C. A. Cupid Headcanons:

Her full name is Chariclo Arganthone Cupid. She doesn’t introduce her first name, since she knows most people won’t be able to pronounce or even remember it.

She is a demigod. This means she is not immortal, but she is extremely long-living and has god-like powers. She is over 1500 years old and has been a teenager for a few centuries now. 

She caused the whole fiasco with Romeo and Juliet. She doesn’t like to talk about it.

Cupid has crazy abandonment issues. Having been left on the steps of Eros’s temple as a newborn, she’s always been grateful for her godly parents. That being said, she feels she has to prove to them that she’s worthy of being their daughter. 

She’s having a bit of an identity crisis at the moment. At Monster High, she had felt she wasn’t scary enough. At Ever After High, she feels too monstrous. She’s neither a true fairytale nor a true monster. She’s not even a true god. She tries to fill the void will some sort of distraction, whether that be her radio show or her love life. 

That said, since coming to Ever After, she’s had to change her entire personality for her own safety. She actually hates being sweet and saccharine, but she knows she has to so she may blend in. She wishes she could be more witty and outspoken like she was at Monster High, and she misses the freedom that came with attending her former school. 

She sometimes slips and calls her friends “ghouls” or “beasties”. Reactions range from confused to offended, so Cupid tries to use fairytale slang as much as possible to acclimate to this new society.

She has six older siblings called the Erotes. They are the biological children of Eros, are fully immortal, and focus more on lustful desires than real love. They would often pick on Cupid for being a hopeless, sappy romantic. They own a nightclub called Venus. 

Cupid desperately wants to know who her birth parents were. She already feels out of place in Monster High, Ever After High, and the rest of her family, so she figures knowing where she came from will help her understand her true place in the world.

She loves sweets, but she has her limits. She prefers dark chocolate and black licorice over other sugary snacks.

She hates archery. Most think it’s because she’s a terrible shot (which she is), but she doesn’t like the idea of messing with someone’s head. She will only use them if they are an absolute necessity, such as when Draculaura was hypnotized by Kieran Valentine. 

She hates love potions. She finds them deceptive and disgusting. She realizes that’s somewhat hypocritical on her end. But, in her defense, she knows the consequences that come with love and magical matchmaking. It’s why she prefers her radio show over her arrows.

Cupid is painfully aware of how fairytale society views beasts and monsters, and it’s precisely the reason she keeps Monster High a secret. She doesn’t want to lose any fairytale friends, but she also doesn’t want any of her monster friends to be disrespected. She reasons that if she doesn’t talk about it and fakes being afraid of certain situations, then nobody gets hurt. It does hurt that she can’t talk about it though.

She can fly, but using her wings for transportation takes a lot of energy. She hadn’t had to use them until recently, since her Monster High wings were made of bone. Needless to say, she’s still getting used to this new power.

She has a close relationship with Hades and his wife Persephone. She visits them during winter break.

Cupid has a thing for the color blue. She doesn’t know why, but everyone she’s been naturally attracted to has worn blue in some form. 

She loves horror movies. They remind her of her ghoul-friends, though she has a few words to say about how the fairytale word portrays monster representation. 

She’s a talented astrologer. She uses it in her love advice show and for her own life in general, mostly for her own peace of mind.

She prefers 1930s and 40s jazz on vinyl over mainstream pop radio music.

Cupid still remains close friends with Dexter. She did need some time away from him at first (obviously), but they still care about one another. She’s even formed a close bond with Raven after getting to know her more. She reminds Cupid of her friends at Monster High.

I've never met ANYONE who actually likes the Chibnall era. Would you seriously say that it's objectively good?

Brace yourself for unpopular (albeit positive) opinions.

Objectively? I don't know, I tend to feel like media is very much subjective and down to opinion. But on the whole...yeah. I'm gonna say yeah. I think the Chibnall era thus far is every bit as good as the Moffat Era and Davies Era were. It actually blows my mind to see the fandom come together and almost universally agree that the show has gone downhill. It's part of the reason why I kind of stepped away from the Doctor Who fandom because there's something very demoralizing about re-watching clips from Season 12 and seeing literally every comment just talk about how the show is ruined. And if I re-watch old clips, very often I come across comments that talk about how the show "used to" be good, and should have ended with Twelve, etc. I know a little reluctance toward the new Doctor can be part of the transition process, but normally the fans are over it by now.

Things haven't really changed.

I've been re-watching Twelve's era, and found a new appreciation for him. But I re-watched Thirteen's era right beforehand, and you know what? It holds up. Season 11 is remarkably strong. I can't think of a single "bad" episode in that season. It focuses on the characters, and thus it doesn't have nearly as strong ambitions, compared to one of the Moffat seasons, which were clever but often convoluted. They couldn't always stick the landing. (Looking at you, Season 6) But every has it's good parts and it's bad. The same man who wrote The Wedding of River Song and betrayed the entire season's storyline in the process...also wrote The Doctor Falls, which is probably my favorite final episode of any season ever. The Chibnall Era is the same way. The Tsuranga Conundrum isn't really a bad episode, it's just kind of forgettable, apart from the Pting. But then it is immediately followed up by Demons of the Punjab, which is an exceptional story in every way. I want the Thijurians to return for Thirteen's regeneration, I'm saying it.

My point being that even if there are episodes you can't stand in the new era, is that really exclusive to Chibnall? All the way back in Season 1, they had The Long Game, which I remember disliking, but it was sandwiched between Dalek and Father's Day, which are in my opinion, the two best episodes of that season. A lot of people don't like Orphan 55, for example. But it's followed up by Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror. Does anyone really dislike that episode? You're valid if you do, but I think it's really good. Ask me about any episode in the Chibnall Era, and I'll find something to like about it. (Except maybe Arachnids in the UK...and that one's not even bad, just kind of weak.) Because like I said, there is good and bad in every season...and I do think that the fandom has overblown how "bad" the Chibnall Era is...though that may be in part because I think this era is generally good? Incredible companions, solid episodes, a great Doctor, and hey...this era actually made the Daleks scary again. That is impressive. Even most of the hated episodes, like Orphan 55 as I mentioned...I enjoy them.

I stand by that. I think this era is great. If anything, I don't like that they reduced how many episodes we get, because some of these stories, like The Witchfinders and It Takes You Away especially Fugitive of The Judoon, are just begging to be two-parters. Spyfall is the only real two-parter we've had, in my opinion (Ascension of the Cybermen and The Timeless Children feel like two separate stories to me) and the episode was much stronger for having the extra time. If I have one genuine criticism with the Chibnall Era as a whole, it is the stark contrast between Seasons 11 and 12. I love Season 11, I thought it was beautiful. I like it far more than most people. I also truly enjoyed Season 12. But they are worlds apart, with Season 11 feeling so standalone and Season 12 picking up with a big storyline that really hadn't been hinted at all in the previous outing. The tone is also different, with The Doctor and "the fam" having a distance between them that seems to have developed offscreen in between seasons. It was as though Chibnall wanted to give everyone a breather from big overarching plots after the Moffat Era, but then after one season he decided "break's over" because he wanted to tell his story. And that's okay! It is. But it's jarring. Anyway, let's talk about Chibnall's storyline. You know where this is going.

"That" episode.

I meant what I said before. There isn't a single episode that I actively hate as much as say, Listen. Now let's get very controversial, because I know what y'all are thinking. "Not even The Timeless Children?" And I'll just get this out of the way right now: I don't think The Timeless Children, or it's twist, ruins Doctor Who. I don't think it gets anywhere close. I mentioned before that I was demoralized reading the comments on a clip of Doctor Who...to no one's surprise, it was this episode. Now, I may just be biased...after all, I didn't even hate Hell Bent. But while I have my criticisms of Season 12, The Doctor's revised backstory accounts for exactly none of them. You want to know what really bothers me? That we had a seven season buildup to Gallifrey's rescue, a nine season buildup to it's return...only for the show to do nothing with it, and then just destroy it again a couple of seasons later. As someone who loved The Day of The Doctor, I'm mad about that. Among other reasons, destroying Gallifrey is the kind of card you can really only play once.

So no, I don't think The Timeless Children is perfect. The Doctor had a seven season character arc culminating in them learning the lesson that using The Moment would be wrong, and that it was never okay to do something like that. To hear her even consider using The Death Particle, that "Or, a solution" line in response to Ryan appropriately reacting in horror? Yeah, that upset me. I don't like that Gallifrey is gone again, and even if The Doctor wasn't the one to do it, she almost did, and she left someone else to do it in her stead. That bothers me more than The Timeless Child ever could. That being said...the Timeless Child doesn't bother me. Seriously, it blows my mind that people act like this twist ruins Doctor Who. It...really doesn't, guys.

It does not insult the legacy of William Hartnell. He is still The First Doctor. It's not like there isn't a precedent for secret incarnations from The Doctor's past. We didn't start calling Christopher Eccleston The Tenth Doctor after we found out about John Hurt. Nothing can change The First Doctor's status or take it away, nor do I think Chibnall is trying. He is doing what I've actually wanted Doctor Who to do for a while. Give us a story about The Doctor's childhood. (Listen doesn't count, I don't care, that was all kinds of bad.) Let me ask you, what does this really change? I've seen people complain about the revision of The Doctor's history...but there's a precedent for that too. We could play bingo with how many times Clara fundamentally altered or influenced the show's history. She is the reason he started traveling, the reason he chose his Tardis, and the reason he saved Gallifrey. Why doesn't that bother people, if this does?

I also understand it if people dislike this change because they feel as though it makes The Doctor a kind of chosen one, compared to them having just been an average person who wanted to make a difference. I get that. However, this is down to interpretation, and there are so many ways to interpret The Doctor. Some people love it when The Doctor goes dark, other people cannot stand it and view it as out of character. Some people love it when The Doctor is heroic and badass, when they save the day...others would prefer that they take the backseat, teaching the humans how to save the day themselves. "The man who makes people better." And which interpretation you get, where it falls on the spectrum...it will vary from writer to writer. Moffat loved to make everything about The Doctor, and Davies frequently compared him to an angel or a god. This is not the first time that the show has portrayed The Doctor as a godlike being. It's not even close to the first time. And honestly? I don't think this makes The Doctor special or supernatural. I think it makes them a victim, nothing more. A victim of child abuse.

People also disliked this episode for removing the mystery behind The Doctor...but I fail to see how it did that? There are so. Many. Questions. That this finale opens up. Where did The Doctor come from? How and why did they get to our universe? What exactly is The Division? What went down between them and The Doctor? Where is Tecteun? (No, she's not Rassilon...) As the Masters asks, "What did they do to you, Doctor? How many lives have you had?" Amid all of the comments that made me sad, I did see a great one about how the original creator of Doctor Who actually didn't like it when they introduced the Timelords, because she felt that it boxed the show in and removed the mystery behind The Doctor, and how "She would have loved this episode." I agree with that. (Still salty that they destroyed Gallifrey though...) You know, I am genuinely interested in this story and where it's going to go, especially with the sixtieth anniversary approaching. But it depresses me that they might scale it back now, after how much the fandom has risen up against it. Not that I'm saying the fans shouldn't be happy, but...it's clear that a story is trying to be told here, and I think it should have that chance.

To each their own, of course. But I will never understand why this era is so hated.

So, I've spent the last couple of months getting myself hooked on the Witcher franchise.

Believe me, no-one is more surprised than I am – especially when I made it through The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt mostly on the strength of the gameplay, but largely underwhelmed by the plot.

So you can imagine my surprise when I gave the Blood and Wine expansion a chance, and it hooked me, grabbed me right in the id and delivered on almost everything the base game lacked. I fell for Regis, I agonised over the endings, I have a million theories about the villains, I just... yes.

And then I tried the novels, and my god, I think I may love them even more than Blood and Wine.... but let’s start back at the beginning.

Up until earlier this year, I knew The Witcher mostly as that game that infamously gave you collectible cards for getting all the female NPCs to sleep with you – not a great first impression. I tried the Netflix series, but bounced off it quickly. And then youtube randomly recommended me Joseph Anderson's  ridiculously long videos analysing the first two games... and found myself intrigued. The complex morality, twisted fairy tale mythology, the promise of decisions with real consequences and sidequests that only deepened the world and themes... that could actually be worth a play. Nothing may have come of this, but then The Witcher 3 was on sale on Steam, and I thought, what the hell?

Over 100 hours of gameplay later, I came away disappointed. Witcher 3 may have something to recommend everywhere except its overarching plot, which... honestly, just calling it a “plot” may be giving it too much credit, when so much of the main quest feel like meaningless fetch quests for NPCs who may be able to help you find some other NPC who can tell you about the real plot, which is mostly happening to other people. Very little can really change or build organically (tension included) since the open-world structure means the player may be doing it in any order. Then, at the end, you fight a generic dark-elf final boss, who’s had less presence or dialogue than many NPCs you can meet in in utterly optional side quests, then you avert the apocalypse somehow – which I knew might be imminent mostly because it kept coming up on the loading screens (you know, between other such sage advice as "sorceresses are infertile" and "Geralt can use his crossbow underwater"). How do you fill a game up with so much unnecessary padding and still leave the core conflict feeling so underdeveloped?

Don’t get me wrong: there is some amazing material scattered through various subplots along the way, but the setup and payoff in this thing is a disaster.

Still, the Steam sale had included the game’s two expansion packs, and the core gameplay was addictive enough that I gave them a chance – starting with Blood and Wine – and fell head over heels in love.

Everything about the expansion benefits from its smaller scope, delivering something shorter and tighter, with some great twists and surprises, no clear villain, and some truly agonising decisions towards the end once you realise you're not going to be able to save everyone. While the main game left me going eh, whatever, maybe I’ll youtube the other endings at some point, hardly I finished Blood and Wine once before I was reloading a save from the last obvious decision point and replaying the final chapter again (twice, in the same evening) because I so desperately wanted to see what else could have happened. Plus, Blood and Wine included Regis (Geralt's ridiculously mild-mannered uber-powerful-vampire BFF), whom I adored, and whose presence works wonders to tie the story and the mythology together.

(No, he doesn’t look like much, but his voice actor is perfect and his attitude to life and his friendship with Geralt only got me more the longer I spent with him.)

The base game’s inability to pull its plot together was all the greater shame considering how many genuinely brilliant characters you meet along the way (YENNEFER! Dijkstra, Thaler, Phillipa, the Bloody Baron, the Crones – the list goes on), but there were none I fell for the way I fell for Regis (and yes, I ship him with Geralt something awful, so help me).

(If you're curious, I found the a lot of the same strengths in the other expansion pack, Hearts of Stone, but felt it ended weakly, and was frustrated by how hard it pushed Geralt to romance Shani, who did nothing for me. Look, game, my Geralt already has Yennefer and his vampire boyfriend, there is no room for Shani in his busy schedule!)

Curious about the backstory (though certainly also tempted by the promise of more Regis), I gave the novels a try... and fell in love all over again. The first book (by far the weakest) is a bit of an introductory hurdle, but the second quickly sucked me in with its wit and humour, then ended with a series of magnificent gut-punches that ensured I was well and truly hooked – and hooked I remained, through the five more novels that followed.

This is not a series I can say much more about without also telling you how the ending broke my heart – suffice to say that it's not for nothing that so few of Geralt's companions from the last three books ever appear in the games, or that the world thinks Geralt and Yennefer are dead before Witcher 1 (they aren't, even ignoring the games, but whether they ever see Ciri or any of their surviving friends again is left hanging). But the games, for all their flaws, certainly do their bit to offer happier endings, and having got this far, I found myself almost immediately buying that one last prequel novel I'd skipped (Season of Storms), because I just wanted to spent more time in this world, with these characters (even knowing so many faves from the later novels wouldn't be present). And I think that's the sincerest rec I can give the series: I earnestly cannot remember the last time any fantasy novel series sucked me in nearly so hard. I’m left comparing its characters and world-building to Discworld, and that’s about as high as my literary compliments go.

I could ramble on for ages about everything that does and doesn't work about the games, and their convoluted relationship with their source material (so much of the story is woefully under-explained without the books as context, so much expands on leftover plot points that the books never properly resolved – while so much more contradicts the books in wildly irreconcilable ways). I have as much to say about all the great and fascinating things in the books that didn't make it into the games. And I probably will at some point, given what an absolute sucker I am for all that kind of analysis, but that's fodder for other posts (and competing for priority with half a dozen different Geralt/Regis fic I seem to have already started. Or possibly Geralt/Yennefer, or Geralt/Yennefer/Regis, or even Geralt/Dandelion – look, dude is shippable, I don’t know what to tell you).

In the meantime... I may have already started rereading the novels from the beginning again. And Blood and Wine ain’t gonna replay itself.

on the off chance I can convince anyone to join me in offering or requesting one of these fandoms for Yuletide (with about 24 hours to go before signups close), I just added this to the promo post on Dreamwidth:

FANDOM NAME: Avengers Academy (Video Game) WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: This silly little mobile game shut down almost two years ago and I still miss it, despite all the frustration involved in loving a game packed to the gills with microtransactions. The premise was really fun: it was a new Marvel universe with younger versions of a whole bunch of Marvel characters (even villains, with a few exceptions), drawing from the MCU and comics and ranging from extremely popular to very obscure, and for various reasons they were all going to school together. The art was great and the writing was top-notch, and it was really fun both seeing new aspects to familiar characters and meeting completely new ones, and then watching them play off each other. The overarching plot about the timefog wasn't really fleshed out by the end, so that's a good avenue for fic, and it's just as good for feelings, fluff, and hijinx.   WHERE CAN I FIND IT?: If you didn't play it while it was around, unfortunately there's no way to play it now. If you did play it and just want to  refresh your memory, though, there's a lot of good info on the wiki and the subreddit. There might also be some Youtube videos, although I haven't checked that. FANDOM NAME: Loki: Where Mischief Lies - Mackenzi Lee WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: If you like Loki in the MCU or the comics, you're probably already interested in this. It's not necessarily canon for either of those--like the other Marvel YA novels, it's kind of its own separate thing--but it's an interesting story that spends a lot of time digging into Loki's motivations when he was still young. Loki is also canonically queer in this. The great part for fic is that it's pretty open-ended: you could more or less fit this into MCU Loki's backstory (probably less so 616 Loki, although several elements haven't shown up in the movies), but you can also...not do that, and take it in any direction you like. WHERE CAN I FIND IT?: Anywhere you get your books. I was able to read it for free as an ebook because my library had it through Hoopla, so that's a good option to check. FANDOM NAME: What If... Thor Was Raised by the Frost Giants? (Comics) WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: It's Marvel comics, but it's also an almost completely self-contained story that doesn't require loads of other reading! It's also a fascinating AU of just how different Thor and Loki's lives could have been if Odin had been defeated during the battle with Jotunheim, and it presents all kinds of possibilities for future stories in this AU or just slice-of-life stories about Thor and Loki growing up. It's also very open-ended, which is just kind of begging for followup fics. WHERE CAN I FIND IT?: Anywhere you get comics. The digital version is $2 on Comixology. I'm pretty sure it's also on Marvel Unlimited, which does have a free 7-day trial. FANDOM NAME: The Bifrost Incident (album by The Mechanisms) WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: I don't actually know much about The Mechanisms but apparently they do complicated concept albums, and this one twists up Norse mythology with steampunk space trains and Lovecraftian cosmic horrors. And I need fic. WHERE CAN I FIND IT?: Looks like it's all on Youtube. FANDOM NAME: Silent Hill 3 WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: Silent Hill 2 is more of a classic in a lot of ways, but this game also has ridiculous amounts of ambience and symbolism--and although I think 2 works better as a self-contained story, 3 is my favorite because of Heather Mason, the game's protagonist, who shows herself to be incredibly tough despite a WHOLE BUNCH of trauma. The plot is a direct sequel to the first Silent Hill game and it does get convoluted at times, but ultimately it's about a teenage girl fighting to reclaim her agency from the people who tried to make her an object for their own ends, and I love that type of story. WHERE CAN I FIND IT?: Well, if you happen to have a PS3 or Xbox 360, you can play the HD version, which basically everybody hates but I thought it was fine, maybe just because I didn't know better). Compared to other options (mainly the original PS2 version), I think it's still reasonably priced. Otherwise you're mostly looking at emulators and the Silent Hill subreddit has some good info in a pinned post. Or of course there are always Youtube videos.

“Picard” S1 Review: Doesn’t boldly go but is nonetheless engaging

Produced by CBS All Access

Starring: Patrick Stewart, Isa Briones, Allison Pill, Michelle Hurd, Santiago Cabrera, Evan Evagora, Harry Treadaway

Many fans had high hopes for “Picard” going into CBS All Access’s continuing voyage into the Star Trek franchise.

Fans wanted to see the lore finally expanded into the future after its previous three ventures (Enterprise, Abrams Trek, and Discovery) took place in the past, bring modern themes and ideas to Star Trek’s futurist’s world view in a way that felt fresh and relevant, but most importantly continue the story of the franchise’s greatest captain; Jean-Luc Picard, of course.

(He’s the best captain. This is not up for debate. Don’t @ me!)

In some ways the new series succeeds at this. We get glimpses of the previously untouched world of Star Trek post “Nemesis,” new themes that are resonant with real world events and exploratory, even critical, of the Federation’s worldview, and of course plenty of Picard himself as he navigates the strange new galaxy he inhabits.

But Picard ultimately misses the mark due to rushed storytelling, half-baked side plots, and just plain poor execution overall. It’s sad because “Picard” and this very talented cast and production team have their moments throughout this first season’s ten episode run but somehow even with 10 episodes of content to work with fans still end up with a somewhat jumbled mess.

(Me by like the eighth episode.)

This isn’t to say “Picard” isn’t worth your time if you’re an avid Star Trek fan or just someone who likes Patrick Stewart in this role in general but the first season will leave you still hungry for more and not in a good way.

“Picard” continues the story of the titular captain, now retired admiral, many years after the events of “Nemesis” as a retired Jean Luc reflects on his life in Starfleet and of his late friend Data who gave his life for his. A synth ban has been enacted in Starfleet after a major riot on Mars some years prior and Picard is understandably sour on the idea, given his relationship with Data, while also fighting Starfleet on not helping the exodus of the Romulans after the supernova that wiped out their homeworld in “Star Trek (2009).” When a young woman comes seeking Picard’s aid after an attack by mysterious assailants, revealing that she is an android and the possible daughter of Data, and gets killed, it is up to the retired Admiral to find her twin sister before she suffers the same fate.

Before we get started let’s throw out some of the bad faith arguments on why this series wasn’t all that good.

“Picard” doesn’t suck because it has “politics” in it. At this point, if you are complaining about the existence of social viewpoints and political/philosophical discussions in your Star Trek, or let alone any series for that matter, I don’t know what the hell you’ve been watching the past few decades. Star Trek has always been more than just a show about cool-looking spaceships and laser beams, you neckbeards.

(Hell, even the other “Star” got more going on in it than that.)

It’s also not bad because of female representation or “girl power.” Again, Star Trek has always had this and frankly having a few more instances of the women of Trek taking center stage doesn’t even come close to rebalancing the scales on the overall massive representation of cis white men across the genre and even the series anyways.

Also get the fuck over the use of curse words in this series. While certainly some instances in this show felt awkward, the use of the word “fuck” does not dilute Star Trek’s overall story.

(It would have made earlier season’s funnier for sure.)

Now that that’s out of way let’s get into the real reasons that, for me at least, the series fell short of an otherwise promising goal of delivering great new Star Trek.

The main problem stems from the series overall jumping off point in its first episode. Picard is understandably still upset about the death of Data and having him deal with survivor’s guilt is a great way to bring this character into the future and reexplore the humanist viewpoints Data touched on in the older series. But also having Picard deal with his fallout from Starfleet, both from the synth ban AND the Romulan exodus, creates chasmic diverging plotlines that never quite come together. The story really needed it to be one or the other. Either Picard wanting to advocate for the continued existence of synthetic life or the rescue of the Romulans post super nova. The latter is touched on a bit through the addition of the character Elnor but doesn’t quite work given that majority of the Romulans in this series are portrayed as villains.

There is definitely a post Brexit, anti-immigrant hysteria message being told there but not enough depth and nuance is given to make it look like Starfleet was particularly wrong here to abandon them given that they do end up being spies committing espionage in the Federation and the clear villains of the first season. The showrunners could have brought these two stories together by perhaps making Soji a Romulan bent on bringing down synthetic life because maybe her twin sister died in the riots on Mars, making Picard have to choose between his commitment to both minority groups abandoned by the Federation but of course, that’s not what the series goes with.

Also suddenly shoehorning in a convoluted anti-synth worldview into the already ultra-secretive Romulan empire was muddled to say the least.

(A decent summation of the Romulans, pretty much ever. Also why is the only Asian actress in this scene in Osaka depicted as an alien, Mr Kurtzman?...)

Some of these ideas could’ve been saved through better editing and pacing though but not enough is done in this first season to mitigate these issues. Too much of plot is told through plain exposition; people sitting down and talking for five-ten minutes about prophecies and backstory instead of having the story simply show us instead. It makes the pacing often slow even by Trek standards and grinds the action to a halt even when there are lasers being shot at one another in the next scene.

Many of these plots get barely any attention too. The Borg cube, why it’s abandoned, and why Hugh is working for the Romulans through the Federation is given surface level development at best. Seven of Nine returns and at one point is momentarily hooked up to the Collective and she doesn’t really say much about it after it happens. The new character’s Rios and Raffi both have side stories given to their development that get touched on once and never brought up again. Dr. Jurati straight up murders her lover and is set to turn herself into the Federation and it’s just kind of forgotten about in the finale. And Elnor, well, he gets to do his best Legolas impression slicing and dicing fellow Romulans with his sword I guess.

(He is still best boi though :3...)

The main co-star however, Soji the perfect android, has a particularly rushed development going from a scientist unknowing of her nature, to supposed prophet of doom, to predictably the savior all in one season. Her arc needed more time to develop with perhaps her Romulan love affair with Narek being the first season’s main driving force and her realization as an android being the climax. 

Instead we get basically four seasons of Battlestar Galactica’s Sharon arc crammed into one season and it unfortunately makes the story feel half-baked.

(Ok, Boomer.)

Don’t get the wrong idea, all these new characters have great individual moments as well throughout the season but sooooo much side plot is shoved in already into a muddled overarching narrative that it feels like several seasons worth of storytelling stuffed and edited down into a ten episode arc. Why the series felt it needed to conclude this robust story about synth hating Romulans in “Picard’s” first season feels like an unforced error in this reviewer’s opinion even if Sir P Stew only has maybe a couple seasons of extensive acting left in him anyways.

But the season isn’t completely worthless, as much as this review has been spent dunking on its less than stellar parts. The cast is exceptional, even working with the spare parts they’ve been given. Episode 5’s “Stardust City Rag,” in particular, stands out as a good mix of old and new Trek, with a decent dosage of cheese featuring Patrick Stewart trying on a French accent in a space bar. Santiago Cabrera is delightful as the ship captain Rios while also playing various forms of himself in AI form in equally enjoyable roles. Evan Evagora is fun as the deadly yet somewhat aloof Elnor, even if his character doesn’t do all that much except cut up a few Romulans. Seeing Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis reprise their roles as Riker and Troi respectively in episode 6 was heartwarming and felt the most like TNG out of all the episodes. And Jeri Ryan seems liberated in this series in this version of Seven of Nine, no doubt glad to be rid of that restrictive corset and Rick Berman’s meddling hands.

(Big “Fuck you, Rick Berman” energy going on in this scene.)

The production value is obviously high level as Trek has rarely looked this good on the small screen. There’s some great cinematography throughout the season whether it’s Picard’s chateau winery, the haunting nature of the Borg cube, or the synth homeworld in the season’s final beats. The spaceships look cool as always and the world of the future feels well futuristic.

The musical score is also top notch, with a great opening theme that feels very much in line with Trek at its futurist glimpse into a hopeful cosmos.

The season’s best moments though are between Picard and Data and will remind you why they were more than likely your favorite characters on TNG. Generally speaking, exploring the humanist themes of artificial intelligence in new Trek was a good choice and having Picard deal with survivor’s guilt kept the pulse of the muddled story still beating. Brent Spiner is still great as Data and will remind you all again how talented he has always been as an actor and though his age seeps through the makeup a bit he is nonetheless still a perfect android.

Though the finale as a whole is underwhelming, the characters do share a nice final moment that is both touching and reminiscent of everything a fan loves about Star Trek. It’s a great cap to an otherwise ok return to Star Trek for TNG’s top characters and its truly touching in the best way that this franchise has always been known to be.

(Deactivating my emotions chip because I just..can’t! I just can’t, ok! *Sobs*)

But great acting and high production value can only mask so many flaws with a convoluted plot and “Picard” unfortunately suffers from the bloated and uncooked nature of its many ideas. What the story really needed was three season arc not just ten episodes and it shows. I guess the plus side is with this particular plot wrapped up it leaves the door open for new ideas and a fresh start in the second season but it does feel like an overall miss for Picard’s homecoming back into the universe of Star Trek.

Overall, though there are worse ways a Star Trek fan can spend their quarantine than watching “Picard” and there’s certainly enough here for fans to latch onto and have hope for better things in the next season.

Hopefully things are less rushed or at least more focused in the second season and we can see a more proper return to form for both Picard and future Star Trek.

Here’s hoping the producers and writers make it so…

VERDICT:

3 out of 5

Let’s hope we get a return of Q in the next season.

insomnia is terrible. here’s thoughts on my recent kdrama binge, under the cut:

Signal (2016): It’s been over a month and I can confidently say I hated the last ~45minutes because they feel like the narrative equivalent of a long loading screen for a program you didn’t mean to boot up in the first place - it’s not the worst ending for a show I’ve ever seen (see Black, down below), but it did both feel like a cop-out and ... hmm. like my faith in the characters was seriously misplaced. Which is a shame! Cop-show/copaganda aside, both the overarching plot (the disappearance of Detective Lee Jae Han fifteen years ago)/plot preoccupations (political corruption, socio-economic stratification and the complicity of the police in reinforcing class barriers/defending the wealthy and powerful at the cost of the poor and powerless) and the individual mysteries that the characters past and present struggle to resolve were interesting and satisfactorily dealt with; the magic plot device of a radio that allowed Lieutenant Park Hae Young in 2015 to communicate with Lee Jae Han in the past (1989-2000) was ultimately far more compelling than it had any right to be. It feels like a long meditation on grief, at times, and how grief both rots and compels. I ugly cried so hard into my cat she sought revenge by dropping a spider in my bed, and I’m still not sure if that’s a recommendation. 

Crash Landing on You (2020): as unlikely and ideologically irresponsible (South Korean heiress accidentally ends up in a North Korean village via paragliding accident, winds up in the middle of convoluted political plots as often as she does small-town hijinx, in no small part because she totally isn’t in love with the emotionally-shut-down-but-kind-Army-Captain; alas, those troubles (but! some of her new friends, too!) follow her when she returns to South Korea and her awful family) as it was ultimately charming. This was billed to me as “a fun romantic comedy” to take my mind off the mindfuck of Signal’s ending, which might have been a mislabeling, considering politics, that the main relationship hinges in small part on the male lead inadvertently preventing the female lead from killing herself seven years before the narrative picks up, and there was no way, short of reunification of North and South, that things would end totally happily for the characters. Serotonin is stored in the abundant found family/true companions scenes, but we can’t have nice things for long. Watch with tissues.

Kingdom (2019-): I spent a significant chunk of this dry-heaving, or biting my nails, or hiding under my quilt. Quality zombie drama that also made me cry my own tears, tightly written, but I’m too squeamish and too worn out by 2020 to enjoy this fully.

Mystic Pop Up Bar (2020): sometimes, a family is a bad-tempered 500 year-old cursed pop-up bar owner, her pun- and grandpa-sweater-loving manager with a long and mysterious supernatural past, their turbo-empath busboy who can’t touch normal people without them spilling their deepest secrets, and the single braincell they have to share between them as they struggle to solve ordinary human’s grudges to satisfy the terms of the curse on the owner. For all that the action is pretty light-hearted, the characters’ backstories are weighted down with trauma, abandonment, betrayal and suicide; the grudges of the episode also deal with heavy stuff (workplace sexual harassment, infertility, the cycle of poverty, to name a few). But this is also a show where there’s a field-day in the afterlife for the dead to compete at ridiculous tasks to win the privilege of appearing to their descendants with the winning lottery numbers, the gods accidentally text the wrong numbers, Steve Jobs apparently digitalized reincarnation records, and threatening deities with baseball bats sometimes works wonders (and if that doesn’t work, annoying the shit out of them might do the trick). It doesn’t explain itself and, frankly, I don’t give a damn. Absurd and absurdly charming. I watched it and then immediately forced my sister to watch it again with me; I have a gallery of out-of-context screenshots of this show that watered my crops, cleared up my acne, and killed my enemies.

Black (2017): Honestly, when I figure out what the fuck just happened in the ending, I’ll let you know. I wanted this show to be better than it was, because the premise hit a lot of my buttons, and I wanted to be swept up in a story about life and death (and whatever comes next), and whether being human is in the ability to laugh or enjoy food or make irrational mistakes, or whether it’s in the bigger things: the wanting to be better and the ability to be so much worse, and what the opposite of human is? A woman with the ability to see the shadow of death on those about to die gets swept up in a sprawling web of corruption and abuse when she encounters a childhood friend by accident in a fast-food restaurant, only to see him killed him a hostage situation a day later. He gets better, thanks to possession by a Grim Reaper with his own agenda, but the Reaper’s involvement (and struggles to act human) reveals hitherto buried secrets in the woman’s past. It’s ... grim. Really grim. The web of mysteries is pretty tightly woven, and the show uses unreliable narrators for everything the trope is worth, but the characters and most of their relationships ultimately feel like they fall short of their potential to me, in a way it’s hard for me to articulate? Generally, the female characters felt underwritten and under-utilized; there’s a posthumous trans woman character who’s especially not handled well (better than some, but still felt transphobic to this cis observer). Honestly can’t recommend, unless you, too, can’t resist narratives about grim-reaper-archetypes, or you enjoy being infuriated by nonsense endings. OST’s pretty great, though.

Currently watching Mr. Sunshine (2018) with friends. pray 4 me.

Zxl Review

Well I finally got through yet another YuGiOh on this YGO Hell Challenge journey, so I want to quickly sum up my experience before moving on to the final YuGiOh in this challenge. Again, reminding you that this challenge will NOT be including V//r//ains, which means we have saved the best for last. Well, let’s do this...

Also, even though my past liveblogs have been primarily documented here on Tumblr, I opted to express my uncensored opinions on my private Twitter salt account for this show in particular mainly out of respect for those who followed me and didn’t want to see me salt so intensely every single day. For those who enjoy this show, I didn’t wanna be that annoying to deal with. For those who did get to see me salt, however, well... 

You know what’s up.

TL;DR: Zxl is not a show that I have ever preferred. I can understand why others might enjoy this show, however I personally can’t find or take away anything that is genuinely deeply substantial or compelling from it. I feel like this show lives off of being superficially loud and boisterous, dragging generic and vague themes out to give the illusion that they carry any real value. Of course that falls extremely flat when those themes are never explored or developed seriously and meaningfully, only being used for the hollow and unimpressive shock-value they can offer on a surface level.

Season 1 (Episodes 1 - 73)

Like I said, I don’t want to make this longer than I already feel it is; I just want to give my overall thoughts. Zxl has a tendency to introduce too many characters, too many high stakes, too many insignificant side stories (which are also meaningless), etc. at such a grueling pace. This first half of the show is plagued with inconsequential filler episodes AND antagonists (and “rivals”) with incredibly melodramatic roles... it’s just... just... so unnecessary to create a genuinely interesting show. Every climax in this show (not just this season) relies on shock-value reveals that tend to contradict characters’ beliefs, logic, and personalities.

Presentation-wise, this show is overall decent as they don’t often have noticeably bad animation, on the contrary Zxl overall tends to remain consistently well-animated. The only problem stems from the gaudy, overly color-saturated designs of various characters and card/monster designs. Character-wise, there are few decent designs like IV and Akari. Everyone else though? This show is consistently.... not a sight for sore eyes, I’ll tell ya that.

The soundtrack design is.... *shrugs*. Not terrible, but also, often extremely boisterous, which I suppose is appropriate. But none of the soundtracks are memorable at all.

As for the main point I suppose I should have mentioned: Yuma & Astral’s relationship and development.... well... this season did a not too bad job at developing their relationship (but no one else’s much), at the expense of copying DM’s Yugi & the Pharaoh’s relationship in terms of concept and setup. However, if it leads to something more wholesome and impactful? Well, that’s to be argued....

Overall rating for this arc: 1.5/5

Season 2 (Episode 74 - 146)

It might be a bit unfair to not break down this season into a series of components, as I did for my 5D’s review, however this season decided it’s overarching plot and its filler were one and the same so *shrugs again*.

This is the part of Zxl that gets good, according to many fans. That’s terribly subjective, of course.

And I’m sure my opinion that this season of Zxl is the worst half is also terribly subjective. Long story short, if season 1 was marred with superficial plot-less messy inconsequential subpar writing, season 2 is that but somehow worse. You didn’t think it could be but it was. With another unfantastic element added to the mix: repetition. Endless repetition in duels, in character “deaths”, in “reveals” (which aren’t reveals if the audience already knows everything that’s being “revealed”), in backstories, in “consequences”, etc. There’s repetition everywhere. Oh and retcons. There are plenty.

This is the culmination of too many unlikable, insignificant, and expendable characters in one 70+episode span, which I didn’t think was possible. And none of it matters because the themes are so convoluted and jumbled up, the ending of this season (and the show) doesn’t actually lead up from the exploration of any of the attempts of surface-level themes presented, it leads into a cliffhanger-teaser for a sequel that is extremely unlikely to ever happen, and a rewrite of anything in this show that COULD have had some consequence. So yeah, in the end, nothing that ever happened in this show matter. None of the characters experienced a growth in persona or self-reflection. The only thing we get is basic themes that can be stated and moved on with like “we can all learn to get along” (and yet nothing that led up to this final “conclusion” ever actually formulated satisfyingly) that stem from no other foundation of any of the so-called values introduced in the show. It’s all very hollow. 

I guess lastly my conclusion is that none of these characters actually are different than who there were when they were first introduced. None. (”But Sai—” THEY DID NOT DEVELOP, THEY WERE SIMPLY WRITTEN SO INCONSISTENTLY AND/OR INCOHERENTLY THAT THEY DIDN’T EVEN HAVE A PERSONALITY TO BEGIN WITH. THEY WERE JUST TROPES FROM THE START.)

Oh and also, I almost forgot: Yuma & Astral have an impactful, wholesome relationship? IMO, no. If anything, I saw so many red flags in it, in particular in this season of the show, in regards to it possibly even being a toxic relationship, but I don’t wanna get into the specifics of it and as I said this is subjective (tho as someone who has lived through some of these red flags, I’m not gonna be arguing with anyone in regards to this because lmao idc enough about them or about your opinion against this).

Lastly, I really despise the Barian designs. I’m happy for you if you liked they’re inflexible faces and gaudy.... appendages (?) but I’m different.

Overall rating for this arc: 1/5 

Final Overall Rating for this show: 1.25/5

Final Note: Finally. Jfc. I’m tired. Finally. I am free.

Friends. I am so unable to have coherent thoughts about Arrow at this point. I wanted to do a little 7x19 review (not much to say, tbh fuck I lied), but then again I also wanted to do a 7x18 review, and a 7x17 review, and...also talk about Arrow ending and EBR leaving. Yeah, ‘cause I still haven’t managed to do those things.

I keep thinking I have to have all my thoughts in order and arranged before I can say anything valuable, but the problem is my thoughts won’t comply. They refuse to be orderly and arrangeable. (Also I’ve tried just typing whatever is in my brain, too, but all I have to show for it is about 10,000 words of semi-coherent babbling hanging out in my Drafts. Probably never to see the light of day.)

So anyway 7x19 (🤞 that I stay on track here - update: I fucking failed! 😱😱😱): it was okay I guess.

As we draw to the end of the season - of the show, really - a few things keep bothering me, and unfortunately they’re coloring any and all enjoyment I may be able to squeeze out of the episodes so I have to just get them off my chest:

1. I keep getting stuck on the terrible production value. I can’t help it! It’s gotten to the point where I cannot help but see the production as much as I see the story, and it’s so jarring. I see the sets, the stage, where I only used to see the setting. It’s the (lack of) camera angles, the lighting, and the very obvious reliance on sets, rather than location shoots. 

And I can’t help but think: it didn’t used to be like this. Seasons 1-3 were so immersive, so atmospheric. Stylized? Yes, but in a way that was purposeful and enhanced the story. 

The most recent seasons make production feel only like a means to an end.

I think the production budget got cut a little after season 3, but seasons 4 and 5 still felt epic and captivating enough. But season 6′s production values were abysmal. And I thought it would finally improve in season 7 with the new showrunner, but instead it has only gotten worse and I realize now that it must have everything to do with budget. (And maybe this is my bitterness talking, but I can’t help but suspect that part of it is that increasingly, more and more of each year’s budget is being used to fund the crossovers. 😠)

The EPs seem to have forgotten something critical about filmmaking - production is always going to be a crucial aspect of story-telling, whether it’s intentional or not. There’s no such thing as an “objective” camera angle or edit. Every non-decision has as much an impact on the story as a decision would have, and by forgetting that, they have vastly reduced the overall quality of the show.

Anyway, I feel like I have to make one thing clear, since after all, I WAS ON THE SET and I MET THE CREW - literally shook hands with and spoke to camera operators, lighting people, and all other sorts of production people: they work hard and take their jobs seriously and in no way am I trying to suggest that any of them are bad at their jobs. They were truly lovely and professional and I was so impressed by them. I truly think the lapse in production values is entirely due to decisions made at the very top about money. It just has a very unfortunate, very obvious impact on the quality of the show they’re making. 

2. I can’t help but see and lament the effect of OVERPLOTTING and a lack of emotional foregrounding.

I comment all the time about how tight the story was in seasons 1-3:

Big Bads who had a personal connection to Oliver

seamless interweaving of the Flashbacks and the present

a clear, consistent, well-paced evolution of Oliver’s character that paralleled the action/plot

excellently-plotted storylines where all the characters were relevant to the plot - so that we had a reason to care, and focus on character actually forwarded the plot.

a good mixture of villains of the week that were both interesting unto themselves, and provided much-needed wins/breaks in the overarching plot, and allowed for plenty of character moments

generally, because of all of the above, a perfect sense of pacing and an excellent balance between plot and character, where plenty of time was given to dialogue and quiet character moments - which only served to enhance the plot

But then season 4 came along and things went south quickly, mainly due (in my opinion) to writing decisions that put plot over character, resulting in some seriously out-of-character stories that unfortunately had a huge impact on the show going forward. But even aside from Oliver’s uncharacteristic lying and Felicity’s unlikely decision to call the whole thing off, season 4 was already suffering from a clear lack of the things (above) that made seasons 1-3 so good.

It was the first time the BB had no real connection to Oliver’s past, which meant that suddenly the villain arc had to pull double-duty - drive the present-day plot and also somehow establish an emotional reason for us to care. Unfortunately, rather than pulling those two threads together into a tight, single focus, the writers created a sprawling story - a messy, confusing present-day arc and the absolute worst flashbacks of the entire show.

And it also saw the deliberate introduction of more comic-book elements to the show, with Damien Darhk’s (and Constantine’s) magic, which was a wrenching change in tone from the first three season’s grittiness. (I know a lot of the haters like to blame this shift in tone on Olicity - and even I will admit that the suddenly happy-go-lucky Oliver was a little too heavy-handed - but I fully believe the tonal shift has everything to do with the introduction of magic. And, of course, the horrible, clunky, meta-heavy crossover, which for the first time was used as a vehicle, rather than a chance for us to enjoy interactions between characters we loved.)

Then there was season 5. Lots of people love season 5, and I agree there were good elements, but for me it still suffers from a lack of those things that made seasons 1-3 so great:

most of all, with NTA there were suddenly too many characters - and they didn’t have a legitimate reason to be there. Their stories were arbitrary, inconsistently explored (or, more accurately, not explored), and had nothing to do with Oliver. And (maybe worst of all), their backstories/stories had nothing to do with the overarching plot of the season. So, again, the show’s focus was pulled in a million different directions, rather than the earlier brilliance of plot and character working together to drive the narrative. 

the introduction of metas as major characters in Arrow (rather than only being used in the crossovers) continued the cartoonish atmosphere which, in my opinion, made the consequences of all actions feel slightly less real, less impactful. To me it felt like a betrayal of Arrow, at its core. Because Arrow was solidly gritty for the first 3 years - even the League of Assassins storylines of season 3 felt grounded and real. Even The Count, Cupid, the Clock King - comic book villains to the core - still felt gritty and real within the universe. But (for me at least) the casual reliance on metahuman abilities let the writers be sloppy and careless with their plots, their resolutions, and their consequences. 

and I know most people love Prometheus, but I never loved him for two main reasons. First, while I appreciate the fact that they tied Prometheus’s origin to Oliver, the personal connection just felt forced to me. Prometheus, Talia, all of it felt untethered and hasty. I think they could have done a much better job grounding the story, planting the seeds earlier, but they didn’t. Second, Prometheus just won too much. The show had spent 5 years making us believe in Oliver’s abilities - as a fighter, an archer, and a strategist - and it was suddenly as if he were a bumbling idiot. The show made him seem incompetent in order to make Prometheus be always 10 steps ahead, and it was not only disheartening, it was unbelievable. Because not only did Oliver have 5 years more training than Prometheus did, he also had a team behind him.

Season 6 failed spectacularly in all ways, in my opinion. It was the ultimate example of overplotting, where the writers basically took everything that was so great about seasons 1-3 and did the opposite. Too many characters, uneven pacing, a sprawling, unfocused villain arc, and a lack of any given reason to care about any of it. And of course, everyone acting counter to their long-established characteristics.

I was really, really hoping that Beth and the new writers would use season 6 as a counterexample: what not to do in season 7. But (and again, I am not trying to place blame - I have no idea who is really in charge of these decisions, plus at this point there are already so many balls in the air that a lot of it is probably out of the writers’ hands anyway) as season 7 winds to a close, it’s clear to me that they’ve basically repeated a lot of the same plotting problems of season 6. 

Which brings me to 7x19. (And all of 7b actually, if I’m honest.)

Because this was supposedly a JOHN DIGGLE-centric episode, but it was way too little, way too late. (Setting aside the absolute tragedy that it’s been 7 years and this is the first chance we’ve gotten to look in-depth into John’s backstory beyond Andy.) Like others have mentioned, the focus on John felt superficial at best. We have a character with 7 years of characterization to explore, but the episode hardly touched on John’s character, his emotions, at all. And the little we got felt superficial. 

Instead, the episode was plot-heavy, convoluted, and tried to accomplish too many things. Things that, for the most part, had not been adequately emotionally foregrounded. By that I mean:

John’s story with his stepfather could have been awesome, except we’ve never fucking heard John even mention his parents before this episode. They planted and harvested those seeds all within a single episode.

Felicity’s struggle with her legacy...WOW. That was the first time we’ve ever heard her specifically say that she wanted her own legacy more than as Overwatch. Yeah, we have the “beacon of hope” stuff from 4x17, and some references here and there this season - and I don’t mean to be ungrateful - but I feel like there were ample opportunities to do a better job foregrounding Felicity’s struggle, yet they just haven’t.

Emiko and Dante. Yawn. Too little, too late - both in the season and in the series. 

Emiko and Oliver. Same.  

I have strong feelings about why it’s all going wrong, and for the most part I think it’s this: the writers aren’t trying to tell a complete, emotionally fulfilling story in season 7. Rather, season 7 seems to be divided into two discrete storylines:

7a, the prison arc, was pretty much its own thing. Sure, the writers attempted to establish a connection to 7b through the flash forwards, but it’s a very weak connection that relies on illusions and attempts to obscure the audience’s perception of events (mainly to do with the attempt to make us believe that Oliver’s prison stint caused a fundamental change in Felicity, making her become a villain in the future). But in reality, the 7a arc was pretty much self-contained - and, in hindsight, all the better for it.

7b, on the other hand, has lacked focus and direction, and as the season has worn on it’s become increasingly clear that rather than having purpose and emotional fulfillment of its own, it’s being used as a vehicle:

to drive the flash forward story, and/or

to drive next year’s crossover storyline, and/or

to drive season 8′s storyline.

(I’m using and/or there because I pretty much suspect all of those things are one in the same.) 

Seasons 1-3 (and even 4 and 5, to some extent) built upon each other. The writers planted seeds in seasons 1 and 2 that didn’t pay off until much, much later, meaning that we were invested in that payoff. We were adequately prepared, through plot and character, for those stories. But rather than continue to reinvest and build on elements of the earlier seasons, the latter seasons - especially 6 and 7 - have gone off in completely unprecedented directions. And for season 7, this means they’re trying to do accomplish too much at the very end. Too much plot, too late in the game, with too little emotional foregrounding.

We have THREE EPISODES LEFT after this - only THREE EPISODES left with Felicity - and there are still so many unanswered questions. Not only for the season, but for the show. And somehow each episode still manages to feel stagnant, refusing to answer our pressing questions, or worse - introducing new ones. 

And I guess that’s what’s really getting to me now. Because did I hate 7x19? No, not really. Aside from the general decline in quality discussed above, it was fine. I like the Team Arrow moments, I liked Olicity in the bunker, the team within the team. This is the sort of action and stories I wanted more of last season, and all this season too. It’s nice to finally have it again. 

But it’s time for resolutions now, and we’re not getting them. It’s time they start answering our questions about the flash forwards, time they start resolving the Emiko storyline - or at least building up to that resolution. (Remember how tight 1x19 through 1x23 are? The threads unraveling, the ever-heightening intensity?? Nothing like the plodding, disconnected feel of these late-season 7 episodes.)  

All of which makes me think they’re not really intending to resolve these questions this season at all. Rather than giving us a satisfying, complete story, they’re just rushing to the next thing - the next crossover, the next season. 

And it just bothers me, because this is the end for Felicity. We deserve character moments, goddammit. 

The showrunners seem to have forgotten that it was always character that made this show great. And it just makes me sad that it seems they won’t remember it in time to give us the proper ending that Felicity (and Oliver, and John) deserve. 

Basically “How Xehanort became one of the worst-written villains in video game history”.

He’s a prime example of something starting out perfectly simple and then becoming more and more convoluted, and a prime example of how a character Nomura refuses to let go ends up getting hurt by this decision. Trying to make Xehanort into the overarching villain of the series from every game released between 2002 and 2019 just did not work out at all.

For my money, the quality of the character goes like this:

Figure 2 > Figure 1 > Figure 3 > Figure 4 > Figure 5. 

When he was just Ansem, the character was great, he was fine...he was just unoriginal, being a typical Square villain (more specifically Sephiroth) mixed with a typical Disney villain in order to create the ideal Big Bad for the original KH. I think the retcon of him as Ansem’s top apprentice who committed identity theft shown in Figure 2 is when he was at his strongest, as even though this was made as a twist for the sake of being a twist, the writing gave Xehanort some additional depth that made him a more interesting character, especially when reflected through his forlorn Nobody, Xemnas. Most importantly, not that much was actually changed from the retcon. Just look at Figure 1 compared to Figure 2: it’s exactly the same save for the name and description of his background. He’s still the same guy(s).

Figure 3 is a mixed bag, because on the one hand this new retcon changes so much more about Xehanort than KH2′s did, the revelation that a guy we already know splits himself into two people already used to be two people is groan-worthy, and how both Master Xehanort and Terra are written feels lazy and derivative of Riku and the original Xehanort. But on the other hand, the Master Xehanort angle gives a new level of dramatic irony to the original Xehanort/Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, the Terra angle gives a new level of tragedy to Xemnas, and both Master Xehanort and Terra are enjoyable characters in their own right. Ultimately, I could still let this slide if nothing more came from Xehanort afterward.

Of course, the exact opposite happened - rather than leave Xehanort wrapped up with his backstory in BBS and moving on to a new Big Bad for the series, Nomura doubled down on Xehanort to the point of saying that everything from KH to KH3 was “the Xehanort Saga”. And that led to Figures 4 and 5, which are pure logic-defying insanity and reduce Xehanort to less of a character and more of a plot device, to the point where “being Norted” is a thing. You could swap Xehanort out with some sort of darkness-based illness and the result would be the same. The fact that Xehanort is ultimately made into a pawn of the Master of Masters and Luxu, with his convoluted master plan just being a part of their convoluted master plan, was the final nail in the coffin in terms of his efficiency. Xehanort began as a great villain whom almost everyone enjoyed, but went out a nuisance whom they were now glad to be rid of. 

Maggie’s Captain Marvel Review:

I’m gonna put this under the cut to avoid spoilers!

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Pros: So first off, there’s nothing not to enjoy about this film. As Marvel origin stories go, it’s one of the stronger entries. Definitely better than Dr. Strange or even First Avenger. It’s got fun, heart, strong performances, and a likable main character. It made me very excited for a second film with Carol because now that we’ve got her rather convoluted backstory out of the way, I’m ready for the angst train and some serious plot to happen. I think a second Carol movie has a strong potential to be the Winter Soldier to this film’s First Avenger if they just increase the story quality in a similar way, and they’ve got a strong team in place to pull that off.

Cons: I should preface by saying, the “cons” are all things my writer brain picked out and are criticisms of the structure of the story and not of my enjoyment. The movie was enjoyable, my time was not wasted. 

My main critique is that the story lacked a central theme by lacking a central emotional conflict for Carol to overcome, a lesson for her to learn, which in general is what delivers us our theme or main thread of the story and left it feeling rather scattered between the three acts. However, given that the last time Marvel tried to give a lead female character an emotional “Dark Night of the Soul” moment it was in AoU with Nat “lamenting” how not being able to have children makes her feel like a monster *ENDLESS SIGH*... I’m ok that Carol avoided any hamfisted or failed attempt at giving her something to break down over emotionally in the final act, in favor of just making a fun action movie.

The thing is, I spent a lot of the film squinting at the screen because my writer brain was in overdrive trying to figure out WTF was going on. The first third of the movie felt like a video game tutorial to me, trying to info dump on me all the various new alien races I needed to keep track of, Carol’s powers, Carol’s squad, etc etc, and how this had anything to do with Earth or the Marvel franchise to date. 

The second third of the movie seemed to introduce the theme of, “Trust No One” and managed to imbue a sense of paranoia into the narrative between the Skrull and the eventual reveal that the Kree, and Carol’s squad, as the actual bad guys. Part of me almost wished the “Trust No One” theme had been there a bit more strongly throughout because it was a good centralizing theme for the conflict. 

But then the last third of the movie was pretty much just a triumphant romp. The theme became, “Carol is Awesome!” We learn she was a badass pilot, she has badass friends, she’s a badass who saves the day! The humor becomes more consistent. While it was peppered throughout the film, it goes full Guardians of the Galaxy with the period 90s girl power music. She defeats all the bombs easily and scares off Ronan with a glare, then one-shots the closest individual she had to an emotional bad guy or dark mirror, then rolls off to save the day for the refugee Skrull because yeah we love adorable refugees in theory but we don’t want them in our country, right, USA? We just want them to somehow go off and find their own magical country somewhere else.

With Captain Marvel, I struggled with figuring out what the story was about. Not about in the literal sense, but the “about” of your story is what makes it bigger than watching someone punch bad guys for a couple hours. Perhaps the fact that I’m a woman and therefore “learning” that a woman can be a badass isn’t something I notice means I missed out on the lesson the story was trying to impart.

But stories generally have an XYZ. “This is a story about X (character) who goes on a physical journey of Y (the main conflict) in which they learn Z (the overarching lesson of the tale).” In Thor 1 we meet Thor, a space prince (X) who must become worthy of his hereditary weapon and throne (Y) in order to overcome his own flaws of selfishness and immaturity (Z). Iron Man has a similar emotional theme of learning personal responsibility, as does GotG, and even Captain America 1 which takes, like Carol, someone who is pretty heroic from the beginning and then has him learn the full extent of the sacrifices he must make to save the world. These moments come together and coalesce in the “Dark Night of the Soul” moment, a character’s lowest point reveals what they needed to learn all along as they suffer a fate worse than death for a portion of the narrative to show us what they most feared to lose.

Generally speaking in a plot formula the Dark Night of the Soul happens right before the Climax in the third act. It’s the moment where the protagonist is brought to their lowest point emotionally and learn the lesson they’re supposed to learn in this story, which prepares them to throw everything into the final battle. In Thor 1, for example, it’s the moment where Thor can’t lift Mjolnir. He has a literal Dark Night of the Soul in the middle of the night, sitting in the rain. He’s taken captive and Loki delivers him terrible news about how he’s not welcome back home. This forces Thor into confrontation with his own past failures and shallowness. It reforges him into a better person, one worthy of triumphing in the end. 

As far as I could tell, the only thing Carol “overcomes” emotionally is her memory loss, but it’s not a terribly dark emotional moment because the memory loss was outside her control and inflicted on her, defeating it is uncomplicated as a result. The only lesson she learns is that she had a physical inhibitor preventing her from being a badass. It’s not a personal failure based on any kind of choice she made. She doesn’t really learn any kind of personal lesson or lesson that’s super relevant to her emotional state. In part because we never got a strong sense of her connection to the Kree such that losing her trust in them is a big crisis moment for her. Even the other woman on her team doesn’t seem terribly bothered that Carol switched sides.

In the end, it’s kind of the same plotline as She-Ra, but at least in the new She-Ra reboot we get a stronger sense of conflict from Adora about learning her old life with the bad guys was a lie and that she was being manipulated to fight for the bad guys. She-Ra actually has a more intense “Dark Night of the Soul” conflict over leaving her friends and old life behind because she decides to fight for the good guys in the war instead than Carol Danvers did with almost the same plotline, even though She-Ra is aimed at small children.

My theory is, the reason Marvel chose to avoid a dark night of the soul moment is the same reason they avoided a romance. They didn’t want the headline of the film to be “Carol cries in the third act because she’s a woman!” when even Steve Rogers cried in the third act of his film, as did Thor, and Tony Stark, because the Dark Night of the Soul is when the hero cries at their lowest point. By trying to avoid any moment where Carol could be broken down by her emotional plotline, they neutered her narrative of emotional impact and a lesson that she learned which would tie the story together and make it about something. Which, hey, I understand because if you do it wrong you’ve just undermined your first female hero (though even Wonder Woman had her dark night of the soul in the third act when she saw the bombed out French village she’d just saved, so it is possible to show tears from a female hero in a way that enhances the story instead of weakening the character). 

But honestly, I’ll take it. There’s plenty of action movies where the male protagonist doesn’t have a significant emotional lesson he learns, where the theme is flimsy at best, and it’s really about punching bad guys to a bopping soundtrack, and we just call those fun action movies. Which is what Carol got and that’s totally fine. It was a fun action movie!

The fundamental problem with later seasons of voltron

I’ve just come up with a prime example of what went wrong with seasons 3-8 of vld, and I felt like sharing it. 

Starting in s3, the focus of voltron went from team voltron to Keith. While he did get focus in s2 with his whole galra arc, that was more of a personal character arc for him than an overarching story arc. In later seasons, we get a lot more backstory for Keith, including meeting his mother. We get tons of flashbacks that show why she left him, and how that impacted his childhood. These flashbacks inspire him to take the Black lion at the end of s6 and become a leader in s7/8.

That’s all well and good, if not for one glaring issue in the execution: We never found out Keith’s father’s name. Seriously! In 7 seasons from when we first saw him, through all those flashbacks, we never once heard someone call him by his name! Even Krolia, his lover, refers to him only as “Keith’s father”. 

Why is this? The father of one of our main characters (the main character in later seasons) seems like a pretty important character, right? Especially considering that his death impacted Keith’s childhood and character. There’s one main reason I can think of: it wasn’t important to the story.

Seasons 3-8 were very plot-heavy. Most people agree that a lot of main characters got shafted to make room for more plot. And that’s the main problem with later voltron: to the producers, the story was more important than the characters. 

The reason the later seasons were so terrible was because the EPs didn’t understand the main idea of storytelling; characters drive the story, not the other way around. Fans didn’t come back to voltron because of the plot (oftentimes it was so convoluted that we could barely understand what was going on). We came back, despite seasons steadily dropping in quality, because we wanted to see where the characters that we’d grown to love ended up. 

That’s why season 8 was such a disappointment-- all the characters got terrible endings, all to make room for the plot. 

Because honestly, if a storyteller doesn’t care enough to name one of their important recurring characters, how can we expect them to complete other characters’ arcs well?

A Not Actually Definitive Ranking of Fire Emblem Games

So after a lot of deliberation I’ve decided not to revisit last year’s Zelda ranking project on a full scale for FE, but that doesn’t mean it’s not something I really wanted to do. 2018 is the year we’re going to get alternatively hyped for and disappointed by FE16, after all. With that in mind have an abbreviated list that will end up being one very long post. I’ve got games to gush over and an anon or two (and very likely actual followers…eep) to piss off, so here we go.

The “personal favorites of the series, love revisiting them” Tier - FE10, FE2/15, FE4

I’m never going to argue that Radiant Dawn is a perfect game or even just a perfect FE game, but damned if it doesn’t manage to do so much right all at once. An extremely ambitious story that builds off its mostly conventional predecessor in a variety of interesting ways, deconstructing a bunch of series narrative standards (life in a defeated country kind of sucks and there are people that don’t warm that quickly to young and inexperienced rulers, go figure) and taking an eleventh hour hard right at Nietzchean atheism as read by a Pride parade. Kind of falls on its ass by the end, but every experimental FE story does the same thing so I can’t fault this one. I love the army switching as motivation to try different units almost as much as I love the oh-so-exploitable growth and BEXP mechanics. Its Easy mode also hits a sweet spot for me of being challenging enough to not be a complete snore while also allowing the freedom for all manner of weird self-imposed challenges that don’t even require grinding. By all accounts Hard mode is one lazy design choice after another, but I don’t play at that level so no complaints here.

Never played Gaiden, but to its credit around half of the unique gameplay mechanics I like in Shadows of Valentia were also in the original: the modest army size, the novel approaches to inventory management and magic, the pretty basic class system with just a hint of nuance. The remake threw in some hit-or-miss questing, dungeon exploration, and achievements, but all the rest was either a solid addition or a continuation of NES-era annoyances that I could live with. And the story…SoV makes me dislike the DS games even more just because this game does so much with so little. Even leaving aside the mostly great voice acting there’s a bunch of new content that characterizes almost everybody and makes half of them (the men, anyway, because this is a remake of a Kaga-era game and therefore misogynistic as can be) gay because why the hell not, and then some development that constitutes the only solid attempt at worldbuilding Archanea-Valentia-Ylisse has ever really gotten and also retcons some stuff from Awakening into making sense. It’s even got some solid DLC with lots of character stuff for the Deliverance, the least sucky grinding of the 3DS games, and probably the only context in which I’ll ever be able to comment on anything from Cipher.

No remake needed for Genealogy of the Holy War to make it competitive with the rest of the top tier - just an excellent translation patch and the standard features of an emulator. I’ve never watched Game of Thrones and probably don’t plan on it, but I gather that this game provides the same essential experience with less blood and female nudity and marginally more egalitarianism for all. I can forgive it for being the original Het Baby Fest since you’d be hard-pressed to find a single entirely healthy and well-adjusted individual anywhere on Jugdral and I relate to that just as much. Screwed up family dynamics for everyone! It’s also arguably got a more fun breeding meta than either of the 3DS games, lacking Awakening’s optimization around a single postgame map with very specific parameters or Fates’s high level of balance that ironically stymies analysis. This is another game for interesting inventory management and unit leveling that isn’t too obnoxious, which mostly makes up for the maps taking an eon to play through even with an emulator speeding through those enemy phases. This would be a strange game to remake, but if it got a localized one of the same caliber as SoV I fully acknowledge that this could climb to the #2 spot. SoV would probably have the queer edge though unless they do some strange things to the plot or just make Gen 2 really gay…but then again Gen 2 is the part that’s more in need of fleshing out as it is. (Also, this game has So. Much. Incest. That’s not even really a kink of mine especially as it’s all straight incest, but I just find that hilarious in light of how Tumblr’s purity culture speaks of such things.)

The “good games, but don’t come back to them as much” Tier - FE7, FE9, FE8

Blazing Sword is not here for nostalgia purposes, especially since when I first played the game at 14 years old most of what I like about it didn’t really register. It was just that game with RPG elements that I liked and permadeath that I didn’t, and it took a few games after that for me to become an established fan of the franchise. Massive props for putting such an unconventional spin on a prequel to a textbook FE; this is a game in a series about war in which no war is fought, how crazy is that? We actually get to see the backstory of FE6′s tragic antagonist, even as it’s completely tangential to the plot of this game and so just feels like random Jugdral-esque family drama without context, and on top of that we get the first hints of interdimensional travel and kinky human/shapeshifter sex several years before either of those became controversial talking points about how they were ruining the series. I am so there. Lyn doesn’t matter to the saga, but her character arc is distinct and self-contained and also she picked up a disproportionately large fanbase while being bisexual and biracial so go her. Eliwood is sympathetic and homosocially-inclined even if his growths frequently make me want to cry (at least he gets a horse unlike his similarly-challenged son), and I can live with Hector even if I could have done without his lordly legacy. Throw in some average-for-the-time gameplay with just enough variety across the two routes and even more good character work *waves at Sonia and Renault and Priscilla -> Raven/Lucius and Serra and…* and it’s all in all a solid experience. The ranking system can go die in a fire though, which funnily enough it did after this game. Yay!

Like most early 3D games - except on Gamecube so it’s even more embarrassing - Path of Radiance has aged terribly by every aesthetic measure aside from the soundtrack. It’s also painfully slow, and my computer can’t run Dolphin apparently so an emulator’s not going to fix that for me. Those obvious flaws aside, it’s still an entertaining game, and more importantly it’s the prologue that had the crucial task of setting up all the pins RD knocked over in stellar fashion, whether we’re talking about the basic storyline that actually isn’t or the many het relationship fake-outs (more so in localization…I guess we’ll never know if NoA was actively planning that when they pushed Ike/Elincia like they did). PoR is also a love letter to Jugdral in both gameplay and themes, albeit an occasionally critical one. The jury’s still out on whether Jugdral or Tellius succeeds the most (fails the least?) of the FE settings at developing a complete world with a nuanced and resonant saga narrative, but that Tellius manages to be competitive while being kind of clumsy overall with racism and shifting the series’s overarching motif of dragon-blooded superhumans to one of kinky interracial sex is pretty impressive. The less I say about Ike the better since it’s only his endings in RD that save him for me; suffice it to point out that his worldview and general personality were clearly designed to appeal to a demographic that does not include me.

And finally comes The Sacred Stones, truly my average benchmark FE as I like it but struggle to have any particularly strong feelings on it one way or the other. The story is standard but has a few intriguing quirks, like the light vs. dark magic meta, surprise necrophilia, and how the main antagonist’s sexuality sort of depends on which route you take (except he’s still never getting laid so does it really matter?). It also seems to have been the first game to have made a legitimate effort toward the kind of replayability that’s normal for RPGs, what with the branched promotions, the route split, and the actual postgame. That’s all much more engaging than just filling up a support log. The gameplay is also more polished and (I think?) more balanced than the other GBA games, if one is willing to overlook the minor issue of Seth. Let’s see…something something twincest that’s now an IS running gag, something something guys talking intimately about their lances, something something SoV did the whole dungeon crawling with monsters bit better but I can forgive SS for not taking it that far. Moving on….

The “they have Problems” Tier - FE14, FE13

Probably qualifies as a fandom heresy, but yes I’m putting Fates first of these two. Fates is in every conceivable way for me the “You Tried” game, because I had such high hopes for it from the moment we got the earliest promotional content. I was expecting a World of Warcraft-style conflict between two morally grey factions with myriad convoluted grievances against each other messily resolving themselves one way or the other according to player choice (though note that this is already somewhat damning with faint praise as no one’s going to call WoW a storytelling masterpiece), with Conquest in particular a true villain campaign that I imagined might play out as European Imperialism: The Game. What we actually got was…not that, not at all, but amid all the complaints about plot holes and idiot balls and moral myopia most fans seem to have forgotten just how much there is to this game. It’s three full stories that together average out to be just about passable, with possibly the biggest gameplay variety in the series that fixed most of Awakening’s more broken elements (pair-up, children being unquestionably superior to the first generation) while also adding in new features that undoubtedly appealed to someone or other like Phoenix mode and the castle-building aspect. I can even mostly forgive the obvious growing pains Fates exhibits in terms of queer content, as they were pretty much inevitable once the developers realized that (almost) everyone was picking up on the subtext and that that approach just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Again, they tried, and if the results included face-touching fanservice and plot contrivances left and right and two-way cultural posturing that inevitably crosses over into real world racism at some point I can still step back for a moment and acknowledge that Fates began as a distinctive, high-concept setting on par with Tellius and Jugdral that was willing to do something different with the narrative norm (for two of its routes at least, and even so I’m not begrudging Birthright its conventionality because that grounding is important overall). And who knows? Maybe a later game will come along and retroactively make this setting coherent.

Fates might have more sexual fanservice, but if there’s any FE that I feel ends up a slave to fanservice in a broader sense it would be Awakening. Yeah, I get that when it was in development everyone thought this would be the final game, so it makes sense that the finished product turned out to be a nostalgia-laden greatest hits piece. It’s still hard to forgive Awakening for feeling so insubstantial, doubly so since it ended up revitalizing the franchise and now it and Fates are everywhere. It’s got a plot that only makes some sense in light of SoV and possibly on a meta level (following my theory that the plot structure is meant to mirror FE1-3 in sequence), the first iteration of an Avatar dating game heavily coloring the characterization and support system, and a queasily feel-good atmosphere that allows almost no character to actually remain dead and centers everything around the self-insert and the power of friendship. So much for the series’s traditionally dim view of human nature and recurring theme of the inevitability of conflict. What’s more, in spite of its theoretically broad scope (including a criminally under-explored time travel plot with a bad future) and numerous call-backs to older games Awakening does surprisingly little for developing the series’s most frequently-visited setting. I think it was in large part how generic this game has always felt to me even before release that I never got very hyped for it and as a consequence was never very disappointed by it. It’s just….there, with its nostalgia and its chronic “no homo” and its host of hilariously broken mechanics. I wonder if we’d have ended up viewing Awakening more favorably if it really had been the last game? Eh, probably not.

The “needs a remake or needs a better remake” Tier - FE5, FE6, FE3/12, FE1/11

I don’t have a specific order for these, except that FE1/11 is almost certainly the bottom since 5 and 6 have remake potential and, lack of localization aside, New Mystery was a better remake than Shadow Dragon.

I still haven’t fully played Thracia 776, but I’ve watched and read through Let’s Plays and have read more than enough analysis and meta on the game to where I can definitively say that I wouldn’t enjoy playing it too much and don’t feel all that emotionally connected to the story except insofar as it relates to the overall Jugdral saga. The concept of a standard FE plot that ends with the playable cast losing is an intriguing one, though they really could have done better than the weird non-ending that is this game’s final boss. I’m also not as invested in Leif the fallen aristocrat as I usually am those types of characters, possibly because it’s a foregone conclusion that he eventually gets his kingship anyway. I would like a remake, hopefully one that smooths over some of the original’s mechanical roughness and also makes a bunch of characters gay because the material’s certainly there in places, but I also admit that I’d rather have a remake of Genealogy first. Or, for that matter….

Binding Blade doesn’t have the potential for an amazing story-driven remake that Thracia does; after all, it’s basically a soft reboot of FE1 with an equally bland lord saved by his Super Smash Bros. fanbase and possibly his weirdly large harem. That said, there’s a fair amount of character potential and worldbuilding opportunities what with the series’s first true support system and the content of its unorthodox prequel. Even by itself I feel like BB does more to sell Elibe as its own distinctive world than any of Marth’s games ever did for Archanea, and that’s even with the reality that like the Archanea games this playable cast is inflated with some really forgettable characters (that seem to have followed a semi-rigid numerical quota by class in this instance. It’s weird.). This game never really stuck in my mind as a good playable experience either, not helped by the fact that it feels simple and antiquated compared not only to the GBA games that followed it but to the Jugdral games that preceded it. Good on them for throwing out some of Thracia’s more unwieldy mechanics, but did they have to throw out skills, hybrid classes, and varied chapter objectives too? The space limitations of the GBA couldn’t have been that severe.

While I’ve been spending much of this post ragging on Archanea, I will say that (New) Mystery of the Emblem has some interesting character beats, like the resolution of the Camus/Nyna/Hardin tragedy, Rickard and the situationally bisexual(?) Julian, and some of the antics of Marth’s retainers. I did like bits of the remake’s new assassin plot even if most of it is cribbed from the Black Fang; Eremiya’s no Sonia, but Clarisse and Katarina have their moments. Also, Kris isn’t that offensive to me since I was never all that engaged in Marth’s inconsistent personality and from what I’ve seen his/her supports don’t all devolve into a dating sim. New Mystery has a broader array of characters than either the original or the previous remake, without requiring the player to kill off characters just to get some of the new ones. That said, the reclassing in the DS games is still broken and allows the player to strip even more character out of their personality-deprived units. I’m getting to the point where I’m having trouble separating the two actually, so I’ll just go ahead and remark that I think everyone can agree that Shadow Dragon is the worst of the three remakes so far, with no supports, the aforementioned killing of units, a prologue that adds to the story but only exists on Normal mode and also requires you to kill someone off (seriously, what is it with this game? Is it commentary on the necessary sacrifices of war that they tried forcing on the player for one game until they realized it was a terrible idea?), the needless removal of features from earlier games like rescuing even as others like weapon ranks and forging were left in, that first clumsy iteration of reclassing, and little to nothing that I can see as elevating the story above the standard fantasy adventure fare of Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light that might have been good in 1990 but didn’t look so hot in 2008. Archanea just feels so lifeless overall compared to every other setting in the franchise, to the point where I don’t even feel that guilty about putting the first game in the series way down at the bottom when over in the Zelda ranking I raised the NES games above ones I found more fun to play solely because of their historical significance. Isn’t FE1 arguably the first tactical RPG? I feel like I should appreciate it more, but I just can’t. *shrugs*

Besides the resentment cause by some people, what is your current opinion on Vrains? Personally overall I like it but I just wish Yusaku wasn't so perfect and people would stop staying this is best thing in yugioh ever when we're only 10 eps in.

welllllll okay, at the risk of sounding kinda bitchy….I’m not particularly enjoying it so far. 

Don’t get me wrong, I like it!  About as much as any other Yu-Gi-Oh series (except for Arc V which is…always going to be on a different level for me for personal reasons.  But I digress).

Resentment towards the fanbase and it’s antics aside, the show itself is…just a little lackluster for me.  It’s kind of why I stopped doing those episode by episode reviews, because I didn’t want to steal anyone’s thunder with my own lack of enthusiasm.

But…anyway.  Let me try to quantify my feelings more specifically; i’ll put it under a cut cause it might be a bit long.

ALSO, please bear in mind that I’m…actually two episodes behind;;;;  So some of the things I complain about may or may not have been addressed in those two episodes, I don’t know. (but then, there’s the main problem right there…I haven’t felt an urge to watch them….anyway.)

first…the setting.  I just…don’t feel like it’s been utilized to it’s fullest extent.  Virtual reality is cool!!!  It’s super cool!!  But….but VRAINS just looks like….regular space.  Regular space with the occasional data stream/storm to hoverboard through.  It’s not….very visually interesting.  Everything about it is pretty subdued, realistic, and with a darker, duller palette, which are not my favorite aesthetics.  Like, it’s virtual reality, man!!!  Show me beautiful ridiculously spread out environments like mountain ranges and meadows and forests, not just…the same old cityscapes that we see in the real world.  VRAINS and the real world do not look visually distinct, at all.  If not for the avatars, I would not know when the characters were in one world or the other, and I fail to see the necessity of the VRAINS system at all.  Why is it important?  Why is it more important that the duels take place on that stage rather than anywhere else?

The visuals of data storm duels just…aren’t very interesting to me, either.  They’re getting repetitive, and I’m already sick of seeing the Link Summon animation because it’s so LONG.  and what with the backgrounds being so boring, too, i just…I want them to have to zip around obstacles and shit, instead of just zooming down a freeway and then occasionally getting sucked into a data storm, where Yusaku does the exact same animation for his skill as always. (like man there is so much recycled animation in this series, his transformation sequence, the Link Summon sequences, the Storm Access skill…no wonder the animation is so good and consistence, they only have to animate new footage for about half the episode)

Second, the characters so far.  I just…I don’t feel much of a connection to them.  As far as Yusaku goes, I do like him, and I’ll get into the parts that I do like about him later in this response, but as far as he goes, I feel like we’re watching him from the outside, rather than actually getting into his head.  We’re not getting much, if any, of his internal monologue.  I feel as though we’re being told how he feels instead of being shown how he feels.  There’s nothing wrong with a stoic character!!  Absolutely nothing wrong with that at all, I mean, I adore Yusei.  What I don’t like is a stoic character who’s….just stoic.  Yusaku is just a little too perfect so far; he never gets tripped up by anything, even when it looked like Blue Angel had him on the ropes, it turned out he had been planning on the entire situation from the beginning.  Like…I’m getting BBC Sherlock vibes out of him at the moment, and I…I don’t like it.  Let me see Yusaku fail.  Let me see Yusaku get upset when he does.  Let me see him feeling, let me see his flaws, besides his single-minded focus on revenge.

I found Go somewhat lackluster as well; his aesthetic didn’t appeal to me, and he just………what about him was “”entertainment dueling”” ?  Maybe once he joins the crew and interacts I’ll enjoy him more but I really can’t even say much about him because I don’t feel like I learned anything about him.

And as for Aoi…..let me preface this with the fact that she is by and large my favorite character in the series so far.  I think she does the subdued personality better than Yusaku does so far, but i think it helps that we have the duality of her Blue Angel persona to really give her some depth to her conflicted personality and nature.  But besides that…?  She’s been treated very poorly so far.  They set her up as a very powerful and important duelist, which is great! ….but then they immediately had her possessed by the bad guys and sent her into a coma.

and….as an aside, i was….uncomfortable with the long, drawn out scene where she was fighting her possession.  There was really…no actual reason for that whole scene of her losing her wings and falling, like…what exactly was happening there????  And just the drawn out sequence of her just sitting here, screaming, without seeing her internal struggle–like, was she actually fighting the virus?  if so, instead of seeing her losing her wings and falling, I would have liked to see her shouting at the virus in her head and struggling with it.  Instead we just got….almost five minutes of her just screaming in pain and it almost felt like torture porn to me.  I would have accepted the losing her wings scene if we had seen some kind of internal monologue about her feeling like she was failing her desire/purpose to prove herself to her brother, and that was why she felt like she was losing her wings, but…instead it was just, straight up screaming in pain.

don’t get me wrong, i loooove seeing characters get broken down, i just like to feel like there’s a character point to it instead of just seeing it to see it

and finally……the plot.  A lot of people have hailed this as the “first yugioh series to focus on plot” but i would counter with….exposition is not plot.  What we have gotten is not plot so much as it is info-dumping.  And there’s nothing wrong with that, not at all.  I just…it rubs me the wrong way to call it “”plot”” because so far, the plot is still developing.  You can’t act like they dumped all of it into the beginning, and you can’t act like a series not doing the same thing is somehow “not plot.”  Plot is the overarching storyline; what we have right now is not plot it’s just…….vague info dumping that makes me feel like i know less than if they hadn’t told me anything at all.  A lot of that info-dumping has been done in an incredibly stilted manner imo, also.  Like Akira talking to Bishop, and he explained things out loud to Bishop that….both of them would have already known.  He was just saying it for the sake of the audience.  That’s…imo that’s a poor way to explain backstory.  It’s telling instead of showing, instead of letting the plot simmer up through the actual story and peek through the cracks, slowly drawing you into the world and slowly getting you involved.  Nope just…just dumps it on ya.  Here it is.  Here’s the back story.

honestly, let me clarify that previous complaint with this: I am 100% a character over plot person.  Give me characters that I love and I will ride through any plot, no matter how convoluted or poorly written.  I am of the firm belief that if you have well-written characters who interact in interesting ways, the plot will fall into place behind them.  My first rule of thumb when writing is, if you have a scene with only one person, do whatever you can to add at least second person for them to play off against.

So far….?  VRAINS has not wowed me with its characters interactions.  And I think the plot is suffering for it.  I don’t know these characters.  I don’t know how they feel about each other.  The majority of interaction comes from them zipping around from a distance on the field, and they don’t really talk…they mostly talk to themselves about what the other person is doing, and then do some loud trash talking that isn’t real interaction.  The closest VRAINS has gotten so far to getting the kind of interaction I want to see is in the intro ep for Blue Angel, where Yusaku had some good interaction with Ignis and Kusanagi, and then with Naoki and Aoi.

I think it’s telling that the only parts of the show that I’ve really, really enjoyed so far are the above mentioned instances.  Not the duels, not the backstory, not the evil dudes plotting, not the new cards or summoning types, not even the fucking virtual reality gimmick.  The only parts I’ve actually really, really loved watching are the parts where Yusaku is put on the spot and expected to awkwardly interact with things that have nothing to do with his overall mission.

And i think that’s a good segway into what I do like about VRAINS so far.  First, what little we DO have of Yusaku, I do like more than i dislike.  I think he’s cute, and like I said before, during those brief moments of awkwardness he had with Ignis/Kusanagi’s teasing and with Naoki strongarming him into the duel club, i loved a lot.  That is what i want to see more out of him.  I want to see him put on the spot, dragged out of his comfort zone, forced to see things from outside his tunnel vision.  I do love his ticks, like his “three reasons” thing, I think that’s actually a very interesting master gesture for him that implies an extra depth that i hope will be explored later.

I like Ignis, and I like his relationship with Yusaku.  I like that it’s almost a reverse Yuma/Astral thing.  I love how expressive Ignis is even though he’s just an eye. 

The animation is good!  My complaint about recycled animation aside, the animation actually is v good, the CGI bits aren’t too bad, definitely improved since their first usage in BBT.  The characters are nicely articulated and expressive in their movements.  My complaints about the backgrounds and sameness aside, this is a style that would become more than just beautiful if and when it decides to expand from it’s current repertoire of backgrounds.

And the parts of the plot that they haven’t explained?  I am fascinated by that.  TBH I could care less about the AI subplot, but the flashback of tiny Yusaku getting dragged out of a house in a blanket as though there was some kind of fire?  That is interesting to me, because they left questions unanswered, and didn’t throw any exposition at me for it yet.  That i am looking forward to seeing explored and explained and threaded through the story.

And as for what I’m looking forward to: I’m looking forward to Yusaku getting a squad.  That’s basically it.  I think my opinion of the show will increase tenfold once Yusaku has his friend group.  Like I said, I’m a character person.  I want characters over plot.  Once Yusaku has his team put together, I think I’ll be much more engaged.

So my overall thoughts, if somehow you read through that entire monstrosity of a response?  I don’t hate it, but I’m not currently very engaged.  This isn’t meant to be a comparison, but coming off of the high of Arc V, which is very important to me for personal reasons, it’s harder for me to become engaged in the new story when it doesn’t hit my buttons for the things I generally like in media.

I’m still definitely in it for the long haul, I’ll be watching the entire series no matter what, and I expect to enjoy it, but I don’t expect it to overtake any of the other yugioh series in terms of my overall love and interest in it.

And I apologize sincerely if this wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to hear…I really do wish that I enjoyed it more, and I’m glad for all the people who are enjoying it.  Please don’t let my own disengagement take the wind out of your sails.

Do you have any advice on how to write long, chapters fics? I've tried multiple times but I've stopped writing every single one after like three chapters. I don't know if it's because I'm pressuring myself too much or if I'm losing interesting in the story (I highly doubt that) and I would like to know if u have anything to say bc I admire you for the way you pushed on and finished iwfyitd (I love ur writing btw thanks for posting it)

/)u(\ thank you! ;;;

as for making long, multi-chaptered fics …

the number one thing I would say is add subplots. You can either do this by bringing in more characters or by creating multiple subplots for your main two.

Take iwfyitd for example. Now, I do NOT recommend that you do what I did with iwfyitd because I bit off way more than I could chew with having so many characters and each ship having its own subplot. But for the sake of this illustration, I’m going to use it.

I Will Follow You Into the Dark’s main plot was, of course, the kaiju. The kaiju attacking, the Super Soldier Program being created to take down the kaiju, etc. and so forth.

However. There were multiple subplots going on, as well. There was the overarching subplot with the serum creating rage states. There was Tsukki and Yamaguchi’s story, which involved Yama wanting to help and Tsukki not wanting him to. There was the Bokuto and Akaashi story, which involved them falling in love but Akaashi keeping them apart. The Kenma and Kuroo story, with Kuroo thinking he’s a monster unworthy of Kenma and Kenma constantly attempting to prove him otherwise. Kenma and Hinata’s story, with Kenma trying to convince Hinata not to join the SSP. The Suga and Daichi story, which involved them falling in love and getting together (plus the whole thing with Daichi’s arm). The Iwa and Oikawa story: Oikawa overworking himself, Iwa’s rage states affecting his self-worth. And, of course, the Mad Dog Gang and their whole story. Oh, and we can even throw in Lev and Yaku.

SO, as you can see, there was a LOT going on in that fic. Too much. Way too much. But it’s what created 20k+-word chapters and a 200k-word, multi-chaptered fic.

I do NOT suggest you attempt to do a story as convoluted with subplots as iwfyitd. Trust me, you’ll just burn yourself out. HOWEVER, adding a few more characters, a couple more subplots, that could help lengthen your story.

What I do to keep all these subplots straight is create outlines. Outlines are your friends, especially with multi-chaptered fics. I create one big outline that hits all the crucial plot-plots that I need, and then for each chapter, before I sit down to write it, I hammer out smaller outlines that go into more detail as to what happens in that particular chapter. This is where the subplots usually come in. (And you can make smaller outlines for the subplots too, to keep things organized. I did for iwfyitd (for obvious reasons) but not so much with a few of my other multi-chaptered fics.)

A better example would probably be my runaway au: Run to Me. There are 4 subplots in that one: Kuroo’s stuff with Bokuto, Kenma’s backstory, Oikawa and Iwaizumi’s stuff, and, of course, Kenma and Kuroo’s story, which is the main, overarching plot. Simple enough, but even with just 4 subplots I have 10 chapters outlined.

The best way to stay interested in your story, though, is to make sure you’re telling a story you want to tell. That you need to tell. You have to want it so badly that giving up is just not an option. Not all ideas are like that, but if you come across one that is, cling to it!

So yeah, I hope that helps??? Good luck with your writing!

sleepover friday!

Heaven's Vault - Deciphering the Truth

I went into Heaven’s Vault cautious. Not for any reason I believed to be ill-willed, but rather, simply because Inkle Studios set out to tell a story about the muddiness of history. That is an ambitious task. History is a deep, branching, and twisting thing. Stories evolve as they are passed down, events are remembered differently. Our memory of our own lives is subject to various degrees of fantasy, how fantastical then are the memories of our ancestors? While it is easy to point this out, it is difficult to put together a story with a consistently ambiguous lore. In fact, ambiguous lore is a bit paradoxical for most works of fiction. The backstory is essential in Mass Effect. No one debates whether or not the First Contact war between the humans and Turians happened. Nor are there really any questions about why. Heaven’s Vault tackles this paradox head on and does a surprisingly good job illustrating a world with a history in question.

A lot of the delivery of this rests on the core mechanic Heaven’s Vault is built around: deciphering an ancient and forgotten language. Players take control of Archaeologist Aliya Elasra, an orphan turned scholar, and search the reaches of the Nebula, for ancient scratchings and etchings of a bygone age. Aliya is resourceful, bringing her base knowledge of the linguistic characteristics of this language from the onset. As you progress, that knowledge grows as you discover more and more cast off fragments of a past culture.

This mechanical core, searching for and finding ancient artifacts, inferring what the runes mean, and fact checking with later discoveries, defines the experience for the player. There is something uniquely satisfying to confirming that a collection of lines and segments means “Pilgrim.” Or realizing that segments of the same collection of symbols mean “Home.” It is in this process of discovery that Heaven’s Vault establishes the aforementioned convolution of history.

The player is forced to guess on translations when the symbols aren’t familiar, those guesses form the information you will act on, and then later translative opportunities confirm or contradict those assumptions. When later translations contradict prior guesses, as educated as they may be, you are forced to reconsider your prior assumptions, often times altering the understanding of how events played out. Even altering your understanding of this forgotten culture as a whole. 

This process is as refreshing and unique as it is challenging. And it is used to great effect in this title. Tasked with hunting down a missing roboticist named Janniqi Renba, Aliya traipses her way around the Nebula looking for signs of his whereabouts. Assembling pieces of his trail of breadcrumbs quickly reveals that there is much more afoot. A darkness approaches and it is up to you, the player, to what that means, and how Renba has gotten himself tied up in all of this. The ensuing pursuit is fascinating, even thought the payoff may seem a bit too encompassing. 

Heaven’s Vault is worthy of a great deal of praise for its execution of its premise, absolutely. It is important to point out that the execution is perfect in every aspect. Few games ever are. This title opens Slowly, with a capital S. I get that every story needs to open with some kind of expository, I just feel that in this case, a lot of the initial dialogue could have been delivered using alternative means. The game leans heavily on a travel system between destinations that allows for a good amount of disembodied dialogue. 

In fact, that system would benefit from a little more content. Sailing the rivers of this universe that bind the Nebula is at first stunning. The environments and vistas are impressive, and the score is impressive, but after 5-10 hours of playing the game, the slow speed of travel and the lack of an easy fast travel system makes these moments drag a bit. Early in my playthrough I was in the cabin of my ship and I was able to tell my robotic companion Six that I wanted to rest. Six navigated the Nightingale to our next destination. Had this system been more readily available I would have absolutely used it more.

Interestingly, despite Heaven’s Vaults amazing structure around learning a language, the game’s writing sometimes falters in its ambitions. It is hard to tell if these shortcomings are the result of the game’s thematic ambition, or if they are the result of the story accelerating a bit faster than these individual threads allow. A lot of the characters in Heaven’s Vault have a promising set up while the bulk of their existence never write lives up to that anticipation. While I wouldn’t venture to call these characters themselves thin, the writing often leaves a bit to be desired.

Further, the description of the game totes a flexible narrative. When this assertion is weighed in light of the didactic nature of deciphering a language, the different directions that the story can lead are clear. When you look to the choices the player is able to make, both in conversation and story progression, few of the choices you are able to make seem to make a lasting impact in the overarching narrative. 

After visiting a the site of a crashed ship and abandoned hiding place, Aliya is given a message from a mysterious being that immediately casts doubt on the motives of Aliya’s adoptive mother and boss. Enough doubt, in-fact, that I avoided giving her the relic I had found the entire game and there was really nothing that came of it. Sure, she asked me to deliver the artifact upon learning of my finding it, but not taking it to her seemed to have no real impact on how our relationship played out. On the other hand, a small side story concerning two laborers, one wounded and the other abandoned, I felt I had far more in charge of the events that played out. 

In the end, Heaven’s Vault is is a complex and interesting narrative with a genuinely unique core and excellent world building. The score is majestic and mysterious, a great accomplishment for composer Laurence Chapman. Truly, the score saved a lot of those moments where the sailing dragged the momentum down a bit. It doesn’t deliver on everything it sets out to do, but for all of its ambition, the amount of time I was drawn in by just the discovery of the language and world it was creating was really satisfying. The many locations you travel between are diverse and beautiful, the characters, while sometimes shallow, are genuinely interesting, and the plot is entertaining and thorough. There is a lot in here for people who love digging into and solving mystery. 

Heaven’s Vault is available on Steam and PS4 for $24.99. Laurence Chapman’s score can be found on Bandcamp for $10.46.

@LubWub