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temunitu · 2 years

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oh boy, rewatching Rise with 1-2 episodes a day is giving me a new perspective on the whole show (I'm talking mostly about character development, plot, pacing, etc.)

disclaimer: this is NOT meant to discourage anyone from watching the show, nor is it meant to attack anyone who enjoys the points i criticize. these are merely my opinions and i respect anyone who thinks differently from me.

read more because i'm incapable of keeping my thoughts short:

first off, when i first started watching Rise, i was completely smitten by the show. the first few episodes that aired before the rest of the show started playing on tv, i watched religiously. it was my favorite tmnt iteration for a LONG time and i still hold it near and dear to my heart.

but it was not perfect. nothing is, really.

Donnie - i’ve reblogged and mentioned how i didn’t appreciate how the writers handled Donnie’s development in Rise. Again, if you’re a Donnie fan, i can still see why - he’s a fun character. To me it just got old watching him run in circles.

Mikey - i had so many thoughts on my boy so i put it in a separate post - TL;DR Mikey didn’t have much development himself, the episodes he supposedly does were problems that got introduced and solved in the same episode, and Mikey acts as more of a hype-man/therapist and feels more like a background character than a main character. I might be biased cuz he’s my favorite, idc. he deserves more spotlight.

Draxum - season 1, he’s great. It’s season 2 that fell short with me. Not all the post-redemption episodes bugged me, he still feels largely in-character in mystery meat and the finale. I think it was hidden city’s most wanted that really… seemed off to me. Maybe it was the fact he was a teddy bear, idk, but him using Mikey as leverage against Splinter irked me. Draxum and Lou/Splinter had hardly any interaction in goyles, goyles, goyles so their “rivalry” felt really forced. i could see Splinter hating Big Mama since their relationship (was implied to have) lasted WAY longer. Draxum kidnapped and experimented on Lou in the same day and they'd barely met. idk, it felt rushed.

Season Two - i don’t blame the writers for this, i blame nickelodeon for cutting the series short so we didn’t get to experience the series in its rightful glory. but even leading up to the finale, it feels like there’s so many gaps missing in how characters and their dynamics change.

unbalanced focus - related to some of the previous points, but there really does seem to be a lot more episodes revolving around Donnie and Leo more than Raph and Mikey. i get why Leo and Don are fan favorites since they get so much more screen time than the other two, but Raph and Mikey had so much potential that just got shrugged off. Especially Mikey (don't @ me, he deserves better)

yes, the show got cut short. It’s still easily one of my favorites (especially season 1) but there were so many episodes that felt like there was a gap (like characters developed off-screen). I know the writers were pressed for time but season 2 just didn’t quite hit the same. Some of the episodes are still amazing/my favorites, but there’s a couple that really bugged me.

but my biggest complaint is still directed at nickelodeon/viacom for pulling the plug before giving the show a chance. most of these points would probably have been addressed or fixed if we'd gotten the full season 2 the writers had planned for.

#rottmnt analysis #rottmnt #tea mn tea

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buddiewho · 3 years

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What’s it to you?

*Long post ahead

There is something on my mind. It’s called Occam’s Razor. The definition I know is, or rather the interpretation in my head is, it’s a gray area, a fine line. So for example, when it comes to Buck and Eddie, I do believe they play right on the Occam’s Razor. The fact that they could be this or they could be that, riding that fine line, which one is true?

Picture this and imagine you’re seeing jealous Buck:

Option 1: Jealous Buck idea pushes the razor to the more romantic, buried feelings thing we Buddie clowns are thinking about.

Option 2: If you don't view it that way, you could then simply see Buck maybe panicking because of his abandonment issues. For example, Buck’s reaction face becomes more like heyo Eddie doesn’t just get to so easily partner off with another firefighter outside the 118 like that [in this case being him or Hen as Eddie’s only option Buck accepts] until they finally ease into helping the 126 with these fires, Buck himself even.

Option 3: We’re speculating our asses off no matter if you believe in option 1 and/or 2, and we do not yet know what’s going on in this scene...

Therefore we’re split down the razor’s edge. Then I also think of this video. The fact that Buck and Eddie fall under the “just let the bromos be homos?” category. They have the cooked up potential for something more and not to just remain a “healthy male friendship.” When we have proper queer representation in combination with “healthy male friendship” then we can talk about the latter. I’m trying to rack my brain for healthy male friendships, but I come back to that video and the laundry list of mlm couples in the just let the bromos be homos category. My brain wanted to say FinnPoe from Star Wars as a healthy male friendship, but then that’s still part of the same category and all I can hear is Oscar Isaac praising the notion that these two characters could be falling in love during wartime...but apparently Disney/the world isn’t ready for that...?

The problem is I cannot think of any representation for healthy male friendships. I keep thinking Shawn Spencer and Burton “Gus” Guster from Psych, but even then there were definite issues surrounding their friendship...if you watched that show. Now, with that show I did believe that Shawn Spencer is bisexual, but I don't headcanon that his awakening happened with Gus. It just happened and he’s known about it for most of his life (like since 18 probably) and Gus knows it too. But again it’s never explicitly made so, it’s always hinted at though. Also, don't get started on Teen Wolf if you’re thinking about that one. I don't pay any attention and maybe it’s because I may not be seeking it out...but I cannot think of a single thing I’ve watched with healthy friendships, save for perhaps in Thor Ragnarok the trio that is Hulk/Banner, Thor and Valkyrie when they’re not fighting each other. Though, there is the case of Gary and Miranda in the BBC show called Miranda. They could’ve had a good run as just friends, but clearly it wasn’t unheard of to think of a hetero pairing starting off as just friends to become more, obvi. Back to 911...

As we teeter this Occam’s Razor, all I ask for is explicit admittance from Buck that he is bisexual. Just for him to say it to close friends and family. For him to feel okay with the fact that he likes boys too. So yes, he has little or no experience, but he can’t help but feel attracted to men as well. Banking on the South America exploration/runaway to expound on this some more. That yes, Buck has known about his bisexuality and does know how he truly feels, but for whatever reasons he’s not ready to show/tell those true feelings to anyone else. For whatever reasons he had to build/hide behind the chaotic sex addicted punk persona that he named Buck 1.0.

I also don't believe that everything needs to be boxed into a corner. 911 was the show that sparked a procedural TV drama to life and thus it created 911 Lonestar as a way to probably showcase a different state and how they handle these emergencies/fires. Who the hell knows, perhaps it’s just for more money? It’s just I don't think it’s a matter of 911 is the mostly “hetero show” whereas 911 Lonestar is “the show for the gays” because it has the canon gay couple. Well, for the record 911 also has a canon lesbian/gay couple; Hen and Karen. What I mean to say is that irl there are LGBT+ folk everywhere, therefore more of them can appear as characters in 911, or even in Lonestar as well. LGBT+ people live in CA and TX; sometimes 911 did the peripheral gay couples who found themselves caught in an emergency situation (the boy with the crush outside the coffee shop, that couple in which one of them had tapeworm and Buck nonchalantly just yanked that thing out...and then of course the older couple who were so graciously paralleled to Buck…). Oh, you can’t forget Josh in 911, who also seemingly thought Maddie was once setting him up with Buck. Also note it wasn’t written as Buck denying Josh on that thought. He just ran with it, no qualms, and we didn’t have some unnecessary “no homo” backlash which leaves room for us to say wait, a gosh darn minute? Are we still leaving room for Buck figuring something out and/or coming closer to accepting himself? Ps. It also wasn’t written for Maddie to decline the notion either. She of course jokingly said her brother wasn’t good enough for Josh and honestly, I think we got {Oliver playing} Buck as a bit offended by Maddie doing that.

Buck is also a double edged sword. So is Eddie. You have two men presented as so strong, so masculine that the instant it’s thought they might like men, it’s damaging to their masculinity somehow. That’s called toxic masculinity which is something Buck and even Eddie occasionally fall into. I think they’ve definitely grown out of that with the help of others and each other even, but I think this is why us crazy shippers wanting Buddie and/or Buck revealed as bisexual is so jarring to others- Toxic masculinity? Fragility? The fact that if men like Buck and Eddie are viewed to be gay/bi then it hurts this notion of what it means to be a strong man. But let’s box it into a corner because 911 Lonestar is the gay show and thus we think less of the characters TK and Carlos because they are gay- not all equivalent in strength to the “healthy male friendship” that is Buck and Eddie? When in fact the four of these characters have similarities? TK and Buck are so very reckless, dive in no questions asked kind of thing and it seems to me that Eddie and Carlos would be the take orders kind of men. They will fall in line with the occasional reckless decision...so therefore they have more similarities than just the four of them belonging to the LGBT+ community...or regardless of if they do all belong in that community together- the whole point is that in real life the Buck and Eddie dynamic of a friendship (or the possibility of something more, as one or both characters coming to terms with their sexuality) exists in the same world with relationships that are similar to TK and Carlos’. So the two supposed bromos (just friends) exist in the same world as the homos...therefore unboxing the shows from their corners entirely.

Another thing that I think this thing around Buck is falling prey to, is that bi guys are just faking it. It’s one stop on the way to figuring out that “they’re actually just gay.” Except no that’s not the case with bisexuality. For some people, it could be, but from what I see with Buck it’s not that at all. He’s bisexual, that’s that.

Also, most everyone thinks those who ship Buddie want Buck revealed as bisexual to only be with Eddie and to see two sexy men get it on. Honestly, 911 Lonestar did provide sufficiently with that, because them TK and Carlos scenes are downright drool worthy, but that’s not all I came for. Anyway, I clocked Buck as possibly bi in season 1- the full moon ep, where yes he’s getting closer to Abby, but damn does he get on well with that gay guy who had tapeworm. Well, shit. Then after Eddie’s introduction they go on to parallel Buck to that older gay couple...anyhow, it’s just why keep putting Buck in a queer space and then not run with that? Yes, sure there are strong straight allies to the LGBT+ community, but Buck doesn’t read heterosexual ally to me, it feels more like the LGBT+ community is where he belongs. I’d say Eddie Diaz belongs there too, but he’s like a mystery on this front. I think he understands his feelings/attractions towards men and he’d respond like yeah, sure, they’ve been there, but I haven’t done shit about them and I haven’t labelled them [gay/bi]. What’s it to you? And if eventually this involved Buck, he’d be like yeah, so I’m head over heels for that smart and lovable reckless idiot, what else do you want me to say?

#buddie 911 #evan buckley #eddie diaz #911 lonestar #911 show #and I have nothing else to say....yet...#but if you made it to the end #you're amazing

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podcastlimbo · 3 years

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My honest honest opinion on second citadel season 3

Uhhhh... short answer? I didn’t like it much.

Okay wait before I go on to my long answer I need to say that this is all just my opinion and it’s all subjective. If you liked sc season 3 that’s awesome! I get why you do and I’m glad you enjoyed it!

But I really wasn’t a fan of where they went with it (even from episode 1), and I’m gonna go on a long rambly and repetitive rant about it.

I’m not gonna talk about the way the season ended and the setup for s4 because I haven’t fully formed my opinion about that - to form my opinion means to relisten to the season and i don’t really feel like doing that.

Anyways, these are my unfiltered 2am thoughts about the Rest Of It - maybe I’ll neaten it up later to make it more palatable but for now it’s wordy n messy and you can just. Not read it bc it’ll probably make you mad, or feel free to pick it apart and tell me I’m wrong, or unfollow me (and at least one person has already done so lmao) but like that won’t change the fact that I just wasn’t feeling s3 so uh. That said.

Long answer? I love the second citadel... at least the first two seasons

I love the world building, how the setting is such a unique, deliberate step away from eurocentric fantasy, how refreshing all that is! The Second Citadel (the place) is rich with culture and history from the brief glimpses we get of it (mostly in knight of the crown). Not to mention the monster society, with its own rules (or lack thereof) and environments and personalities.

I love the storytelling, how different mediums are woven into the way each episode is formatted. Rilla has her tape recorder, Damien his prayers, Caroline her letters, and each medium is so well suited to each character, and it truly lets us get a glimpse of what’s going on in their minds, and I find it utterly fascinating how a protagonist of one story could just as easily become an antagonist (or at least, an annoyance) in another

And the characters! Each one so compelling, with their own goals and motivations, their own intriguing backstories and potential.

Most importantly, the way these characters play off of each other is what makes second citadel amazing. Getting to see people with similar experiences but different world views clash (Caroline and Mira), people with fundamentally different beliefs reconcile and meet in the middle (rilla and arum), just, Kabert created so many interesting characters, and watching them bounce off one another is a joy.

And that’s what made season 2 so great for me. The exploration of each character, getting to see their good sides and bad, through either a medium tailored for them, or through interactions with others, as they explored a fascinating world.

The end of season 2 left me so satisfied, but still with so many questions and excitement about what was to come. I wanted to see Talfryn come into his own and step out of his brothers shadow. I wanted to see Damien, Arum and Rilla navigating their new relationship. I wanted to know more of the fate of Rilla’s parents, Damien’s past, the consequences Arum would surely face after defying the monster court. I wanted Marc to finally be recognized by his fellow knights, to watch as Caroline lead the journeymen knights, while learning to trust in others as she was beginning to do. I wanted Angelo continuing to unlearn the implicit biases that had been instilled in him as a result of his upbringing, or more details on Caroline and Quanyii’s relationship. I was also curious!! How would human and monster relations change after the events of the finale? And would we learn more of the past, when humans and monsters lived together in peace?

I was buzzing with excitement for season 3, and then.. it came, it aired, and then it went.

And I felt... meh?

Don’t get me wrong. There were moments that I liked. Some of what I hoped to see did happen (see the above paragraph lmao), getting a glimpse of the western wastes with its own culture a joy. The dynamics between Olala and some of the characters were really fun! And the direction the story took at the end was one I didn’t expect, but left me open to more.

That said,,, everything else about the season just. Didnt gel with me.

Everything I loved about second citadel pretty much wasn’t there??? Aside from Caroline, Angelo and Quanyii, all the characters they spent so much time introducing to us and fleshing out over 2 seasons were just relegated to the side??

I think my main problem with season 3 was that it felt like a completely different show. Characters introduced as part of an ensemble became side characters in (what was supposed to be) their own stories. Character arcs that got set up were dropped, and mysteries/backstories teased were forgotten. Heck, the monster court and senate wasn’t even brought up! The aftermath of the fear bugs attack ont the citadel went unexplored! It’s like nothing in the past season even happened!

And I’m sorry I gotta say this, but the problem is Olala.

I mean. Okay I don’t wanna be super mean- she’s perfectly fine as a character. We root for her, we cry when she cries, and we cheer when she wins the day.

But since all the episodes were centered around her, we didn’t get to see anyone else’s inner worlds. And like okay, yes, they did it for this season of Juno Steel too, where Juno, the previous POV a character for 2 seasons, became a part of an ensemble, and was a side character for many episodes. But this choice worked for Juno and not Second Citadel, because it was a natural progression for his story! We spent 2 seasons exploring Juno’s character, his backstory, his motivations, we saw him come to terms with his family history, grow and change as a person, and by the time he joined the Carte Blanche, we’d gotten to a point with Junos story where we’re okay to step away for a while, and see events through the lens of others.

But that just?? Doesn’t work in second citadel? Because unlike Juno, the characters introduced in s1-2 are virtually unexplored! There’s still so much about their stories we don’t know, and so many ways for them to progress.

But we didn’t get any of that! Stuff established in s1-2 barely got payoff in this season. Characters stagnated, and when previously it was amazing to watch them interact with each other? Having each episode throw different combinations of characters together and seeing how they clashed and came together? Yeah we didn’t get that, it was all the same characters bouncing off of Olala, which is fine at first, but honestly? After the first couple episodes, it got stale.

And remember how before, we would get to see the characters tell their story through a medium suited for them? Well I noticed that the format of this season was a lot moreee audio drama-y (basically a TV show but with no visuals) and while there’s nothing wrong with that, one of SC’s strengths was in using the medium in unique ways, presenting the episodes in unique formats depending on the POV character. And with the exception of a few moments, the season really lacked that!

I know there were episodes in s1-2, like caves of discord and the Janus beast which didnt follow that format, but I think it’s a fan consensus that the episodes that do (moonlit hermit, KOTC lots, lady of the lake) are favourites, because they fully embraced the advantages and limitations those framing devices offered, and were truly perfect for character exploration.

It’s like. Idk. Imagine wolf 359 s3 where the si5 were introduced, and there was like 1-2 episodes of them interacting with the rest of our cast, but then after that the rest of the season just completely focuses on Eiffel and the new characters, and everyone else just disappears n twiddles their thumbs and doesn’t even do anything during the finale. That’s what happened this season, and that’s the kinda weird vibe I’m talking about.

Since I’m already rambling, I might as well just say some more stuff. I was disappointed with the music this season. I can tell Ryan Vibert was trying to figure a way to make SC sound different from Juno, and he was getting there in s1-2! The pieces that stand out now are the soft, acoustic guitar pieces, like Rillas song, or the lone melody line of the guitar in the SC theme. I thought he was getting it with s3e1, when Marc fought the dinosaur while traditional Japanese instruments were playing!! But then for the rest of the season, it was just samey echoey ambient electric guitar, like how it is for Juno. There could’ve been so much potential to give this world its own musical identity, but in the end, that attempt was dropped (at least that’s how it come off to me), just like so many other elements introduced in s1-2!

I’ve gotten this far in my rant, and I haven’t even talked about the story. And the story is. Hmmmmm

Like. It’s completely serviceable? Kabert are good at what they do so the story is a okay I guess? But to be completely honest, the characters and story were so tied together in previous seasons, so much so that in this season, even though the plot was just fine, it stayed just that. Fine. it always felt like there was something missing because the characters were the story, and to have just. So many holes in that department meant that the story itself was fundamentally empty.

Anyways uh. All of this is to say that this all boils down to character. I had my nits to pick with other elements but the fact that Rilla, Arum, Damien, Marc and Talfryn got completely sidelined (Tal most of all) when so much of the previous seasons were spent setting them up- in favour of a completely new storyline featuring new characters and settings when there was still so! Much! Left! Unfinished! From unfulfilled arcs to dynamics left untapped, and creative potential lost, the essence of the show was watered down and it left me with the intense feeling of

Idk. Season 3 felt like a completely different show. I liked s1, I loved a2, but s3 just. isnt second citadel for me. I’ll probably still listen to the next season out of loyalty, but I don’t think I’ll ever feel as passionately about the shows future as I do it’s precious seasons, especially if they continue this way.

Sorry.

#wow thanks for reading all that if you made to to the bottom #I’ve been sitting on these thoughts for a while but I couldn’t sleep last night bc Thoughts so here #I feel like I’m swinging a bat at a hornets nest even though I’m not putting this in the fandom tags ah well #and uhh I guess it’s okay to reblog this??#my posts

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lizzybeth1986 · 4 years

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I don't think you play TRR/TRH anymore but you should see what they did to Kiara in the newest chapter. It's so dumb and makes me so angry, especially considering the current climate of events. I've already seen people on Reddit be like "but we helped her overcome her trauma" (we didn't lol) and someone called her the c-word, very classy. Honestly PB's been low key racist in the past but all the stuff right now makes it high key...

(Apologies for the long post and not being able to place this under a cut)

I'm pretty glad I got these anons because truth be told I wasn't sure how many people - besides the few that I already knew were constantly speaking about Kiara's treatment in the books - would care enough to ask any questions about this. Most of the posts I saw expressed a disturbing eagerness to throw her under the bus, without exploring nuance or asking questions, and at this point I'm not very surprised.

I've always maintained that the treatment for Kiara is what happens when both the writers and the fandom are heartless, and these past few weeks have only been proof of that.

There are questions you could raise about this finale re: Kiara - questions almost no one seems to bother asking. I have three:

1. In this Coventus Nobilis...how is it that I see four Heads of House, and only one heir?

2. If Kiara - who is not head of house - is supposed to represent Castelserraillian instead of her father Hakim (who presides over that estate), why do I not see Madeleine? Why do I not see Penelope?

3. Why are we suddenly seeing Adeleide popping up out of practically nowhere to rep Krona/Fydelia, and Landon conveniently rep-ping Portavira?

Some of the answers to these questions lie in the questions themselves. Why else would Madeleine and Penelope not be present in this meeting - if it weren't to purposely distance them from this awful moment? After all, both of them have inbuilt subplots ready for the next book that would require interactions with the core group. How else do you think the writers could ensure we kept coddling them and pandering to them in Book 3, except by distancing them from this "betrayal"?

Why else would the narrative choose to pit Kiara - the lone woman of colour we'd been shitting on for most of this series - against Olivia - the white woman who has been given innumerable individual PoV scenes and her own mini-book (and whose reputation we had to help rebuild in said mini book whether we cared about her stupid duchy or not).

Why else would they force Kiara to alert us mere minutes before the meeting begin, if not to distract us with crumbs ("See? At least we wrote her as warning you. Of course we don't hate her!").

Why else would you have Olivia and Kiara pitted against each other like this - if not to show these two women side by side, on opposing ends - and compel us to believe that the white woman we spent 4.5 books propping up and pampering, is the most loyal one. When in fact we have done absolutely nothing to deserve any fucking loyalty from Kiara or her family to begin with! (Ezekiel and his white bride notwithstanding).

What we finally got as a result, was a narrative that (as @queen-of-effing-everything summed it up when I discussed this with her) in one full sweep "glorifies Olivia, shields Madeleine and Penelope and sets up Kiara". Very few of us even noticed. And even if we did notice, is there any guarantee that we would care??

Remember how I mentioned in my last ask that I wished we expanded the same energy that we did with Aurora, to speak up against the ill-treatment of other black characters? Kiara was undoubtedly one of those.

After this, we as a fandom will speak very easily now of her "betrayal". We will call her the b-word and the c-word. We will boast of how we will "take her down" along with Adeleide and Landon and Bartie Sr. We'll boast about how we "never liked her" to begin with, as if doing so required some...idk exemplary foresight. We will make memes about how Olivia was "the only bitch we ever respected". We will make huge, sweeping claims about how Kiara was our "friend" and how (as you've mentioned, anon) we "helped her overcome her trauma" (!!!!) and claim by that token that we were entitled to good treatment from her. I'm pretty sure when TRH3 finally comes out, her every word and action will be screenshot, put up on blogs, mocked and torn down just so we can write essays on how awful she is.

Yet I saw very little of this energy in Book 3, where the MC could first emotionally manipulate her into supporting the Unity Tour, and where we actively suspected her at a time when she was traumatized. At most there was some lukewarm acknowledgement of how she "deserves better", all while people still continued to write fanfic that positioned her as creepy and obsessed and villainous. Almost no one had a problem with Savannah not acknowledging Kiara's earlier support of her, and in fact I'd seen posts that clubbed her with the other ladies of the court who likely "treated Savannah badly". Her father Hakim was made to join the tour alongside her by default, without the expectations that Landon/Emmeline and Godfrey/Adeleide were allowed to have, and the fandom was mysteriously silent about Hakim being made to "bow to his knees" in a way the others did not have to. Very few people even bothered to notice or talk about how often Penelope was allowed to hold the MC's baby, or how Kiara was never really allowed to hold her even once. Which "friend" treats someone like this??

When I finally published this essay on the treatment meted out to Kiara especially in Book 3, what I got was a lot of neat, but ultimately hollow, little platitudes about how Kiara "deserved better" (How and in what way? Who knows, who cares). Out of those many many people who reblogged and responded, only a handful held the MC and Drake in particular (and Maxwell, who thought it appropriate to joke about "one suspect down") accountable for choosing to suspect and interrogate just her, and for showing ZERO remorse in forcing her to reopen those wounds. How is it that we can judge Kiara for this latest "betrayal", yet pretend that the MC and Drake had nothing to do with the pain THEY caused to her? How is it that this fandom was so fired up over her comments, yet would have such a weak, muted, carefully-generalized response to the screenshots where Drake was openly suspecting her and optionally minimizing her trauma?

Following that, why should we be entitled to good treatment from Kiara when we never really gave her even half as much?? Why is it so easy to divorce characters from their words and actions in Drake/MC/Maxwell's case, but so hard for a character like Kiara? (One may claim this is because Drake and Maxwell are potential co-protagonists, but the aforementioned essay already proves that you as a main character can get punished for not treating a mere side character with kindness).

Another thing that fascinates and repulses me even further is how the fandom has created myths around this one character, and how PB has constantly leaned into these "characteristics" even though the text itself tells an altogether different story:

1. Kiara is a snob. This is especially hilarious considering that she is established in Book 2 as being the only person who befriended Savannah before her departure and cared about what happened to her when she left. Never once in the books has she looked down on us for class-related issues, or outright mocked people for not knowing the languages she knew. In fact, she was the first person to acknowledge our skills if we showed any before Lythikos in Book 1. On the other hand, Penelope can be uppity and look down on us in Book 1 (there is even a dialogue option in Chapter 10 that leads to her calling us a "commoner wench") if we don't do well, and yet she's a cinnamon roll. Olivia can engage in snobbish , entitled behaviour without the fandom having a problem just because she's their favourite. Madeleine can look down on us and pretend for 3/4ths of the social season that we're not worth her time yet somehow Kiara is the snob. Okay. Okay. 😐

2. Kiara is "obsessed with" Drake and constantly comes on to him. This is said by the same group of people who saw Olivia fucking Nevrakis plant a WHOLE FUCKING SMACKER on Liam's mouth, and said..nothing. Kiara on the other hand, has admired Drake's abs once, mentioned she'd always liked Drake once, spoken normally to him about his sister once, flirted with him once (Paris tea party), and ordered a wine from him when he was bartending. In the next book she either looks at him wistfully or admires his suit. Yet somehow she's the creepy, annoying, stalkerish. Okay. Ooookay. 😑

(This one was particularly damaging, because post the TRR3 hiatus, all efforts from PB were focused on reversing Kiara's position as an alternative LI. This included "confirming" on livestream that her affections were one-sided, at a time when Olivia was finally allowed to have some romantic moments with a single Liam, pushing forward a buildup scene to Drake's eventual secret wedding that had him acting extremely rude and confrontational to Kiara mere minutes after suspecting her (while she was expressing joy at his upcoming wedding in his playthrough!!!), and involving a subplot where he openly and by default suspected her. Sure, he spends a minute to be nice to her and chat about trauma if the MC chooses. But that's like a drop of sewage water floating in an ocean of shit).

3. Kiara Pretended to Be Our Friend And Then Dropped Us: This is false. Kiara only ever promised to put in a good word for us to the rest of the court, no more, no less. And she fulfilled that promise. Otherwise she never pretended to be friends with us nor made friendly overtures either way. In fact if you're going to accuse anyone of duplicity, you have Penelope and Madeleine. Yet somehow Kiara is the dishonest one. Okay. Okay. 🙃

4. Kiara Was Insensitive To Penelope and Didn't Understand Her. I'm not sure how Kiara is supposed to magically understand something that her friend isn't telling her. Plus this argument deliberately leaves out the fact that she stood up for Penelope when people chose to be mean to her, and even explained to the MC that she employs "tough love" because she can't always be around to protect Penelope. It also leaves out how one-sided this friendship is and how Kiara is made to do most of the heavy work in this friendship. Meanwhile, at Kiara's most difficult time period, in Castelserraillian, Penelope says absolutely nothing as the MC forces Kiara to join the Unity Tour, while making bedroom eyes at Kiara's brother. In fact the only reason Kiara's brother even exists is to give Penelope a love interest. The Kiara-Penelope friendship practically revolves around Penelope. I have never really seen Penelope look out for Kiara or attempt to actually support her in any way, and Kiara was the one who got the knife wounds. Yet somehow I'm supposed to believe that Penelope's the better friend of the two. Suuuuure. 😡

And this steaming pile of crap doesn't just make its way into shitposts and short opinion posts. It creeps into fanfic and fandom opinions. It finds its way in the tags and in other social media. It eventually even finds its way into the books, even though nothing in the earlier narrative ever really supported these extremely stale takes.

Because PB didn't care for Kiara the way they cared for their white characters, they had no problem framing her narrative the way this fandom so desparately wanted it. Book 3 has the MC claim behind her back that Kiara is stuck-up and acts like knowing ten languages makes her better than everybody else, even though this is not backed up by the text, and in fact you will never see any acknowledgement of how Madeleine forced Kiara to make herself sound "exotic" in Book 2, or of how Madeleine and the MC (optionally) could downplay or question her skills unless they wanted to use her. Also, Penelope is never allowed to be talked about like that no matter what she's done. PB even had a scene (in the Hana playthrough) where they aggressively retconned the events of Madeleine's bachelorette party, where Kiara supposedly shouted at Penelope until the latter cried, and Madeleine was the one "having fun". Kiara was literally being thrown under the bus to make Madeleine look better. Madeleine. Imagine that. Madeleine.

Given how desparate the fandom was to nitpick and overdramatize everything Kiara said and did, is it any wonder that the team got away with the writing they gave her in Book 3? Considering that all the false arguments I stated above have made a resurgence in the past few weeks or days...is it any wonder that the only "support" this fandom is capable of re: Kiara, is lukewarm platitudes, cold takes and rank hypocrisy??

Yes, we can hold PB solely/largely accountable for the treatment meted out to Kiara now. They made these choices over and over, and continue to do so, while tossing us occasional crumbs of faux-sweet behaviour from the MC. And they did this in insidious ways, which were so hard to catch that even a Kiara stan like me had to observe multiple playthroughs just to unravel even half of what they'd done.

But let's not pretend a huge chunk of the fandom was just as responsible for this - with their unfounded opinions, their disgusting bias, their favouritism of white characters, their refusal to observe anything besides their favourites, and their godawful fanfiction where Kiara is a creep or evil or killing the virtuous main character. Out of the huge body of fanwork that I've seen for TRR that features Kiara - at least 90% of it features her stalking Drake, or harming the MC (particularly the Drake MC), or in cahoots with the villains, or generally being referred to as a creep (why Olivia, who kissed Liam without his consent in Book 1 and was entitled enough to be angry about him not returning her feelings in TRH1, never got this sort of writing - I fail to understand). There is a tremendous gap between the vitriol dumped on her when she does something the MC doesn't like, and the milquetoast response when harm is done to her. There have been times when I've had to comb through pages and pages of hate just to read even one positive post on Kiara in her own goddamn tag.

When the next book arrives, I know you folks will continue to gas up the white women in this book every chance you get, and mask your racist vitriol for characters like Kiara (and Hana, let's not forget the way y'all treat Hana) behind the same self-righteous judgements and the same tired, stale takes. I know that PB - despite what I will still believe is their hollow promises today - will write every single one of those stale takes into existence. All because it will be "justified", because Kiara is a "bad person" or "untrustworthy" or "fake". Whatever. Y'all can stick to Olivia The Black Hole and babysit Madeleine and Penelope, I guess. Kiara always deserved better than these writers and most of this fandom anyway.

#long post #kiara theron #the royal romance #the royal heir #trr kiara #lady kiara #i'm sorry kiki we didn't deserve you #i chose not to play trh2 and that's because this is EXACTLY what i felt would happen after they tossed us those crumbs in the book 1 finale

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radbutsafe · 3 years

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ALL FUCKIN 35 OF THEM SKLNWESDJFPXO

I SHOULDVE EXPECTED THIS FROM YOU

1. From one to five stars, how would you rate your writing? (No downplaying yourself!)

A three! I think I’m mid range cause I ain’t terrible but there is still shit I gotta improve and grow in my writing

2. Why do you write fanfiction?

to manifest what canon won’t give me and to write more! (though yes it is mainly about the smooching and the— I’ll stop there LOL)

3. What do you think makes your writing stand out from other works?

Hm! My weird research details? I’m that “fun fact, did you know...” in my fics sometimes LOL! I plan on giving a penthouse for erina in a fic and I went through penthouse listings in Japan for floor layouts and locations💀 my research gives me inspo and depth to stuff I think I lack in comparison to others sometimes.

4. Are there any writers that inspire you?

In terms of fellow fic writers, one of them I can’t name here but she’s an inspiration with her exceptional gift for prose period and her lovely skill at comedy! I want to be as funny as her when I write, I love her ironic situational humor. Other fic writers are @takoyakitenchou, @royaldragonsevgisi15 who I always love sharing ideas with and motivate me to create more! For non-fic writers it would be V.E. Schwab, Leigh Bardugo, Oda, and Horikoshi! The last two may be mangaka, however they are writers as well to create their stories! The depth these creators have given their worlds and interesting characters theyve given life to are all what I aspire to be like!

5. What’s the fic you’re most proud of?

so far uh?? hm everything I’m currently writing are wips lol!! im proud of my wip that has been nicknamed ‘soma panics’ that is a multi-chapter fic that spans like probs 20 plus chapters maybe

6. What element of writing do you find comes easily?

dialogue! it’s so much fun! and character thoughts. I’ve said to people I may be better suited for script writing

7. What element of writing do you struggle with most?

I think it’s description, of like setting and showing action. also an expansion of my vocabulary LOL

8. Which character(s) do you find easiest to write?

erina! I think it’s because canon has shown us many of her different faces and range of emotion.

9. Which character(s) do you find most difficult to write?

SOMA!! chill ass mofo whos more carefree compared to the common shonen protagonist! for other shokugeki characters I’m not sure just yet because I haven’t flexed my fingers enough for the rest of them.

10. What’s your favorite genre to write for?

I guess I should say romance cause that’s what I mostly write LOL!

11. Who or what do you find yourself writing about most?

sorina and I try to get them to smooch eventually KEK and yeah it’s..usually romantic fluff lmao

12. Tell us about a WIP you’re excited about.

HONESTLY ALL OF THEM but “soma panics” is my brain child

13. First fandom you ever wrote for?

pretty sure it’s digimon....

14. What’s your favorite fandom to write for?

currently shokugeki no soma!!!!

15. What’s the weirdest fandom you’ve ever written for?

uhhhh I guess SNS? LMAO fandoms...all have their quirks to them.

16. Any guilty pleasure trope(s)?

characters cuddling!!!! or getting the urge to smooch!!!!

17. A trope you’ll never, ever write for.

unrequited love GOOD FUCKIN BYEEEEEE

18. Wildest fic you’ve ever written?

I have plot ideas thst can be wild potentially but so far nothing fits this criteria so far that I actually have written.

19. Do you prefer canon-compliant, AUs, or something in-between?

depends on the fandom, but if written well, all of it!

20. Gen fic or shippy stuff?

shippy 100% like I said I like smoochin

21. Favorite pairing to write for? (platonic or romantic!)

romantic is...*drumroll* SORINA! platonic, soutaku and erina and alice!

22. Do you listen to anything while you write?

Sometimes! There are times songs will be on loop and times I just shuffle a playlist. and if I’m writing in random bursts it’ll be with no music but it really does depend lmao I think music is when I’m forcing myself to write?

23. Do you prefer prompts and challenges, or completely independent ideas?

completely independent ideas, I’ve realized in the past prompts shoot me in the foot often unless I luckily figure something out. but I’m often driven by my own sporadic self interest with shitty ping ponging attention

24. One-shots or multi-chaptered works?

multi-chap I guess cause I can post without being finished LOLLL but tbh can I really answer? I haven’t finished anything.....

25. Have you ever daydreamed about side adventures/spin-offs from your fic? Tell us about them!

I can’t answer this question imo because I haven’t finished a fic yet so technically stuff could all fit in the one fic?

26. Is there anything you’ve wanted to write, but you’ve been too scared to try?

MYSTERY AND CRIME! I love the genre and I have plot ideas once a blue moon but I can’t dive in because I want to make details that work and reduce plot holes where suspension of disbelief isn’t as needed. I need to study it more (I need to study all the details for any of my fics imo to be confident sometimes LOL)

27. What’s the nicest comment you’ve ever received?

I don’t think I can say one comment was the nicest because I’ve gotten comments that have given me quite the smiles to my face many times! I know this is a cop out but it’s true!

IS WHAT I WAS GONNA SAY UNTIL REINA SENT ME THE FOLLOWING ON DISCORD LIKE TWENTY MINS AGO:

and also rad. i am never this vocal about my emotions like EVER but this needs to be said your fics are obviously far from perfect, as are mine and everyone else's. but the thing about your works is that they're so well-sanded that it's impossible to find any rough edges or faults in them in terms of cohesion to a plot. your cast is never OOC and the amount of effort you devote to developing your takes on the characters as accurately as possible is unimaginably awe-inspiring.

BITCH I WANNA CRY 😭

28. How well do you handle criticism when it comes to your writing?

I’d like to believe I take it often well to try and improve because that’s always my goal. if someone is rude lol that’s not constructive snd is unhelpful. If I disagree with criticism I’ll explain why !

29. Have you ever gone outside of your comfort zone for a fic? How did it turn out?

Not yet, but I have some plot ideas I think will let me test this.

30. Tooth-rotting fluff or merciless angst?

F L U F F.

31. Do you have any OCs? Tell us about them!

elliott fuji, a japanese-american award winning photographer who is erina’s boyfriend in ‘soma panics’ which..causes soma’s panic LOL he’s 30 with slightly wavy black hair. I still haven’t pinpointed his personality just yet...he kind of humble brags for sure an artsy fucker and flirts maybe I’ll make him a lil shy though. he teaches sometimes, and becomes an adjunct photography professor in Tokyo so he can be with erina.

32. Summarize a random fic of yours in 10 words or less.

a cook is unfashionably late in realizing his feelings.

33. Is there anything you wish your audience knew about your writing or writing process?

I am a slow. so slow. motivation who is she? I also write out of order, unfortunately a bit too often.

34. Copy and paste an excerpt you’re particularly fond of.

this should be for the fic ‘soma panics’ it’s either megumi or satoshi talkin to him rn, I’m leaning towards satoshi

“You thought she would always wait for you, didn’t you Soma-kun? To always welcome you home.”

Soma drags his palms down his face and groans. He doesn’t like this at all. He doesn’t shy from confrontation but this is a whole different ballgame. Soma doesn’t play any ball.

“I guess..?” Is his reply, because he thinks he isn’t sure how to answer that.

“You guess?”

Just being questioned again is enough to crack Soma’s pathetic facade as if it was dropped chinaware and he lets out the longest sigh.

“No.”

Coming home means coming home to Nakiri Erina too.

Nakiri Erina is his forever.

this is @takoyakitenchou’s excerpt she’s most proud of that I’ve written, which is also from you guessed it, the long fic soma panics

SOMA: I am, I mean I will be, I swear I will always come home to you, not spend as much time abroad, once I’m done with work I’ll come right back. I’ll make sure to message you. Nakiri, I’m in love you with you. Maybe for a really long time. You know how I say I dedicate my food to you? My dad—my dad said that the key to become a good chef is to find someone to dedicate your cooking to. A special someone. For my dad it was my mom, you know? For me it’s...

(this is a good piece of dialogue tbh so I am also proud of this)

35. Ramble about any fic-related thing you want!

I’ve mentioned it throughout this but the WIP I’ve nicknamed ‘soma panics’ is something I’m super excited to write, but it’s going on slowly...and almost completely out of order. out of all of my writing it showed off that particular habit of mine, along with “what is this, a shoujo manga?!” though the latter is currently being written chronologically now that I’ve posted chapter one and is pretty solid in direction. it was originally supposed to be a one shot but I got impatient and wanted to post at least something for the sorina / soueri fandom.

however, because ‘soma panics’ (I won’t call it that LOL) is my baby I want to keep true to my rule of refusing to post it until I have a draft of the entire fic finished and I’m satisfied with the main points pretty much. due to my writing out of order, I’m worried I’ll change my mind about scenes or want to reflect things in earlier chapters for later ones etc etc

I joined the SnS fandom extremely late, as season five was airing. I was a fan of the manga five years ago and dropped it because I forgot to check for updates when I caught up 😔 I really want to bang out the different fics and aus for sorina that I have before the fandom fizzles out entirely but tbh I’m writing for myself, I’m manifesting what I want to see and I’ll just share it with all my friends to read if no one else will. cause I’m slow broski I dunno what writing fast even is like LMAO I do really want to write faster though, so I can contribute more and let the words free from the discord dms....

#ask meme #ask rad shit #writing #writing by rad #fanfic #reina girl u put me thru it I swear lol #thank u for sending!!#ur amazing!!!!

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dreamerandcrazy · 3 years

Text

Ok, so I haven't been able to comment much on my Riverdale rewatch mostly bc i'm watching it with my boyfriend and we have an agreement of no cell phones when we're watching, otherwise we can't pay proper attention to it. But I wrote down some notes about the episodes I did watch (I watched up until ep 6, which is very ironic bc apparently today is its anniversary, so yay for my perfect timing). I actually remember most of the stuff that happened in s1, so here's mostly a few things I paid more attention to or noticed about the characters and the ships, or things i'm able to look at through a different view now that i've watched all the seasons. Strap in if you want to see my notes, if not just scroll please, no ship or character hate here please. Also, feel free to ignore, this is really just a personal look in some stuff I didn't notice in my first watch.

- Betty's character used to be much happier and lighter in season 1. I know we're introduced to "Dark Betty" right in episode 3, but still, I feel like the way Lili played Betty in season 1 did not hold the same "darkness" as it does in the following seasons. The scene where she is dancing happily in her bedroom because she's going to homecoming with the boy she likes? The scene where she introduces Jughead to the Blue & Gold and gets him to work with her? Her genuine innocent happiness at seeing her sister again after so much time? The way she interacted with Kevin and Veronica? Those were all chef's kiss because she actually feels like a teenager in them. In all her girly glory, she radiates youth energy and it's a thing that was sadly lacking after s1. Btw this is not a critique at Lili's acting at all, I blame it entirely on Ras and his obsession with dark Betty.

- There's actually so many indications of Cheryl being a lgbt character in the first episodes that I have no idea how I missed it the first time. But then again, there were many indications with Veronica as well, and sadly that's not the path Ras chose for her.

- Jughead in s1 is truly so superior in so many ways that it's not hard to see why he quickly became such a fan favorite. I think even if he wasn't played by Cole Sprouse, he still would have conquered many fans' hearts. Sadly, the things that made Jughead such a loving and interesting character for me also fizzled out in s2 when the writing team decided to make him a woke serpent leader instead of allowing him to sticking to his true personality as a passionate mystery lover, a dedicated friend and very nerdy, which was very cute. I feel that we got some of that back for him in s4, which was good, but sadly s1 is where my love for him really stayed to stay. But I still care for him, and s5 has a promising storyline for him which i'm excited about, so let's see if s5 Jughead can become better than s1 Jughead.

- Going back again to Cheryl for a sec, I just noticed that the red lipstick actually wasn't that common for her in s1? At least not in the first five. I wonder when did it start becoming her trademark? Anyways, it's actually a really good look her and allows you to appreciate Madelaine's natural beauty even more.

- Also, did anybody notice how Alice lowkey figured out who killed Jason in ep 2 lmao, like... in episode two she legit says she wouldn't be surprised if the Blossoms themselves had killed Jason, which... is what happened LMAO, considering we know it was his father. And even more hilarious and tragically ironic note, in ep 6 she's laughing at Betty suggesting that Hal killed Jason because "do you think your father has the stomach for it?!"... Ma'am... i'm-.... 😂😂😂😂.

- This rewatch has reminded me of how much I adored and how I much I miss Josie and the Pussycats. The girls were such a nice addition to the cast, and their songs were so beautiful. I truly wish we get to see them again someday, but at the same time I also think the actresses deserve to be at a work place where they're given the treatment they deserve and not completely ignored and treated like extras.

- Archie/Valerie was super cute and is very underrated in the fandom, but i'm glad Valerie stood up for herself and didn't take any of Archie's or Cheryl's sh*t. Still sucks because they were really good together, though.

- Why was Jason not allowed to talk, lmao? Like, i'm sure it's become a running joke in the show at this point, but back when season one was airing what was the excuse for it? He appeared in so many flashbacks and scenes and we still never heard a single word ☠️☠️☠️☠️. I just want to know what was the reason lol.

- I liked s1 Reggie, but I feel like Charles Melton's Reggie is better because he actually feels like a douche with good intentions lol, and he has more of a personality. Most of the time I even forgot about Reggie in s1, but after s2 he definitely made me more aware of him. So for that, I like Charles Melton's Reggie more. But the actor from s1 still did a good job with what he was given.

From now on I will be talking about the ships, so bear with me, and know that I am a multishipper. Yes, I have my preferences. No, my word is not law, it's just an opinion, so please respect it.

- Bughead is still super cute in s1. I feel like from s1 they will always be my otp, even if I no longer feel as strongly about them now and have a different insight as to where I would like their story to go, and now I definitely see the problem others had mentioned before of how they kind of took over the show, which is something I kind of closed my eyes to before... But I really loved them in s1. It felt like a very juvenile teenage relationship, they didn't give much thought on why and if they should be together, they just went for it like teenagers usually do, and they were very very cute together.

- I feel like if you don't count Beronica (because they really were the best no matter what you say or ship), if there's a ship that deserves "best chemistry" award for s1 is probably Varchie. I lost my interest in them years ago, but this rewatch reminded me of why I actually loved them once. They never really became an otp for me, but Kj and Camila's chemistry in s1 was VERY GOOD, and I really liked them. Their kiss in the pilot was electric and the s&xual tension was OOF, and that chemistry carries on through the season. You can easily tell something will happen between them eventually. It makes me sad bc I don't know what happened after s1, but their chemistry from s2 onwards was just... not there for me. Which is ironic bc it's the season they truly started dating and they got a lot of smexy scenes, but I just... didn't feel it. But I'll leave that comment to my s2 rewatch. For now just let me enjoy Varchie's chemistry in s1 while it lasts because it was really good.

- Now we get to Barchie, who I made clear was the reason for my rewatch, so let's get to it. I LOVED the way Barchie was written in s1. I remember when I first watched Riverdale, I was curious about their dynamic but didn't put much thought into it because I loved Bughead too much and wanted them to be together, and I thought Barchie would be the traditional "first og ship" thing and wouldn't have a big follow up, but boy was I WRONG and am I GLAD for it. I'll talk more about their development in the next seasons when I get there, so for now let's focus a bit on s1. Just in like the first two episodes, there is so much Barchie foreshadowing, like, it's legit insane how it was right there in my face and I missed it the first time! "I have never felt what i'm supposed to feel with betty", "it's not my fault he doesn't like you", "I can't give you the answer you want"... Omg, those are obvious eyebrow raising "this will come back to bite you in the a$$" moments and it's incredible how they actually DO! I would call it clever writing, but like... it's Riverdale lol. So I really am just glad that the ship was done this way, i'm glad Barchie has the back story that they do, they've really come a LONG way and i'm happy I get to experience their whole growing storyline. It's also especially good because s1 actually provides you with scenes that show you their friendship and how they're so close, you see them hanging out, talking, their pictures together, everything was just really done well with them. Still have a bit of critique with the way Archie contradicted himself sometimes regardinf his feelings for Betty, but let's be honest, we've watched enough Riverdale to know that's just a problem with the writing.

- Kevin/Joaquin is still my favorite Kevin ship, i'm sad it's completely impossible to go back to them someday so for now i'll just be really glad it existed and that I got to see them even if it was short-lived. They had great chemistry and their kiss scenes always outsold.

- Beronica... sigh. Beronica. The most wasted chemistry i've ever seen on CW and I've watched a LOT of CW shows. There was so much potential there, s1 was practically overflowing with them and it's one of the reasons it became some popular. I remember when the Beronica fandom was the biggest one, ah, good times. Veronica and Betty were easily the best part of season 1, their friendship, their lowkey romantic moments, they were just superior in every way. This ship deserved better, not even just as a ship, but as a friendship.

- Veronica's s1 hair >>> Veronica's hair in seasons 2-4. I loved the side part and I am glad it's back in season 5, it looks so much better like that.

- Cheryl, as always, deserves better. Can't wait for her to meet Toni so I can watch again Cheryl finally get to love someone and be loved back, which is exactly what she deserves.

For now, that is all! I will probably make another post soon when i'm done with season one and from season two on I will be live-blogging the episodes since I will be watching it alone. Once again, pls, no hate, my thoughts are my thoughts. Peace.

#bri rewatches riverdale #riverdale #barchie #choni

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inmyarmswrappedin · 4 years

Note

Now that Nora's season is coming to end, what are somethings that you want for amira's season

Hi 😁 I bet you thought I’d never reply to this ask! Well, after you sent this in MARCH, I am finally posting an answer.

Btw, I did the same for Nora’s season, and as a note, I’m a white European and an atheist. If any of this is offensive or not my place to say, I preemptively apologize.

1) I would like for Amira's arc not to be about being Muslim. That is, Cris' arc isn't about being bi, it's about learning (and accepting) that she's more than the fun friend. That she has and can offer more to the people in her life. Nora's arc isn't about being a feminist, it's about not being so set in your first impression of someone that you don't notice red flags or don't notice them trying to be better people. Same with Eva and not being defined by her mistakes, or about Viri and her financial situation. And I would like the same for Amira.

2) I think one common denominator of all Sana seasons so far is that they've shown the mains doing something that people assume hijabi can't do when it's more like they're systematically excluded from participating. For Sana, it was basketball. For Imane, it was dancing. For Amira M, it was boxing. I joked on twitter that Amira N's thing should be binging TV shows and eating junk, proving that hijabi are really like anyone else, but on a serious note, I'd like for Amira's thing to be photography (and maybe modeling? since Amira's friend was taking pics of her).

3) A scene where Amira explains how she can be a feminist and a hijabi both, just so we as a society have that scene to point to when the question inevitably comes up again. Seriously, I feel like that's one of the questions I most often see people asking Hajar.

4) I want the association girls to have their own youtube channel. Or at the very least, their own instagram and/or twitter account. I would love for them to post memes punching up about their experiences.

5) I feel like, much like with trans narratives, there's this "acceptable" narrative for hijabi in mainstream society, which is: the character made the decision to cover after coming up with solid reasons to do so. I.e. she made the decision early and can defend it with inarguable rebuttals. It's like women can't be trusted unless they know 150% what they're doing, be it covering, or dating a girl, or going vegan, or any number of things. I really appreciate that Amira started covering just because it felt right, and she's finding meaning in it after the fact. I would like for this to be a thing in her season, that she's still figuring herself out, that she's not already an Islamic scholar.

6) I also think that's what makes her stand apart from the other Sanas. I feel like (maybe with Zoya's exception), none of the other Sanas would entertain a crush on a white guy. They'd have never drunk or flirted (like we know Amira used to do). It's like they're not allowed to fuck up, or can only fuck up in acceptable ways, like engaging in a flirtation with a non Muslim only because they didn't know he wasn't a Muslim, or had booze at home, but it wasn't theirs, etc. I'm hoping that they've made Dani a love interest specifically to explore this idea (and not because they wanted to whitewash a character or give less time to an actor of color).

7) On that note, SKAM Hajar brought up an idea that, because the hijab makes them super visible, hijabi are perceived as ambassadors of Islam, expected to be able to answer any question about Islam, but also that people will judge all Muslims based on whatever mistake they individually make. I would like for a potential bench scene to allow Amira to say that it puts major pressure on her to feel like she can't make any mistake, because every Muslim will be judged based on her making a mistake, having a shitty day, being in a bad mood, not wanting to be Muslim wikipedia that day, etc. That sometimes she just wants to be Amira, not Islam personified.

8) I would like for Dani's character to represent not just white society, but also childhood, the safe choice, the choice her parents would love, and for Sofian's character to represent not just Moroccan culture, but also like... SEXY risk, independence, novelty... Because I feel like when I see Muslim girl/Muslim boy/white guy love triangles in fiction, the Muslim guy is positioned as the boring choice (but still incredibly wrong because he's abusive or maybe even secretly gay and forced to beard by his parents), the safety, the guy you'd bring home to your parents, whereas the white guy represents independence and carving your own path away from your parents.

9) Just once, I would like for a Muslim character to say, "what do you think of Catholic priests abusing kids?" to someone asking them what they think of such-and-such Muslim majority country doing such-and-such to its citizens. Bonus points if it's Sofian's character.

10) I would like for Dilan to get an insta and a storyline. And for that storyline to connect to Amira's.

11) In general, I would prefer that parents be kept to a minimum (not to get rid of them entirely, of course, but to be kept at the level they've been in other Sana seasons). I just have never thought the point of Skam was the parents. And I get why they have a larger presence in a second gen kid, but I, personally, am more interested in what they represent in the main's life, rather than in giving them a lot of face time.

12) And, on that note, if they do with Amira what I've outlined above, I don't think there's a necessity for Amira to have siblings. Particularly if eskam isn't going to continue after this season. I think it'd be far more interesting if Amira's character contained the elements of figuring her identity as a Muslim living in a Western country that Elias, Idriss and Essam had. (And maybe that way Dani is both Yousef and Elias, stealing not just one role for an actor of color, but two! lmao)

13) I really hope that the obligatory evak s4 side plot be kept at a minimum tbh. I'm really not interested in a) Eloy coming back to cause drama, b) Amira's friend causing croana drama because she's Joana ex or whatever, c) a physical fight breaking out because of (perceived) homophobia.

14) I want Amira to tell Cris that amiris es lo más real que hay. 😭 I would love it if, as a parallel to Cris' season, Amira doesn't tell Cris about her interest in Sofian's character at first because she's afraid of her reaction, only for Cris to be supportive of whatever she chooses to do.

15) I would be so fucking happy if eskam adapted the "is your faith stronger than your lust?" scene in this season. I have always wanted to love that scene, because how often do you get a scene where two girls get to talk that long and that much (even in Skam most of the iconic dialogue scenes between just two people aren't between two girls in the squad), but I just haaaated the purpose of the scene in Skam.

16) I would cry buckets if we got a scene like Det Beste fra Islam where Amira and Sofian's character both talk about what Islam means for them. Particularly if Sofian is introduced as not the Perfect Muslim Man, but it turns out he has THOUGHTS about religion.

17) And, finally, I would love for the unquestionable villain of the season to be a white guy. If the villain is going to be a woman, then I would want her to be Cris' mom, not a high school aged character. Not because of white feminism yayyy! but because I think the major issue Sana seasons have run into before is that the showrunners want to touch on white girls being the problem, but they also don't want to villainize white girls. So we have stuff like Sana inviting Sara and Ingrid (of all people!!) to Eid, Imane apologizing to Ingrid (of all people!!), random one clip white women attacking Amira M (and the Kiki/Amira friendship of course), etc. I'd just rather they didn't have girls doing shitty stuff to Amira N, if they're going to go back on it. Which they inevitably would, because eskam's overall message is sisterhood.

Bonus clips

18) I would love it if Skam España was like, "you thought we were dropping storylines left and right? Nope!" and resolved long standing mysteries like who was behind Eva's hate ig, who had the pills, who outed Cris to the school, who's the owner of the keys that were left behind at GSC, and so on. Will die if it turns out to be Ramón!

19) I want Joana to get that job she wanted so bad last season!

20) I would love for Emma to show up and come out as a lesbian, just as a last hurrah lol.

21) I don't feel strongly about which couples should be endgame and not (other than not Dani/Amira hghvvh please), BUT in my most embarrassing fantasies, I want Skam España to hire Alejandro Reina's irl boyfriend to play Lucas' boyfriend for the finale. Not because I can't separate fiction from reality or anything, but because when I thought Lucas would be getting a season, I wanted his boyfriend to be a poc, and I was highkey buttmad that they hired random white bread when they could just as easily have hired a poc.

22) I think it would be really cool if Inés got a clip on her POV, but I don't think we're going to get it. I think all bonus clips will be from the squad's POV, i.e. Eva, Cris, Nora and Viri. Not even Joana.

23) I want a Mallorca special or episode so bad, and I will be so FUCKING ANNOYED if we don't get it. Seriously, I can't imagine the team didn't feel betrayed when they watched Skam for writing purposes, and didn't get their russetide. So they should know how angry we would be if we didn't get even a little bit of Mallorca time.

#ask #skam españa #I am literally unable to be concise it's just not in my blood #long post #comicluke #I used to always say that I wanted them to feature the m-30 mosque in amira's season #and they're doing that!! so yay!

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sunnixsunshine · 3 years

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Finished Loki and I have opinions you can feel free to ignore.

I enjoyed it but I didn't love it.

The writing felt too rushed to the point where it felt like it was all cluttered and all the information/lore was getting jumbled around. And I get that its 6 episodes, and that most likely is because they wanted more than one season; I'd say 3 seasons at most is what they're hoping for even though 2 can clearly wrap the new story up. I just feel like the inner workings of the TVA should have been shown more. It would have been a bigger shock to the audience if the TVA was showed more from not just the basic view point of Loki, a bad and unfair place, or Mobius, a office like "we do what we have to do" sorta place. Give us, the audience, a reason to trust TVA and then rip that away from us without a moment's notice. Give us trust issues.

Sylvie is a little hard to sympathize with. All we know is the TVA took her as a child, she ran away, and has been hunted down since. We got barely any glimpse into her childhood, which since she couldn't remember much could have been easily provided by a TVA agent. There's not a lot there to WANT to sympathize with her, so I just can't. Show us the hardships she faced running from the TVA. Don't show us her strengths and present struggles. Don't tell us why she wants revenge, show us why and give us her process into how she planned to get revenge. She has potential, I'll give the writers that, but she lacks flavor right now. It's not there. I can't like a character that doesn't have a whole lot character in the first place. She just feels like a pawn, only there for Loki to fawn over and progress his character development and not hers.

You can argue that its the short season and they had to make cut backs, but look what they did with Mobius. With Loki. With the Judge. And that Minuteman without the memorable name(I can't remember numbers well so that's on me). They had really good breakthroughs by the end of it and Sylvie's is reversed entirely AND THEN brought back by falling to the floor when she kills McwhatshisfaceIdontcareabouthim???? It feels WEAK. Ending a season with the lead female role just learning next to nothing, just regret and a soul full of "wow that achieved nothing I still feel empty!" Like I said, she does have potiential so I hope in season 2 she gets her proper character development and big ol' arc dedicated to her.

Now whatshisface, probably clock hologram's personal fuck toy because honestly I think his standards are low and he's very submissive. I'm sorry but I hated him. He was so hyped up, which would have been comedic and wonderful in a line of movies if the praise and mystery continued on longer. But in this setting it felt. Weak. Very downplayed. Showing up in the finale. Dying in the finale. Oh come on that sucked! His "powers" sucked too! I'm sure that was the point of it but it just didn't translate well.

The kiss. Nuff said. Ew.

Also I didn't mention it before, but that fight scene with I need a hero playing? Yeah they thought they could up DreamWorks with that but they didn't, it felt super out of place. They just made themselves look like fools. Shrek does it better, honey.

Besides the complaints, I quite liked Mobius. And I liked the interactions between all the Lokis. I loved it when classic Loki made up the illusion distraction and Loki and Sylvie got their chance to enchant Howeveryouspellit. I also like the whole look and feel of TVA; vintage, modern, and futuristic all rolled into one! Super fuckin cool! The ending was nice though, the pan over to the statue was a good touch. A classic leadway into a new season, can't go wrong with it.

In conclusion, I would die for alligator Loki.

#well now im off to start wandavison bc i barely got spoiled for that!#loki #loki spoilers

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nicad13 · 3 years

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Death Watch, Cults, and Controversy

I’m not sure of the best way to discuss the controversy on the Children of the Watch Cult thing, so I’ll try this and see what happens. I’ll lay out my potential biases as a middle-aged white cis woman who ran away from Catholicism the first chance I got because, among many other reasons, Pope John Paul II was a flat-out misogynist. Christian Fundamentalists in general then proceeded to annoy me right out of theism altogether. Most of my feelings on religious fundamentalism are based in my experience with white redneck bootlickers who think they’re doing the Lord’s Work by threatening (and too often all-out murdering) POC, non-cis folks, progressives, and whoever else they’re cross with at any given moment.

With that in mind, I’ll acknowledge that I’ll probably fuck some of this up, and if I do, please know that I’m deeply sorry and am open to discussion on all of this.

My understanding is that resistance to calling Children of the Watch a cult is that the helmet rules are a parallel to head coverings, so they code as Islamic. Picking on practices and issues that are at least in part a result of white colonization is shitty, so just leave them alone.

That’s a totally fair and valid view, particularly given the problematic treatment of characters of color through the entire Star Wars universe.

Here’s another view.

The Clone Wars got around to Mandalore with “The Mandalore Plot” in January 2010, about 7 years into the Iraq War. Pre Vizsla rolled up with Death Watch spouting off about bringing back warrior ways (the same ways that decimated the planet), calling pacifists the real threat. He sounded just like all the Republican assholes who were more than happy to go to war wherever the hell George W. Bush felt like sending soldiers. Pile on the facts that all the humans of the Death Watch leadership were white (Vizsla, Gar Saxon, and Bo-Katan), helmet rules weren’t a thing at that point, so Death Watch TEN YEARS AGO coded as white-supremacist right-wing Republican warmongers. These days we’re still getting an earful from right-wing nutballs about taking up arms if Trump doesn’t get a second term. When I think of the modern AU equivalent of Death Watch, these are the people who come to mind for me.

As far as I can tell, Sabine Wren was the first Mandalorian of color we see since Boba Fett, and I don’t think her family’s ties to Death Watch were revealed until 2016 or 2017 or so? Even then loyalties were a fractured mess. The lack of POC among the New Mandalorians was shitty, but I’m not sure that lining up POC exclusively with Death Watch entirely works, particularly given the white leadership. (Depending on how far up Ursa Wren was, though one could argue that the Wrens were exploited by Death Watch. Again, it’s a mess.)

Which brings us to Children of the Watch and the signature helmet rule. I could see how it made sense in the aftermath of the Purge and saw it as little more than a device to drive the mystery until the final episodes of Season 1, where things came together for me in the following way: Din was 1) picked up by a group that for ten years coded to me as white-supremacist warmongers, 2) raised in something called a “Fighting Corps” which sounds suspiciously like being raised as a child-soldier, 3) so indoctrinated that he chose to die for the helmet rule instead of receive life-saving treatment. Not sure about anyone else, but a practice that demands one’s death in a situation where death is otherwise easily preventable strikes me as problematic.

If we want to take things a step further and assume that the Armorer looks like Emily Swallow (who is white as far as I can tell?) and Paz Vizsla looks like Jon (or Pre, but with all the adoption stuff, who knows), they continued to have white leadership in the covert. One of whom even tried to helmet-shame the brown guy who tithed every dime he earned, and that’s problematic as well. How much race-based exploitation went on there is hard to say, but I got the impression that Din was being used even from the start.

So, that’s where I’m coming from on this; Death Watch as right-wing zealots possibly exploiting adopted kids as gun fodder, and when it all falls apart post-Purge, we see a covert dependent at least in part on the labors of one of the adopted kids.

Again, I’m totally open to discussion on this. Fire away. Tell me where I fucked it up.

#the mandalorian #death watch #cult #din djarin

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andhereisthetea · 4 years

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Just finished Season 3

I have been watching She-Ra for the past seven days non-spot and I just finished season 3 and...

god

dammit

I am just....

UGH.

I want to talk about a lot of things after this, but I know I can’t just sandwich them in this post. I watched all three seasons in less time than I should have, I feel so damn conflicted right now about certain things, even if I spoiled myself about it before.

I spoiled myself about the whole Entrapta and Hordak arc, I watched gifsets and I saw your beautiful fan arts both in tumblr and twitter, but watching it, like... really watching it, it’s a whole different thing and now I feel both sad but also relieved I’m watching this after the show ended because 1) I am sad I didn’t experience things at the same time the fandom and most Entrapdak shippers did BUT 2) this would have made a mess of me, I get affected very easily with things like what I watched.

Ok, I have some things to say about the three seasons:

First... Entrapta.

There are some things I find refreshing and others that I don’t, I am not going to point it out in this post, also I can’t expect a lot from a family show.

The thing is... I feel they should have made up a backstory for Entrapta.

I understand the lore and the plot Crew-Ra focused into, but also I knew the Lore before the creation of this show, I feel there should have been a better way to explore more characters from Masters of the Universe.

Think about the complete mystery she is.

We knows most of the characters’ backstories, at least the most complex and important ones, we knows for example that Mermisa got her ruined kingdom from her father who was killed in the first battle against the Horde. We knows basically all the story of Bow’s family, we knows about Glimmer, about Scorpia, about Perfuma’s kingdom, about even Adora, Catra who was an orphaned, and also about Shadow Weaver.

But Entrapta? she is a complete damn mystery.

She is the Princess of Dryl, she designed the Crypto Castle, a literal labyrinth without sense, she is obsessed with First One’s tech since who knows how long, she isn’t an elemental princess but she can move her hair as if it were extra limbs and evn fight with it as a weapon, something that no other specie in the whole planet of Etheria can do, she has an intelligence even bigger than Tony Stark, nobody even talks about what happened to her parents, NOBODY, like they didn’t even existed and she popped up from nowhere and created her robotic parents herself. And even if her seeking for data and more and more progress and tech can be seen as a clear symptom her Autism (like autistic people focusing so much in something they can’t do anything else, I have that) or the fact she is looking for something else but not even her know what the hell is...

She knows or is implicit that she knows about the language of the First Ones, she understand their technology better than anyone else, also, her kingdom is the most advanced, they are considered to be in the industrial era compared to other kingdoms controlled by the elemental princesses. Where did all that technology knowledge, and also First One’s knowledge, came from? I don't think that in 20 years since she had reason and enough skill to be able to learn by herself Dryl has built all that; Dryl's kingdom had been working that way since before she was even born, so who told her? who taught her?

In addition to the fact that she has access to mining in her kingdom where she has been able to find who knows how much of the first one’s technology... right under her feet. The sole fact they put someone so important for the plot as a princess who has no runestone is just mysterious, she used the Black Garnet even better than Shadow Weaver, I can completely see her or someone before her doing the same with her own Runestone (which I picture as an Amethist btw).

I think they chose to put Entrapta’s possibilities of a backstory aside because, after seeing how the character became increasingly important and popular, they realized that once they had started to create her backstory and origins, they wouldn’t have been able to stop, and the central plot wasn’t about her at all, and is very likely that whatever idea of backstory they had about her would have been focused in the central plot.

For example (and call me crazy, I don't care) if they had said that she was the granddaughter or daughter of Keldor AKA Skeletor, I would have totally believed it.

The thing with that is... even though they chose for her an Etheria region, which in the original Lore was unimportant, everything to do with Entrapta in She-Ra becomes important immediately, but ultimately it would have distracted them from the central plot with Adora as She-Ra, and Horde Prime, who is the main villain they choose for the show.

For now I just want to imagine what could have been if she had more protagonism and wasn’t only the geek princess, she has so much potential and I haven’t seen a character so refreshing like her in long time.

Okay, I want to talk about the seasons I just watched while the information is still fresh inside my head.

One of the main things that frustrated me about the final season is how Crew-Ra COMPLETELY NAILED IT in making me hate Catra. They didn’t make her sympathetic, she is toxic and most of the time she remembered me people who I had to avoid in my personal life, so the natural reaction to all her actions is to dislike her, that is exactly what Crew-Ra wanted for us to feel.

But in some point it got to the point that if you tell me the character was unpredictable, it lost it a bit in the final episodes, she started to become predictable in her actions because as an impulsive person constantly in denial over her emotions and projecting her problems over everyone else, it was obvious she was going to go through a destructive path wanting for everyone to die together with herself because it wouldn’t have seen less like a suicide.

And as a self-centered character with tunnel vision over her purpose and actions, she was going to completely underestimate Entrapta and wasn’t going to understand why Hordak found her interesting, she would attribute everything to power and fight for positions just like SW taught her, instead of something as pure as friendship, in fact she might have know it, but she didn’t want to admit it, because to know that someone as hateful and intimidating as Lord Hordak suddenly has someone who loves him beyond that is just too much for her, who doesn’t understand and is hurt by the fact that Adora doesn’t love her back, but doesn’t want to change one bit for fear to lost the life that ironically she hates so much without Adora in it.

So of course she was gonna electrocute Entrapta and send her to Beast Island, and her impulsive decision was made out of pure fear over what she did not only to Entrapta, but to Hordak himself and what he might do to her when he finds out what she did, and no matter how much she wants to hide behind a curtain of falsehood, is a matter of time he realizes Entrapta is nowhere in Etheria to be seen.

She is a character who does not measure her actions until the consequences are so horrible that she runs away, because reality is too painful for her to even accept what she has done, also she usually thinks that EVERYONE thinks just like her, every one of her speeches about fake friendship, power and winning is just about how she sees the world work from her perspective, she has zero notions over someone’s else vision of the world.

That's one of the biggest reasons why I liked Adora in the last episode of the third season; Catra made a decision, her desire to win basically led her to condemn Entrapta to death, almost destroy the planet and ultimately kill Angella or worse. I have seen posts about people saying that Catra hasn’t killed anyone directly, but I am sorry, she did this season, and she lied about it to everyone and to herself, but Adora knows better.

Now, Hordak

God how I start with this.

Hordak, opposite to the original Lore of Masters of the Universe, is right now basically an alien version of Lucifer from John Milton’s Paradise Lost but with God being fucking evil.

Just like Lucifer, he wants to replicate his creator’s creation on Etheria, choosing to rule in hell rather than heaven, but unlike Lucifer, he stills has a connection with his creator and just like Catra, wants to satify his wished to conquer Etheria all by himself.

But unlike Horde Prime, he is in fact a good leader, and a logical one. He appreciates when his soldiers thinks by themselves and achieves their goals, unlike Prime, and he in fact doesn’t accept empty adulation, if you are good at something, you have to prove it, not to him, but to yourself.

So I just love how with every season they are adding more complexity to his whole being, and now they have added the emotional factor with Entrapta’s friendship and ultimately “betrayal”, I want to watch how this at first glance stoic character loses the shit out of his stoicism, even if I already knows what is going to happen. The fact he already got affected by Catra’s lies over Entrapta betraying him proves how far he has gone since Entrapta came to his life, if he was just impressed by Entrapta or wanted to use her, that wouldn’t have affected him that much, he already feels something for her, but he struggles to know what it is, and even if he denies it due to what just happened, he is still feeling it.

Which makes the anticipation to the discovery of Catra’s lies so much more painful.

Also, the fact he believed Catra, just like that, made me feel disappointed, but that is based on the complexity of the character and his self-loathing, he feels he doesn’t deserves friendship nor love; he is a defective clone after all, in his own mind he is imperfect and she is the complete opposite of that, so believing it is easy, but that doesn’t make it less painful, and that is what I am sure Hordak will realize ultimately.

I don’t know how long will took me to watch the season 4, but I know is worth the effort if I want to see Entrapta and Hordak together again, I love them, they are pure brain and incredible refreshing to watch, and the affection they feel for each other is obvious, one of the most bittersweet scenes for me was when Entrapta remembered Hordak due to the trio saying his name, her suddenly quiet behavior and calmed and painful smiled was so unlikely of her that one has to admit something more is going on, also her choice of language, “I had a lab partner”, not “I have”, gives a sense of sadness to the whole scene that broke my damn heart.

I will tag you guys @cruelfeline @ineffablelabpartners @etherian-affairs because I want to know your opinions about this, I never thought Entrapdak was gonna affect me that way, in fact I never expected to ship them at all, but here we are, dying for them and I just can’t escape.

#season 3 #s3 #spop #shera #shera3 #entrapta #hordak #catra #meta #mypost #entrapdak

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theteapotofdoom · 4 years

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First thanks for your responses, I enjoy reading your opinion. Second, I was wondering what your take is on 2 things...1. Dabi’s personal feelings towards the league and 2. Will hawks be found out, or do the villains already suspect him? To me dabi is hard to read because he’s always aloof. He seems to follow tomura’s lead and wants to increase the leagues power, but doesn’t seem to care much for the well being of his team, since he wasn’t interested in saving Giran. What do you think?

Hello! Sorry for taking so long to answer this, I’ve been doing a break from Tumblr during the holidays, and I was also focusing on updating one of my shigadabi fics, but I’m back now! Thank you for being so patient :D I’m glad you’re enjoying my rambling!

I have a bit of complicated relationship with Dabi because I enjoy some things about him and see his potential as a character, but at this point in the manga, I mostly find him very bland and uninteresting. But I don’t mean this as a hateful comment, I don’t dislike him at all! It’s just that, the way I see it, Dabi is not a real character yet. He is easily the most underdeveloped member of the LOV with Compress, he isn’t especially sympathetic or dislikeable, so it’s hard to have a clear opinion of him. Again, to clarify, I absolutely believe that Horikoshi is doing this on purpose and we will eventually learn more about Dabi ( and I don’t mean about Touya Todoroki, I mean about Dabi himself, about who he is now).

So with all of that in mind, I think it’s completely impossible to do any meta or analyse of Dabi at this point in time because we simply have nothing to work with. I can’t really tell you what I think Horikoshi is going to do with Dabi (nobody can), but I can tell you what I want Horikoshi to do with Dabi (based in the little crumbs he gave us).

So here’s my opinion about Dabi and his relationship with the LOV: right now, Dabi is just like Shouto before the sports festival arc.

Let me explain: people tend to forget this, but before the sports festival (basically all of season 1) Shouto was a pretty bland and boring character. He was a pretty boy with a cool design and super OP quirk who kept his distance with the rest of the class and refused to make friends. Sounds familiar? It was only during the tournament arc that we got to learn more about who he was, his backstory, his personality, his views on heroes, and that’s after that arc that he started to change.

By now, everyone pointed out the thousands of parallels between Deku and Shigaraki, they are on the exact same journey and their arcs have similar beats. I want Horikoshi to follow the same path with Shouto and Dabi. Right now, we’re seeing Dabi pre “it’s your quirk, isn’t?” when he is still cold and distant and mysterious. But if Horikoshi wants to continue the parallels between Deku and Shig, I really want him to give us a similar moment between Shig and Dabi. I could see a scene where the LOV is fighting Endeavor and Dabi is visibly struggling, and Shig yells at him something like “You know you’re stronger than that clown! Your fire is hotter than his!” (because yeah, Shig and Dabi are still little shits, so they wouldn’t be as “poetic” as Deku and Shouto in their version of that scene). This will be the moment when Dabi finally truly connect with Shigaraki and recognize the LOV as his true family (like Spinner did during My Villain Academia arc, and like Toga and Twice did during the Overhaul arc).

Here’s what I want for Dabi’s character arc: I want Horikoshi to address the fact that Dabi was abandoned and hurt by his family, and I want Dabi to learn that he can find a new one. Imagine how cool it would be! Dabi refusing to bond with the LOV because he built a wall around his heart because his previous family hurt him so bad that he never wants to get close to anyone ever again! And so his arc would be about how he realises that true family is the one you choose, not the one you’re born in and that it’s okay for him to care about the LOV because they will never leave him behind. Again, I can’t say that this is what Horikoshi has planned for him, but Horikoshi keeps calling the LOV a found family, so I think that this could happen.

So the way I chose to see it, right now Dabi is purposely distancing himself from the LOV because of his past, but his arc will be about opening up to them and learning that he deserves to be loved for who he is. Just like I said, pre sport festival Shouto. He isn’t interested in saving Giran because he is used to people (like him) being left behind. I really want to see Horikoshi explore that with him. I think it could truly be something “groundbreaking” because this type of arc is often given to heroes, so I would love Hori to keep pushing the shounen boundaries like he did with the My Vilain Academia arc.

Also not to shigadabi on main, but there are MANY parallels between Shigaraki and Dabi, so much that it can’t be an accident. They both had an abusive father, they both got abused because of how their fathers felt about heroes (Touya was abused so he would become a hero, Tenko was abused so he wouldn’t become one), they both have a personal conflict with the number one and number two hero respectively, they were both let down/ignored/failed by hero society, they both changed their names, they both have self-destructive quirks (Dabi burns himself and Tomura decays himself), and Dabi’s hair went from white to black and Shigaraki’s hair went from black to white. Sooooo … yeah. Horikoshi is gonna have to address all of these things at some point, which means that will definitely get a conversation between Shig and Dabi (and they will possibly get closer).

Oooof that was a long answer!

I’ll be more concise with your second question! I’m honestly convinced that Shigaraki already knows that Hawks is a spy. Shigaraki’s two most consistent traits through the series are that he is smart and that he hates heroes, so I really don’t think I will trust the number 2 heroes in his rank for even (1) second. He might not have decisive proof yet, and he is busy with other things, but I’m pretty sure that he suspects him.

Also spoilers for the MHA movie!!! Apparently, there is a scene in the movie where we see that Shigaraki has been observing Hawks from afar for months. So although the shigahawks part of my brain says “enemies to lovers slow burn 234k”, realistically, I think Shigaraki is just onto Hawks.

Honestly, I really don’t think that Hawks has any chances of survival in this story. It’s just a matter of time now. (But as always, I could be wrong!)

#dabi #todoroki touya #my hero academia #bnha #shigadabi #shigaraki tomura #hawks #keigo takami

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canvaswolfdoll · 4 years

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CanvasWatches: Id: Invaded

Okay, what if we could catch serial killers by entering their subconscious minds (referred to as an Id-Well), where the amnesiac avatar of a investigator must search for clues while also solving a murder mystery created within the bounds of a fantastic, mind bending world? Isn’t that an amazing premise for a combination platformer/puzzle video game?

Anyways, Id: Invaded is an anime. The only major complaint I have is how I would much rather be playing it than watching the proceedings, which probably just means it’s got a good concept.

Uh… it’s a mystery show with a season long arc and character progression so… spoilers? It’s a good show if you’re into that stuff. Handles grit and mature themes well, but… well, mature themes and violent images abound. So be careful of that.

So that’s the spoiler warning.

After watching the first episode and learning the basic concept, two truths were immediately evident: the young-looking police girl (Koharu Hondomachi) hearing the exposition is going to kill someone so she’ll be a candidate to dive into the id-well, and the elderly director guy overseeing the project is 100% the big bad.

Still, just because a couple things are easily solved by knowledge of narratives doesn’t mean there aren’t surprises. Like trepanning is a plot-important element in this for… some reason… it gives a secondary character superpowers!

Don’t… don’t blindly emulate your media, kids.[1]

The first couple of episodes telegraph what elements to pay attention to pretty clearly. Hondomachi is wide-eyed and overly interested in the Id Well machinations, and asks about how one becomes a candidate for entering the machine, and doesn’t look put out by the need to be a killer.[2] She also headbutts a drill to assist in the capture of the first serial killer of the show, so she’s not hesitant to take extreme measures. Which leaves the question: will she kill with the intention of joining the Id Well delving team?

Meanwhile, Takuhiko Hayaseura appears only long enough to be marked as important, but he doesn’t take an active part in the plot. Then the mysterious John Walker Phantom appears with similar old man body language, those dots are connected and you just have to wait for the plot to catch up.

Finally, our protagonist, Narihisago, dwells on wanting to save the perpetual victim of these murder dinner parties he’s investigating, signalling that Kaeru is more than a prop of the gimmick. I didn’t have enough details to take a guess at what her larger role would be, so the reveal in the later episodes was a successful twist.

There is a small tragedy with the structure of the anime course. While I typically prefer the 12 to 24 episode style, as it allows for limits for the artists to work with (like a trellis), and means that the series maintains a consistent narrative without flailing about to maintain momentum until given permission to die, we occasionally get a show like Id: Invaded where the central gimmick lends itself so well to an episodic, killer of the week style stories that I just want to watch the variations and not care too much about the myth arc. Because it’s set to conclude with episode 13, the show can only play with the gimmick for about half the course before having to buckle down and start telling the larger narrative, leaving me yearning for more new id wells and mysteries.

If the show were twice as long, it would’ve been able to play with the gimmick more, and have space to flesh out the investigative team to have actually interesting characters.

The first episodes introduce six characters watching Narhisago and analyzing the world around him to deduce the actual identity of the serial killer, but they have very little dialogue outside of exposition, and their mystery is opaque to the viewer until they solve it. The team could’ve been cut in half without losing anything.

But if Id:Invaded had two cours to stretch out and tell stories, the investigation team could have subplots and character revealing dialogue. But there’s no space for them, so… lost potential.

In fact, if this story was told as a video game,[3] there’d be plenty of space for the Wellside team to have incidental dialogue to develop them. The audience/player can also get more direct satisfaction out of solving the gimmick of each Id-Well, as they get to directly utilize the solution to complete the level. If the hypothetical game takes a page from Pheonix Wright, which is the game I most mentally aligned with the show, there can also be a section after the level where the clues found within the level can be analyzed and the player gets to piece together who the killed is.

It’d be fun.

But… er… the actual story.

It’s fine. The characters make a lot about learning who this John Walker fellow is, but the obvious culprit is sitting right there, so the viewer is just patiently waiting for the characters to catch up, amusing themselves with the episodic portion of the story.

Then, a twist: they find the device used to enter Id-Wells within an Id-Well. So, what would happen if someone used it?

So our protagonist does, and finds himself seemingly back in the real world, though before the death of his wife and daughter. He can set right what once went wrong!

Although… he knows this can’t be real. He remembers everything that led him here, so surely this is permanent.

But what if it is?

First order of business: Narihisago sequence breaks and puts a stop to the serial killer who murdered his daughter early, the fight placing him in the hospital, where he finds… Kaeru? Except her name’s Kiki, and when she sleeps, those around her experience her dreams.

Dreams where she’s constantly getting murdered, often in very brutal fashion. Huh.

Despite the characters attempting to lean into the mysterious nature of the machine allowing them to place people into Id-Wells, I took it for granted and assumed it wouldn’t need explanation.

Instead, we learn Kiki’s power is being exploited to enable the gimmick, which I should have seen coming considering how much the anime is built on women suffering.[4]

Eventually, Narihisago and Hondomachi (the girl who becomes a second Id-Well diver partway through) are able to use the time and space given in this recreated past to find a solid lead on who John Walker is. Just in time for the system to kick them out and for them to climb back out to actual reality.

Hayaseura, learning the jig is up, releases Kiki from the hidden chamber she’s been in, and lets her loose, where her powers rage out of control and pull everyone in the building into various Id-Wells.

He then goes to the chamber with the machines allowing the well-dives, and upon being confronted, he activates a machine to take him in as he shoots himself, intending to wreak havoc in the collective unconscious or whatever.

In hindsight, they probably could’ve just unplugged him and moved on to resolve the Kiki problem. Instead, our nominal[5] heroes follow him in for the final confrontation!

Then Covid-19 struck, and I had to wait three months for the final episode to get dubbed!

All my dubs are delayed. Which is fine. It’s fine and fair. I don’t want anyone to risk themselves just for my entertainment, but I’m allowed to be a little disappointed by fate.

So after a three month delay, I sit down to watch the final episode, not bothering to rewatch anything because I’ve waited three months and a not insignificant portion of my motivation was to just finish the dang thing.

The final episode was okay. The two detective characters work together to outwit John Walker, sending him to the time displaced universe via a machine in the Id-Well of someone who’s now dead.

Which… upon reflection, isn’t a permanent solution. Both Narihisago and Hondomachi went through that experience, and eventually got ejected to their original Id-Wells, and the death of an Id-Well’s owner doesn’t collapse the place (as proved by Hayaseura/John Walker using his own Id-Well to jump about despite being dead himself.

Outside the Id-Wells, the leader of the Wellside Team puts on a prototype suit version of the machine to attempt to get Kiki to stop making a mess of the building. He meets up with her, refuses to shoot her, and they all agree to put her back and maybe try and solve her problem.

So, at the end of the series, we’re mostly back where we started: using an applied phlebotinum girl to chase serial killers. Which keeps the premise open for a sequel,[6] but they’ll need to write a new overarching plot, as I don’t thinking curing Kiki’s dream projections lines up as a murder mystery. It’s possible, but I find it unlikely.

In the end, I enjoyed the show, and I’m glad I watched it. I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a more obscure anime after getting through the Canon of the artform. Still, the amount of female characters suffering, to the point that the plot itself operates off a woman’s suffering is uncomfortable. If there is more, hopefully they can lean off that element.

Also, let me reiterate one last time how Id:Invaded would make a great video game. I buy that Visual Novel in a snap.

Kataal kataal.

[1] Not that kids should watch this one. [2] The reason for this limitation is not explained, and is likely unimportant. [3] A desire I wasn’t being facetious about. [4] Most of the murder victims are woman, and there’s a worrying tendency for the killer’s methods to be based on maiming. [5] All three are killers: one a serial killer killer, a second a killer due to self-defense, and the last just a straight serial killer who happened to be useful. [6] And, indeed, a manga continuation started at the same time as the show, so the premise lives.

#CanvasWatches #id:invaded #anime #CanvasReviews

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tristala · 5 years

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Star vs the Forces of Evil Finale (Spoilers) Part 5 Final:

I remember the time when I used to imagine what the ending of this series might be. The possibilities were endless and fascinating. I used to anticipate those new episodes and browse the fandom for theories. But now in the last months it had, I just wanted to get it over with.

In all of the series finales I have ever watched in my life as of now, Cleaved is the worst one I have ever seen. It was even worse than Samurai Jack’s ending.

So you’re telling me that Tom Lucitor, one of Star’s and Marco’s closest friends, was forgotten by the same “best friends” that he’s ever had? I know that everything was chaotic but they didn’t even show that they stopped to think where he is?

Was destroying the magic really the only thing they could do? Was there really no other way? Star suddenly just made a very rash decision/revelation. They could have gone through with Eclipsa’s suggestion and tried to fight Mina or just come up with something else. Star claims that magic was the root of all the problems but have they stopped to think about the good things too?

Did Star ever thought about the magical beings made out of magic? Her spells? The MHC? They were problematic yes but she kinda grew up knowing them. Why didn’t they show her hesitating at all?

And Marco. You have known Hekapoo for over 16 years but you have barely shown any remorse or sadness that your old friend, who you have known for more than half of your life and known far more and longer than Star, is going to just die? Just like that? Do you feel nothing at all?

An “I’ll miss her.” is not a good show of sorrow people.

ALSO him getting stabbed didn’t matter at all. It was all for the trailer to hype the fans. That’s pathetic. No side effects to the stab wound at all. Nothing.

It did not give me any sense of satisfaction at all to see Mina getting defeated like that. I really don’t like the fact that Solaria was just frowning and coldly staring at her most loyal subordinate getting beaten down and kind of getting drowned by the dark unicorn. It disturbed me. It didn’t feel right. Solaria was almost the same. I bet she has even killed innocent monsters and their children. I feel her character doesn’t have the right to judge Mina when she has done the same.

Mina is of course, not an innocent person. She is a crazy monster hating fanatic but who was responsible for it all? Solaria. She was the one who experimented on her and while I know that Mina volunteered, she probably didn’t know that she’d turn coo-coo and be alone for centuries. Mina could have been a great antagonist but she didn’t have enough screen time. I understand why she became what she is now but a full flashback episode couldn’t have hurt.

This series has shown that not all monsters and mewmans are evil but then they could have, should have delved into that more. Both sides have their reasons for war but it really would have helped if They. Have. Shown. More.

Hence I shall talk about another wasted character that I couldn’t stop mentioning because he was such a waste.

Toffee is literally my favorite character. There was so much mystery with him I was so intrigued that it kept me up at some nights thinking about what his past was or what’s his next move.

What did the Butterflies do to him to make him hate their magic so much? How did he meet Glossaryck? How did he rise up and become a general? What was his relationship with Seth?

There still so many questions. But no, they just killed him off. Just like that. Again.

Star has always been selfish and that’s fine, she’s a spoiled, privileged princess who didn’t know much about the world yet she did grow throughout the show. But I never thought that she would be so willing to never see her family and friends and her world just to be with a boy she loves. That was so selfish.

I actually understand Marco’s decision more because he was freaking stabbed by a unicorn with dark magic so he might have thought that returning to Earth would just be heartbreaking for his loved ones to see him die or something. Or maybe he also just cares about Star and Star alone. Who knows at this point. I mean this is the Marco who has become numb to his own parents.

The music was so dramatic and epic. It builds up at the right time but I wish it was used for a completely different finale for the show. The scenes it was used for didn’t do justice for it.

“Because with or without magic,”

“We belong together.”

I vomited inside guys.

Star and Marco. You are emotional teenagers. Romantic love isn’t the ultimate love of all. Get over yourselves. I hate that the series is showing that romance is the only thing that matters. That two people having that type of love don’t need anything or anyone else. That’s a messed up message to send.

And all of this is happening just after Star, Moon, Eclipsa and Meteora committed genocide.

Those people, those unicorns, those spells had their own thoughts, their own will and their own lives. They had families and they all just died for a gamble that a teenager has rashly made.

All of the creatures made out of pure magic are dead and majority didn’t get a say to it.

When Ponyhead was “comforting” Star it was all sorts of wrong for me. They will never see some of their friends again. But why can Ponyhead still fly? And how did she know about their friends and their other worlds? Was she lying? This all just feel forced with them laughing and feeling better. Also, does this mean Tom can go back to his home? Does he still have his powers?

And the way they treated the Magical High Commission’s deaths were very disturbing, at least to me. I am aware that they have done horrible things but the way their deaths were portrayed as a joke is frankly messed up.

Another thing is Ludo’s arc is also one of my more favorite arcs of the story. I was looking forward to him having more screen time now that he has kind of recovered and grew as a person. Him and Dennis were adorable and I wish there was more content of them. I was hoping they would appear in the finale but I wasn’t surprised that they just appeared for like a few seconds.

And finally, the merging of Mewni and Earth. For the last time, the show treated it like it was a good thing, the music used for it was so lighthearted and hopeful while you see humans running away in horror and some being victims of other creatures. I bet a lot has already died. There will be upcoming destruction and culture shock on both worlds. There will be even more fear and discrimination for the monsters. There will be wars. It was horrifying and so fucked up.

But hey, at least we got our OTP back together right? RIGHT? This ending is so fucked up. Fuck off finale.

The only things that I actually liked was Moon and Eclipsa seeing their mothers for the last time (Though I’m still iffy about Solaria having “redemption” if that’s what you’re gonna call it) and the music.

God the music was amazing. It’s the kind of music for an epic finale which the series didn’t give. Such a waste.

So, let’s sum this up:

Star committed genocide of pure magical creatures and prevented other people from seeing their friends and family ever again. She and Marco have an unhealthy obsession with each other to the point that they were willing to leave their parents and friends forever just be with each other. Moon was given a slap on the wrist and was forgiven easily for endangering hundreds of innocent lives. Earth and Mewni are now cleaved together so now the monsters will be in even more danger and be more prone to discrimination.

Four years of character development and plot buildup just flushed down the toilet.

I was in love with this series. It was one of my top cartoons. But ever since season 3 it just went for the worse. Instead of me getting excited for a new episode, I watched it like I’m watching it out of obligation with some dread almost every time.

I know kept saying this but it had so so much potential. It could have been great. This could have been a classic cartoon that people would love to rewatch. A show like Adventure Time, Gravity Falls and Avatar The Last Airbender. But all of it was wasted unnecessary drama on romantic love. 35% of those episodes were about romance. If they had just gotten over with it or didn’t have much focus on it the show could have been much more fleshed out.

It’s just so sad that a lot of people put a lot of heart and hard work on this series for it to end up like this.

I will miss Star vs the Forces of Evil but I will miss it mainly for the wasted potential it had.

To all the people who read this rant or the other parts of my rants, thank you.

Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4

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jerusalemstraycat · 4 years

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Post-Finale Thoughts (very long post)

Here is a comprehensive and possibly unnecessary summary of my feelings and opinions about the SU:F finale. I’ve been procrastinating (lol what else is new) so it’s a week later than I would have liked, but at least my thoughts have had a chance to fester a bit. Anyway.

I was a bit iffy about the way it went at first, but it grew on me. There are several glaring issues, as there always are, but overall it was a great note to end on. What an amazing sendoff for one of the most iconic shows of the decade.

Part of the reason the finale felt so weird to me on my first watch-through is probably the fact that I started with Everything’s Fine, having watched Homeworld Bound when it was released early.

Homeworld Bound was a great episode overall and set things up very nicely for the rest of the finale, and not having that bookend made the last three episodes feel odd and disjointed. The power of watching a show in the way it was meant to be watched, I guess.

I am SO relieved to see that Spinel’s new living arrangements are working out, you have no idea. That was my main concern with the end of the movie.

It was neat seeing the Diamonds find new applications for their powers, but Yellow’s ability to fix shattered gems with tweezers and healing static didn’t sit right with me. It makes Jasper’s shattering seemingly irrelevant and lowers the stakes way too much. How can it be that reversing corruption is harder than literally bringing back the dead? (Pink Zombie powers notwithstanding - it’s probably different with organic creatures.)

THAT SCENE WITH WHITE THO. Good lord. When Fragments first aired a common complaint was that it felt jarring, like it didn’t really belong in the series. However, the possession scene somehow fit right in while still being just as terrifying. I don’t really have much to say about it in the way of interpretation that hasn’t been said already, but I do want to point out how cool it was that Zach could sound like two entirely different people in that scene. He HAS the range.

Everything’s Fine was also good, though I feel it could have been re-timed.

The first half of the episode was excruciating to watch. Not quite as bad as Together Forever, but it went on for far too long and simply belabored its point.

Maybe it’s all the half-corrupted Steven fanart I’ve become very attached to, or my low tolerance for secondhand embarrassment, but I really feel the episode would have benefited from devoting more time to the breakdown/transformation scene at the end and making it more gradual.

But hey, I’m not going to complain about what we got, because that ending was phenomenal. The slow descent into madness, the whole impostor syndrome thing that is all too real for me, the expressions??? The exploding into monster form at the end??? I loved it.

I Am My Monster is easily my least favorite episode of the finale, and probably of the second half of SU:F in general.

The only good parts were the scenes with Connie, and of course the ending (which was probably my favorite part of the finale). The rest felt so sparse and empty, which was even more of a letdown considering the potential it had. That time could have been used in so many interesting ways, but it wasn’t.

I would have loved something from Steven’s perspective, some mindscape stuff, internal monologue (or even dialogue), clarification of what the heck was going on, closure concerning Steven’s nature as a half-Diamond, something! But no, we had to settle for a lackluster kaiju fight and clumsily executed group hug.

Don’t get me wrong, everything happened that needed to happen, and strangely enough nothing felt rushed, but...I’m not satisfied with the way it went down.

As much as I grumble about this episode, I did love how Connie was the one to give him the “healing kiss” (such a sweet scene ;_; ) BUT that didn’t change the fact that the “power of love” thing they were going for was a familial love, not romantic. Infinite thanks for not going the romantic route.

The Future was what really saved the finale for me after the disappointment of IAMM.

I don’t actually mind the timeskip, though I do wonder how in the heck Steven managed to recover from everything. I’m just glad my boy’s okay, and I don’t think I could have emotionally handled seeing what happened in the intervening months.

And I love how understated everything was - he’s not dramatically turning his back on his home, he’s moving out like a normal person, keeping in touch with his loved ones. He’s in a relationship with Connie, he’s got a therapist, and Jasper’s at Little Homeschool. No need to make a big deal out of any of it.

I really feel what Rebecca said about this episode - it’s an ending where Steven, always forced into the limelight, gets to live his life with some privacy.

Parting thoughts:

I’m perfectly fine with the chest in Lion’s mane remaining a mystery, as a metaphor for the secrets of OG SU being revealed. I’m NOT fine with Rose’s portrait remaining in there forever, because it seemed to me at the end of Rose Buds that it was just continuing to repress Steven’s feelings toward Rose and putting off dealing with them.

Speaking of which, we spent all this time watching Steven trying to reconnect with his humanity but NOT reconciling it with his Diamond side. I wish we could have had some scenes where he internalizes that having the powers of a Diamond does not make him a bad person.

I do appreciate that Rose/Pink was barely brought up at all, since the main conflict was no longer related to her. That had been dealt with in the first half of the series, and bringing her in in the finale would not have been appropriate.

Zach Callison Broke Into My House And Smashed A Barrel Over My Head Killing Me Instantly. Seriously, I’ve been watching SU since season 2, and it’s been such a ride hearing him grow as an actor over the course of the series, and you can tell he really put everything into SU:F.

Of course everyone’s obsessing over Zach’s performance but I would also like to commend the whole cast, who did a superb job of bringing the characters to life (particularly Deedee Magno Hall, Shelby Rabara, and Michaela Dietz. Pearl, Peridot, and Amethyst really made the series for me).

I don’t really cry over shows (though Storm in the Room came close) but rewatching the end of CYM after finishing the finale simply ended me. Remember when it seemed like a nice happy wrapping-everything-up kind of ending? Lol.

If you read the whole thing, I applaud your tenacity. Send me your own thoughts, agree, disagree, whatever. Actually please disagree, I would love to hear other takes.

#steven universe #steven universe future #suf finale #long post

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crazy-loca-blog · 4 years

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Personal thoughts on… 2019 releases (Part II)

Note: As the title says, these are just personal opinions on Choices books and chapters. Of course, you may agree or disagree with them, I only use this platform to express my thoughts on what I read every week.

Welcome to the second part of this three-part post. As I said in the first post, I will include current releases and books that were released on 2018 but finished in 2019. The list is organized in alphabetical order and it doesn’t include the VIP Books (as I don’t have access to the feature) or the seasonal books (as I’ll talk about them in another post, after all of them have been fully released). You may see Part I here.

PS: I’ll do my best to upload Part III today (Dec. 31), but I can’t make any promises because I won’t be home on New Year’s eve.

Desire & Decorum, Book 3 (August 4, 2019 - December 1, 2019): This is the only wedding book that made real sense to me this year… and it’s definitely my favorite wedding book of the year. It was the perfect closure for a series that didn’t convince me that much at first, but that I learned to love over time. We had this whole new plot with Harry that was a little weak, but at the same time it was a smart move, as it helped to keep a balance and to not overcharge things with the wedding. But can we just talk about the final chapter? It was simply adorable, I loved every part of it (honestly, I haven’t heard of anyone complaining on the final chapter yet). If I have to criticize something, I’d say the writers went too far with Mr. Sinclaire. The man went through hell in the first two books, I thought they would give him a break in the third one… I was so wrong! But overall, I really liked this book, the new characters such as Harry, Briar’s mom and Hamid’s mom gave some fresh air to the story and new plots such as matchmaking Luke and Anabelle’s sister were a nice twist. I’m pretty happy with this book.

High School Story: Class Act, Book 1 (October 8, 2018 - January 14, 2019): New cast, same school. I couldn’t actually say if I like or dislike this book more than the previous series because I actually feel it’s just impossible to compare them. The writers had a very difficult work to do, as they needed to make this cast different from the HSS one within the same environment, and I’d say they succeeded. Not only you can see the problems are different, but also the way they address their relationships is different, and it’s quite evident that they are younger kids that are transitioning into their teenage years more than teens thinking about graduating and going to college. We also went from this super popular MC and being prom king/queen to a MC who embarrasses himself/herself quite often and whose friends (except for Rory) are probably amongst the most unpopular kids in school. Finally, the fact that the story focuses in one specific school area (the theatre club) was a pretty smart move to not make this story a mess. So overall, it’s not one of my favorite books, but I enjoyed reading it and I appreciate the writers’ effort to make this series different from the first one.

High School Story: Class Act, Book 2 (February 11, 2019 - May 20, 2019): This is the theatre book where theatre is not seen anywhere. I’m not sure if this is the weakest book in the series (I think I still need to realize how Book 3 will end in a few weeks), but I admit I had to review the chapters’ summary because I couldn’t even remember what the book was about. The plot was simply lame, there are no big highlights in the story, we spent like half of it in the middle of a fight between Rory and our twin because they both want to be school president (can we talk about the fact that Maria is graduating?) and we appeared on TV. Our MC simply didn’t shine or did anything truly remarkable during this book. If it weren’t for Ajay’s parents’ divorce and the role our MC played on supporting his/her friend, this book would have been easily forgotten.

High School Story: Class Act, Book 3 (October 30, 2019 - Present): Honestly, I’m not a fan of mixing both HSS gangs in Book 3. It feels weird not to be able to control a MC that I was able to manage in the past. I also understand all the hype for going to London, but did we really need as many people as we see in this book? Where are people like Natalie or Danielle? I mean, I don’t like them, but they’ve belonged to this group since day 1. Anyway… I’m guessing this is the way the writers found for us to say goodbye to this series. After six books, I think it’s the perfect time to put High School Story to rest for a while, before it becomes a mess. Even though there are some chapters left, I can already tell what my favorite thing about this book (and this series) is: the issues these kids have to face in their personal lives are serious stuff. In the past, Rory’s mom had cancer and Ajay’s parents got divorced, and now we talk about Skye coming from an abusive family and our twins trying to find their roots. That was enough. I don’t think we needed Rory and Ajay facing new problems in this book. Instead, I would have preferred to see Rory working with Maria or Ajay dealing with the fact that he became “the man of the house” after his parents’ divorce. The idea was to see them “growing” throughout the series; unfortunately, this hasn’t happened yet.

It Lives Beneath (October 10, 2018 - January 30, 2019): This is the only book in the list I haven’t read… and there is a very specific reason for it. When It Lives In The Woods was first released, I noticed that a lot of the screenshots people were posting included spiders… a lot of them. As an aracnophobic myself, I just couldn’t even begin the first chapter of that book. Then, It Lives Beneath was released and I noticed that there were some characters from the first book, so I said “mmm… maybe I do need to read the first book because it might be linked to the second one”, so I never read it. However, I have to agree with the fandom on the fact that we need more mystery and horror books in the app. Sure, I’m a sucker for romance books, but at the same time, I’m totally capable to understand that we need more diversity in terms of books. So I’m totally waiting for this series to be revisited in the future, the fans deserve it.

Mother Of The Year (August 30, 2019 - Present): This God-tier book is one of those gifts that you don’t expect to be that nice, but it ends up being a treasure. It definitely climbed up in my personal list and went straight to the Top 2 of my favorite books in the app. Nobody had much hope on this story, but we ended up meeting an adorable daughter, a mom that was a warrior, three LIs that were simply adorable, one of the best BBFs that Choices has given us and Luz Mendez, probably one of the best characters in the app. Overall, the plot and the characters (even the evil ones!) were so real and relatable that I have to admit I went through every single possible feeling while reading the book… I laughed, I cried, I screamed, and I got mad at times. And of course, my heart broke when we realized that this was a standalone book. But do I really want it to become a series? I’m not that sure. There is a part of me who wouldn’t like to see a second book because the ending was so precious that I wouldn’t like it to be ruined with a second book. On the other hand, I love the story so much that it makes me sad to realize we won’t be getting anything new from these beautiful people. However, I think the story is perfect to make a Christmas or a Halloween special, focused on the kids… maybe even a summer book! This book definitely deserves to be revisited in the future.

Nightbound (April 24, 2019 - July 31, 2019): I’m not surprised by the end of Nightbound, but I’m definitely sad. I had problems trying to understand the book at first because I’m not the type of person who’s into supernatural and magical stuff (I have to admit this also causes me some problems even when trying to understand the plots in books such as Bloodbound and The Elementalists, despite I think those are good series). I may even have to replay it to fully understand it. But there are some things that are pretty clear to me: the book is well written, the book is good, the book has awesome characters and most importantly, the book is DIFFERENT, something that this fandom has been asking for a long time now. So I was quite shocked when the writers said the book wasn’t doing as good as they thought. Does this book deserve a sequel? Absolutely! Even though I think it got a proper closure, I also think the plot has a lot of potential that could be explored. As that won’t be happening, I really hope to see some of these characters in Bloodblound 3, just as we saw Cal in Bloodbound 2.

Open Heart (February 22, 2019 - June 7, 2019): Sorry, but right now I think my opinion will be completely biased because this is my absolute favorite book in the app. There’s just nothing I don’t love about it. The balance between the romance and the professional stories is one of the bests (if not the best) in the app, the characters are well written, the medical plot is interesting and it addresses many of the current conflicts in health care… it’s just a masterpiece. On the romantic side, it doesn’t matter if you go straight to Bryce or Jackie or if you preferred the slow burn with Rafael (actually, can he be considered a “slow burn”?) or Ethan, the writers took their time for the MC to befriend them, we got to deeply know these people (except for Bryce and Jackie… I’m so waiting to know more about them!) before making a choice, and not all of the romance stories ended up with happy endings and fairy tails, so yeah… it’s my perfect book. Can’t wait for the second one!

Passport to Romance (March 20, 2019 - June 19, 2019): Probably my biggest disappointment of the year. The idea behind this story seemed nice, we could have learned about so many places, we could have laughed about so many of the troubles that people travelling on a budget face, we could have had a series instead of a standalone book. Instead, we got a MC who was always late, who seemed to be quite irresponsible with her job, who lived a life of luxury and who suddenly became BFF with people he/she had just met. Come on, they were nice people (even though at some point I just wanted to make Elliot disappear), but again… we had just met, it’s not like you can’t live without them. On top of that, I can’t even remember how many times this gang violated some rules… sure, Yvette was happy, but it might have cost you an expulsion from Europe, which is not nice if you’re a travel blogger. Let’s add up the non-sense of some situations. I know that books are supposed to be a mix between fiction and reality, but I think they went too far this time. I mean… why would the coach allow Ahmed to travel with a group of strangers instead of travelling with the rest of the team? Especially if he’s a professional athlete and he’s competing in an important championship... sorry guys, but there’s nothing I can rescue from this book.

Platinum (May 30, 2019 - September 19, 2019): This is definitely one of my favorite stories this year, and sorry… but I will never get over the fact that this is a standalone book. This book is so unique in so many ways… for the first time, we heard voices and we heard people singing… we also got Avery and Raleigh, two LIs that were gender customizable… the secondary characters were gold… the plot was so cliché but so attractive at the same time… and I could continue. Reading it every week was a real pleasure, you were actually waiting to find out what would happen the next week, and at some point, it seemed like it was the only book that people talked about. However, creating this book was expensive, and well... that just sucks. It would have been so nice to see our MC touring with her friends, taking new risks, visiting new places, and receiving the rock star treatment that she deserved. This book still has a solid fanbase (especially in Tumblr), so it’s just sad it won’t be revisited in the future.

#playchoices #choices stories you play #desire and decorum #high school story #high school story class act #it lives series #it lives beneath #mother of the year #nightbound #open heart #passport to romance #platinum #hss #hssca #ilb #moty #nb #oh #ptr

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