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oldtvandcomics · 9 months

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I binged the entire Good Omens season 2 today, and, well. I certainly don’t have anyone in the Real World to talk to about it, so here is my review. Under the cut, because spoilers.

Good Omens 2 was ALWAYS going to be a hard sell, because season 1 was so damn perfect. It was a closed story, based on a book, very faithful to that book, yet still added enough to keep things interesting. Amazing actors, great costumes and set design, it was funny, it had a great theme, and was very layered.

It is also literally the only time that I saw the kind of relationship I feel like I’d want for my self. Ever. Anywhere.

So yeah. I very much would have loved if the show had just left things there. What I was telling myself is that I trust Neil Gaiman, and that whatever happens, he knows what he is doing and why. I’ll get back to this.

The majority of the season was fun, but significantly less good than the first one. As I said, the standard was very high, so no surprise there. What I was surprised by, however, was just how much the characters who are not Crowley or Aziraphale (I wouldn’t even call them side characters, they are just as if not more vital to the plot) added to the whole. They were not in this season, and the show is definitely poorer without them. Gone with them are the fun and whimsical worldbuilding things that made this story so good, like the witches and the prophecies and the children and their way of making sense of the world. It is also a loss not to have any of those very colourful people mentioned again.

The side characters that this season does have are a lot less interesting than the ones in the previous season. They also don’t seem to add as much to the theme as the old ones did. Every character in season 1 revolved around love, love for humanity and love for someone they were supposed to be adversaries with (looking at you Anathema and Newt). Meanwhile in season 2 we get two shopkeepers on the same street who kind of have a crush on each other. It is much lower conflict, and much less relevant to the theme of the story. Ass far as strength of character goes, I feel like none of them live up to, for example, Mme Tracey.

The scope of the story feels smaller, too, possibly because the action is almost all happening on Aziraphale’s street, while season 1 had a significant part be in Tadfield, and Aziraphale and Crowley were moving around much more. We also get fewer, but longer, history flashbacks, and no voiceover narration or animated sequences to illustrate said narration.

A lot of the plot is ideas that I’ve seen online in the fandom. I’m not sure whether it is because we were particularly good in guessing stuff, if said tropes were already known from previous things said by Gaiman and Pratchett, or if Gaiman got inspired by popular headcanons and used them in his work. I also don’t care where the ideas came from. I definitely enjoyed seeing things on screen that I knew from up here, including but not limited to that one crack ship I used to read some fics about back in 2019 because one of the two partners uses genderneutral pronouns.

Ah, talking about. Gender. And general queerness. It’s there, but feels less overwhelming than it did four years ago. Maybe that’s me, but I definitely did miss the parts where Crowley was presenting as female. Most shopkeepers on that street seem queer in some way, and one of them has a visibly nonbinary partner, but it was all very much in the background. I would have liked these things to be a little more prominent. Season 1, I still go back sometimes and rewatch Pollution’s introduction, just to hear God use they/them pronouns. Season 2 didn’t have any moments like this.

Crowley and Aziraphale. Crowley and Aziraphale... Oh dear. Please let me repeat again that I am not going to be able to be completely objective about them. (Neither is anyone else in this fandom. At least I’m honest about it.)

So I was very happy with most of the season. Not great, but it was nice and fun. And then the ending hit.

As I said, Neil Gaiman clearly knows what he’s doing. What he is doing, is setting things up for a third season. As far as cliffhangers go, this one was very elaborate, instead of just throwing in a scene at the end, but also, I really, really wish that he hadn’t.

I’m not sure that Neil Gaiman understands just how important Good Omens was to many of us BECAUSE of the happy ending. And obviously he doesn’t owe us anything and is not responsible for my emotional reaction, but this doesn’t change the fact that I am very, very deeply hurt, because it feels like we’d been given the perfect fairy tale, back in 2019, and now it all got ripped away. And for what. Also, I do trust Gaiman, but I do very, very much NOT trust Amazon. If he doesn’t get a third season, then I don’t want the story to be left like this.

There are a lot of deep conversations that we could, and should, have here. About streaming shows and their obsession with cliffhangers, about our cultural inability to conceive of two characters who are just together, without any drama, and also love stories that are not about getting together. We could talk about abusive situations and how difficult is to get away and not be dragged in, and how maybe the show will explore that. About queer representation in particular and how tired many of us are to see our few couples being kept apart again and again, with no promise of a further season to fix things (remember First Kill).

I am not going to have any of these here. Obviously.

What I AM, however, bothered by, is just how out of nowhere it seems to have come? I honestly feel like Aziraphale’s character development had been set back to episode 3 of the first season, where he still believed that Heaven was good and worth trying to work with. After that, he realized that it is very much not the case, openly defied Heaven, was almost killed for it, and then got a happy ending by getting rid of them all and being allowed to stay on Earth. WHY IS AZIRAPHALE EVEN SLIGHTLY INTERESTED IN THE IDEA OF GOING BACK TO HEAVEN AND RUNNING THE PLACE?! I mean, that was the whole point of his character, wasn’t it?? An angel who loves Earth and humanity enough to defy the will of God, just so he can stay and spend more time here. WHY WOULD HE WANT TO DO SOMETHING ELSE NOW??!

So the thing is, I understand why he would want to go back to an abusive institution. I wanted to go back to school, too, after the first attempt almost killed me. The problem is that I did not see this coming. If you want to change a character’s motivation this much, then you need to set it up very carefully. Throughout the season, we’ve seen Heaven be generally kind of awful, and Aziraphale didn’t show any signs of missing being part of it. There also isn’t anything they can really offer him, because he was already together with Crowley. It’s very weird. Gaiman seems to be setting up a getting-together story, but like, we’ve been through that already in season 1? He actually talked about it multiple times himself how he purposefully structured it as a love story? And like, he IS a very talented and experienced writer. He would be absolutely able to set up some interesting conflict for an already-together Azirapahle and Crowley, that doesn’t feel like setting their arc back half the story??

I don’t understand why he chose to do this. I am always very annoyed if I don’t understand where storytelling choices are coming from. It’s why the Supernatural finale pulled me back in so strongly.

I am also very hurt, but mostly angry. I don’t feel like I really have the right to be, but I am.

#personal #review #good omens #good omens season 2 #good omens season 2 spoilers #IDK this is all BEFORE really looking at the fandom #I don't know if I even want to #but they might change my mind on some things

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vibes-of-chaos · 6 months

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Saw someone talking about RWBY and went to check and... Nope. Season 10 is still not even greenlit yet. Honestly the series could not be more disappointing with how it gets handled.

RANT.

At the end of volume 5, it was implied that Raven went home to meet with Taiyang. In 4 seasons there hasn't been a single solitary frame of screentime dedicated to resolving that cliff hanger. They've barely been mentioned in passing. 2 perfectly capable professional fighters that would have been perfect for several fights and conflicts... Just gone. One of them is even capable of making portals to one of the main characters. Raven could have literally gotten them out of the wonderland dimension in seconds. The second those two saw what was happening with that WORLD WIDE BROADCAST their characters, as they stood as people, would have been FROTHING AT THE MOUTH to run over and do something-- Taiyang because he loves his kids, and Raven because she would realize Cinder had lived and would want to put that bitch back down. (Also because she loves Yang but she'd be pretending she didn't.)

The characterization of SEVERAL characters doesn't just leave much to be desired, it's garbage hastily thrown together to further plot points that seemingly will no longer go anywhere, because the team decided to kill them off. Characters who have made complete 180s as people in the worst ways, to the point where their story arcs basically got erased because the story needed to be Edgier.

The points presented to us at the start of the story that got many of us hooked have been completely abandoned, if not laughed off as a joke. Remember all the other teams being setup and not just given spotlights, but several dedicated songs and signs of plot relevance? Remember Haven's teachers that were in the loop with Oz that were also friends with Ruby and Yang's dad and obviously knew that the kids were getting into some shit? Remember the Faunus who had decided to take a stand and help the humans fight back against the grim? The writers don't.

The actors are becoming more of a joke with each passing season, using their positions as Twitter clout to win arguments while phoning in half their performances. Hell, in the RWBY remake, Ruby's actress is quoted as saying that she's decided to play her character as more cynical. Not because RUBY is more cynical-- no, she's still bright eyed and bushy tailed. No the actress has just decided that since Ruby grows to be more cynical after SEVERAL VOLUMES OF TRAGEDY OCCUR, it would somehow be better if she was like that from the beginning.

Also back to that point about the weird Wonderland story... What point did it serve? The season was several episodes shorter than any other and was completely contained without a single cutaway to what the entire rest of the world was dealing with, which considering the size of the plot, is WEIRD and STUPID. It's INSANE how little of a shit the writers gave about their own work, actually. Almost as if it was on purpose. The dire situation the team left was barely talked about. There wasn't a single piece of information given to the audience about the fate of the group of refugees who they saved. This was basically a DBZ filler arc, that did nothing but show that Juan looks attractive as he gets older, and... I guess make Ruby feel more confident? When a simple conversation between her and her team would have done the same thing, because her only real issue was that she thought she was doing a bad job? And show that the Gods of their universe had a previous residence?

Volume 9? This. Was. Anime. Filler. Because no one on the writing side of production can figure out what the hell kind of conclusion the show is trying to reach. They've lost the thread completely. They branched so far away from the original story that absolutely none of Monty's notes probably make sense anymore, and we all keep getting told "it's coming! We're working on it! You'll learn all the answers next volume!" When 10 hasn't even been Okay'd TO BE WORKED ON. They're floundering and stringing everyone along, all the while making a SECOND crossover movie with the Justice League-- yep, the RWBY characters with the Justice League. Why? Who knows! BUT THERE'S A SECOND ONE NOW! It's blatantly clear that to RWBY's team, the show isn't even their priority with the IP anymore. This show is completely dead unless a complete overhaul occurs within the writing and directing teams. And I mean that genuinely. I'm just gonna say it: the reason 9 was so short and didn't do a VERY needed cutaway, was because no one on that crew knew whether they wanted the refugees to live or die. They needed more time to decide how much more edgy they could get, so they fabricated a season of complete nonsense so that they could desperately try to patch up their own mistakes. Volume 10 isn't being greenlit because even the CEOs in charge know that their pitches are embarrassing. They needed time to pull themselves together.

And then they wasted it on the second Justice League crossover instead. Because, you know, THAT'S what RWBY fans have been begging for.

#rian posting #rant

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marshmallowgoop · 2 years

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Episode 425, Blu-ray Quality, and 10th-Anniversary Quiz Questions

Watched Episode 425 of Detective Conan for the first time recently, and it's a fun ride. Absolutely ridiculous—the FBI is really just taking this child along to stop multiple(!) assassination attempts!—but not without heart. It's got some great character moments (especially with Ai) and emotional drama (loved what we were shown of Kir).

But unlike Episode 345, the big, grand, showstopping 2.5-hour special prior to this one, there's some considerable bloating in regards to pacing here. A story that likely needed only a 2-hour timeslot to tell (at most) is stretched long and thin, with a laughable amount of repetition and recap. Perhaps most outrageously, there's a flashback to James Black's introduction case (specifically the second part, Episode 259) that's dragged out so unnecessarily far that it dawdles all over the screen for nearly a full two minutes.

(The timing of Episode 425 itself also strikes me as pretty funny. 345 has buildup, you know? 329 to 345 is practically straight plot. One hard-hitting, main-story case after another. Pieces are falling into place and threatening to collide constantly. There's a real sense of rising tension that culminates in the bombastic showdown that is the series' first 2.5-hour special.

(And this isn't just any anime. It's the 1,000+-episode, 25+-years-on-the-air, ginormous-barrier-of-entry monstrosity that is Detective Conan. Things proceed at a glacial pace here. The tiniest crumbs of crucial information are dropped at the speed of, like, three seconds every five episodes. Getting so much plot all at once is meaningful, something fitting for hyping up a big event that at least rattles the status quo, and while that Dutch-themed anime-original case in the midst of the 345 buildup (Episode 342) is of course wildly and ludicrously out of place, it's nothing compared to how out of place 425 feels.

(There's practically no setup here. The excessive recap makes it almost embarrassingly blatant that hardly anything main-plot relevant has happened since 345, and the episode prior to 425 is a filler—get this—called "Photo Email from the Clown."

(Yes, really. Only DetCo can build up to its super plot-heavy 2.5-hour special with a case featuring incidental characters we'll never see again and a dead clown. I love this show so much.)

But anyway, 425 is the only episode of the series that I own on Blu-ray, so I did actually appreciate the flashbacks for their visuals, if nothing else. None of the recounted episodes with traditional animation are of remastered quality, but there's definitely a clear difference between the DVD (top) and Blu-ray (bottom); as shown with this cap from Episode 177, the Blu-ray version has cleaner, sharper lines and colors:

And while I don't own a DVD version of 425 to compare how the episode itself looks between the two formats, judging from how much smoother and crispier (crunch) the digitally animated Episode 345 looks when recapped in 425 than it does on DVD, I think it's (probably?) fair to say that the same holds true for the Blu-raying of any digitally animated episode:

Regardless of anything else I could say about Episode 425, the evident jump in quality with the Blu-ray was dazzling, and it got me bummed that only a select handful of episodes have been released in this format! (At least in Japan, from what I know? Maybe other countries have more Blu-ray releases?) Sure the Black Organization and FBI-themed Treasured Selection Blu-rays (and the Akai Family TV Selections later) contain the Big Plot cases, and sure there are remastered versions of Episodes 1 to 123 up on Crunchyroll (in many countries) that do (in my opinion) have more elaborate and stunning HD'ing of traditionally animated episodes than what I see on my Episode 425 Blu-ray, but I'd love to own more high-quality Cone.

I've said in the past that it was a mistake to buy the Japanese DVD volumes individually—it's probably much less expensive in the long run to focus on listings selling entire season(s)—but there's certainly a silver lining here. The Black Organization and FBI 11 Treasured Selection that I purchased instead of Part 14, Volume 10 looks slick in Blu-ray quality, and I kind of want all the Japanese Blu-ray collections now.

But one thing about not having Part 14, Volume 10 is that I'm missing the first question in a 10-question quiz that commemorates the show's and movies' 10th anniversary and, fittingly, is a part of 10 episodes (starting with 425 and ending with 434). These short quiz segments before the openings are nothing out of this world or anything, but they're definitely cute, kinda like those "Who's that Pokemon?" spots. Loose translations are loose, but all the questions I do have are under the cut.

Question 2 says, "52 volumes of the original manga are on sale now! If you stacked all the books horizontally, how tall would the pile be in centimeters?" The three options for answers are だ (da), 70 cm; ぢ (ji), 90 cm; and づ (zu), 110 cm.

Question 3 asks, "How long is the show's opening narration in seconds?" The three options for answers are あ (a), 5 seconds; い (i), 15 seconds; and う (u), 30 seconds.

Question 4 asks, "In the year 2005, how many hours of Conan were broadcast?" The three options for answers are さ (sa), 10.5 hours; し (shi), 15.5 hours; and す (su), 20.5 hours.

Question 5 asks, "What episode number is the current episode?" The three options for answers are か (ka), Episode 379; き (ki), Episode 429; and く (ku), Episode 479.

Question 6 asks, "How many openings and endings has the Conan series had?" The three options for answers are あ (a), 41; い (i), 31; and う (u), 21.

Question 7 asks, "What is Conan not good at?" The three options for answers are ら (ra), soccer; り (ri), karaoke; and る (ru), swimming.

Question 8 asks, "What's Shinichi's favorite food?" The three options for answers are が (ga), lemon pie; ぎ (gi), sweet potato pie; and ぐ (gu), apple pie.

Question 9 asks, "What is the color of Dr. Agasa's car?" The three options for answers are つ (tsu), red; て (te), white; and と (to), yellow.

Question 10 asks, "What is the name of the drug that shrunk Conan?" The three options for answers are あ (a), APTX 1996; い (i), APTX 4896; and う (u), APTX 4869.

How'd you do? Personally, I found it amusing how the questions could range from difficult (for me, anyway!), like the manga-stacking question that is Question 2, to something more obvious, like Question 7 asking about what Conan's bad at.

Question 5 also cracked me up because the answer is super easy if you're watching on DVD, but, you know, on that note... the Japanese DVDs actually tend to not have their episodes ordered completely chronologically. For example, Episode 426 is included as the final episode on Part 14, Volume 9, even though Episode 425 makes up the entirety of Part 14, Volume 10. This is done so as to not split up multi-part cases across different DVDs, but it also means that, say, if I'm watching Episode 424, the next-episode preview at the end will be for Episode 426 (which comes next on DVD), and the episode preview for Episode 425 is included at the end of Episode 426, which chronologically takes place after 425! And let me tell you, so many of my subtitle files don't work for the previews because of this.

The DVDs thus encourage you to watch the episodes not in chronological order but in DVD order, and yet, the second quiz question is still included with Episode 426, not Episode 425, so you should be watching them in chronological order after all?

Ha, I don't know, but the answers, revealed at the end of each episode, are as follows:

2: だ (da), 70 cm

3: い (i), 15 seconds

4: す (su), 20.5 hours

5: き (ki), Episode 429

6: あ (a), 41 (specifically, 17 openings and 24 endings)

7: り (ri), karaoke

8: が (ga), lemon pie

9: と (to), yellow

10: う (u), APTX 4869

(Which, can I just say that Question 8 is cute? When I saw it, I knew that the answer had to be lemon pie because of its significance in Episodes 100-101, but I didn't realize that lemon pie was Shinichi's favorite food! That makes it so much sweeter that he loves Ran's first try at lemon pie so much, aw.)

Conan: Yummy!

And if you put all the hiragana (and katakana) of the answers together...

You get, "Thank you for loving Conan!"

Aww.

#detective conan #case closed #ramblings #shut up goop #detco dvd saga #ish #this probably sounds more negative than i meant but i had a lot of fun with episode 425 haha #it just totally came out of nowhere #also it didn't really fit but i swear i've heard it mentioned that some of the blu-rays #crop the 4:3 aspect ratio to fit into the modern 16:9 ratio?#not the case with 11 here but idk about the other ones #anyway blgh afraid my rent's gonna go up like 200 a month #and i messed up the shipping for one of my detco orders (the clean op/eds!) by using a po box when they don't ship to po boxes #so now reshipment fees are in my future and there goes 3800 yen....#so anyway here's something that's fun (i hope)#i can't believe i like detco so much but it makes me laugh

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azureflight · 3 years

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My entire friend group have uninstalled WoW and started FF14

It still feels surreal we are doing this. Now, it is perfectly possible that we will be back to WoW within the month, talking about how disappointing the “weeb game” was, but, this stills feels like a seminal moment.

I have been a Warcraft fan since I was a literal kid trying (and failing :P) to play Tides of Darkness on my aunt’s desktop. I spent so many hours and so much of my allowance playing Reign of Chaos in internet cafes.

When WOTLK trailer dropped, we had hijacked the computer lab and projected it to the auditorium for all to see.

I have been part of real life, unironic Horde vs Alliance infighting in college gaming clubs. I remember us all wearing Horde/Alliance merch, enthusiastically and rather foolishly, but completely seriously, arguing about lore, about who did what wrong and who was “more at fault”.

I own, almost every single Warcraft book, comic, guide ever published. I own hard copies, I own digital copies. I have watched and read and listened to every single piece of lore ever produced about this setting.

I have kept my sub up and played through all of the content draught, the infamous SoO, the practically less than 2 patch worth expac that was WoD.

I have allowed my sub to lapse for the first time during BFA.

I was so hyped for Shadowlands back when it was announced, and was annoyed when they changed the release date, causing me to waste my vacation time that I had taken for it. But a mere month of the expac in and I was already bored of it. And now, 9.1 is out and I am done. I barely played this patch and I have not only cancelled my sub, but went and removed the game from my PC.

Maybe this is a stupid overreaction and in the next patch, at the worst the next expac, I will be right back at the fur shop like the old fox I am. However, I know it feels different.

Throughout the years, I had many a thing that frustrated me about this game. Made me rage even. But I hadn’t quit then. No. The feeling that has been creeping up on me, isn’t rage. It is disinterest. I just, don’t care anymore.

Most of my friends over the years have switched to the Horde and this has been a sore spot for me. I stuck with Alliance, having some alts to play with them, and they had some Alliance alts to play with me, but... It wasn’t the same, it wasn’t enough. Several online friends, I had already lost contact with.

And now we are all gathering in FF14! I had the discord chat of my life! So many people I hadn’t talked to in years, on top of my actual real life friends whom I hang out with, are all jumping into this new journey.

My best friend’s progression guild is looking to make a full guild transfer, currently all of them except one have characters and a guild in FF, trying to convince the last guy to make the switch.

And then there is the lore. That’s why I fell in love with this setting in the first place. I loved this story, the cheese, the heroism, the over the topness, all of it. It was never “high art”, but it was unique in its own way, it had heart and it had characters and stories that I got invested in. Deeply so. I hadn’t start playing WoW because I was a connoisseur of MMORPG genre and “calculated it to be the best among its contemporaries”. I dived head first in Vanilla because it was Warcraft.

And now, I honestly cannot bring myself to care about this story, or its characters, other than a passing resentment. This was not the case, less than a year ago. I had bought the bloody Shadows Rising novel, I had read it and I liked it.

Now I am just, over it. This sense was rising, this sense of feeling less and less care for it, as expac after expac went in wildly nonsensical directions. But I had things that I had liked well enough to keep at it and have hope, hope for a good enough story that would keep me engaged. But I lost it. Something broke in 9.1.

I guess I realized, or rather I perceive, that the actual writers of this story do not care about it and none of it matters. There is no story. There is no plot, no continuity. Just an endless stream of “cool” shots in cinematics that ultimately don’t matter because, it has no basis and it has no relevance. It exists because someone wanted to make this cool scene, without caring what came before it, or what will come after it. Each scene exist, not to progress a cohesive story, but simply because someone wanted it to exist. And the next “cool” piece will flagrantly retcon the last one, ignoring or outright invalidating the stakes and hooks that had been set up in the previous one.

This is no longer a story of people, who were dramatic and weird and fantastical, but ultimately people. No. This is now a check list of what someone wanted to do in WoW setting and all the characters are empty puppets and all the plots matter only as much as they matter in any given single cinematic or questline. There is no pay off, and there is no logic. Characters aren’t allowed to live and react. Things only happen because the author said so, and the characters just bend and transform to do their bidding. And they feel no reason to explain nor establish as to why a character acts the way they do, let alone trying to make it believable or internally justified.

The gameplay aspect is the least important to me, the exact opposite of the majority. But I am sick and tired being punished with powerlessness for what I like story wise or aesthetically. I am sick and tired needing to read through guides upon guides, copying meta builds, just to have my class be remotely playable.

And most importantly, I am sick and tired of a game that will put me through genocide, deny me justice and vengeance under the guise of need for cooperation and then deny me playing with my friends across factions.

Now I get to play with all of my friends without jumping over the hoops or giving up on what I love. Because there are no stupid factions in FF14. And I can play multiple classes without hating myself.

I had several favorite characters in this game. They are still, mostly, alive. But do I care about them anymore? Jaina, Anduin, Sylvanas, Turalyon, Tyrande, Genn... No. I don’t care and it doesn’t even hurt anymore, it just feels like I had wasted my time and money. It feels exactly like how I felt during season 8 of GoT. An empty feeling of waste, so I leave.

Will I care about the characters or the story in FF14? I don’t know. I don’t think I will stick around if I don’t. But will I go back to WoW? A piece of me wants to hope for a superb turn around, but... Honestly? I don’t see it happening. And anything less than an epic turn around that fixes all of this, the lore, the classes, the playerbase division? I won’t bother anymore.

So off to the greener pastures! Maybe I will come crawling back within the blink of an eye, eating this post, repenting for ever having left. Maybe... I just don’t think so.

#World of Warcraft #shadowlands #Anduin Wrynn #Jaina Proudmoore #Sylvanas Windrunner

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blackgirlsuperherorants · 3 years

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With more articulation, I'm ready to talk about why the push for Lokius simply bothers me, and this can be said for other m/m or w/w ships that fans push to be canon so hard just because they ship it.

It's the framing. The framing that if Marvel doesn't do it (or whatever the brand is), it's because homophobia, and if other fans don't like it/ship it, it's because homophobia (even if they ship other queer ships and are queer themselves.) And the biggest problem with that is that it overshadows the REAL issue of lack of queer representation on screen in mainstream nerd media, especially from big things under the Disney umbrella (Marvel and Lucasfilm/Star Wars, especially.)

It makes it bad that your ship isn't canon instead of bad that there haven't been any queer romances on screen in the MCU.

And like, as a writer myself, I find myself dissecting the stories of other media all the time. I can watch an MCU movie or series and pretty much assess what direction the story is going in by the narrative points they're hitting. I knew Sylki was basically gonna happen (even if just a kiss) because narratively, that's what the show was doing as soon as they had that "what is love" conversation on Lamentis-1. It didn't mean I liked it. But I knew it was happening.

Similarly, there's no romantic undertones to Loki and Mobius. None. For Marvel to make them a couple, it would mean they'd be doing it simply because the two present as men and it would make stans happy. And while there's something to be said for fan service, it would be annoying to watch them cram two guys together who aren't romantic in the slightest. I'd much rather see Loki meet some guy and have the same type of undertones they were giving to Sylvie and form a real bond to where the kiss feels earned and warranted. Not just put him with the nearest man because "he gay lol."

And how you guys are claiming it's being queer that makes you want this is beyond me. It's not being queer that makes you want this. I don't want queer characters that fuck everyone of whatever gender(s) they're attracted to even when it doesn't make sense for them to. I want real love stories. I mean, yeah, sometimes we can have a slut character, because that's fun, too, but that's not even what y'all think Lokius is. You seem to want them to be in love. But why? Because he's the first friend Loki made that isn't through Thor?

I hate that, too, because I hate this idea that queer people cannot have friends of their same gender without wanting to fuck them. IDK how y'all are, maybe y'all are like that, but I almost never have wanted to fuck any of my friends. The only few exceptions have been when I tried to befriend someone I had a crush on (in which case, usually the friendship can't work, really, because I have a crush on them.) I also think it's okay if you can have casual sex with friends, or if you have a friendship that develops into romance, but Jesus, do you people not have friends that you don't want to fuck? I am bi, maybe more pan (gender kind of doesn't matter to me, I guess) and I'm friends with people of all kinds of gender identities and like... I love them as people, which is why they're my friends, but I DO NOT want to fuck them. Especially my closest friend. I talked about her, before, here, but she's like my sister. The thought of fucking her is gross, to me. Not because she's gross, but because it feels incestuous.

Loki shouldn't want to fuck Mobius just because they developed a friendship. And that's very much how it's written on the series. They almost dislike each other (or Mobius is at least indifferent to Loki) and then they become friends.

That's not to mention the power dynamic that exists, there. And I know some of y'all are subs, but yeah, it's a bit gross to imply a sexual relationship with Loki's captor.

But on to Sylki. It sucks that I feel like most of y'all hate Sylki because Sylvie is a girl, and not just because it's bad in other ways. Like, the reasons Sylki is bad have less to do with "it should have been Mobius" and more to do with it being a lazy 1980s action movie plot that should have never happened. I'm not as creeped out by the selfcest (as many of you wouldn't have been if she was a he, I'm almost positive), but what's bad about it is that they couldn't have a strong female lead character without her being the love interest of the main guy. She didn't need to be, especially because she was a Loki variant, anyway. There was no need for it to have romantic undertones, and there was no need for them to kiss. It was sexist more than it was homophobic (and I can't help feeling like y'all are kind of being biphobic in this case. Maybe I'll talk about that, later, but yeah.) It was sexist bullshit. And there's valid criticism that Sylvie is underdeveloped. She's just angry and something for Loki to project affection onto.

I was also hoping they'd do a "found family" type of thing with Sylvie and Loki and let her be like the sister he never knew he needed, but no, they had to go trope and make her the love interest. It was lazy and bad and basically went "If Loki girl, main Loki want bone!"

Basically, having the main character fall for a character just because of their proximity and gender is bad and I hate it (and it would have been bad with Mobius, too, but yeah.)

Both the Mobius and the Sylvie thing also feel kind of racist, to me, because the show has prominent Black women who aren't even presented as desirable to Loki. And y'all, of course, ship him with anyone but the Women of Color. Y'all can pull true love with Mobius out of your ass, but he couldn't possibly fall for the Black women. lol.

Anyway. Not every show needs ships, and this show shouldn't have had any. I hate it. It's bad.

I guess on the biphobia front, I have heard some takes that it's not biphobic because Loki being queer in the MCU which hasn't shown any queer relationships, and Loki being the first openly queer character means they shouldn't have shown him with a woman presenting character. Which, I guess I get where you're coming from... but I have also been in fandoms for a long time and I see mostly girls saying this shit, which is what leads me to feel like it's simply jealousy. It happens all the time when a long-beloved single male character/celebrity suddenly starts dating a woman. Everyone hates it. And like, we haven't seen Loki be with ANYONE in the MCU, because mostly he's been doing villainy and his dating life hasn't been relevant. If the demigod says he's bi, he can kiss a woman. Especially a woman version of himself. Like I said, I hate it for other reasons, but pretending it's because he should have kissed Mobius is utterly delusional. He probably shouldn't have kissed anyone. Not in this series. There was no reason for any canon romance, especially because the show has a season 2 and we'll have time to see Loki develop earned, deserved romance with someone.

I'd much rather see them create a character just to be his boyfriend than have y'all push Marvel into making Lokius canon, which is a nonsense ship that only happened because Mobius is the only prominent male-presenting character before we meet the other Lokis.

My sincere wish is for people to remember that their ships are just ships and to enjoy them without getting all self-righteous about it. I TOLD y'all that Lokius wasn't gonna be canon like 4 episodes back, and here y'all are acting shocked and like Marvel took something from you. NOBODY expected y'all to ship Lokius. It's not even queerbait.

You can make clear arguments as to why Sambucky was queerbait. It's there in undertones in the actual series.

You cannot watch Loki and tell me you thought it was queerbait, unless you think men can't have conversations or hug goodbye without being romantically involved. Which means, in my opinion, that you need to learn about healthy masculinity.

Again, this is not a defense of Marvel. They DO need to let characters be queer, for real, and not just by saying " A bit of both". Like, let Loki be queer. Let Deadpool be queer. Let these queer characters be queer on screen. Yes.

But please stop making it about your ship. I'd rather see a flashback of Loki dating a guy and see him kiss someone he loved back on Asgard than watch y'all force Lokius. Because my queer rep is not about your crackship. It really isn't. And the fact that y'all keep calling us homophobic for not liking your ship REALLY needs to be addressed.

Like, when will y'all stop? I got on Stucky shippers about this shit in the past. All of us gay as hell, too, we just don't like YOUR ship. A lot of us like other queer ships. A lot of us like queer ships in other fandoms, too, and even have queer OCs. YOUR ship just ain't it. Stop forcing it. Literally, most of the ship wars between MCU fans have been queer ship vs queer ship, not really queer ship vs straight ship. Like, the number one Stucky rival ship was Stony. Not Steggy. People are not homophobic for not wanting your ship.

Sometimes it's because they ship something else.

And sometimes, like me, it's because they want something to make sense narratively and not happen for the sake of it happening. It's always better writing to have a character meetcute a new love interest than to magically turn a platonic friendship into a romantic relationship. Like, even when the characters are straight. Like, when Moesha dated Hakeem. It was just weird, even if he was kind of a great boyfriend. He was just supposed to be her friend, and people didn't really like it because it didn't fit narratively.

And that's why ships for the most part should be left to fanfiction, with the exception of a few where fans are right to call out the writers for not making it canon because it's clearly bait (like what happened to Destiel shippers. To see Lokius shippers compare themselves to THAT was so ridiculous. Destiel shippers had a decade of evidence only to be let down by a criminally unfair ending. Lokius shippers saw two men have a deep conversation once and lost their minds.)

Anyway, I'm not saying don't ship Lokius. I don't even hate it, really. I just think it obviously shouldn't be canon, and fans pretending like they were robbed of it is ridiculous. Literally, Ao3 exists for this reason. I will never see Steve fuck Sam Wilson, so I wrote it into my fanfic. I am not mad that they didn't actually date in the main MCU storyline.

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kitkatopinions · 3 years

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The only way I can see RWBY recovering in quality is if the island arc in volume 9 ends with seemingly days passing in the island world and a time skip in Remnant. The world of Remnant and their friends have moved on from the loss of RWBYJ in Atlas and have been dealing with Salem for 3 years or so. Gives the world time to heal from the damage RWBY+ caused in Atlas and with the broadcast and realize how much they fucked up following Ruby Rose blindly. Solves the age gap debates of Rosegarden if that's the ship they want to go with for Ruby and Oscar. Let's Sun move on from Blake organically and allows Blake to come to terms with any romantic feelings she had for him and how that chance is long gone. An opportunity for Salem to take control in a way that might not have been possible were it not for RWBY+'s actions in Atlas. Shows that the protagonists can fuck up and suffer consequences.

Ahhh, see, I specifically don't want a time skip because I think it likely will be a way to remove the affects of a bunch of the stuff that I want pay off for. You say that having the world have time to heal from RWBY + actions would be a good way to show the consequences, but I disagree with that. I think that'd actually be the quickest way to make Ruby's actions not matter and not seem important. Having her forced to see the full effects of her actions as the suffering is unfolding in front of her would be a way to get her to actually see for herself that maybe she's made some massive mistakes.

Can I paint a picture for you?

Ruby, Yang, Blake, Weiss, and Jaune get back from the island quickly, only a day having gone by for the people in Remnant. The refugees have just arrived in Vacuo, they lost tons of people trying to get through the desert, everyone is staggering with exhaustion as they move through the Vacuo streets, parents carrying their sobbing children, there are people throwing rocks at Winter and people trying to beg her to save them because they saw her fly through the gates and guessed that she was magic, there's sirens over a comm system in the city, trying to alert everyone to remain calm that's been going on for the hours it's taken to try and get everyone in and calm-ish in the first place. On top of that, the gates are flooded with guards working around the clock to keep Grimm out of the city, some of the exhausted Atlas hunters have gone there as well, Ren and Fiona and Team SSSN are desperately defending the last few hundred stragglers as they arrive. Ruby, Yang, Weiss, Blake, and Jaune are shocked, dismayed, they manage to get to the Academy where Nora is there with Oscar and Theodore, Theodore trying to get in contact with the Vacuo council in clear distress. Oscar tells them that everything has gone wrong, that everyone is panicking, that Vacuo was already struggling with keeping the Grimm away from the city when Ruby's message came, and with the addition of the refugees, the Grimm are coming in by the hundreds - by the thousands - almost more than the Vacuo authorities can fight back. Ruby is so confused, she'd been trying to reunite the world! But she just brought panic instead, and she now has to contend with that while seeing the immediate aftermath. She knows Qrow is missing, she tries calling him on her scroll, hoping she just missed him among the refugees. She and Yang are going crazy with worry, they think he might've been stuck in Atlas, he might be hurt, he might be dead, he might get captured by Salem, and they both have to face that. Being assigned by Theodore to help get refugees to the homes they've been temporarily assigned to squeeze into, Ruby is confronted by grieving families who lost everything, parents who tell her their daughter was one of the Atlas soldiers who died fighting on the front lines at Atlas, a couple with four kids spit at her and refuse her help because to them, her broadcast felt like a death sentence for Atlas while she called for hope for the rest of the world like they didn't matter. As she's traveling, Ruby runs into Neon and Flynt. They're angry and bitter too, coldly telling her that Ivori and Kobalt died in the fight against Salem. Ruby leaves that encounter wiping away tears. She wants to break down, but then gets assigned her next family to move and has to push it down and get back to work trying to do her job. Meanwhile Weiss has to deal with a brother who still clearly needs someone to help and take care of him when their relationship is somewhat rocky. Nora and Ren have to have distance and sort through what they want in their relationship and we see that and the immediate affects of their breakup. Salem has two Relics and Ruby has to explain that to Ozpin and maybe admit some mistakes and apologize while it's still relevant enough to matter to him. Emerald sees the affects of a lot of what she's done and has to contend with the fact that Mercury will be in Vacuo and she has to choose whether to try and help him or fight him instead. Mercury and Tyrian have to react in real time to the fact that the Atlas plans went completely sideways and now there's tons of people from Atlas here ruining whatever plans they have for Vacuo. Team RWBY work with Team SSSN while his and Blake's relationship is still clearly going to matter to him and he wants to continue where they left things and she has to explain her shift in feelings. Oscar is still contending with the fact that he and Oz are going to merge someday, asking questions about that. Salem must regroup now with so few people, and Cinder is going to have to try and keep up her lies in real time. Neo (if she survived the

island) is going to actually have to either get scrapped as a character or grow beyond her motivation of just wanting revenge. Winter is dealing with powers that are still new (remember, Maidens being 'new' is supposed to mean something) and having her whole world crash around her, while also maybe finally interacting with the family members outside of Weiss who have just had their entire way of life gone and now must adjust to sudden poverty. Qrow, Robyn, and the Ace Ops might have a storyline where they deal with what just happened themselves, maybe launching rescue for some of the people who didn't make it through the portals (like Pietro and Maria.)

These are all really important things that we should be expecting pay off for that should get focus and development. Ren and Nora's relationship problems, Oscar dealing with merging with Oz, how Cinder is going to regroup now, what will happen with Mercury, what the Schnees will do now they've suddenly lost everything, how Emerald is going to go on from her 'side switching,' how Qrow and Robyn reacted and where they'll go from here, whether or not Vacuo can even take in refugees, what the people think of RWBY and what consequences they've had to go through, and especially RWBY seeing the aftermath of the things instead of being allowed to just move on to the next thing and write it off as a victory like they did with Haven... All of that is something that we're likely to miss if we have a big time skip.

What I really don't want is for everyone to get back to the world after three to five years have passed only to see that it's doing pretty okay right now. Vacuo thriving with the Grimm population under control, and everything a little crowded, but most of the Atlas population settled in their new homes at this point, many of the important relationships of the side cast have been solved off screen and Maria, Pietro, and Qrow are already in Vacuo and have already adjusted to their various losses (both real for Pietro and believed for Qrow,) while (like you suggested,) Sun has just moved on from his dead former love interest he never got closure with that he promised to see again, because it has been years, and BlackSun fans like me see him in some relationship with someone he's never had any growth at all with (or maybe Neptune, which is... the preferable option over someone Sun's never actually talked to before.) Now Ruby doesn't see that her choices have caused major problems, instead she sees a city doing fine and if anyone is angry at her for causing them problems three to five years ago, they're mean. She's been supposedly dead for years and that person is just fine now! How can they yell at her? Now she doesn't see people suffering and Grimm flooding, she sees that her plan worked out in the long run, everyone just needed to hold on and have faith. She doesn't see a giant economic crash and families uprooted and soldiers dead and Pietro's reaction to the death of his daughter and people panicking over Salem... Ruby sees people talking about Salem as common knowledge, amassing troops to go after her now that the 'hard times' have started to pass, and she's validated. She knew it would turn out, she knew if she just believed, things would start working out!

I don't think the writers could save this show with a time skip, I think they'd just use it as a way to jump past the immediate affects of Ruby and her group's actions and avoid organic growth and problem solving while 'not being unrealistic' about it. If they brought RWBYJ back to Remnant within days, weeks, or even months, people expect real repercussions for the things that happened in the previous couple of seasons. They won't be able to just pretend none of it happened - or they might, but then most people will (hopefully) realize that's stupid.

So their choices are 1. just waving everything away and pretending there aren't any consequences to actions, 2. bring RWBYJ back in days, weeks, or months and address and deal with problems in a way that feels natural, 3. have a time skip so they can bypass the affects and consequences and avoid giving pay off for much of the things that fans have been expecting and waiting around for.

#rwde #anti rwby #rwby bashing #rwby hate #anti crwby #anti ruby rose #rwby criticism #rwby critical #I know this is all just speculation btw #but I have no faith and that's not my fault lol

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finalgirlbrainrot · 3 years

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I have two unpopular opinions 1) if roles were reversed and Dean was the one drinking blood, Dean stans would have excused the shit out of it and even liked it. 2) if none of Dean's trauma was addressed and ignored (like most of Sam's trauma is) Dean stans would fucking riot.

(sorry in advance, I ranted A Lot)

2) I'm gonna start with this one. YESYESYES I mean dean stans are already constantly unironically whining that dean's traumas never get acknowledged (EVEN THO IT'S LITERALLY NOT TRUE, HIS TRAUMAS ALREADY GET ACKNOWLEDGED MORE THAN ENOUGH. EVERY TIME HE STUBS HIS TOE. EVERYONE IS CODDLING HIM AND ASKING HIM HOW HE'S DOING. HALF THE SHOW IS LITERALLY DEAN MANPAINING ABOUT HIS TRAUMAS - but apparently that's not enough for them, so I can't imagine the uproar if it was actually true). meanwhile sam's traumas either get ignored or they get treated like a fucking joke? well I guess it's just another tuesday

I've also seen a lot of dean stans moaning about sam "forcing dean to talk about his traumas", because apparently sam actually acknowledging dean's traumas and encouraging him to open up about them and being always supportive af because he actually cares is unacceptable (and I'm willing to bet that if he didn't acknowledge them, they'd still complain because sam literally can't win no matter what he does)

but dean ignoring and never acknowledging sam's traumas (not even when he's directly responsible for said trauma) or making them all about himself (mystery spot, hallucifer, soullessness, gadreel possession) or vilifying and victim blaming him (being force-fed demon blood, soullessness, gadreel possession) or using said traumas to justify his actions (hallucifer) or making cruel, disgusting and unnecessary jokes about them ("you had a girl inside you for a whole week" [meg possession] "you know how wrong that sounds, right?" "you've like an episode of teen mom" [gadreel possession - let's talk about how these two in particular are a thousand times more disgusting than the rest since he's actually joking about a violation he's directly responsible for] "smores foot" [bmol torture] "crybaby pie" [cole torture] "you saw the [devil's] john [or butt]?" [the cage] dick of death jokes right, left and center) is perfectly acceptable behaviour

1) again YESYESYESYES. I mean, this isn't even a hypothesis, we already have an extremely similar storyline for dean - the moc - and everyone made excuses for him and glorified him, even tho he was worse than demon blood sam in every possible way

actually I wrote a rant on reddit a couple of days ago about the awful double standards between demon blood sam and moc/demon dean. I'm gonna paste it here because I'm Bitter Af

comparing demon blood sam and moc/demon demon is ironically and hysterically bitter because, logically, no matter how you spin it, s4 sam is much more understandable and easy to sympathize with - both in intentions and actions - and should have the moral high ground, while s9-10 dean was flat out awful and damaging. yet both the show and the fandom crucify sam and treat dean as some poor victim or a great martyred hero who made some great noble sacrifice and I just... don't get it. so let's break it down:

> reason for drinking blood / getting the moc

- sam: exorcising demons without harming the host, thus saving people (which apparently isn't that relevant to dean) and killing lilith, first because she sent his brother to hell and then to stop the apocalypse and because she was an actual threat

- dean: because he couldn't face the consequences of his actions after the gadreel mess and decided he wanted to kill abaddon, who, at that point, wasn't even their problem (she only became a real problem in 9x17, when they learned about the soul harvesting, so unless dean has some sort of prophetic knowledge, he had no reason to take the moc in 9x11) and was a real threat to no-one but crowley

> trusting / working with a demon

- sam: I've already said this before, but ruby was a master manipulator and went to extraordinary lengths to gain sam's trust and even managed to fool every single demon (aside from lilith obviously). as far as both brothers knew, she's done nothing but help them, saved their lives multiple times and helped them save others, fixed the colt for them, was there for sam after dean died, is basically hunted by other demons for helping them, has risked her life for them several times and even got tortured for them and was helping sam to go after the demon who was trying to start the apocalypse. sam had absolutely no valid reason not to trust her. I'd really like someone to look me in the eyes and tell me that, if anyone did everything I mentioned above, you wouldn't trust them

- dean: trusted a demon who they knew is extremely untrustworthy and self-serving and only does what's in his best interest and has screwed them over one way or another every time they worked together and has hurt people they're close to

> level of manipulation involved

- sam: as I already said, ruby was a master manipulator and spent two years carefully manipulating sam to get him to do what she wanted. not the mention everything azazel did to get him there, lilith pushing his buttons at every turn to get him to kill her and the manipulation from heaven as well, who were lying to the boys at every turn

- dean: while crowley was manipulating him, the level of manipulation isn't remotely comparable to the one sam went through is s4. crowley saying “let’s kill abaddon” and pretending to be afraid of cain is not comparable to a plan that’s been set on motion since the beginning of time and crowley wasn't the only one involved in dean getting the mark. cain was involved as well and he wasn't manipulating him (unlike sam, who was being manipulated by everyone involved). on the contrary, he was completely honest with dean and even offered to tell him more about the mark and DEAN REFUSED (like can you imagine how many problems would've been avoided if dean sat on his ass for one minute and listened to cain's warning???)

> actions

- sam: in s4 sam was trying to use something that was forced on him when he was six months old, and that he hated about himself, to do good because he felt like he had to and was literally SAVING PEOPLE and trying to stop the apocalypse, I literally still don't get why he's vilified for it????? in s4 sam killed a total of one (1) person: the possessed nurse and while that was obviously bad, 1) he was clearly upset about it and 2) I still haven't seen one (1) valid reason for why she's any different from the demons dean drained and killed in swan song or from any of the other possession victims they killed with the demon knife or the angel blade

- dean: meanwhile dean was going around murdering people left and right (also another example of fandom double standards: everyone defends moc!dean and demon!dean because "he only killed bad people" - which isn't even true, but let's say he was - and yet, I seem to remember a certain kitsune named amy pond, who was ALSO killing bad people (and not for the lolz of it, but to save her son) and dean killed her and the fandom defended him back then as well. is killing bad people okay only if dean does it?), tried to kill sam, beat cas bloody

> keeping secrets

- sam: keeping his powers and the demon blood a secret was his god given right, since it affected no-one but sam himself and the demons he was exorcising. not to mention, he had pretty good reasons for not telling dean, considering his bigotry, black and white views and judgmental attitude. and yet, he was, and still is, vilified by both the show and the fandom for keeping secrets and dean even punched him for not telling him about his abilities (something in particular about this point that absolutely drives me up the wall: in 4x04 sam accidentally revealed that he knew about what azazel did to him and dean got mad at him for not telling him about it, even tho dean himself found out about it and didn't tell sam and no-one - not the show, not the fandom and not even sam and dean themselves - notices the hypocrisy. they're literally saying that it's okay for DEAN to keeps something about SAM a secret from SAM, but not okay for SAM to keep something about HIMSELF a secret from DEAN. if you don't think that's super fucked up, then I don't know what to tell you)

- dean: no-one says anything about dean keeping the effects of the mark a secret, even tho, unlike s4 sam, lying about the mark directly affected other people and put everyone around him in danger, including sam

> general treatment

- sam: everyone treated sam like a monster in s4, dean straight up called him a monster, told him he'd hunt him if he didn't know him, forced him into a torture-detox that almost killed him, tried to control him and refused to see his point. at the end of s4 sam apologized to dean. in s5 dean repeatedly told him that he doesn't trust him. sam was blamed for everything that happened in s4 and his mistake kept getting brought up even seasons later

- dean: everyone and their mom was coddling him and helping to get rid of the mark. everyone considered the mark to be the problem, not dean himself. sam was unconditionally supportive. dean never once apologized to sam for any of the awful things he said/did to him while he had the mark. sam never once blamed dean for anything that happened in s9-10 and instead placed the blame on crowley and none of the things dean did ever got brought up again

> at the end of each arc

- sam: paid for his mistake by sacrificing himself and jumped into the cage and saved the world and got tortured by the devil himself for centuries

- dean: paid for his mistake by having his mother brought back to life

send me unpopular opinions

#redredwine92 #sORRY FOR THE MEGA RANT YFGEUFYUGY

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goblins-riddles-or-frocks · 3 years

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Do you feel like the Crows were adapted well because I personally feel that while Nina and Matthias were fine, even great, the other Crows were done a disservice. Their introductions were changed to be a lot less memorable imo, Kaz was an idiot for not expecting Pekka Rollins to return the blow (I mean, come on! Book Kaz would never), their storylines in this season will take away some of the build-up and/or development of their stories from the books later on and the very fact that they got mixed up with the Alina story was not entirely smart imo. The chances that they would succeed in their mission were small, the screenwriters missed their chance to add a lot of depth to Inej's character considering her backstory and the fact that she is now tasked with kidnapping a person (and she wasn't nearly scared enough of Tante Heleen even though she is still her property while in the books she is terrified of her after years of not being in her grasp anymore) and the fact that there is another way to cross the Fold that is allegedly safer and the Darkling knows of? Wow, what a plot hole. Jesper's addiction to gambling was also treated a lot more as a plot device rather than part of his journey as a character. Personally, I don't like how they were adapted. They had a couple of good scenes but they felt pretty lackluster and not nearly complex and fleshed out enough considering how much screen time was spent on them. At one point I was almost feeling like the show runners wanted to make the show about them actually and yet... Their characterization seems subtly but profoundly misdirected.

So this is literal months after the show’s release but I wanted to rewatch to figure out my thoughts before I responded. But my boyfriend wanted to watch it with me, but he also doesn’t really binge lol so it took awhile 😂

But yeah I agree the crows were overall adapted fairly poorly. The biggest problem for me was that their plot went essentially nowhere. It was just one long easter egg for book fans as a cash grab because SoC just has the larger and more vocal audience.

I understand the choice to adapt it all in a single TV show, and to include them all in the first season from a practical stand point: negotiating screen adaptations is difficult, just because the one project happened, it’s no real guarantee that a second series would actually make it through production hell and not fizzle out like plenty of other announced TV/movie adaptations; and early cancellations are fairly frequent, so there’s also no guarantee that a linear adaptation would stick around long enough for the Crows to be introduced.

So consolidating the IP and the fan bases makes sense, but artistically it just didn’t really work. Their entire plotline was just #hijinks. They didn’t really have any character development of their own. And while the main plotline was already really poorly paced, the occasional segue into a random *completely stagnant* plot just weighed it down even more. Like I wish they actually had something to do, or that we’d simply gotten their canon backstories, or a nonlinear glimpse into the future with the Ice Court heist. Just literally anything beyond the weird improv game style plotting we got with zero real development. Or like ideally the screen time could’ve been used to…god forbid… actually flesh out the world building and to give us a better glimpse of Ravka and how things works, maybe some court intrigue or anything else. (Give us back Genya’s scenes 😭😭)

I don’t know it was just a very poor use of screen time. And I’m just personally not as invested in the Crows without the intricate plot to bolster them, so I was pretty meh about their presence.

I did like the brief moments of characterization we did get, and seeing the main trio’s dynamic before anyone else joins up. Kit Young managed to somehow carry the entire show despite the script practically giving him nothing. His performance was fantastic and just like… the sheer personal charisma it takes to be that charming with so little help from the writing. I’m generally happy with the casting choices, they were all fun. It was just the writing team that really didn’t show up for them.

And yeah the “kidnap the sun summoner” plot was just… not a great idea imo. It makes sense for how to centralize the main goal and have them be relevant (unlike Nina just off having her random separate adventures lol) but just… it obviously wasn’t going to be successful. Even for an audience that hadn’t read the books, Alina was clearly framed as the main character. And the Crows heist plotline was handled with a sort of… humor I guess? where it’s absolutely clear from the first few episodes that they are not going to actually kidnap her and get the money. So with an impossible plot, you’d think they’d focus on character work instead, right? And yet!

Like you said, that could’ve been an excellent time to get into Inej’s head and flesh her out, give her moral dilemmas, etc. And just establishing where they are as people and giving them depth and things to emotionally overcome. But I feel like they were just deliberately held in limbo, probably because the writers were trying to preserve all their arcs for the SoC era in the plotline. (FWIW the random human smuggling train didn’t bother me as much. It established the steampunky adventure vibes Nikolai brings in later, and like crossing the fold isn’t impossible in the books either. It’s just extremely dangerous, which I think the show did address at all. Having completely secure borders isn’t really realistic in any sort of setting)

I’m really curious to see what they do with season two though. A lot of people have been talking about the Ice Court heist being introduced but that’s still not exactly chronologically a thing that happens yet? I don’t really…like… this writing team’s take on completely new content. I think they spin existing stuff in cool ways, but none of the wholesale new stuff completely worked for me. So I’m not even sure what I’d prefer here lol.

#shadow and bone #grishaverse #six of crows #okay also something that bothered me A LOT was how the show handled Jesper as a total comic relief? like in the books he’s *funny*#but it’s meant to be like in a suave and charming way? meanwhile in this almost all the jokes were *at his expense.*#again Kit Young pulled through amazingly and was so good in the role but I’m side eyeing the writer’s room hard #i ramble sometimes #long post #all the bendy punctuations #*writer's cap*

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zumpietoo · 3 years

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Here’s the thing that Milly/Zelda/Kombucha/Dazey/Lisa/etc and all the socks in their drawers combined don’t understand. It is 20fucking21. If Cole Sprouse was some horrible abuser of women, rather than just the victim of his unfortunate taste in headcases (aka Lili and Bree) – he would be CANCELLED. No army of teenage fans, no amount of popularity in Hollywood, nothing could protect him in this day and age. If Bree had the receipts she and her fans claim she does… where are they? Why hasn’t she come forward properly instead of vague posting about Cole on Tumblr/Twitter/Insta/Twitch/wtfever? Why did all of their mutual friends side with Cole during their breakup? Clearly these people don’t remember when the Bree shit hit the fan. People were ready with RECEIPTS of her fuckery… the head games SHE played, all of her jealous stalking (which she also stalked Lili for a while!!), how she shit all over things that made him happy because they didn’t include her, how she told everyone he emotionally abused her when the reality was she thought they were going to get married and be 2GETHER4EVER (at 19 lmao ok), and then when it turned out he just kind of wanted a girlfriend to have sex with and play video games with (lmao like MOST 19 year old guys), she flipped the fuck out and called it emotional abuse. People had all her crazy documented back then, went after her across multiple platforms, and she ended up deleting everything and claiming it was “his stans” that made it impossible for her to come forward which… no… she just didn’t actually HAVE anything, no proof, nothing. Meanwhile, all of their mutual friends unfollowed her, if not immediately then definitely in the years following. The only reason Bree drops his name anymore is because it’s the only way she stays even close to relevant. It’s not because he actually abused her, mentally, emotionally or otherwise… it’s because she’s a tinkerbell who can’t deal with it when she’s not the most important thing in someone’s universe and when that turned out to be the case with Cole, she threw a bunch of accusations at him, stalked his new girlfriend (Lili at the time) etc. But never EVER in all that did she produce an ounce of proof. No friends that sided with her. No texts. No nothing. Because none of what she claimed ever actually happened.

Fast forward to Lili and we have the same issue. If Lili was the victim of Cole’s horrible emotional abuse… she’d put his ass on blast so fast. Lili has ZERO problem speaking her mind. She shit talks like it’s going out of style, and if she was the golden child of Riverdale, and was loved and adored by the producers and writers and RAS and the rest of the cast, and was the welcome wagon and all of the other stuff that her stans claim, if she went to ANY leadership and said “This is what happened, it was horrible, and I cannot be around my abuser like this” the CW would fire him. Or at least work to accomodate Lili if she was that beloved. Look at how fast they got rid of Ruby Rose on Batwoman when it turned out she was a nightmare behind the scenes? And she was the literal STAR of the show. And isn’t their narrative that the show leadership can’t stand Cole anyway (some of that is true, looking at you RAS and Ted especially, but that’s not because Cole is a nightmare to work with and more because KJ isn’t the fan favorite which, whatever)? Also if Lili DID get the network/show to give him the boot, which if he was abusive to her, she absolutely could, what would Cole do? Sue for breach of contract? When she should have mountains of proof after 3 years? When no doubt the show would’ve seen this behavior happening too? Like, what is their REASONING that Lili suffered and continues to suffer all of this grief that he’s supposedly causing her by flaunting Ari, etc? If she had proof, if anyone had seen all of this happening, they could’ve gotten him bounced in a heartbeat. Look at how fast ALL of Hollywood turned on Armie Hammer? Kevin Spacey’s accuser came forward 30 years after the fact, with almost zero proof and Hollywood cancelled him so fast. This isn’t the early 2000’s or even the early 2010’s anymore. It is 2021 and if Cole was really that horrible, people in the industry would know, and no one would work with him. But instead he’s still booking photography work, he’s still booking movies (two of them, Moonshot and Undercover), he’s inking deals with production companies. His past coworkers are excited to see him when they run into him on the street. Practically everyone who works with him says what a hard working professional he is (or they don’t say anything at all). His podcast that he helped produce and starred in won one of THE awards for podcasts, and is most likely getting a second season. And what has Lili done? Her poetry book was on the NYT Best sellers list for a week and then fell off. Chemical Hearts flopped HARD (to the point where she was recently pimping it MONTHS after it released). Covergirl filmed one commercial with her and did one print photoshoot with her, and then basically cut ties, having Lili put together her own photoshoots. Even if she didn’t buy her way onto PlusMinus or whatever it’s called, she still has 1 movie coming up and nothing else. Nothing even in the works that we know about. She’s the only one promoting Riverdale at all anymore because she has nothing else to fall back on. Honestly, the only reason she has pretty much any engagement anymore is because of her dog, who I actually think might be more popular than she is now. AND on top of all that, her recent whatever with Wallis apparently already has drama while Cole and Ari remain unbothered despite Ken and that other pap being dicks and all of the hate they Cari lobbed at them on a daily basis. Like, sorry Lili stans that she’s on the brink of irrelevancy, but if she had been abused and had her head fucked with like you all claim she has, she’d be lighting Cole up on social media because people would believe her, proof or no proof. Instead, she’s hanging with people who “only validate” her, including a toxic drunk bitch who basically trashed not only Cole but also Dylan at like, 3 in the morning all because Lili had to do a scene with her ex, and her mom who is KNOWN for feeding the fandom BS lies that she later gets caught out in. She’s trickling out a self-staged photoshoot because she hasn’t booked a real one in what? A year? She has 1 movie, and relies on her dog or breadcrumbing with another B-list actress to get her likes. I know its a tough pill to swallow for them and that’s why they’ve doubled down on the crazy so hard lately, but honestly it’s just sad now. There’s zero proof that Cole is anything they say, and if there was proof, Bree and especially Lili would be shouting it from the rooftops, but it doesn’t exist. There IS plenty of proof that Lili has zero work lined up, and a new drama filled relationship, and toxic friends (and that she cheated on Sam to be with Cole… something else they have absolutely NO PROOF of Cole doing). Sucks to be them I guess.

Even their concept of “abuse” consists of “Cole moving on and living his best life/OMG Cheater!!!”

And the latter applies to Lili, not Cole....

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rachelbethhines · 4 years

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Tangled Salt Marathon - Lost and Found

Another plot episode and another mountain of missed opportunities, failed set ups, and foreshadowing that goes nowhere. But outside of that it’s pretty entertaining. Are we seeing a pattern yet?

Summary: Rapunzel and Eugene go on a journey to retrieve the fourth and final piece of the scroll that will lead them to the Dark Kingdom. They receive help from Vigor the Visionary, who reveals himself to be Lord Demanitus himself, the author of the scroll depicting the purpose of the Sundrop and Moonstone. He leads them to the maze that he hid the last piece of the scroll in. Guiding them through the maze, they obtain the last piece, which united the four into one singular map. As they are about to leave, they are attacked by a stone monster.

Maybe That’s Why You Should Have Brought the Only Person Who Can Read It Along?!

Once again, having the characters acknowledge their stupidity in meta dialogue doesn’t alleviate the fact that the audience is going to think them stupid.

Regardless of your personal feelings towards Varian or what he has done in the past that does not change the fact that he is literally the only character in the show thus far who can translate the scroll. The mains knew that before leaving and they knew from the get go that they were going to need the scroll piece which is why they took it from him.

Not bringing him along, not getting a translation key from him before leaving, nor even showing us a scene of Raps trying to ask him to translate the scroll for them before leaving and then having him refuse to do so, is a plot hole.

Timeline Hint...Sort Of...

Rapunzel said last episode that it had been almost year since they left Corona, and it’s now close enough to her birthday again that Eugene could be tricked by it but not enough to actually be her birthday.

So...when are we again?

I’m going to guess 10 months after Secret of the Sun Drop? Maybe... It could also be 9 or 11 who knows... but I am still seeing fall like trees which is our only indication of a changing season in this show because the creators don’t understand climate apparently.

Maybe cause we’re now further north of Corona we see fall/winter leaves even into early spring?

Where Was This Rapunzel In Season 3?

Rapunzel actually giving a crap about what Eugene wants is as rare as seeing a fawn in the woods. It happens, but most of the time you forget it's even there.

While come season three, Rapunzel will just shoot the poor deer dead.

Madame Canardist is a Wasted Character

I’ve already discussed at length the biggest problems with Madame Carnardist in my Vigor the Visionary and Curses reviews. So I won’t rehash those talking points here again. However what I spoke about were larger problems with the media industry and bigotry as a whole and not the specific impact the character has on the story. Which is next to none.

The crew went through all of this trouble to make a deleted character from the film relevant to the series’s plot, and even there they failed. Madame Canardist is nothing more than a translator for Vigor when Demantius isn’t around. The story doesn’t utilize her properly despite her connections to one of the more plot important characters.

What is her relationship to Demantius and Zhan Tiri? How did Vigor come into her care? Why is she the only person who understands him when Demantius isn’t in control? If Vigor is centuries old by this point than how old is she? What is her stake in all this and why does she bother with Rapunzel at all if she has nothing to gain from it? Why doesn’t she go along on this important quest through the maze seeing as how she is Vigor’s caretaker?

She’s not completely useless, but like with Lady Caine, Xavier, and Hector before her, she has far more potential than the series is willing to explore with her.

So Much For Caring About What Eugene Wants

Welp that lasted all of five seconds.

Man, Rapunzel is a shit girlfriend.

The Pay Off Works, But It Then Serves No Purpose Afterwards

I don’t mind the idea of Demantius being the monkey. I mean it is one of the very few plot points in the show with proper foreshadowing and follow through. And yes, Demantius does accomplish one thing here, by helping Raps obtain the last scroll piece.

The problem is, nothing changes with this revelation.

No one’s perceptions or interactions with Demantius/Vigor are altered after this reveal. No one changes their plans, goals, or motivations afterwards. Things carry on more or less afterwards the same as if they had never met. The only thing of importance here is the scroll pecice and that’s only relevant in Cassandra's Revenge and is then forgotten about completely for the rest of the series.

What’s the point of having a plot twist if the status quo still remains?

If the information being revealed doesn’t alter the story then why keep it secret to begin with?

How Could You Research Them If You Never Found Them?

So did Demantius write the incantations or not?

He is the one who put them on the scroll, so it’s natural to conclude that he did create them, but he couldn’t have done that unless he had studied both the moonstone and sundrop to see the effects the two macguffins had to the spells.

Now according to this exposition dump, the sundrop and moonstone had been around for ages before Demantius and had become legends by his time. It is possible that someone else studied the two macguffins before him and came up with those incantations, but who?

The ancient people of the Dark Kingdom might have studied the moonstone since they were tasked with guarding it, but no one knew where the sundrop was until Gothel found it.

The audience needs to know this sort of information in order to understand the motivations driving the conflicts of the characters.

Imagine a Lord of the Rings trilogy that never bothered to say where the one ring of power came from or how it came into Gollum’s possession. You’d be left wondering why everyone was fighting over what amounts to an invisibility spell that once belonged to a small deformed hobbit who used to catch fish.

This Explanation Goes Nowhere

Why did the disciples betray Demantius? What did they gain from siding with Zhan Tiri? Why was Gothel with them? Did she betray everyone once she found the sundrop? What was Demantius and Zhan Tiri fighting over to begin with?

Don’t expect any of those questions to be answered. The series inexplicably makes a big deal over Gothel being connected to Zhan Tiri, but then never actually explains what that connection is, what they’re relationship dynamic was, nor how it connects back to Rapunzel’s and Cassandra’s current conflict.

That’s the real failing of the show’s lore and backstories. They don’t connect back to the current conflict. It’s just there.

In a well constructed show, Demantius would have been a parallel to Rapunzel who was also ‘betrayed’ by people she trusted. It would have been revealed that it was Demantius’ own actions that drove away his followers and caused them to side with Zhan Tiri. Thereby serving as a warning to Rapunzel herself and forcing her to realize in the end that in order to save everyone she’s have to apologize to those she hurt. We also would have gotten three betrayals instead of two since that’s more thematically impactful.

But this isn’t a well constructed show and the characters in it don’t ever evolve.

This Contradicts What We Find Out In Season 3

We find out in the last season that Zhan Tiri was originally from this world and that the only reason she was ‘bent on destruction’ was because of Demantius ticked her off somehow. She also had no magical powers of her own until after Demantius had banished her to that other realm where she was imprisoned.

Also Demantius didn’t use any powers. He just chucked her into a portal he had built without any warning or trail, with zero idea if it would kill her or not, all because she just stood there yelling at him. Like there wasn’t even any physical fighting, so it wasn’t a case of in defense either.

Demantius should have been revealed to be the real antagonist all along but that would require the showrunners to be actually clever for once and not misogynistic towards their female characters.

This Makes Zero Sense

First off, when was Zhan Tiri ever looking for Demantius? She’s been too busy trying to escape from her prison and it’s been centuries. She has no reason to suspect that he’s still alive nor does she care. Zhan Tiri’s plans are not dependant upon whether or not Demantius still exists.

Secondly, how is the host body still alive after centuries? Why go with monkey when I’m sure there are actual human beings out there who would agree to living forever. Does the transfer actually destroy the mind? Cause if not you could have had an actual coherent host that could have helped out when Demantius was dormant.

And don't give me any guff about ‘ethics’ because this is the man who played judge, jury, and executioner to his supposed friend/possible lover and probably killed one of his disciples as Sugarbee’s spirit was trapped in his device.

Not the Best of Plans My Dude

So Demantius is basically committing suicide here for no real reason.

Unless he was just already dying anyways when he made the transfer, then Demantius is drastically shortening his conscious life span. The monkey will live on, but he won’t.

So why? He had no way of knowing that the sundrop would become a person in the future, it’s completely coincidental that he met Rapunzel just at the right place and time to help her, and as stated above, Zhan Tiri was no longer a threat to him or the world since he imprisoned her and defeated his disciples.

Like what was his thought process here? “I just really, really want to be a monkey?”

Eugene Isn't Wrong

Look, I am a deeply religious person and I have faith in many things, but even I know that critical thought is necessary for basic survival and that scepticism is just plain common sense. Believing in something doesn’t mean shutting your brain off and never thinking for yourself.

Demantius has yet to give any reason for why Eugene and Rapunzel should trust him. Him saying ‘have faith’ repeatedly does nothing to instill confidence and in fact does the opposite. If you want to people to believe in you, especially in a dangerous situation that you dragged them into, then you need to earn that trust.

There’s a world of difference in assuming the best in people and being a fool, and Rapunzel is not the better person just because she blindly goes along with anything because she stubbornly wants to do whatever she wants and assumes she’s always right.

Eugene is Still Right

Is ‘Faith’ the new ‘Destiny’ now? Are we just assigning different meanings to random words in order to push the story’s narrative along?

This entire maze only involves solving puzzles, answering riddles, and a bit of running and climbing here and there. ‘Faith’ has absolutely nothing to do with it.

This theme doesn’t even work when you take into account the reveal that it’s Eugene who needs to have faith in Rapunzel. Because Rapunzel isn’t the only one doing these things and getting them through here.

In fact Demantius being here, and being the one who built the maze in the first place, kind of negates Rapunzel’s importance in this area. Secondly, Eugene is doing half the work anyways so it should be a message about having faith in each other. But they already have that so...yeah what’s the point of Demantius constantly bringing it up?

Why Are You Caring About Money While Stuck In a Death Trap?

You’re rich now, Eugene. You’re the future prince consort and live in a palace. As soon as you get back to Corona or a place that recognizes Corona as a kingdom you’ll have plenty of money to spare. But you can’t do that if you’re dead inside a maze.

Moreover, Rapunzel still has money on her. She just threw two coins in to the well; one for her and one for Demantius. You two live together! You’ve been traveling inside a caravan together for over a year now and neither of you work. Ergo, you should logically be sharing your finances at this point in time. Especially since that is what you’ll be doing anyways once you’re married for real, as you’ll both be heads of state.

That’s Now How Faith Works

Faith is evidence for things unseen, or to put it more accurately the evidence for things that are unprovable. God, death, the future, creation, souls, the meaning of life, ect, are all concepts that can’t be proven nor disproven. No one upon this earth will ever know for certain what happens after death, how the universe was made, or if there is any intelligent life out there beyond ourselves.

People don’t like the unknowable.

Believe systems of all kinds, whether they be religious or not, exist to bring us comfort when face with the dread of such existential questions. Even if that belief system is agnosticism itself.

Gravity, weight, and basic physics however are all provable concepts that have been around since Ancient Greece, if not longer. Man has always known that if you drop something it falls, even if they didn’t have the math to back it. It’s just a fact of life.

‘Faith’ isn’t going to stop Eugene from falling. It’s not going to make the bridge more sturdy. It’s not going to magically make him as light as a feather. It won’t turn the acid below him into water. “Faith’ can’t literally give you wings and make you fly; that’s just a metaphor.

What Demantius is promoting here isn’t faith. What he’s asking Eugene to do is to blindly follow his orders without question.

This is especially jarring when you consider that Demantius is supposed to be a famous scientist. He should know very well the importance of critical thought and that having faith doesn’t mean shutting your brain off.

The Scroll is Such a Let Down

We’ve spent a season and a half finding the pieces for this thing and it won't actually be relevant until the halfway through season three. Mostly because the one person who can translate it isn’t here.

On top of that, it’s no longer important outside of one episode. It’s an example of the payoff not living up to its hype.

So This Is a Lie

The scroll only contains four incantations on it, and one is on the back in invisible ink and not the fourth pecice itself. None of those incantations involve combining the moontsone and sundrop together. In fact, after using two of those incantations only once they’re never seen being used again for the rest of the series. Furthermore, once the moonstone and sundrop are combined they only allow the user to perform the healing and hurt incantations, which Rapunzel can do anyways without the moonstone.

Demantius wrote the dang scroll himself! He should very much know what is on it and what it does. This is yet another case of the writers not planning things ahead.

Being Good at Riddles Doesn’t Make You ‘Pure of Heart’

Being ‘pure of heart’ means that you are kind. One does not need ‘faith’ to be kind. Being kind is doing the right thing and helping others even if it doesn’t benefit you at all.

Not only does running through a maze not have anything to do with faith, it also has nothing to do with kindness.

The only thing it proves is that Rapunzel enjoys running through a maze, and will do so in addition to dragging others along with her regardless if those people want to do it or not.

That’s not being kind.

If anything Rapunzel has only proven thus far in the series that she is a very selfish person who shouldn’t be trusted with such grave responsibility.

But as already pointed out, Demantius doesn’t care about actual faith, kindness, or purity. He just wants blind obedience. He’s mistaken Rapunzel’s exuberant and stubborn nature for nativity; not realizing that her complancany is only because they both desire the same goal.

Had he asked Rapunzel to do something that she didn’t already want to do, she wouldn’t have been so ‘pure’ to his mind.

That Is a Very Valid Question

Eugene has a point. There’s no reason to go on this quest. In fact knowing about season three in hindsight, turning around now and not going to the Dark Kingdom would be the better option for everyone.

Cass couldn’t steal the moonstone. Zhan Tiri would never be freed. Corona will never be destroyed and the brotherhood never mind trapped. As for the black rocks they will just sit there impotently not doing anything.

Even freeing Quirin, not that Rapunzel cares, only requires the hurt incantation, which she already has.

The only problem is that Cassandra has ZT trapped in her mind but without the moonstone that has no consequences outside of Cass hearing a annoying voice in her head that she is perfectly capable of ignoring. And even that wouldn’t have happen if they had turned around after the Great Tree.

SHOW DON'T TELL

Nothing in the show back up what Demantius is saying here. We haven’t seen the rocks being active since season one. Even when Rapunzel was lollygagging around or going off the path.

When they do become active again in the next episode it’s to help her, and after that in season three it’s all Cassandra’s doing.

Also in season three Rapunzel is able to rebuild Old Corona around the rocks with little problem even though she didn’t reunite with the moonstone.

In a Competent Show This Would Be Foreshadowing. This Is Not a Competent Show.

I genuinely thought this was hinting at Moon Eugene, when I first saw this. Now couple that with the talk of ‘three betrayals’ earlier and I thought Eugene would be the final ‘betrayal’ and that a true love's kiss, after Rapunzel had apologized to him, is what would reunite the two powers and save the day.

I’m not going to fault the show for not living up to my expectations and predictions, but I will fault the series for failing to utilize Eugene properly and not working him into the main conflict. He’s the duel protagonist of the franchise. He should have just as much weight in the narrative the same as Rapunzel has.

Oh How I Hate Where This Arc Goes

What the show does wind up doing to Eugene however, is incredibly stupid and frustrating.

Remember how I said that ‘faith’ in this show is just blind obedience?

Yeaaaahhh....

That’s what Eugene takes from all of this. Not that he should support and believe in his partner, something that he already was doing by the way, but that he needs to be a doormat to her and her whims.

Like with Rapunzel yelling at Hook Hand in Brother’s Hook, this is the point where Eugene’s character starts to break. You just wouldn’t know it until after watching season three.

This Is Such a Lazy Cop-Out

Like the audience has these questions too. Neither us nor Rapunzel will ever have these questions answered. You just backed out of committing to any real answers because you didn’t have your story planned out like you should have.

Why Does Everyone Act Like There’s a Prophecy When There Isn’t Any Actual Prophecy?

Once again, Demantius had no way of knowing that the sundrop would become a person. No one did. There’s no prophecy and there’s zero explanation for his psychic abilities, which are inconsistent at best. In fact I don't think he does have such powers, otherwise he’d be more helpful inside the maze. I think those are reserved for Vigor only and we don’t know where he got them or if he even is a ‘real’ psychic.

Tangled the Series wants to act like it’s running on a predestination plot. That events must occur and will occur regardless of what actions you take to prevent it. Now ignoring how that causes problems with the characters’ agency for a moment; you can not have any predestination if there’s no actual destiny.

Chosen one plots often have prophecies for a reason. Predestination is there to evoke either tragedy that can’t be prevented or present consequences for if/when the main hero doesn’t follow along. Either way it’s there to establish conflict.

Everyone in TTS acts like there is a conflict when said conflict hasn’t actually been established!

This is writing 101. You need conflict. You need to establish shit. You can’t just pretend that a conflict exists where it doesn’t. ‘Fake till you make it’ doesn’t work in long term storytelling and television animation. It has to be pre-planned.

Also The Timeline Doesn’t Match

Demantius said that it was a millenia when the sundrop and moonstone fell.He also just said he’s been waiting for a millenia to ‘meet the sundrop’. Yet Demantius acted like the sundrop and the moonstone were already legends by the time he started to search for them. That means they had to be around longer than he has. It also brings us back to the first question of who wrote the incantations if he and Zhan Tiri never found them?

Believing In Someone Does Not Mean Shoving All the Work Onto Their Shoulders

You’re supposed to be in this together. Couples should work as a team. Both of your lives depend upon getting out of here so you should both be coming up with ideas and working together.

Not only does this miss the entire point of what ‘believing in your spouse’ actually means, it’s also incredibly unfair to both of these characters. It’s unfair to Rapunzel for put so much pressure and unrealistic expectations onto her and to have her be the person to carry both of them through when Eugene is perfectly capable of physically doing things. It’s also unfair to shove Eugene to the side and make him a useless character all of a sudden.

Rapunzel Does Nothing To Earn Such Blind Devotion

Rapunzel’s magical hair has nothing to do with Rapunzel as a person. It’s an entity separate from her being. Literally. The hair can move of its own accord as shown here and it’s possible to physically separate Rapunzel from her powers as seen in the finale.

Believing in Rapunzel should be about believing in who she is as a human being, about her individual character. It should not be because she has magic glowing hair.

Not only is this a betrayal of Rapunzel and Eugene’s relationship and why they came to love one another in the first place, but it’s also a betrayal of Rapunzel’s growth as a character. It’s not only Eugene who blindly kisses her ass after this point, it’s everyone, even though she gives them little reason too.

This the Last We’ll See of Vigor and Madame Canardist

Three episodes spent establishing these characters and now they’re just gone for no reason. They’re never seen of nor mentioned again beyond a single meta joke. Despite the main conflict revolving around Demantius and them both having the closest connection to that character.

This Is Bad Foreshadowing, But At Least It’s Actual Foreshadowing

Up till now any ‘foreshadowing’ we got for Cass’s villain arc has been confined to poorly thought out background images; the painting of the moon, the broken mirror in Gothel’s tower, and I won’t even dignify Chris’s bullshit about her handmaiden dress being blue.

Not to mention all of that was only in season one. Outside of her conversation with Eugene about their parents, way back in Cassandra vs. Eugene, we haven’t had any real foreshadowing until we hit the Great Tree.

Since the Great Tree we’ve only had a couple of bitch fights with Raps, which I personally don't consider real foreshadowing since no ill will was attached to those, and her glaring angrily at Rapunzel after escaping the shell house.

In light of that, this scene is at least genuine foreshadowing, it’s just poorly done foreshadowing.

While the other attempts at foreshadowing were too subtle, this one is too obvious. It gives the game away too early because there’s no other viable options within Rapunzel’s group. Adira comes closest and she’s not actually here and not really considered a friend by Rapunzel herself.

So what winds up happening is that Cass’s arc feels rushed despite being planned since the beginning.

Conclusion

I spent three days fighting tumblr to get this review posted! Appreciate it!

As for the episode itself, it’s fun to watch in isolation, but it’s such a let down knowing what’s to come from it all.

#tangled #tangled the series #rapunzel's tangled adventure #anti-tangled #demanitus

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brazenbells · 3 years

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The Vaccine News Continues to be Better than Many People Realize.

From New York Times – Morning Report, Feb 1, 2021 by David Leonhardt

Infections aren’t what matters

The news about the vaccines continues to be excellent — and the public discussion of it continues to be more negative than the facts warrant. Here’s the key fact: All five vaccines with public results have eliminated Covid-19 deaths. They have also drastically reduced hospitalizations. “They’re all good trial results,” Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, told me. “It’s great news.”

Many people are instead focusing on relatively minor differences among the vaccine results and wrongly assuming that those differences mean that some vaccines won’t prevent serious illnesses. It’s still too early to be sure, because a few of the vaccine makers have released only a small amount of data. But the available data is very encouraging — including about the vaccines’ effect on the virus’s variants. -“The vaccines are poised to deliver what people so desperately want: an end, however protracted, to this pandemic,” as Julia Marcus of Harvard Medical School recently wrote in The Atlantic.

Why is the public understanding more negative than it should be? Much of the confusion revolves around the meaning of the word “effective.”

What do we care about?

In the official language of research science, a vaccine is typically considered effective only if it prevents people from coming down with any degree of illness. With a disease that’s always or usually horrible, like ebola or rabies, that definition is also the most meaningful one.

But it’s not the most meaningful definition for most coronavirus infections.

Whether you realize it or not, you have almost certainly had a coronavirus. Coronaviruses have been circulating for decades if not centuries, and they’re often mild. The common cold can be a coronavirus. The world isn’t going to eliminate coronaviruses — or this particular one, known as SARS-CoV-2 — anytime soon. Yet we don’t need to eliminate it for life to return to normal. We instead need to downgrade it from a deadly pandemic to a normal virus. Once that happens, adults can go back to work, and children back to school. Grandparents can nuzzle their grandchildren, and you can meet your friends at a restaurant. As Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told me this weekend: “I don’t actually care about infections. I care about hospitalizations and deaths and long-term complications.”

The data

By those measures, all five of the vaccines — from Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Novavax and Johnson & Johnson — look extremely good. Of the roughly 75,000 people who have received one of the five in a research trial, not a single person has died from Covid, and only a few people appear to have been hospitalized. None have remained hospitalized 28 days after receiving a shot. To put that in perspective, it helps to think about what Covid has done so far to a representative group of 75,000 American adults: It has killed roughly 150 of them and sent several hundred more to the hospital. The vaccines reduce those numbers to zero and nearly zero, based on the research trials.

Zero isn’t even the most relevant benchmark. A typical U.S. flu season kills between five and 15 out of every 75,000 adults and hospitalizes more than 100 of them. I assume you would agree that any vaccine that transforms Covid into something much milder than a typical flu deserves to be called effective. But that is not the scientific definition. When you read that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was 66 percent effective or that the Novavax vaccine was 89 percent effective, those numbers are referring to the prevention of all illness. They count mild symptoms as a failure. “In terms of the severe outcomes, which is what we really care about, the news is fantastic,” Dr. Aaron Richterman, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, said.

The variants

What about the highly contagious new virus variants that have emerged in Britain, Brazil and South Africa? The South African variant does appear to make the vaccines less effective at eliminating infections. Fortunately, there is no evidence yet that it increases deaths among vaccinated people. Two of the five vaccines — from Johnson & Johnson and Novavax — have reported some results from South Africa, and none of the people there who received a vaccine died of Covid. “People are still not getting serious illness. They’re still not dying,” Dr. Rebecca Wurtz of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health told me.

The most likely reason, epidemiologists say, is that the vaccines still provide considerable protection against the variant, albeit not quite as much as against the original version. Some protection appears to be enough to turn this coronavirus into a fairly normal disease in the vast majority of cases.

“This variant is clearly making it a little tougher to get the most vigorous response that you would want to have,” Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said. “But still, for severe disease, it’s looking really good.”

What would an expert do?

The biggest caveat is the possibility that future data will be less heartening. Johnson & Johnson and Novavax, for example, have issued press releases about their data, but no independent group has yet released an analysis. It will also be important to see much more data about how the vaccines interact with the variants. But don’t confuse uncertainty with bad news. The available vaccine evidence is nearly as positive as it could conceivably be. And our overly negative interpretation of it is causing real problems.

Some people worry that schools cannot reopen even after teachers are vaccinated. Others are left with the mistaken impression that only the two vaccines with the highest official effectiveness rates — from Moderna and Pfizer — are worth getting.

In truth, so long as the data holds up, any of the five vaccines can save your life.

Last week, Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University told my colleague Denise Grady about a conversation he had with other experts. During it, they imagined that a close relative had to choose between getting the Johnson & Johnson vaccine now or waiting three weeks to get the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine. “All of us said, ‘Get the one tomorrow,’” Schaffner said. “The virus is bad. You’re risking three more weeks of exposure as opposed to getting protection tomorrow.”

#couldn't find another post about this so i decided to make it myself #great vaccine news #coronavirus #vaccines #new york times

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randomwankystuff · 4 years

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Confession: Deku Annoys Me

Disclaimer: I’m not entirely caught up on BNHA - I read the manga/wiki pretty much at random.

I can’t stand how obnoxiously perfect Deku is. He was presented as this underdog protagonist but hasn’t been since episode 1. And I don’t just mean his quirk - OFA is powerful, but All Might doesn’t have the same Gary Stu problems Deku has. My problem with Deku isn’t that he’s too physically powerful, but that he plays too many roles in class 1-A. Right now he’s:

1. A physical powerhouse. Only Todoroki, Bakugo, and nighttime Tokoyami can even compete.

2. Probably the fastest student. Full cowl 8% was already about as fast as Gran Torino, and Iida hasn’t been useful for several arcs...

3. The best strategist. Even though Yaomomo is canonically a genius, and Iida and Bakugou are more booksmart, most of the time it’s Midoriya that comes up with a brilliant yet simple plan to save everyone’s asses. Yaomomo only really seems to be relevant when she’s in school, taking a test. Midoriya had the best actually useful plans during the U.S.J. incident, Kamino, etc.

4. The most effortlessly selfless. (I mean, this goes without saying, this is pretty much his defining character trait.)

5. The best leader. His classmates voted for him at the beginning of their first year, and pretty much everyone except Bakugou defers to him without hesitation in sticky situations.

6. The hardest worker. He’s always training, always trying to improve. Remember the air chair exercise in Season 1? Casually just squatting throughout the entire class. Everyone was in absolute awe.

7. The most inspirational. Everyone looks up to him, from Aoyama to Kota. Aizawa notes he and Bakugo are the pillars of 1-A.

8. The most social. Yeah he’s presented as an awkward nerd, but he makes friends in two seconds flat with everyone. He’s charmed his way into friendships with Aoyama and Todoroki. Eri absolutely adores him. He’s always sweet, thoughtful, likable.

9. He’s even good looking. Ochako and Toga have crushes on him, and his art is designed to be pleasant to the eye.

Although BNHA tries to pretend Deku has flaws, he actually doesn’t, because they’ve never had any real life consequences.

“He’s insecure.” Well, his insecurity rarely hurts him. He was always committed to pursuing his dreams as a hero. He doesn’t lash out at others when he feels unworthy. When death is hammering at the door, he magically summons the confidence not just to act, but even to command and to inspire others. In real life, insecurity is often much more debilitating. Insecurity in real life often means you don’t even try because you believe you’ll fail, you get uncomfortable or temperamental around people who make you feel less than, and you don’t magically get a confidence boost when it’s convenient. Yaomomo’s arc is much more compelling than Deku’s when it comes to overcoming insecurity because, unlike Deku, her insecurity actually holds her back.

“He’s an awkward nerd.” That hurt him when he was a child, hanging out with Bakugo, but since he entered UA, he manages to effortlessly charm everyone he knows, so really, he doesn’t have a significant social handicap. His awkwardness is presented as sincere, endearing, and funny more than anything.

“He’s selfless to a fault.” To what fault? He gets lectured, but he’s always right in the end. His charging into danger without any regard for his own safety has been proven to be the right thing to do several times. He inspired All Might to fight against the sludge monster. He saved Bakugo when he was kidnapped. Yeah, he breaks bones doing selfless things, but this is shonen - temporary pain has very little emotional weight because everyone gets hurt all the time, and then they get healed by magic. He breaks his bones, discovers he has legs, and then goes back to fighting at pretty much full strength. A cool looking scar doesn’t count as a real consequence of his selflessness. Honestly, I’m just waiting for Deku to rush in to save one person even though he’s warned against it, and because of that, the villains are alerted of their presence/he isn’t there to help others when they need them, and several other people die as a result.

To be clear, none of what I’ve mentioned above is a problem on its own. OFA is obviously an absurdly powerful quirk. Midoriya spent years taking notes on heroes and learning from them. He’s naturally a selfless person - that’s the point of his character. He should be likable, clever, hardworking, and inspirational. But he shouldn’t be the strongest AND fastest AND smartest AND most selfless AND the best leader AND the hardest working AND the most charismatic AND the most social, all while having pretty much zero relevant flaws. It’s absurd. Especially in a place like UA - isn’t it supposed to be one of the two best hero schools in the country?

I know plenty of people who have gone to top tier universities, work at Google, are top ranked athletes, etc. None of them have been anywhere near as perfect as Midoriya. Generally, if you’re the most athletic person in the room, it’s not likely you’re also the smartest. If you’re the most likable, you’re probably not the hardest working. If you’re the most selfless, you’re probably not the leader who gains everyone’s undying loyalty and respect. Perfection almost never happens. You can’t be the best at everything, especially at a place like UA, which is supposed to be the Harvard of the BNHA world. Rather, everyone should shine in certain areas only. For example:

Yaomomo is canonically a genius, and she’s also shown to be meticulous and hardworking. She should be the best strategist of 1-A.

Ojiro made it to UA with just a tail - no fancy, overpowered tricks, just a damn tail. Just think about how hard you have to work to stand on the same level as people who can destroy buildings with a punch, shock a dozen people simultaneously with electricity, and shatter rock with their ears. It’s not even some magical tail, it’s just a damn tail. He has to have worked his ass off to get in incredible shape, think of ways to creatively use his quirk, and learn martial arts. Ojiro should be the hardest worker of 1-A.

Kirishima is easygoing, loving, loyal, and charming. He should be the one befriending Aoyama, earning people’s trust, inspiring children. He should be the most social and charismatic of 1-A.

Highlighting the abilities and positive traits of these three would be a easy way to get more attention on BNHA’s fantastic cast while also helping Deku grow as a character.

Or, just treat Deku the way BNHA treats All Might. All Might is amazing but he’s far from perfect. He’s not the best strategist - he’s very smart, but he still relied on Nighteye to look out for him. He’s caring and charming, but is shown to be a pretty mediocre teacher. His overwhelming selflessness and his heart-over-head mentality actually had consequences in that it cost him his relationship with Nighteye. His trusting nature and his empathy for the powerless led to conflict and complications when he chose Midoriya over Mirio. His heroic drive wrecked his health, forced him into retirement, and prevented him from saving more people.

Even Mirio, who is probably a Gary Stu, gets arguably better treatment than Deku because, although he’s very powerful, he doesn’t shine academically/strategically the way Deku does, and he also literally loses his quirk as a result of his selflessness. Todoroki and Bakugo both also have plenty of flaws/weaknesses, and suffer for their mistakes all the time.

I still root for Deku, but honestly I continue to follow BNHA mostly for characters like Todoroki, Aizawa, Kirishima, and Yaomomo.

#bnha #mha #midoriya #midoriya izuku #momo yaoyorozu #yagi toshinori #Mirio Togata #ojiro makoto #kirishima ejirou

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smallestclowninthecircus · 3 years

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Season 4 notes

Ep 121: mmmm tape recorder turning on without them knowing goes brrr. AAAhjhdsjfhjdf "do you mind if i call you jon" its like "can i call you elias?" is this the dream guy with the tendrils? who wants to bet the boat is captained by peter lukas? big man if it killed yall how are you still here. oh boy the tape is doin that thing. who do we think it is? did he wake up? hmm. ep 122: lol jon. 6 months!?!? bruh quit movin big man. he just Knows things sometimes you know how it is. nah b/c i can relate to feeling like other ppl/ things arent real, thats the biggest mood BUT i think it is kinda pretentious to entertain the idea that youre the only Real person. If you dont see a body dont believe it. i'll hold out hope for a bit. theres not a new archivist is there? surely i wouldve heard about that. oh god peter what changes did you make. ep 123: web development. hope its about spiders. she blames him. bruh why. if they hadnt done anything the world would've ended piss off melanie. why are ppl acting like he chose to be in a coma for 6 months. we know this they just appear. no longer "head archivist of the magnus institute, london" now he's just "the archivist" covered in spiders? cuz ik the spider has to do with controlling what youre doing and all this stuff but i cant think of how this connects to that. ep 124: ugh vertigo. is michael crew an old man? oooh. fairchild. how did he know it was martin? hmm. GRR I LOST MY NOTES AGAIN. FROM EPISODE 125 - part of 131. ep 131: bruh he's so hard to understand big man ur voice is so low. Jared Hotworth. the boneturner. "the ones i helped find their proper bodies" name a better top surgeon? our favorite trans ally? ep 132: woo field trip into the coffin! static lol. he says "chill out im just poppin in for a quick recall mission" is the rib thing actually gonna work? bruh it feels so odd and contrived but he's an odd man with some odd powers so idk. rip that archivist ayyy statement time. voices? recordings? are those tape recorders? was it the tape recorders? did they pull him back? i hope so b/c if the rib thing actually worked im gonna be so disappointed. ep 133: predicting the lonely? tundra. like the lukases. hmm. sanikova! like sanikov land. so its the hunt? i suppose? yeah. so daisy's clearly rejecting the hunt, which makes sense cuz she doesnt seem to like the entities that much. wait so are we just not gonna talk abt all the tapes playing on the ground?? no? ep 134: not an archival assistant anymore? Adelard Decker (or however you spell it) i recognize that name. 15th power. i was right there are 15. the extinction? im trying to remember what ive heard. oooh spooky. no i gotta be real i dont understand this fear but i'll believe you that its a thing. ew lukas is so squealy. lukas can turn invisible? oh boy. oooh martin put the tape recorders there. lol lukas is worried he's gonna be an avatar of the eye. ep 135: yoo its the third Daedalus statement! maxwell rayner (reiner? reigner?) i dont know who that is but ik its somebody. is he the cult leader guy? church of the divine host? 4 people?? what? did they kidnap somebody and keep them up there?? oh dear jon are you dying? did he try to See or Know or whatever? why does everyone call basira detective lol. ep 136: he was the one from the spider movie that ate ppl right? the special effects artist? is it annabelle cane? "its a joke jon" lol. hmm they wanted to record the therapy session with melanie? i wonder who that is. i almost wanna guess annabelle cane but im not sure. ep 137: this is the one! he went to the other place and read the war statement but it wasnt the one she took. not the music again. sounds like the slaughter. who the heck is eric lol. "the watcher's crown" like the crown of eyes we saw in the piccrew ep 138: oh boy Robert Smirk time. is that elias? as unhelpful as usual. if new powers can be "born" can others die out? did jonah magnus wear the watchers crown? maybe they were born from our fear or maybe our fears were born from them. ceaseless watcher does ceaselessly watch so. idk what you want

big man. yeah jonah for sure did something. ep 139: agnes!! lol that one dude threw off all their plans thats so funny. BUT this does tell us something. the tree in the backyard of the hilltop house? not made by her. it going down didnt kill agnes. im guessing gertrude tied agnes to the house using the tree? u good jon? cuz every time you try to Know smth intentionally it seems like it causes you great pain. how come he can do it accidentally with no problem but the second he wants to know smth of plot relevance he gets a headache or whatever ep 140: lol pagan exultation. classic. "oh thats my rib" lmaoo. ppl are always so mad at jon and his Eye powers except when it benefits them. they're like "oh you shouldnt do that its not right" and then all of a sudden they want to know something and its all "oh cmon jon its the only way" ep 142: oh god jon what did you do. its interesting she's giving her statement in the way that they do when jon Asks. did he see her in the Coffin? and so he's following her? ok cmon jon you're supposed to let them come to you. lmao ikr martin. "start to hear the blood" "suure." lmao ep 143: lol that awkward moment when gertrude is already dead. big J if you die im gonna kill you. bruh. ayo helen? i guess it worked? ep 144: lol this reminds me of that one edgar allan poe story where he kills the old dude with the weird eye. spooky music stuff. lol thats my favorite symptom of a heart attack its hilarious. so its smth abt the location probably? bro i feel like you should write down the numbers idk. 162830165049 564846474827. seems like the distortion? like the kinda thing that causes you to go crazy because of the numbers. oh boy is it the extinction again. bro what?? im?? his dad just died and he's like eh. martin dont be mean. he's being all lonely again. big man ur pushing ppl away. oh god its fucking squealy boy. ep 145: that almost sounds like breekon/hope... Arthur? agnes. aah was he from the lightless flame cult. a tree. lol he's just ranting rn. hehehe fuck landlords amirite. yay someone tells jon outright to go to therapy. now do it big man. ep 146: oh great! the distortion! i'm making a spiral themed building in mc right now! jon maybe accept you did a bad? nah this goes back to what i said before. they're fine with him compelling ppl when its convenient for them but otherwise its "no jon you cant, youre a monster jon" the tapes didnt turn on. i spose that means its not important? i agree with daisy, this seems unecessarily dangerous. ep 147: is that a tape? the first tape? well that went better than i expected tbh. BAHAKJASHDJKF she did the "can i call you jon" like nikola says "elias, can i call you elias?" damn annabelle is such a girlboss. oh! the one thing from the picrew. its been a while since ive connected smth to that. lol all the other avatars always talk abt their patron so lovingly and the jon just. absolutely hates the eye. ep 148: lol thats the most elias thing. "i just like the way it sounds" ep 149: did he disappear? bruhh. ur lonely powers are popping off i guess. oops i accidentally deleted my notes for 150 - 152 ep 153: thats the cult right? yeah. it doesnt sound like the church of the divine host? idk. if it is the church of the divine host then they worship the dark right? so is the eleventh the dark star or wtvr? it almost sounds like the corruption b/c of the oil or grease or whatever. oh dear what happened. oh its the hunters. theyre so annyoing. not an "it" he has a name. he's a person. is this a page from the skin book? ep 154: oh shit this is gerry's dad! oh shit he quit! oh dear god. jon don't you do it. haha martin. yeahhhh... is he gonna tell the others? cuz you know theyre gonna get mad if he doesnt. oh also picrew connection! the bandages over the eyes? yeah thats this im guessing. ep 155: oh good he told them. oh my god what did you do. lol i have no mouth and i must scream. nah you get none of my sympathy you're straight up murdering ppl. its like the desolation, destroying lives to sustain your own. ok but taking their statements doesnt

kill them. oh... bye melanie. ep 156: lmao imagine if the tape recorder spoke back. oh boy decker! i swear we got a statement from him already. oh god mirrors scary. They're gonna eat the body arent they. Yup... sounds like the flesh or the slaughter, but I'm not sure. Could be the extinction for sure. Smth at the center! Like Helen mentioned. God Peter you dick. Ep 157: peter's just so :/ another decker statement i see. a statement about the corruption? hmm. maybe its not abt the corruption. the extinction. lol pandemics. topical. John Amherst. helen? lol i can hear admiral purring in the background. oh cmon helen dont be like that. im trying real hard to like you but you make it so difficult. ep 158: did they fucking free the stranger? im gonna lose it. you absolute dumbass. im sorry who is that? jonah magnus? my guy. peter. you absolute dickhead. that's elias. (im p sure i had this spoiled for me that elias is jonah) oh dear this is her death. god peter you prick. i hope this is a pop off martin moment and not a "martin you idiot" moment. i hope the hunters kill the stranger entity. or she kills them. furry daisy pop off! yeah fuck you peter martin can make his own decisions. you know that clip from Twisted where jafar says "ok what the fuck was that" martin D: ok like i know its gonna work but still D: D: ep 159: peter you bitchboy. because if im alone i cant hurt anyone else. imnotgonnacryimnotgonnacryimnotgonnacry do it do it do it do it. pop off jon. ok its a pretty good idea for a ritual i gotta be honest. she didnt even have to blow it up lol. oh dear that was certainly a noise. "he gets you" did he not have jon already? he's back! our boy is back! awwww thats so cute. ep 160: oh right this is the thing in the safe house. i love him. "obviously im going to tell you if i see any good cows" martin my beloved <3 :)) oh boy who is this. fuckin. people. jonah you dick. gahh. you can tell he's trying to resist so hard lol. ohh. hehe keep an *eye* on him. altho if the extinction is a real thing he needs to be marked by that right? lol he sounds so intense im sorry- i want martin to just burst in and be like "look at this cow i saw!" its so dramatic and for why.

#tma notes #tma

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chibimyumi · 4 years

Note

Hi Chibi! I’m kind of obsessed with your blog. I’ve loved Kuro for a long time so it’s nice to see someone make very thoughtful posts about it. I was reading some of your posts about the kuro anime and was wondering. What is your opinion of the season 2 OVA The story of Will the reaper? I love the reapers so getting to know about their world is great, but will kicking grell’s ass was not great 😖.

【Response to: “are there any S1 or S2 OVAs you enjoyed?”】

Dear Dagonl,

Thank you very much for your interest! I’m happy you like my content, and it’s always nice to hear that somebody is interested in long-winded posts deep-analyses! ^^

Short answer:

As for my opinion on ‘The story of Will the Reaper’: as I said in the original post, in my opinion “[a]ll OVAs for the second season were (almost) as awful as the season itself, save for ‘The Making of [Kuroshitsuji]’.” Though, ‘the story of Will the reaper’ is actually the one that made me add the ‘almost’ in the previous sentence, meaning that it’s marginally better than the rest.

Click for Full Answer: The good things and the... awful things.

1. The good things

The reason I found this OVA marginally better is because I do respect the ambition and (attempt at) creativity the makers have shown. At the time of release the manga had not revealed anything yet about reaper origins. So I guess they could be forgiven for their artistic liberties (unlike the spoiler-revelation of Undertaker’s nature that ruined his big revelation in the manga.)

1.1. Fair world-building

The world-building works well with the idea of Yana’s satire on the Japanese Salaryman through William. As William is something of a self-proclaimed ‘model’ and so unforgivingly rigid, it gives us reason to believe the Reaper Dispatch Society is built on this type of ideal; aka the Japanese office environment. We have also seen that the technology of the Death Scythes is a century more advanced than Kuroshitsuji’s contemporaries, so the 1980s setting was well done in my opinion.

1.2. Fair reflection on reaper/Salaryman doctrine

The biggest critique on Salaryman culture is the robotic attitude employers demand. The Japanese Salaryman™ is expected to be no more than silent executors of the will from above. As explained by William, reapers don’t actually do all that much; all they do is meaningless double-checking JUST IN CASE something might be off.

As a satire this OVA is not ‘complete’ because you do need the information from the manga that came out many years later to understand why the reaper world is a satire in the first place for the actual punch. But in the very least the OVA pays adequate lip-service and does not disrespect the satirical origins of Yana’s design.

One thing this OVA does arguably better than even Yana is showing that most reapers are robotic work zombies like Will, rather than that the Dispatch Office is filled with eccentric youngsters as the named reapers of the series might suggest. (Though there is a downside that I will discuss in section 2.2.)

2. The awful things

So, to me this OVA has two good things, but they are insignificant in the face of the awful things that’s the rest of this OVA.

2.1. Raging homo and transphobia, etc.

This OVA handles Grell extremely poorly. First of all, this OVA makes it explicit that Grell is a homosexual man, blatantly defying both canon and Yana’s explicit statement of her female gender. Why? Because the most obnoxious shippers want their Yaoi, and this sells. This one literally needed to sell because it’s an OVA.

As explained in more detail in this post, Grell was called a man and she eagerly responded “oh, yes”, and later she herself confirms this statement by making it explicit that she dreams of herself in a m/m relationship. (Yes, these subs are accurately translated. Click the link for a Japanese to English breakdown).

Some fans have explained this as Grell’s words before she realised her own identity, and I understand why. We all want something to not be this gross and try to make sense of the nonsensical, and some actual identity discovering journey would have been nice. For Grell as a character however, it only serves to give Man!Grellers more ammo (even though they have the destructive power of cotton wads).

As I said in the post linked above, “[if this statement] used to be [Grell’s] thoughts that are no longer relevant in present time, the script should have addressed that in present-timeline of the story. As it is now, it is clear as day that the writer Nemoto Toshizou did not take that into inconsideration.”

Secondly, this OVA is desperately trying to cater to Grelliam shippers. Fans have always come up with different reasons to ship this, but this OVA had to choose the most toxic one to capitalise on. Why make Grell so shitty to Will for no reason? Being degrading to him is one thing, but Grell was outright deadly violent to William for trying to do his job. And then Grell only stopped being so hostile because she got beaten back and therefore fell in love?

Yes, people justify this by saying that it’s charming to Grell because she’s a masochist, “whatever”. This however, paints a very askew image of real people who enjoy masochism as a kink. Any responsible adult in the SM community would tell you how painfully shallow Grell’s masochism is portrayed as, and how this portrayal takes away all accountability from someone who harms a kink-masochist if something went wrong.

This OVA would ironically have been more effective as an anti-Grelliam story, except that it sells itself as the opposite. With just the manga, people could just say: “oh, Grell doesn’t respect William’s personal boundaries, and William is very aggressive to Grell, but they can sort that out...eventually.” Add this OVA however, suddenly William is an indisputable abuse victim, and Grell is just an “in your face gay” (as the gay stereotype dictates...)

2.2. Contradicting Canon

I am actually not all that harsh about this OVA contradicting canon history because at the time of release nothing about the reapers had been revealed yet. Like I said above, I even respect the creativity to some extent. The only real problem is because this fandom tends to conflate canon with anime information by using cross-media information to understand Kuroshitsuji.

As discussed in section 1.2., the glimpses of the Reaper office are interesting, but the downside to this is that it suggests reapers are a race one is born into because all newbies are approximately the same age. Without the manga, this information in a vacuum is fine. Later however, Yana reveals that all reapers are suicides and are being punished for this sin. If a fan accepts both pieces of information and tries to piece them together, then suddenly this bit of creativity becomes a totalitarian nightmare.

People of all ages commit suicide. If a fan were to try shoehorn the OVA info into canon material (for lack of more stories), then we get: 1. reapers are suicides who get punished, and 2. all reaper newbies are approximately the same age and able bodied. The only conclusion we can draw then is that only able-bodied suicides who fit the ‘newbie age’ are punished. What happens to people who fall outside this norm? Is becoming a reaper and ‘paying off’ your sin the only way to “serve your term”? If so, then do suicides who fall outside this norm never get a chance to redeem themselves?😱 Or...... do only able-bodied youngsters get punished for committing suicide because they still had “societal value” but wasted it? Either way would be f*cked up!

But again, none of this is a real problem as long as a fan can distinguish canon from non-canon information ^^ So, moving on

2.3. Are reapers God Almighty?

Unlike the second, the third issue I have with the OVA is actually something I am quite harsh on. In this OVA we see that even trainees like William and Grell have apparent power to judge over somebody’s life and death based on their intellectual value. However, this begs for an urgent question!

Under section 3 of this post I discussed whether the law of “a human dies because a reaper says so” according to Grell would be feasible. It’s a relatively long discussion, so please click the link if you’re interested in the details. If you just want it to be quick then just ask the following question: “why give trainees/reapers with human subjectivity an almighty God’s** power to decide over life and death of others?” If we then add the manga’s canon information that reapers are being punished for having committed suicide, then why give people whose sin was ‘deciding over life and death wrongly FOR THEMSELVES’ the power to do so for OTHERS????

Still, even if we disregard the manga and view this OVA in a vacuum, it is still VERY alarming that trainees are given this power. Perhaps if a trainee misjudges there will be due consequences from above, but why give a trainee this power in the first place? Are human lives just test objects to this “reaper race”?

This third issue is so awful to me because it shows how little the OVA creators thought through matters and just wanted a quick money grab by selling the most toxic version of the Grelliam ship.

**TLN: A ‘shinigami’ is Japanese for ‘Death (shini) God (gami/kami)’, but please note that in Japanese definitions, a ‘kami’ is not ‘god’ in the same way it is in the Abrahamic sense. A ‘kami’ is more similar to a ‘spirit’, and is therefore not a supreme being. Entirely accurately, a ‘shinigami’ would be more similar to ‘death angel’ or ‘death spirit’.

Why would Sascha have committed suicide? Rutger, Will and the JP Salaryman

How does a scythe kill a reaper? A discussion of MBD musical’s horrible writing of universe laws, and canon reaper laws

Can reapers teleport?

A reaper’s dormitory

#Shinigami #reapers #reaper #Grell Sutcliff #William T. Spears #William #Shinigami Will's story #The story of Will the Reaper #OVA #Kuroshitsuji 2 #Season 2 #Black Butler OVA

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smokeybrandreviews · 3 years

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Beskar and Bullsh*t

This season of Mando has been very interesting to me. As a show, it’s been pretty interesting. A slow burn building into something special toward the end. Maybe. We’ll see. I have faith in Favreau. I have faith in Filoni. Speaking of Filoni, this season is like a greatest hits from his clone heavey neck of the galaxy. I love the fact that Katee Sackhoff showed up as Bo-Katan. I’ve been a fan of Sackhoff’s since the long ago days when she rocked that gender-bent Starbuck on Galactica. Hearing her cast as the younger Kryze sister made perfect sense. Almost as perfect as Rosario Dawson for Ahsoka Tano. We haven’t seen this one yet but i am absolutely looking forward to it. Tano is my second favorite Star Wars character after Vader and Dawson was the dream cast for her in live action so this is a legit event for the fandom. There is a lot to like about this season. I’m about to get kneed deep into the sh*t i don’t like though so buckle up.

The show, itself, is good. The sh*t happening around it? Not so much. This season of Mando is mired in controversy after controversy and they’re all stupid. Like, none of these things are a proper issue and i hate that they’re made out to be. That sh*t with Pedro Pascal wanting more face time? Bro, you’re playing a Mandalorian. They don’t take their helmets off. You never saw Boba Fett’s face and he’s the one your show is supposed to be about anyway. Oh, you’re upset Katee Sackhoff got to take her helmet off and get that delicious visage viewing and not you’re throwing a tantrum about it? Dude, you signed a contract. You knew exactly what you were doing going into this thing. I get your feelings are hurt bu suck it up, buttercup. You got papers saying you’d wear that helmet. Do your f*cking job and quit b*tching about it. I hear that the compromise was just voice work which makes sense. Win-win for both parties i guess. Pedro getting that James Earl Jones treatment going forward seems fair.

Speaking of Katee, there is a bit of controversy about her Mandalorians and the breastplate that sits on top of them. F*cking Anita Sarkesian, of all people, decided to take umbrage with the fact that the female Mandos have “boob armor”. Aside from the fact that Sarkesian is an unscrupulous, opportunistic, grifter who shouldn’t be taken seriously about anything, and lost any semblance or relevancy or credibility years ago, the f*ck are you talking about? Women have tits. They have to be accounted for. Mashing them into a flat space like you’re constantly getting a mammogram because you don’t want to see women “sexualized” is stupid and would probably be excruciating. The real kicker about all of this is the fact that the “boob armor” in question ain’t even egregious in nature. There is a legit, defined, contour on the front of their armor. You can see it but it’s definitely not emphasized. There is room there so your breasts aren’t crushed against your body while you, you know, jet pack all around the f*cking galaxy, getting into firefights and fistfights. I can see if these things were, like, Beskar boob socks or somethings but they’re not. They literally have just enough room for the women wearing these armors, to be comfortable. How is this even a f*cking thing?

An even less issue that seems t have become the biggest controversy of the season so far, is The Child eating that frog lady’s eggs. Look, you can’t be mad at a kid sneaking their favorite food when the adults aren’t watching. I get that you people feel some kind of moral outrage at the assassination of The Child’s character or whatever but, for real, if you think this something they would never do, you haven’t been paying attention. Kid literally chased down a whole ass frog and ate it alive last season. Why the f*ck wouldn’t they pop a few of those tasty delights if left to their own devices? What two year old you know ain’t going to shove piece of cake into their mouth when you’re not looking Hell, they’ll do it while you’re looking! Why would The Child be any different? Especially considering they’re being raised by a f*cking Mandalorian! Like, this whole issue, their entire controversy, is because you people built an entire image of who The Child is in your own minds, and now you feel bad because it doesn’t jive with your own version. That sh*t is dumb. I get that’s the whole argument that Disney sequel apologist, especially those Last Jedi traitors, espouse but there’s a difference between actual in-character behavior that’s been well written and objective disdain fueling a targeted attempt to assassinate everything that came before. Baby Yoda might be a psychopath. IF that’s where Filoni and Favreau want to take it, it's their prerogative. They created the character. It lives in their mind. you people are only borrowing it, projecting your perception and biases all over it. Stop it. Sh*t never ends well. You’re just going to keep hurting your own feelings like that. Don’t be so dumb.

#The Mandalorian #Star Wars #Bo-Katan Kryze #The Child #Din Djarin #Disney #Lucasfilm

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