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#sort of. a mini meta one might say
greghatecrimes · 2 months
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This scene in its entirety is one of my absolute favorites in all eight seasons, but in this clip specifically I want to draw attention to:
The change in House's voice before and after Thirteen tells him, "No, you don't know because I don't know." He is so utterly gentle and quiet when he says to her, "How could you not get tested?" There's no judgement there, no anger, no scolding. To me it's pure shock, concern, empathy. He cares. So much.
Thirteen's line: "Not knowing makes me do things I think I'm scared to do. Take flying lessons, climb Kilimanjaro, work– for you." She was scared to work for House. The whole season until then... she's been afraid that entire time. And, save for the moment with the patient in Mirror, Mirror– which we (the audience) are privy to and House is not– she hides it so well.
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somehow-a-human · 2 months
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GOOD OMENS SEASON 3 - Speculations/Predictions
DO NOT ASK NEIL ABOUT FAN THEORY
The GO brainrot is well underway, we’re only 7 months out of season 2 and I dont know how I will cope until season 3! But I have been ravenously consuming all of your lovely meta, fanfiction, and fanart and I have finally decided to add my messy ball of thought yarn to this hellsite!
Warning: this is going to be long and wild, I have no real life people to talk to about Good Omens, and I really need an outlet to gush about these ineffable idiots.
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SO! Shall we begin?
S3E1 will open with the great war/the fall. The opening of the previous seasons have been Crowley and Aziraphales earliest meetings, it makes sense season 3 will mirror this. I’m hoping we will get more context of their relationship; had they become closer after S2E1’s ‘before the beginning’ ? Will we see them going to war, will Aziraphale come face to face with Angel!Crowley on the battlefield? Will Aziraphale search for him among the fallen?
Somethings up… with memory. The way I look at it, season 2 was meant to bridge the storyline gap between armageddon and the second coming. It’s there to set us up for another world ending plot and also to give us context for season 3. I think the introduction of the idea that memories can just be manipulated willy-nilly by the big boss, and Gabriels little vacation as Jim serve exactly to show us that this happens. It says: look heaven does this! they were just casually going to do it to the Supreme Archangel, no questions asked. Crowleys memory, in this regard, has been a topic of debate. I think the biggest clue that he indeed has suffered some sort of memory loss is when he’s talking to Jimbriel who says he feels like “an empty house”. Crowley later finishes Jimbriels thought with “I know, looking at where the furniture isn’t.” I think he is downright kind to Jim in the bookshop and chummy with him because they have some sort of kinship, maybe from when they were angels, but more probably because Crowley feels it through the loss of Gabriels memories. Maybe he understands and relates in a way to what he is going through. His not remembering Saraquael or Furfur could just be chalked up to Crowley being an asshole sometimes. I think Crowley has definitely worked on recovering his memory some if this is the case. He remembers Aziraphale though from their time as angels so what specifically might he have forgotten?
Crowley will be a Duke of Hell/Grand Duke of Hell. Not only was Crowley offered the position by Beelzebub, but the blocking in that scene, where Crowley leans across the dual thrones to be in the very center seems to be foreshadowing it. I’ve seen multiple people make this prediction and it makes the most sense to me. What is Crowley gonna do on earth wallow and mope around the bookshop? Look he’s a disaster puppy yes but he’s also in love with the new Supreme Archangel. In the final moments of S2 he is sad, but he also looks determined. He’s angry, but I don’t think he’s angry with Aziraphale. And if there’s one way to keep an eye on Aziraphale and all this second coming nonsense, being a high ranking member of hell seems like a good idea to me.
Is Maggie more than human? Nah I dont think so. Look Maggies got a lot of weird stuff going on sure but I think her most important role in S2 was to be Crowleys mirror (and deliver the gut punch “you never say what you’re really thinking” but we are skipping that). Forget the masonic and biblical imagery associated with her, maybe all the mis-spelling in her note was showing us was that the bubbly blonde is tied to the demon instead of the angel like you might immediately assume? Sure Nina is edgy and closed off, but she’s the one in a toxic relationship, and she doesn’t realize how Maggie feels about her, not until an awning full of water (1941 nazi bomb) is dropped on her head. Maggie is patient and supportive of Nina. She ‘saves the day’ by grabbing her an array of milks from the mini mart in Ep6, and most importantly she says she will wait for Nina. When Crowley goes to get in the bentley after Aziraphale leaves for heaven, he looks first at Nina. She gives him a little ‘goodbye’ wave, then he turns to look at Maggie, she’s asleep at the register, waiting. I don’t think Crowley is angry with Aziraphale, he would’ve driven off if he was. Instead he stands there watching, telling him he’ll be waiting.
1941 Pt. 3 minisode. Okay everybody wants this I know. What happened to the zombies? They definitely listed to ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’ that night right? We know Aziraphale does the apology dance, presumably for 1. nearly getting Crowley shot by nazis, 2. blown up by a bomb, 3. caught “fraternizing” by hell, and 4. nearly making Crowley discorporate him himself with the bullet catch. Maybe they put on some music, and maybe they dance a bit together before Aziraphale remembers himself and says “angels don’t dance” or something to end it. In the Jane Austen ball scene when Aziraphale asks Crowley to dance, barring the subtitles are correct, Crowley replies with “you don’t dance?” not “WE don’t dance”. I think that’s an important distinction, that could point back to this night.
Book of life & Book of Love. Another thing S2 set up as cannon for S3 was the Book of Life. I have no clue what this could mean but I immediately thought of the Doctor Who episode “The Big Bang”. At the end of the episode, The Doctor doesn’t exist because wibbly wobbly timey wimey… stuff. But Amy realizes something isn’t right, that someone is missing. She ends up bringing The Doctor back through her memories, simply because ‘something loved cannot be truly forgotten’. What does this have to do with GO? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Just where my head is at, and I could see someone being erased from the book of life (one of our ineffable idiots for example) being undone in a similar vein. Love is the strongest force in existence, stronger than anything angels, demons, or God themself could understand.
Crowley will make a whale. Well, okay maybe that’s too literal of a statement? To be fair God never says to make a whale, Job says that's what he thinks she means. But look, he’s going to get to talk to God right? I think of the questions God asked Job. Did you set the constellations in the sky? Crowley did, S2E1 we watched him do it. Do you know the rules of the heavens? Crowley does, we even see him explain (gr)mavity to Jimbriel. Can you send lightning and get it to report back? Crowley can, we saw it after he got in his little argument with Aziraphale. Did you teach the ostrich to run? Maybe? Is this an allegory for telling Gabriel to go to Alpha Centauri? Or the peacocks to fly? Beez? Miss Sandwich? look its God okay not everything is going to be straightforward. Anyway, I think it’s clear our demon will get to ask his questions, he might not get answers, but he will get to ask the questions.
It begins as it will end, with a garden. Not the garden of Eden this time, but perhaps a garden at a cottage in The South Downs. Or.. maybe the Garden of Eden. If you've not read the short story "In The End" by Mr Neil Gaiman himself, please do, it's only a page long and it's lovely. I bought an extra copy of Fragile Things just so I could cut it out and glue it in the last page of my copy of Good Omens. Anyway, it's a brief but beautiful imagining of the last book of The Bible, in which God gives the Garden of Eden to humanity. I love the idea that human souls might return to Eden after their time on Earth. I also (and I know I'm in the vast minority) love the idea of Crowley and Aziraphale choosing to somehow embrace mortality to fully enjoy life on Earth with each other, and therefore themselves being able to return to the Garden of Eden with each other someday.
WELL! Did anyone actually read this? If you did, you’re insane just like me and I love you for it! Please let me know your ideas!
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bone-apple-teeths · 2 months
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Apollo has never blessed me with the power of prophecy and I doubt he will now but just in case I'm calling that Freddie (aka FR3-d1, the computer program that runs the OIAR) is also some sort of sentient or formerly sentient thing trapped in a computer that we just don't know about yet. An unknown rogue factor that yk might be evil and will definitely come into play later on.
So this half-baked mini theory spawned from when I saw someone somewhere say that the reason the OIAR works nights is because Freddie only works nights... which is super suspicious (I don't know if it's true though I don't remember hearing it in the podcast). And even if it's not, it's still not a huge logical leap.
I mean, we the audience have the omnipotent knowledge that Chester, Norris, and Augustus are (probably) Jon, Martin, and Jonah -- so why would the fourth and final named computer system be an exception? Admittedly he doesn't talk like the rest, but he still is what seems to be in control of funneling what statements to which person, and people are theorizing the statements are personally targeted (\which, just saying, has Web written all over it) like how Cecelia's first statement seemed like a giant TMA reference, Sam got one about the Magnus Institute on his first day, etc.
And yeah, maybe it's just the gays in your phone pulling the strings but I still think Freddie could be intentionally getting downplayed rn. Plus the irony of Alice naming and personifying the programs and then that coming back to bite her in the ass is not missed by me. And then further, more meta irony of us the audience going "hehe the OIAR have no idea there's little guys in the computer" and johnny and alex turning around and going "surprise! hehe you had no idea there was a little guy in the computer" could totally be something they'd do.
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stagefoureddiediaz · 11 months
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Costume meta 6x18
Wow I can’t believe I actually managed to write one of these (with all the additional mini metas) for every episode this season!!! if you’ve read, liked or reblogged and any all of my metas throughout this series then I just want to take a moment to say a massive thank you - it really means so much to me that you do take the time to read the epics I post, that you interact with them and that you ask me questions and seem to learn from what I say - sorry to everyone who now sees check pattern clothing out in the wild and gets worried 😬 it happens to me too - its good to have your company!
I’m so sorry that this has taken me far longer to get out that I had intended - my internet died on Thursday night and still hasn’t come back up (it has not been fun - who knew how internet dependant I’d become11!0 so I’ve had to find a cafe on my day of to actually get this posted (I live in a 4g dead spot too just to add to the fun!) Not going to lie - I am in need of a little break because these posts are a lot of work (you don’t want to know some of the side quests some of these posts have taken me on!!), but I love writing them so I plan to continue in season 7. I do have some fun stuff planned for the extended hiatus so while I might not post as much, I will still be around - making art and providing some costume related (and non costume related) things for you to enjoy - I have breakdowns for each character which includes spreadsheets and graphs (don’t get too excited - but they are actually interesting I promise!) in the pipeline as well as sorting out my pinned post as I’ve hit the link limit!!!.
Back to the costumes for this episode - it sure was an interesting one (when are they not tbh) with plenty going on for me to talk about! Apologies for the photos - it was really hard to get decent stills this week - everyone and the camera constantly moving!! As always the rest is  below the cut to save your dash!
Athena 
Athena has just the one costume this week - heading off on the cruise! I very much enjoyed her being in yellow and saying that she might not tell anyone about them actually being on said cruise! There are a couple of reasons why - firstly its yellow - the colour of communication - which means that her character is telling us something which is important. So Athena suggesting that they don’t tell anyone they are off on this cruise is the key point we need to take away from this scene - what that could mean - well its a throw back to when they attempted to go on the cruise the first time - they were communicating their departure then by being on the phone with Beatrice as they were leaving the Grant-Nash house so by not communicating they’ve gone on their cruise they are preventing another interruption from occurring. The other thing its communicating is that the lack of communication between Bobby and Athena and their family and friends could actually be a bad thing - its a bit of preempting costume design - if the show does indeed choose to go with some form of cruise ship disaster to open season 7 (less likely now that they have delayed the show until midseason, but it depends on how they choose to play the time jump!) then this line comes back into play - the 118 being sent to help with the disaster not knowing Bobby and Athena are on board would make for some very interesting storytelling and potentially parallel with the tsunami very nicely!
The other thing about this costume is the fact that we have bold block colour wearing Athena in a pattern - and a floral pattern at that. Athena doesn’t wear patterns - we saw her in a patterned shirt in 6x10 - when she was undercover and therefore it doesn’t count as actually being something Athena would wear
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Bobby
Again the only costume we see Bobby wearing outside of uniform is when he is leaving for the cruise, this is the same costume he was wearing when they made the first attempt at their honeymoon cruise . From a personal perspective this was done to provide continuity between the two scenes as Bobby shirt is the loudest and most obvious thing to carry that thread through for a general audience.
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Denny
Denny continues to wear muted tones post reconnecting with his biological father and we also have check on this outfit. The fact that the check is only worn down the sides could indicate either approaching trouble or trouble passing, for me it’s more likely that it is a sense of foreshadowing and will be connected to the Wilsons season 7 storyline revolving around the new baby that they will be bringing home as Denny will become a full blown big brother rather than the role he currently fills with the foster kids – that hovers somewhere between brother and friend. This costume is a bit blink and you’ll miss it and so it’s hard to get more of a read on it than the very basics.
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Karen
Karen is wearing her typical large print florals for both her costumes this week and we have the contrast of red - a colour of anger, passion and love with t he yellow of communication, happiness and optimism. the use of the two colours to bookend the episode perfectly play into Karens mini arc for this episode - from the love tinged with disappointment and anger (broken hearted rather than fury) over fostering - the constantly having to hand children back, to the happiness and optimism surrounding the baby girl they may very likely get to adopt. the colours rather than the prints are the things conveying messages for Karen in this episode. they also contrast her very well with Hen in her black and white and then orange.
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Hen
It’s really interesting that we have hen in this black-and-white check cardigan which is a parallel to the one she wore in 6×10 that one was red with larger neutral face emoji is and foreshadowed her anger over Denny contacting his biological father. This new one is more confused and the smaller design with the variety of boxes lines and neutral face emoji is creates a sense of confusion and also feels like it is chaotic in an organised manner it plays into both check theory and striped theory to a certain extent/theory foreshadowing the news of the baby they may potentially get to adopt and the cheque foreshadowing the upcoming disaster we see in the episode. the black and white also plays into the idea of Hen being settled into the black and white nature of fostering children - accepting the reality and highlighting the difference between now and when they had Nia - this is deliberate as it shows emotional progress, but it is also about emphasising the joy they experience later in the episode when told they will be getting a baby girl - its more impactful because we’ve seen Hens acceptance of their situation.
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Hen’s other costume for the episode is this orangey red shirt which both contrasts and matches Karen’s yellow floral print shirt it also fits nicely with the oranges and lemons we see on the kitchen countertop next to her. Orange is an optimistic and energetic colour, it provides emotional strength and joy in its positive outlooks however is -ones are connected with superficiality in patients and domination. I think in this scene we can take the positive traits of the colour as opposed to the negative as we get to see Hen and Karen achieve something they’d given up on – the possible permanent expansion of their family – and brings them both full-circle after their disappointment surrounding Nia.
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Chimney
Chimney is wearing a brown shirt with a black check pattern, brown is a colour of stability and reliability, it’s a grounding colour and chimney wearing it here indicates that where he is in his life is grounded in stable, his relationship and impending nuptials with Maddie are built on solid ground and overall this colour bodes well for their marriage. We do need to consider the cheque pattern as being foreshadowing for the potential exploration of Chimney storyline next season, whether that involves Madney actually making it down the aisle without problems arising, or if the show will explore some of chimney’s trauma in more detail remains to be seen however it does appear season 7 May begin a little bumpy for Chimney.
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Kameron
Kameron wearing both the light and Navy blues that we’ve seen Buck wearing throughout this season whilst struggling to open a jar of pickles was a direct reference to Bucks struggles with who he is and who he wants to be. The props and costume work together to hint at Buck getting himself in a pickle and struggling to successfully deal with his issues, the fact that Kameron needed someone else to open the jar is a reference to Buck needing somebody else to help him with his struggles whilst the pickles in both this episode and the previous episode are a reference to Buck dealing with one issue but not his others. The use of blue costume in this scenario tells us the viewer should associate that struggle with buck specifically as the show has taken great pains to show us buck in a huge amount of blue costuming this season. The blue costuming also refers to water and water finding its level this has dual meaning in that it is foreshadowing Kameron’s water breaking later in the episode as well as continuing water theme surrounding buck story arc. The costume (and props) parallel Kameron and Buck and tell us to relate their stories to one another - Kameron being in a pickle with her life - her relationship with Connor - paralleled with Bucks own romantic storyline - both of them looking for support in the wrong place - from the wrong person, instead of with their respective partners - Kameron seeking help from Buck instead of Connor and and Buck seeking answers to being seen from Natalia instead of Eddie.
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Cameron second costume one she’s wearing when she goes into labour continues the blue theme but also plays into the grey black-and-white theme increase seen in the scenes that appear to be re-shoots. The choice of daisies as appropriate for this dress as they symbolise innocence new beginnings and purity, they are also the symbol of fertility and childbirth.
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Maddie
Ok so unusually I am going to talk about Maddie in connection with both Marisol and Natalia because their costumes are all connected by stars!
Maddie is wearing black with a lot of stars in white, while Marisol and Natalia have sparkly stars in fewer numbers on their costumes. the difference is the sparkly nature of said stars whilst the stars make perfect sense on all three of them for their respective scenes, they have different meanings attached to them - both Marisol and Natalia’s stars are a play on the concept of fantasy and dreaming and reaching for the unattainable, there are fewer stars and the glitteriness is a play on the idea of all that glitters is not gold - that the seemingly attractive external appearance is not a reliable indication of its true nature - that it is superficial. That meaning does not work for Maddie, her stars are not glittery or sparkly, they are matt and there are lots of them - there is more substance to her and Chimneys relationship and it is a direct and deliberate contradiction to the relationships of Eddie and Marisol and Buck and Natalia - we are meant to see the contrast - the building of something which has had to be fought for versus the untested and insubstantial nature of both of the other relationships - it all comes back to what bobby told Eddie - Maddie and Chim have sat with each other, taken a moment and stepped into the mess - they are fully aware of the reality where as Marisol and Natalia are both untested and fit much more into the fantasy concept the show has explored this season and the fantasy rarely holds up when exposed to reality.  
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Natalia
Aside from the stars that I’ve spoken about above, it was an interesting choice to remove nearly all colour from Natalia’s costume for scenes where she is present when life is brought into the world. When not in her ‘work’ role, we’ve seen her wearing a fair amount of colour, even if black is nearly always present - lots or red and oranges and whites and greens, however she was all in black for the living funeral and here again we have her in predominately black, with a little bit of navy thrown into the mix the choice to use very dark colours is intentional and these dark colours play into her role as harbinger of death - she is representing death as life is brought into the world. I wrote a post about that scene and her presence in it and how it plays into the fact that death has haunted Buck since he was brought into the world. Natalia’s presence was necessary precisely because of what she represents and because death is still hovering in Bucks life - the fact that Natalia and Buck get together while she is still dressed in this way is very telling about her position in Bucks world - he is still focused on death and its being a part of who he is rather than seeing/ focusing on other things. It all plays back into the ‘she really sees me’ of it all - Buck wants to be seen beyond his death/ beyond the death that has shadowed his life, but he is still falling back into the safety of being seen for death rather than the life he is living. Natalia is a representation of Buck falling back on these safe behaviours and thoughts because he is fundamentally scared of being seen for who he really is and Natalia’s transition from the orange of their ‘first’ date to increasing levels of black in her subsequent outfits shows that representation in Bucks life perfectly.
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Interestingly though we get a direct contrast to all that black in the ‘morning after’ scene with Natalia in white shirt which is meant to be one of Bucks. Honestly - fascinated by this choice! Putting her in a shirt that is meant to be one of Bucks makes total sense, but they could’ve chosen any colour they wanted - Buck wears a lot of colour, but they chose a white shirt. A. White. Shirt. a white shirt that is supposed to be one of Bucks. We all know how things go for Buck when it comes to white shirts - it doesn’t end well - it leads to bad things! Natalia isn’t going to end well for Buck - the white shirt has spoken!. 
The other thing with the white shirt is its contrast to Buck being in blue/grey because it puts her in opposition to Eddie who wore black when on the balcony. The balcony is a place that puts her on the outside of things, she isn’t inside with the mess (the couch) and the colour white is considered both a colour of innocence and purity, whilst at the same tie being seen as cold, uncaring and bland. When placed in contrast to Eddies black- a colour of power, strength security and protection, things don’t look great for Natalia’s future, or her ability to understand and support Buck.
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We have to have a quick talk about Jo and Mallory for the simple reason that they are dressed in Buck and Eddies colours, despite essentially being representations of Christopher and Buck, the implication being that Christopher would retain a lot of the traits etc he has gained from Eddie, even if Eddie were no longer a physical presence in his life, and that Buck would’ve nurtured those aspects of who he is.
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Chris
Christopher in grey as a neutral tone is an interesting choice. The green, specifically khaki green hidden underneath is a nod towards Eddie and, the fact it’s hidden under the grey to me is a reference to Christopher accepting things because he thinks they’re what his father does. But also towards Eddie once again, doing things that he thinks is right for Christopher.
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Eddie
We can’t not talk about the St. Christopher being brought out at this moment! We haven’t seen this necklace since 4x14 when Eddie got home and its use here is so very intentional in a camper van that is essentially a microcosm of the will arc - all of the elements of Buck, Eddie and Christopher’s relationship is shown here in the camper - the will, the fridge, the couch, the coffee , the risk of explosion, and the earth mover van crashing into it, we even get similar camera angles and injuries. the entire thing is supposed to direct us to what that St. Christopher means, what it already represents and it is setting up next season - there is no other reason to include it otherwise.
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Eddie in blue and in check – blue being connected to Eddie and his family suggests that the check is foreshadowing rocky times for that family dynamic and hints that this new relationship will end poorly whether that’s by fizzling out or in some other way remains to be seen. The other thing about this blue plaid check shirt is that it also ties in with a couple of other things - Eddie rarely wears plaid check - only 4 times before now and generally these are tied with when he’s been having family issues - we see it in the flashback scene in Eddie begins that show family conflict, conversely he doesn’t wear check in flashback scenes where is mind and intention is clear (such as when he argues with his parents and stands up for himself before going outside and asking Chris if he wants to move to LA.) The only other times we see him wearing check and not in a flashback is very much connected with his struggles with Christopher - and being able to support him - feeling like a failure as a father (which he isn’t) such as when he is at Bucks taking about Christopher’s skateboard accident and wanting his kid to feel normal. The only other time we see him in plaid is when he helps Buck move Maddie’s sofa into her new apartment - this is the only scene we have Eddie in non uniform before he goes to visit Durrand and is told he’ll need to get back in touch with Shannon - its kind of foreshadowing the conflict of the school visit when they couldn’t very easily put him in plaid.
I therefore really intrigued by this choice to have him in plaid for this scene when we don’t see any family conflict - so its either foreshadowing upcoming family conflict, or its playing on the idea that he’s internally conflicted - doing what his family wants (dating a woman) rathe than what he actually wants, or if the conflict is going to arise from him including Chris in this new venture into dating (we all saw how well that went last time!)
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The other thing this plaid shirt is comparable with is Eddies Poker suit. Which has me all kinds of intrigued because it really does actually imply that the poker game was in fact going to be played as a ‘date’ (which would’ve likely played into the family conflict theme and thus been in keeping with all the other times Eddie has worn plaid) before they changed tack due to getting renewal and therefore didn’t follow through on whatever direction they had intended to take the Buck and Eddie storyline they had planned when they thought this might be the final season of the show. 
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Buck
Buck in brown with a vertical stripe, the brown suggests solid ground or in a stable place - so Buck is being presented as having made peace with the sperm donation, as well as being a stable place from which to try and help Connor and Kameron sort out their problems. The vertical stripes also play into the theme of vertical stripes we’ve see non him this season. Interestingly, we haven’t seen Buck wearing these vertical stripes around Natalia, which I would expect to see if their relationship was meant to last as the vertical stripes are very much connected with Bucks search for himself, in particular, connected to couch theory (this is the second time we’ve seen vertical stripes in connection with couches/ armchairs) - Bucks version of couch theory, not the second couch theory that he as a character isn’t aware of.
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We have this grey marl tee, which is green tinted - perfect choice for Buck delivering the baby he helped create in a scene that heavily played into Bucks own birth. The grey and green tones have been associated with Bucks arcs this season - either in relation to the sperm donation (the green tones) or the family he has been searching for and is on his way to finding/ fully comprehending (why he wears grey around Bobby and Christopher in their one on one scenes - its the father son relationships being more deeply established). so for him to have both on when he gets to be the one who delivers the child he helped to create is a great choice and plays into both themes - especially when he tells Connor to love that child at the hospital.
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The addition of the check shirt is solely about Buck starting a relationship with Natalia, and them getting together in a moment not that dissimilar to how Buck and Taylor got together - at a moment of Buck reckoning with something important - the trauma of nearly loosing Eddie with Taylor and now with Natalia his reckoning with the sperm donation and having delivered the baby he helped to create. This is a deliberate choice by the show to parallel the two moments, but the use of check is highlighting it further and telling me that this relationship with Natalia isn’t going to be as ling and drawn out as his relationship with Taylor was. Buck doesn’t actually wear check patterns all that often considering the amount of danger and trouble he gets himself into and we’ve seen him wear it in most cases in relation to mental health struggles (the Equestrian centre is a prime example - Buck trying to raise the shooting with Eddie and being unsuccessful because Eddie wasn’t ready - and its parrallel with the grave scene from this season when Buck isn’t ready in return) so for him to be wearing it a second time is short succession and both connected with Natalia (and thinking he’s finally being seen) doesn’t bode well for anything related to their new relationship.
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Buck wearing his watch for the balcony scene is very telling because the scene is meant to imply buck and Natalia spent the night together and this is the following morning when they address down and comfortable and she is wearing one of his shirts, however him wearing his watch suggests that there is already a countdown/ that there is a time limit on their relationship. 
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Buck grey blue tee parallel with hoodie from the Eddie balcony scene - buck not understanding or seeing things clearly. The new one is darker and less blue, which not only plays into the previously stated concept of not understanding, but also suggests that Buck is currently in a less receptive state than during his previous times wearing the blue/grey colourway. The other thing to bear in mind is that Buck wearing a dark grey plays back into his costuming around Taylor in last season - he wore a lot of grey, but there was a distinct difference between the lighter shades we saw him wearing around Eddie and Christopher (which was the building blocks his grey wearing this season was built off of) and the darker greys we saw him wear around Taylor.
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And there we have it - one very late but finished costume meta! I’m off to pray to the internet gods that my home internet will be fixed very soon (current date I’m being given is the 5 June) as I can’t survive much longer without being able to do the things I need and want to! if you want to send up a prayer for me then please feel free to help a girl out 😁
Thank you to all of you that have read one, several or all of my metas for this season. I hope this one was worth the read and I look forward to getting to write metas for whatever they throw at us in seasonn 7!!
As always and for the final time this season, tag list below! 💜💜💜
@mistmarauder @theladyyavilee @leothil @girldadbuddie @kitkatpancakestack  @buckscurls @lemotmo @trashendence @elishareads  @clipboardsandstethoscopes @comfortbuddie @fiona-fififi   @callanee @calyssmarviss @pbandjeremiah @batgrldes @spotsandsocks  @livingwherethesidewalkends  @idontshitpostbuttheolympicpark @diazboysbuckley @sweettsubaki @shortsighted-owl @sherlocking-out-loud @wh0rebehavi0r @favouritealias @hearteyesdiaz  @ktinastrikesback  @princesschez75 @bucksbuddie @oneawkwardcookie  @leatherati @moniquekatie @wanderingwomanwondering   @asharadaine @ajunerose  @talespinner230 @pop-kam @swiftiebuckleys @xxfiction-is-my-realityxx​ @butchjerry @mandzuking17 @yelenasbuddie @copyninjabuckley @name-code-black-widow @rogerzsteven @bi-moonlight @usercowboy​ @inthecarwithaboy @inandoutoffocus-blog​ @toboldlynerd​ @shammers86
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aquaquadrant · 10 months
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Apparently that ask opened my creative floodgates and I accidentally wrote a mini fic at like 11, and now, the next morning, I actually really like it! There are bits in it that I’d love to chat more meta about, but it doesn’t feel right to put them here with it. So here, if you’d like it, is my take on Tango’s first experience in a solo world, informed by my deep love and familiarity with what is probably our closest equivalent to the feeling of hopping into a new world:
Because, Ya’see, I’m a hiker, have been all my life, real, proper backpacking, and that feeling of waking up and being completely removed from human civilisation, surrounded only by wilderness, is very familiar to me. I’m probably gonna sound cliche for a minuite, but there’s a… centredness, sort of, a kind of peace, or something, that touches deep in your bones when you are miles and miles from even the nearest forest service dirt road, when there is nothing but wilderness. For me, that feeling is deeply comforting. There’s a pervasive sense of calm, and silence, and utter absence of anything man-made. After living somewhere that everywhere was either extremely dangerous, or extremely dangerous and populated, I think Tango would find that, the utter peace, so overwhelming.
He probably wouldn’t notice at first, probably even manages to start basic gathering and wandering and such. But eventually, he’ll pause for a moment, and he’ll be hit by the fact that his fist punching wood, and his own breath and footsteps is all he can hear. And he stops moving, stops shuffling feet and rustling fabric, and quiets his breathing, and stands completely still. And there’s… nothing else.
He can hear birds chirping.
And small animals scuttling.
And leaves rustling.
And wind.
And that’s it.
There’s nothing else. No one else.
If he stops moving, there is no player-made noise at all.
Not even the suggestion of it.
And everything else is so quiet. It’s so strange, when you’re used to always hearing some kind of noise, and suddenly the loudest sound is the intermittent breeze, and you realise how quiet the world really is. It is utter silence in the most peaceful way. (It’s my favourite feeling in the world and I still can’t accurately put it into words)
Occasionally, there are birds, and occasionally, there are animals, and it is the definition of peace. There is no one else here. Has never been anyone else here. There is an entire world and he is literally the only person in it.
There is no sound unless he makes it.
There is no one to come up to him, to distract him, to talk to him, to interrupt him. No one to have to lie to.
No one to hurt him.
No one will ever make any other noise here. If he stands completely still, only the birds and the wind will be heard. And if he doesn’t move, there will never be a player-made noise again. It will just be the wind and the birds and the animals. And it is so, so quiet. And yet so alive.
He shifts his weight and his clothes rustle and it sounds like the loudest thing in history. The birds and the wind are still so calm.
(No one to keep him from hurting everything)
(And yet something in the silence feels so right, so centerd and grounded and relaxed. Feels like the universe is saying it will take care of him, will wrap him up in the silence and make him part of the peace and rightness.)
(That shouldn’t be so terrifying)
He’s never been somewhere so quiet before.
He thinks he might be feeling every single emotion.
His knees give out.
He sits on the soft dirt,
On the never-trampled grass,
And he cries.
HEY…… OUCH??? oh, this… this was a great read. i love how you perfectly captured the atmosphere with simple yet descriptive words, it’s very impactful 👌👌👌 and GOD poor tango, you absolutely nailed the emotions. ty so much for sharing!
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avelera · 2 years
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Do I think Izzy Hands is an interesting character with complexity, who could eventually have some form of redemption arc or reveal hidden depth? Sure.
But do I think Izzy is already good, underneath it all, or that exhaustive exploration of his character’s actions as they’ve been presented to this point reveal him to already have hidden depth and to be more than a selfish, cruel, and small-minded antagonist to the story as it currently exists? No.
Honestly, I’m rather bored of most Izzy discourse, especially the takes that try to make the case that he’s already more than he appears. I think he could grow. I think we could learn more about him in the text. But as it is, to me he is only interesting as an antagonist and plot device. I don’t see him as a protagonist and I don’t see him being elevated to more than a side character, even if he does undergo the aforementioned redemption arc in some way. I don’t think there’s more to him and honestly I’m not all that curious in seeing him be more than an antagonist and interesting plot device. I simply don’t like his character enough as a person to do so.
I’m not going to tell people how to enjoy fandom. This is merely a comment on my personal taste.
Stede/Izzy is a NOTP for me, I enjoy their rivalry too much and what it reveals of Stede’s character and his capacity to exhibit anger and unexpected backbone. I think Ed and Izzy MIGHT have had some carnal knowledge of each other at some point, maybe, but if they did it was of even less importance to Ed than his relationship with Jack which was described as a “dalliance” because “anything goes at sea.” Sure, if there was a past physical aspect to their relationship, I think it meant a hell of a lot to Izzy but I don’t see any future for him with Ed that isn’t Ed at his absolute lowest and most depressed making some unwise choices. To me future Ed/Izzy is “darkest timeline” shit. Stede/Ed/Izzy is right out for me too in NOTP land. I ship Izzy with well written Dom OCs that I’ve seen in a couple fics and with anyone the show gives him along those lines in the future, but not with Stede or Ed. Ever.
All of this is really just to say, this is not an Izzy apologist blog. I don’t think about him much and I don’t intend to ever write him in fic as more than a side character or plot device, just as I see him in the show.
I don’t really care about the character’s happiness. I find his current form loathsome, selfish and cruel, myopic in his world view, uncreative and without empathy for others. I personally don’t think there’s much hidden depth there. I think at best he’ll grow or get some sort of redemption or emotional arc down the line, which I’m curious about but they could also end his arc with him dying as part of his comeuppance for what he did to Ed and the rest of the crew and I’d be satisfied with that too. I don’t think that will happen because Con is so lovely and they’ll want to keep him around, but it is a possibility I’d be fine with.
I don’t mind Izzy fans. I think a lot of the emerging Izzy meta from that corner of the fandom is interesting and sheds light on potential facets of the character or the wider story. I just personally don’t have much interest in that corner of the fandom (much like I had little interest in the Thranduil corner of the Hobbit fandom, or the Dis one for that matter). I’m into the show for Stede/Ed and for the humor of the wider crew antics. That’s what you’ll get on my blog and in any future fics I write. / end unsolicited mini rant
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blueiight · 8 months
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hello! how are you?
for the series ask, could you do lotgh?
hi! this question is framed so politely… im hangover grumpy but other than that im doing well..
Favorite character
cheating a little by doing this in tiers so empire side i like reinhard, kircheis, oberstein, reuenthal & hilde… alliance side i like yang, jessica, schonkopf (u notice i like good ideological challenges to MCs in this series) & julian
Second favorite character
n on the next tier of faves is mittermeyer, dusty, dominique, elfriede (an enemy of reuenthal is a friend of mine), frederica (if only tanaka knew women had interiority amirite), and many more
Least favorite character
its not so much least favorite character so much as it is i feel like bc tanaka really is so harsh about religion (& i say this as a nonbeliever myself but u cant deny that religion is a powerful social force) the entire earth cult as a concept really suffers in the writing of canon... and ova designers what the fuck was they doing w machungo’s design
The character I’m most like
ummmm ..i think if i said it id be subject to fines and cancellations so... u can decide ^_^
Favorite pairing
reinhard/kircheis, mittermeyer/reuenthal, reinhard/reuenthal, everybody/yang .. getting into crack pairs here dominique/el & ferobe :3
Least favorite pairing
its not hate cuz i love their dynamic but framing reinhilde as a love match is hilarious .. i can buy yang/frederica cuz yang is need of mommy doms but reinhilde is a lavender marriage. also ry would also be a lavender marriage to me the appeal of reinyang is yang to reinhard is like the girl that got away .. reinhard’s one true ‘equal’ that he could never gain supremacy over or sublimate into his camp. and yang has a sort of abstract admiration for reinhard as a historical figure but also recognizes that hes his ideological foe/nightmare of sorts in the present lol
Favorite moment
the kunmel incident itself, when reuenthal is at his desk in the ova and is like ‘this is everything in my life that built up to this incident’ (literally have a drunken thinkpiece about it somewhere on this blog), hilde saving reinhard at vermillion, reinhard & yang meeting..the dishonor gaiden (ngl i need me some thyoxin)+ ‘dont be nice to anyone but me and my sister kircheis’ gaiden …oberstein’s REDACTED
Rating out of 10
7.5/10, to me history, mini odysseys n shit n mythmaking by characters in a narrative is something tanaka seems to have a consistent interest in if u take his other works into account and i feel like u can tell that lotgh was his first foray into space opera & milsf w/o even getting into his other works .. theres lingering plot threads that dont rly go anywhere or arent answered satisfactorily (the entire earth cult-fezzan-lang connection is rly weak in terms of writing. yang disavowing conspiracies & terrorism as ‘impacting the flow of history’ couldve been a cruel stroke of irony if the terrorist conspiracy was in anyway narratively coherent).& an overarching motif of the series being the idea of ‘might makes right’ not only attracts an unsavory crowd of fans to say it politely.. but it also weakens a good bit of the series as yang is physically ‘weak’ but mentally + strategically a genius , he has no real conflicting force in his camp outside of schonkopf at a certain point where reinhard has oberstein hilde + reuenthal who all have their own ideological deigns on him as hes the leader of his camp. yang being so cerebral + very easygoing/bereft of the desire to have power dynamics despite being a military leader (seeing his subordinates as friends, rather than lord and master) makes him a very fun character but in later arcs it lends him to being a bit of a device/ insert for meta ideals more than having internal conflicts as a character of his own right & it makes me so sad bc just when he has one of his biggest dilemmas he CENSORED. also if the story dealt w/ reinhard’s final arc more (namely the revelation he has of REDACTED considering how much of his identity is built around his militaristic might) id rly love it. im speaking vaguely bc my friends r watching & ion wanna spoil and i also feel like im being mean to this series but i rly do like this series TTvTT
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bluelockednyx · 1 year
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thoughts on lunasae? u have them listed in your pairings, i was wondering if u could elaborate on them more specifically. i'm still conflicted on the pair myself. sometimes, i think it'd be a cute and funny ship that id love to see more content for. other times, it feels like it'd be wayy too draining to put anyone in a relationship with luna (probably just my own personal biases speaking though. it's tiring to deal with people who are so… backhanded. but i feel sae would probably handle his personality better since he doesnt really seem to take shit passively). i can see them as a couple… but like, one that's gonna break up in the future? or just a relationship where they just have the occasional hookup or sumn? idk, thats why im so interested on what u may have to say abt it. im also curious as to why u may like it over something like shidousae
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An ask for my other shipping log in Blue Lock!!!!
As always, a ton of rambling, so it's behind the read more.
On Shidou / Sae: they're on the lower end of my ship interest ranking, simply because there’s nothing in their interactions that particularly compel me towards them (those superbly gay lines to each other aside), and there’s not much of Shidou’s character design that interest me. My initial impression of him was some sort of spoof on the gyaruo subculture, and it really hasn’t changed much, hypersexualisation included. If there’s more stuff between them, or more development of either of them in the future I might get more invested, but for now I think that Lunasae could have a far more interesting dynamic and narrative, even if the authors don’t take it to where I think they could.
I get why you say that Luna is possibly tiring to deal with in a relationship. The way he talked to Rin? Not everyone can accept that kind of sarcasm and way of talking. But there’s quite a bit more to his character, even in his very, very brief appearance in the manga. It could really just be me overthinking things as usual, but I don’t think so. There’s some subtlety both in his character design and depiction that suggests that he is a character that has been given a fair bit of thought by the authors, so I’m running off of that. This is gonna be a little all over the place, so bear with me.
As a very, very minor character, there’s not much screen time for Luna, but there’s a ton of stuff we can extrapolate from his very brief appearance.
His interactions with Rin in the vs World 5 miniarc is really fun from a writing perspective. On the surface and in a quick skim through, the impression that he gives off is that he’s sarcastic and rude, but his actions with Rin in the mini arc tell a different story. He first deescalated Rin’s provocations (to Rin’s benefit, might I add) and neatly keeps Dada, Pablo and Adam from Rin after that by turning Rin’s attention, and Rin’s ire, onto himself. And how does he do it? By talking about Sae, praising Sae, even, to Rin’s face and saying he’s looking forward to see how Rin does.
During the match he gives Rin valid criticism and points out his weaknesses, and towards the end after Isagi and co. have given up on winning the match, while Rin is still trying to win, he even goes so far as to say he’ll face Rin sincerely. After he scores the last goal, he immediately reassures them as well, reminding them that this is an evaluation, and that they were never expected to win. He even tells them (foreshadows?) to meet in an official match next time. All in all, I think Luna has a sharp tongue on the surface, but he’s also pretty subtly caring with a certain level of emotional maturity and astuteness at handling conflict. Also seems to be a bit offbeat, judging by how Loki had to point out that he was being rude for him to apparently notice it.
I’m gonna dive a little more into meta about character design, since there really is so little we have about him in the story right now.
I’m going to start off with his name: Leonardo Luna. Luna was the part that really jumped out at me first, because one of the most common uses of Sae’s given name, the Japanese kanji, is to describe nights and shine, e.g. 冴えた夜、冴え輝く, both of which well, can be easily linked to the moon, thus Luna. The moon shines brightest in a clear night, after all. :D
For Leonardo, the meaning is lion-heart, and there’s a ton of positive connotations with the name of course, mostly to do with bravery, but I also like the implied meaning of a lion at the head of its pride, caring for the cubs and its pride members etc.
Then Leonardo’s nickname: the Noble of Real Madrid. Probably something in there about how he’s probably noble-hearted, tying into his given name, but there could also be something about Leonardo being a Madrileño and perhaps a legacy player of sorts, with older family who had made names for themselves in the sport too.
I’ve said before that I like them as an asshole x asshole ship, though in all fairness that’s pretty much all of the Blue Lock characters and ships. Just thinking of the both of them being judgy assholes together is hilarious to me, along the veins of Sae outright insulting someone to their face and meaning it, then Luna at first seeming to come to the other person’s face, then delivers another backhand insult way worse than Sae’s without intending to be rude is a comedy bit for me.
From what little we’ve seen of Luna, he seems to be a little fond of teasing people. Maybe a bit fond of leading people around the nose, with the way he played against Rin that time. I think that Sae is okay with that. Sae doesn’t give Shidou a hard time for any of it in the U20 match, even going along with it, somewhat. The only time he got pissed was when Shidou leapt onto his back without permission after Shidou got his second goal. When Oliver outmaneuvered him, Sae too, went along with it and continued playing in the match.
I think they both appreciate the hard truth, and have a pretty level-headed view of things overall (arguably you can’t get far in competitive sports without being able to do that, but y’know). Leonardo certainly doesn’t hesitate to say that he believes a Spanish guy could win in sumo more easily than Japan could win the World Cup in football, and its the same poor opinion that Sae himself has about Japanese football. They’re both also pretty decent at guiding/giving advice to others – I’d even say that Leonardo and Sae had some parallels to each other when they were with Rin and Shidou in the World 5 miniarc + U20 arc respectively, talking about Rin and Shidou’s weaknesses and how they needed to get better.
They’re both also more subtle with how they care for people, and we can see it in how they treat Rin. I just talked about how Luna looked out for Rin in the World 5 miniarc, but Sae is similar too. I’ve talked about how Sae treated Rin badly, but he’s still mostly a good brother to Rin: he didn’t scold Rin when Rin interrupted his match when they were children, he played and pushed Rin to be better with him, before he went to Madrid he was worried about how Rin would do without him since it’s implied Rin has never played without him up till that point. He would have ditched the U20 match after seeing Rin score, even saying that he has ‘seen what he wanted to see’, which strongly implies he just wanted to see Rin doing well with the Blue Lock project. He also thinks very highly of Rin’s capabilities, and his word choice shows as much when he talks about Isagi to Rin at the end of the U20 match (RIP Rin for not understanding the subtlety and having better insight to Sae’s thoughts).
Luna mentioned Sae specifically to Rin. It could be simply a minor detail more to distract Rin than anything, but I’m inclined to think that Luna has watched, or maybe trained a bit with Sae before despite the age gap. It’s not unlikely, since Sae is one of the best young talents around within Real’s Youth system. Clubs try to train up their own people irl and move them up if they have potential. There’s probably some level of regard he has for Sae there. On a more speculative note: I wonder if the authors are implying that Luna took the part-time job with Blue Lock because he was interested in Sae’s interest. Sae cancelled his return flight to Spain just to observe the Blue Lock project. It would have made some buzz in Real, especially if Sae is a core figure of Real’s youth team and that well-regarded, which I believe he is.
Also, Luna’s a world-class player, I can’t imagine Sae considering his butt as unattractive lmao.
Beyond that, I think Luna could be a fantastic foil to Sae, if the authors take it that way. Given the name etymology I discussed above, it would be amazing to have their stories paralleling each others: Leonardo, as a true blue Madrileño, growing up and achieving international success in his hometown and home team, vs the struggles that Sae had to go through while living out the basic immigrant story: of searching for greener pastures overseas to fulfill his dream, the hardships from living in a very different culture etc. Potentially quite a bit of drama, such as microaggressions, racism + bullying, the need to work twice as hard to prove himself to get at the same starting point others already are, the child exploitation that exists behind the whole sports youth system; basically a side commentary of a ton of social issues, which, again, I kind of doubt they’ll dive deeply into. It’s a bit too heavy, I think, for your average shonen sports manga, but who knows.
Then there’s the whole bit of the career paths both have chosen and are succeeding in: Luna as a world-class forward, and Sae as a genius midfielder part of the current generation's world-level players. There’s a fair amount of conflict and, well, story that could be in there too. We have nothing yet about the full reasoning behind Sae’s decision to change his dream, so *shrug* imagination, here I come.
Also I wonder why all the forwards Sae's been shown to play with, besides Rin, are blonde. Hmm?? Hinting at something, Kaneshiro-sensei??? Does Sae have A Type beyond the butts???
On the shippier side, I do believe they can have a pretty easygoing dynamic going on between them. A lot of easy banter, not quite like Shidou and Sae's conversations in the U20, but similar. They both definitely like the high life too, and I wouldn't put it past them to be the type who'd have super expensive dates and have them on a whim too, like, idk, a spur-of-the-moment trip to Paris or something.
And there's the typical drama involved with an age-gap relationship, plus the side dishes of navigating an interracial relationship, and a queer one, in a pretty homophobic environment overall. Especially when you remember that Sae himself is a perfectionist. It's an excellent bedrock for all sorts of character and ship dynamic explorations. All fun stuff to explore and think about.
TLDR; I like their individual aesthetics. I like what we’ve seen of their individual personalities. I like the potential they could have, both their commonalities and their differences. There’s a lot of story that could be there between them, and I have a ton of fun imagining dumb shippy and not-so-shippy stuff between them. So that’s why I ship Lunasae.
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Jukebox reviews part 40! For context, see my post “A Project” under  this same tag. If you want to see a full list of his EMCSA stories,  they can be found here, sorted alphabetically.And if you want to see some of his drabbles, check out his blog at @jukeboxemcsa
 Z-Word
 date uploaded   date updated     Tags
4/14/2018                                     mc mf md
Ok, but *what's the word though?* I spent the whole story distracted by what the word might even be! Also, Jukebox, you may have accidentally stumbled into one of the more ... shall we say heated? ... debates in paleontology, though it's cooled a *little* since 2015. But paleontologists are not entirely in agreement on whether or not brontosarus is a valid name - and even using the proposed model from 2015 brontosaurs is a genus, not a specific species, though I assume she's looking at B. excelsus ... oh, sorry, hobbiest paleontologist mode was activated >.> This story is fine, if I put my particular paleontology interest aside for a bit, though it's a little too good at pricking my curiosity and then not giving me an answer for it!! I enjoy the sense of process here, the hints that it's been going on longer than Amber realizes, and all, but also I'm a little *too* like Amber for this not to poke at my brain. 9/10 spirals 
 Hands and Knees
 date uploaded   date updated     Tags
4/21/2018                                     mc mf md fd
This is a fun varient of a trope, and I really enjoy it on a meta level, though the in-the-text level is not as much to my speed. It's too much of a sex-focus for me, even when that sex is being used for the method of control. Still, it's a good story! But saying much more would spoil some of the fun. 7/10 spirals 
 Your Horoscope for Today
 date uploaded   date updated     Tags
4/28/2018                                     mc mf ff fd
Heh, well, these are probably more accurate than most horoscopes! It's a clever premise, and an entertaining set of mini-trances! I recommend everyone give these a read; just don't put too much stock into what a single saggitarius says about the stars. 10/10 spirals for pure creativity 
 Front Porch Thing
 date uploaded   date updated     Tags
5/5/2018                                       mc ma
This one is ... odd. It's the very magic control I tend to dislike, and by a plant at that. If you like non-human controller, give it a read, but that isn't what I look for in my MC erotica. Add in the mild surreal horror vibes and it's not for me. 3/10 spirals 
 Autopilot
 date uploaded   date updated     Tags
5/12/2018                                     mc ma
oooh, this is clever. Also I love Ashley's excitement to see new technology at work, even if it maybe wasn't the safest technology ever. Ah well, it got her to her destination safely, anyway, so there's that at least. Though now I'm wondering what would have happened if she'd said no to creating a profile? Hm. It's a wonderful premise, though, and seeing her go from mildly irritated to docile is lovely. 8/10 spirals 
 Kill 4 U
 date uploaded   date updated     Tags
5/19/2018                                     mc mf md
Aw, poor 4U being in a situation where she knows something is coming, but unable to do anything but obey the commands she is given. I'm curious to see where this is going, and what the fallout of the behind-the-scenes power struggle is. (And how this story, and the power struggle within it, relates to the previous 4U story, which also hinted at a power struggle of this sort.) At this point I'm more engaged in the plot than the control - not that that's a bad thing! 9/10 spirals 
 Just Another Story
 date uploaded   date updated     Tags
5/26/2018                                     mc ff
So is it even more meta-textual if I'm reading (for review purposes) a story about someone reviewing a story about someone reviewing a story? And of course, messing with the text a little intentionally (like a paragraph that gets repeated exactly) just adds to the meta-everything. It's a good story conceit, though the level of abstraction and the framing do make it slightly less in my own personal sweet spot. 8/10 spirals 
 Smells Like Teen Spirit
 date uploaded   date updated     Tags
6/2/2018                                       mc mf md
This is so firmly pseudo-science-y, but also the power of scent as a method of overwhelming someone is A+. So I'm a bit torn here between "yes, I love this method" and "but that can't even work that way" here. The rest of the set-up isn't quite for me - I can feel her terror a little too strongly to enjoy things. The fear, the desperation, just are a turn-off for me. Even though we see it melt away as she surrenders to the perfume. But if that isn't a turn-off of you, it's a solid story. 6/10 spirals 
 Resistance
 date uploaded   date updated     Tags
6/9/2018                                       mc ff
Oh, I do love warping science terminology in ways that don't quite work except as a hypnotic induction. Like, I can put the "that isn't how the science works" away because the science isn't the point, it's using it as a metaphor that the hypnotized brain will understand and that just... *yes.* (Not that I have a partner who commented that she needs to study up on chemistry fractionation now to use it because fractionating me with fractionation sounds fun or anything. Oh wait, yes I do.) And I know just enough electricity and magnetism-based physics to follow this! It's a good use of the way electrical resistance works, and playing on words with different meanings in different contexts. 9/10 spirals 
 Looking Out My Window
 date uploaded   date updated     Tags
6/16/2018                                     mc ff
Ah, the powerful lure of one of the Fae, inevitable, irresistible, intoxicating. Add in the power of a song that overwhelms the senses, and, well, it's a lovely image, even if the sort of numb dread that the story starts with isn't to my taste. After we get to the part where our narrator is staring out the window, though, well, it's a lovely story of control and magic and the power of the fae in ways I adore. Yes, it's all magic, but in a hot way, and I love the description of the faerie lights. 9/10 spirals
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less-than-three-3 · 1 year
Text
played metroid prime just like everyone else on the planet, apparently
it was ok (for a metroid game) (that means it is still pretty damn good)
But I can’t lie, given the reputation this game has, I was somewhat disappointed. For transparency, I did play it m+kb on my microsoft wii, though if I had shelled out the price for the remaster I doubt my experience would have been much different lol. Explanation below, with spoilers?
I’ll start with what it does well though, and that’s being Super Metroid but in 3d. In terms of exploration, how the world is presented, how you progress, etc. was translated to 3d pretty perfectly. Having pretty much no guidance and a full map, but still having one or maybe two actual correct ways that, if you just keep going forward or think about what you’ve seen before, you can find really easily. Honestly, in many ways, it just kinda feels like a really really big zelda dungeon. Or maybe zelda is a mini metroidvania. You decide! You can really see the bones of this game in so many modern metroidvanias. There’s not even really things you need to shoot a million times because of scan visor! 
And yeah, the scan visor is really cool. Being able to just scan to find out how to approach enemies, or how (or when) to get past obstacles, or learn stuff about the world is pretty neato. The other visors, though, were... ok, I guess. They aren’t interesting to use or anything, just *necessary to see certain enemies*, which I guess is fine just not nearly as interesting as scan visor. (They are also sort of an eyesore, and I imagine the remaster does improve on that)
Speaking of needing a thing to beat certain enemies, I just really hate the space pirates and drones and metroids that have a certain element that they can be hit by. This might just be some bias but I feel like they just take way too long to kill compared to their 2d counterparts, and being forced to use, say, ice beam (which shoots slow as hell) is just a slog. It kinda leads into my first major gripe, being that the combat feels like it takes a little too much of a spotlight for how... admittedly boring it can be. And this is with m+kb controls making aiming a lot better. I don’t really know if it’s actually just later enemies having too much health but the shooting doesn’t feel *that* fun or fluid, like in the 2d games, or out of the way, like in ori 1. Like if it was just a minor thing you just don’t have to think about I wouldn’t complain, but since fights take so long I can’t help but just be a little underwhelmed. 
It is definitely exacerbated by my second gripe, which is just that enemies, and especially bosses, are not that interesting? Like they have 1 or 2 attack patterns that you can recognize and dodge, and then you have your turn and you shoot them in the weak spot or with the weak element, rinse and repeat for however long. I think I can give it a little bit of a pass for how old the game is, but I just didn’t really feel that engaged by the bosses. Maybe that’s just a boss design thing and not the combat? I don’t know. Something in there just felt underwhelming.
One last thing to complain about, I promise, but I felt pretty much the entire last “act” was kind of... eh? I didn’t really care for the artifact hunt, it felt a little annoying (especially having to go through the space pirate research base again...). And then the back to back to back of Meta Ridley, Metroid Prime, then Metroid Prime again just really made a point of showing me the totally awesome boss fight design. Especially the final Metroid Prime form which I thought would be like Dark Beast Ganon like oh cool I super zap it to deal a ton of damage.... and then it dealt like maybe 1/10 of its health bar. And then it started summoning more metroids, some of which were the annoying ones. So it was just a really really... fun.... “I have my turn (for a full minute) and then you have yours (for 10 seconds)”. And to then top it all off, I don’t even get an evacuation sequence?? :/
This one’s a more minor, personal issue, and that’s just that I really don’t care to read so much lore. Environmental storytelling and worldbuilding, and ambient mood setting are things that I think Super Metroid perfected and nothing has really met, and that’s something I still believe even having played Prime. If you want to deliver story beats/developments/realizations in a game like this, you show don’t tell. I’m not delivering like a crazy revelation here, any writer knows this lol. But like, for example, to show that, say, the space pirates experimentations of phazon with metroids, instead of a bunch of space pirate data logs to read, there could have been like, idk, some metroid encounters or you see a metroid escape that looks unstable and oozing with phazon. And the chozo artifacts could definitely have been better tied to the phazon stuff too. It’s why I’ve always really enjoyed Fusion and Dread, even if they are departures from the way things are presented in Super, because they actually commit to narrative telling. Maybe I’m off base here, idk, but I just really wish there were less lore tablets and more intuitive things or like even straight up character interactions to show me what’s going on. I hope Silksong improves on that, but I doubt it. Wait what game are we talking about again?
Ok but enough negativity, I really enjoyed everything up to then. Like I said the actual metroidvania parts of it were really excellent. As good as Super Metroid? Not quite, but I do consider that pretty much peak metroidvania performance, so that’s a very high bar. It emulates it super well, and I was definitely really enjoying the full loop of unlocking and going further into the planet. The music too, was really good -- but again Super Metroid’s soundtrack is simply a masterpiece that I think even the 3DS and Switch’s adaptations/remasters of the same tracks don’t hit the same. 
All in all I think that’s pretty much a really good way to put it. It adapts Super Metroid’s strengths very well, but not quite to the extent of it, and some things do just get lost in the transition to 2D and 3D, I guess. It’s different from Fusion and Dread because those games are unabashedly more straightforward experiences, while still maintaining pretty much all the Metroid backbone and blood. It’s trying the same thing, but in a different form. I can respect it, but it’s definitely not my favorite. Which is a high bar! For reference I still end up rating this game pretty much a 9/10 - which may seem odd given all I’ve said, but I think for the most part this really hits the mark, and Metroid has just a really super good backbone, there’s just some.. growing pains? idk. I’ll definitely play the rest of the trilogy. I did see Dark Samus escape from metroid prime so... I think the next 2 games will definitely up the ante. Or maybe they won’t. We’ll see.
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miloscat · 2 years
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[Review] Anodyne 2: Return to Dust (PS5)
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Surreal but so real.
After playing the first Anodyne a while back I expected that the sequel would be a similar love letter to a retro game style (in that case, top-down 2D adventure, now low-poly 3D exploration) with a similarly abstract story. What I got was that, yes, but so much more: a genre-bending odyssey, with a story more concrete yet more surreal, more confronting but also more touching. It’s hard to sum up!
In the world of New Theland, Nova is born fully formed as a Cleaner. Her task a sacred duty handed down by the godlike Center: to combat the plague of Dust threatening the domed city and its surrounds. This Dust distorts the minds of the denizens, warping their desires and worst tendencies... or does it? Suffice to say there’s a few twists and turns; I expected there to be some reveals but the directions the story took were affecting nonetheless, even told mainly through simple text cutscenes.
When it comes to exploring this charming and off-beat world with its tragic and poetic undercurrents (offset by moments of levity and satire), the low-poly style is less than half the picture. Taking a cue from Melos and Marina’s earlier game All Our Asias, which also featured similar low-poly 3D exploration, you will be exploring the abstracted inner worlds of a bevy of bizarre characters. These sections see you shrink down to “Nanoscale” and enter a direct successor to the Anodyne 1 gameplay style; you even revisit an important location or two. Rather than a broom you have a vacuum which opens up various fun possibilities for combat and puzzles, as you solve the characters’ subconscious problems in a variety of self-contained and uniquely designed mini-dungeons, each one a harrowing tale of personal dysfunction and connection. There’s even sub-sub “Picoscale” locations later on which take on ZX Spectrum-like aesthetics!
This three-scale retro-look dynamic reminded me of the excellent Evoland 2, not to mention the additional-genre minigames/phases. In this game you can transform into a car for mobility while exploring the expansive yet contained 3D overworld, and entering another’s mind initiates a rhythm game-adjacent sequence. There’s other one-off interludes as well, including a very memorable section where you’re whisked off to a sort of mini-horror game in isometric pre-rendered style. Even traversing the overworld plays with genre by introducing collectathon elements partway through that, in a very intentionally discomforting way, creates dissonance with the story and additionally opens up a layer of meta-commentary about the game’s development. On top of that the game expects you to start experimenting and breaking the rules to find all the secrets.
In some ways it’s a very challenging game, but not in difficulty: it challenges convention, and challenges the player to consider what they’re doing on multiple layers. Some of the narrative elements could have been followed through on more thoroughly but that might just be me hungry for more. The realities of a low budget and two-person development team make for a somewhat limited scope, but one brilliant and unique experience, bursting with passion, full of characters who look ridiculous but who embody raw emotional honesty, full of joyously normalised queerness, full of weird obscure rabbit-holes. It’s quite a special game and I’m so glad I played it (and also glad a friend encouraged me to explore more of the postgame of Anodyne 1 beforehand).
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April 27: The Fandom Experience
I saw a post that I basically agreed with but instead of reblogging it I’m making my own post saying something very similar. It was about what qualities in a piece of media make it fandom-izable. I actually have thought about this a lot. For me, first off, a true fandom experience is one that’s centered on transformative works. I have been in fandoms where that aspect was fairly small—but those have been experiences that sit on the edges of the definition, for me. Like being obsessed with the same thing as my friends in high school: we were a mini IRL-fandom-group, doing a lot of the obsessing and discussing and squeeing you would do in any fandom, but we’re also just friends hanging out. In a completely different way, Star Trek is a complex fandom experience for me, for reasons I’ll get into. But speaking really generally, “getting into fandom” for me is “writing and reading fanfic related to this piece of media.” There might be other activities, too, like discussions and meta etc., but the transformative works aspect is central.
So, yes, I agree with the original post that, paradoxically, media that is too good is not ripe for turning into a fandom. If a story feels complete in and of itself, well-told and compact without filler, with all of the parts accounted for, everything working together perfectly to tell THIS story exactly as it needs to be told, and upon completing it, I feel satisfied and content, that’s an excellent story. That’s a wonderfully made piece of media. I will appreciate it. I will love it. I may even be lowkey obsessed with it for some period of time. But there’s nothing for me to do, you know? I neither want nor feel like I can contribute anything to this. Similarly, anything I love too much or think is too perfect becomes too intimidating for me to touch.
On the other hand, I disagreed with the OP that media that is ‘bad’ or a real hot mess is really where fandom comes in. The very first ingredient is I have to like the thing, you know? I have to really like it. It has to live rent-free in my head, and it needs to stay there so long that eventually I start thinking, ‘hey what if I helped it stick around longer by writing fic of it?’
So I think for me there are really three elements organic to the media itself that makes it a potential fandom for me:
It’s good. The most obvious one perhaps but essential. Fandom is about loving the thing. You can also be critical of the thing; you can eventually develop a love-hate relationship with the thing, but if at the core, you don’t love it, then why would you waste your time on unpaid labor relating to it? This is ‘fun work,’ basically. You’re not getting paid so you better be having a good time. This is the element that sparks the initial interest, that makes me want to keep thinking, and thinking, and thinking about the thing. But this element is also present in a lot of works that I have no fandom-ish interest in.
But it’s not too good. I need to feel like there’s some sort of transformative works space. One element of this is that if I think the original is just TOO good and TOO perfect, I won’t feel comfortable getting in and playing around with it myself. This isn’t fully rational, but it is true. Another related element, which is also an aspect of point #3, is that if I feel the story this media is telling is complete, I won’t feel any need to mess with that story: it’s done.
It includes a variety of diverse elements and feels open. This one is hard to boil down into one sentence because this element can be present in a variety of different ways, but another way of distilling it is: there’s room to play. If the story feels complete and perfect in and of itself, there’s nothing for me to do, no transformative works space. I can love the thing (see the related point #2), but I won’t enter the fandom for it. On the other hand, if the media has an expansive world, or a large number and variety of characters, or an open story with a lot of blank spaces—or, yes, something to fix, though again if there’s too much to fix I won’t even get to this step—then I feel creative and inspired and interested.
This framework doesn’t fully explain every fandom experience I’ve had but the fandoms I’ve felt the strongest about and been in the longest tend to fit it very well. If number 3 is lacking or weak, I might be there for a while, but then leave when I sort of run out of things to do, or when the fandom itself breaks up or weakens as a whole and the community is gone. (Presence of community is sort of a 4th element, but I don’t pick fandoms based on popularity or ‘where people are going’ so I didn’t include it.)
I think this explains why I’ve been in T100 fandom for 334879098347 years: because it is a pretty paradigmatic example of how this works in my brain. The first two seasons are excellent, and season three had a lot of interesting ideas and standout episodes, even though it also struggled a fair bit with execution. So, they definitely check off box 1, and part of box 2 as well: they weren’t perfect, and there was a lot of space, especially in S3, for ‘what if what you were trying to do but better’ type transformative works ideas, but it was still really excellent in a lot of ways. Then seasons 4-7 were a straight up unwatchable hot mess. But their existence kept the fandom going such that I still had a community to hang out in even though I’d totally ceased watching the show by the end of S4. And 7 years is a long enough time, enhanced by it being a week-to-week show, for that community to grow and develop and stabilize, that even though that community has shrunk severely, it’s not totally dead or not worth contributing to.
And finally and most importantly, it definitely fits box 3: an ensemble cast so huge I would actually argue that maybe it was too huge; multiple locations; expansive but also half-assed worldbuilding… there were a lot of IDEAS in this show and an extremely wonky execution that’s really just perfect for transformative works creation. And (some of) the characters being the show’s strongest asset makes it easy to use them as basically just crutches for original storytelling, when you want to go so far off the canon that you’re basically one step away from filing off the serial numbers.
A fandom like Star Trek is a little harder to fit into the paradigm. AOS fits in fairly well and that’s been my main ‘online Star Trek fandom’ in a lot of ways. Certainly that’s where I was almost exclusively in the STIX era. I have a real fondness for these movies but they’re also hot messes. The characters are endlessly interesting (even I actually only care about a fairly small number of them personally) and the universe is literally very expansive. TOS is harder because it doesn’t check off Box 2 for me. Like I really do see it as intimidatingly perfect and I don’t want to mess with it. I have only barely dipped my toe into any sort of TOS-based fanfic writing. But I also have been in the fandom for it in the broader sense since I was a kid. Outside of the transformative works aspect, I interact with it in a very fandom-y way: rewatches, meta, discussion, but also fan conventions and involvement in the shared-fandom-community spirit that really defines the phenomenon outside of transformative works. So I guess what I’m saying is that it is a very normal fandom experience but it’s divorced from that fanfic-centric aspect that otherwise controls my fandom experiences.
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britesparc · 2 years
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Weekend Top Ten #553
Top Ten Music Videos
So, music, yeah? Alright, innit? I’ve never been a big muso-type person. I’ve never been one to read the NME or Q particularly, to follow a band religiously and find out all about them. But music videos? They’re like little films. Them I can get behind.
Back in my CITV days I liked using commercial tracks in my promos (I mean, I always like using commercial tracks in my promos, but I find other companies are a bit more proscriptive either for financial reasons or for reasons of tone and content). The best way for someone without an in-depth and far-reaching knowledge of the music industry to find good tunes? YouTube. Or at least that’s what I find.
Anyway, there’s always something cool about music videos. As a cultural artifact, their popularity really ties into the rise of MTV in the eighties; yeah, people made videos before that, but I’d say what we consider a video now – the artform – is effectively a product of the eighties. Nowadays, with TV broadcasts of videos essentially rendered an afterthought, YouTube is the place to debut them; they become mini-events, more cinematic in presentation sometimes, free of concerns of censorship or audience. And, of course, a music video is a great playground for artists – not just the musicians but the directors, the designers, the animators. Loads of A-list Hollywood director started out making music videos.
But what makes a good music video? I think, like all art, the answer is “it depends”. It’s cool when there’s a visual and stylistic resonance with the song. Also if it’s just visually compelling; well-directed, exciting, beautiful to look at. Cool, experimental techniques – styles of animation, for example – are another thing. Or if the musician behind it all is also the one directing, overseeing the whole thing, carrying through an artistic vision as if it’s basically just a short film with a song in it.
But a great video doesn’t have to do any of that, really. It just needs to be a really cool music video. Just like a movie or a book might be deep and heartfelt and thought-provoking and artistically adventurous, but then you decide to watch Jackass instead. Anything counts.
And so we have my list; my ten favourite music videos. Now, it’s true, if I were more objective I might have been able to venture further into genres beyond my comfort zone to find other examples of truly excellent videos; but no, this list is pretty much comprised of songs that I like that also have terrific videos. Make of it what you will. Now go and play the guitar on the MTV.
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This is America (Childish Gambino, 2018): a terrifying tour-de-force performance by Donald Glover and director Hiro Murai, presented as one continuous, astounding shot. We’re treated – if that’s the right word – to a tableau of images representing various factors of modern American culture, all of it filtered through the lens of the 21st century Black experience. Full of incredible references and pastiches tying police brutality and gun fetishism to slavery and Jim Crow, it’s the sort of meta-textual piece that’s begging to be hyper-analysed. But beyond all that it’s just a phenomenal, haunting, compelling, entertaining, tragic piece of work.
Sledgehammer (Peter Gabriel, 1986): I’ve always been fascinated by animation (this won’t be the last animated video on the list), and this one hooked me even as a tiny child. An intricate and beautiful piece of work from Aardman and the Brother Quay, directed by Stephen R. Johnson, a cavalcade of impossible activities fly around Gabriel’s head as he sings, the stop-motion effects of his face giving the whole thing a stilted, distorted, unique presentation, making it decidedly, delightfully off-kilter.
Nobody Speak (DJ Shadow feat. Run the Jewels, 2016): juxtaposing the coarse, vulgar, and exquisite lyrics of a rap battle (with imagery stretching from Snoopy to Trump) with a conference room of middle-aged white guys debating is just a genius, hilarious idea right from the get-go, but this is executed to perfection. Sublime performances of the actors miming to the song conveys a genuine emotion and, well, depth to it all, as matters escalate to a full-on brawl of powersuited business-types, throttling each other and braining people with flagpoles. Bonus points for the random piglet.
Hurt (Johnny Cash, 2002): reinterpreting a very personal Trent Reznor song into something identifiably Cash is one thing, but this video – directed by Mark Romanek – elevates it into something else. A haunting elegy to a life of pain, mistakes, and love, it’s one of the most beautiful videos of all time; footage of an aged Cash playing guitar is interspersed with shots of a deserted Cash museum, old performances and home movies, and increasingly disturbing religious imagery. It’s intensely sad and heroic and triumphant and melancholy.
Thriller (Michael Jackson, 1983): this one would be even higher – probably the highest, truth be told – if it weren’t for the problematic nature of some of the key artists involved, including director John Landis. Talk about music videos as short films, this one is over ten minutes long, homaging and pastiching multiple tropes of classic monster movies. It’s delightfully macabre and creepy, with some incredible prosthetics and makeup work, with – it must be said – a fantastic performance from Jackson, perfectly skirting the line between the inherent creepiness and sexiness of his persona. And, yes, Landis directs the arse out of it, with a barnstorming dance sequence that has to be seen to be believed.  
I’d Lie for You (And That’s the Truth) (Meat Loaf, 1995): coming after I’d Do Anything for Love and Objects in the Rear View Mirror – both directed by Michael Bay – this video was an event. I remember there was even a making-of broadcast on TV! And whilst it might not be as beautiful as the others, it’s a production, a full-on Indiana Jones-style stunt spectacular, with vehicle chases and explosions and Xander flippin’ Berkeley. It’s just big dumb fun and I love it; ironically, more Michael Bay-ish than the videos he did direct (Howard Greenhalgh made this one).
Money for Nothing (Dire Straits, 1985): another exceptional piece of ground-breaking animation that captivated me as a child, this was a rather revolutionary use of computer graphics. Looking like something from an N64 game, two workmen complain about musicians on MTV whilst footage of the band plays in the background – delightfully, they even have rotoscoped headbands and guitars, as if the video wasn’t already eighties enough. Despite some rather dodgy-in-retrospect lyrics, this remains an excellent, landmark video.
Weapon of Choice (Fatboy Slim, 2001): beautifully directed by Spike Jonze, with a great central performance by Christopher Walken. The deserted hotel foyer is artfully shot, and Walken appears suitably weatherbeaten and dejected. But then the music starts, and he dances – exquisitely – around the empty space, his moves simultaneously elegant, elaborate, and amusing. It builds and builds on this amusing concept until eventually he leaps off the mezzanine and flies round in the air, in what is an impressive piece of airborne choreography. Perfectly marries the unabashed joy of dancing to your favourite music with the contradictory aesthetic of a sad, abandoned hotel and a sad, abandoned man.
Take On Me (A-Ha, 1984): another one that’s here due its gorgeous animation. We all know the story: in beautifully rotoscoped line-art, we’re taken inside a comic book, where the interplay of live-action footage and animation is staggering for its time (as the camera pans around characters who alternate between live and animated). it’s really something, and is also excellently directed (by Steve Bannon), brilliantly timed, and even though it’s a bit of a cliché nowadays it remains a really compelling video.
Like a Prayer (Madonna, 1989): just edging out the playground hilarity of Sabotage or the kinky robot escapades of All is Full of Love is this, a pean to bonkers religious imagery, white guilt, and just how sexy Madonna is with dark hair. Madge herself plays a kind of fallen woman (she literally falls over right at the start) who hides in a church and whose remonstrations awaken a Black Christ. She speaks to God, receives stigmata, dances in front of burning crosses, and rescues a falsely imprisoned Black man, thereby – presumably – resetting the clock on police brutality and race relations. It’s utter batshit. It’s bananas. She makes out with Jesus, for Christ’s sake. I adore it, and not just because it’s her best song. The sheer bloody hubris of it, combined with its sincere attempt to make a valid comment on racism in society, is something to behold. It’s also a really beautiful video, directed by Mary Lambert, and it’s worth pointing out it was hella controversial.
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jaskefer · 2 years
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ok so not to be back on the apology meta train like 3 months after the season dropped, but i have been thinkin about it a lot lately, and honestly just falling back on the idea that it feels hollow because it feels like Geralt is only apologizing for half of what happened.
like! S1E6 was left with a pretty open ending in general, but with the way Jaskier walked away from Geralt saying he’d “see him around,” there’s at least some implication in this that it was Jaskier who left first. But then S2 drives home the point that oh no, actually, it was Geralt who left Jaskier. 
“After everything we did, we saw, you turned your back on me.”
“I haven’t seen Geralt in months. Not since he abandoned me in Caingorn...”
“You left me on a mountain.”
and when Geralt does actually apologize, it comes on the back of Jaskier’s statement about friends coming back. This focus on the act of leaving winds up making it feel like that’s the only thing Geralt’s apologizing for, and not also the fact that he blamed Jaskier for everything that complicated his life and wished that he could be rid of him. Additionally, we never actually get to see the act of Geralt abandoning Jaskier. We only learn about that after the fact; meanwhile, we got to actually see Geralt turning around and lashing out at him. Between the two, which one holds the most relevancy and emotional impact to the audience?
It’s not that S2 never touches on Geralt’s words at all; Jaskier brings it up during the initial reunion (“The last time we met, you basically told me to fuck off”) and also in a roundabout way on the journey to find Ciri (“People do stupid things when they think they’re trapped in a corner, Geralt. And they say stupid things). It’s just that it wraps up the entirety of the event—both the harsh words and the leaving—into one blanket statement, and as a result, winds up giving the impression that Geralt is expressing remorse for only one of those two things, because all of the emphasis is placed on Jaskier being abandoned.
and mmm I’d end it there but tbh I was typing this all up the other day and had a few thoughts about Geralt as a man of action over words, and started wondering if the reason Jaskier was willing to go with him when Geralt asked for his help is because Geralt coming back to him was in and of itself an act of apology. That it was Geralt admitting that he was wrong to have blamed Jaskier for what his own words and actions had gotten him into. A means of saying, without words, “I was wrong to treat you like you were at fault for this. It’s my mess, but I trust you, and would like you to be by my side again as I try to fix it.” 
but idk. there’s still a lot of emptiness that could be filled where all of this stands, and room for the weight of Geralt’s words to still land heavy on their shoulders.
#angel.txt#the witcher#geralt of rivia#jaskier#meta & theories#once again taking 3 am twitter thoughts and going ‘ooh wait this would make a good mini essay’#might write a drabble or smth with the idea of reunion as an act of apology cause i Like it. if i can mold canon like dough lmao#idk. i just think that it's very clear that the only thing the season gave weight was the reunion itself#the act of coming back and seeing each other again. so then of course the actual words fall to the wayside#which sucks bc like! it was jaskier's involvement that brought and yen and ciri into geralt's life#but it was *geralt's words* that tied them to him the way they are now.#so you would think that if jaskier also holds an important place in geralt's heart... his most vitriolic words would be regarded with weight#like twn wants to say geralt and jaskier are close friends!#but also geralt can apparently blame jaskier for his own mistakes and wish that life would rid him of jaskier‚ and jaskier's just like#''people say stupid things and lash out when they're backed into a corner but hey. friends come back.''#like mmm i can buy this sort of understanding characterization of jaskier but twn can't have it both ways#and also should stop treating him and his feelings like a doormat sfdsfds#anyways! rant over lmao#sorry hsjshs any time i think about ‘if life could give me one blessing it would be to take you off my hands’ i go feral#in both good and bad ways#i am very much obsessed with s1 geralt and the consequences of words as well as actions#even more so after s2 and the ''all i ever think about are consequences'' scene with ciri 🥺
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pikahlua · 2 years
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Star versus the Forces of GOT’EEEEM
Okay, I finally have, like, interesting thoughts about the current manga arc. So here’s the outline of my mini-ramblings:
Y’all sometimes let Horikoshi play you like a fiddle and honestly? you should keep doing that
Was I right? Or was I right?
American exceptionalism (no, not like that)
BUGS
New Order: Star can step on me
Star is Katsuki-coded (and really, did you expect any less of me than to say something like this?)
WOW are we finally getting something truly AFO-centric?
Nerfed or no?
Okay but WHAT IF-?
(The bolded sections are probably the most important in terms of serious meta.)
Y’all sometimes let Horikoshi play you like a fiddle and honestly? you should keep doing that
For how predictable MHA can be, this fandom sure isn’t genre savvy about its predictions sometimes. And actually, that’s awesome! Makes the story more enjoyable, because Horikoshi is a master of meeting your expectations 90% of the time just so that the unexpected 10% blows your minds. I just think it’s funny that the “unexpected” parts are when the story does exactly what it tells us it’s gonna do lol.
Was I right? Or was I right?
Okay, so my early predictions were:
All For One’s hubris at the start of the arc was foreshadowing that things wouldn’t go according to his plan: RIGHT
All For One won’t steal New Order: WRONG, but then...
Even if AFO gets anything close to what he claims to want out of this battle, there will definitely be some sort of twist: RIGHT
We’re going to get something about her history with All Might before she can die: RIGHT, though sadly contained within the same arc
(Will she die after that? [shrug]): “RIGHT” in whatever sense this can be considered a prediction lol
Horikoshi’s also hinted vaguely at her having a personality, but I guess that can be fleshed out in this fight alone: RIGHT
And okay, it’s fun to gloat, but I acknowledge that I really hedged my bets here with some of these, so please note I’m just participating in the satiric trend of hilariously unmerited arrogance. These all are way too vague to be called ACTUAL predictions.
This is all really just to illustrate one thing, which was the point of the original post: any in-universe character (especially a villain) who says their plans (or their predictions of the future) out loud will automatically be wrong about it to some degree. Why take one panel to tell us everything that’s gonna happen in the next few chapters and then actually draw out that very thing for the next few chapters as described?
American exceptionalism (no, not like that)
Okay, but I’m not gonna act like this was Horikoshi’s best writing or anything just because he made one correct (if loudly broadcasted) writing choice. I’m still very confused about how none of this was foreshadowed even in the chapter where Horikoshi teased Star’s existence (chapter 303).
Yeah, there is a lot about this arc and Star’s character that...make for really awkward discussions about how the US is or is not portrayed. To some degree, it reads like Horikoshi watched a bunch of old Hollywood movies recently and wanted to reference them all in one go because they don’t fit as references anywhere else in the future story. And yeah, that’s...just...I don’t know what the state of education and general public knowledge is in Japan about post-war USA-Japan relations, but I do wonder about it now.
Then again, it’s not like most or any of that is covered in American public education either.
Actually, in light of that thought, I’m kind of surprised this arc didn’t end up far cringier than what we got. Maybe I should be counting my blessings here...
BUGS
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BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS
Hell, this isn’t even the first time we’ve seen an army of ants! Although interestingly the sides are switched this time.
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WHO’S THE ANT NOW, LOSER?
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Okay but again with that reversal of One versus Many? Where the One is unexpectedly the hero and the Many is the villain and his nakama (well, maybe not so much in this particular case...)? FASCINATING.
...
Yeah, I, too, immediately noticed the hairstyle of the forefront vestige’s silhouette. I, too, quirked ([snort]) an eyebrow.
New Order: Star can step on me
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That is all.
Star is Katsuki-coded (and really, did you expect any less of me than to say something like this?)
I’m just sayin’:
Both have initials KB
Both smile like terrifying monsters in the face of defeat (see above)
Both have a reputation for doing whatever the fuck they want fuck you
Both bite as their last resort
Both have a not-subtle-at-all war-theme for their character stylizations
Both are characters focused around the concepts of “Number One Hero”, vague god complexes, and comradery/growing into team leaders
Bombs and explosions. Rotating missiles. Howitzer Impact aka Katsuki the Amazing Human Missile. ‘Nuff said.
Both admire All Might but also kind of try to one-up him whenever they get the chance (because it’s about SURPASSING All Might)
Tell me Star’s final move there wasn’t the most amazing pettiest “even when I lose I still win” shit SHE ESSENTIALLY TURNED HER QUIRK INTO A SELF-DESTRUCTING BOMB DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?
I can’t believe I’m about to use a filler episode as support but it really doesn’t get any louder than this
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“Star” of the show. Get it? GET IT?!
I guess this makes Kaminari the pilot
Additionally, just because I can:
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Now to NOT extrapolate Star’s fate to Katsuki please god no
WOW are we finally getting something truly AFO-centric?
As much fun as Star was this chapter, I was already pumped before she got up to her antics. Because holy crap, we’re getting actual insight into AFO’s character?????
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“It all begins here, Yoichi. About that comic I read with you that day, it’s not that I didn’t know there was a continuation. I knew what came next; that’s why I stopped reading!”
THIS. This can be interpreted in so many fascinating ways!!!
Is AFO saying he thinks the villain won in the comic? Is he that arrogant and genre-unsavvy?
But the fact that he acknowledges Yoichi’s contention means he did hear when Yoichi said, “The villain always loses.” So AFO actually knows the villain loses now.
So...did he know that then, too? Did he not want to continue reading because he didn’t like that ending? Is all of this an attempt at writing a new, exciting, different, unpredictable story? (lol Horikoshi you’re not subtle)
Or maybe it wasn’t about preference at all. Maybe it’s about prediction. Remember, AFO thrives on control and loves making predictions about how people will behave. Maybe he got bored with the comic the moment he knew how it all ends? (ha! so he’s my antithesis)
But since we see a brief shot of baby Yoichi here, since we get a brief glimpse at AFO’s deeper thoughts, since the chapter ends with AFO’s composure cracking in the face of “the ghost of All Might,” since the fight technically isn’t over yet, could it be that...this arc is about exploring AFO’s character? His...his backstory??
ARE WE GONNA FINALLY GET OUR AFO+OFA FLASHBACK?
CAN WE GET SOME GODDAMN NAMES ALREADY?
[makes grabby-hands for the Second]
Nerfed or no?
If not, did this whole arc just serve the purpose of nerfing TomurAFO? Or is that even what’s happening? I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I still don’t have a lot to say on this. Sure, it looks like some quirks were lost, but where does it go from here? I wonder if this will serve the purpose of creating some quirk blob or turning TomurAFO into an unstable monster that eventually rampages out of control maybe. The point is, could things actually still get worse?
Okay but WHAT IF-?
Just for funsies, I thought about it...
Based on the way Star worded her final New Order, I don’t think New Order should cannibalize itself in the end?
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Which means it could still technically exist in a person with no other quirks.
So, you know, a quirkless person?
...
Could...could All Might get New Order eventually?
(Or really anyone but...just at the price of their quirk getting eaten NO THANKS)
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invincibleweasel · 2 years
Text
Nitpick November: Day 3,4, 5 & 6
Nitpick 3: Why is Penny’s blood green? If we are meant to believe that she was built to blend in with the rest of humanity, why give her such an inhuman colour for her internal fluids? What if Penny got injured while on a mission with her old team, and they see her green blood. Her cover would be blown.  Considering the fact that Penny bleeding in the first place seems to be a new addition to Penny 2.0 which begs the question, why give her the ability to bleed? Why give her the ability to feel pain? These weren’t features she originally had. She shrugged off the truck in Volume 2 like it was nothing, just a scratch. It really brings into question what Pietro was thinking while making Penny 2.0. Nitpick 4:
Adam’s main colour is red, supposedly. Why does he wear predominantly black then? If this was post Fall, I would understand. Wearing more and more black as a visual representation of his growing obsession with Blake, that would’ve been good. But he doesn’t. He wears more black than red in all appearances that we’ve seen him in. What gives? Why not dress him in mostly red for the Black Trailer and then following the Fall he starts to wear more black. 
Nitpick 5: The Colour Naming Rule leaves much to be desired. It isn’t necessarily bad, conceptually. But there’s a lot of loopholes that come with it. Any name can be associated with a colour with enough leaps in logic and reaching. And that isn’t even getting into the fact that it doesn’t even have to be the first name that is colour associated. Just the last name will do. It’s why we have names like Jacques, James and Ghira which have no colour meaning, but are still accepted as following the rule because of their last names.  What’s stopping them from naming characters generic names? Weiss Schnee could easily be named Karen Schnee, after all, she gets the colour meaning from Schnee, doesn’t she? Even then, you could get a colour out of Karen as it can mean ‘pure’ potentially bringing to mind white. Which brings me to my next issue with the rule, a name’s meaning could bring to mind different colours depending on who you asked. One person might think that ‘pure’ brings to mind white, while another might think of black as a ‘pure’ colour. It’s vague and there’s no objective right or wrong answer to it.  Another problem I have with the rule is that names reference things that don’t exist in Remnant to get their colour meaning. Dr. Bartholomew Oobleck for instance, gets his colour green from the oobleck substance from the Dr. Seuss book Bartholomew and the Oobleck. This wouldn’t be too big of deal if the rule was purely from a meta standpoint. But the rule actually exists in-verse, meaning Dr. Seuss and his books would have to exist too to get this colour meaning. The same applies for Ghira, who takes his name from Bagheera. Does The Jungle Book exist in-verse as well? Nitpick 6:
Heels. Why does almost every female character in this show, regardless of occupation wear some sort of high heels, stilettos or wedges?  Now, this isn’t to say female characters can’t wear heels. They obviously can, and for some characters such as Weiss, Cinder or Glynda it makes perfect sense. It works character wise. But characters like Blake, Pyrrha, Neo, Winter and Raven? Highly trained fighters who partake in a lot of movement while fighting shouldn’t be wearing heels that would likely inhibit said movement. Even Nora in the words of Ein Lee who worked very closely with Monty was originally in high heels and had much longer hair in Monty’s original sketch, before Ein Lee changed it. This honestly wouldn’t be too big of an issue if the creators were a group of women who wanted to make their own show of badass women. But it isn’t. The truth of the matter is that these characters were made and designed by three cishet men. They are the ones who chose to give their spartan inspired character super high platform heels with a mini-skirt and no upper armour. They are the ones who gave a random heart-shaped boob window to their Nordic warrior. They are the ones who gave the audience long lasting shots of a female character’s body for the audience’s enjoyment and nothing else. They are the ones purposely gave their black thief an even skimpier outfit than the one she had originally, just to show off her breasts more.  These were all decisions the creators purposely made regarding their female characters’ designs, who were all minors at the time. The creators have a problem with unnecessarily sexualising their female characters and it needs to stop.
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