sound like an important issue, it really does show when it comes to how characters are written together and (I think) the fandom war.

Summarizing what that video said because I don’t remember who made it, the writers/producers never made up their mind on which ship was supposed to be endgame (klance, sheith, allurance, kallura). And this really does show in the show itself. I don’t like klance. I especially hate it because of my experience with the fandom, but I won’t deny that they were sometimes written romantically. The same goes for sheith. And that’s the problem.

I don’t think the world building parts of the show was fully developed either. Shiro was supposed to be a teen like everyone else but then he was an adult. His and keith’s relationship was honestly vague for a good while. I don’t think anyone really knew how each characters’ relationships with each other was supposed to progress. Was allurance always supposed to be endgame? Because they didn’t really interact that much until like season 6, and then it was kinda sudden from what I remember. There was very little, if at all, parts where we were shown oh allura might like lance romantically. Keith’s relationship with the main cast didn’t exist for like 3 seasons. It was messy.

Speaking of which, keith disappeared for a good portion of the show. I assume it’s because steven yeun was busy. Which is fine but then I think about how quickly voltron came and went, I wonder why they couldn’t slow down a bit so they could still have steven voice keith during those episodes. Maybe it’s because of how much I love keith, but he honestly felt like a central character to me.

If I think about teen titans, for example, this show also had 5 main characters. Sometimes certain characters would get a spotlight for a season, but all-in-all they were fairly equally represented. It didn’t feel like robin was the main character. But that’s how I feel about voltron. Keith, and shiro to an extent are the main characters. A good portion of the plot relies on them. Shiro got kidnapped, keith leads them to the blue lion. Shiro is the leader with keith has his right-hand man and they mostly interact with each other. So when shiro “dies” and keith takes over, it starts to feel like keith is now the main character. Now he’s the leader and the arc is about him growing into becoming the black paladin and stopping lotor, who is his main enemy. But then he disappears.

Again this is most likely because of my bias towards keith, but the episodes after that felt lackluster. Lance didn’t really get his character growth to become a good second-in-command. Because that development was supposed to be based around keith. :P. A big part of lance’s growth is to learn to stop needing to feel that he’s better than keith. And him accepting keith as the black paladin was a huge part of it. But with shiro as the leader again lance loses that development. Keith’s not in the picture anymore, and the person in-charge was already in a leadership position and has nothing to learn by being there.

Before I go way too deep into my thoughts about the plot/characterization, I do want to mention the animation. The fighting scenes are amazing and one of the most beautiful 2d animation I’ve seen. That is, when it is actually animated and not just the camera panning on a still image. Here’s where my biggest concern over the time comes in. 2 years is absolutely not enough time to animate that many episodes. I was genuinely worried for the animation company because it could not have been a good experience. And yes, we got more episodes sooner, the quality definitely dropped and it’s a real shame. Who knows when we’ll get another american cartoon in this style. I love this animation style but it takes time and a lot of skills to do, so not that many companies do it. I honestly wished they took their time with the show not just to get more time to animate, but also to flesh out some of the plot.

PLOT

As hunk said in one episode, they don’t linger on dramatic events that just happened. This show is very fast paced, and that’s not a bad thing. But they never took the time they needed to really feel the weight of everything that happens. Keith’s galra heritage reveal was basically swept under the rug. So was the shiro clone, lotor’s death, zarkon’s death, naxzela, and so many more. In general, that was a big problem with how the episodes went. If it wasn’t for the sheer number of fanfics covering those topics, they were really swept under the rug. It honestly kinda felt like the writers didn’t know what to do with the aftermath of their reveals. But some of these were pretty essential to the plot of the story.

Keith’s part galra! So he doesn’t look it but there had to be obstacles with voltron forming the coalition. He’s part of the race that caused this war. I honestly think we should’ve seen that reveal become part of the plot, or what was the point of it? They could’ve just as easily wrote keith to be a regular human just like everyone else. Taking the time to add that part of his character needs to have some significance in the story. And yeah, they had krolia appear but she wasn’t really a significant character except to kinda magically fix keith’s problems. In general it felt like they forgot parts that they were foreshadowing with keith. Why could he turn purple sometimes? Did that quintessence he was hit with fix him or help him hide the galra parts? Why does he look so human? What is up with him having that quintessence sensitivity? I’m all for shows ending with some questions unanswered because sometimes it’s impossible to answer it all and let it feel natural, but this just felt like they forgot or decided it’s too much of a hassle and just ignored it.

Okay going into more specifics now, s8 was kinda meh. It especially felt bad because it came out the same day as spiderverse which had a very similar villain motivation, but objectively done better. I think honerva’s motivation came out of nowhere. We see in the flashback episode that she was so intent on getting knowledge that it literally destroyed daibazaal. So, it was established that her motivation is knowledge. Even though she lost her memory and regained it, as haggar she was still very focused on quintessence. We know she was gathering a lot of it, and maybe they said it and I forgot, but we never knew why. Family wasn’t really shown as a motivation for her. Even with lotor it didn’t seem like she wanted to be a family again, but instead was using him for her own unknown motivations. Anyways, the season felt awkward. And the new dynamic they had really needed more time. The last season should’ve expanded to be at least 2 more. It would’ve fit a lot better imo. S1-2 would have zarkon as the main villain, s3-6 would have lotor, and s7-8 would have haggar, who was also the puppeteer throughout the entire show. But she didn’t appear for s7 and her motivations didn’t really make sense in s8 so it evidently felt rushed. There were also so many major characters in s8 we needed more time to see them interact.

So the ending with allura becoming constellations. Gonna be honest that whole last part had me confused. Especially with the fact that I barely remember what happened, why are the old paladins like trapped in the lions? I could excuse the other 4 but zarkon? Especially a zarkon that’s not corrupted? It was weird and didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and that’s all I’ll say about that. I don’t even want to try to suggest an alternative because I think that whole last half of the season is so messy it can’t be fixed. But it was so obviously pandering to the fandom it hurt. Lance getting those marks was so obviously referencing when people wanted lance to be altean in response to keith’s galra heritage. The shiro/curtis kiss was very “look see he is gay and not just because we said so” while nice, was very weak (why wasn’t keith in the shot?).

Despite my complaints, I remember liking s8. I really liked the addition of the atlas, even though it didn’t feel like we were watching voltron anymore sometimes. S7 had to be one of my favorite episodes since s2. Not to say that s7 is better or worse, but I really like it because it felt like a genre shift. I usually don’t like space sci-fi or mecha stories. Voltron somehow managed to combine the two and make me love it. S7 did not feel like either of those. First, a good half of it took place on earth. And I believe two episodes didn’t even have the main cast, and when team voltron finally made it to earth, voltron wasn’t even there until the final battle. I genuinely loved it. I think it was a very well done invasion/apocalyptic story that doesn’t get told in animation that often. But if I think about s7 with the rest of the show, it was awful. It broke up the tone the show usually had and it was a very different way of storytelling that voltron didn’t have before. It wasn’t a space sci-fi mecha story, it was an apocalyptic action story. Voltron was so unimportant they sat on a moon for episodes. It stopped becoming voltron and started becoming a spin-off.

I do have to add that I absolutely loved the color themes in s7. We already had purple for the galra, but in s7 it was very obvious that alteans are themed blue and earth is themed with orange. I loved it so much and it was great. I do like that they gave shiro something to do. Honestly not killing him off in s2 made him an awkward character afterwards. But I didn’t like that they brought back sendak. There was no explanation for it and it wasn’t good imo. He didn’t really do anything besides conquer earth then die. Haggar was also absent the entire season which definitely didn’t help her storyline in s8 because we didn’t know what she was doing the entire time except abandoning everyone who was loyal to her.

I’m usually not a fan of time skips, it has the tendency to gloss over character development or create glossed over recap. Honestly I wish voltron spent more time over the blade of marmora massacre or just the bom in general. They received no rest. Literally everyone part of that group died except for kolivan. Speaking of that episode, there was no explanation for how keith was able to know where macidus was about to appear and that honestly bugs me. There’s so much about keith we don’t know. He has so many abilities we were just never told.

Again a lot of problems within team voltron is that there was never any follow up on things that happened, like keith leaving the team. He becomes the black paladin and no one bats an eye. Lance did make one comment about keith leaving but then it wasn’t ever mentioned again. I get that the writers/producers wanted the dynamic the original had, but they didn’t take the time to work up to it. Keith wasn’t a natural leader, but he suddenly is because he spent 2 years on a space whale with his mom and a space wolf. Like I mentioned earlier, voltron feels like keith is the main character but then they dropped him for a few episodes, realized that he’s important and added him back in while saying “oh he went through a time skip so he grew into the role he needs to be in now”. It feels like a cheap pay off.

I’d like to specifically talk about my thoughts on each season and work back but honestly I don’t think I can remember s3-6 separately. So they’re being chunked together.

Lotor had the potential to be a really great villain. But he had to be foiled with keith. They have a lot of similarities that I think could’ve really played off well together. Lotor isn’t really allowed to have a leadership position. Yeah he was technically in charge while zarkon was recovering, but haggar didn’t really allow him full control. But, he was a great leader. He knew how to read his enemies and form an alliance. Meanwhile, keith had a leadership position thrusted to him, and frankly he wasn’t a good leader. He tends to keep to himself so he never really has to make decisions with a team. It could’ve been great, but shiro had to still be in the story. I’m honestly conflicted about this because on the one hand, I think it really ruined character developments for the main cast, but then I loved the clone shiro plot line. I think keeping shiro prevented keith from growing. He was able to remain dependent on shiro instead of actually bonding with the rest of the paladins. And of course he had to just go awol. Also, lance didn’t really get to have as prominent of a role as I think he could’ve had with keith.

These seasons are also when the lions stopped being sentient robots that specifically choose their paladins to just really cool spaceships. We don’t get that level of bonding that was so prominent in s1 and 2. That’s also something I’m conflicted with. I think the lion swap was a great way for character developments, but it also removed a lot of it. It kinda made the bonding feel useless. The swap also changed the dynamic of the group. Instead of shiro and allura being co-leaders, and everyone else feeling like they’re on equal footing, it felt like Keith was the leader with lance being a needed right-hand man. Hunk and pidge were off doing their thing and allura was a leader but also not. Maybe if they had spent more time working with this dynamic it would’ve felt better. But they didn’t and it didn’t. Voltron also implied that allura was the only one that could control the castle ship, but then she goes to become a paladin and who’s driving the ship?

I do wish we could’ve gotten more about the altean colony and the reveal about lotor’s plans, but that got overshadowed and forgotten by the clone shiro reveal. Maybe I just missed it, but I wasn’t sure what the galra empire and lotor were collecting quintessence for. Was it just to make mechs to rival voltron? Lotor’s death was also very unclear.

The coalition was a much needed thing, but I think very badly executed. They were gathering people from malls. These people are regular civilians who probably don’t know how to fight or fly a ship. I thought it was really weird that they were just getting regular people (aliens?) to sign up like they’re applying to be part of the army. But we never see them maybe join the rebel force matt is part of to learn how exactly to help. I think about avatar and how they also had a rag tag group of people to fight against the fire nation, but these weren’t just regular people living in a village. They were either warriors or very skilled benders. The voltron coalition was just regular people. That genuinely annoyed me because the voltron show just felt like those army propaganda ads, but exciting. Not to mention it was a very hard to watch episode.

It was definitely making fun of how the fandom complains about how characters are getting reduced to a certain characteristic. But it wasn’t done in an entertaining way like the ember island players episode from atla because some of those were legit complaints (like hunk being the fat/food guy) and that stuff wasn’t resolved. Like the ember island players made fun of sokka constantly talking about meat or katara crying all the time, but the show made it very clear beforehand that these characters are much more than that. Is hunk really more than the food guy? As far as the show mentions, the only things he’s done was make the machine to help find the blue lion, and help save the balmera. All of which was in season 1. After that hunk honestly took the backseat in voltron.

I mentioned earlier, but the time skip on the space whale felt like we were cheated out of keith’s character development. I mean we got development, but we didn’t get to see it. The vlog short showed that keith believes a lot of his problems stems from not having a mom (and a dad) in his life. But instead of seeing keith learning to trust and open up to people despite having so many people in his life leaving him, we get a cute montage of him with his mom. As if it makes sense that two years with his mom would fix everything. (side note, I know a lot of people were saying how obvious it was that krolia was keith’s mom, I genuinely did not know until she said so at the end of that episode).

I’m not gonna talk about my thoughts on s1 and 2 because I’m pretty sure I live blogged those and honestly I don’t think I remember it.

CHARACTERS

Now I’m finally talking about the characters and I’m starting off with keith as if I haven’t talked about him enough already. I love keith. He’s undeniably one of my (if not the) favorite characters ever. And he’s obviously a fandom favorite if we’re considering the two biggest ships in the fandom. Or maybe he really is just the secret main character of voltron. We know so much about him, for someone who loves keith, it’s great. We basically know his entire backstory, and yet we know no one else’s (except maybe lotor but even that’s iffy).

I never rewatched a single voltron episode since it ended, and I can’t watch any of the connected shows (meaning shows that have the same ppl that worked on it or the same fans, think dragon prince and she-ra) because the fandom was the absolute worst one I’ve ever been in and parts legit trigger me. I am fascinated with fandoms. I love it. I chose my major because it was the closest I could get to just learning about them 24/7. But the voltron fandom was so incredibly toxic and over two ships? Honestly the fandom itself was a major reason why I couldn’t get super invested in the later seasons. I get afraid when it seems like a certain ship might happen. I actually hoped that certain characters just didn’t interact. (I’m not gonna get much deeper in this because I don’t want to touch this topic with a ten-foot pole, at least not now) Aside from that, I think that the plot and characterizations for voltron got really messy post s2. The lion switch was never handled well imo, and post switch the lions lost that sentient personality that was established in the first two seasons. It also didn’t make sense aside from the writers wanted everyone in the original lions. Or at least, we never got the proper character developments into those roles. Keith left right after becoming the black paladin.

I think another major problem with the show is how some decisions felt like pandering. I remember hearing that they didn’t kill off shiro because he was a fan favorite, so he had to stay for marketing and to make more money. But then keeping shiro alive would’ve derailed the original plot idea. I wish I could see how the story would’ve played out with shiro staying dead.

Draft 2: rewatched the show then started writing this

So I wrote a draft of this like a year ago, realized I don’t remember the show much, so I rewatched the whole show and started rewriting my thoughts.

Pre-rewatch thoughts: It was a good show that was poorly executed

Mid-rewatch thoughts: it’s a really good show that just has some weak points (the second half of lotor’s arc, team voltron’s importance in season 4-6 it feels like a lot of filler episodes until keith shows up again)

End-rewatch thoughts: it's actually a really good show. It has some weak points and some really strong points. Season 8 was confusing though. I went through most of it going yeah okay I guess that can happen.

Final verdict: it's a genuinely good show

What went wrong

It ended on its weakest season, which was also the most abstract and different season. While the main antagonist changed throughout the seasons, it still continued to be the galra empire. Even when lotor joined, the team was still fighting fractions of the galra empire. Meanwhile, season 8 didn’t have any conflict with the galra. The antagonists were honerva and the alteans, who are very different types of villains compared to the galra. There was also little build up to that change. Sure, we got to experience that briefly in season 3 when they went to the alternate reality, but I don’t think that was built up well. Also, the protagonists and the audience are just not prepared. We don’t know how the alteans work like the extent of their abilities, but we were given dozens of episodes to learn about the galra. As a result season 8 just wound up with me feeling confused and thinking “uhh sure I guess they can do that, that makes sense maybe?”

It could not pick who its protagonist is. Yeah the five humans plus allura (and coran?) are the main characters but most shows with multiple major characters still focus one one character as the protagonist. Like atla has aang, adventure time has finn, umbrella academy has five. Voltron just never picks someone and the group constantly changes too, so you end up having to not focus on any character for the sake of time. Of course not all shows do that. Teen Titans had each season focus on a particular member of the team, and tbh I was wondering if that was what they were planning for the show, especially when season 2 was so Keith focused but guess not.

It feels like they did not have the time to fully flesh out the story. Voltron came and went so incredibly fast. They had 8 seasons (technically 6 if you group up the halved seasons). But also the show only lasted 2 years. It honestly horrifies me to think of the time crunch everyone on the team was going through, especially the animators. You can see the drop in quality as there were very few scenes that involved actual animation for the middle bulk of the show. So then, how much time did they have to develop the story, in addition to execs telling them what they can and can’t do. There’s so many arcs that seemed to start then get forgotten, and I don’t blame the writers for that at all. Although I wish we could’ve learned more about Lance and the Altean sword and Keith with his apparent quintessence sensitivity, they probably just didn’t have the time to plot those out.

It had too much outside influence. Such as, the writers wanting to kill off shiro, but then being forced to keep him on the show because the execs said to. And honestly, the fandom. For example, the whole last episode with Lance getting the Altean marks (an obvious omage to ppl wanting Altean Lance).

What went right

There’s a reason why the show became so popular (aside from being a reboot of a popular 80′s show) and it’s because of the characters. I’m not about the whole “we become attached to characters because the writers did them wrong but we fans can see the potential and that’s why fan works are better” bs that I see going around this site all the time. The first season particularly wrote these characters so well. They’re relatable but also intriguing enough for you to care about what’s going to happen to them.

Some thoughts regarding popular fandom discussions:

It’s a plot-driven show with character-focused fans

I like to think of there being two ways to tell a story: by being character-focused or plot-driven. Plot driven shows are ones like atla, young justice, legend of korra, etc. There’s a conflict that gets introduced and the story revolves around that conflict. Character-focused shows are ones like adventure time or we bare bears, they’re less concerned about a plot line and focus more on the characters interacting with their world. Of course all stories incorporate both parts, just some focus more on one than the other. So, here’s where I think a lot of the issues about voltron and the fandom comes from. Voltron is a very obviously plot-driven show but the fandom is very character-focused. I won’t deny I loved the episodes about keith. Season 4 and 5 were hard for me to watch because I missed my boy. But that’s where the arguments come from. People get upset that their fav isn’t in the spotlight

It didn’t queerbait

I understand watching a show for representation, I really do, but voltron is not that show and that's okay. Not every show has to be revolutionary in its representation of marginalized people. I won't pretend to know the harmful tropes for marginalized people. My consumption of media is not usually diverse. But I will stand by my stance that a large part of voltron's later seasons is about the casualties of war. So of course a lot of people died. I also firmly believe that the producers had a much easier time adding diversity to their own created characters than the main voltron characters, because of rights and all that complicated nonsense. So as a result the ones who were more expendable and could die were also the same characters that they could add diversity too.

I’m gonna add the definition of queerbait here so we’re all on the same page: Queerbait is a marketing technique for fiction and entertainment in which creators hint at, but then do not actually depict, same-sex romance or other LGBTQ representation.

But here’s the thing. We were told at comic-con or one of those cons that Shiro is gay, and he had a boyfriend. They actually gave us that. Yeah it wasn’t as explicit as She-ra got, but that’s another point for later. There was no lying about it. Shiro is canonically gay, and his boyfriend was Adam. If anything, this whole thing came out of wanting Keith in a relationship with Shiro or Lance. Yes. I will admit, there are plenty of scenes between Keith and Lance, and Keith and Shiro that can be read as romantic. Someone correct me if I’m wrong but did any of the cast members tease the possibility of Kl//ance or Sh//eith (VAs don’t count, sorry but they don’t really have a say in the story)? Because unless they did, and they did repeatedly, the fandom queerbaited themselves. So many people in the fandom were so certain that Keith would be in a relationship with one of them, there was basically an all out war. Even if there was a chance, did you really think the creators (who were pretty active in early fandom days) would continue that development? It was so so toxic they were forced to shut off any possibilities of that.

In regards to minority characters

Again, I'll admit vld is not the place to go for real, proper representation. Their characters tend to be characters that happen to be a part of a minority rather than a minority character. wtf does that mean? Well, you can swap (earth) races for just about any character and it wouldn't make too much of a difference in how they act. There's some lines that wouldn't work like Lance's "I'm just a boy from Cuba" but other than that there would be no significant change. Of course this goes down to preference. Would you want a minority character whose struggles reflect those in real life and as a result be defined by that aspect of themselves, or do you want a character that just happens to be a part of a minority group but whose life is not really affected by that?

Draft 3: months after the rewatch, mostly an attempt to reorganize the previous two drafts

I’m gonna start with the negatives just to get the ranting off my chest. Season 8 was bad. Yeah. No argument there. Although I wouldn’t say it was bad in the same way Game of Thrones and Supernatural was bad. Rather, it was an interesting and complex premise that didn’t have the build up it needed and honestly needed a few more passthroughs to iron out some parts. At worse, I felt it was confusing to the point where I just accepted whatever new worldbuilding thing they threw at me. The issue with Season 8 vs Seasons 1-7 is that Season 8 had a completely different villain, and a brand new cast dynamic. We got 7 seasons (65 episodes) developing the Galra as the villain. We got to learn who they are, their motives, how they operate, etc. Not only that, but they were pretty basic and easy to understand villains. They’re conquerors. They don’t have any sort of magic, they really just use brute force to attack and enslave the planets. In striking contrast, the Alteans in Season 8 weren’t conquerors. They didn’t care about controlling the universe. They also had magic abilities that our main characters don’t understand and didn’t explore. Season 8 had villains who could create illusions, mind control, and manipulate quintessence. The Alteans are leagues beyond the Galra in terms of complexities as an antagonist, but they didn’t get nearly enough time to be fully developed.

Also, Season 8 essentially doubled the cast size. So despite the fact that we have yet to see much of Keith-as-the-black-paladin Voltron group dynamic, now that screentime is being balanced with the MFE pilots and other Garrison characters. Essentially, there were too many characters, and too little time to flesh out the ideas of this season. A side note, Haggar’s (Honerva?) motivations were lame. I think it would’ve been much more interesting if her plans were just to continue the research she did 10,000 years ago with the rift. That would’ve also brought back the rift monsters which we never got an answer for. What even are they? Instead, her goal to have a family again is really weak. Even in the flashbacks she never showed any care for the more familial aspects of her life. It didn’t make sense for that to be her drive. It also didn’t help that Season 8 came out on like the same day as Spiderverse and the antagonists for both had the same goal, but Spiderverse did an immensely better job.

Another thing that didn’t make sense to me was Keith giving the speech to the rest of the Galra. He is not the right character to give that speech. Sure he’s Galra, but he didn’t even know for most of his life. For him to say “we” like he’s also a citizen of the Galra empire feels so weird. He never grew up with the Empire’s influence, and we never saw him experiencing Galra culture with the Blade. He learned about the Galra as an outsider, and despite the fact that he’s part Galra (he doesn’t even remotely look Galra), I don’t think that gives him the authority to say a speech like that. The speech is similar to Zuko’s at the end of ATLA, and that makes me feel like it would’ve been a lot better had Lotor said it. I think even Kolivan would’ve been a better fit than Keith.

The more I’m writing about Season 8, the more I’m remembering just how messy and confusing it was. Additionally, the last bit of Season 8 was so obviously pandering to the fandom it gives me second-hand embarrassment. Lance getting those marks was so obviously referencing when people wanted Lance to be Altean in response to Keith's galra heritage. The Shiro getting married was just to make it more obvious that he’s gay, but had no build up. (There were definitely more but I didn’t write myself a list and I’m not rewatching that season)

Second, “Voltron queerbaited”. [this was posted before here]

Speaking of which, Voltron premiered summer of 2016 and ended in winter of 2018. That’s about 2 and a half years where they aired 78 episodes. That’s stupid fast, especially for an animated series. I’m constantly worried about what the people working on that show had to endure. For sure, Season 3 with Shiro coming back wasn’t written until at least Season 1. I recalled the execs demanding that Shiro not be dead since he was a popular character. It’s honestly concerning how little time they had to work on the show, and it unfortunately showed. In the later seasons, a lot of the shots were just still frames that moved across the scene. And the plot line with Lotor could’ve used some work. Although, I think Shiro being forced in there was also a reason for it being so shaky.

I honestly hate Seasons 4 & 5. I cannot tell you what happened because my brain keeps erasing it. Obviously, the lack of Keith had a huge impact on my opinion of those seasons, but it also felt like a whole lot of filler episodes, and not the fun ones with character development. With Keith mostly out of the picture, and Lance becoming the right hand of Voltron, that should’ve been a great time to develop Lance to become a second-in-command. To have him go through an arc where he overcomes his insecurities. It would’ve also been an amazing time to develop his and Shiro’s relationship. But we didn’t get any of that.

I genuinely believe Keith was supposed to stay the black paladin and Shiro wasn’t supposed to come back. Keith would be an amazing foil to Lotor. They’re both half-Galra. They’ve both been given a new leadership role that they don’t want. The middle arc always felt so weak to me, and as I mentioned earlier, the Allura/Lotor interactions were awkward. It feels shoehorned in because someone has to interact with Lotor and I guess the writers decided Allura was the best option?

Season 3-6 felt like the epitome of what happens when showrunners are forced to do whatever the execs say and have no time to properly develop their story. I’ll forever be bitter at all the character and relationship development we lost because of that. We never got to see Keith really learn to open up to the team and start to trust others. But Keith still had to get to that point, which is why I assume they had the time jump for him. It’s so disappointing because we lost what could’ve been a great character development. It also made Keith being the Black Paladin again feel cheap. We didn’t get to see the struggle he had to be the leader Shiro saw he could be. He was just suddenly leading them and they worked like a proper team.

Voltron also had a lot of plot holes. Now, I don’t expect shows to answer every question, because it’s impossible to tie everything up and leave no questions unanswered in a natural way. But, there’s a lot of things that felt like the beginning of a plot line or honestly needed some answers. Like, Lance shifting his bayard to a sword. What was the point of that if it was never mentioned again? It felt like that was an important start to an arc for him that just got forgotten. Also, what was up with Keith’s quintessence sensitivity? How was he able to sense where that druid was. How did he know he could summon his bayard to him. I think the part that bugged me the most was that Keith was the only one who did that. Also, Keith’s eyes becoming slitted during his fight with Kuron was never addressed, and I really wish it was. It felt like such a throwaway moment that could’ve been interesting to explore more. Although I’m not too upset with that one as I think we were given enough to piece together a reason for it.

#have fun with this monstrosity of a post #over 7k words #personal #my thoughts about #frxstguardian #kingofthewilderwest #honestly the only two people this post was intended for #I give up!!

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travllingbunny · 4 years

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The 100 (re-)rewatch: 4x13 Praimfaya

What do I say about this episode that hasn’t been said already? It is for The 100 what Through the Looking Glass was for Lost: a game changer, arguably marking the end of the first half of the show (though 4x05 was technically the 50th episode) and re-defining it.

This time, instead of making notes about the timeline at the end, I need to start with it: The largest chunk of the episode takes place over less than 3 hours, and is a race against time and against the upcoming death wave – just 90 minutes to make the pod intended for two people functional for 8 people and get the air recycler from the lighthouse bunker, then an hour to get to the Ring and for Raven to open the hangar door manually so they could enter before their air goes out… And then there’s time jump of 6 years and one week, or 2199 days. If feels insane, but this period was 11 times longer everything that happened in seasons 1-4 from the Pilot to Praimfaya (around 6.5 months, or 200 days).

To be fair, the season 5 finale was another game changer, and the only episode that may have had a timeline even weirder than this one – but the second time-jump, even though it lasted 125 years, did not have any of the same weight and meaning for anyone other than Monty, Harper and Jordan, since everyone else was cryo-frozen and practically continued their lives as if they had just gone to sleep a few hours before. But the time jump revealed in those last few minutes of the season 4 finale affected all the characters. They all lived through these 6 years that the show skipped, and only showed in about 2-episode worth of flashbacks (or not at all, in the case of Spacekru), profoundly changing their lives, relationships and arcs.

Apart from the radio talk between Bellamy and Octavia at the start of the episode, and two short scenes in the bunker, which are there to round up their story for this season, and the short appearance of Madi in the last couple of minutes, the entire episode involves just 8 people – Clarke, Bellamy, Raven, Murphy, Emori, Monty, Harper and Echo.

Octavia was well aware that she wasn’t ready to be a leader: “All I did was win a fight”. Bellamy tries to give her some confidence, saying she also gave people hope. But his comparison to – Prometheus – wasn’t the greatest, because, as Octavia points out, Prometheus got punished by the gods by being chained to a rock while a bird plucked his entrails. Dark foreshadowing for Octavia’s future?

The radio dies, so Clarke doesn’t get the chance to say goodbye to her mother. It’s an understatement to say that this is not the last time a radio dies and Clarke isn’t able to get through to someone.

Eh, about that…

Octavia tells Bellamy “I love you, big brother”. Bellamy tells her “I love you” back, for the second time (after he’s said it for the first time, to anyone, in 4x11). They have both made the point that it takes the end of the world for them to say it. These final episodes of season 4 are the time when several of the characters are expressing their true feelings to each other. Monty said it to Harper in 4x11, but she wouldn’t say it back at first, and lied that she didn’t love him, to make him let her die. Jasper tried to make Monty say it to him before he died, but Monty said it too late. Harper admitted to Monty that she did love him, after she had decided to live. Monty said “I love you” to Harper again in 4x12 while they were in the rover. And Murphy now talks to Monty about his relationship with Emori and Monty’s relationship with Harper, telling him that he’s experienced how love changes you, and asks him if he has told Harper he loves her.

And – totally unrelated, I’m sure – Clarke and Bellamy have deep conversations about their relationship, where Clarke wants to tell him something important, because she thinks she is dying of the radiation she got in 4x12 after she took off her helmet for a while and before Monty and Harper arrived and gave her Jasper’s. A large part of why she believes that is due to Abby’s vision. But because she implies she may die (“If anything happens to me…” – “Nothing is happening to you”), he interrupts her, because he can’t stand that idea – the same way she interrupted him when he wanted to tell her something before they separated in 4x06 (“If I don’t see you again…” – “You will!”). Interesting how those two always keep having interrupted conversations where one of them seems to want to say something important. I don’t know what that could be. They end up talking about their relationship, the leadership, Head and Heart, as Clarke is praising Bellamy for his big heart (something she always found appealing in him was his ability for love and devotion – which she saw in his feelings for his sister, even early on in season 1) and advising Bellamy to use his “Head” more, to be a more rounded leader. In the context, she is not criticizing him, she is trying to tell him he would have to be the sole leader, without her, because she thinks she’s probably about to die. She won’t, but he’ll indeed find himself in a situation where leaving her behind will really be his “only choice” – at least one that makes any sense, as staying and waiting would have only killed him and the other 6 people with him, while Clarke would have still died (or lived) regardless.

But I’m sure nothing in that conversation was deeply personal or intimate…

And later, when Bellamy is about to leave with Murphy to save Monty, and Clarke is about to go on her own to align the satellite dish so they could dock at the Ring – which will prove to be the last time they see each other in 6 years – Clarke stops Bellamy briefly to tell him something (even though they’re in a hurry, and Raven and Murphy are also present), and he interrupts her again, expecting another talk about leadership and using his head (he obviously didn’t realize the weight of that talk the first time), and she says she just wanted to say…”Hurry”. That doesn’t really seem like something you’d stop a person to tell them, when they’re already in a hurry. It’s almost like the episode was teasing that she had something else to tell him there. Now what could that have possibly been, hmm…

To be honest, I’m sometimes not sure how I feel about the Head and Heart phrase, because the fandom tends to take it too far and simplify both Clarke and Bellamy as characters and not really do either justice, making it seem as if Bellamy can’t or has never been calculating (like manipulating the Delinquents into taking off their wristbands, or pretending to be manic and self-harming while in a cell, in order to hurt himself enough so Abby would have a reason to come and set him free) or offered the more rational options (like not telling people that the knife Wells was killed with was Murphy’s, or not telling them immediately about Praimfaya until they have an idea what to do about it), or as if Clarke hasn’t acted purely on emotion so many times. I’ve seen people make contrived arguments why some of the things Clarke did (like desperately going into Mount Weather without any plan and doing everything to save the people she loves, or mercy killing Finn to spare him torture – after having done everything to save him, including offering her own life) were supposedly so cold and logical they would make a Vulcan proud, or people complaining why Clarke, who is “supposed to be a logical character”, did unwise things because she was emotional when, for instance, her best friend got murdered, or when her daughter seemed to be in danger. Both of them are, in fact, much more complex characters, and, as most people, many of their actions are a combination of reason and emotion. And it certainly doesn’t mean that one of them is more able to love than the other, or that the other has lost that ability after having to be a sole leader and assume both roles. The Head and Heart works better as a description of how they usually/typically approach leadership and decision-making at this point, where Bellamy can rouse the crowds with emotional speeches, give more successful pep talks to the others (although Clarke does great pep talks to Bellamy) and usually has a better feeling for the emotional state of the crowd, while Clarke is more likely to appeal to people with pragmatic arguments, try to forge alliances with outside forces, and look at the big picture. And I don’t think that makes their relationship codependent: they can both function on their own – and have – but they function much better together.

At the beginning of season 4, Raven arc seemed to be about leadership and having to make tough choices – she had a mini-arc in 4x03 where she started off telling Clarke that, while Raven was in charge of rations, choosing who lives or dies was Clarke’s specialty (!) when she told Clarke to make the list, but then went on to practically choose who lives or dies by denying medicine to Luna’s people. That did not end up having any consequences, but the rest of her arc this season was instead about her relationship with herself, her pain, confidence, her mind and will to live. This was beautifully resolved in 4x11, but in the subsequent two seasons, the show hasn’t seemed to know what to do with her. (It would be great if that arc about having to be the one to make the tough decisions and decide on life and death happened for her in season 7.) In this finale, she has another moment of self-doubt and regression, worrying that she is not smart enough without ALIE’s code in her brain. But after getting pep talks first from Clarke and then from Bellamy, telling her basically the same thing she had told herself in 4x11 through her vision of Sinclair, she finds the solution exactly by remembering what ALIE did in season 3 when she uploaded herself to the Ring. Something that was a moment of defeat for Raven against ALIE back then, now helped her find a way to save herself and others.

Murphy’s season 4 arc was mostly about him forging real friendships and being accepted into the group of people he antagonized and was exiled from season 1, showing that he changed during the time he was away from them and was not the same douchebag, now that he knew how to love another person. But out of the core group, someone he’s had the least amount of interaction with was Monty. This was their first serious interaction, and in fact, the first time they’ve even been in the same place since early season 1. That means that Murphy didn’t expect hostility from Monty because the latter wasn’t among the people he had seriously hurt (he had already been kidnapped by the Mountain Men by the time Murphy’s murder of Connor became known and by the time he murdered Myles, tried to kill Bellamy and shot Raven), but he had forgotten the fact that Monty only remembered his jerkass persona and behavior from the early days on Earth, and the way he kept wishing for wounded Jasper to die – and that Monty has not seen any of Murphy’s development. Of course he hates him, I hated Murphy in season 1, too! But this relationship gets a big leap forward when Murphy brings the machine and goes back for Monty together with Bellamy, and even gets a hug.

Monty’s line “Eight people in space, and one of them is John Murphy” has the same energy as Clarke’s “The last two people on Earth, and one of them is a child from hell” from 5x01.

Jasper is, understandably, a very sensitive topic for Monty. And Murphy’s ill-thought line about “coward’s way out” (which I don’t think was malicious, as he had just praised Jasper for being stronger than he seemed) probably upset him even more because he had had similar thoughts: a few episodes ago, he called Harper a coward for wanting to commit suicide.

As for the Grounders in Space, Emori and Echo, due to their completely different backgrounds and histories, have the opposite reactions to all the new things they are encountering: spaceship, lack of gravity, seeing Raven spacewalk… Emori is excited and takes to everything new easily. She was an outcast, she never had an opportunity to be tied to one place or belong to a group of people, and has no reason to feel nostalgia for the Earth she’s leaving; and she’s used to adventure and adjusting to new circumstances. Echo is confused, somewhat scared, and lost without the things she knows, and without her clan to be loyal to and work for. (Maybe my biggest problem with the writing for Echo is that the show insists calling her a spy, which doesn’t fit with anything we’ve seen of her job, her actions or personality. By all accounts, she was a soldier/captain of the guards/assassin for Azgeda, who prefers to use direct methods, brute force and violence, while being subtle, perceptive, keeping a low profile or adjusting herself easily to new circumstances are really not her strengths.) These last few episodes of season 4 probably contain the best characterization Echo ever got in the show, and it’s certainly Tasya Teles’ best acting, particularly during her suicide attempt.

While Emori finds in Spacekru a family she’s never had, Echo finds a new clan, new group of people and leader to give her loyalty to. You can already see the change in Emori – she’s starting to care about people other than John, when she asks to give Clarke more time before they leave her. Emori and Murphy joining forces to give Raven the necessary oxygen seems to be setting up that trio as a close friendship on the Ring.

After Bellamy has helped Echo with her helmet in a small moment in 4x12 and then talked her down from suicide in this episode, the show is really not subtle in trying to foreshadow Bellamy and Echo’s relationship with this:

(Oh look - the old “just falling on each other” trope that TV shows do when they want to foreshadow something will be a thing, without actually bothering to develop it! ..Wait a moment, Monty and Harper fall next to each other, Bellamy and Echo fall next to each other, and Murphy and Emori and... Raven fall next to each other? Was the episode trying to tell me something about those three on the Ring, hmmm? J/k)

I guess they thought that was enough? Which is weird, since these are merely the first steps, where these two stop being enemies trying to kill each other or their loved ones, and become almost-friendly allies by circumstance, who may, for starters, become friends after a certain period. (Three years?) And Bellamy talking Echo down from suicide, just like Echo hearing him give a speech about war and violence in 4x05, can serve as a decent setup for Echo falling in love with Bellamy. However, there’s been absolutely nothing to set up or show why Bellamy would fall in love with Echo. On the other hand… it’s debatable whether anything in seasons 5 and 6 suggests that he is in love with her. In the next two seasons, we see that she looks up to him as her leader, he cares for her and considers her one of his people (his “family”), and they are boyfriend and girlfriend (as seen in a physical relationship and occasional PDA), because they were stuck together for 6 years with just 5 other people. The show never makes that relationship look like a real romance story. And in those terms, one can argue that this is all the setup we need. This is a general tendency with Bellamy’s relationships – it wasn’t very different with Gina: while most of the other characters are at least occasionally shown to be in love with people they’re involved with, he gets these relationships that start off-screen, get little screentime, where he cares about the woman and likes her, but doesn’t really look like someone in love, especially not compared to how he interacts with his…platonic (?) partner, Clarke.

Oh Bellamy, you had no idea when you joked with Clarke back in 4x01!

It is such an interesting and heartbreaking end to the Clarke and Bellamy’s arcs in season 4 that she – after trying to be the Big Picture leader and save the human race for most of the season – ends up saving her friends, while Bellamy – who has tried to save any individual he could save today – was forced to leave one of the two most important people in his life to die.

Clarke never even knew for sure if they managed to open the hangar door and if they were alive. But while she thought she was sure to die (“My fight is over”) and was still putting all her efforts into saving her friends, no matter how difficult it was, she still has her survival instinct - after she had managed to align the satellite dish and finish her mission, she runs from the death wave into the lab.

Passing the Baton: I see what the show did there. Too bad the bottle was empty, as Jaha drank all of it in the season 1 finale. It’s also a sad reminder that Clarke and Bellamy never got to have that drink she was asking him to share in 1x09 and that he was offering her in 2z1x6. Will they have one in S7?

And the time jump is here. This scene is beautiful visually and thanks to Tree Adams’s music. I can even forgive the fact that Clarke’s lines are a bit too expositiony: she’s telling Bellamy about the bunker going silent and Eden being the only green spot on Earth, on the 2199 day that she radios him. But I guess she may be telling him the same every day, just in case it’s the first time he finally manages to hear her.

There are a lot of people who think that this was the best – or even the last moment when the show should have had Bellamy and Clarke get together. Many are really, really angry that it did not happen and that the show separated them instead. And this is where I completely disagree with a huge chunk of the Bellarke fandom. If they had both gone to space and started a relationship, that wouldn’t have been such a great resolution to this slow burn, wonderfully developed dynamic. But getting separated by a tragic twist of fate? Bellamy mourning Clarke and believing her dead for six years, while trying to honor her memory, while she is almost all alone and calls him every day without answer, for 2199 days? Bellamy learning she is alive and coming back, only for Clarke to learn he has a girlfriend now? Love triangle and a bunch of misunderstandings and a terrible conflict as a result of their separation? Coming back from it even stronger? Clarke “dying” again just a month after Bellamy got her back, and Bellamy forgetting everything else in his desperate quest to save her, brings her back with his love and faith in her? That’s a truly epic story, with the potential to be one of the best love stories ever seen on TV. Scratch that – it already is. I don’t even need to see them make out or say ILY for that to be true. I much prefer the story we got to the story that a lot of fans think they wanted.

Body count: Thousands of people, possibly millions, died all over the Earth – the majority of people who had survived the first apocalypse. Some in this episode – like everyone who was left out of the bunker. Others had already died before the timeline of this episode, as the death wave was hitting different places in the world at a different rate (as we saw in 4x01 with the people who died in Egypt). Among them were certainly the 365 Arkers who were left outside of the bunker, hundreds (thousands?) of Grounders, including Madi’s family and a lot of people from her community, and, no doubt, the wandering outcast Grounders (such as Zoran and Sienna from season 2). The show may have killed many people in seasons 1-3, but it really outdid itself here. At this point, as far as we know, only 1202 people are left alive on Earth, and 7 more at the Ring. We will later learn that 300 more humans are alive, in cryo sleep, on Eligius 4, and many others on Alpha.

Rating: 10/10 (because the problems I have with the episode are not big enough to compare to all that’s good about it)

#the 100 #the 100 rewatch #the 100 season 4 #the 100 4x13 #praimfaya #clarke griffin #bellamy blake #bellarke #bellamy x clarke #john murphy #raven reyes #emori #monty green #octavia blake

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rwby-nwbe · 4 years

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Just Finished RWBY Volume 2...

...and HOLY HECK IT GOT BETTER.

[Warning: Spoilers for Volume 2 and Long Post.]

New antagonists! More huntsman action! More characters and interactions! And the fights, tho. THE FIGHTS!

*Ahem* Okay, clearly I just need to start from the beginning...

Episode 1

We start the new season by being reintroduced to our new antagonists, Emerald Sustrai and Mercury Black. They may be villains, but they're also obviously teens (Mercury radiates prick energy) and they're dynamic is entertaining. Also, RIP Tukson, he seemed like a nice dude...

We then cut back to Team RWBY and JNPR, who are apparently on break at the moment. It's also nice to see Sun again, and we also get to meet Neptune. Anyways, someone throws a pie in Weiss face, and you know what that means...

FOOD FIGHT!!!

Seriously, THESE KIDS ARE CRAZY. Ruby can apparently surf on lunch trays! Weiss used ketchup and a freakin' swordfish like Myrtenaster! Blake used baguettes and a sausage link like Gambol Shroud! Freakin' YANG was punching things with TURKEY! JAUNE... threw a melon, that was cool; nice to see that he's losing the noodleness of his body. NORA RIPPED OUT A PIPE, STUFFED IT TO A MELON, AND CALLED IT MAGNHILD! Note to self: never challenge Pyrrha to a fight near a vending machine (or anytime, really). Ren can kick WATERMELONS, and fight with LEEKS. HOW CAN THEY EVEN DIGEST ALL THAT FOOD!?

RIP Neptune's hair though, I hear grape is hard to wash out...

Then we cut back to the White Fang and Torchwick, who are then met with Mercury, Emerald, and later the great Cinder Fall herself. I'll admit, Mercury's funny but a jerk, and Emerald... I'm pretty sure I was mentally screaming "YOU'RE BEING MANIPULATED" when I saw her and Cinder. First she doesn't give Emerald a hug, then she tells her to not think and just obey? RED FLAGS. RED FLAGS EVERYWHERE.

Oh, speaking of Cinder, while she does radiate boss energy, I'm glad that I don't personally like her. I don't know what it is, but it might be the fact that she's treating everyone else like her pawns (and considering she used a chess piece later in this volume, I wouldn't be surprised). I mean, good villain, but like any good villain, I want her to get roasted, though that might not work given her Semblance.

Also, Roman Torchwick, you beautiful jerk, never change. I love ya, but I also love seeing you get dragged, which is what Emerald did to you at the end of this. Yep, I'm on board for this season!

Also, the new opening. I thought nothing could top "This Will Be The Day." I was wrong. Haven't listened to all of it yet, but "Time To Say Goodbye" SLAPS.

Episode 2

So, several things. There's board games, insert Yu-Gi-Oh reference here... Yang has too much power. Also, if I remember the lingo right, then this is also the episode where the White Rose shippers got crumbs, the White Knight shippers were once again denied, and where the Iceberg shippers were born (while the rest of us were titling our heads in confusion with Jaune). Jaune continues to be a social dork (what's with the blonde boys blowing Blake's secret? Don't think I've forgotten about Sun...). Blake is being consumed with the burden of RESPONSIBILITY. I feel that Blake. Oh, and the ending...

Why do out villains have to be clever enough to infiltrate the actual school!? And Weiss' "We're doomed." I hope that's not secret foreshadowing...

Episode 3

Jaune fails yet again at wooing Weiss (at least Yang comforts him at the end), and the gang begins their espionage. We meet Penny again, Weiss deals with her past, albeit briefly, and Penny... oh boy. She's hiding something, and the hiccups make it obvious. What could it possibly- oh...

Episode 4

Most of us had our suspicions, what with Penny's awkward demeanor and ludicrous super strength, but yep, she's a robot! Aw, get yourself a real one like Ruby. Oh, and Neptune's useless with Yang around. Speaking of, HEY, good to see you again, Junior! So Blake and Sun intercept the White Fang rally and... oh fudge they got giant robots. BAIL! We also get to see Neptune's weapon and Sun's semblance (before they nope off the road and leave the rest of the fighting to RWBY, while they go off and get ramen, the jerks...). Also, nice to see that they have team attack names (I believe some of them double as ship names), and this is where we get to meet the Ice Cream Queen Neopolitan (not to be confused with the now officially dubbed Ice Queen Weiss Schnee. If even the villains are calling you that, then congrats, you have a new title)! Neo then proceeds to give them the slip, and I personally believe that Yang only disliked Weiss' pun because it highlighted her failure.

C'mon Yang, at least she's TRYING!

Episode 5

Pyrrha is a combat queen. 'Nuff said. Suck it, CRDL.

Oh no. Mercury is both a smart aleck AND smart. This will not end well.

Blake, take a break. No, seriously, working yourself to death just because you think you can doesn't mean you should. You will only feel worse. TAKE A BREAK.

Well Jaune, mission failed. You'll get her next time.

Pyrrha Nikos. Sweetie. We're talking about Jaune Arc here. He's not gonna get the hints you're dropping unless that "hint" is a full blown irrefutable confession so obvious that even he can't screw it up. I know you want to help him because you like him (and yes, even like like him), but it's clear Weiss isn't interested, at least not now. Capitalize on that!

And our villain group continues to be dastardly. *Chuckles* We're in danger.

Episode 6

The dance draws near, and it seems that both Blake AND Jaune could use a pep talk!

Poor Blake. It appears your faunus trait makes you more cat-like than just the ears.

Also, poor Ren. He just wants a nice bath, but alas, the power of bromance.

Oof, tough love from Yang. Pretty good flashback, though. Also, Pyrrha, your selfless nature will be your undoing, listen to Nora.

...oh God, if I'm saying "listen to Nora" when the world isn't ending, we might ACTUALLY be in danger.

Aw, the dance looks fun. Poor Jaune, tho. Don't worry, at least Yang, Blake, and Sun are having a good time (and this is the part where I realize I'm becoming a SunnyBee shipper, crap). Poor Ruby, having to wear heels. Don't worry, Ozpin will keep you company.

Oh crap, the villain kids are here! What are you up to!?

Episode 7

This one gets the runner up for my favorite episode. Alternatively, I give it the title "Team Leaders Know What's Up."

Jaune, you may be a dumbass, but you're the rare "Surprisingly Competent Dumbass With A Heart Of Gold," and you get my respect for that. Being socially awkward with Ruby? Comedy gold. Putting things into perspective for Neptune? Props, my dude. Comforting Pyrrha? Friendship goals (even though it should be more than friendship goals, but hey, you put on the dress, I'll give you that). Nice dance moves, by the way, JNPR.

As for Ruby... drinking Jaune's punch? Iconic. Noticing Cinder sneaking away? Nice. Fighting her in heels of all things? You, my dear red reaper, are on another level. A shame that Ironwood couldn't get there faster and that Cinder had to bail, but oh well.

Also: Penny continues to be heckin' adorable. I will never NOT stan.

Episode 8

HEAR YE, HEAR YE, THE NOBLE DOG ZWEI HAS GRACED US WITH HIS ADORABLE PRESENCE. Tremble before his ability to fit in boxes and melt Weiss' heart. Oh, and RWBY gets exposed to Ozpin, but surprise! Even Ozpin doesn't have to play by the rules! Though that could get him in trouble with Ironwood later...

Why does this show keep showing me characters that I want to get to know better in record time!? Team CFVY looks so interesting, and it's nice to see Velvet again! Ooh, I hope we see them more later...

Also, Professor Oobleck, I know we saw a bit of you in Volume 1, and I wish we got to know you better. You seem delightful.

Episode 9

Okay, my previous statement of DOCTOR Oobleck still stands. I love this chaotic fast man.

He's both funny AND deep! His reaction to Zwei? Comedy gold! Him picking apart RWBY's motives and the Grimm? Disturbingly thought provoking, but enjoyable. Also, Ruby, you're great, but you're not entirely a genius, you're just a little bit lucky.

In conclusion: there are a lot of characters to stan in RWBY. Dr. Oobleck is one of them.

Episode 10

We learn about WBY's motivations, now excuse me while I go crying in the club right now.

OH NO, RUBY GOT KIDNAPPED! AND SHE DOESN'T HAVE HER SCYTHE! FRICK, it's a mindset kind of deal! Without her scythe, she thinks she's useless! Oh, and Roman's there too, that's not good.

...that is REALLY not good, Oobleck! Get down there, all of you! Wait, is your thermos... your WEAPON!? HOW THE FU-

(Sidenote, I looked up the name, since most weapons have them and I'm impatient for them getting name dropped. "Antiquity's Roast," eh? Fitting...)

Episode 11

So... this episode.

Poor Ruby. She failed to fight back, she almost ran away but then it turns out Melodic Cudgel is also a GRAPPLING HOOK. Thank god Yang and company finally busted their way in.

...why are Roman and the White Fang going kamikaze with those train car bombs? Oh right, the Grimm. Crap, that ain't good.

Ah, Oobleck. You may have accidentally repeated Ruby's line, but a swig of your thermos/club/flamethrower and then using it to bat Zwei into a cannonball of death redeemed you!

So Neo's back. She's skilled, sassy, has something going on with her eyes... Oh boy, Yang's getting outclassed by a pipsqueak. That's gotta suck.

Does every faunus (baring Blake, Sun, etc.) hate the SDC? Seriously Weiss, what did your father DO!?

Roman, do not get flirty with Blake. Junior tried something similar with Yang way back in the Yellow Trailer, and he got socked in the face. You deserve that kick in the head.

Oh look, Yang's mom is here! Nice, now Neo can't kill her (don't you dare, you little ice cream, I swear...). Oh. OH. That's a big sword. Yeah, ya better run, Neo. You ain't winnin' this fight. Great, now I want to know what Yang's mom's deal is. Figures she just warped away afterwards...

And now the Grimm are above ground. Yeah, seems like a good time for the season finale.

Episode 12

Now THIS is my favorite episode.

Look at that, Jaune's getting good instincts! And it's nice that Team JNPR was able to help RWBY. Also nice that Jaune can actually kill a Grimm now. Good job, man. You earned Pyrrha's smile of approval.

As much as I'm wary of the antagonist trio, I'll admit, they can fight good. Especially Emerald, her guns are sick. Why am I warming up to her so fast? What is this magic!?

...CFVY. CFVY. WHY ARE Y'ALL SO BADASS? Seriously, Yatsuhashi's carying an entire sword and a half. Fox just pulled a Ren and caused a Grimm to explode. Coco... God, Coco- WHY DOES RUBY HAVE SO MANY QUEENS, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!?

"You just destroyed my favorite clothing store. Prepare to die."

I-FREAKING-CONIC!

And she just murders Grimm with a BRIEFCASE. That turns into a GATTLING GUN. BECAUSE OF COURSE IT'S ALSO A GUN. (BTW, Gianduja is a really cool name for it.)

And now I want to know Velvet's weapon! It doesn't look like much now, but apparently it took a semester to build. And we know that Velvet can fight based on what we saw with her and Fox, so how does she ADD to that!?

THAT TRACK IN THE BACKGROUND, TOO! "CAFFEINE~" HELL YEAH!!!

Ooh, Port and Oobleck teamup! Oh no... THE GLYNDA IS MAD PEOPLE. I REPEAT, THE GLYNDA IS MAD! SHE HAS NO PATIENCE FOR YOUR GRIMM BS!!!

Welp, Roman got handled, though I doubt it's for long... Yay, RWBY finally gets a break! Oh boy, trouble brewing between Ozpin and Ironwood, that ain't good.

...bull man's back. Uh, guys, Adam's back! And he's helping the bad guys! THIS IS REALLY NOT GOOD.

...oh, so your name is Raven? And that's what you look like under the mask. There's the resemblance... Oh boy, where have you been all of Yang's life?

...

So all in all, Volume 2 was even better than Volume 1, in my opinion. It's like they took the first volume and amped it up to 11. Longer runtimes, great comedy, great action sequences, great CHARACTERS. It's just a complete trip! 10/10, would ride again. Welp, it's getting late, so I can't immediately start Volume 3. But what Volume 2 gave us is good enough to tide me over.

...I am so glad I started this series. Well, this is goodbye for now. Cheers, internet!

-Mathewton, the RWBY Newbie (22 March 2020)

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samrosemodblog · 4 years

Photo

Looking back at my art from the 2010s. I went through and picked 1 piece I drew/wrote from each year that I felt either showed off my best art, my most iconic art, my best improvement, or was simply a personal favorite of mine.

There were a lot of possible choices and it was kind of difficult to narrow it down to 1 per year, since each piece tends to encapsulate so much more than just a single moment per year. Especially with stuff like Motherly Scootaloo or Aria’s Archives encapsulating so much history in a single picture. But under the Read More are my choices at the end of the decade:

1.) My Old Drawn Blog # 53

Man, the years before MLP existed were really weird for me. I knew I liked drawing and telling stories, but I had no consistent direction on what I wanted to do with my art. I was still jumping between different comics and ideas, and in 2010 I was going through some of the worst depression I’d ever felt in my entire life. I hadn’t even had the experience of being kicked out of the first place I tried to move out of home to yet. It was wild.

As for the ‘joke’ that seems ‘so obvious’ in this post, I had a running gag back then of the face the Flower makes, known as the ‘screaming window’ face. I drew it whenever I needed to draw something screaming in pain or fear for maximum comedic effect. Maybe I’ll bring it back some day lol

2.) Silent Ponyville

I couldn’t NOT put Silent Ponyville on this list. I was gonna have both 1 and 2 as different spots, but I wrote them both in the same year. That seems insane to me now?? Like WOW, I just WROTE those fics and then they became fandom-wide phenomenons. To the point where even in 2019 I’m still getting people drawing fanart of it, or people telling me “Yeah, I got into Fanfiction because I read Silent Ponyville”.

I don’t know if I’ll ever make a creative piece as universally known in a fandom as Silent Ponyville again, but I sure would love to make an original piece of art that is as beloved as Silent Ponyville one day, if not more so. It’s a testament to the fact that if I put my mind to it, I can create a really amazing horror experience, and I know I do plan to do so again some day.

3.) Pirate Dash x Dead Rainbow Dash

Who doesn’t love shipping wars that get large numbers of people involved? This is probably the second most involved in the ‘community’ I got, though it was certainly the better experience of the two. And it was all just for silly fun at the end of the day.

And funnily enough I never ACTUALLY shipped these two, I just thought the reactions from the creators seeing them be shipped was hilarious, so it just kind of grew from there. It was all fun and games at the end of the day, and made for a good memory, and a pretty dang ambitiously drawn pic for the time!

4.) If Twilight Wasn’t a Princess

2013 was surprisingly sparse as far as ambitious projects or art pieces go. I was in full swing with Motherly Scootaloo, and nothing really ‘amazing’ happened in 2013 for the blog. Which was surprising. But Season 4 of MLP DID happen! And it started with the Princesses going missing, and authority over Equestria being transferred to Twilight as the next closest Princess around. And with Cadance ruling the Crystal Empire, I thought, who did that leave to rule if Twilight HADN’T been able to temporarily take the role?

And judging by the length of the comments section on DA, a lot of people found the idea hilarious as well lol. Blue Blood NEVER showed up again for the entire run of the show, and it’s a shame because there was a lot of hilarious joke potential they could’ve done with him. But ya know, the show is what it is is, and this joke still makes me laugh.

5.) My Time

My first original music video, with a song I had commissioned and everything! While it wasn’t my first video involving music and MLP, it was the first time everything was mine in one way or another. I wish I could write music, but the ambitiously talented AllLevelsAtOnce and Queen Mickey the Sass Master made this project well worth the time and effort put into making it!

And of course, it encapsulates the kind of futures I wish the CMC had acquired, with Sweetie Belle finally achieving her foreshadowed talent of singing. Apple Bloom built the stage, and Scootaloo likely would’ve ended up the choreographer if not for her baby. Sadly we shall only ever have fanon for that.

6.) Demonloo

Love or hate the wedding arc of Motherly Scootaloo, this will always be one of, if not my top, favorite panel from the entire arc. Scootaloo looks just so appropriately menacing, and the effects placed on her are glorious. And then of course, I love the little twist of “That’s not just an audience visual effect, she actually looked that way in the comic” rofl

Motherly Scootaloo was a trip that got weird with my inclusion of magic and magical beings from the show, so much so to the point that if I were to ever remake the whole thing one day, a LOT of that would be toned down. Probably to the point Chronus wouldn’t exist. But hey, things are the way they are, but I will forever love the art of this arc.

7.) A Motherly Scootaloo Christmas

If there ever was a picture that basically summarized the entirety of Motherly Scootaloo, it was this picture. Pretty much ever major character of the stories over the years was in the picture (minus Starlight) and showing their relations to everyone pretty much. I remember this picture basically killing me when I was drawing it, but was really proud at the time of how it came out. Of course, I could see how to improve it now, but I’m not gonna lol

It’s still crazy to me how many years Motherly went on for, and how much time and effort was put into it. But I’m still glad I did all of it over those years. It taught me so much about art, and about myself, and in the end, taught me the skills I needed to make art a true career for myself. And I’ll always love it for that. And introducing me to the best friends I’ve ever had, of course.

8.) Twilight-Midnight is PISSED

Look. I recognize the Aero crossover had some convoluted issues with it, but god DAMN if I didn’t enjoy drawing that fight scene! I GENUINELY loved every panel of it! I can only hope that in the future the fight scenes I draw will be just as fun to draw as these were. And as visually impressive!

That’s ultimately why this won my pic over say, the time-glitch arc with her Mom. The explosions, the action lines, the visual foreshortening, I’ve never seen such visual improvements in a single update from me quite like I have these entire scenes. When I push myself to be amazing, I can pull off some fantastic art, and I need to do it more!

9.) A StarTrix Christmas

2018 had a LOT of really good choices. Like. Too many choices. So many art pieces I was super proud of, so many pieces that showed growth as an artist, was a personal favorite, that people loved... So in the end, I went with the piece from the end of the year that is still a piece I hold up as truly a cultivation of how much effort I can put in to a picture.

Also it’s Christmas related. I LOVE Christmas. Never enough Christmas.

And as much as I hate FriendLight Glimmer, I still ADORE StarTrix content. It’s the good food for me, one of the rare things that the later era of G4 got right for me. And since I can make them be however I want in fanon, making them a GOOD loving couple was top priority for me, and I just adore them together. I truly do. And this picture is beautiful because of the love I put into it.

10.) Fate of the Lost Princess

I couldn’t NOT put Fate of the Lost Princess on this list. It’s too important to me, means too much to me, and shows my growth as an artist the most. And of the pages of Fate of the Lost Princess I have done so far, the piece of Tina and Noah on a bus stands out the most for me because, I ACTUALLY managed to make it look and feel like they were on a bus! I was so worried about this page and I spent so long working on making it look right, and in the end, I succeeded in a way I never thought I could!

It feels good to end the decade on my original webcomic, showing just how much I’ve grown as an artist. Going from a successful fanartist, to a successful original artist, that still does fanart on the side, but I’ve grown into my own person now.

I’ve lost track of how many times I tried to start an original comic, only to stop working on it and let it fade into obscurity. Fate of the Lost Princess is the most effort and work I’ve put into an original comic before, and I’m so proud of myself for not only getting as far as I have, but proud of how much effort I plan to put into it in the future, and how much effort I’ll put into the comics beyond Fate of the Lost Princess.

It represents everything that is me from the last 10 years, and I hope it’ll be the fantastic start of the 2010s I want it to be. And I couldn’t have picked something to be more proud of to wrap this decade up with.

#Personal Art #Looking back at the decade #Art of the 2010s #Silent Ponyville #Motherly Scootaloo #Tumblrpon #Friendship is Magic #StarTrix #Fate of the Lost Princess

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clarasimone · 5 years

Text

A perspective on the forewarning fascist iconography in GoT

Was it yesterday ? I reacted to a mind-provoking aesthetic analysis of GoT reblogged by @felixthemudnescat ... which basically no one reacted to (LOL) but... chatting with @scratchybeardsweetmouth and @ser-jorah-the-andal, I felt like revisiting it to add observations to my initial reaction. Even if it’s too heavy-meta for such a beautiful summer day. @felixthemudnescat pardon me for not using the reblog button cause I want to do this under the dot-dot-dot so as not to weigh down the usual degree of levity in our tumblr group ;-)

Also I only realized today that you actually reblogged without commenting and I assumed, maybe wrongly, that you adhered completely to what you reblogged. And that might not be the case, so I’ll alter my text accordingly...

So here we go... (my input comes at the end)

Anonymous asked:

Girl. Gurl. Who the fuck is Leni Riefenstahl? Y'all Sansa stans pulling the most elaborate nonsense out of your asses to justify shitty writing. Or you twist everything and make D&D sound as if they're the most brilliant minds the world has ever seen LOL

fedonciadale answered:

Hi there!

If you would have taken one moment to look up Leni Riefenstahl - and I assure you that it is not difficult to look her up - you would not have combined your question with a comment about the writing…. Look her up and learn a lesson about how tyrants manipulate.

The visuals of the show are alluding to famous/ notorious shots of Leni Riefenstahl. You would agree that the visuals are something that gives us hints? In addition to the dialogue?

Sansa stans have complained about the writing since season 5…. You all - I’m just assuming you are a Dany fan, correct me if I’m wrong - had no complaints about shitty writing in season 7?

Look I am not saying that the way D&D got to DarkDany this season was well executed, but the foreshadowing and the character development are there. And actually from all the things the show did Daenerys is one of the better from book to screen. The hiding of her path to ruthlessness by filming from her POV is well done in season 1 to 6, and the triumphant visuals are part of that.

Visuals are part of the foreshadowing. It did not come out of nowhere and it was always a major plot point - as has been argued by book readers for ages. That Dany blew up King’s Landing was always to be the culmination of her arc. And it was always meant to hit you in the gut. So, as you do nicely put it : get your head out of your ass as and realise that you have been duped. And ponder about why? Was it because Dany is beautiful? Was it because she had the occasional bouts of benevolence? Was it because you thought she was entitled to an ugly chair because she suffered? Was it because she was set up against people coded as villains, so that you don’t care about how she defeated them? Was it because she is a woman and woman can’t be evil?

Take your pick and learn something about yourself and your own bias, how we can be duped by a tyrant! If you do that you are doing exactly what GRRM intended his readers to do by writing Dany like he did.

une-nuit-pour-se-souvenir

(in fiction, all these logos meant to reference the nazi flag)

fedonciadale

Reblogging for @une-nuit-pour-se-souvenir ’s excellent additions. I could not have done that because that film is actually forbidden in Germany.

justacynicalromantic

Ohhhohohoho the last one - I am😏 at people who half a year ago threw stones at me when I argued that Dany has always had parallels with Hitler.

felixthemudnescat

Found this shared on Quora, had to re-blog!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi @felixthemudnescat long time no see !

I had not seen the original posting of this. My first instinctual reaction to this iconographic/aesthetics research is to object to the simple equation of Daenerys with Hitler. No fiction character will ever match the scope of evil (for lack of a better word) this man and his ideology represented. By ricochet and association, it makes every fan who was moved by Daenerys a potential Nazi sympathizer and that makes no sense. It’s also unnecessarily hurtful and insulting both to these fans and the real World (those who suffered and still suffer from The Holocaust). This said, the iconographic evidence you provided through your reblog has weight and is exactly what I referred to in some of my posts as the visual clues given in the show as to Dany’s *possible* arc, its *possible* finality (more on the *possible* further down); clues which scream at you if you have the cultural baggage to recognize them, and when you binge-watch the series 3 times in one month instead of watching it an ep at the time over 8-9 years. The middle seasons are especially ripe with these visual signs because they’re tagged unto somewhat repetitious narrative (Dany freeing/conquering one city at a time with little intimate character dev scenes). And @fedonciadale is right in wanting fans to look more closely into themselves; we shouldn’t close ours eyes on the shady ideological and moral symbols casting shadows on Daenerys throughout the seasons. But they were shadows. I don’t think they were meant to be the beginning and end to all things explaining the character.

@felixthemudnescat or @fedonciadale don’t you think D&D were building something much more subtle than the end result they opted for and which gives weight to your comparative iconographic essay ? For many seasons, the fascist references or foreboding reminders of Targaryen madness never outweighed the characterizations of Daenerys as a young woman who, regardless (or because ?) of her thwarted and abusive upbringing was trying to conjugate her own suffering and road to affirmation with the conquerer’s path given her. She might not have questioned the necessity/validity for her to conquer her way back to Westeros, as the only way she could get home, but she didn’t do it through simple rampage either. She did care to free the people she needed to build her armies. She did have a heart. This she did spontaneously; it came from a deep source within her, not a calculated one. Even if, of course, it turned out to be an astute strategy. And that sets her apart from the Nazis and its leader. At their best, D&D conjugated the two: giving us a rounded character build-up and evolution with ominous symbolic shadows lurking about her. @scratchybeardsweetmouth also made me realize, I who have not read the novels, that this humane aspect of Daenerys is brought even more to the foreground in the books. I quote @scratchybeardsweetmouth: “In the books (...) she repeatedly communicates firsthand with her freed people. She hears their opinions, is not afraid to mingle with them, always finds a way to protect them, even went out of her way to help heal some when a disease was about...” Without getting as much detailed info on her compassionate stance and actions in the show, it’s certainly the impression she indeed left us with, and it’s what her most faithful and steadfast companion, ser Jorah, sees in her and repeatedly says out loud, lest we forget it ;-) (“You have a gentle heart,” etc.)

So I thought it was IMMENSELY daring of D&D (or the novelist I’ve not read yet) to give us that scene where Daenerys is called Mhysa/Mother by the slaves she freed because the scene was inhabited with so many conflictual signs: I was all at once moved and sooooo worried as to where this could lead. Moved because, bottom line, these slaves are freed, actually freed, it’s the start of something. Dany has always given those she freed a choice to leave if they so wished… Moved because it’s a woman effecting the freeing, not a man… Moved because it’s Dany, the girl who suffered, who was a slave of sorts, that does the freeing, not her mentors…. Moved to see a culture refer to their freer as “Mother” (what a great homage to mothers, to women in general) / buuuuut also worried to see a culture refer to their freer as “Mother” because it seems to infantilize them on screen.

Here we could also open up a whole debate about the malaise one can feel in seeing an Aristocratic White Woman free Third World People but I urge you to go read @khaleesirin‘s meta writings on the subject. She makes a great case for us NOT to see Daenerys in this fashion. Regardless of her looks and lineage, the novels (and GoT, I insist in my chats with @khaleesirin ;-) shows her to be like the people she frees: an Other. She like then is homeless, uprooted, migrant, disenfranchised. If we fail to see it in Essos, the show really drives this home once Daenerys sets foot in Westeros where NO ONE welcomes, understands or appreciates her. (Which suddenly complexifies our rapport to Sansa and the Northerners we grew to love and respect since they seem not to be above xenophobia, and racism.)

But to get back to the Mhysa scene. Once the worrying starts, I can’t seem to stop it, even as I am moved to tears. Literally. Because of the above-mentioned qualities of it, and also possibly because of the Christ-like iconography it uses to celebrate Dany (”Let the little children come unto me” - if I may paraphrase the New Testament -- and thanks to @ser-jorah-the-andal for the reminder). And I’m always partial to feminizations of Christ; I love it, I think it’s sublimely subversive :-) But I’m also kicking myself for liking this because I fundamentally don’t want a Messiah saving the Third World, I want the Third World to save itself... and I’m worried. I’m really worried as I watch Daenerys triumph in this scene because we know she’s lacking important elements in her “psycho-affective and socio-political tool kit” (regardless of the quality and loving care of advisers now on hand, *cough* Jorah -- in the books @scratchybeardsweetmouth tells me she needs no advisor to keep her moral compass straight) and, so, will this get to her head ? Will she get drunk on her Messiah complex (and of course she does at the end of season 8) ? And what will happen if those she freed disappoint her (again flashforward to the end of season 8) ? And how will she rule them exactly (ditto) ? And, finally, yes, worried because, the fascist iconography is there and I’m going: omg where are they going with this ?

Here I want to open another parenthesis, also brought on by something @ser-jorah-the-andal wrote me: “if this is what they meant in the first place, they sure as hell didn’t bother to tell anyone in the cast so they could act accordingly, tho a case could be made that Dany never saw herself as the villain so that’s why they didn’t tell Emilia.” Indeed I’m sure the cast, or at the very least Emilia Clarke, were never told about the endgame, or never cued to the quoting of fascist iconography in some of Daenerys’ triumphant scenes. Clarke’s shocked reaction upon reading the last screenplays is a testament to her profound surprise... and this raises ethical questions, doesn’t it ? I mean in the ethics of creative partnership. It’s a recent debate possibly because there are so many tales of directors manipulating actors into giving them the performance needed to embody and communicate the discourse they want to leave us with. But the professional in me cringes here a bit. You’d hope they would trust actors enough to let them into what it is exactly they’re supposed to be creating...

This said, up to the moment before “the bells” scene in season 8, I had nonetheless seen D+D and EC give us a woman struggling morally with her choices. That’s important to state. And to get back to the above demonstration of fascist parallels, well, please, let’s point out that the Nazis and their leader never did struggle morally with what they were doing (or if they did, History bears no markers -- I’m talking about the Nazis here, not the German people as a whole). And I was prepared to see Daenerys fail because she never healed, she never achieved psycho-affective soundness (shall we get into the chapter of her misconstruing what love is ? Her relationship arc with Jorah speaks volumes) but I was expecting her to feel remorse if she did succumb to true fascism; remorse to the point of self-execution if you will, because that’s the kind of moral person D+D had been building for 7 years. But after D&D sent her over the edge, they erased all the previous nuances they had built into her, and I believe, tried to explained it away with a broken heart, megalomania and madness….

So if their plan was truly to make us see her as a fascist leader of the scope we’re talking about here, the way the above visual essay seems to suggest, they would have fleshed out her character’s arc accordingly throughout the seasons, and they didn’t. There were clues as to the possibilities -- yes, Dany stepping out for her final speech is absolutely shot like Triumph of the Will by Riefenstahl… but it’s also infused with other iconographic references. That image of her merging with Drogon’s wings belongs to the fantastic, and makes her into a formidable and powerful Id, which can be construed as a positive subversive marker. And some of us do celebrate WrathfulDany for this reason....

The reality of GoT is that there were no actual scenes developing her fascist ideology. So let’s not confuse allusions to fascism with actual fascism. With all D+D’s failings towards the end, Daenerys remained a more nuanced and contradictory character than that. She is NOT Hitler, please......

The iconographic research you provided in your reblog @felixthemudnescat show us one important aspect of Dany’s subtextual arc but not the full picture. It’s missing the heart and the suffering behind the soul who fell from grace.

I hope you don’t construe this long winding reaction as a slam. I know you come from a very specific place in regards to Daenerys. I just thought the excellent research you provided deserved to be reblogged, but with an added perspective ;-)

#got meta #got analysis #daenerys targaryen #Ser Jorah Mormont #fascism

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mobu-time · 4 years

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Read the tag and out of curiosity, how would you pacing the broccoli arc for season 3?

lmao I'm sorry you probably weren’t asking me to go so hard on this but uhhh this is my favorite arc and I've got some opinions

Here’s how I’d love the arc to be paced

Episode 1: Youkai Hunting

-Chapter 93

-probably include and end with the Has It Begun? My Era? panels from Chapter 92

Episode 2: Future Prospects + Carried Away

-opening from chp 94 (the youkai getting pulled into the broccoli)

-Chapter 92

--skip right over has it begun bc it was in ep1 and go straight into next scene

-Chapter 94

-end with dimple leaving after the “eat shit, dimple” smackdown I guess

Episode 3: The Psycho Helmet Cult Part 1(things start to get weird)

-Chapter 95

-if they wanted to, this would be the episode to add in a new scene with Tsubomi or remind the audience that takenaka was a character at one point

--basically as just a bit of prep for the other two arcs

-either ends where vol13 ends (teru setting out for the broccoli) or ends where the teru fight cuts off (just after dimple reveal)

--I think ending with the dimple reveal is the way to go, plus this way there’s a fight scene in this episode and not two in the next one

Episode 4: The Psycho Helmet Cult Part 2 (things go wrong fast)

-Chapter 96 and 5-6 parts of Chapter 97

-The quest to destroy the broccoli

-The teru v mob fight

-probably end just before or after dimple actually shows up

Episode 5: Dimple and Mob

-The rest of it

--@bones pls do go ham with the dimple v psycho helmet fight

Here’s how the episodes fit into your mp100 season patterns, which are Very Correct btw

I big agree with you about having the youkai hunting as the first episode. It’s a super solid way to start the season. It’s also especially funny bc this chapter starts with a parody of the show’s usual introduction to psychics, replacing “psychics” with “youkai hunters”. It’s a good piece of mob growth+slice of life, at some point Amakusa wonders if the broccoli is attracting spirits that want to use its life energy or whatever (foreshadowing), plus inukawa (who plays a bigger role later in the season) is in it.

For the second episodes, I would def say it’s just fun stuff for most of the ep, but I think another thing the second episodes do is that they end with something that sets up the third episode and is usually the start of a big chain of events. S1: join BIC, S2: reigen puts up the website, S3: dimple leaves

Future Prospects is important to include here bc it’s an easy way to reintroduce mezato and the psycho helmet cult plot. It’s also some of Serizawa’s only screen time this arc and we can’t let it go to waste.

Ep3 is still mostly a mob character study, bc a lot of the chapter is mob dealing with being (or suddenly not being) recognized as the psycho helmet cult leader + reacting to the spread of the cult’s influence in general.

Ep4 is the beginning of mob’s concrete The Broccoli Must Be Removed quest, which continues into Ep5

Ep5 -Dimple was a friend r.i.p.

Side Note: I desperately want the omake adventures of Hoshino and Asahi to be referenced in some way. Maybe when the shiratori brothers show up they can have a “what are the other awakening kids up to rn?” 10 second bit.

And now here’s the reason WHY I organized things the way I did, but it’s under a read more bc this post is already too long

So full disclosure: the reason I paced the broccoli arc the way I did is entirely bc it’s my favorite arc and I want them to take their time with it. It’s also an arc that requires a LOT of setup before getting to the payoff, so I’d like the arc to be more like 4-ish episodes instead of the 3-ish episodes you predicted. This isn’t an arc you can just kind of start. Part of why the separation arc worked as well as it did was because they were subtly setting it up all season with little comments here and there between reigen and mob. It wasn’t something that just happened one day. They had to lay the groundwork and build off of it, and this arc isn’t much different.

Another thing is that the vibe of this arc is one that will take some effort to establish. The slow, creeping influence of the psycho helmet cult is unsettling, and then suddenly getting caught up in the effects of the widespread brainwashing is even worse, but in order for those feelings to really come across we have to spend time with them. Slowly realizing that something is very wrong and then being horrified by it is something that, unsurprisingly, has to develop slowly. And by ‘slowly’ I mean spreading it across two episodes (3-4) instead of shoving it all into one.

This arc, more so than most of the others, is driven by a complicated combination of emotions that can very easily be misunderstood if they aren’t displayed fully. I know this because when I was reading this arc for the first time I read through it too quickly, and had to start over because I didn’t pay enough attention to what was going on and confused myself. One of the only weaknesses, imo, that the anime has is that they have to cut stuff out. This is usually fine, but sometimes it can have a significant impact on the audience’s understanding of a character. It’s something that happened with ritsu’s arc. It wasn’t really That much different in the anime, but a few lines were cut here and a few shots were skipped there and the result is that ritsu’s fall is a bit harder to actually understand. At least for me, somehow the manga only has a few more lines and yet it makes ritsu’s character and his whole character Arc much clearer.

I feel like something similar happened in the anime with dimple. There isn’t much aside from a few cut omakes and punching Suzuki in the face that’s significantly different, but a decent amount of time his lines get cut or altered a tiny bit over the course of the series and ultimately the result is that manga dimple is a slightly different, and slightly fuller, character than anime dimple. Idk fam I just watch people’s reactions and I worry that the fact that dimple actually has feelings that can potentially be hurt isn’t something the anime-onlies are prepped for.

If the anime doesn’t take its time in this arc, and decides to cut some things here and there the way it has in the past, it runs the risk of 1. Being all around harder to follow, 2. Feeling out of character, and 3. Not hitting nearly as hard. Feeling out of character is the riskiest part of all this because mob and dimple ARE acting out of character. That’s the point! They both get carried away and they fight and they do and say things they shouldn’t and usually wouldn’t do, but if it isn’t clear that that’s what’s happening then their behavior can feel confusing or even disappointing.

One more thing. I love mob psycho fight scenes. I really do think they’re some of the best I’ve seen, and there are a lot of fights in this arc I can’t wait to see animated. It can kinda become a problem though if emotional content screen time is sacrificed for action content screen time. Not to beat a dead horse (or cat in this case), but, uh, *cough* mogami. I’d rather they go ham with the animation in the confession arc and spend more time in this one on the other stuff.

There’s just a fuck ton of shit that happens in this arc and fitting it all in before episode 6 without rushing anything is gonna be a process. It’s possible, but it’s really gonna take some planning.

#mob psycho 100 #mp100 manga spoilers #mp100 #broccoli arc

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blayzez · 6 years

Text

So I recently rewatched Voltron s1e01 - The Rise of Voltron to compile screenshots of my favorite Lances of that episode, as I believe that episode animated him BEAUTIFULLY while the rest of the series tends to make him more off-model than any other character (don't deny it, you know it in your heart it's true).

Anyway, while doing that, I made a few... observations. As per the usual with pilot episodes, a lot was packed into this episode. Some of it probably seemed pretty throw-away, early season stuff that won't really make reappearances in the future. However, I am seeing some stuff that actually DID reappear -- sometimes late in the series. I am referring to these as planted seeds; these seeds were planted in the very first episode, but some of them are just late bloomers.

So I have decided to make a meta about this. I want to point out the different seeds that were planted in this episode and when they actually bloom later in the series. Keep in mind that some of these are very obvious and stuff that everyone knows, but I feel they should be here for reasons I'll explain later (and just to have these seeds in a nice compilation).

DISCLAIMER:

I have nothing against ANY ship. While I don't ship many things myself in this show, I'm not against the ships people have for this show, regardless of what those ships are. That said, my confidence in the endgame ship is Klance, and as such, other Lance- and Keith-related ships may not be shown in the best light in this post as one of the points I make in this meta is WHY I believe Klance will be endgame. I will not use the full ship names other than Klance so that this post will stay out of the tags of those ships. THAT said, know that I do not find the ships I'm trying to disprove unhealthy, wrong, or bad in any way, I just don't believe they'll be endgame. Please go into this with an open mind.

All that said, let's get this show on the road!

I am starting with the most obvious and well-known seed:

Okay, we all know about this one. Pidge being iffy about the Kerberos mission, eventually revealing to Shiro that the two people who accompanied him on the Kerberos mission were her father and brother, showing us that she desires ro find them in space. We all know this, the show has beaten us over the head with her arc repeatedly. Still, this seed was planted in this first episode and so it warrants mentioning. It's also noteworthy that this seed did not fully bloom until season 7 -- one season away from the finale season. This is important, but I will get to it later.

Onto the next one!

Another obvious seed. Allura's insecurities as well as her expectations of herself and the Voltron crew to carry her father's legacy. This seed is still growing and got a lot of focus in seasons 5 and 6, where it bloomed the most. This is a seed that I don't think CAN blossom until the series is complete, though, as bringing peace to the universe is how Allura and Voltron can fulfill her father's legacy. Not much to say here, just posting it for prosperity's sake and to show that, like most of the seeds on this list, this seed did not/will not fully blossom until the very end as well as the fact that it's something we see throughout the show and does not get ignored.

As for this next one:

I hesitated to add this one because it is a bit of a reach. After deliberating, I decided it was worth adding in.

So Allura was integral in Pidge's season 1 arc regarding Pidge's identity. I've noticed that Pidge seems to be reciprocating come season 7 -- Allura helped Pidge by trying to get her to admit to her true self but also keeping it a secret and letting Pidge be to one to reveal it, and now Pidge is Allura's MVP in getting back the castleship.

Allura is impressed by Pidge in this scene. This is actually Allura's first impression of Pidge, as Pidge didn't say much before now. And her first impression of her is that Pidge is extremely intelligent and has a mind that can be relied on. I think it's possible this is a seed that is sprouting now in season 7, when Allura is relying on the intellect of Pidge and Pidge's family get back a piece of Alfor's legacy -- the Castle of Lions. Allura even eluded to this in The Feud, when she chose Pidge to leave the game show and said it was because Pidge and her family have the best chance of finishing what Alfor started. And that started right here in this scene, I think.

So, next seed:

This is a small seed, and an unexpected one. I've always viewed Iverson as a jerk and thought this scene no different. Fresh off the heels of season 7, I rewatch this scene and realize how... honestly concerned Iverson sounds. He doesn't sound angry or too business-like or gruff, he sounds concerned and confused and seems to actually have Shiro's well-being in mind when he requests they put Shiro under. His voice, especially when compared to how he spoke to the Garrison Trio, is softer and hints that he really isn't as bad a guy as we've all pegged him to be. Come season 7 and we see how right that actually is. He ISN'T a bad guy; he's a strict guy, yes, but he has everyone's best interests at heart and honestly feels gutted when that entire crew is wiped out.

I know that was a small seed, but it still counts. Next seed, ahoy:

This explains a lot regarding Allura's connections to the lions, but we don't really see the fruits of this until season 6. In season 6, Allura was able to use her powers from Oriande to take Shiro's soul from the Black Lion's consciousness and place it into Clone Shiro's body. Yes, she has powers from Oriande -- that's how she was able to mess with Shiro's soul like that -- but it was her connection to the lions that allowed her to connect to Black Lion's consciousness in the first place. Oriande didn't do that -- Alfor did, and this scene proves it.

This next seed is... wow:

This one caught me by surprise because holy crap how did I miss this???

Okay, so I made a post talking about that Lauren Montgomery art and how it's playing into the show in unexpected ways. Please go read that to understand this to the fullest extent.

This scene? This scene foreshadows Lance's inclusion in Shiro's arc. Shiro offers a hand -- his Galra hand -- to Lance for shaking (Lance being the only person in the room aside from Keith whose name he knew). Lance looks at the arm trepidatiously for a split second before smiling and reciprocating the handshake.

This moment is focused on for a reason and I can't believe I missed it. Because isn't it interesting that Shiro offers his GALRA arm despite it being a symbol of his trauma and not something he'd be eager to flaunt? Isn't it interesting that the episode puts so much focus on his handshake with LANCE, but his handshake with Pidge is barely given any thought?

It IS interesting, and here's why.

Lance was much more important to Shiro's arc than we thought. While Keith brought Clone Shiro to an end, and Allura brought the real Shiro back to life, Lance was the support he needed. Clone Shiro wasn't doing so well. I mean, he's a Galra-created clone being controled by Haggar, of course he's not doing well. The ones who suffered the most from this were Allura and Lance. Allura stood up for herself and refused to be pushed around and sometimes managed to get her way. Lance, however, respected Shiro too much to do more than try and keep the peace. He didn't stand up for himself, didn't call Shiro out on his bullcrap, just tried to keep him calm and keep the peace among the team. It's no wonder that Lance is the one Clone Shiro goes to about how he's actually feeling. And what does Lance do? He supports him. Comforts him. Promises him they'll figure it out together. He's worried at first, much like how he showed worry before accepting Shiro's hand in s1e01, but he ultimately puts that aside and accepts Shiro.

This scene was the planted seed. It was subtle, so subtle I completely missed it, but here it is. And it took a while to bloom, BOY did it take a while! Took until season 5 before we got to see it blossom. But it did and Lance was the support Clone Shiro needed to stay sane until Keith could come in and fix the situation.

Speaking of Lance:

This seed came to fruition in season 3 -- it was definitely foreshadowing. Most of the other paladins get are shown alone when shown their lions. There are two exceptions to that (one of which I will get to later).

This seed is the first exception. Lance and Keith are both shown with the Red Lion here, rather than Keith alone. Come season 3, Lance becomes the Red Lion's new pilot.

With this next seed:

This was planted in this first episode and didn't really see the light for day for AGES. We were told from the very beginning that Hunk is the one who is meant to help keep the team together, but we don't actually see that happen.

Until season 7.

Hunk's arc in season 7 seems like it came out of nowhere (his family arc kinda did), but it was foreshadowed from the very beginning. There was always going to come a time when the team seemed like it was falling apart and it'd be up to Hunk to keep them together. And in season 7, that's EXACTLY what happened. This seed actually sprouted in season 6, when Hunk got their Galra allies to stop arguing during a crucial moment. It stagnated then, until season 7 came along and this seed finally bloomed in full.

I love this next seed:

This seed is one of my favorites, because the principle of its existence helps prove a point I will make later in this post.

It's Leifsdotter! This is a seed that didn't begin blooming until season 7. I know, the showrunners could have just needed a design for an mfe pilot and pulled hers out of the episode, but there are two things that make me disagree with that notion:

1. Her design is so much more... detailed and not standard-background-character-ish than the rest of the students in that scene. She's not the focus of the scene and doesn't even speak, yet her design makes her stand out. The showrunners WANT us to see her.

2. Hers is the only mfe pilot design pulled from that episode. That group had multiple different character designs and all of them could have easily suited the mfe pilots. But the showrunners didn't do that, which makes me think this was very deliberate and planned out.

I will be getting to these points soon.

Now for the seeds that have been growing throughout the series but have not reached full bloom. First off, we have...

Okay, this one is super subtle. Shiro actually has had a hand in Lance's romance arc since this first episode. We have a very tiny hint of Shiro's sexuality with this shot:

Color theory is often used in media to portray subtle clues to the audience about something happening in the background or as foreshadowing. This scene is the latter; it foreshadows Shiro's arc by using a rainbow in the background, right above his head, and the lemur-sloth-thing that's guiding them blocks the rainbow off from extending to Pidge as well, keeping the rainbow strictly to Shiro. So we had a subtle hint in this very first episode about Shiro's sexuality.

And I think that alludes to the expectation we all have of Shiro helping Lance with a sexuality arc. It makes sense, and it's interesting seeing that Shiro has kinda of been involved in Lance's romantic arc this whole time! Right from the first episode!

We see it continue throughout the series; the people that are most annoyed with Lance's flirtations are Shiro, Keith (who isn't really verbal about it but almost always looks disgruntled), and Allura (who is often on the receiving end of said flirtations). Shiro interrupts flirtations on multiple occasions and has shown a lot of annoyance with it.

This... kind of continues in season 7 with the reveal of Shiro being gay. He doesn't have much interaction with Lance, but I think his sexuality being revealed here (however... too subtle it may have been) is paving the way for the climax of Lance's romance arc in season 8.

The next seed is not nearly as subtle:

Black Paladin Lance! This is the second exception to the paladins + their lions scene I mentioned earlier.

I know a lot of people lost hope in this, but not me. There has been way too much set up for this, and as I will talk about soon, almost everything that has been set up has come to fruition.

So let’s look at this scene.

The Green and Yellow Lions have scenes with their paladins alone -- no other paladin is in the shot. For the Red Lion, both Keith and Lance are in the shot, which foreshadowed Lance eventually taking over the Red Lion -- which happened in season 3. Then we have the Black Lion. Three people are in that shot -- Shiro, Keith, and Lance. Shiro is, of course, the original Black Paladin. Keith took the helm in season 3 and then again in season 6 - present. So this shot foreshadows that. This leaves Lance.

I want to point out how this shot is set up. Shiro is the largest, which makes sense as he was the Black Paladin for the longest -- seasons 1, 2, 4, 5, and half of 6. Keith is the second largest. Again, this makes sense as he's been the Black Lion's pilot for seasons 3, half of 6, and all of 7. So he has been the pilot for the second longest. Lance being the smallest makes sense if he's only to be the Black Lion's pilot for a short while. So theory time!

I believe something will happen to Keith in season 8 -- he'll be captured or perhaps Honerva mind-controls him. The Black Lion then enlists Lance to be its pilot long enough to get Keith back, who will then take over as the Black Lion's pilot and Lance goes back to Red.

And it makes sense, considering how this shot is set up, for it to have taken this long for Lance to be the Black Lion's pilot. He's the smallest in the shot, smaller than Keith, and Keith had only just gotten back to piloting the Black Lion. With the way the series is set up, it wouldn't have made sense for Lance to pilot the Black Lion sooner; seasons 4 and 5 (keeping in mind that seasons 3 and 4 and seasons 5 and 6 were meant to be single seasons each and were split up last minute), while not featuring Lance -- although Lance has always been developing in the background, it's just slowly done and not at the forefront -- do show the changes he goes through in losing Keith to the Blade of Marmora. We see him become isolated, ignored, and any confidence he had built up being Keith's right-hand was shot. Season 6 was about resolving the overall problem of which Lance's issues were a side effect. Season 7, meanwhile, allows us to see Keith coming back into action with a clearer mind while also showing us how much he relies on Lance despite being a much better leader. You can see the difference in Lance's actions in the show between seasons 4 and 5 and seasons 6 and 7; in season 7 especially, he's much more in-action, plays a much bigger part, and shows how necessary he really is. This was all needed for Lance's arc -- getting rid of this flow (even if season 4 was not the best by any stretch of the means) would have weakened Lance's arc and made him less able to be the Black Lion's pilot.

Another point I want to bring up is the "following in his [Keith's] footsteps" thing. This is something that has also been a constant in the show -- not the phrase, but the action. Because Lance is ALWAYS following in Keith's footsteps. ALWAYS. He literally followed Keith's footsteps in this episode to save Shiro. The series shows how often he follows Keith -- they're constantly next to each other, Lance often wants Keith's glory, and in more serious points, he takes over Keith's lion, takes Keith's role as right-hand man to Shiro, gets a sword like Keith gets.

Quick diversion, on the subject of the sword, Lance has yet to use it despite having it for three seasons. In my opinion, this was to show us how alike he is to Keith and serves little purpose beyond that (perhaps will have a plot point sometime in season 8).

Back to the point, Lance has always followed Keith. "Don't follow in his footsteps," was something that was a focal point of the scene it was said in. It was that scene's finale line, a line that we were supposed to pay attention to and remember, and then the episode shows Lance disobeying that repeatedly and constantly following Keith's footsteps. This seed was planted -- a whole scene gave us focus of it being planted -- and it has slowly grown and blossomed over the course of the series. It hasn't fully bloomed yet, but season 7 did not ignore it like some might think. There was a bump in the road, but we saw him really slide into the role of right-hand man to Keith, showing himself reliable and actually being better as a right-hand than Keith was. He's followed in Keith's footsteps and, in some ways, has surpassed him. We also saw his relationship with the Red Lion and how similar it is to the relationship the Red Lion had with Keith. He's been following Keith's footsteps throughout the show and that hasn't stopped -- season 7 made sure to showcase that.

One last point I want to make is Lance's progression. His main issue in leading the team in this episode was his ego. Season 7 is such a huge jump because Keith leaves the team in Lance's hands and we see how responsible and logical Lance is in doing so, making keeping the team safe his number one priority and not even caring about the glory. When Keith put his, Pidge's, and Kosmo's lives in Lance's sniping hands, Lance had a chance to brag to his sister and the mfe sniper that was with them. He didn't. He explained what his gun does in a no-nonsense manner and left it at that. There was no ego, not talk of the glory he'd get for his skills, no showboating. He stayed on the task and his only concern was getting his job done right and keeping his teammates alive and safe. That seed was planted in the first episode -- that was his starting point, and much like his leadership seed, he has grown and bloomed into something much bigger and better than what he started out as.

And there's my point here: His leadership skills have grown. This seed is the seed of his leadership, and it has slowly grown as the show has gone on. It sprouted in season 3 and now season 7 is showing how beautifully it's blossoming. A seed planted in this episode didn't really start to blossom until the second-to-last season! As mentioned before, yes I will come back to that particular point soon (we're almost to the culmination of these "soons" and "laters", I promise).

I swear this next seed is important please bear with me:

I know the A//urance in season 7 scared a lot of people off, but PLEASE bear with me, I swear I have a point. Also, I promised Klance would be a big part of this meta and I was not lying so just... be patient. This is important.

Lance's arc has always been romance and that became the most obvious here. I want to say that out of all the un-bloomed seeds on this list, this is the one that is nearest to completion because his arc with Allura will conclude -- I predict -- early on in season 8.

Allura is important to Lance's arc, we can't deny that. His crush on her is superficial at first. This is proven later in the season; when Allura sacrifices herself so Shiro can escape the Galra ship, Lance is no more worried about her than the other paladins. Honestly, Coran and Shiro are more worried about Allura than Lance is. And that's saying something considering how much he worries about her later in the series.

The A//urance seed -- which I believe is mostly platonic and only dips into romance a little bit but will go right back to platonic -- was planted in this episode. It doesn't really grow much until season 5. That's not to say Lance's thing for Allura is not mentioned or focused on until then. No, what I mean is it is not DEVELOPED until season 5.

In the first two seasons, it's basically a running gag, there's not real seriousness behind it. Season 3, after Lance supports Keith's leadership, shows a turn in their relationship from running gag to actual friendship. However, season 3 doesn't show us much of this -- we only get focus on it in episode 2. After that, their relationship is sidelined for Lance and Keith's development.

We got a scene or two in season 4 of their friendship, but relationships aside from Pidge's and Matt's are not really explored or focused on in this season.

That's where season 5 comes in, because that's when we see them have serious scenes together that are akin to their scenes in s3e02. It's also where we see that Lance's crush on her is no longer a gag. In fact, until season 6, it's practically non-existent. Season 5 instead focuses on their friendship. Season 6 focuses on his one-sided crush.

And season 7...

Here's the thing: Season 7 isn't as A//urance-friendly as is believed. Sure, they get two nice scenes together, one including mutual blushing, and both including teasing from Lance's sister. However, there's something much, much different about their interactions here than in the previous seasons, and that is Lance's attitude.

Because Lance doesn't seem that terribly happy that Allura might be reciprocating his crush. He smiles, yes, but he only really blushes because of his sister's teasing, and he denies that Allura could possibly have any feelings for him. While, yes, that could be due to his insecurities, but if season 7 showed us anything about Lance, it's that his insecurities are finally lifting and he's finally gaining confidence in himself and his abilities.

If season 7 showed us anything about their relationship, it's that Allura initiated both of their scenes. Aside from that? Lance... actually kinda of ignored Allura for most of the season. His attention was more focused on his family and, well, Keith.

And that's something I've noticed has been consistent throughout the series since season 3.

In season 3, once Lance became Keith's right-hand man, his flirtations stopped COMPLETELY. He not only stopped flirting with girls in general, he even stopped flirting with ALLURA. And this stuck throughout the rest of season 3.

Season 4 had Keith leaving the team, yet Lance's flirting didn't pick back up. I believe this was because he really missed Keith and wasn't quite ready to fall back into his old habits. Season 5 is much the same.

Now his sudden flirtations with Allura (he only flirts with her on two occasions, I must point out) in season 6 seem out of nowhere. However, there was some build-up to it, what with his development with her in the previous season and the fact that he was jealous of Lotor's closeness with Allura. Not a lot of build-up and was still kind of sudden, but there was some.

However, I want to point something out: He started flirting again in the same season that has Keith's return. I believe this was deliberate and will play an important role later on.

Season 6 is also when we find out the depth of Lance's feelings -- it's not love, but it's a much deeper crush than he used to have.

This seed was planted in the first episode and was focused on quite a lot throughout its introductory episode and the episodes through the rest of the season. It took a while to grow, but it finally is and it is nearing it's blossoming. Like I said, I believe this seed will reach its full bloom early in season 8.

The last seed, however, will not reach its own full bloom until the end of season 8.

And the very last seed is-- oh come on, you know exactly what it is.

Yes, it's Klance. Of course it is.

Okay, so Lance's and Keith's relationship was one of the focal points of the episode. The seed that is their relationship was planted here and it's been growing this entire series. We've watched it grow and bloom, its growth being a focal point of the series, and season 7 did not ignore this. Actually, season 7 showcased their growth. It showed how much their relationship, which was once built on jabs and competition, is now built completely on mutual trust and respect and devotion. For God's sake, Lance called Keith the future! Compare that to how he interacted with Keith in the first episode and you see how much their seed has bloomed and how much season 7 did not only NOT ignore this growth, but actually made it one of the season's main themes.

I want to bring up these screenshots:

This might be a reach, but I find it interesting that Lance is standing in between Allura and Keith in this shot. Like, right smack dab in between them. Meanwhile, he isn't even looking at them. He's looking at Coran's pod, his face being in neutral territory. To me, this screams a subtle hint of Lance and his two love interests.

His front is facing Allura, his back to Keith. This seems like a visual to Lauren Montgomery's "He knows what he wants but not what he needs" thing. He wants Allura, is facing her, and he has his back to what he actually needs because what he wants and what he needs to not align. His face is in looking in neutral grounds, showing that while he prefers one side to the other, both sides are options.

It's also interesting to note that Allura is above him because of the pod. Later in the series, we find out he believes that Allura is above him, that he is beneath her, inferior to her.

Keith is below him but is stepping up to reach Lance's spot. He stays on the steps for a bit, but...

He obviously makes those final steps and a few minutes into the scene, he is standing beside Lance (something that happens a lot throughout the series). This is interesting because while Lance always secretly viewed Keith as being above him (i.e. better than him), him and Keith have always been on level ground with neither of them being superior to the other -- they just have different strengths and weaknesses and it takes Lance time to realize that just because he and Keith don't have the same strengths doesn't mean Keith is better than him because there are things that Lance is better at Keith in (shooting, being stealthy, strategies, etc.). They were always on level ground. Lance and Keith, neck-and-neck.

We have this shot:

In this one, everyone is looking at Shiro, and everyone's faces has the expression of excitement (and trepidation for Hunk because he's concerned about the bodysuit's size in proportion to him). Everyone is looking at Shi- no wait, Lance is definitely looking at Keith.

See? His line of sight is pointed directly at Keith. Someone pointed out that he supposed to be looking at Shiro, that his line of sight, if continued, points to Shiro. This is what I had to say to that:

"See I thought that, too, which is why I didn’t catch it until now. Lance’s line of sight COULD be leading to Shiro, but instead of looking at his face like everyone else, he’d be looking at Shiro’s man-titties. And while they are very nice, I doubt Lance was actually looking at them. If he was supposed to be looking at Shiro like the rest of the team, his irises would have to be right in between the top and bottom lines of his eye outlines. That’s how everyone elses shes are animated – even Keith’s irises are positioned upward to properly look at Shiro. Hunks irises are more down, yes, but that’s because hes taller than Shiro. But Shiro is slightly taller than Lance, so the position of Lance’s irises if hes looking at Shiro doesnt make sense as his irises would have to right in between the top and bottom lines of his eye outlines. Instead, they’re pointed down, at Keith."

Here's a quick edit I did to show where Lance's irises would have to be to be pointing to Shiro:

NOW he's looking directly at Shiro. But that's not the official animation we got. No, what we got was this:

While this could boil down to Lance having small irises, making it difficult to animate exactly where they need to be, I don't buy that. Hunk's irises are small in this shot and were animated fine, and s1e01 has some of the best animation the series has seen (I'd say only The Black Paladins tops it). The animators knew what they were doing. This was deliberate.

Then there's this screenshot:

I just think this one is pretty.

I also want to show just how often Lance and Keith end up standing next to each other. Here's a link to a compilation someone made of all the times Lance and Keith stood next to each other in just the first episode.

This? All deliberate. There is no way this was done accidentally, considering how often it happened in just this one episode and how often it happens in the series henceforth. One post would not be enough to showcase all the times they stood next to each other throughout the series. They're next to each other more often than any other character -- they always gravitate to each other, are constantly and consistently animated next to each other, even in season 7.

A lot of people assumed that A//urance and Ka/cxa was now set up for the endgame ships, but I think those people are jumping to conclusions waaaaaay too quickly.

You see, here's the thing about endgame ships.

They happen at the end.

Any ships being set up in season 7 are going to be rushed because they are not endgame. Josh Keaton keeps repeating that this is being written as a slow burn -- he wants us to remember that, so he's constantly saying it. Only Klance fits that term.

I want to bring in the Legend of Korra for just a second to prove my point.

LoK did not start off with Korrasami. One of the creators (Bryan, I think) really liked the idea of Korra and Asami being together, but they were operating under the assumption that they only had one season and Makorra was considered the easier relationship to develop. So Korra and Asami started out somewhat as rivals -- what with both girls liking the same guy, and Korra being suspicious of Asami's father and allies. Then they got greenlit for more seasons. What's the first thing they do? Season 2 dismantles Makorra and the season finale makes sure we know that these two are NOT getting back together and will not be endgame. Seasons 3 and 4 then go on to develop Korra's and Asami's relationship, but it was done subtly, to the point where there were many fans that thought the romance in their relationship came out of nowhere. They were wrong -- the friendship between these two was probably the most developed one of the series. Asami ended up back with Mako in season 2 after he and Korra broke up, but their relationship was shown to have ended season 2-3, where Asami began developing with Korra more. Both Asami and Korra had romantic relationships before ending up as each others endgame, and their relationship didn't take its real dramatic turn until season 4 -- the series' finale season.

Keith and Lance's relationship share a LOT of similarities -- which makes sense considering how many of Voltron's showrunners worked on Avatar and LoK. Klance is practically genderbended Korrasami IN S P A C E. A lot of what I mentioned up above about Korrasami fits Klance a lot -- both relationships started out rocky, turned into a friendship of mutual trust and respect, and are the most developed relationships of their respective series. The difference is that Voltron's showrunners knew how much time they had and didn't have to divert the relationship's endgame like LoK had to do with Makorra/Asamako/Korrasami. Klance's relationship development ended up much slower but much smoother because of it.

I actually regret judging season 7 as harshly as I had, because there was a lot of goodness in there and it really didn't kill Klance (a conclusion everyone, myself included, jumped to). A//urance and Ka/cxa? Yeah, it's there. But they're so tacked on that they're practically afterthoughts. The relationship that actually got focus this season? Klance. We saw the inherent trust Keith has in Lance in almost every episode, and we saw the high opinion Lance has of Keith as well as how much Keith leaving hurt Lance more than anybody else. Their relationship was a focus in season 7, one that I feel a lot of people overlooked because of a few tacked-on scenes featuring the other aforementioned ships. Honestly? I'd say that while this season isn't as Klance-centric as season 3, it probably fits in the number two spot. Don't believe me? Go watch it again, like, REALLY watch it and see how much Klance meat is in this season. Because there's a LOT.

Their relationship has always been a focal point of the series, and while some seasons didn't focus on it as much as others (compare seasons 1, 3, and 7 with 2, 4, 5, and 6 -- keeping in mind that seasons 4 and 5 hardly had Keith in it and seasons 2, 4, and 6 still had some noteworthy Klance moments), it has still been the most focused-on and developed relationship.

And that started with the very first episode.

The very first episode planted their seed and that seed's growth has not been ignored, contrary to popular belief. And that's where the "laters" and "soons" come in.

Because see the finished seeds list? All of those seeds were planted in the very first episode. And how long did it take for them to blossom? A LONG TIME. The earliest one we got was the Lance and Shiro seed, and that took until SEASON 3 to bloom. Another took until SEASON 5 to even SPROUT. The rest? Took until season 7. SEASON 7. That, to me, is proof that the showrunners have not thrown out the seeds they've planted in the beginning; it's just taking a long while for them to sprout and blossom. The fact that most of them took until the second-to-last season to fully come to fruition is absolute proof that early-planted seeds are not suddenly being ignored. We just need to be patient. Just because these seeds aren't blooming fast enough for our liking doesn't mean they're not blooming at all. It's not over until it's over. We still have another season for those seeds to blossom, so let's look to the future with hope and confidence!

#voltron #voltron s7 spoilers #klance #lance #keith #shiro #pidge #hunk #allura #leifsdottir #meta #season 7 positivity #my post

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xoxofandomlives · 5 years

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What was Voltron s8???

Alright here we are, finished with Voltron forever, thank god. I should never picked up on this series. Please, please for the love of God, if you have not watched this show, DO NOT WATCH IT. It is such an dissatisfying ending and underwhelming build up with SO much lost potential. Here’s my review and spoilers under the cut.

1. ALLURA DIED. What was the point?! To show how high the stakes were in this war?! Allura literally has gone through way too much for the show to kill her off. She lost her family, her planet, her people, her father’s AI, her leadership, her crown, her agency, got her heartbroken, and now gets ripped apart from her new found family? What kind of writing is this??? It’s not fulfillment??? Sure I get there was foreshadowing in s5 especially with the White Lion reference, but you continuously tortured Allura and beating her up over the course of eight seasons, how does this entitle her losing her LIFE? This was not satisfying whatsoever and she didn’t even get to say goodbye to Coran?????? Funny how this same reasoning was applied to Adam, a character we knew nothing about, but oh! he’s related to Shiro and he’s gay??

2. Honerva. The resolution of her arc especially had me HEATED. How does one look into her past coMPLETELY change her ways??? I thought there would be some complex hand-to-hand combat scene or Allura duking it out with her, but no. One simple conversation and the power of friendship!!! I was already kind of annoyed that her big reason for all this was to reunite with her husband and son which literally sounds like a Disney villain and not a complex written one. When you write her as a big bad, her intention from the beginning should have at least evolved into her wanting a happy ending with her husband, but this literally only became clear in the last season. That’s poor writing and characterization.

3. Lotor???? What was the point of episode 2 showing all these signs that Lotor was a victim of abuse and validating his justified anger (not actions) toward everything IF YOU WEREN’T GOING TO REDEEM HIM. Even worse is you show his melting corpse. What even. I have been upset since s6 at the VLD team for writing Lotor’s arc like that and now I’m fuming. Humanizing Lotor and doing nothing to further a redemption arc????

4. Some of these fight scenes were so underwhelming and when Voltron gets beat down, here comes Keith and his power of friendship speech!!! What kills is that Shiro barely even serves any purpose and doesn’t give these speeches? When Voltron and the Atlas merged (which also was a weird and offputting decision b/c wow nothing like more robots when we HAVE SO MANY), Keith gives the whole we are stronger blahblah but the fact was Shiro was standing like right there in the same panel and he doesn’t say anything??? Like this is SHIRO’S SHIT.

5. The characterization was so off putting and almost everyone was a shell of what they once were. Hugest offender was Lance obviously, how was he reduced to just being worried about Allura all the time and not being able to be proactive??? What sorta bugs me is that it was only Keith comforting Lance the whole time, and not even Allura could provide him ANY bit of comfort. Lance resorted almost 90% of his dialogue about Allura and his insecurities about being with her were never addressed directly to her face. For a VLD romance, you sure loved to make Klance moments look so beautiful while making your main romance look really sad and tired everytime they’re together.

Not to take away value from the Klance sunset scene (because that scene was so beautiful), but if you had Allura say similar words to Lance, you could have written SUCH a better and more believable romance between them. This all felt so one-sided to me. I was all for some cute Allurance. Instead, you leave Lance at this epilogue where he isn’t who he was and it’s because of Allura. You give Lance the girl he loves and SHE DIES? What kind of slowburn romance were you aiming for VLD? They were done sO DIRTY. I fondly shipped Allurance from s3-s5, but they were like destroyed this season. Nothing about this season indicated this was a slowburn romance from the beginning. THIS WASN’T EVEN ENDGAME. And when Allura is saying goodbye to each Paladin, she says something thoughtful about who they are, but just Lance is like i love you and gives him marks to remind him FOREVER of his loss. say what now?

6. Too many characters??? VLD decided to make s8 the season where everyone has to be mentioned once or twice, but it really showed that they didn’t know how to handle their characters and couldn’t focus on developing the bonds of the Paladins even more. What felt super ironic to me was that the team reallyyyy only looked a family to me when Allura made her decision to sacrifice herself and after she died. Like we haven’t seen all of them interact like this in so long, maybe like s2?

7. Don’t even get me started with that half ass wedding. Shiro deserved so much better and he was not the type of person to “leave the battle behind.” That wedding was a cheap attempt at damage control and it GREATLY backfired.

Well these are my main criticisms; there were so many more, but these were the main ones. I only will think of Voltron fondly from s1-s6 and s7 and 8 can rot in hell. Those were AWFUL seasons and honestly destroyed my perception of this show, but I will do my best to fondly see the series for what it should have been.

#voltron: legendary defender #voltron #allura #lotor #klance #honerva

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snkpolls · 5 years

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SnK S3E12 Poll Results (Manga Reader Version)

The poll closed with 487 responses. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Please note that this is the results of the manga reader poll. Anime only watchers are suggested not to read if you do not wish to be spoiled about certain events! Anime only viewers, click here to view your poll results!

RATE THE EPISODE 481 Responses

The final episode of the first half of S3 was another banger with positive reactions. Compared to earlier in the season when manga readers seemed more dissatisfied with the adaptation, we are happy to see that the final episodes of the arc turned out to be a much more positive experience!

Considering this episode was essentially just the calm before the storm, I was pleasantly entertained by it. Not the best episode because not a whole lot happened, but still it did what it needed to do.

I was super worried they would change something in this episode but thank Ymir-sama it's okay.

IT WAS AWESOME AND THAT ENDING IS ONE OF THE BEST THING THIS ANIME HAS EVER MADE!

This episode was so good! And funny! And angsty at the end! All the ingredients that make a good AOT episode

Very good, the preview was spooky and the whole episode had humor to lighten the mood, some emotional stuff and High Anxiety Cliffhangers to finish us off. Its gonna be a long 6 months.

HOW WOULD YOU RATE THE FIRST HALF OF SEASON 3 AS A WHOLE? 481 Responses

Overall, the first half of season three was satisfying for manga reading poll takers despite the changes.

All in all, absolutely stunning season. From the bottom of my heart, thank you WIT.

It was a really good episode. It followed manga perfectly. Every ep. of Uprising should has been like that. Too bad it wasn't, that why I rated the whole series pretty lowly. Honestly, I expected something better. But that was fine, not the worst. Yet, I would have changed a lot.

Really good way to end this half of the season. Can't wait to see the next half. It was nice to see a "calm before the storm" episode.

It was a brilliant idea to end the first part of season 3 right there, by doing this we were given proper construction to this arc.

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE SEASON TAKING A BREAK UNTIL APRIL? 481 Responses

About 37% of respondents are sad to see the anime take a break, but nearly half of voters are fine with the break stating that it’s not too bad of a wait, with some who are even looking forward to the breather for a bit (we’re looking forward to having a good rest as well although we will miss the anime!).

I'm okay with it since it means that we will a get a really well made RtS arc. But they really should've said that the break was going to be this long earlier. Or just called it season 4

Waiting is something we SnK fandom know how to do, unfortunately

As a manga reader it's easy to not be too upset since we'll have plenty of chapters during that time.

It's nice to get a breather before shit hits the fan.

I don’t mind waiting 6 months when I know it means the animation will look a lot nicer as a result

I feel like i would have been less upset if they just told us from the start how its gonna be... I hated the uncertainty

If it means a fantastic second cour then I'm all for it. I mean my life is empty and I wish I were dead, but other than that I've accepted it!

6 months for preparing myself to let Erwin rest in peace

I AM NOT READY FOR RTS THIS IS LITERALLY THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO A HIATUS WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WIT

WAIT Studio

Does Annie have some space next to her for the next 6 months?

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING SCENES WERE YOUR FAVORITES? 480 Responses

The Survey Corps’ sendoff was the most favorite moment of the episode, followed closely by Eren and Jean’s nostalgic fight. Levi and Erwin’s talk after the meeting made it to third most favorite scene of the episode, followed closely behind by Eren, Armin and Mikasa’s conversation. Everyone losing their minds over meat was another favorite.

Erwin was so perfect, I loved his little laugh, I thought the whole interaction with him and Levi was done so well... god, I'm gonna miss him so much, it actually hurts.

Good breather episode, comedy gold with the dinner scenes, and the send-off was just as fun as it was touching. Also, the extra scene was creepy and great, but I hope anime-only watchers don't spoil themselves trying to find the meaning to it...

I think they did a really good work with the Erwin x Leviv talk, and EMA talk... Since enfatizing Erwin's reasons, and showing Armin's, It became more clear Levi's choice in future

I loved EMA talk... it made me pretty sad because of the events which now are taking place in the manga. That was good to see them together in the anime.

My Eruri shipping heart was in tatters, I tell you. I've been looking forward to the ""I'll break your legs"" scene for ages now, and shit, watching it was a literal punch to the gut. Erwin's beautiful roar of victory on the wall, his final ""SUSUME"" just... I was in awe.

Sasha nomming on Jean’s hand was even funnier animated

The 104th dinner scene was just perfect! It's been so long since we had a scene of such warmhearted camaraderie, it really brought back all my season 1 feels for the babies. Beautifully done.

Overall great Episode, really liked how they foreshadowed Erwins Demise and his conversation with Levi, EMA talk was great too, and the serumbowl scene made for an amazing cliffhanger

DID THE GLITCHED ENDING SCARE YOU? 483 Responses

The abrupt reminder that SNK is a horror anime definitely seemed to work! The majority of people were scared by the ending at least a little bit, and some were thoroughly terrified.

"Blink and you'll miss it" my a**

Honestly it reminded me of how horrid the show actually is. I forget it's not all cute and funny scenes with a tinge of "yikes" that happened, but instead vice versa

I knew it was coming in the ED but didn't know WHEN and I was just anticipating it like a dark corridor in a horror movie XD

Moreso that scare me, it got under my skin and just stayed in my head the rest of the day.

Scare is not the right word. The option I'm looking for is FUCKING WRECKED

I learned that apparently a lot of you watch shit alone in the dark. But to answer the question, no, not at all.

It thrilled me to see them cleverly setting up the next half of the season this way

Only the Levi's distorted "you guys". The glitched ending was awesome

I saw some screencaps of it prior to watching so I was somewhat prepared but it was way creepier than i thought it would be, it spooked me

It wasn't actually SCARY, but I fucking loved it. So twisted and creepy

rip ears in that ending, it makes for some great youtube reactions though lol

Well, mark me down as scared and horny

SHOULD ZACKLEY’S ART BE REALIZED? 478 Responses

We suppose the real question is, when will Zackley’s “art” stop becoming something we ask about? :P All in all, most of you agree that it should not be seen or talked about. 21% of you are still finding humor in it.

HOW MUCH DID YOU ENJOY THE SEQUENCE OF EREN AND JEAN FIGHTING? 483 Responses

Most of the viewers enjoyed Eren and Jean’s antics with 84% rating the scene with a 4 out of 5 or higher.

Mikasa letting them fight and not dragging Eren way is the best part! It's such an important character development for her. Also this Episode was full of parallels to their training days. Great episode.

Eren and Jean bringing the Drama™ (as expected of Eren and Jean)

THE SURVEY CORPS HAS NEVER EXPERIENCED A SEND-OFF LIKE THEY DID IN THIS EPISODE - FAVORITE PART OF THIS SCENE? 481 Responses

The surreal experience of getting a positive send-off like this made Erwin’s smile and shout the overwhelming winner here, and for good reason! A smaller portion of respondents enjoyed Springlestein being themselves and a few called out Levi’s face in the comments:

All of it. Because it will be the first and the last time we'll see it

YYYYEEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH

Levi looking at screaming Erwin like "WTF Erwin"

Hange smile

LEVI'S SOFT LOOK

I like the manga version better because Levi's smile was softer there

Levi's expression when Erwin did his triumphant shout.

literally everything about it was perfect

WOULD YOU LET LEVI BREAK YOUR LEGS? 480 Responses

While 58% of respondents cannot understand why anybody would want their legs broken by Levi, a small percentage were even asking for it.

THE EPISODE WENT EXACTLY AS THE ORIGINAL MANGA! 478 Responses

So, the story behind this one is that one of the pollsters posted this “question” on our original document as a joke while another one of us was at work. When the one at work got off, they put the question onto the poll form while the person who created the “question” was not online, not realizing it was meant to be an unpublished joke. This was completely overlooked during the final proofread. It was never actually intended to make it onto the poll but since one of us always tries to rush through things, here we are! In any case, we hope you guys had a good laugh, because we all collectively lost it when we realized the mistake much too late!

wow y'all throwin shade with this Q huh

Yes, it is Erwin's birthday celebration after all

Glad that Erwin and the crowd’s screaming was a ‘dialogue’ and that he screamed again.

Makes sense, given how its purpose is to set up the new arc. Not much need to leave things out for the sake of pacing.

They done it so perfectly! I love that episode and love the hope in the air, my man similing and being happy, I love they see people cheering for them. THAT was earned.

It still modified some moments like Armin thinking of Eren and Mikasa instead of the bullies in the manga. Maybe it's better and more consistent with the following events.

Thanks God! The whole series should has been this way. Compared to the sad 1st episode of Uprising, this one was a true masterpiece.

u people need to get the salt in your blood checked, let others be dissatisfied with something they care about? please and thanks

i don't care if it went exactly as the original manga or with some changes as long as the episode is good

THE CHAPTER SIGNIFIED THE START OF A NEW ARC, BUT THE ANIME USED IT TO END THE FIRST COUR, WAS THIS A BENEFICIAL DECISION? 478 Responses

The majority of folks thought shifting the send-off to the end of the cour to create an uplifting cliffhanger was a good way to end the season. Several people called attention to how much contrast was felt between such a positive ending and the credits scene.

I think it works great, especially the triumph of the send off and the "oh shit, what's happening" moment in the ED

should have been the first ep of the next arc, with the send off as the cliffhanger

It was a nice, fun send off for the arc. Has the suspense of the scouts going towards the foes. The next episode with the next chapter/s will be perfect for getting back into the series after 6 months

WAIT Studio used it as an effective cliffhanger but from an adaptation perspective it's just like the Wall Titan. Something to keep the audience's attention at the cost of the narrative's flow. If the season was going to be split then rushing the Uprising Arc at breakneck speed resulting in one extra episode was pointless.

The opening of 73 is a perfect opening for the second cour, so I knew from the beginning of the season that ending in this chapter would be their aim. The second half won't struggle for content, and they can either push ahead flashbacks (I expect some of Bert's parts from 96 making it into the adaptation of 77) or content that didn't make it in the first half used to extend other parts (Eren's experiments for Armin realizing how to beat Bert in 81)

I think this will help the second part by being on the way to Shiganshina to start it off.

Heck cliffhangers!

LEVI WASN’T EXPLICITLY SHOWN EAVESDROPPING UNTIL THE END OF EMA’S CONVERSATION, DO YOU THINK THIS DIMINISHED THE FORESHADOWING? 478 Responses

The vast majority of respondents agreed that as long as we saw him listening to them, that’s ultimately all that matters. A small few believe that not showing him listening in on them earlier will diminish the overall impact when he makes his decisions later, however.

I don't think it matters, especially if the anime includes a flashcut to this moment post-decision, which will make its important even more obvious for viewers who may not remember this scene at all.

I'm not sure, I guess it did seem more ambiguous here. They'll flashback to it when serumbowl happens though.

Wouldn’t have spent more time on it. This show is about subtle details. I think its ok.

It still worked, but I would have liked it to have been made clear that he saw Armin's expression when he was talking about the ocean

No, but i think it was nice in the manga to see that at the beginning of the conversation he was standing and ended up on the floor by the end of it. Small detail, but i took it like he didn't mean to listen in the beginning but decided to stay in the end because of what he was hearing?

No, because it was a detail it meant a lot more. Subtle details have greater impact in visualities, manga is a different medium and the scene was used properly for its medium.

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT WIT SHOWING *THAT PART* OF THE RTS ARC AS A TEASER? 480 Responses

38% of respondents believe that the teaser was a great way to keep interest in the series high. 20% specifically feel that it will keep the anime only fans invested. About 21% of respondents combined don’t think it was the smartest choice on WIT’s end while almost 10% are just not ready to see that animated at all.

Even though I already know what will happen, my body *isn't* ready for this shit to come, except for the lightning spears

Honestly, I thought it was stupid as fuck and a cheap way to keep hype up for anime-only people. I would've preferred my anime-only friend to go into RTS completely blind.

I think it's great because it lends itself a lot of hype for the next half as well as leaving it very open ended. Especially because they cut out lines about the serum.

I think this teaser shocked more the manga readers than the anime onlines.

It's the worst part of the manga they could spoil. I'm not sure what they intend to do by showing such a controversial moment

It was brilliant. Anime only watchers don't often get the experience of agonizing over certain cliffhangers monthly, but with this flashforward looming in their head, they have a whole season of suffering ahead of them. SUFFER LIKE US, ANIME ONLIES!

I really liked it but I think they could have shown a part of Bert/Reiner/Zeke’s convo since we saw Bert and Reiner at the end of the episode, and it would have anime-onlies wondering who the glasses guy is

I was shocked and hyped at seeing them include this scene, but at the same time I’m sad that anime-onlies were spoiled that at the very least Mikasa, Eren, and Levi will survive until this scene, destroying any tension of them dying

I'm really conflicted; on one hand, I was very surprised in a positive way, cause it was a ballsy and unexpected move. On the other hand, I understand that anime viewers might be sick of spoilers bc of the scene at the beginning of ep1.

It gave me anxiety lol. Please someone save my babies from their horrible destiny

One hell of a cliffhanger and I can't really imagine anything better to show everything going wrong (Colossal nuke is way too obvious, for example), but the people complaining about spoilers do have a point...

WHAT ARE YOUR EXPECTATIONS FOR RTS’S ADAPTATION? 480 Responses

WHAT SEGMENTS OF RTS ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING ANIMATED NEXT COUR? 481 Responses

Over half of respondents feel that the Return to Shiganshina arc will be delivered just as well as Uprising was. 37% of respondents feel it will be much better than Uprising’s adaptation. A small few don’t have much faith in the second half of the four.

FUCK ME UP!! R.I.P. ANIME ONLIES

GIMME THE 2ND COUR NOW!

I don't know if I'm emotionally prepared for this arc

I’m going to have 6 more months to mentally prepare myself for the return to shiganshina arc and I still won’t be ready

from an adaptation perspective it's going to be the same as the previous seasons. WAIT Studio excels at certain aspects of packaging SnK into anime, but as a whole it's a bad, rather than amazing, adaptation.

Is there a "NOPE I am not ready for RtS arc" in the questions?

WHAT SEGMENTS OF RTS ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING ANIMATED NEXT COUR? 481 Responses

The most anticipated segment of the Return to Shiganshina arc is the suicide charge + Levi totally wrecking Zeke. Following closely behind are the basement reveal, the serumbowl, Grisha’s diaries and flashbacks, the ocean and the showdown with the 104th and Reibert.

Kill me! I cannot believe I have to wait 6 months for RTS. 6 months until I can see Reiner and Bertholdt in action and the FREAKING BASEMENT!!!! I was fine with a 3 months break but 6 is too much ;____; I want to see Grisha's past animated

What everybody is waiting for the RtS Arc: the basement, Reibert fight, Levi soloing the beast titan, the ocean. Me, an intellectual: THUNDER SPEARS THUNDER SPEARS THUNDER SPEARS THUNDER SPEARS THUNDER SPEARS THUNDER SPEARS THUNDER SPEARS THUNDER SPEARS THUNDER SPEARS THUNDER SPEARS THUNDER SPEARS THUNDER SPEARS THUNDER SPEARS THUNDER SPEARS THUNDER SPEARS THUNDER SPEARS THUNDER SPEARS THUNDER SPEARS THUNDER SPEARS THUNDER SPEARS THUNDER SPEARS (and Grisha's backstory)

can't wait to see historia looking graceful as hell in front of the sunrise while the SC goes off to fuck reibert and zeke up

The only thing I can think about is Zeke.... *screams* ZEKE AND EREN! THE JAEGERBROS! AND THE GRISHA FILES! SO MANY JAEGERS *dies*

I'm definitely looking forward to RTS okay, but I'm dreading it more, honestly. But the one thing I'm looking forward to, and really hoping they'll animate, is Levi taking down those Titans on the way to Zeke. I know the focus is on Erwin's last charge in the manga, and rightly so, but DAMN, I want to see Levi do that -I honestly don't think anyone, even Mikasa, could do what he did there.

I have a fever, and the only prescription is Season 3 Part 2

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON THE EPISODE?

A pretty decent choice for a midseason finale. But most important, a pretty good choice for episode 49. Once we're back in April, the series will be celebrating having made it to 50 episodes. Just 2 years ago, we were wondering if we'd ever get episode 26, and now we're getting to a landmark episode that will be exciting and memorable! Nothing between chapters 70-72 could've worked as such a landmark, in my opinion, but chapters 73-74? Absolutely perfect for it.

And my ship finally got some screen time

But damn wit... I almost got a heart attack because of the glitched ending!! Please, I at least want to survive to see manbun Eren animated

For anime watchers: I enjoyed watching your confusion over that ED. May you all be prepared by April 2019.

My heart is filled with so much Eruri that I may cry. You could literally see how much concern Levi had for Erwin in his eyes.

I love Bertoto and Raina more than myself. Guess, I'll die in April.

I'm an Erwin Lover™ and the show is gonna come back right around my birthday so this was Great and I'm Fine

It was out of character to see Eren fully clothed.

The moment when SC were cheered up and Erwin was so confident and happy and then they left into the sunset gave me goosebumps and almost made me cry :') it was a beautiful, strong, encouraging moment for SC!!

Let me just tell you how fucking HYPED I am for the next season after those previews during the ED. HYPED. And Jesus fuck yes, Armin looked like a charred French fry that got left behind in the oil. THANK JESUS. I was afraid WIT might downplay that, but no, my boy gonna be the CRONCHIEST.

The glitches were great and not too spoiler-y but WIT absolutely ruined it with the Eren/Mikasa/Levi scene. They showed too much.

rip ears in that ending, it makes for some great youtube reactions though lol

Erwin looked fine as fuck

Wit, you better be paying for my doctor visit. My ears were bleeding with your little trick you pulled at the end.

This episode. THIS FUCKING EPISODE. Man what a way to end the cour. REALLY, standing ovation to WIT. That glitch ending was just like that tiny Titan-in-the-wall scene at the end of season 1 that made me go looking for the manga. Absolutely brilliant stuff.

Thanks for these polls.

WHERE DO YOU PRIMARILY DISCUSS THE SERIES? 446 Responses

Thank you to everyone who participated!

Please keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming Uprising Arc poll!

#snk poll #snk polls #snk spoilers #snk s3 #poll results

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bellamyblinkingrapidly · 5 years

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I just read a reddit post from 4 years ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/23p48r/the_true_nature_and_purpose_of_the_others_and_the/?sort=new

Essentially an idea that...

1. The Others aren’t pure evil & actually have a reason for rallying and coming South. They are the heroes of their story just as they appear to be the villains to us.

2. The Starks have a long history with the Others and the Night’s Watch. Somehow their story is tied up in the Night’s King, the first Lord Commanders, The Kings of Winter, and the Kings Beyond the Wall. Their words “Winter is Coming” are derived from this connection, and may not just be a warning of hard times but also a brag of their own such as “Hear Me Roar” or “Growing Strong”

3. Therefore, the Starks have a large role to play in the conflict with the Others, and that conflict will likely result in diplomacy.

4. The ultimate resolution will be about restoring balance to the world. Right now, there are extremely long winters and extremely long summers. The seasons are out of whack, and there is some kind of ancient magical reason for this.

5. Dany is Azor Ahai, and ultimately she will become dark!dany or more of a villain character.

6. The ice and fire threats are the Others and the dragons/those of dragonblood. But there is also the R’hollo to consider as well as some type of ancient ice god/force.

7. Jon is the song of ice and fire, and as such he will likely play a large role in negotiations with the Others and potentially Dany.

8. The wall may have first been built by the children of the forest or the others and not men as it is told in stories. (Generally the legends may be exaggerated and untrue). The Night’s Watch may have been originally an allied Others and First Men group under the Night’s King (human and a Stark probably) and his queen (other).

9. The Others reasons for rising and attacking may be that some form of the alliance or agreement was broken. It could be the return of Daenerys and dragon/magic, the widespread religion of R’hollo, Summerhall, Aegon’s conquest, or the long night’s return, etc. etc.

This post and its collective comments were written 4 years ago, so we have much more of the show to add to these original theories. Of course, D&D may have strayed from what GRRM will do, but they know the ultimate ending. It’s safe to assume we are headed toward the general right path.

There’s speculation that Jon as the balance between ice and fire will become the King at the Wall and take an Other as a bride. Some believe that Val from the books could be this bride or that Ygritte could be raised from the dead to become the bride. Either way, it seems likely if this kind of marriage alliance were endgame, then the bride to be would appear in the show before season 8. It’s also fair to point out that Jon’s marriage to any one - an Other, Dany, even Sansa, would be an imbalance of ice and fire. His blood is equally ice and fire, and any kind of child he would have with another woman would not share that same equalness.

Some telling things have occurred in the show so far...

heavy foreshadowing of a Dany/Jon baby & the boatsex scene

Melisandre interchanging the prince/princess who was promised with Azor Ahai

R+L=J confirmed

Bran returning to winterfell as the Three Eyed Raven

The Night King killing a dragon & resurrecting it for his army

The Wall coming down via the Night King’s dragon & also the Night King riding a dragon

lots of hints at a dark!dany plot and “fire and blood” mentality

building up Jon and Sansa’s relationship and specifically her ability to lead and be a queen/lady

the remaining Starks returning and reuniting at Winterfell

the Children of the Forest created the first Other from a First Man with dragon glass to help them in the war against the First Men (or that’s what they told/showed Bran)

the Children of the Forest helped Bran and the Three-Eyed Raven, while the wights and Others attacked them

Craster offers baby boys up as sacrifices to the Others and in return they allow him to live peacefully

Jon becoming Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch by being elected by his men and then becoming King in the North at the request of the northern houses

Jon believes they need the dragons to defeat the White Walkers

There has been no attempt at peace or diplomacy

The White Walkers attacked Hardhome a settlement North of the Wall

The Night King can see Bran even when he wargs & he can touch him even though he’s the Three-Eyed Raven

The Night King also seems to have a large interest in Jon

The Night King and his officers do not seem to be able to burn instead they create frost/cold as they walk

When a White Walker is killed, all the wights it created are killed as well

R’hollo is seen as the Lord of Light and in many ways life as well as flames obviously but shadows too. There is another god who may contrast him: Death. These seem to be two popular religions in Essos. While the Seven are still most popular in Westeros (especially by the Andals), and only the First Men, Children of the Forest worship the old gods.

So... if Jon and Dany have a baby... will it be sacrificed? This would be pretty dark and possibly hard to do believably bc like Jon wouldn’t just hand it over and also why would it be near the war?

If there is to a marriage alliance, it might make the most sense to join ice and fire - the Night King and Dany. Or to go with the old legends where a Stark married an Other. It may be Sansa who is married off to the Night King. It could also very well be that Jon ends up marrying an Other and becoming the King on the Wall, which would seem fitting. Again, though, this wouldn’t bring a sense of balance in my opinion. I don’t see Dany making it out of season 8 alive, and if she does, I see it as some sort of alliance like this one.

Perhaps there could also be an ending where Dany is defeated after she probably backs out on the deal with Jon and goes to take down Cersei. I imagine she would burn the Red Keep to the ground and at some point the Iron Throne itself would melt. (Although I always liked the idea of Sansa or Jaime ultimately taking Cersei down...) A deal is made with the Others, and they retreat. A Stark rules in Winterfell as King in the North/The King of Winter, and perhaps the Night’s Watch is abandoned or changed entirely. If it was part of the old treaty, it obviously ended up backfiring. (Also, in this scenario perhaps Sansa and Jon can be together because tbh that’s what I truly want). Maybe there is independence and Westeros becomes Seven Kingdoms who work together again, and this may be led by Tyrion who is a great politician but not a true leader or King of all Seven realms.

I think that Arya’s fate is the only Stark I am truly worried about... if Jon dies, I know it will be at the pinnacle hero moment which will ultimately make it worth it. He will have died/sacrificed himself because he’s the only one who could do it or something like that. Similarly, if Sansa were to die or be married off to an Other or something similar, I feel it would be her duty and in some way so befitting of a queen to sacrifice for her people. Arya on the other hand, her death would have less plot meaning. I think in general her arc has the least amount of plot meaning and endgame potential, so I worry she will die in battle. I’m sure it would be a lovely scene, but it wouldn’t probably have lasting impacts the same way Jon or Sansa’s (or also Dany’s) would. Bran I don’t think will die because he is the Three-Eyed Raven UNLESS it is important that the Three-Eyed Raven die in order to defeat the Night King/come to an agreement/etc. We still don’t know the full extent of his powers or his purpose yet, so a lot is up in the air for Bran. We just know he’s important.

I want to add quickly that Melisandre said she has to die in this strange country. I wonder if perhaps there is some of agreement/coupling or something that she as a Red Priestess will be involved in. She obviously still has a part to play, and seeing as I imagine that the second she arrives she’ll be marked for death, she will likely show up at a very pivotal moment. I don’t imagine her just popping in to give Jon some advice at a vision in the flames. It will be more than that and likely it will be magical.

The teaser of the map where ice and fire meet and almost form some kind of wall or mountain... it has always made me think that perhaps a new wall is formed at the end of this to replace the current wall?

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blairtrabbit · 6 years

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Thoughts on Goddamn Voltron

1. The treatment of Shiro and Adam as a couple was the stupidest shot at “representation” i think I’ve ever seen and it honestly made me angry. We don’t know anything about Adam. We don’t know anything about him but his name and that he possibly has some sort of relationship with Shiro. We are never even allowed to see them physically touch (because this would be gross I suppose) and when Adam is killed off immediately in the initial invasion there is no emotion to it other than he was someone we were supposed to care about because Shiro cared about him. Or ...so its suggested. Not only is Shiro denied any sort of emotional catharsis after being forced to be stoic and endure unimaginable amounts of physical and mental trauma there is no one waiting for him to come home. They are killed for absolutely no reason aside from creating some bizarre boyfriend in the refrigerator for a character who certain has enough anger at the Galran empire that he doesn’t need anymore. If Adam was introduced to show Shiro was gay then that failed. If Adam was introduced to heighten the stakes that failed too. Adam was created to die for no damn reason and unless he somehow appears in season 8 this kind of shit queer-baiting is un-acceptable...hell even IF he comes back who cares? we aren’t even given the chance to know him as a person so whats to come back? Sidenote: Don’t make Shiro sick with some terrible wasting disease and then NEVER mention it again. What the SHIT. 2. The treatment of Lance is unimaginably cruel and I don’t understand it. In season three Lance proves himself to be a mature member of the team and not only does he help Allura who took his lion he becomes Keith’s right hand after a rocky start. He has shown multiple times that he is vulnerable, once to Keith’s face, and yet his leader and his team constantly question his choices and insult him. It went beyond ribbing this season. It felt like everytime there was a chance for the writers to do it they stuck in a Lance barb. I kept expecting a breakdown a moment where he finally defended himself, walked away or told them that he was tired of it. But that moment never happened. Instead the strong right hand of voltron just takes it and continues to do his job. No matter how many great shots or encouraging comments he makes he never gets fucking complimented. Also the writers seemed more determined then ever to give him absolutely no arc or focus. Which leads me too- 3. Why the hell did Hunk have Lance’s story arc. Theres this thing in writing called “setup and payoff” Its a super simple concept that all writers,especially in film and television, know how to use. You set up a concept early and later on it pays off with an emotional revelation or a character change. In seasons one two and three...even four? Lance was the only one on the crew besides Pidge who talked about his family. We saw them in his memories. he had a scene with Coran where he talked about missing earth. He talked about his mom and so on. That was his starting point and when he gets back to earth it should have been his family in the camps, his speech about being angry about coming back to a peaceful earth and a closed end to his talk with Keith about being a leader and how he respects him as one back in season 3. Having Keith compliment his bravery would cement him as his right hand the person hes SUPPOSED to be closest to on the team. Hunk had no set up for this. He never mentions his family or how much he misses them. He talks about food but for some reason he was given the ending arc that Lance EARNED but wasn’t given. In fact it feels like it was even written for Lance but was changed because they goddamn hate him and decided he doesn’t get an arc fuck you. 4. Hey. Hey Voltron. Its called fucking character development. If you wanted to make Allura and Lance have a relationship you can’t make them blush in ONE EPISODE and call it development. Why don’t you cut down on the 90 fucking minutes of brain melting action sequences and put in some more character development. You can’t just dedicate the first half of your season to some goofy (lance abusing) comedy then spend the last half in one constant exhausting battle and expect us to give a shit about the cadets or anyone you introduce on earth. To me the stand out episode this season was the one where everyone is floating in space. They had to...INTERACT with each other but even this episode felt empty because Keith was the only one allowed to act out...AGAIN. Where was Lances righteous anger? Or even Allura’s? Why is Hunk stepping into this role as mediator all the sudden? What even lead to that? Was he literally just written into the Lance roles? If you wanted to tear the group down to have them be built back up then you have to do so on equal footing and it felt....tame. Like you didn’t want the kids to worry too much. Stress makes people act in cruel ways sometimes and overcoming it is a part of good character development. Instead it was just some lame foreshadowing about the deux ex machina that was lion summoning. It had so much potential-SO MUCH.

5. Not everybody has to end up in a fucking relationship. Axca? Seriously? Man are you gonna crank out some romance bullshit in season 8 aren’t you voltron? Is that what your gonna do? Make sure everyone gets a set of corresponding genitalia to wrap everything up in a nice straight bow? I’m sure you’ll give Shiro some kind of significant other right? Or maybe just have him smile at a dude ala live action Beauty and the Beast because that's what representation looks like in 2018. 6. Coran not getting to build the spiritual successor of his grandfathers work is kinda bullshit.

He spent literally every season waxing lyrical about how great his pop pop was and how much he wanted to be the one to build something like he did and then the castle is destroyed and I’m like oh man so cool Coran is gonna get his wish.Thats so emotionally rewarding that after all the hero-worship Hes gonna have the opportunity to build a new castle even better than the one his grand-oh -no...ok Sam did it. Yeah ok.

7.YOU CAN’T SPEND ONE EPISODE ON EARTH BEING DESTROYED AND SHOW MAYBE THREE PEOPLE AND EXPECT ANYTHING TO HAVE EMOTIONAL WEIGHT. Hey, remember the movie Independence day? Not a great movie but it actually felt like the world was being invaded. It felt like peoples lives were being interrupted on a large scale and it accomplished this by showing the invasion from multiple pov’s worldwide. Would that have been so hard? Maybe show a little girl at school seeing a Galra ship. A man in Africa? A mother in Russia? Just quick shots. Thats all you need. A few establishing shots to show that people are experiencing something foreign and terrifying. I know its a kids show and you gotta what...keep it Y-7 but the Galra literally killed thousands and thousands of people-possibly millions you can’t just gloss over that. STAKES CAUSE TENSION. WITHOUT STAKES OR JUSTIFICATION A BATTLE IS EMPTY AND POINTLESS.OH ON THAT NOTE. 7. THE BATTLES IN THE LAST EPISODES BECOME RIDICULOUSLY BORING AND REPETITIVE. You can tell what the writers wanted to write. They wanted to write whole scenes where people star trek groaned in chairs and shouted about how much time they had.Because of the season lack of setup or stakes buildup in the previous episodes theres no tension whatsoever. Do I care about the people of earth? No I haven’t even seen them. I care about Shiro and the mains ...not even the cadets. I haven’t seen them interact enough with each other to even establish their personalities. So if the whole earth fries eh...I care more if Shiro is ok because i’ve gotten to know him over time. If the entire battle was to save Shiro from a falling ship (HOW THE FUCK DID HE SURVIVE THAT BTW I GUESS BEING A CLONE MADE HIM IMMORTAL) It would have more weight to it than the entire Hour long clusterfuck that was the battle for Hunk’s Parents, literally the only humans we care about. 8. WORLDBUILDING? HOW ABOUT FUCK YOU. Wow...so WW3 huh. That sounds interesting Voltron you wanna...no? Alright so...Russia is still a country this far in the future? Is China still communist or? Hey...why is this lady the queen of the Garrison? Why is her position so important? Who funds the Garrison? Is it the United States? The UN? Is it an international organization? Who pays the bills? The funding must come from some government who would be curious why you asked for millions of dollars towards all these bizarre supplies that could be used to build the biggest ship ever made.Why is Admiral Sanda god? She keeps threatening to go over their heads in the chain of command but that means that SHE has to report to someone? WHo?? THE PRESIDENT? SOME KIND OF WORLD LEADERSHIP COUNCIL? I know this shit is hard but come ON. Earth is NOT like these alien planets Voltron has been on that have a centralized monarchy or singular race with one central government. If Sanda is worried about causing wars and global panic thats fine but shes the one commiting treason by not reporting to her own superiors and letting the leaders of the free world make decisions on behalf of their own people. One person can’t make all the decisions we call that LAAAAAAAAZZZZYYYYYY. Oh and about Admiral Sanda? 9. Admiral Sanda is the worst villian Voltron ever faced Why did you try and give her a redemption arc? Every decision she made was stupid every choice was just...so dumb. She betrayed everyone and her level of power kept making me go...why...is she the queen of earth? When she died I was like good. What a dumbass. Don’t try and redeem someone who did nothing good in the first place especially if you never established enough world building to show she might have been correct. We can’t just trust TELL you have to SHOW us. 10. If you think the racism against immigrants is bad now I can’t even imagine the civil wars when actual aliens just invite themselves over. 11. Thanks for fucking up our tide systems by parking a fucking Balmera directly in our atmosphere assholes. In conclusion:THANKS I HATE IT.

#fuck this #fuck everything #voltron #vld #season 7 spoilers #season 7 #voltron legendary defender #lance deserved better #again

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cupidsbower · 6 years

Text

I never opened myself this way

Supernatural 13x01, “Lost and Found,” and 13x02, “The Rising Sun.”

Hello friends, I’m baaaaaaaaack.

It’s been a while, but I think I remember how to do this thang.

Let’s see, what to start with? The love song that opens the season? The spectacular casting of Alexander Calvert as Jack? The grey make-up they’ve splattered on Jensen Ackles to make him look a decade older? The statement of thematic intent we get in the third scene?

So many options, so many choices.

I wasn’t actually blown away by the opening episode this season. It was workmanlike - it did its job of setting up the season, but felt a bit plot-by numbers.

That said, there were some lovely moments. Jack is brilliantly cast, with Calvert looking so much like Misha Collins its uncanny. The pay-off of the whole son-of-Lucifer vs son-of-Castiel bait and switch is great too. Clearly families of blood and families of choice are going to be a big theme this year.

If you remember, last season, the theme was “nature vs nurture” but this season it’s looking more like, “Can the apple fall far from the tree?” Or, maybe it’s more, “Who’s your daddy?”

We start with a love song that tells us:

So close no matter how far Couldn't be much more from the heart Forever trusting who we are And nothing else matters

(x)

Which harks back to that old idea of family not ending with blood, but also kind of implies, that yes, maybe the apple never can escape the tree. But on the other hand...

CLARK: Dude. Check it. KID: Check what? CLARK: This! Can I interest you in a Cheesebutt? Or maybe a Salty Butt Combo? Or perhaps my favorite - the Buttshake.

Or an assbutt maybe?

KID: Dave sees this, he’s going to fire you. CLARK: Oh, come on. He’s fired me, like, seven times. And I keep coming back. You know why? KID: Uh, because Dave’s banging your mom? CLARK: Exactly. Let’s face it, buddy. Around here, I’m untouchable. KID: Cool. Good for you.

STATIC CRACKLES FROM THE DRIVE THROUGH SPEAKER. JACK: Father?

(x)

So maybe blood isn’t all that important. Neither Clark’s parentage nor who his mom was dating ended up meaning all that much. An angel blade through the stomach proved Clark was touchable after all.

Hmm. I smell the faint whiff of foreshadowing.

I’m expecting to see a lot of pseudo-parents and pseudo-children this season, all playing out this idea of what they owe each other, and what they give each other.

And as Clark does “keep coming back”, I’m also wondering who we’re going to get back this season that we thought was dead???

The most interesting of the pseudo fathers in these two episodes are, of course, Sam and Dean. I wonder if we’re going to get another bait and switch here. Sam initially seems like he might step up as one of Jack’s pseudo-fathers, but the implication he’s focused on wanting to use Jack to save Mary undercuts it -- if he’s still focused on his own role as child, it puts him on a parallel course to Jack. Dean on the other hand is painted as a John-figure very strongly -- self-destructive in his grief, and seeing things in black and white as a result.

I doubt those positions will last long, though.

“The Rising Sun” is a much meatier episode.

Right off the bat the title tells us there’s going to be lots to explore. Its title uses that old, old play on words: sun/son. It’s a reference to Christ, of course, who was mortal/holy, just like Jack is, but also the dawn of a new day, the Morningstar, and, as Castiel is “Sunshine”, it’s also a reference to him as a father-figure.

Asmodeus is an interesting choice of villain. He’s a demon of Lust. He’s obviously a Trump stand-in of sorts, as so many recent villains have been on Supernatural, but he’s also playing on a bunch of other of America’s vaguely villainous associations. He’s from the south, he’s an older white dude, which together always invoke the Klan. He looks like Colonel Sanders, who is a trickster figure in some ways. While based on a real person, he’s become a cartoonish icon, like Ronald MacDonald. “Colonel” Sanders is so-called because he’s a Kentucky Colonel, rather than a military rank.

Put all this together and compare it to the white-suited Lucifer of The Endverse, and Asmodeus is very much Satan-lite. He’s a pretender to Hell’s throne, and one of the pseudo-fathers Jack will face.

I find Dean’s relationship with Jack particularly interesting in this episode. He calls Jack “It” and is still advocating that he’s intrinsically evil, but he also hallucinates sheep on the road. Sheep. Like the rising sun, this is a common symbol of Christ - sheep are the Lord’s flock.

1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters.

3 He restoreth my soul; He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.

4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me.

5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. (Psalm 23)

So let’s recap:

Sam and Dean get a hotel room so that Jack can lie down. Next to still waters, or rather the waters that Scooby Doo motors through with his tail.

Dean throws him the Bible to read -- the story of Jack’s own family. But it doesn’t open to death and violence and sin. It opens to The Song of Solomon, a book of love and pleasure. To whit: “Because of the savour of thy good ointments thy name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee” (x).

They feed Jack. They follow him to the valley with the Shedim. Sam comforts him. Dean offers the rod.

It’s not so surprising that Sam is being comforting here -- he had a whole arc about coming to terms with his own powers last season. However, considering how negative Dean is right now, he’s doing a surprisingly good job of being a shepherd to Jack. Take this scene for instance:

JACK: What the hell am I? I can’t control… whatever this is. I will hurt someone. DEAN: You know, my brother thinks you can be saved. JACK: You don’t believe that. DEAN: No, I don’t. JACK: So… if you’re right? DEAN: If I’m right… and it comes to killing you… I’ll be the one to do it.

(x)

That does not strike me as a threat at all. In context, I read it as setting a boundary. For a kid who is worried about his place in the world, that’s incredibly reassuring!

Combine that with the way that Jack is mimicking Dean, it’s pretty clear that it’s Dean who is being established as the main father-figure so far.

I haven’t touched on Castiel much so far, but this seems a good point to do so. The text here is pretty clearly linking Dean and Castiel in a romantic light. Dead-Castiel is to Dean as fridged-Mary was to John. The whole shape of this opening twinset of episodes makes that clear. Sam is focused on getting Mary back, and is willing to use Jack to do it. Dean is grieving for Cas, and his whole world is empty right now because of it.

And yet, both of them have grown and changed since season 1, and neither are falling into quite the same mistakes that Mary or John made. Progress! It’ll be interesting to see what iteration of their mistakes we get this time and what they learn from them.

The final thing I want to mention here is Donatello. I do like this particular ninja turtle. “What would Mr Rogers do?” Hahahaha. Sounds pretty solid to me. But more importantly: 1) a prophet can smell Jack’s power, and it’s not corrupted so far, and 2) we have our first return from the fridge with this character. I’m pretty sure we’re going to get a lot more where that came from.

Okay, I lied. One more thing. Jack is adooooorbs. I love his literalness (such a great hark back to Castiel), and his emo-ness. He’s too good for the torture he’ll be put through on this nightmare soap opera horror show. *squishes him and offers him nougat*

#supernatural #spn meta #dean winchester #sam winchester #theme #meta #magess #jack kline

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theuntoaster · 6 years

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On the writing of RWBY volume 5 and why I like it

Ok I have seen too many posts about why people dislike the writing of RWBY volume 5, so I’m here to counter with why I actually really like it. Yes there are flaws, but that’s not what this post is about. There are enough posts about them already.

1) The writers really know how to make the viewers hate a character. Honestly, I have not seen a character so universally hated by the fans as Adam (up to the end of volume 5. I know nothing about the character short so that’s not included in this) since Umbridge in Harry Potter. It’s HARD to write a character that is viewed as a terrible person by everyone and they did this with Adam time and time again. Yes he’s a bit of a whiny bitch at the end of volume five, but that makes even the people who liked him for being a badass see that he’s just a coward.

1.5) Still on that point, Cinder. I actually have always loved Cinder as a villain. My sister cosplayed her 3 years in a row and that made me enjoy Cinder and always want to see more of her. But when the writers were about to “kill her off” (in quotes because I won’t believe it until I see a body/powers transfer), they made her universally hated by the fandom by having her spear Weiss. In that moment, even people who loved Cinder (like myself and my sister) wanted her dead.

2) Plot twists and cliffhangers done right. I’ve actually gotten really into watching RWBY reaction videos again just to see the looks on peoples faces when a) Weiss gets speared and b) “She’s not the spring maiden, I am”. Both of those were just so jaw-droppingly unexpected that I was left speechless after the episodes. And these weren’t cheap tricks to get an audience reaction. They were well crafted and well implemented. In terms of the spring maiden, there was subtle foreshadowing: candles going out when Raven was speaking with Qrow in V4, spring maiden powers only being used when Raven was wearing her helmet, Raven saying that Cinder’s last name was such a fitting name she must have chosen it herself while pretending a girl named Vernal was the spring maiden.

Weiss getting stabbed was less foreshadowed because it was meant to be a shocking scene. But I love how they did it. First it served two major plot purposes: unlocking Jaune’s semblance and making the viewers HATE Cinder. And the latter point is impressive (as mentioned above). For it to work, Weiss had to first be a super liked character. And volumes 4 and 5 managed to make most fans I know love Weiss so much. For a show with over 50 characters after the second season, it’s amazing that they could make one character so universally loved. Especially when she was such a brat in Volume 1 that a lot of fans disliked her. Second, the parallels to Pyrrha’s death during that scene were heartwrenching. Third, we all knew Weiss would be okay, at least in the back of our minds, but it’s a testament to the writers that the stakes still felt high anyway. That even though we KNEW they wouldn’t kill her off, we were still worried that they might. Let me tell you that it takes skilled writing to first build up a character who is that well liked (especially when they were such a brat at first), then give them a near death experience that is actually suspenseful and not eye-rolling, despite it being a character that you KNOW won’t die.

3) Ilya gets redeemed without dying, and in a believable way. I really like what they did with Ilya. It’s rare to get a real redemption arc. My roommate and I actually spent a good half hour a few days ago trying to list real redemption arcs in books/shows/movies/video games and they are few and far between. What I mean by real redemption arc is one where the character was actually one of the bad guys (and not brainwashed, possessed, blackmailed, or otherwise forced to do so against their will), who for a real reason (generally the bad guys going too far) has a change of heart, decides to help the good guys and try to atone for their evil ways, and doesn’t die doing their one good deed (because that happens so much and is such a cop-out). Ilya worked with the White Fang because she hated humans after her parents died in a mining accident (and possibly before too). She was there because she truly believed in their cause. She had a change of heart when they went too far and tried to kill Blake’s family, and even then she still followed them until part way through the fight at the Belladonna’s. And Blake choosing to forgive her after her change of heart was strongly built up in Blake’s character arc from the beginning (she comes from a similar background and has trouble forgiving herself, but also sees the importance of not holding past misdeeds against the members of the White Fang who want to leave it).

4) Heartwarming team rwby reunion moments (also giving Weiss and Yang some interactions because we’ve barely had any of those before this): the writers must have done something right if tiny moments can be impactful for so many different reasons. Weiss hugging Yang in the bandit camp is one such example. It works so well because Yang’s surprise says a lot about how alone she thought she was and Weiss initiating the hug shows how much less cold she is now and how desperately she missed her team. Then when they meet up with Ruby, and Yang and Ruby hug, Weiss looks sad and then Ruby opens her arms to include her. It shows so much about how Weiss sees them as family but at the same time felt like she didn’t belong to that reunion because Ruby and Yang are actually sisters. The writers did something right if a facial expression can convey all of that uncertainty. And Blake’s reunion with the team was full of so much uncertainty and the way they’ve been handling it gives me hope that we will get a proper resolution to her running away at the end of volume 3, as opposed to just immediate forgiveness.

5) We’re finally starting to explore whether or not Ozpin is trustworthy. This has been hinted at since the song Sacrifice in volume 2 (and less so in a handful of cryptic lines in volume 1) and we are finally getting some in show evidence for all that speculation. I especially love that Ruby still follows him because the greater good (stopping Salem) is more important to her than whether they’ve been lied to/they’ll die in the process/etc.

6) Lionheart’s death was super creepy.

I could go on, but this post is getting really long. In general, though the pacing of the writing isn’t always the best, that’s been a problem since volume 1 (the exception is Volume 3 because shit hit the fan). There are other flaws to the writing, but like I said, this post isn’t about those. The strengths to the writing lie mostly in the writer’s abilities to make us feel what they want us to feel: we hate who they want us to hate, we love who they want us to love, we cry just by having them say the words ‘combat ready’ or ‘keep moving forward’, we fear for the lives of some characters and root for the deaths of others. This is the sort of writing I love. I love being made to feel things, and it’s rare I get that from a show. Another strength is in how interesting all the characters are. They’re all distinct and unique, a difficult feat for a show with so many, and most of them are interesting enough that they are someone’s favourite. Personally, I can never choose who my favourite character is because I like so many of them for different reasons (Ruby’s optimism and bravery, Weiss’ finding herself and becoming the person she wants to be, Blake’s struggle to forgive herself for the mistakes of her past, Yang’s fierceness, etc etc). The third thing I love about the show’s writing is actually a place where it receives a lot of criticism. I love how cryptic they’ve been with things (villain plans, ozpin’s intentions, etc). I’ve seen some complaints that this drags on or it makes it feel like the villains are doing cryptic bad things with no grand purpose, etc. Personally I love it because it leads to so much speculation about what will happen next. We are given just enough info to start guessing and this has led to so many discussions with my friends just analyzing every sentence of the show.

Overall, while the show’s writing has it’s flaws, I still love it.

#RWBY #rwby volume 5 #why I like the writing in rwby #long post

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