#oh also this isn’t relevant to their overall stories either but they are both so autistic .. manuela listens to music to decompress
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really it’s remarkable how much it’s like, my god, bmc’s doing all that & giving so much of [exactly what you could want] wherein it’s generally so rare to find / difficult to wring those things from just anywhere else, but here it’s so straightforward & permeating & Deliberate like well im overwhelmed & like
just one thing to touch on re: that sort of thing is bway agtikbi like, dear god. what a fun song, first of all, just on its own. the fact that jeremy & christine overall are So good which is an opinion but i’m right, and regardless of my also being right, i’m Discerning lol, like you Can Naught just throw a gesture at [romance] at me out here, swatting that shit away like cmon. don’t make me sit through this. but that we have these Displays of how like, this isn’t the sk8r boi [he was a boy she was a girl what more can i say] setup for like, why’s jeremy like this particular girl?? who knows??? & who cares b/c he’s some boy & she’s some girl so can i make it any more obvious???? like, she is Individually Characterized immediately like, she’s not the generic anygirl next door nor like oh the peak [performing femininity Correctly] girl anyone would be in love with, she’s also not even simply the like manic pixie dream girl(tm) situation when she’s really not even doing things “correctly” enough for that either, but even if you loosely categorize it thusly, here’s jeremy actually immediately being her mpdg in return lmao like she notices him, he’s immediately behaving in an elevated & dramatic way too, making a noise & fleeing the scene, like there’s Your attention-grabbing interest-capturing little weirdo too lmfao. the fact that in ilpr it’s a solo character portrait song but it’s also v relevant that jeremy’s there, jeremy has a role in christine’s arc the entire way here rather than like oh christine forever Simply Does Her Own Thing and jeremy gets to hitch his arc to this & get pulled along, like, she would’ve retreated to reading & waiting for rehearsal to actually start & then focused on going through that rehearsal, but it’s b/c of jeremy’s clear Interest & participation that she starts and then continues this song & gets increasingly fully Enthused & Expressive with it, she never is Just Being Herself(tm) fully, especially if there’s anyone else around and/or it’s not in the context of rehearsal or wherever else it’s safe to be so theatrical & enthusiastically so. and that they’re both just having a fantastic time lmao, the acting kills it so hard. like i’m always saying, if you can see those ilpr rehearsal / press day antics & Not be like “omg. them” then well alright but i don’t know how you manage it lmao
and i love how agtikbi is like, clearly a love song, and it’s a love song between christine and jeremy except also it’s Not, b/c christine’s singing about jake, except for the Very Straightforwardly About Jeremy “guess there’s a part of me that wants to / who knew??” section which, i like have to sit down, it’s So sweet lmao. and it’s that like, just like in ilpr there’s really still this indication that christine already Likes jeremy as well to a nonzero/increasing degree, but here she’s not even like engaging with the concept of “oh i guess i’m In Love With jeremy” b/c she’s instead engaging with “oh i guess i’m In Love With jake maybe possibly,” but the element of that closeness & affection & interest b/w her and jeremy organically manifests anyways, without a required conscious Romantic Narrative to it, actually (and stuff like this wherein it’s like, it’s already not the point of anyone’s arc that Being Eternal Romantic Soulmates saved the day rather than Being Ourselves Together / Via Mutual Support, but b/c it’s the latter that’s True throughout this story & is what matters, it doesn’t make sense to assume that jeremy & christine’s relationship is Nothing, or something superficial & insignificant at least, if for whatever reason they aren’t dating) like, that this Enthusiasm isn’t contingent on consciously focusing on one’s crush, and the enjoyment of their interactions isn’t either, when jeremy obviously v much knows he Likes christine, but she’s considering Liking jake, since that’s her way of venturing outside what she already knows & what she considers to be the rules & bounds by which she can remain safe enough / socially tolerated and maybe sometimes even move beyond to enjoying herself & being accepted. the Bowling Alley Performance Art interaction that leads into the scene like, my god. the moment when christine hugs herself to jeremy while singing about how she guesses a part of her likes to hang with him. i’m flipping out.
all this and the way that, of course, this is reprised as what’s now a straightforwardly romantic moment b/w christine and jeremy at the halloween party on the couch, when it’s this bookend of how like, okay, their forays into connecting with Popular People that followed agtikbi are fairly in shambles rn & they’re sure feeling worse for wear about that, but not yet fully [i suppose i’m having a crisis] about it, and of course this reprise Begins as specifically a reprisal of the “guess there’s a part of me that wants to / who knew?” sections of the original number, but wherein by contrast, with christine now more conscious of Liking Jeremy as well, the first line “it’s kinda killer to sit and chat with you” is now applying that word “Kinda” towards jeremy, like, now definitely actually considering how she might feel about him, romantically, rather than the titular Guy That I’d Kinda Be Into being jake, and of course that “kinda” then turns into “pretty” for the rest of the verses, and there’s no Guessing or “who knew?” tempering (addendum: that “who knew?” becomes “it’s true” in the reprise =‘] ). and of course the more downtempo & quiet execution, just like, in awe of that switch b/w off bway and bway where instead of getting bolder and more dramatic via a volume increase, jeremy stays as soft & downtempo when asking her out, like, help....that this Very Much Peak Love Song moment between the two, who have obviously been bonding over like, higher energy elevated spontaneity together, which is fantastic and which has already involved Vulnerability b/c neither of them are Just Like That with Just Anyone, as well as has been Real & Genuine since behaving in ways that seem weird / noticeably theatrical to others can sure be like that, but they also can have these moments of being vulnerable while very outside of both their elements or any guiding rails within a particular Situation, and they did just manage to again totally naturally have one of those especially spontaneous, elevated moments, despite both being unhappy & hiding out on this couch & uncertain where to go from here long term or short term, i don’t know what i’m supposed to say, just say what’s on your mind....and the Nd Communication / Socializing moments lmao, express yourself through some weird noise that’s improvised every afternoon or night, echo & build on that together & enjoy that completely, despite that it clearly doesn’t Fit In, but even once that moment of connection / particular exercise of that particular way of expressing themselves subsides, they’re able to have this interaction of even increasingly vulnerability / intimacy Within that subsided vibe, not propelled by peak spontaneous enthusiasm, but where like, the Emotional aspect is one that just as real & as close as ever even though it’s not happening with this peak Passionate Effusion of like, oh what must be Realest must be what’s most unfiltered & spontaneous & elevated, filters & hesitation / restraint / second-guessing & Not feeling “wow this is the most intense emotion i know, and i’m gonna just dive right into that and see where it takes me” must all lead people Away from what’s most genuine & right for them & etc etc. when that’s hardly true in general, and again from the like Neurodivergent For Neurodivergent angle b/w christine & jeremy, that’s another layer of how “um just be yourself :)” doesn’t mean everything and Being Yourself for real involves conscious effort rather than the shedding of that, and the fact that jeremy & christine’s relationship exists when they’re being fully spontaneous (which they can’t Just Do around anyone, anytime) And Also when they’re having this dialed back slower and quieter moment where it takes a little bit of back and forth to work up to saying something more direct....Augh
all that as kind of contextualizing leadup to Falling Over about the first agtikbi scene where it’s like good god they’re So precious already and that now it’s time for this banger of a song AND THEN when the section that Is truly directly more about christine and jeremy kicks in we have given the delightful chorus GLITTERY HEARTS with which to enhance the choreography and illustrate the apparent situation here and i personally am like leaning over clenching a fist like holy shit jesus christ i can’t believe bmc gives us so much so straightforwardly. and then the agtikbi reprise comes along and that’s yet another thing i crumple & explode over. thank you so much ;m;
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This or That Tag
I’ve had this sitting around for a little while, meant to get to it much sooner but you know how it goes 😅 I was tagged by @starlit-hopes-and-dreams, thank you!!
(I may cheat on a few of these and pick both? Whoops!)
Historical or Futuristic
I couldn’t possibly choose. Right now I’m writing fantasy/historical, but this is my first long-format project with that setting. Typically I’ve always written stuff set in modern day or in the future. For reading, though, I tend to prefer historical settings!
Opening or Closing Chapter
So much easier to write the start of something than the end of something, imho lol. Especially if it’s a long project. The pressure to wrap everything up nicely and make it all feel like it went somewhere & meant something? That’s tough
Light and Fluffy or Dark and Gritty
Give me grit. Give me drama! I just can’t help it. I need characters who struggle, I need characters with tragic backstories, I need to make my protags walk through fire so that they come out stronger (and a little damaged??) on the other side! Light and fluffy has its place, but overall? Give me that grit. (I’ve always preferred dramas to comedies lol)
Animal Companion or Found Family
Found family. 100%. Found family is one of my absolute favorite themes in any media/art, so of course I love it in my own writing, too 😂
Horror or Romance
I’m not really a big fan of horror as a genre, I just don’t gravitate towards it. I typically don’t do romance as a genre, either, but I love a good romance happening alongside the main plot. (For writing or reading.) Mmm.
Hard Magic System or Soft Magic System
This one is too hard to pick. It really depends on the story, I think? I love writing & reading both, so long as it’s done well for the story it’s in.
Stand-alone or Series
Series, all the way. I think I’m physically incapable of writing short-format things, it always ends up ballooning into a larger project. The same goes for reading - I really enjoy getting to know characters, and one novel just isn’t enough!
One Project at a Time or Always Juggling 2+
Again, I think I’m physically incapable of dividing my attention between multiple projects. I get so obsessed with whatever I’m working on that I can’t move on to something else until it’s done. To those of you out there who juggle multiple stories, I applaud you. I have no idea how you do it 😭
One Award Winner or One Best Seller
At the end of the day, I think the reason most of us share what we write is so that other people can appreciate it. I’m not out here trying to write a masterpiece. I just write what I like to write because I enjoy it, and I want (hope) other folks enjoy it too.
Fantasy or Sci-Fi
This one is very similar to the historical/futuristic one above - I’m currently writing fantasy and I love it, but overall? I love both and couldn’t possibly choose one over the other.
Character Description or Setting Description
So I feel like this one is calling me out a little bit lol. I tend to go ham on describing a setting (I know, I’m working on it, okay? 😅) but I often keep character descriptions basic. I only tell the reader the most relevant/necessary details of a character’s appearance. I feel that 9 times out of 10 a reader gets a few details & then constructs their own mental image of the character anyways, and then it’s quite jarring to have that image disrupted/altered. Besides, I just enjoy describing places 😂
First Draft or Final Draft
Oh gosh, I would never post a first draft anywhere on the internet. Mine are always a disaster. Although to be fair I’m not sure I’ve ever posted a “final draft” either - I can always go back and do more revision lol
Leaving no-pressure tags for @burntcoffeewhump @pierrotwrites-hc @dont-touch-my-soup @i-can-even-burn-salad & also leaving as an open tag!
#tag game#This or That tag#My writing#ask me anything#this or that#been meaning to do this one and i'm glad i finally did#it was fun
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Dimitrescu Daughter HCs
I thought this would only take a few minutes. I was so, so very wrong. Anyway, some of these are somewhat exclusive to my fic (Serenade), but they’ll make sense even if you haven’t read that.
Daniela:
Others have already talked about how Daniela reads a ton of romance novels, so I’m not really going to go into that very much, just saying that I agree 100%, I mean c’mon, it’s practically canon.
While she mainly sources books from her family’s library, there are a few she’s “acquired” over the years that she keeps locked away in her room. These tend to be a bit, ahem, steamier than her mother would approve of/let her read under normal circumstances.
How did she get these? Well, there has to be someone who delivers goods to Castle Dimitrescu (Duke, perhaps?), seeing as the Maidens need, like, actual food to survive. Sometimes Daniela manages to convince them to order books for her, usually just asking for books by authors she likes, or ones she’s heard maidens whispering about.
No, the delivery person does not read the book’s summaries or reviews, they have a feeling (based on titles and covers alone) that they don’t want to know.
As for her experiences with actual romance… she’s so very, very excited about it, all the time. Wants to kiss every cute Maiden she sees, and sometimes daydreams about a beautiful woman fleeing from lycans who comes to the castle for shelter, clinging to Dani for warmth and protection, and it’s love at first sight, and they kiss and kiss and right as it gets to the good part-! Someone interrupts her daydream (usually Cassandra).
However, her actual experiences are fairly limited. Sure, she has kissed Maidens, but she tends to get over excited. Like in Serenade, she starts to rush the process, and usually ends up draining her “lover” aka victim before anything more intimate happens.
She’s definitely done sexual things, just, well, not with other people. Private things. Usually during or after reading one of her special books. You get the picture.
Because of this, and her aforementioned love of romance novels, Daniela has become somewhat obsessed with the idea of her first time. She wants everything to be perfect. The setting, the timing, who she’s with… Hence her reaction in chapter 3 of Serenade. It’s not that she didn’t want to continue, just that the circumstances didn’t feel right. She’s very particular!
Favorite Music Genre: Girl goes wild for an emotional, gut-wrenching love/power ballad. The type to lie in bed and cry while listening to Hozier or Lorde (not that she can hear either of them, considering her limited music options). Doesn’t admit it, though, and mostly listens to indie pop when other people can hear. That and whatever the Maiden plays on piano ;)
Okay it feels weird to joke about her loving music I wrote, anywayyyy
Hobbies: Other than reading there’s not too much I can see her doing, really. She’d be sure to get into anything that her s/o enjoys, though, even if it’s something difficult or time-consuming. Writing is something she’d love, but it’s difficult for her to keep her focus on just one project at a time. Ideally she’d write short stories, romantic ones obvs, and have someone else proofread/edit them. For the most part she’d write within fantasy and historical setting (seeing as she’s got experience in both of those departments).
ADHD, BABY. Bigtime, seriously. Maybe this is just my adhd ass projecting, but I can’t not see her as having it. For her it mainly manifests with hyper-focusing/difficulty staying on task. It’s like a switch with those on either end, flipping back and forth every once in a while. She can spend six hours reading two different books in one sitting, but if someone just breathes too loudly it disrupts her completely. Because of this she’s somewhat prone to abandoning projects. It’s a sore subject for her, and her sisters are aware, normally only bringing it up if they’re really angry with her.
Opinions on the four lords: Thinks Heisenberg is a tool (pun intended), also thinks that he secretly reads super erotic novels. She doesn’t have any proof, though, and would never say anything about it out loud. Just makes fun of him in her head. Doesn’t actually judge him for what she thinks he reads, just judges his personality and the “need he feels to hide his secret”. Loves Donna, and low-key thinks she’s attractive. Daniela mostly bases that off the portrait she’s seen, but, like many fans, also thinks the hands are nice. The puppets don’t bother her, though she also doesn’t really care about them, other than thinking that Donna interacting with them is cute.
Opinions continued: Moreau is… uh… fish boy. Daniela thinks he’s weird, kinda gross, and hardly considers him a “real” lord. Poor boy :( At least she doesn’t actively make fun of him?... Even if that’s only because she kinda forgets about him most of the time. As for Lady Dimitrescu, well, obviously Daniela loves her mom. The whole family is very close, and as the “youngest”, Daniela gets a lot of attention. Sometimes she thinks her mother is too strict, but at the end of the day there’s no love lost.
Bela:
Cleans up after her sisters a lot, but still nowhere near as much as any of the Maidens do. Often agrees to help with messes in exchange for blackmail material. “Oh, Daniela, what a shame you broke mother’s favorite dish… I could help, but you owe me one.” At the end of the day, though, there’s plenty she would slide.
Being the “oldest”, she’s expected to behave the best, and often feels more restricted than her sisters. Being an example is hard! Occasionally she’ll have the impulse to rebel, but this usually only manifests in scenarios like the one mentioned above, aka she’ll simply be more lenient of her siblings for a bit.
Overall far less sadistic than her sisters. Cares more about the quality of pain then the amount of it. Only ever goes overboard if someone full out threatens or hurts her family. Insults towards them still earn her ire, and will get her to punish someone, but it’s not enough to make her resort to torture. Usually.
Gets the most restless out of the three. As cool (and large) as the castle is, it’s all she’s ever really known. If not for her weakness to cold, she’d go out on hikes a lot. Nature interests her, fascinates her, but she’d be a little less fond of most of it in person. Like, oh, waterfalls sound so cool, followed by a hundred complaints about the noise. Thinks deer are the cutest shit ever (second only to humans, maybe).
Unlike Daniela (though that HC is relevant almost exclusively to Serenade), Bela has actually slept with a Maiden before. She doesn’t really care for them enough to consider it a relationship, instead admiring them for their entertainment value. Definitely could fall for a Maiden, simply hasn’t yet. Of the three I feel like she takes the longest to fall in love, and even longer to actually act on her feelings. Sometimes resents her siblings because they unknowingly “claimed” a Maiden that she was starting to be interested in. However, she fully acknowledges that she should have said something if she didn’t want to lose the girl, considering the situation they live in.
Favorite music genre: Classical, full orchestra style, with a soft spot for swing/jazz. Enjoys having music play softly while she reads, and is very particular about the volume. Absolutely would argue with her sisters if they tried to change the music or turn it up.
Hobbies: Reading, duh. Less interested in romance than Daniela by a considerable amount. For the most part she reads non-fiction books, enjoying learning about history and the sciences. Astronomy is at the top of her favorites list, followed by biology, then obscure (and often bloody) pieces of history. Niche=perfect. Also enjoys music, even if she had to rely mostly on self-teaching books. Knows the basics of piano, but doesn’t actively play, much preferring both the violin and harp. Most of the time she’ll only play if she knows her sisters won’t bother her, or if her mother asks her to.
Opinions on the four lords: Admires Heisenberg’s work/his edgenuity, but thinks the actual man is a temperamental child… who smells like wet dog. He’s only been at Castle Dimitrescu a couple times (per Mother Miranda’s request), and both times Bela moved to the other side of the house so she wouldn’t have to acknowledge his existence. While she would never admit it, she’s low-key creeped out by Donna’s dolls, and really only tolerates Angie. However, she would never act on her nerves, out of consideration for Donna’s feelings. She knows that her mother gets along well with the dollmaker, and keeps this at the forefront of her mind.
Opinions continued: “Moreau who? Oh, the fish guy? He’s still alive?... Good for him.” Wants to make Lady Dimitrescu proud, but not as desperately as Cassandra. Unknowingly mimics a lot of her mother’s little habits and ticks, and would be quietly embarrassed if someone pointed it out to her. As mentioned previously, she feels like she has to be an example for the others, and somewhat resents the pressure this puts on her. On the other hand, she does enjoy being “responsible for” (read: in charge of) her sisters. Additionally, she is the most likely to get away with lying to Alcina, though she does not often do so. This isn’t because she’s the most manipulative (that’s Cass), or the best liar (that’s Dani, if she’s trying), but simply because Alcina doesn’t think her oldest daughter would lie. Even if she doubts something Bela says, she’ll usually give her the benefit of the doubt… as long as it doesn’t happen very often.
Cassandra:
Sleeps the most of the three, if only because she’s the most active of them. Not as fast as the others while in swarm mode, but the fastest on foot, partially because she’s more likely to simply walk places. She knows the sound of feet on the floor scares the Maidens, and she drinks their fear with utter pleasure. Additionally she claims that it just feels nice to “stretch her legs”. But she will not hesitate to enter swarm mode when chasing someone. As fun as it is to smell their fear, she can get impatient, wanting to get close and personal to her target.
Tends to hide most of her feelings, sometimes even opting to “convert” them into anger. In other words, think of her emotional state as an ever-filling bottle of water. As things happen, she feels emotions, and the rate at which water pours into the bottle increases. Ideally if the water level started getting too high, she would address whatever is increasing the flow of water. Instead of that, she often uses anger, which is equivalent to shaking the bottle a bit and letting water messily spill out of it. Doesn’t address the actual problem, but let’s her release some pressure/free up some room.
Goes through Maidens faster than her siblings (yes, even Daniela “draining you of blood is romantic” Dimitrescu). Not all of them even die in the basement, sometimes what was supposed to be a “warning” turns into “oh shit the blood won’t stop coming out, this is how I die, in this accursed castle, no friends or family to mourn me, just the painful knowledge that I will not be the last, I will die for no cause, no glory, just the bitter whims of a blood-soaked mistress” or something along those lines.
While more likely to get attached to someone than Bela, Cassandra isn’t one to do much about it. She might flirt, might even try to kiss (or, uh, kiss while also not wearing clothes wink wink), but she won’t (usually) claim someone as her own, or protest if one of her sisters wants to have some fun with them (even if it’s the bloody kind of fun). Technically gets over breakups and “breakups” (i.e. death) easier than either of her sisters. To be fully accurate, Daniela still goes through lovers faster, but she also remembers them and cares for them for longer post-breakup.
Somewhat of a blood kink. Like, more than vampires automatically have. In intimate settings she cares more about the quantity of blood and what she can do with it (loves bloodstains) than what causes the bloodshed.
Favorite music genre: Rock ‘n roll. Leans towards older stuff, as well as heavier songs. Soft spot for symphonic metal, but doesn’t admit it out of the fear that some might consider it a “weaker form” of the genre. Almost exclusively listens to bands that have female vocalists, and gets crushes on them more than she’d ever admit.
Hobbies: Art! Painting, mostly, but dabbles in sculpture from time to time. It’s been too long since I took an art class for me to suggest a style for her paintings, but I imagine her sculptures would be somewhat abstract. Her art would revolve around emotion, the stronger and rawer the better, with viewers often being left uncomfortable. While Alcina buys plenty of art supplies for her, Cassandra is fond of improvising, especially by creating her own “tools” (of questionable efficiency) out of items she has laying around. She is absolutely the one who took her mother’s lipstick. If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry, it’s just mentioned in one of the RE8 notes that Lady Dimitrescu’s valuable lipstick is missing.
Opinions on the four lords: Tolerates Heisenberg more than the rest of her family by a considerable amount. She’s seen glimpses of his work, his steampunk-adjacent style, and actually kind of digs it. While Bela cares more about the science behind his work, Cassandra just digs the aesthetic. Sometimes for her art she also needs things she can’t get from the castle, and are too obscure to get from a merchant, so she trades tools/ideas with Heisenberg in exchange for him making something for her. “Can you make a battery but whenever it’s in use it makes a horrible screaming sound?” “Yes. PS I hate your mother and Miranda.” “I didn’t fucking ask.”
Opinions continued: Doesn’t really care much about Donna, but acknowledges her as a fellow artist, and would be willing to consult her if she talked more (and talked without Angie). Cassandra hasn’t met Moreau, thankfully (he would cry). Knows about him from her sister/mother, and as a result doesn’t care about him. Internally whenever someone mentions him, she pictures, like, a Goldfish Cracker (the snack that smiles back) with legs except also it’s green and moldy.
Opinions cont.: Loves her mother so much. Determined to please her, to make her proud, but often left feeling less loved than her sisters. This strains her relationship with her family, not that she’d ever voice her feelings and talk through the issue. Let’s be real, Alcina would probably feel guilty for not realizing how Cass felt. Nonetheless, Cassandra probably spends the most time with her mother, often offering to assist her with tasks, or trying to get her to appreciate her art.
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Yup, Sure Was a Finale
I had an epiphany. The reason why I never re-watched the final two parts of Sozin’s Comet even though I’ve popped in episodes at random many times over the years isn’t that I can’t bear the sadness of seeing one of the best, most engaging narratives out there come to an end.
It’s simply that the finale isn’t all that good.
Some honorable mentions of what was enjoyable.
(+) This
Just this.
(+) The Church of Zutara has another convert
“Are you sure they don’t get together?” Hubster, 2020
(+) The tragedy of Azula
And the fact that it’s acknowledged as such. I hope Zuko will do his best to get her help and have a relationship with her…
(+) Sokka being a big bro
And the whole airship sequence in general. It’s wonderfully paced and plotted, with moments of humor, real stakes, Toph being both badass and a scared crying kid, Sokka strategizing and protecting, Suki saving the day, and non-benders being instrumental in thwarting the bad guy firebender’s plans. Would be shame if Bryke never portrayed them this capable ever again…
And now for the main course.
(-) Blink and its over
The wrap-up feels too quick (hashtag Needs More ROtK-style False Endings). A part of this is due to how fast the story goes from the thick of the action to hastily tying up a bunch of loose ends, but the larger issue is how Book 3’s uneven pacing comes home to roost. After spending half a season on filler episodes that at best subtly flesh out established characters while dancing around a huge lionturtle-shaped hole, and at worst contradict the theme of “no one is born bad” with “you’re a hot mess because your great-grandfathers didn’t get along too well”, the frantic “go go go” rush of the second half screeches to a halt with “they won and everyone was happy because now the right people have power and it will be all good from now on yup nothing more to deal with baiiiii”.
Yes, I know, it’s a kids’ show. But goddamn, this particular kids’ show has proven so many times it can do better than the expected tropiness. Showing the characters in their roles as builders of a new world was the least that could have been done.
Oh well!
(-) Ursa
We’ll never know. There will never be a story that delves into this. Yup. Shall forever remain but an intriguing mystery. Is good, though. Mystery is better than a story where Ursa shares her son’s penchant for forgetfulness. Imagine how embarrassing that would be. Speaking of which…
(-) What does Mai see in this jerkbender?
Look, I like to harp a lot on the mess of inconsistent writing that’s Mai but let’s unpack this scene from her perspective, shall we?
Zuko forgot about her! It totally slipped his mind that the one person who prioritized the safety of his dumb ass was rotting in the worst prison in the Fire Nation—because of him! And she was rotting there long enough after the final Agni Kai for the news of Zuko’s upcoming coronation to spread and her uncle to feel sufficiently secure to release her. But then the coronation scene is attended by every single member of Gaang & Friends that was imprisoned?
So what this tells me is that either a) the invasion force had the ability to break themselves out the whole time and for some reason decided not to exercise it until after the war was over, b) Zuko forgot about them as well and no one thought to remind him there were prisons full of POWs until Mai arrived, or, and that’s even better, c) Zuko took care to free every single resistance fighter while making sure Mai would be the one to stay behind bars.
Never thought I’d say this but Mai? Honey? You deserve so much better.
(-) “What does Katara want?”
Asked no one in the writers’ room ever, apparently.
This is not so much anti Cataang as anti romance stories that pay attention to the needs, opinions, and wants of only one partner in general. Over the previous 60 episodes, Katara actively expressed romantic interest in Aang exactly, wait for it,
Once.
And it got retconned out of relevance by the following two interactions where the possibility of a romantic relationship came up, making the Headband dance pretty easy to reclassify as just one of those examples where Aang “teaches” Katara to have fun (as if one of the main obstacles to her having fun wasn’t him constantly fooling around and offloading his duties). And because the writers not only didn’t succeed in portraying Katara’s internal state of mind, but also failed to root her reluctance to pursue a relationship in outside circumstances that could change, her sudden state of unconfused once Aang steps into the spotlight has a single canonical explanation that as much as approaches coherency.
The fact is, though, that trying to interpret canon Cataang from a Watsonian perspective is an exercise in foolishness. Because there is no Watsonian justification for the ship and never has been. Bryke simply conceived of Katara as nothing but a tropey prize for Aang, never saw her as anything beyond that, and were perfectly happy to go on and immortalize her as a passive broodmare for the rest of her life.
And I fully intend to die mad about it.
(-) Iroh dips
OK, it’s been long apparent that the show doesn’t intend to do anything about Iroh’s complicity in AzulOzai’s regime in any meaningful way, and that his sole motivation for doing anything whatsoever is Zuko whom he views as a replacement son which is supposed to be good for some reason. But the finale has him abandon even that, and instead turns him full-on YOLO, idgaf anymore. It really throws Iroh’s supposed love for Zuko into doubt when his last act in the entire show is to take a half-educated 16-year old with no political savvy or an heir to secure a dynastic continuity and plomp him on the throne of a war-mongering imperialist regime where the entirety of the militarist and ruling class is guaranteed to fight him tooth and nail for power.
(I sure hope Mai’s ready to start popping out babies by tea-time otherwise the whole country is fukd in about a week)
Christ, how hard would it be to have Iroh keep the throne warm for a few years while Zuko is getting ready to succeed him? Not only would it make the whole FN reformation bit quite likelier to occur, it would require Iroh’s hedonistic ass to actually sacrifice something for once. And not having Zuko ascend to power, instead spending some time bettering and educating himself first, would be a wonderful message that no matter what you endured and overcame, you never stop growing. A kids’ show, remember?
(-) The conquering of Ba Sing Se
Gee, I feel so blessed to have my attention diverted from battlefields which actually matter to an old dude vanity project I would have been perfectly happy to assume resolved itself off-screen.
The White Lotus in general just bugs me. I was fine with the individual characters and their overall passivity when they were portrayed as lone dissenters living under circumstances where it wasn’t really possible for any single person to mount a meaningful resistance. But as members of a far-reaching shadowy organization that’s left the real fight to a bunch of kids for 59 episodes straight and didn’t turn up until a perfect opportunity presented itself to take control of the largest city in the world and bask in the spotlight?
Yeah, no.
Similarly to the lionturtle-ex-machina, the White Lotus represents a huge missed opportunity for a season-long storytelling. Here’s just a brief list of what they could have been doing throughout Book 3:
orchestrating a Fire Nation uprising;
gathering those directly persecuted by AzulOzai’s regime to help Zuko keep his hold on power once he’s crowned;
establishing themselves as a viable alternative to Ozai;
sabotaging Fire Nation’s war efforts from the inside;
countering Fire Nation propaganda (Asha Greyjoy’s pinecones, anyone?);
running a supply network to alleviate the suffering of Earth Kingdom citizens.
Instead, they sit on their asses until the time comes to claim personal glory.
You know what, good on Bryke for making me conclude that in comparison, the Freedom Fighters were perfectly unproblematic, actually.
(-) Fire Lord Dead-by-Dawn
Yes, a kids’ show, I know! But ffs, this is the same kids’ show that came up with Long Feng and portrayed courtly intrigue, kingly puppets, secret police, spy networks, and information wars. Was it really too much of me to expect something other than “enlightened despot solves everything”? Especially if said enlightened despot has persisting anger issues, no personal support system, no base of followers, and no political experience whatsoever?
If Zuko’s actually serious about regaining the Fire Nation’s honor (i.e. by dismantling the country’s military machine, decolonizing the Earth Kingdom, paying reparations to everyone and their lemur, and funding any and all cultural restoration projects Aang and the SWT come up with), then there is no way, no way in the universe that he doesn’t face a civil war, deposing, and execution within a month.
One reason why his future as a Fire Lord seems rather bleak is that little’s been shown about the actual subjects of AzulOzai’s regime. While we get a vague reassurance that “no Toph, they’re not born bad” (le shockings), they largely remain a voiceless uniform mass of brainwashed clapping seals. What is their view on the Fire Nation’s crimes? Do they associate their condition with their country’s war-mongering? How will they react when Zuko starts dismantling the country piece by piece to rebuild it, bringing it to economic ruin? What will they do when noble Ozai loyalists come out of the woodwork and begin rounding them up under the banner of “Make the Fire Nation Great Again?”
I have no idea, and Zuko doesn’t either because he’s unironically more qualified to rule the Earth Kingdom than his own people.
You know what would have been better? Fire Lord Iroh, White Lotus pulling the strings to maintain the regime, and Crown Prince/People’s Champion Zuko travelling the Fire Nation with Aang and an army of tutors to promote the new boss, only to realize that absolute monarchy is kinda crap for the people he’s one day supposed to rule and gaining their support by ceding some power to them.
I’d laser holes into my TV due to how much I’d enjoy watching that.
(-) All hail Avatar Rock
Literally and metaphorically. Aang doesn’t sacrifice anything, gets everything, and the clever solution of going about getting said everything is handed to him on a silver platter, requiring no active participation on his part whatsoever.
He doesn’t work to unblock his chakras, spiritually or physically.
He only speaks to his past lives to get a pat on the back and a bow-tied solution he could mindlessly follow.
Energy-bending doesn’t require any sacrifice from him, leaves no lasting marks, and only serves for the narrative to praise him as the rare individual that’s unbendable and thus so very very special.
The most infuriating thing is, however, that Aang is clearly shown as being able to beat Ozai without either the Avatar state, or energy-bending.
And he chooses not to. From this moment on, Aang no longer fights to save the world. He fights to preserve his beliefs, going directly against the instructions of his past lives and effectively reneging on his duties as the Avatar.
Again.
It’s not like you can’t portray Aang’s faithfulness to his spiritual beliefs as the key to beating Ozai and saving the world. But that’s not what the show did. There is no link between Aang sparing Ozai and securing a better future, quite to the contrary—Ozai’s survival ends up being a massive problem for the continuation of Zuko’s rule, and consequently a threat to the world at large. His survival benefits Aang and no one else.
Aang’s spiritual purity and his status as a savior of the world are allowed to coexist only due to a deliberate stroke of a writer’s pen.
And I hate it.
Welp, nothing to do about it now except to bury myself up to my tits in fix-it fics I guess.
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@seethemflying I think Sansa is in the next bracket down of important characters (with Jaime). In the outline, they weren't named as one of the big five, but in the process of writing have grown more important. No way is Sansa's ending going to be anything like Show Sansa's, though (and same with Jaime tbh).
agreed but lemme take a second from cramming to rant about this because I honestly have An Issue
in the sense: I 100% agree that both jaime and sansa are next bracket/secondary main (speaking as someone whose top five is made by ppl who are either secondary main or tertiary main if they have a pov like.... I'm not gonna argue that theon is a main fiver bc he's in my top three) but like what I can't deal with is the following as in that the main five are the main five bc they have in between them all the main themes george wants to tackle + the main plot stuff except for the 'romance is my #1 sense of existing in the plot', as in:
jon is azor ahai + has the chosen one deconstruction trope going on + most likely has the 'I never wanted to be Important™/have a throne but I'll have to for duty' ending + identity arc ie if he's not jon snow first of his name i'm eating my hat
dany has the dragons + the targ ancestry deal + 'I thought I wanted to rule but actually I don't I just want to help ppl' storyline (which is the hill i'm dying on)
bran has the oH WAIT fisher king deconstruction going on + the magic™ storyline + he's most likely kitn + he's tied to uh the literal rebirth of the continent so + how to deal with disability storyline
arya has the I NEED TO REALIZE WHO I AM storyline + the learning to be yourself as a gnc woman storyline + revenge is shit storyline + I'll become a skilled assassin and choose not to act on it unless absolutely necessary storyline + trauma/ptsd storyline tied to losing your own identity
tyrion has the shakesperean hero thing going on as in I have to make peace with the fact that I killed my father/did mistakes + overcoming the societal issues/problems/the prejudice most ppl have for him that’s caused by his disability storyline + he's the only one of these five who doesn't have any magical stuff in his background/only has his brain to rely on + overcoming his family's legacy and making it better storyline
now: a bunch of other minor/secondary characters have all of this (I mean idk theon and jaime have identity + learning to deal with/overcoming societal scorn given by them being disabled/having become disabled in various ways + ptsd, brienne has the gnc woman thing etc) but like each single one of these characters only lacks the OH I HAVE A BIGASS GREAT ROMANCE WITH MY BACKGROUND (I mean gendry exists to be arya's LI but idt it's gonna be important in her future storyline the way it'll be in brienne's to say one).. which oh wait SANSA JAIME AND BRIENNE HAVE, because guess what that's the next secondary bracket where those three characters have it as a main part of the story which is exempt from the politics angle (bc none of them is tied to the iron trap by the plot no none of them jaime doesn't want it, brienne isn't a contender and sansa was supposed to be queen in the beginning so she's obviously not going to be that later no not even qitn that's gonna be bran) and here falls the entire shebang because what half of this fandom doesn't seem to get is that *drumroll* george's favorite angle to tackle when it comes to romance is... THAT EXTERNAL BEAUTY IS NOT WHAT YOU SHOULD BE LOOKING AT IN PEOPLE AT THE END OF IT AND GUESS WHAT THAT'S THE MAIN POINT OF ALL OF THEM PLUS THE KNIGHTHOOD DECONSTRUCTION THING and with that I mean:
not counting that sansa's reaction to trauma is written to be specular and opposite to arya's as in arya tends to lose sight of herself/becomes someone else/resorts to violence to survive sansa never loses track of herself/her innate kindness which... is smth I wish dnd remembered, the thing is: sansa is presented in the beginning as 'i'm a twelve year old with all the issues with shallowness a 12yo brought up like me can have and everything I want from life is a good love story', which... guess what she's 100% going to get except
characters need to have an evolution, if sansa wants a handsome pretty guy who'll make her queen in the beginning and she has to realize joffrey was The Worst, do we really think her endgame is being queen of a handsome nice king when her entire schtick is liking songs about knights and wanting true love and someone gentle and brave blah blah? no, and that's exceedingly obvious when the text throws at you in the face that her only two actually viable choices for LI - sandor and tyrion - are.. guys who are either disfigured or disabled or traumatized or all three of them but are actually good people and she has to learn to see beyond looks, and no one else fits that bill period - sansa isn't getting with a pretty guy who'll make her queen, sansa will find love with a guy who's nowhere near pretty or handsome but will love her for who she is and that she will see the good behind the not-handsomeness dot and she'll prob go back north with him and be happy advising bran bc she learned stuff in court at most and I'm dying on that hill, bc again the entire point of her sl is having the nice good love story where she sees beyond external beauty which has been clear from page five of her first pov imvho
never mind that again she wants to be a queen in the beginning and then she realizes it's shit so why would she be one in the end? like not to be that asshole but george isn't exactly pro monarchy and it's obvious he's not going to paint it as an inherently positive thing
this attaches back to the fact that there's a whole knighthood deconstruction happening for which sansa has to realize that the gallant/true knights are not the ones who seem that/look like it/flaunt it around
which brings us to the fact that oh wait sandor and jaime in themselves are true knights in spite of the fact that sandor refuses to even consider himself one and jaime thinks he fucked it up and no one sees them as such
and that the truest knight in westeros who will get recognized as such is brienne
who doesn't look standard hot either
and has the love story with jaime right on page
and jaime also has the love story right on page where he has to realize he's into people that aren't c. especially brienne and so on which is what's happening right now like jb recognizing themselves as true knights™ is part of their whole thing like... it's... important
(this counting that san/san is beauty and the beast played straight with sansa as the beauty while jb is the same trope except reversed on itself five times because both j and b are both of them)
and this would also like make utter sense if oh, wait, jb weren't in the riverlands where sandor also is and if oh wait who has sworn a vow to find sansa like again I'm dying on the hill that brienne kills stoneheart, they go on the quiet isle to recover, sandor is like AH YOU'RE LOOKING FOR SANSA and sansa gets rescued in the vale by the only three true knights in these series including the one that's her actual love interest at least the way I see it and where do you think that's going to end yeah exactly
as in: she'll have the umpteenth proof that all the true knights in these books don't look like the songs and she'll get the one she wanted
(also brienne is way more like sansa than arya in personality so like... parallelism of two girls into romantic stuff getting with the guys they like? except that for b. it's relevant bc she's ugly and she gets with hot guy who's into her and for s. it's relevant bc she's hot and she goes with guy-everyone-considers-a-lost-cause showing that they're not exactly a lost cause)
like sansa is there to a) have half of the main love story plot b) as the resident song expert witness what knighthood actually means, jaime is the resident person doing things for love and finding ways to do it that aren't toxic/finds someone who'll actually love him and not what he represents, brienne is the resident 'I never thought anyone would be into me and I'm pursuing my dreams without a shred of hope they'll go well' and she gets all of that and sandor is there to be sansa's LI and to tell ppl that you can go to rehab and have a decent life even if you were used and abused to hell and back (jaime too tbh) and like none of that has to do with the iron trap, the magic, the zombies and whatnot but it's okay because it's their point in the plot and is2g I just wish people would take characters for what they represent instead of shoehorning them into others's themes/stories just because it's what they want for them, the end
(I could rant about the third bracket of characters ie theon & co & getting over trauma/ptsd without the Love Story™ but I have to get back to study if I wanna fill some prompts later so it's not gonna happen for now but... sorry for the rant I'm just really tired of the whole sansastark will get the iron trap and the north and be the ymbq and get with a guy that looks good for her depending on what we ship not considering the overall reaching plot or her book plot and everyone else will have zero relevance in the story because we said so especially when it means giving all of that to a character who is uh not belonging to any of the categories represented by the main five which are actually kiiindaaaa relevant rep but I'mma just gonna shut up here)
#janie rants#janie writes meta#i guess#anti show sansa#seethemflying#janie replies#jaime x brienne for ts#sansan for ts#long post for ts#janie speculates#right i'm back on studying penal law rip#my stuff
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Possibly a big ask to get just out of the blue but: what are your Supernatural season opinions? Which one is your favorite? Least favorite? Did you watch long enough to have showrunner opinions? If yes, which showrunner is your favorite and which is your least favorite? If no, which season that you haven't seen most tempts you to get back in the Supernatural trenches? Answer exactly as many of these questions as you want to. Carry on.
You know, I am not sure how long this Ask has been sitting here, because my Tumblr notifications are borked -- I hope not long? If long, I apologize, I wasn't ignoring it on purpose!
Okay, so I have more than the average number of Supernatural opinions, probably, but I'll try to keep this to a dull roar! Inside Me There Are Two Wolves: one of them believes that only the original five seasons of Supernatural are worth defending in any way, the other really, really loves seasons 11 and 12. The Kripke Era had a lot of problems, particularly in its treatment of women as bodies without agency and its treatment of Black men as literal predators, but also for all its flaws, it had a kind of coherence and narrative drive that comes from being the product of a dude who obviously cared about it and had something to say. Taken on its own, seasons 1-5 are a brutal and compelling story about the traumas of being men in a universe that's been absolutely destroyed by its Fathers: on almost every level, it's about these abandoned and brutalized boys discovering that their entire reality is the product of an abandoning and brutalizing God, populated by authority figures who are universally demanding and arrogant, but also completely fucking useless. It's quite literally about Sam and Dean trying to hang onto their souls and their own agency when everyone around them wants them forced into shapes formed by conflicts that fell into place at the beginning of time. It's hard to remember, but back then even the Lucifer plotline was about that! It was about the damage fathers inflict on sons! Things were about things, in the Kripke era!
Then we get to the Gamble era, and. Woof. I actually -- don't hate 6 and 7? Like everything Sera Gamble touches, those two seasons are kinetic and memorable and funny and weird and hit some really, really great emotional beats. There are Some Problems, but Gamble was saddled with a pretty dire job, trying to find a way forward after everything about the series really had effectively wrapped up in Swan Song, and I think she did an okay job. People got mad at her for killing Castiel, but you know, damn, I give her this: that was a storyline. Like, this character who was fresh out of the cult he was raised in becoming disillusioned by how messy normal life is and deciding that maybe people need better authoritarianism instead -- the way he's driven to take too many risks by the fact that he's abandoned and desperate -- Crowley as a legitimately scary villain while still being charming af -- and the tragic resolution of Castiel being torn apart by both his hubris and his heroism. It's actually really good. I understand why people didn't want what Gamble was serving up -- and I'm able to like it because it was undone later, you know? -- but she really did commit to a full season of character arc and saw it all the way through to an earned ending, and I gotta respect that.
I genuinely hate seasons 8 and 9. I think everyone is a dick, particularly but not exclusively Dean, to the point where I just find it a bummer to watch. I mean, you get Benny, and I love Benny. You get, I dunno, bits and bobs of decent episodes, but overall they are very fucked up seasons in my opinion. So Carver era is on thin fucking ice with me, but I do think you start to get a rebound in season 10 with the Mark of Cain stuff, although I wish they'd managed to keep Cain around longer. All the really good Claire stuff starts happening, which is nice because Claire, but also because for once the show is really letting itself go back and deal with the mess these protagonists leave behind them constantly. Castiel and Claire have maybe the most interesting non-Winchester relationship on the show. Oh, and Rowena shows up around here too, right? Love her. So the back half of Carver, 10 and 11, are starting to really gain traction for me. The world is building outward, secondary characters are starting to be genuine characters in their own right, the politics of Heaven and Hell get a little richer and more interesting. The show is really starting to feel like it takes place in a universe, which is great because we love the Frigging Winchesters, but they shouldn't be the only thing going, right? We have 15 seasons to get through! Season 11 is basically bracketed by what are probably my two favorite Supernatural episodes: Baby and Don't Call Me Shurley. (I think I'm the world's only living Metatron fan; I fucking love that little dude.)
Dabb takes over in 12, and I really, really, genuinely love season 12. I fucking love Mary. There are so many episodes I adore -- Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox is a special favorite of mine, and I remain pissed off that the Banes twins never made it to recurring status, bluntly that feels wildly racist to me -- probably the best three-episode streak in the show is Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets to Regarding Dean to Stuck In the Middle (With You), three just almost perfect episodes. So I was poised to really love the Dabb era. I wanted to! My body was ready!
And I do really love the first chunk of season 13, the Widow Winchester arc. Obviously I'm a romantic, love that for me, but it's just also really good? The acting, the writing, the psychological complexity of Dean wanting Jack to be Bad so he has an outlet for his anger and Sam wanting Jack to be Good so he can retroactively parent himself and raise a Lucifer-tainted child who isn't crippled by self-loathing. Billie's great, and it looks like she's going to start being one of the major powers of the universe. Unfortunately -- with the occasional exception of this or that solid episode -- that's kind of the end of Pretty Good Supernatural. Season 13 kind of unravels; season 14 always feels like it's looking for itself (which is a bummer, because I wanted very much to care about Michael); season 15 is, idk. Idk about any of it, it's all pretty pointless. I feel bad complaining on some level, because the show's been on for like fourteen years at this point! It's kinda justified in feeling a little worn out. But the reality is that the later seasons systematically undo all the expansion that had excited me earlier -- the Wayward Sisters crew pretty much vanishes when the spinoff isn't picked up, Naomi and the angels stop doing anything, Crowley's gone, Mary's gone for much of it. We're just kind of futzing around with monsters who don't seem to matter (very much including Lucifer, who hasn't mattered in ages) and a lot of Jack, who. I try not to shit all over, because I know he's a popular character, but I find him just ungodly boring. Everything in the last two and a half season just feels like it's headed nowhere in particular, and also it bored me. The Empty deal is just sadness porn; it doesn't have any resonance or meaning in terms of Castiel's character, it's just him agreeing to die for his kid, which is okay, it means he's a loving dad, which he is, but there's no conflict there, ergo no real drama. It's just mean; it happens because it'll make us sad, and no other reason. Rowena is the only strong secondary character left, and her ending also doesn't feel particularly relevant to her, it's just a generic Sacrifice to Save the World. Everything just feels like they're autogenerating plotlines, rather than letting the actual needs and drives of the characters shape the narrative. So while I have this weird split personality with Carver where I either hate what he's doing or I love it, most of the Dabb era is just. There. It doesn't make me feel anything except kind of tired and embarrassed. Which is a bummer, because I have an inexplicable fondness for Dabb, probably just because of how much I love s12. I wanted to love his seasons! I did love his first season! I feel like maybe something happened when the CW rejected Wayward Sisters? I know that was kind of his darling, and it feels like maybe losing that kind of sucked the joy out of him, and he's kind of checked-out by the end. That's genuinely just my guess, however.
That's Professor Milo's Intro to Supernatural Studies, don't forget to fill out your course survey on the way out!
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FTWD 6x09: Things Left to Do
Okay. How did everyone like the episode? Fear is always full of TD symbolism and callbacks, but it tends to be less full and relevant than regular TWD. So, most weeks, unless it’s SUPER full, I’ll probably just do one post about it. Like this one. 😉 Just FYI.
***As always, spoilers abound below for FTWD 6x09. Don’t read until you’ve watched!***
In this week’s episode, we start with June burying John. It really is a LOT like Ty’s burial in 5x09. Just the way they show it with the shovel in the dirt and such. Also, June is wearing a yellow, flowered shirt. I think the flowers are white and the shirt is yellow, but still. It reminded me of the graveyard flowers in Alone.
Then Virginia takes her back to Lawton where she lines everyone else and puts them on their knees. Morgan won’t answer her, and she starts yelling into the walkie that if he doesn’t answer, she’s going to kill one of them. He just shows up in person on his horse.
Now, because of the on-the-knees lineup, clearly there are parallels to Negan here. But beyond the on-the-knees part, I actually find this more like Grady. Unlike 6x09/7x01, no one actually dies here.
Daniel is the first to get hurt. He gets a deep wound on the left side of his forehead. It isn’t caused by a bullet, but it is caused by a gun. One of Virginia’s rangers hits him with the but of his rifle.
It’s a deep, canal-like split in his scalp. And although Beth’s wound obviously didn’t look like that, we’ve seen a lot of walkers with a similar wound. The one that crawled after Bob in the Big Spot in 4x01 had that. But lots of others have, too.
Morgan gives a speech about how Virginia is a hypocrite and doesn’t follow her own rules. When something goes wrong, she covers it up. (Dawn at Grady, anyone?)
When Virginia goes for her gun, Strand shoots her in the shoulder. Then he yells at everyone to stop and calm down, saying, “Stand down! This is all that has to happen.”
Again, it reminded me of the “it was just about her. Stand down,” from Coda.
But things get out of hand and a shootout ensues. Virginia manages to take Daniel and Grace hostage. One of her rangers leaves with them.
Strand and his people want to execute Virginia, but she says if Morgan allows them to, Daniel and Grace will die. So, he takes off with her, rather than giving her to Strand.
They go to the vacant water tower we saw earlier in the season. * 👀 👀 👀 *. It seems to me that safety and salvation are always found in and around water towers of some kind. Here, Virginia confesses that Dakota is her daughter, not her sister.
Here’s my first big takeaway . It’s clear after watching it twice that Virginia is something of a Beth proxy . It’s a bit counter-intuitive because she’s all evil and stuff. But I think the proxiness is really just about the situation in this episode. Overall, she’s very Dawn-ish as well, and we can relate that to Beth.
But during the lineup/prisoner situation, she got shot (in the shoulder, not the head) and survived. She goes to a water tower. She’s wearing blue the entire episode. A lot of it. And the dialogue, both from her and around her really stuck out to me. People say, “she’s alive,” “she’s still alive,” and “you’re still alive,” to her constantly. She has a couple of “bullshit” lines. That sort of thing.
They have to run from the water tower because Sherry’s people, who also want to kill Virginia, come.
They have a conversation where Morgan says he’s nothing like her. He says, “you and me are not the same.” And she says, “Oh Morgan. We’re all the same.”
We’ve heard this LOTS of times before, including in 2x08, Nebraska, and from Crazy Tattoo Guy at Terminus. (I might have more to say about the Nebraska episode later this week. Stay tuned. 😉)
Morgan takes Virginia back to the place he’s building on the dry riverbed. Dwight, Alicia, Al, and most of the others are there. No one is very happy he brought her. Strand and Sherry’s groups show up, demanding they turn Virginia over to her.
Virginia finally decides to be self-sacrificial. She says she’s willing to die as long as 1) they take care of Dakota and let her live with them and 2) Morgan kills her. She’s afraid the others will torture her, and she just wants it to be quick. She says if he agrees she’ll release Daniel and Grace. So, he does.
He takes her outside the walls and it reminded me a lot of when Daryl turned Lydia over to Alpha. It even had ominous music (but not the same music from that scene or the Red Machete; much softer than that.)
And once again, it doesn’t end at all the same way, so I don’t know if it’s meant to be a parallel. He’s taking her out to be killed, not exchanged. And, long story short, Morgan can’t do it. He says if he does then they’ll be setting a precedent that’s exactly like what Virginia did at Lawton. So, he takes her back inside and makes her talk to Dakota.
The part with Dakota is interesting. Virginia tells her she’s her mother and it’s very tragic. But Dakota is a prisoner in the church, which I couldn’t help but side-eye. We know they tried to bury Beth in a church, even if we didn’t see it. So, the idea of her being imprisoned there is interesting.
Plus, Dakota is walking around with this huge iron shackle around her foot. The way she drags it around reminded me of the walker with its leg in the bear trap in 4x03, Isolation, when Carl and Hershel are gathering berries.
And if you’re wondering why that’s important, this walker with the bear trap on her leg is Beth foreshadowing. There’s the bear trap stuff around Beth from her figurine. So Dakota in this scene, being imprisoned in a church with a metal shackle on her leg, is a Beth proxy.
After that, Morgan goes back out and basically talks everyone out of killing Virginia. Sherry is really pissed, but most of the others see sense and get on board.
Then we have this interesting sequence where we see three different couples in different stages of coming back together. First, Morgan and Grace, who hug and she goes inside the walls with him.
Then Dwight and Sherry. She says she’s not ready to go inside with him yet, but she’s getting there. He accepts that.
And then Alicia and Strand. (I know they’re not a romantic couple, but friend-wise they’ve been something of a dynamic duo lately. They may be the new Daryl and Carol.) They’re really not on the same page at all.
She feels like he betrayed her earlier when he wouldn’t take her with him. He says Morgan’s place isn’t for him. They basically argue again, solve nothing, and Strand leaves. *coughs Carol*.
Then we get to the final scene where June says she took out the bullet, but ends up killing Virginia. Couple of things here. The dog licking Virginia’s face as she wakes feels significant to me. With all the other Beth parallels to her, I feel like it’s a hint. She’s literally asleep (think Beth at Grady, even though it really doesn’t look at all similar) and a DOG licks her awake.
She’s in the church when it happens. Much like Dakota, the church symbol feels important to me. *Gross picture below!*
I want to make a point about her head wound as well. Now, obviously Virginia is dead. I don’t think anyone will make a case for her return. And for most of you, this is preaching to the choir, but for those who still think Beth’s gunshot wound was fatal, look at the difference. Specifically in the entrance wounds.
Gunshot wound trivia 101: the exit wound is always MUCH larger than the entrance wound. That’s because the bullet pushes blood and tissue and anything else in its path ahead of it, so it does a lot more damage exiting than entering.
We don’t see an exit wound on Virginia, because we can’t see the back of her head, but it’s probably 2-3 times as big as the entrance wound.
But look at Beth’s tiny pinprick of an entrance wound by comparison. See the difference? It might also be significant that Virginia’s is on the opposite side of her forehead. (Like, opposite side = opposite outcome, in this case?)
But since that’s what we see, let’s focus on it. It must be 10x the size of Beth’s and blood is POURING out of it. (Probably because the gun is bigger and much closer to Virginia’s head.) We also see flecks of skin and bone around it. (Ew.) There’s no doubt that Ginny is dead. But do you see why Beth’s wound is small potatoes by comparison?
And of course there’s a parallel in the fact that it’s in her forehead. In a church. After all the other Beth dialogue and parallels around Virginia.
And of course June puts on John’s hat, which sort of has a new sheriff in town vibe. She also leaves the community. I wonder if she’ll end up with Strand or just head off on her own. And of course this makes her a proxy to Daryl. Though it took much longer, she took out the person who indirectly but overall killed the love of her life.
As for who the villains in the second half might be, it will probably have to do with those guys who were trying to get Emile’s key, and are part of the red submarine/ “the end is the beginning” group. I forgot about them.
That’s about it for this week’s Fear. (There will also be no more TTD until the Fear finale, so I won’t have anything to report on there either. Thoughts?
#beth greene#beth greene lives#beth is alive#beth is coming#td theory#td theories#team delusional#team defiance#beth is almost here#bethyl
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OMG! I’m watching the 2016 PPG reboot on reboot to make fun of its awfulness by comparing it to the far superior OG cartoon from 98’-05 version, and I just got finished watching the atrocious episode “Musclecup.” I know the girls are supposed to be very precocious for kindergarteners-first graders, and I know that Buttercup is the “toughest fighter.” However, I still am in awe at the sheer stupidity of the writers of this episode, who thought it would be a “genius” idea to write a storyline in which Buttercup, a super-powered little girl in the first grade, actually gets addicted to steroids because she wants to bulk up her muscles!
First of all, Buttercup is a child, so this storyline feels gross and unnecessary, even if she is the “toughest fighter?”
Secondly, it doesn’t even make any sense as to why Buttercup thinks she needs to bulk up her muscles to a beef-cake level since she was born with superhuman strength that easily allows her to overpower the average person, anyway.
Thirdly, it’s annoying that Blossom and Bubbles are yet again rendered to be completely helpless and ineffectual by the writers together against one villain together without Buttercup, the brash and brawny tomboy, there to swoop in and save them. I know I’ve complained about Buttercup occasionally getting the short end of the stick when she had centrics the OG cartoon in which she was either getting into trouble, getting punished, getting double standards, and/or suffering exceedingly and/or unfairly with the world getting turned against her, sometimes to the point of needlessly mean-spirited overkill of character derailment for either her and/or other characters in the episode she cared about. Yeah, the writers not knowing how to write Buttercup centrics where she was framed in a positive light, being treated fairly, and/or granted the same individual compassion and emotional support of her loved ones that she normally had otherwise, and that her sisters were granted individually in their centrics when they were in the wrong or feeling down, was an occasionally recurring flaw in the writing on an overall great show that started showing up sometime in her centrics in S2.
However, in the 2016 reboot, the writers seemed to have overcorrected the writing flaw of Buttercup’s occasional designated butt-monkey status in the OG cartoon by turning her into the main character Mary Sue of the show, who gets the most centrics, and who does all the saving by herself without the other two girls most of the time. In the reboot, this now has created a new problem of diminishing Blossom’s and Bubbles’ individual strengths and relevance in the story.
Not to mention the fact that reboot!Buttercup’s personality is pretty shitty. In the OG cartoon, she was generally portrayed as a jerk with a heart of gold. Here in the reboot, she’s been flanderdized into an openly arrogant, crude, exceedingly aggressive, disrespectful, loud-mouthed, mean-spirited, obnoxious, petty, nonchalant, and selfish brat. She disrespects Ms. Keane and mocks her when she’s teaching a grammar lesson to be a class clown in “Painbow.” In “Professor-Proofed” she gets her dad hurt by causing him to lose focus, sneeze, and get hurt when he’s working in his lab with a dangerous chemical by peppering her pancakes right in front of him, then doesn’t ever apologize to him for it, and even ends the episode doing it again with an evil smirk on her face right in front of him, causing him to get hurt all over again after sneezing when the pepper goes up his nose. She tries to steal one of Bubbles pigtails in an attempt to catch a crawdad in “ClawDad,” and didn’t apologize. In “Little Octi-Lost,” she steals Octi from Bubbles in the dead of night when they are all asleep to “teach her a lesson” for being so into it, which isn’t a good reason at all, then realizes she wants to go play with Octi herself, takes him to a state fair, and then tries to cover it up when she loses him, rather than tell the truth. In the episode “Man Up” she violently blows up in an aggressive rage, recklessly destroys an entire state fair, and accidentally gives Bubbles a black eye all because a villain calls her “princess,” and she hates being called that. The moral of the episode was supposed to be learning to temper her aggression, but unlike in the OG Buttercup centric, “Makes Zen To Me,” the lesson doesn’t actually end up sticking with Buttercup at all, and she ends the episode reverting back to being an overly aggressive and obnoxious jerk because “status quo is comedy gold.”
Granted, out of the three girls in the OG cartoon, Buttercup did have the greatest tendency to be the most aggressive fighter with the greatest instigator and rebel tendencies, and she had some ooc instances of suddenly being a very uncharacteristically greedy, sadistic, and remorseless jerk than usual to fit certain contrived plots in bad episodes, such as “Moral Decay,” though almost everyone in the fandom despises that segment the most of the OG series and pretends it never happened because it was such ridiculously out of character and mean-spirited derailing writing for both Buttercup and her entire family in order to turn her into the villain and punish her harshly in ways that didn’t feel fair or make any sense.
However, generally, og Buttercup genuinely did have the heart of a hero and love her family more than anything. While she did have trouble apologizing to Elmer for teasing him in “Paste Makes Waste,” she genuinely did still feel bad about it, even if she had some trouble apologizing for it, and she did learn to swallow her pride and do it at the end. She and Blossom tended to argue a lot because they both were very stubborn people, who had trouble making compromises, and admitting to it when they were wrong, and she liked to mess with Bubbles the most. However, she generally hated seeing either of her sisters getting hurt, and she was always quick to defend them in battles against threats. She generally felt bad about hurting her sisters, and apologized all the time.
Buttercup occasionally got irritated when the Professor became a doting, sentimental, and overprotective Dad™️ with her and/or her sisters in the OG cartoon in episodes like “Uh Oh, Dynamo,” “Mr. Mojo’s Rising,” “PowerProf.,” and “Oops I Did It Again,” especially because she didn’t like to be doted on. She got in trouble with the Professor more than her sisters, partially because she was genuinely caught being disobedient, making bad choices, or instigating fights with her sisters by him more often than they were, but also partly because the writers dealt her an unfair hand in the world in her centrics since they liked turning her into the designated butt monkey when she got in trouble in them in a couple of instances, such as “Moral Decay” and “Down ‘n’ Dirty.” However, even at her worst and most OOC, she would never have tried to deliberately hurt her dad for shits and giggles like she did in reboot episode “Professor-Proofed.” She and her sisters also never would have deliberately sabotaged one of the Professor’s romances for their own benefit because they wanted him to be happy in the OG cartoon.
Fourthly, I know he’s not in the episode, but if the girls are this irresponsible and stupid in the reboot, then why would Professor Utonium ever think to trust them to stay at home alone, while he goes to work for the day? Oh, right...It’s because he’s also been reduced to an idiotic, incompetent, irresponsible, neglectful, reckless, and selfish parent 9 out of ten times in the reboot, who has little to no knowledge of how to actually be a good parent at all, and usually only appears to make things worse whenever he does appear anyway by being a cliche and mostly unfunny bumbling bad sitcom dad. In the OG cartoon, it’s different because the girls are mature enough to handle staying by themselves for a few hours, even while he’s out at work, though he got babysitters for them when he was out at night to be safe, but in this reboot version, the girls shouldn’t be trusted to stay at home alone by him.
Finally, that’s the other issue in the reboot. All of the adults are morons who have no common sense most of the time. The writers really expect me to believe that an adult would be totally okay with giving a little girl steroids without any thought to just how gross and unethical that is? Yeah, I know it’s a cartoon, and even in the OG cartoon, the city of Townsville were complete idiots at times to fit certain plots, but I don’t believe any of them would actually ever be stupid and unethical enough to give steroids to a little girl with superpowers to help her bulk up her muscles, especially not without warning her first about how it could be dangerous.
#anti PPG 2016 reboot#ep: musclecup#I can’t believe they actually did a storyline about a superpowered first grader getting hooked on steroids!#the classic PPG wasn’t always a good show but overall it was a really great cartoon#they have completely turned buttercup into an obnoxious tomboy Mary Sue in the reboot#granted they’ve ruined all of the girls in the reboot but I’m focusing on buttercup in particular here#they completely ruined buttercup’s personality in the reboot!#buttercup utonium#bubbles utonium#blossom utonium
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Do you have a license for all these hot takes? ▲ Unleash the other meta conversation. Please give use Ichigo.
Or not, apparently I don't know how to read and missed that you already did one for him. Oh well.
Even though I’ve already given my Hot Take about Ichigo (see here), I figured I can take this chance to write that meta I promised re: ichiruki’s double protag status, the meaning of ichigo’s name, and what it means to be a shounen hero. This will also sort of addresses the debacle a few months ago in regard to the Only well-worded, moderately coherent and somewhat valid IH meta I have read, which is also primarily about the meaning of ichigo’s name and how that ties in with the overall theme of protection throughout the manga. (I think the basis for the IH meta – that Ichigo only ever uses the serious form of the word ‘to protect’ for ORIHIME as an individual, and that the other times he uses them are for broader swathes of things—has been debunked in the comments, but since I don’t speak Japanese I really can’t figure out the validity of either side of the argument so I’ll take it as it is. Also, when I say ‘somewhat valid meta’, what I mean is in the context of the narrative I don’t think it’s valid at all, but at least there aren’t major glaring logical fallacies in the meta itself. The bar is so, so low for IH meta. I’m not even sure we can call most of their…. text-vomit… meta at all.
Anyway. Petty and off-topic.)
So, here goes: the meta about ichigo’s name and how it correlates to the theme of protection throughout the manga, what it means to be a shounen hero, and why and how those two things tie in with ichiruki’s double protag status!
Ichigo’s name is comprised of two kanji – one obviously the kanji for the number one, the other a kanji that means ‘to protect’. We all know this. This leads to Ichigo’s name potentially having two interpretations: ‘one protector’ (or as the official eng translation put it, the one who protects), or ‘to protect one thing’ (the translation used in the scanlator’s versions + official kr translation). Both would make sense given the context of the entire story, but I tend to think the latter version is slightly more relevant (not necessarily more accurate— just more relevant), mostly because in chapter 19, straight after hearing the meaning of his name, Ichigo goes on to single out one thing (one person) that he wants to protect—his mom.
(And why does he single out his mom for this honour? Because his mom always protected him. This is relevant a little later.)
He then does go on to say that as his sisters were born and he went to the dojo and got stronger, the list of things he wanted to protect grew, so it’s absolutely valid to read his name as just meaning ‘protector’. But, despite that, it’s very clear in the text that Ichigo always has one thing (person) that he wants to protect above all no matter what. This is the ‘one’ thing that he associates his identity of ‘protector’ to. Initially, it’s his mom—because when she dies, despite the ‘growing list of people he wants to protect’ still existing, Ichigo loses his sense of identity as ‘the protector’. Sure, he still protects his sisters, but it’s duty driving him— he no longer thinks of himself as a protector. How can he, when, in his view, he’s the one who practically killed his mother? His ‘growing list of people to protect’ halts to a stop, and years later, we see him telling Rukia that he’s ‘not a good enough guy to stick his neck out for other people’. This is a lie, as we all know, but it’s important that Ichigo is espousing this rhetoric. He has stopped actively wanting to protect.
So, despite Ichigo having an innate desire to protect, I would argue it’s conditional – 1) dependent on the one person he wants to protect the most (e.g. his mom, and, as I will argue in a moment, Rukia) being alive and well, because otherwise he just falls into despair and rejects his identity as protector, and 2) initially dependent on the subject of protection being someone close to him. Ichigo, despite having progressed to ‘I will definitely protect everybody’ by the tybw arc, did not start there—it was a progression! He starts off very small and quite selfish – first, the person most important to him, his mom. Then his family. Then his friends. Then friends of friends, then acquaintances, then—and so on. This is why I said Ichigo is self-centred: everything he does is dependent first and foremost on the things and people that are most important to him. (Which is fine for a normal person! Maybe not so fine as a shounen protagonist, though that part comes later.) Ichigo doesn’t start off with some lofty ideal to protect the whole world – compare that to Rukia, who lands in the story and immediately demands him to protect everybody, regardless of distance or convenience. As dux put it in his excellent meta, this is an instinct towards protection versus a philosophy of protection. Ichigo has an instinct to protect, like most people do! But Rukia has a philosophy of protection, which most people can’t even begin to fathom or try to emulate. (This will, again, be important for a later point in this post, but for now, back to ichigo’s name.)
So basically, we have established so far that: Ichigo’s name means one who protects or protector of one thing. But whichever interpretation we go by, it’s evident in the text that Ichigo has a… tether person, of sorts, that he ties the meaning of his name and his identity of ‘protector’ to—a person he wants to protect above all. Initially it’s his mom. But after his mom dies?
It’s Rukia.
It’s blatant. Ichigo being unable to save Rukia in ch56 broken coda is DIRECTLY paralleled with him being unable to save Masaki. At the end of the arc, in having saved Rukia, Ichigo regains his identity as protector finally gets some closure re: the Masaki era of his life: ‘the rain’s finally stopped’. It’s very clear that Rukia’s importance to his identity as protector is equivalent to the importance that Masaki had on it. Rukia has now become his ‘tether’; Rukia is now the person he wants to protect above all; Rukia is the one, who, should he fail to protect her, he would fall into despair and reject his protector identity again. He WAS a little down about being unable to protect Tatsuki, Chad, and Orihime in the HM arc, but it was nothing like the abject despair he experienced at Masaki’s death + Rukia being taken away for execution, and as soon as RUKIA comes back and affirms his identity, despite the fact of his failure still existing, Ichigo perks straight back up. Basically, failures to protect people other than Rukia get Ichigo down, but it’s not enough to keep him down as long as Rukia’s still standing.
Ichigo also consistently goes apeshit over Rukia’s safety in particular. He’s not spurred into action re: going to find the Vaizards until Rukia becomes hurt. He thinks of Yammy and Ulquiorra, but his eyes don’t glaze over black until he thinks of Grimmjow, who has hurt Rukia. He refuses to split up and Rukia specifically calls him out that it’s out of concern for HER safety. As soon as he feels Rukia being cut down, he immediately throws away the mission to go save her instead. And most importantly – what’s the main criteria for Ichigo deciding on the one he wants to protect the most? It’s the person who protects HIM. Rukia is one of the only people in the text who consistently protects Ichigo, physically, mentally, and emotionally. (She is also the only person that the text refers to as having ‘saved’ Ichigo. Nobody else gets this distinction.)
Alright! So Ichigo’s instinct towards protection has a self-centred bent to it, and the person at the centre of this instinct has gone from being Masaki to Rukia. So what now from here?
A little bit of a tangent: when I first read the chapter regarding the meaning of Ichigo’s name, I was a little taken aback, because – what a selfish name for a shounen protag, for someone who’s supposed to go on to become a hero of the world. Heroes don’t get to protect just one thing, they have to protect everybody! How is Ichigo going to be a shounen protag saving the whole world, if he’s only going to protect one thing?
To answer this question, we need to have a look at what makes a typical shounen protag. Look at Naruto, whose ‘ninja way’ has rehabilitated countless people, who eventually became Hokage, so that ‘his ninja way’ officially became adopted as the whole Leaf Village’s ‘ninja way’. Look at Luffy and his crew, whose carefree attitudes and ride-or-die comradeship between their crew members is widely admired and emulated. Look at Fairy Tail, where Natsu’s guild is the ideal for what a guild should be, and many guilds have reformed in their image with their values. What makes a typical shounen protagonist, I would argue, are two main things: an indisputable, unshakeable, almost inhumanly good ideal widely recognized within the canon as the way that things should be, and the faith, power, and drive necessary to rehabilitate people to this ideal and change the world so that it becomes closer to this ideal.
Naruto is the ideal of a ninja. Luffy and his crew are the ideal of a pirate crew. Natsu’s Fairy Tail guild is the ideal of a mage guild.
Is Ichigo the ideal of what a Shinigami should be?
Not initially! Initially, he’s just a prickly little kid with a shitload of trauma and depression to boot! Initially, his instinct to protect has a self-centred bent to it! Initially, he’s not even a Shinigami at all!
This is where Rukia comes in. Rukia and her philosophy of protection is the ideal of this series – she is what all Shinigami should be. The text isn’t even subtle about this—Rukia canonically has the most beautiful sword (soul) in all of Soul Society. Realistic or not, Rukia is the ‘absolute good’ of this universe—her ideal is, theoretically, the universal ideal.
But idealism alone doesn’t make Rukia the protagonist-- Rukia lacks the faith, power and drive necessary to turn people to her way of thinking and enact change, which is the other key component of a shounen protag. This is the part that Ichigo supplies—his complete and utterly unshakeable faith in Rukia and her values, the power necessary to back those values, and the ability to spread these values far and wide so that other people start to take up these values as well. I said above that Rukia’s philosophy of protection is so far-fetched that most people can’t even begin to fathom or emulate it—but Ichigo is not ‘most people’. He’s a shounen protag, goddammit! He has the ability to take up an ‘ideal’ that for most people would be impossible, and actually enact change towards that ideal.
This is why Ichigo and Rukia are double protagonists. Not because they were designed to be matchy-matchy or because of their avalanche of matching titles or whatever else. This is why. They are literally two halves of one shounen protagonist. Kubo called them sand and rotator in the side A and B poems, and he could NOT have picked a better analogy for them. Think of a watermill (or a sand mill, as the analogy is given), which is used to grind grain. The mill by itself cannot perform its purpose any more than the water by itself can magically grind the grain. The water needs to be driven by the wheel through the right mechanisms, and the wheel needs the water to actually function. Rukia drives Ichigo, points him in the right direction with her values, and Ichigo supplies the force necessary to enact change. Rotator, and sand. One protagonist, split into two.
(As a completely unrelated aside, I don’t know what it’s like in Japan, but in Korea ‘grinding the grain’ is a euphemism for sex, and watermills are inextricably associated with illicit liaisons. They’re the eastern world’s equivalent to the western world’s stables- any raunchy business conducted outside is usually conducted in a watermill.)
This is also why Ichigo’s name wasn’t something more all-encompassing. He can ‘protect one thing’ and still be a hero – as long as the ‘one thing’ he protects is Rukia. He wants to protect Rukia above all else, to the detriment of others, even (as evidenced by him turning away from rescuing Orihime to rescue Rukia)—but Rukia tells him no, no, I refuse to be protected by you, you have to protect the whole world. This is why it HAS to be Rukia for Ichigo – anyone with less than the absolute selfless ideal that Rukia has could never make Ichigo into the hero. Rukia turns Ichigo’s head to the whole world, opens his eyes to the possibility of protecting more than those in his immediate circle, makes him selfless enough to go through with it. Rukia makes Ichigo the hero. (Big aside: I’m not using ‘hero’ and ‘protag’ interchangeably here. Ichigo is the ‘hero’ of the narrative, but BOTH ichigo and rukia are the ‘protagonists’ of the story.)
But that isn’t the end of it. I have mentioned, in the past, that Bleach is not typical shounen, that it is structured more like YA lit and should be analysed as such. ‘But Sera! You just spent like 2 A4 pages talking about why Ichigo and Rukia are Standard Shounen Protags together!’ Ah but you see, that’s only initially. INITIALLY, Ichigo and Rukia need each other to become One Whole Stock Standard Shounen Protag. Rukia lacks faith and drive, Ichigo lacks ideal. They need the other to support their flaws, initially. To be completely honest, this is an excellent way to start an unhealthy codependent relationship. The most beautiful part about Ichiruki is that they don’t go down this path at all. They start becoming a whole shounen protag individually, by adopting the other person’s strength as their own. Rukia’s ideals inspire Ichigo, and by tybw, he is as avid about protecting everybody as Rukia is. Rukia sees Ichigo’s unrelenting faith in the fact that she is a good person worth saving, and starts believing in it herself and reciprocates in kind in HM and FB arcs. This is where the YA component comes in—YA protags, unlike typical Shounen Protags, don’t start off with an unapproachable ideal and the power+faith+drive necessary to change the world with it. They GROW into it. That is what Ichigo and Rukia are doing—they are both growing throughout the whole story to fit their protagonist roles, so that eventually, they can become One Whole Independent protagonist on their own.
It’s a beautiful, perfectly balanced, ironic jigsaw puzzle: Rukia had the ideal, but didn’t have the ability to turn others to this ideal. The only person she turned to it was Ichigo, but that was enough—Ichigo turns everyone else to it as well, overcoming centuries of tradition. Ichigo had the faith and drive, but no-one to put it behind. The only person he put it behind was Rukia, and that was enough—she and her values guide his choices and actions, and he becomes heroic. Ichigo and Rukia each failed one criteria for being a shounen protag, except with each other, BUT THAT WAS ENOUGH. Affecting and changing just one person—each other—was enough to set everything in motion.
A couple other points that I couldn’t find a place to fit into the essay cohesively, but think they’re still worth a mention:
Rukia says ‘all souls should be protected’, and she enacts this by protecting Ichigo, who is a hybrid of all the different soul types present in the narrative: human, quincy, hollow, reaper. Ichigo, despite being such a mixed entity, identifies firmly as shinigami, not because the shinigami convinced him with their ironclad, lofty morals but because Rukia did.
If Ichigo’s main flaw is being self-centred and tunnel visioned + a weird sort of superiority/hero complex, then Rukia’s main flaw is probably the exact opposite - despite having this incredible ideal, her lack of faith in herself + her tendency to obey the system in all but the most dire, life-threatening situations. Even their flaws are a perfect balancing act, mitigating each other out. (Rukia’s main flaws I probably want to go into in a bit more detail some other time, since it’s not something the fandom in general has much discussion on.)
So! In summary, the tl,dr version:
Ichigo’s name means ‘protector’ or ‘to protect one thing’ (both versions have been used in official translations). The latter is more relevant, as I have explained above. This ‘one thing’ initially is his mom, but by the end of the SS arc, it has very firmly become Rukia, again evidence listed above.
This had the potential to be problematic, as it’s not very heroic of someone to want to protect just one person, to hell with everyone else. BUT the narrative sidesteps that by making Ichigo and Rukia two halves of one shounen protagonist, and making them work best when they are together.
Shounen protags require two components: an ideal, and the ability+desire to enact that ideal. Rukia had the former, Ichigo had the latter. That’s why it’s not problematic for Ichigo to want to protect just one person most— because that one person is actually the ‘ideal moral standard’ of their entire universe, and she keeps telling him to use his powers for good and not just her.
But that’s not even all. Initially, they need the other to become ‘whole’, so to speak— but they don’t stay that way. Ichigo and Rukia have an immensely positive impact on each other, and help each other grow to adopt the best traits of the other and become a hero in their own right. Again, this is why they are both protagonists— because both of them kept growing and changing, right up to the final arc.
So, even though it’s been said a million times before, it bears repeating: Bleach genuinely is a story about Ichigo and Rukia, both of whom felt a little displaced in their own worlds and had trouble making connections. They connected with each other, and only then could their immense capacity for good could start changing the world. That’s really the crux of it— that it had to be each other for these two, not anybody else. Nobody else could bring out the best in them except for the other. They would never have become this extraordinary had it not been for the other person recognising their inherent value. It absolutely had to be Rukia for Ichigo, and vice versa. It’s always going to be the Ichigo and Rukia show.
#replies#bleach#bleach meta#ichiruki#fangirl life#i dont often ask people to read my meta but everyone should read this one#i feel very strongly about this meta#masshiro--ni#q&a
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I haven’t had a chance to watch 5.17 again yet, but some initial thoughts.
1st things 1st, there were some sublime choices from Melissa Benoist as the Director. I have a couple of screen captures of the ones that immediately spring to mind. She definitely showed her nuanced understanding of the characters, and that really was so fantastic to see. She deserves another shot in the directors chair in S6 if she wants to (& it sounds from interviews as if it is something she’d like to have chance to do more of). Even without understanding the characters, some of the lighting & overall framing of shots were so good! From lighting to just mirroring chess board pieces. I loved it. I felt the Eve fight scene was pretty masterful.
The episode itself. Whilst it did give up a couple of twists (the most major being Lex set up Jeremiah’s death), honestly it fell pretty flat for a number of different reasons.
My biggest problem (& this isn’t new for me), is that Lex’s behaviour was entirely predictable. That all bar a couple of plot points weren’t things that the fandom haven’t already talked about in one way or another almost Ad nauseam.
A big part for me was this flashback episode leaves us with no more truly relevant details on things than before the episode began.
Lex setting up Leviathan? Knew he was going to do it, this is Lex we are talking about.
Lex manipulating Lena, especially against Kara. C’mon, you’d have to be either blind, or in denial this has been going on for months on his manipulation of Lena. Yes, she should realise he is doing it, but again, Lena (as even Mon-El mentions) is the product of her abusive family. That doesn’t simply disappear!
Eve - we knew she was back, so again no real surprise on Lex manipulating her. Again (oh and side note. If you’re going to hate on Lena for ‘killing’ people & say her manipulation by Lex doesn’t excuse her, but don’t say the same thing about Eve, who killed outright for both Leviathan and Lex, your hypocritical hatred of Lena is showing. Check yourself at the door).
Lillian. She had already admitted she wasn’t Earth 38 Lillian to Lex from the award ceremony dialogue. So again, it wasn’t a surprise.
Honestly I could keep going, but you get the picture.
With only 2 episodes left, (& even had it been a full 3 episodes as I expect them to perhaps try and extend 5.19 into a longer one, perhaps over 1.5 hours instead of the usual hour schedule), we still have no clear answers on anything. Leviathan? Nothing was added to their story, and considering they were supposed to be the big villain of S5, only Lex has been that so far. And when you have an episode that does nothing more than we saw in S4, to ‘expose’ Lex ..... news flash. We know all this about him.
What we don’t know is who leads Leviathan? Who else is part of the organisation? We practically know nothing about them.
I felt this episode would’ve been better placed after Winn’s first episode (I’ve said I felt having him over that 2 episode arc was a waste, as again that 2nd episode did absolutely nothing plot wise that couldn’t have been added in the 1st episode, & the 1st episode didn’t add a lot either! I’m not saying don’t bring Winn back, but make it relevant & not 2 filler episodes). To have it done so late in the season makes zero sense to me. It feels messy.
On to William Dey. I’m not even going to try & pretend I like the character. I absolute despise him, & not because of trying to be Kara’s LI. I despise him, because once again we had him in scenes that others should have been in, especially Alex at the beginning. She is supposedly working with J’onn, and while I get they might not want her around Lex, have her working remotely from the tower, sending that information from the video clip to J’onn and Kara. After all, she did that from the DEO. J’onn has all that computing power & I’ve yet to see it used to any full potential.
I also found it strange William just walked up to Kara & J’onn as if they’re best of buddies, but we have nothing to suggest he knows Kara is Supergirl. I hate he has that level of familiarity with them. It again feels rushed & disjointed & totally wrong for any of the characters. Failing having Alex working it, how about having Nia, who again I keep repeating, is an actual reporter, but also as Dreamer could help scout out & report back in with them all back at the Tower.
I also found the wording Lex used to Eve in regards William. "Activate William."
So activate how exactly? Sure they got him working as a journalist, but how? Through clues being sent to him? Is he under some kind of control? I can think of a host of different ways to phrase that, but activate? That sounds an awful lot like some kind of manipulation that is far more than straight forward sending William some clues is about.
And about this. William is a Nobel Prize winning Journalist, & yet not once has he been able to do anything without someone giving him the heads up! I know some journalism requires that, but constantly? If he is so good at his job, he should be finding more than dead ends. It grates like crazy.
Then he simply arrives at Kara’s with sympathy baked goodies - only to then launch into needing help over what he has found. There is a time & a place for that kind of thing. That was neither the time nor the place. I know Lex wanted to get Leviathan on board with his plan, & needed to show they were about to get Supergirl looking at them far too closely, but really? Just no. He could’ve met Kara at CatCo. Met Kelly at Obsidean. Texted or called Kara to check it was okay to drop by her apartment even. But doing so unannounced, when he knows Kara & Alex have just lost their father? It also grates.
Now onto Kelly - lovely to see her supporting Alex - and Kara - after the loss of Jeremiah. But does she know Kara is Supergirl? We still don’t know for certain! The inference in this episode is Kelly does know, as William tells them about the warehouse, then Kelly & Alex are at the tower with J’onn in the same outfits, as Supergirl lands, stating there was nothing at the warehouse. So yes, it is highly likely Kelly now knows. But how or when did she know. It’s these kind of details most fans actual want, not to have to make educated guesses on! This is a reason fans get frustrated. We were being told who used to get to know Supergirl’s identity, but now with Kelly, nothing! And people wonder why fans feel the LGBTQ characters are getting shortchanged this season. It isn’t just about lack of screen time. It’s about lack of depth of story, when previously they had people falling over themselves to show how they knew Kara was Supergirl.
Another example of this lack of depth or explanation is Brainy. Sure he is likely doing what he is because of future Brainy’s warning, but it still comes across as Brainy seemingly stupid considering his apparent intellect. We have been thrown these plot lines, but they’re then left for us to have to fill in the blanks as each episode airs, as we’re not getting them otherwise.
It is far too chaotic for my liking.
So once again my overriding sense after watching this episode is frustration. It still feels like a total mess, with no answers (& even if they give us those answers, 3 episodes - now 2 - would be nowhere near enough time to do it without rushing. It even felt rushed at times in this episode).
William continues to be an absolute waste of space, (and God do I feel sorry for Staz over this), taking perfectly good screen time away from other already established characters, who could do what he has just as easily.
The Kara and Lena push & pull is giving us nothing new! Nothing. It’s gone well past giving us angst to us having had enough. Like with Lex, they seem to have gone too far with a good thing, & now rather than enjoying it, the majority simply hate it. With a passion. I am sick to the back teeth with it. Lena deserves to finally be rid of this villain tag, & given her rightful place back with the Superfriends (after a damn sit down talk with Kara - not Supergirl - and get on some level ground for good this time). I don’t expect a miraculous friendship rebuilt in seconds, but I do want actual forward progress between them to stick. Not 1 step forward, 2 steps back. I certainly don’t want this carrying on into S6, or at least not without resolving more than this.
In all the 5 seasons I’ve watched Supergirl, I don’t think there has ever been such underlying anger or frustration on how the season has panned out, both from fans & media alike. The disconnect from the fans to the show is huge right now, & really I cannot understand how the end of S4, which was seen as a real step forward for the show, to the excitement of S5, & how it was being portrayed; to this.
I want so much to be able to sit here & write positively over the episodes generally, but too often this season I’ve not been able to do it. I feel so sorry for the cast, because I know they love the show so much, and I want nothing more than to be writing positively about it each episode, but I simply can’t do that.
So in conclusion.
Phenomenal directing by Melissa Benoist.
Complete & utter frustration & disconnect everywhere else.
#supergirl#kara danvers#lgbtq#chyler leigh#alex danvers#azie tesfai#katie mcgrath#nicole maines#kelly olsen#supercorp#brainy#david harewood#j’onn j’onzz#m’gann m’orzz#white martian#green martian#lena luthor#lex luthor#jon cryer#lillian luthor#brenda strong#jesse rath
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I'm a bit ignorant in this whole field, but I was wondering about the boundaries of professionalism psychological counseling in FFS. Like if the time ever comes when Ef may no longer require therapy (if that even can happen? considering it also feels like his trauma will be a constant battle in his life and rightfully so), will Dr. Gary still be allowed to remain in his life as emotional support/maybe even friend? That honestly feels idealistic though tbh, so I wanted to get more insight.
Hi hi anon!
Ooo there’s two good things to talk about here. The first:
Like if the time ever comes when Ef may no longer require therapy (if that even can happen? considering it also feels like his trauma will be a constant battle in his life and rightfully so)
It’s actually a myth that people stop therapy once they’re mentally ‘healthy.’ People stop therapy once their goals are met. And usually those goals actually don’t include curing them of their disorders. Most people who exit therapy still have mental disorders, but they often exit when they have the tools to manage those disorders safely, and have achieved a level of function in human society (i.e. friends, possibly partners, hobbies, the ability to self-regulate or have mostly healthy coping mechanisms) that they’re happy with.
Shit fuck this got so long, sorry.
For example, I’m always going to have PTSD, major depressive disorder, and a couple of other things. But I’ve gone from needing therapy quite often, to only needing to go about once every 3-5 weeks, and as time goes by, eventually I’ll phase out to much less often, until finally I’ll probably only need to call when I have something unusual or an emergency.
So basically, Efnisien can have PTSD and Pure O forever, but he likely won’t need a therapist forever. Though he’ll need to see one longer than most people, because of the complexity of the mental injuries he’s endured.
will Dr. Gary still be allowed to remain in his life as emotional support/maybe even friend?
That might technically be possible, but not in the way you’re thinking, and for a few reasons:
1. If Efnisien exits therapy, but then needs it again, he can’t go back to having therapy with Dr Gary if he’s Dr Gary’s friend.
2. I’ll go into this in more detail below but... Dr Gary can’t stay as like, an emotional support if he’s not working in his role as therapist. Mostly because he’s a person, and he either gets paid for his job, or they renegotiate their connection.
3. Dual relationships are considered profoundly unethical and unprofessional in therapy. So this is like, when you’re friends with your therapist and also they’re your therapist. (A more extreme version is when you have a sexual relationship with your therapist and also they’re your therapist, but I’m not going to touch that one at all, lmao).
4. ‘Once a patient. Always a patient.’ This is partly because the therapy-client relationship is built on a fairly significant power differential, and that power differential is kind of impossible to unpack once you’ve kind of gone through it that way. (It’d be like trying to make your mother no longer a mother so you can ‘just’ be her friend, your brain still knows she’s your mother).
Like, you spill your secrets to someone who responds from professional distance. They want you to do well, but all they expect from you is payment. They’re not telling you anything that doesn’t help you the most as a patient in the moment (from their perspective), and you’re not finding out anything about them as a person. It’s wildly, inherently imbalanced in nature, and sets up flawed expectations (even the expectation that Efnisien could get emotional support in a friendship with Dr Gary is, itself, kind of a sign that it’s impossible to see him as a person and not a therapist, or not in a role where he centres Efnisien’s wellbeing possibly over his own).
5. Ending therapy, and the grief it brings, is actually a therapeutic technique that’s really relevant and important! It allows the client to grieve and cope on their own (something they’ll have to do in ‘normal’ life as well), and learn for themselves that they’re so much stronger than they used to be. It mimics other circumstances where they will lose things (or people) that really really mattered to them, but in a way that is guided and very safe, and can be done compassionately. It sets a client up to go ‘oh, I survived that, actually... I can do this.’ Ending therapy into ‘friendship’ kind of ruins that process.
The general adage is - it’s easier to find a good friend than it is to find a good therapist. So keep the two separated.
*
The *general* rule of thumb is that if a therapist and a client are going to be friends, it should happen around 2+ years after the therapeutic relationship has been exited, to make sure that the client is like, living an independent life and that friendship boundaries can be negotiated. This doesn’t make it ethical, by the way, or even a great idea, it just makes it slightly less unethical (there are exceptions to the rule, but Efnisien and Dr Gary don’t meet any of those exceptions). Personally I’m still not a fan of it, and I don’t think it should happen in Efnisien’s and Dr Gary’s situation anyway. (I have no problems with people imagining it happening! And maybe there are AUs where Gary isn’t a therapist, but ends up become Efnisien’s friend, etc.! But I can’t imagine it for myself).
No WAY should Dr Gary be Efnisien’s emotional support and a friend. He’s either a friend, or he’s a professional, not both. There’s never a future (except in fantasy land) where Efnisien should be allowed to see Dr Gary after therapy as a friend to talk about how hard his life is and get therapeutic advice. That’s just ‘free therapy’ which is bad for both of them.
(Also, we don’t know what Dr Gary is like as a friend. It’s a fact of life that quite a few therapists are well, not that empathetic as friends, because they’re so tired from supporting their clients all day they don’t have much energy left to support their friends, lol. I say this as a person who has a lot of friends who work as therapists and psychologists (which is how I know it’s not always true, but it’s sometimes true!))
Something Efnisien could ethically do after seeing Dr Gary (also, Efnisien will still be seeing Dr Gary once this story finishes, lol, getting *some* support in his life doesn’t clear him to exit therapy at all) is send Dr Gary updates or emails about his life sometimes. Or have like a once a year session to just catch up, that’s a lot more relaxed and just going over how things have been. Like just because they terminate therapy, doesn’t mean Efnisien can’t update to say like ‘things are going well, thanks for everything’ and Dr Gary can’t reply with ‘I’m so glad to hear that’ etc.
But overall, the exiting process re: therapy is actually a really important part of therapy! It’s actually even more important if both parties have experienced positive transference (i.e. really liking each other / wanting to stay friends).
I’ve had to wrestle with this a bit myself. Like, in real life. Sometimes it’s really tempting to stay friends with your therapist. But yeah, outside of just daydreaming about it, or imagining it, it’s not something I see happening for Efnisien even though I really love Dr Gary, and I really love the way Dr Gary and Efnisien act together. It’s not something to worry about in the story anyway, we won’t be seeing Efnisien exiting therapy even if he’s really worried about Dr Gary getting rid of him, lol.
#asks and answers#falling falling stars#fae tales#fae tales AU#efnisien ap wledig#dr gary konowalous#i'm not a therapist#or anything#i've done a lot of research#and i have a lot of books#and i've been through a lot of therapy#but like#it's always good to err towards caution anyway#there are medical professionals in my life who've treated me who i've adored#yeah i'm not friends with 'em#especially not the therapists#it's hard to explain#but one day it's just like 'oh no no no that...will be bad'#trust me the therapists most likely to abuse you#are the ones most likely to start treating you like a friend#even during therapy#and *that* i know from experience#sadly#Anonymous
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Tangled Salt Marathon - King Pascal
This is, in my opinion, the worst episode of season two and I’ll get into why under the cut.
Summary: The group is stranded on an island after a storm. The tiny islanders, the Lorbs, mistake Pascal for their mystical ruler; the chameleon loves the adulation, until he’s expected to protect his people from a vicious monster.
Since When Did You Learn How to Sail, Rapunzel?
So they hit the storm and Rapunzel starts doling out orders like she always does, but like, she logically shouldn’t know what to do here. She’s only been out of the tower for a little over a year and sailing takes time to learn. There’s been nothing to establish beforehand that she’s learned this stuff. If anything Eugene and Lance should be the one giving the orders here as their backgrounds could feasibly included sailing as they’re world travelers.
Here lies part of the problem with Rapunzel’s characterization, and I’ve already touched upon it back in The Alchemist Returns, but Rapunzel can’t and shouldn’t be magically good at everything. She can be incredibly skilled in some areas, like acrobatics and the arts, but she also should have lapses in knowellage just due to a lack of experience and expertise.
A female character isn’t ‘weak’ just because they have to sometimes rely on other characters. They shouldn’t be written to be magically better than the male characters just because they got boobs. That’s not empowering; that’s condescending. Women are people, and real people have varied skill sets and weaknesses that match their interests and backgrounds.
So Why Is the Island Tropical?
According to what few maps we see in the show (and yes, they are inconsistent, but bare with me), Corona is somewhere in Northern Europe near an ocean or sea. According to dialogue at the end Forest of No Return, they’ve been traveling east, and according to the map in Rapunzel’s Return, the Dark Kingdom is north east of Corona specifically. Meaning that they must be somewhere in the northern Baltic Sea right now, which is not tropical at all.
This is part of the problem with Tangled’s ‘throw it all into a blender’ style of approach to worldbuilding. If traveling the world is going to be a major plot point for a season then we kind of need to know where things are in relation to each other. Climate should help determine such things, but if you’re all willy nilly about culture, which climate affects, than nothing is going to make sense.
My only guess is that the island is suppose to be magical so it has a different climate to the surrounding environment, but that’s just a headcanon and not actually stated by anything in the show itself. I shouldn’t have to be doing the work of the writers for them.
So Why are We Separating the Guys Again?
Back in Freebird the writers needed to get Cass and Raps alone in order for them to have their bonding time and a heart to heart, but here, it’s just lazy writing. This is a Pascal focus episode and it requires that Rapunzel interact with lots of other characters, so splitting the group up doesn’t benefit the story in any way.
The writers just didn’t want to fool with writing for eight characters at one time (I’m not counting Fidella or Owl, though logically they should be considered characters in their own right and not just props for the story, but oh well); which begs the question of why they wrote in so many characters to begin with.
It’s also an excuse to make the girls seem more competent than the boys, which, as I explained above, is not real ‘girl power’; just bad writing.
Let’s Talk About the Outfit Changes and How Marketing Affects the Story
The entire point of this episode and indeed this whole island arc, is just because of marketing stipulations. Every season is required to have one Pascal focused episode and one Max focused episode, because Disney marketing wanted to sell cute animal toys. Another requirement of the story was outfit changes for the mains so that once again marketing could sell dolls and variants and such. It’s why Rapunzel, Cass, and Eugene get so many alternate costumes, while Lance doesn’t despite being with them on this journey too.
Which is understandable to a point. American television animation has always been about selling toys and merchandise. It’s how these shows make most of their money back. If there’s a show that you enjoy and you want to support it being on the air, you need to buy the toys. Priating doesn’t do jack to the bottom line, it does not affect ratings as most people don't own a nielsen rating box. (an increasingly outdated method to calculate popularity anyways) But whether or not the toys sell is the make it or break it point of every show.
However, there are better ways to implement these stipulations then how Tangled goes about it. You want to give Max and Pascal focus? Then actually give them focus that relates to the overall plot and not just meaningless filler. You want to the characters switch up outfits and have that tie into the story? Then make sure it fits all of the characters and don’t drag it out more than it needs to be, because this island arc it too damn long.
And you want to know what the biggest kick in the teeth is? There’s barely any merchandise for this outfit. There’s like one paper doll set and that’s it. The toys for Tangled the Series did not sell and they stopped merchandising the show after season one. Now add in the rating plummet during seasons two and three, and we’re incredibly lucky the show didn’t get canceled outright because it’s by all accounts a financial flop.
I suspect there was an upfront contract that guaranteed them three seasons no matter what, and that’s the only reason it managed to escape the chopping block and why Chris and Ben weren’t let go sooner from the project. Because Chris at least no longer works for Disney. He left as soon as production ended on the show.
The False God Trope is Over Played
I can find examples of this trope dating all the way back to the early 60s, and arguably even sooner than that. However around the 80s, after Return of the Jedi hit theaters, the trope was inescapable in children's media. Every cartoon since has had this same plot shoved in somewhere. It also became paired with the ‘liar revealed’ trope (the bane of my existence) more often.
And that’s what this is; an incredibly stale take on an incredibly by the numbers story. I kept waiting all episode for the other shoe to drop, for some sort of twist on the usual cliche, but it never came.
This episode is boring, aggravatingly so. It’s the main reason why it’s in my bottom five. Because while you could argue that really little kids wouldn’t be as over exposed to the trope like an adult such as myself, the writers themselves desperately tried to distance themselves from that targeted audience. They’re the ones that yell ‘it’s not a kid show’, while feeding us crap like this, and I just have to roll my eyes.
Tangled doesn’t know who it’s audience is. It should be pre-teen girls, but the creators want shoot for an older audience, teens, while marketing wants this to be a preschool show. So the series careens wildly all over the place in terms of tone and winds up satisfying no one. Older audiences are frustrated by childish filler such as this, while younger audiences are exposed to themes and messages that they probably shouldn’t be. I know several parents who have stopped their kids from watching the series because they don’t approve of the toxic values the show prometes in its incompetence.
It bungles so many of its attempts to be mature because it won’t actually explore the complexities of the plot. Either cause it’s wasting too much time on filler, it can’t explore it’s more disturbing elements to their natural conclusions due to the audience, or it just mistakes ‘shocking’ as deep.
King Pascal isn’t mature or deep. It’s pointless guff that adds nothing while actively taking away from more interesting storylines. I say skip this dreck and go watch Doctor Who’s The Aztecs instead if you want to see this trope done right with maturity while still being all audience friendly.
It’s also has the added bonus of featuring two well developed strong female characters who hold their own with the equally capable guys while actually developing all of those characters simultaneously, and was co-produced by an actual woman. If they could pull that off in the early sixties than Disney and Chris have no excuse today.
This Is the Same ‘Lesson’ As Pascal’s Story
In addition to being boring and unoriginal, this episode is also redundant. Rapunzel already learned to show appreciation to Pascal back in season one. Why are we having her relearn this lesson instead of giving Pascal a new arc?
It’s not even consistent as Rapunzel only acts this way towards him in his focus episodes. It’s also not a lesson in behaving condescendingly in general because Rapunzel goes on to be condensing to everyone anyways.
So Did We Really Need This Episode Just to Introduce the Island and the Firefly?
Yes both of these things come into play later, but not in any significant way. We’re here on this island for four whole episodes and it only comes back for one in season three, and only to further a side character’s story; not the main plot. Also the Firefly will help resolve the plot in five episodes time, but it’s just given a reintroduction there anyways. Why couldn’t this information have been condensed down and repackaged into another episode entirely?
That’s what I mean by poor pacing. Tangled is not efficient in its storytelling. It drags things out only to give us rushed endings or no resolutions at all. Stop drop feeding info in the backgrounds of filler episodes where it’s not relevant and actually give us stories that focus on the plot, dang it.
Once Again, Rapunzel is a Hypocrite
Just like in Pascal’s Story during season one, Rapunzel is quick to show consideration for her oldest friend but can’t be bothered to admit fault to a teenager that she abused. One that she knows is currently facing horrendous and inhumane treatment inside of a jail cell right now and still does not give a damn.
You can’t claim Rapunzel is a kind and compassionate person so long as Varian and his story exists.You just can’t. Because no matter how you slice it, being a minor means that there is a power imbalance in how adults and the government treats them. A power imbalance that is constantly being exploited by the mains.
Conclusion
You won’t miss anything other than the shipwreck itself if you skipped the episode. Which is aggravating because it means it’s technically necessary to the on going story without actually adding anything substantial to it. It’s like the series opener all over again, only made worse by how boring and redundant it all is. Worst episode of season two; and now I just want to go watch Doctor Who instead.
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Thoughts on Petshop of Horrors: Wandering Ark volumes 1 & 2
(also on dreamwidth)
HOW did I manage to miss the translation of my long-awaited Papa D PSOH series?? I've been stalking it ever since I found the announcement and somehow the fact that @ruthlessnightsscans already put out the first two volumes completely went past my head.
Obviously I had to read it right away, sleep be damned.
this is the edited version of my brain thoughts after i managed to get two sleeps and calm down a bit or it would be a lot more incoherent
The art: the initial pages really remind me of the old art! Unfortunately it goes back to the roundness prevalent since the Shin series (which has only become even rounder with time) not long after. That art style is also a lot less dynamic than the original, I find. It's a bit of a problem on scenes that are supposed to have some tension caused by movement. This is nothing new since, like I said, Sensei has been using this art style since a good while ago. I really miss the original art though. It had a major nostalgia punch to it and a lot more feeling as well.
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First chapter: "I am on a journey with no destination in mind" just say you're on vacation and go off I guess.
Papa is... weirdly easy-going. I want to say it's because he's not yet mad with grief and his son being taken away and so on, but the glimpses we saw at his time in university definitely didn't paint him this soft. There's no edge to him, on this volume or the next.
Regarding the story itself, I can't say I loved it but it’s not the worst out of all of them (there are four in total between these two volumes, and a third volume is on the way). I liked Koushun's character, but Seiyou annoyed me, especially when he presumed to know what she wanted (or perhaps he didn't presume, but decided for her what was better anyway) - something like I Shall Revive This Species So Breed In My Name Okay Bye. Note also that while Koushun was willing enough to marry (thinking she was marrying someone else but that's another point entirely), the groom himself came in chains. And then Seiyou... locks them in together? Great. Just great. Very conducive to a loving mood indeed, locking a woman with a potentially dangerous stranger who might cause her harm and telling them both to fuck (note. the. chains. you don’t put chains on someone you think is harmless; they never put any on Koushun even when she attacked Seiyou). I was afraid for her when it cut to another scene here, with the last we saw of her being pushed against a wall and being told by the groom that it seemed that he would have to make a child with her. "Rather than hate each other, I want to break that curse"? Seiyou, sweetie, that is NOT the way to make them not hate you. ((The reveal that Koushou is some sort of creature - very PSOH-y - does not help, since putting two wild animals together without them being used to each other is perhaps even more likely to them killing/harming one another.))
MAJOR little mermaid vibes on Koushun standing over a sleeping Seiyou with a knife.
There are quite some parallels with the D species on this tale of bloodshed and revenge. The Ds could stand to learn from this, though historically they don't. "Even if you kill the third prince, the Kagetsu people are already gone. They won't return." Papa himself says that 'winning on the last available tile' is a waste of time, which really resonates with his research into reviving lost species and the issues of his own kind. A reference to the health of descendants when no new blood is introduced is also made here, which might or might not point to our D depending on where in time this Papa is from.
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Second chapter: it's... frankly, super choppy. The story is all over the place. On the author's note, Akino herself says that it's a challenge to put the whole life of that empress in 57 pages, and I have to agree. Either it should have been cut to the REALLY relevant parts and worked on them some more, or be discarded in its entirety. It's too rushed. The whole first part was unnecessary: it could have started with her already working at the palace or being chosen as a concubine, and then made references to her previous life in her thoughts instead of wasting several pages on it when that backstory won't be going anywhere (except for some references to Hakubun whom she sees on that other actor - who dies like, two or three pages later, so that's that on that). I do like Ranji herself as a character: she's clever and quick to pick up on things. Her life is just a series of tragedies one after the other, unfortunately.
Papa D is some sort of benevolent helper in this chapter for some reason - this pattern repeats somewhat on the next chapters, but on this one there isn't really anything to gain for him at all, other than perhaps his dubious acquaintance with one of the concubines/future empress, which wouldn't really hold much weight since he met her ?once? apart from near her death.
And then, somehow, the initial Papa D in this chapter was actually Sofu?
Sofu???? I'm calling bullshit. As far as we know - going back to Sofu's own series and flashbacks on the original PSOH, even - Sofu never had a hairstyle of that length, and out of our three known Ds (new!D excluded) he's the one least likely to help a human just because. The ark is also said to travel through space and time, so I'm saying that's Papa D and that's it. Fun aside: on this chapter, Papa says he's the "third generation", meaning that on this series he's probably the youngest existing D (and by inference our D does not exist yet).
Also, some issues with in-story continuity here: when the last emperor dies Ranji still looks fairly young and the emperor-to-be is three years old, a couple pages later she looks a lot more aged but the new emperor is still three years old. To be honest, I think the story would have been tied off much better if A-chan had some connection with Hakubun or the eunuch instead of each having their very brief, individual emotional connections to her - which, in turn, doesn't really make them memorable. The "wishes" thing was interesting, really called back to the old PSOH tradition with the mystical pets and bittersweet be-careful-what-you-wish-for endings.
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Third chapter: I think, overall, this was probably the one I liked the best. Can't really bring myself to call it my favourite though, since none of them even begin to compare to the original PSOH chapters. I cackled at the "jawline is too sharp" dialogues and thoughts: with this art style EVERYONE has the same round jaw as every other character, and it's the furthest thing from "sharp" possible.
With this series it really seems like Sensei is giving more focus to trying to tell historically-accurate stories rather than focusing on the stories themselves, as there is a huge amount of superfluous historical information to be found in these volumes.
The empress Elizabeth reminds me of Sofu, in truth. She won't "mind" affairs and the like (read: she will hate it but ignore them) as long as it works towards her ends. Her taking away the newly-born child is a huge parallel to Sofu regarding both Papa and D, and D and new!D. Child-snatching FTW! That being said, I actually kind of liked her, ruthless as she was: the whole reason why Sophie made it as far as crown princess was because Elizabeth valued her hard work. You don't get to hold an empire together without having a steel spine and a cunning mind (or people to do the work for you I guess, but here it doesn’t seem to be the case).
I hate that Sophie had to change even her name and religion to fit her new reality, accurate as it is to history. That sort of thing always messes me up (throwback to the Nazi/teddy bear chapter of the original PSOH series, where there was also a name/religion change for the sake of survival). Not a reflection on the author in any way, I just hate that this is something people had to go through. As something I hated that kinda does reflect on the author, though, was the ugly = terrible association with Pyotr and the maid. Sophie/Catherine is initially said to not be beautiful but she's not depicted in the same way those two are at all.
Papa's benevolence is thankfully offset this chapter by the fact that he does have something to gain here. For some reason Ds doing things merely for the goodness of their hearts kind of rubs me the wrong way unless it's D during or post-Leon.
Most PSOH victims clients: oh a pretty person! WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S AN ANIMAL
Sophie/Catherine: a dog you say? sounds kinda hot ngl
Gotta respect how she just jumps straight into the dog affairs. The take-back of the empire was also nicely executed, and I'm always here for ladies in traditionally male clothing.
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Fourth chapter:
This is linked semi-directly to the third chapter by virtue of the amber room Papa D craved. Marks also the second time that Papa takes a human on board of the ark.
D, circa end of original PSOH, a single tear rolling down his cheek as he watches Leon plummet towards the earth: Humans have not earned the right to board this ark.
Papa D: I'm gonna go for a joyride and take along this human and this human and this human and this human and--
Papa really gives Doctor Who vibes on the ark matter. Travelling through space and time, occasionally taking human companions? The one for this chapter - who I'm guessing might be a cameo from one of Sensei's other series, since I didn't recognize him and there was no backstory for him on the chapter - even has era-appropriate wardrobe changes (at least assuming it's the same person and not just someone who looks similar scratch that they have eyes of different colours so I guess Papa has been giving rides to delivery men now), the second of which leaving me very ??? as to WHEN he is from.
That last Look(TM) reminds me a of Leon Orcot, between the long ponytail and the clothes resembling the ones Leon wore on the last chapter of Shin PSOH (in PSOH time, that would have happened approximately 15 years after the end of the original series, meaning that Papa was already long dead then. Unless Leon's style was just stuck in time, which is also very possible).
It might or might not have endeared him to me for that exact reason. What can I say? I'm a sucker for Leon Orcot, and apparently also for characters that visually remind me of him. ANYWAY.
Why another Nazi-era chapter??? Sensei plz. One was already enough on the original PSOH - it wasn't anywhere near my favourites back then, either - and the fact that this one mostly followed a Nazi colonel didn't help either. Here we witness them tearing down the amber room, "reclaiming" art from all over the world, a father's heartbreaking sacrifice to “save” his daughter’s dog, and Papa D coming to meet the Nazi dude. One would expect the Ds to avoid genocidal racists given the fate of their own species, but apparently the Nazis were relevant enough for not one but TWO Ds to interact with them. Oh well. Either way, I really don't like how Papa appears to not care one way or another - when the D for the original series interacted with people he didn't like, his mask was really fairly obvious (at least for the reader). Perhaps Papa simply has a better mask. Perhaps those nuances were lost to time and round art styles. Perhaps Papa or Sensei just don't give two shits. Guess we'll never know.
EVERYONE seems to comment on the flavour of Papa's tea: it's 4 out of 4 so far for these two volumes, and in this chapter in particular it seems as if it's laced with some kind of truth serum - it seems to be Papa's version of D's (and possibly Sofu's?) incense from the original PSOH. A reference to the original PSOH's Nazi chapter is also made here, with Papa mentioning that Sofu was on friendly terms with Eva Braun: this implicates that in this time they were in closer contact (not surprising since Sofu probably hasn't stolen his still-non-existent kid yet).
The colonel seems to value art over human life - surprise surprise! - so he kills his own comrades to keep the art "safe". A stomach-turning moment comes where they find human golden teeth being kept as treasure, which Papa mentions remelting to turn into golden nuggets. Why, Papa/Sensei, why? It's in poor taste, even if you're testing the colonel the way D did with some of his clients on original PSOH.
At the very least an eerie moment comes next where Papa explains that dead creatures can be revived using DNA. "Even dead people?" Cue Papa's all-seeing stare directly into the reader's eyes (and presumably the colonel's as well) with a backdrop of an inverted black-and-white multitude of graves as he says that future is not very far. Colonel almost shits his pants, with reason when you consider the amount of people the Nazis killed off that would presumably come after them. This almost forgives the teeth comment, and it's probably the first moment in these two volumes when we see some genuine emotion on Papa's face (on this page and the next), creepy and maniac as it might be.
Colonel dude has spent the whole chapter justifying everything under "orders of the fuhrer" so far. Then comes the moment that Papa calls him out by saying that the orders were to burn his sweet dear art so that it wouldn't fall into enemy's hands, and it's here that we see how much of an hypocrite the colonel is when he doesn't want to follow those orders. Suddenly it's "treasures of mankind" (even though he's been stealing them left and right) and the fuhrer is "a fool" (even though he's been using his orders and his "greatness" as justification for everything).
Suddenly, Papa's companion! Who the heck is that! Shoots him! This is someone whose family was killed by the colonel (directly or under his orders) or so he says; he's gripping a piece of art we don't get to see, which is presumably the reason for those deaths. Now in the future! A guy who looks a bit like that other man who shot the colonel, but who I'm not 100% sure if it is or is not the same person because the round art style makes everyone look alike Someone who is definitely not the same guy because his eye colour is different (and who's dressed in a sporty outfit with a long ponytail, which I've mentioned kinda reminds me of Leon) looks for the amber in the place the art was stored, alongside Papa. He flies on the ark (all these humans on the ark, Sofu would have a conniption!) and reminds me of Leon once more while being shouty and holding on to the main mast for dear life.
The sacrificial father mini-plot also gets resolved with the dog returning (but not the father himself) along with a picture with that family. Which is presumably the picture the other dude who shot the colonel was holding, which begs the question: how is he related to them? He doesn't look like any of them, but he did say the colonel killed his family while (presumably) holding that same picture, so hmmm. Maybe he's the dog, colour-scheme aside? But apart from the father, the rest of the family seems to have survived, so it's kind of a strange thing to say since that sort of wording usually means more than one person. Even if he is the dog (my money is on that option), it's not exactly obvious to a reader who's not looking very closely. Some loose ends there, or at least ends that don't really look like they're tied together at all.
"No matter how long winter is, spring will come." Fairly hopeful final words there, Papa D. These echo similar ones spoken by D at the end of Shin PSOH, after running from Leon once more ("someday, the season for returning will come"): perhaps both these Ds are not as pessimistic as to their future, at least at this point? Poor Papa definitely had a change of heart between his series and the ending of original PSOH, unfortunately.
--
General thoughts: Sensei hasn't quite managed to replicate the feeling of the original PSOH just yet. The storytelling feels a bit shallow and rushed, though the pacing improved from the first volume to the second. There's also very little focus on Papa himself for some reason: he's more of a background character on his own series except for the fourth chapter, which is a very strange narrative choice. In part this might also be because he doesn’t have a permanent companion to discuss/argue with like in previous iterations of the PSOH series. I wonder if the third volume will continue on this trend? I wish it’d delve a bit more into Papa, but either way it’s still nice to get some more PSOH content.
I've heard Vesca will make an appearance next volume, I'm so excited!! Out of Shin PSOH, my favourite chapters were Leon's (surprise surprise!) and the ones with Papa and Vesca on their university days. Papa definitely seemed a lot sharper there, which I miss here - I feel like Sensei has been smoothing out all their edges like with the art style lmao, and in turn it makes them feel a bit lacking since the Ds are not meant to be bland and forgiving and easy-going, at least as per their original portrayal. I've also seen sneak-peaks of Leon and D from author notes of the next volume so I can't wait at the chance to weep at the slightest panel of my son Leon.
A final shoutout to RNS for continuing the PSOH translations! I really can't thank them enough!!
#PetShop of Horrors#pet shop of horrors#psoh#hyouhaku no hakobune hen#papa d#wandering ark#psoh wandering ark#psoh ark adrift#petshop of horrors hyouhaku#howl rambles a lot
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Pokemon Rejuvenation V13 Live Reaction Thread 10/10+Final Thoughts
Spoilers for V13 under cut
Geara >:(
Did I ever tell yall that i despise the haunted field
Geara’s team(Krook,Para,Grimm,Geng,Chan,Clef)
Hmmm
This fight isn’t particularly hard my problem is that Gengar can hit very hard and the clefairy is annoying ugh
what the fuck????
what the fuck is up with the parasect???
Maybe he is hard
I soft resetted so many times for the fight
Also ig u can’t overwrite and destroy fields anymore???i tried to use misty terrain because the hypnosis was driving me insane but it was just added onto the field
i really don’t like that
Its morning now
I beat him because I got a crit on the clefable :)
Still hated that battle
Okie saki time
wtf is up with this field 🗿
Remember when I said the hardest fight so far in v13 was the Cella battle
Yea
Not anymore
Saki’s field is busted and since we can’t really remove fields temporarily w/ type terrains…i’m stuck in it…
Was Terra in reborn fought on this field…?I forgot how I beat her it’s been years
So the Glitch Field
Yes i’m taking notes
Removes the physical/special split
Meaning physical and special moves are based off of typing now
Special attack is based off of either spatk or spdef,depending on the larger one
Wonder room can kinda make things easier
Dragon types are useless
New day
Saki’s pissing me off and this is kinda an unfair fight since changing the fields doesn’t work anymore
I don’t care if this is cowardly but i am gonna cheese saki through destiny bond+quick claw+wonder room mismagius
First try with cheesing i made it to her last mon(corviknight) but i accidentally ran out of potions…somehow
Took 3 tries with cheesing but I beat her
Not proud of it but i wanna finish the main story
GROUP HUG
Rhodea :(
Oh shit crescent
Crescent deserves better
Ooo Xenpurgis is an ub
Rune mvp
Oh damn we’re just attacking team xen in v14 cool cool
Cool done with the main story
Okay I am going to a little review for this version. Overall I think I would give this chapter a B+ or a B.
My favorite path without a doubt was Erin+Kanon’s route. I loved exploring Angie’s mansion and I adored the atmosphere of the place itself. The map and tilesets were just really well done. I used Erin’s team without the Interceptor…well intervening with our pkmn and I felt like the difficulty was just right. I stuggled but all I needed to do was change my strategy. The atmosphere with the maids and the ost complemented the environment so well. Erin was great and she’s probably a contender for one of my favorites in the game…ignoring Aelita of course. The path also added a lot onto the Vitus situation and what interactions might happen in the endgame since we still don’t know his whereabouts.
Next would have to be either Aelita or the Player’s path. Personally, the path’s were kinda along the same in terms of ranking but I feel like their was more that happened in the player’s path that personally felt more relevant. It was nice seeing the player’s past self and their history with Crescent back in Miera…which begs the question, how old is Crescent??? Geniunely what is the timeline between the events at Miera with the player and the player heading to Gearen…Also thank you developers for not making Crescent have a past romantic relationship with the player…I have seen this happen too many times in other games and shows. Let them just be besties. Looking back at it, this part was kinda dialogue heavy but that problem is alleviated from the puzzles and good interactions in both routes.
The only problem I felt is that…imo Rune left as soon as she came. Ig since we found out she’s the puppet master she was always there but…i felt like we should’ve seen her as Rune just a bit longer…Also the twist regarding her and Huey’s background also kinda felt like it should’ve been alluded to earlier(unless they did hint to it earlier and i just forgot) because it didn’t feel like much. Still a good route tho, a solid B.
My least favorite was Melia+Venam+Ren’s route. I kinda felt like this route was shorter than the other one’s looking back at it. Gameplay wise there wasn’t much happening there save for the battle with Cassandra. The underground area also wasn’t really special overall. There was some interesting tidbits regarding the Archetype and the Garufans but it hasn’t really payed off yet in the story. The trio’s interactions were just okay, I liked their interactions in Goldenwood but their dialogue in the underground place was meh. Though I loved Nim and I am happy to know she has changed sides, I can’t wait to see more of her.
The developers knocked it out of the park with this version! I only talked about the additions to the main story but I went back to earlier places that got upgraded and woa Sheridan and Goldenrood look phenomenal! Route 3 and Phasial cave got changed and they look superb. I’ll miss Route 4 but the reservoir looks amazing so far and I am impressed with how they are handling the rift dens! Also making gigantamax mons function like mega evolutions is genius. Also the aevium forms are really nice and my favorite is the alolan mareep that I can’t get :)))))))))))
Also I started over to see changes made with the beginning cutscene and man the ship looks better and the additions with the full artwork of characters is great. I want to play this game again in the future(probably during winter break since I am going to be busy for awhile) on normal mode with a monotype team but I haven’t decided which one yet :o
That’s it with main story additions, I am going to have to go back and catch any new pokemon added in the game.
#pokemon#pokemon rejuvenation#pokemon fangame#pokemon rejuvenation spoilers#hana plays pokemon rejuvenation
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The Big Splash: Group Commentary pt2
Part three coming in tomorrow
@wolkemesser This hot card was the very first submission for the contest! The main selling point for me was the first activated ability, both mechanically and in terms of flavor!
“Destroy target haunted creature” I don’t know, it just reads awesome!
If I had to be nit-picky about the design, I feel that its a bit heavy between the political token generation, destruction and situational reusability of the haunt cards. Overall I would call MaladoLa an unpolished diamond of the Orzhov!
@reaperfromtheabyss I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between your design and urge to feed (I had a vampire deck at the time) Although Bloodfeast Frenzy can damage anything and put counters on anything it’s overall weaker, and the challenge was about making a splashy card. I think we would get there if the overall effect was on a creature card instead of a sorcery.
@juggernaut-is-a-metalhead Going for God tribal was a surprise! In theory the game plan this card suggests is solid. A 7/7 beatstick that increasingly becomes more costly to kill, should it unleash two tomes worth of mythology onto the battlefield. But in practice, a god heavy deck is tricky to build, and in my opinion the kinship trigger should be optional because if you draw a relevant god, you might actually want to cast them instead of waiting to use it after the doggo leaves.
@naban-dean-of-irritation If taking extra turns isn’t splashy I don’t know what it is XD Thanks for taking loops into consideration, but the kitchen table won’t be forgiving either way. Narset and Yennet would surely auto include this spell in their 99.
@misterstingyjack Spirit and Ninja is surely an interesting mix. The kinship trigger provides a ton of value and I like how it suggests the player to go for bounce shenanigans like ninjutsu or flicker to get maximum value. I am a bit skeptical about the power level but it requires some serious setup.
@shootingstarhunter The lost cousin of Lost Auramancers from Theros. On the one hand, you can exile cheap enchantments and thin your deck right away, and you may even get the card eventually, but on the other hand, if Starfield Summoner dies young, you will miss the card entirely. May the gods be with you.
@snugz Pretty ironic that a card named final moments is a permanent that helps you stay in the game for a lot of turns :p Jokes aside, I really like the dual purpose of the card because usually Fateful Hour cards offer two versions of the same effect. I could see this being a frequent choice in control oriented EDH decks.
@partlycloudy-partlyfuckoff One of the hardships of being a judge here is that you need to let go off your biases, and here’s a card that supports two tribes I love, that also comes from Lorwyn <3, and is a witty throwback to one of the most famous two-drops out there. In my heart of hearts, this is the winner of the contest XD I can’t help but wonder, would this be ok if it was a 1B 1/1, or it would lead faeries getting banned from many formats?
@col-seaker-of-the-memiest-legion Welcome to the fair! I think we all can tell the design could use some tidying up, like the missing creature type etc, but I will judge the overall direction this card is going.
Four abilities is usually a lot for one card, but let’s break them down to their very core and look at them
Search for “Trait Doctoring”
Red creatures can’t be blocked
Instants cast during the main phase gain cipher
Cast en encoded spell on attack, whether you actually manage to hit with the creature or not.
All in all, I can say you’re trying to tell a story with those four abilities, and the card would play nicely in a playtest. I really like the free trait doctoring part, abilities like these give new life to underused card and there’s a running trend of such designs in Yu gi oh when Konami decides to revisit old mechanics whose core cards lack the power of newer archetypes, so they make up for it with increased consistency. I recommend joining our Discord, for inspiration, help and feedback :)
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Go Back Couple made me cry it was so sweet and wholesome ;-;;; and it was really clever too! And I thought it said a lot about people it really made me think about how we really see only one or two sides of someone else in a relationship. I saw Hospital Playlist at the start of quarantine and I spent the whole time just being “I miss my friends!!” bc it has such beautiful friendships and platonic relationships (and cute romances too)
Also if you have more recs please share bc once this quarter finishes I really want to watch more dramas I’m collecting recs ^^
ooooh, i just read the plot of go back couple and i’m so curious, and i’ve added it to my to watch lost! and yessss, i’ve been meaning to watch hospital playlist! i think i watched the first 10 minutes of the first episode, but i never got around to continuing, but i most certainly will resume my watch once finals finish for me too :’))
oh yes, but as for more recs...well, there’s this list that i compiled a few months back, but since then, i’ve been thinking of other kdramas i’ve watched and liked, so...below the cut!
1. penthouse (1 & 2, renewed for a season 3, which will be coming in june!)
where to watch: viki (although with some kind of plus plan, but if you don’t have plus,,,here’s a place where you could theoretically watch)
favorite track on the ost: idk, i haven’t really been paying attention to the ost because like...this kdrama is also so incredibly focused on opera / classical music, and it’s actually introduced me to a lot of wonderful pieces, one of my faves being mozart’s die zauberflote.
listen: it usually takes me a hysterically long time to get through a new kdrama, but i was so invested that i got through the first season (complete with 21 episodes!)n within like,,,two or three weeks, and i have about 3 episodes left of the second season (which has 13 episodes!). this kdrama is just that good. it’s basically about these families living at this super fancy apartment complex called hera palace (which is fitting...hera, the queen of the gods, also the goddess of maternity...). honestly, there’s so much going on in this kdrama that it’s kind of hard to explain everything that happens, but essentially, the show opens up with the murder of a young orphan girl and works backwards from there. we learn about each of the families’ secrets, ambitions, and some really shocking twists and turns along the way.
honestly, i’m surprised by how much i love this kdrama. there aren’t a whole ton of likable characters--literally almost every character is deeply flawed and obvious about it, but honestly, the complexity and layers built into each character is worth it. we really see how environments shape people, especially with each of the family’s children. we see all these moralities clash with each other, and we see how greed and ambition can muddy those waters, even amongst the children. i’ve been super enjoying season 2 especially, because we’re learning even more, not to mention that i’ve been so surprised by the level of character development going on here. i won’t spoil anything, but like...it’s wonderful and impressive, and i cannot believe this kdrama has me actually rooting for certain characters. also, on another note: this kdrama does a lot with addressing exactly how far a parent would go for their kid--and it’s bonkers and wonderful. honestly...an addictive kdrama, full of suspense and drama and with deeply complex characters.
a fair warning: this kdrama is rated r, although i’m learning that rated r in south korea would probably pass off as pg-13 in the us--there’s more explicit scenes of violence, really harsh bullying, murder (of course), and implied sex scenes (nothing ever shown, very much a “camera pulls away” situation).
2. pinocchio
where to watch: viki
favorite track to the ost: pinocchio by roy kim
okay, this kdrama is...just really sweet, and again: i liked it a lot more than i thought i would? it’s a little older, like it started airing in 2014--but i just...really liked it. it’s about these two people from separate families (but they grow up together under the same roof, it’s a whole complicated thing), and both of them become reporters. the only issue is that one of the characters has pinocchio syndrome, which is basically that she can’t tell a lie without hiccupping. you’d think this makes for a goofy drama because of that, but this kdrama def. has a lot of heavyhanded/serious moments. it’s so weird to think this kdrama aired in 2014, just because i think a lot of the themes--all of them about truth and what counts as the truth especially in journalism--feel still so relevant today.
this kdrama also has a lot to say about generational trauma/the burdens we inherit from our parents and our older siblings, and it also has a lot of stuff about taking responsibility for the sins of our parents, etc. it’s so wonderfully and beautifully done, and i’m honestly...again, surprised by just how deeply they ran with this concept. the romance is also cute, although i’ll def. admit there’s some stuff that still makes me “???” but overall, i really enjoyed the actors’ chemistry with each other, and i was still satisfied with the ending!
3. fight for my way
where to watch: viki
favorite track on the ost: i don’t think this kdrama has too much of an ost? and i don’t think i was paying attention to the ost in this kdrama either, oops
i’m still watching this kdrama / have i think 5 episodes left of this kdrama, but i’ve been really enjoying it so far! it’s following the story of these four twentysomethings, and they all have these big dreams for themselves. unfortunately, they’re also twentysomethings, and achieving their dreams is...kind of hard. honestly, this kdrama is just so wholesome, and it has its serious moments, but i really love it. the friendships in this kdrama are solid, and the romance is super sweet, and it’s very much so the classic childhood friends to lovers that just makes me :’))
also, just like...it’s hopeful. and empowering. and just like, seeing characters go “i know this is hard for me to achieve and i know it would make so much more sense for me to just sit down with my head low and quietly accept where i am, but i’m going to pursue my dream anyways” just...idk, i feel like it’s a kdrama that a lot of young dreamers can relate to, and i really need to finish this kdrama, but it’s...really sweet and relatable.
4. space sweepers
where to watch: netflix
okay, so this isn’t a kdrama, but i need to rec this movie because it’s...so good. this is a science fiction film following this crew of...space sweepers. basically, earth is now uninhabitable/unsafe to live in, and the wealthy are all living on a repurposed mars. (bro doesn’t that sound familiar?)
in order to get money, a lot of people risk their lives by cleaning up debris still floating around orbit. these people are known as space sweepers, and they’re basically space janitors, only with a lot more flying and swearing. this crew winds up accidentally getting ahold of this mysterious child, who may or may not have a huge bounty on her head. i won’t go any deeper than that, but...this movie is so wonderful for its found family elements, and each character has such an interesting background, and i’m honestly surprised by how this movie went so deep into each character in such a short amount of time? (although honestly i would 1000/10 want a netflix series following each character’s lives just because)
admittedly, there’s some issues i have with this movie--like, idk, one character wears dreadlocks, and i’m just :/// about that, because :///// it really shows that south korea isn’t exempt from cultural appropriation. i still like the character, and i still like the movie overall, but that’s just a heads-up.
but besides that, this movie is really good at showing how sometimes the villain is just a wealthy old white dude, and sometimes family can really just be a ragtag team of outcasts, and sometimes it is really the younger generation that can literally bring hope and etc. it’s very much :’))
and that’s all i’ve got! thank u for asking me about kdramas, because...as you can tell: many thoughts.
#answered#i have....so many kdramas to watch too#like hospital playlist and king eternal monarch are def. kdramas i need to resume watching#and i've also....steadily been making my way through romance is a bonus book although i still don't really know how to feel about it#it's cute but i don't have too many thoughts/enough thoughts on it#i've just been watching a lot of lee jong suk's kdramas let's be real#i've also been meaning to watch what's wrong with secretary kim? because i remember liking it but i've only watched the first 3 eps#so i wasn't sure whether to rec it#tbh check back on me in a few months and i'll def. have more kdramas to rec asdfsfasdf#i now have the yearly viki plus plan and as you can tell: i am using it
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