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markantonys · 6 months

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My Mom Reacts To: wheel of time season 2 episodes 5-8 (episodes 1-4) (season 1)

the episode 1-4 post did not contain book spoilers, but this one does, so beware!

first, some dinnertable questions that arose in the past few days:

mom: 3000 years ago, when the first dragon was around, was ishamael--wait. was ishamael the dragon? me: no mom: but he was around back then? me: yes, he was the first dragon's best friend, but then he betrayed him mom: just like how liandrin is betraying everyone

(also, she keeps trying to call him "ishmael" like the moby dick character)

mom: at the end of 14 books, does good triumph over evil? me: i'm not gonna tell you that mom: well this show won't go for 14 seasons, or if it does, i'll be in a dementia ward by then

mom: how long is someone the amyrlin? me: for life, unless they get removed mom: is it an elected position or would they have like a coup? me: [sweating] it's an elected position

she wanted to know where everything was, so i pulled out the handy randland map mug she gave me for christmas to show her! haha

she also asked if we see more of the other colors (ajahs) in the books, and i said if anything we see less because liandrin and alanna have much less screentime in the books, and she was very surprised to hear that

dad: [setting up a dad joke voice] what's it called when lan dies? me: what? dad: lan's end

(okay that might be an americans-only joke lmao there's a big clothing chain called lands' end, not sure how widespread it is. but it cracked ME up, at least!)

mom: does lan die?!?!?!? me: you read his wikipedia article like 2 months ago mom: well i don't remember any of it, that was a long time ago!

she also assumed that no one who is together now (lanaeve + randgwene) will end up together. i'd straight up told her a while ago that rand and egwene don't end up together but she wasn't totally sure of that now, so i think it's actually okay if i tell her spoilers because she'll forget them immediately djkfjgh

episode 5

"she should be glad to get those ridiculous nails cut"

she was horrified by the horse slaughter!

my dad laughed at the guy getting his head exploded, maybe it's not just rand maybe he just likes to see Anyone have a bad time

elyas: your friends from the two rivers aren't your pack mom: ohhhh 😔😠 elyas: neither was your wife mom: [GASP]

she loves hopper so much and i'm not ready for her to see ep8!!

brown sister trio introduced, we pause as i am tasked with writing down every ajah and what they do lmao

my mom repeatedly asked if suroth was a forsaken. probably because she has The Audacity to talk to an actual forsaken Like That!

not much reaction to aviendha at all this episode! i think my mom was a bit overwhelmed by all the new info being learned in this episode, so she was more concerned with trying to figure out who the aiel and the seanchan are than with paying attention to aviendha specifically (partially my fault bc i first explained the aiel as "those warrior people" and she thought i meant the seanchan lmao). she mourned that we hadn't started our character/terminology list on a bigger piece of paper!

i had to fight to keep it together rather than shout with joy during the gawyn namedrop djkjfgh

mom: did the red one free nynaeve so they could try to escape?? me: yes mom: she is just too complicated for me

in this same vein, my dad later referred to liandrin as a "double double agent"

moiraine: [big sigh] dad: she's always a drama queen

he's not wrong jkdjfg

ishy tenderly stroking rand's face also got no reaction, much to my surprise haha i meanwhile was silently losing it

when the seanchan were bringing out egwene and saying how powerful she is, my dad was like "but she's the wrong one, it's the other one who's powerful" oh my god let poor egwene LIVE djkfg even he is pulling a "did you hear that nynaeve is the most powerful channeler we've seen in 1000 years" on her!

my mom cracked up at moiraine saying "it's your choice rand, i mean it this time" and was like "yeah i was gonna say, is she ACTUALLY going to let him choose here?"

episode 6

my mom literally THE SECOND renna's bracelet linked with the a'dam: "so she can channel too? i thought these people punished everyone who can channel" not her INSTANTLY clocking The Sul'dam Secret when in-world it apparently took hundreds of years for anyone to notice hahaha this certainly lends weight to the "this information Is Known but routinely suppressed, as fascist governments are wont to do" interpretation over the "literally not a single person had any idea until the wondergirls" interpretation

lanfear: why do you think you can't trust me? mom: because you have a silly hat

911 lanfear's just been murdered. i guess some people (straight women) ARE immune to her dominatrix outfit djkfg

my mom also voiced her displeasure with rand's haircut again in this scene. my mom 🤝 me 🤝 mat

BOTH my parents thought lanfear's condition was going to be that rand had to kill moiraine himself! the second he opened his eyes they both said it! they're already thinking so dark!

on that note, i'd predicted my mom would be annoyed at moiraine for refusing barthanes's sandwiches, but that was not the case: instead, she and my dad both went "oh i bet the sandwiches are poisoned" they're so suspicious of everything now! and rightfully so

"i can hear you bickering from the fruit market" got a good laugh

my mom also gave a hearty, appreciative chuckle at mat shitting on rand's hair. he spoke for all of us!

mat: i'll meet you in an hour mom: they don't have watches, how will they know when it's been an hour?

mom when moiraine apologizes to barthanes: why is she being nice? me: because she feels bad mom, as if it never occurred to her moiraine might have a conscience: oh..............

mom when siuan arrives in cairhien: now someone can tell her about liandrin! me: but no one here knows that mom: UGH!!!

haha welcome to wheel of time! the necessary information is always stuck in the wrong plotlines and unable to be passed along to the relevant people!

elayne to nynaeve: if we help ryma, we can't help egwene mom: oh this poor woman, now she's faced with another hard choice just like in the arches! me: [sits there stunned because i never made that connection]

episode 7

my mom loved lan telling rand to tuck in his shirt, naturally

lan: heron dips over the wing [or whatever the name was] mom: what? me: it's a sword form, they all have weird names mom: oh, that would explain why it didn't make any sense

lan: your duty is to protect everyone in the world, not just the ones you love mom: that's a big responsibility :(

she laughed and said "she doesn't like not being the boss!" at nynaeve's face when elayne told her to do what she said

she is SO PRESSED about other characters needing to find out about liandrin. she was so excited when anvaere eavesdropped and then so mad when moiraine left before anvaere could tell her the news (but i reassured her by saying that moiraine is about to go to the same place as nynaeve & co who will be able to tell her)

moiraine: [is Mean to lan] mom: TUH! dad: he should just slay her

mom: so what does this tea do? me: allegedly it will show mat his past lives mom: but it might be a trick me: ishamael DOES call himself "father of lies"

my dad was like "that was cool!" after mat's bad trip, which is among his biggest reactions to anything, other than "[chuckles] that was a good one!" when egwene said "renna i will kill you"

ishy: i just want to close my eyes and never have to open them again mom: so kill yourself then 🙄

911 ishamael's also been found murdered. i think she could put the forsaken in line honestly, "you have a silly hat" "kill yourself" she's just not having any of their shit. i hate to compare her to cadsuane, but it's kinda giving cadsuane.

lanfear's dominatrix outfit did get more appreciation this time though when the silly hat was not present ("they had fun with her costumes")

rand: i need your help lanfear mom: ??????? doesn't he know she's evil???????

"she could at least say something nice to lan 🙄" when moiraine fails to say something nice to lan after getting unshielded thanks to him

lanfear: [broken amyrlin line] mom: is she broken??? me: i think she just meant metaphorically, not physically mom: oh. but their love is broken :(

episode 8

my dad actually put his laptop away to watch this episode with his full attention. this is high praise! he never does that!

mom: who's that? [dain] me: the whitecloak perrin spared when he escaped with aviendha mom: i don't remember that me: we watched that YESTERDAY mom: 🤷

she did remember after another moment though haha but that supports my impression that ep5 was A Bit Too Much New Info for her to take in all at once

lanfear: rand i'm the only one who truly cares about you mom: i don't think THAT'S true!

when perrin tells hopper to stay there: "he's just going to leave his dog out in the desert with no water???"

mom when lanfear calls ishy sweetheart and strokes his hair: wait was he the one she was in love with????? me: no it was rand's past life, that's why she's obsessed with rand mom: rand's past WIFE???? me: LIFE

babe wake up new polycule just dropped (lanfear/ishy/lews/ilyena)

she GASPED when renna cut off egwene's braid! as she should!

she said "too bad min isn't here" during the episode (she thought it would be helpful if min could tell mat what would happen if he were to touch the dagger; i was like "i think he knows it would be bad mom" lmao) and after the episode she anxiously asked if we would ever see min again, dammit mom don't you dare become a min stan on me jdkfgh (although, the fact that she thought we might not see her again indicates it's 0% on her radar that min might be anyone's love interest, which is interesting! a number of show-onlys were at least expecting her to be mat's i think)

nynaeve: i'll make you regret the first kiss your mother ever gave your father mom: [delighted] that's a creative one! dad: there are a lot of nasty women on this show and only one nasty man [ishy] me and mom: TUH!

although he is not wrong to say that s2 was the season of Female Villains and Women Being Mean (and i loved every moment of it!). don't you worry dad, rand's gonna be stepping up to fill the Nasty Man Quota soon enough. and i can't wait!

dad when rand is watching egwene from a distance: he's not doing a good job of hiding me: at least his cloak is the same color as the wall dad: well his dumb face isn't

why is he SUCH a hater when it comes to poor rand jkdjfg please, that's your future son-in-law!

they both were repeatedly pressed about everyone carrying the horn box (or rather "the briefcase" as my dad called it) out in the open

mom: they need to just put it in a sack! me: they don't have any sacks on hand! mom: there's plenty of sacks lying around!!!

she keeps thinking that rand got the heron-marked sword from his mom, and when she saw that turak had one she was like "but i thought those were the swords of the aiel?" and i cracked up imagining how offended aiel would be to hear her say that

she missed rand killing all the seanchan because she was too busy asking me the above question, but when she looked back at the screen she went 1) "oh, this is so gory" 2) "did RAND do all that????"

she was sad about ingtar, she was like "ohhhh, i liked him :(" imagine caring about ingtar, could not be me jdkfg

me: so lanfear is talking about the seals of the other forsaken, she wants this guy to throw them all in the ocean because she doesn't want them to be released mom: why doesn't she just do it herself? me: me: me: i don't know, actually..................

(maybe she just wanted them gone stat but didn't want to leave falme for even a moment while shit was going down with rand and ishy? or maybe she was like, I'm Too Hot And Iconic To Get My Hands Dirty Doing Things Myself)

mom as soon as renna's shown to be alive, after egwene's picked up the collar: she should go put the collar on her!

she been knew again!

mom at the mat-perrin reunion: put the spear down before you hug him, you'll stab someone by accident!!!!

she was glad to see egwene get her vengeance, but added "but now i bet she'll feel guilty for killing someone because she's a good person :("

ishy: [talking about what rand did in his past life] mom: rand doesn't even remember that! rand right on cue: i'm not lews therin!

i warned her "you might not want to look" just before hopper's death, but she did look, and she was very sad. as was i!

she thought that one of the heroes of the horn was stepin and i told her it wasn't (it was just some random guy with similar hair) but maybe i should've let her keep on believing it because it's a nice idea!

mom when the spear goes through ishy and hits rand: OH NO!!!! just like min said!!! me: [vibrating with glee over The Great Cauthor Stabbening]

when ishy said "i'm sorry old friend" to rand here my dad said "that sounds familiar" and i was like what's he talking about? but then realized that's what LTT said to ishy in the cold open!!! my heart!!! thank you dad for catching that parallel, i gotta go make a gifset now

"how is one guy holding off all these soldiers by himself?" mom i cannot believe you of all people would doubt lan!

she laughed at rand being like "[half-dead] who are you???" but made no comment on the subsequent romantic shot of elayne. however, after the episode she was like "'who are you?' rand said................is something going to happen with him and elayne??" and i was like 🤷😁😁😁😁 and then she said "but they both have red hair, are they from the same place?" and i told her that elayne is not aiel and not ALL redheads are aiel lmao and maybe i should've just said "you'll see" but. i don't think it's a spoiler to confirm that elayne is not aiel.

she does not believe that ishy is really dead, and she kept asking me if he was really dead and if he shows up again later in the books and i swear, the three oaths possessed me in that moment and made me incapable of saying "yes he's really dead, no we don't see him again in the books". so i just kept shrugging which probably made it obvious that indeed, this is not the last we see of him haha

mom when moiraine starts weaving fire in the direction of the tower: what's she doing?! everyone's up on that tower!!! me: she's not trying to BLOW UP RAND mom: oh

at some point during all the battles she was like "now what's lanfear up to during all this? 🤨" a good thought to have always!

at the end of the episode: "now we have to wait a whole year or two for the next season!!!!!" she's hooked!!

favorite character roundup: my mom said lan is #1 and egwene is #2, and she also loves loial, and she said that she didn't care for perrin last season but likes him a lot now. my dad said his favorites are "the tree guy" (loial) and "the new woman at the end who's more powerful than anyone we've seen so far" (moghedien! that one was a surprise to me. tumblr 🤝 my dad. i hope he'll enjoy The Season Of Moghedien next season! tho it could also be that he just said her because she was the last character we saw and he'd already forgotten all the other ones lmao)

#wot #wot on prime #the wheel of time #wot show spoilers #wot book spoilers

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kimberlyannharts · 5 months

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actually I would love a rant about how JJ sucks as a character

Merry early Christmas to you then, Anon!

Like I think what makes everyone clutching their pearls over the sanctity of JJ’s character and place in the canon so ridiculous is he is barely a character in the first place. He is a plot device in SotD, a narrative goal for Tommy, as the story wasn’t about JJ developing into someone worthy of the Dragon Shield or even an SPD cadet - he's already done all of that. The story was about Tommy realizing he should retire and hand over his stuff already. And you have a son who’s pretty good at being a ranger, so……….he should take it! Great! That’s it. I genuinely don't know why they didn't do some kind of Goofy Movie-esque father/son journey together, especially if you really wanted to discuss this idea of him feeling like he's in his dad's shadow. His existence in the show amounts to namedrops and one voiceover line in the Ninja Steel special, and the only bits of characterization these amount to are he’s a kid who goes to karate camp. To me it comes off like people are attached more to JJ’s POTENTIAL as a character rather than HIMSELF as a character, in like a “well, maybe one day they’ll give him his own book/show/whatever” sort of way, which….it’s been five years since SotD. Hasbro is gearing up to do a reboot and even then, as we’ve talked about many times, they don’t want to put focus on cop characters. Unless some stuff is getting retconned, I am not holding my breath.

The reason I call Minh the superior legacy character by comparison is because there actually was time and space dedicated to showing how she stands out as a person and a character beyond her being Trini’s daughter; in fact, her being Trini’s daughter is the least interesting part about her (in no small part because Trini herself was handled very badly by that special.) What makes her interesting is her personality, her relationship with Zack, how she’s suddenly thrown into the deep end of the PR world by way of great tragedy, and her arc from a vengeful kid to a true hero (the special’s shaky writing of this arc notwithstanding. But at least I get what they were TRYING to do here.) JJ did not have anything CLOSE to that.

Something else about him that’s funny but also frustrating because it’s obviously not intended by the writers, but still happens WAY too often for my liking, is how his existence is honestly a detriment to a lot of women in this franchise kjkfdj he was the catalyst for the old SPD ranking drama, as him being green meant Syd and Z had to stay as pink and yellow (and no, them throwing in some random female OC no one remembers as blue does not make up for it.) And then….Kat……well…..I think this belongs in a discussion that covers more than just JJ, as in a way how they handled Trini in OaA is a very similar situation, but the fact of the matter is that since JJ’s inclusion in the canon Kat’s existence has boiled down to being his mother rather than a veteran ranger with her own life and work, no matter how many times the show and books TRY to be like “No look! See! She’s a super cool badass wife who keeps everyone in line! She’s off doing her own things, too, we swear!” my brother in Christ the same 30th anniversary story that tries to show off how cool and independent she is ALSO has a scene where she’s like “it’s okay honey, you take care of the Ranger missions while I stay home with JJ, it’s fine :)” They’ve made it very clear that JJ is Tommy’s son, Tommy’s legacy, while Kat is his stay-at-home caretaker, WHICH IS FINE FOR A WOMAN TO BE, but not in this narrative, where Kat’s time as a ranger is treated as irrelevant compared to Tommy’s. (A good example is how, in SotD, only Tommy was listed as JJ's emergency contact, with no mention of Kat. I'm almost certain there was an early draft of this book where Tommy did not have a wife.) How do we have two (2) comic stories where we have married TomKat but Kat doesn’t morph. And not as a plot point or character bit or something (I think it actually would be very interesting if Kat not having much attachment to her time as a Ranger was actually intentional) but just in a “we don’t feel like involving Kat in her husband’s adventures” situation. Hello???????? I know that kind of feels off-topic to why JJ sucks but trust me, it’s partly his fault. And it’s why I’m making such a big deal over the potential mother/daughter Ranger teamup for Kim and Olivia, because the alternate mother of Tommy's alternate kid has gotten such a raw deal.

And the SPD/Dragon Shield combo is ugly.

#transmission #anonymous

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huapaiqingyuan · 2 years

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for what it’s worth, chihayafuru had a pretty faithful anime adaptation but within the first 5 minutes we already see a divergence in how the anime chooses to introduce the setting and the characters.

in the manga, the very first page we are treated to is chihaya playing her queen’s match in her third year of high school. this was established from the very start that she was always going to get there. it’s very brief—we don’t get who she’s playing against or how well she’s doing—and we are immediately transported to six years ago where she was still “clueless about passion”, to her very first meeting, as well as introduction to our second main character, arata. meanwhile taichi is briefly introduced a few pages later, but his character only really gets established in the second half. this first part focuses on chihaya’s introduction to karuta, how arata helps her find her own passion and dream beyond her elder sister’s successes and just generally fleshing out their characterisations.

look at how cute they were as children LOL

in the anime, it begins with chihaya pinning two karuta posters in her first year of highschool. at this point, she already has found her passion and is pulling off ridiculous stunts to get people to help her achieve her goals share the same passion. we see that everything she does (joining track) was in a way to further herself in karuta. as she lays in the grass reminiscing about the past—where we briefly see the then unnamed trio—we then get introduced to our second main character taichi.

the background, that one line, the whole scene. dare i say endgame foreshadowing?

it is only after we get a feel of their dynamics and their present* attitudes towards karuta, do we then get introduced to karuta itself via the flashback to their sixth grade days. it is only midway through the first episode that arata is then introduced to us beyond chihaya and taichi namedropping him with such a heavy atmosphere.

*whilst the manga introduces chihaya in her third year, the bulk of the story chronologically follows her progress from her first year of highschool

why i found it pertinent to point out this divergence is that the manga focused more on introducing the audience to chihaya’s passion aka karuta and its rules. besides the first two pages, the manga is essentially chronological. meanwhile, the anime, by choosing to introduce chihaya in her first year before the flashback, focused more on fleshing out the dynamics of the characters’ relationships at present.

i also remarked to a friend that the way the two talked about arata was similar to the anime trope of that one dead friend who inspired the main characters

in a way, i found the anime’s take more compelling because it made me want to learn more about each character. it also expanded upon the kids’ interactions whilst slowly introducing karuta via showing the students memorising poems. personally, the manga, by delving into karuta straight away, came off a little bit too technical for my liking. but perhaps it is because as a foreigner, i am quite literally coming into the manga blind while the average japanese most likely is already somewhat familiar with karuta.

but besides the divergence, or my own personal preferences, is what it means to be the second main character. i’m out of touch with manga now, but a common trope back then was that the first male to be introduced is the male lead. that he is the one that will be the endgame love interest.

in this sense, is chihayafuru a subversion of this trope? or does it bolster the theory that arata was initially supposed to be the endgame love interest? or is it because we are treated to a flashback scene at the very start that throws this “rule” out? perhaps this doesn’t even matter: romance, after all, isn’t the main focus of chihayafuru.

regardless, the manga and the anime had different takes on how to handle exposition and i would absolutely love to hear the logic behind such a narrative decision by the anime team.

#chihayafuru #i havent used tumblr in a hot minute #i dont remember how to tag things #but i still chose tumblr because the tagging system on blogs makes it easier to be organised than on twitter #why is there a space #whatever #chapter 1 #elementary school arc

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vickyvicarious · 4 years

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So having just finished watching The Bank Shot Job, I have realized another thing I adore about Hardison.

His confidence.

And not just in his computer skills. Those are obviously well-founded and given his reputation it makes total sense he'd be cocky and overconfident about them. Except it isn't overconfidence, is it, when he always backs it up.

No, what struck me here was his confidence with people. He isn't a grifter like Sophie, he isn't an especially great actor. He says ridiculous stuff like "we just got back from handling a chupacabra situation" and overacts his emotions to the point of comedy. His characters aren't necessarily very nuanced. But he gets away with it, every time, and why? Because he is so confident in himself, he railroads right over the logical part of people's brains going "....wait a minute."

One of my favorite early scenes from the Mile High Job is when Hardison enters the elevator as a janitor, blatantly blocks the other guy from coming in, changes clothes on the way up, and then accuses the guy of being racist so he doesn't catch on to Hardison being the same guy. He SAW his face, he KNEW it was the same person. Hardison raised a fuss, talked quickly and over top of him, then got out while he was still reeling.

And even that guy, by the end of the episode, didn't question that Hardison worked in the building for a while before this. He gets people so caught up in his pace that they just go along with him, and that is carried purely by his confidence.

We see it with the whole crew to some extent, of course. While Parker is the one most obviously worried about grifting, everyone has their own moments when they hesitate. Still they all have confidence and plow through to achieve their objective - but none with Hardison's flair. He never just takes up space, he owns it.

And part of it is simply the fact that he is such a genius. He knows it, and uses it, and his skill, intelligence, and creative mind help him through everything. But it would be so so easy to go the route of having the genius hacker be socially awkward or have confidence issues when compared to someone like Eliot. And Hardison just never does.

He proudly proclaims "age of the geek, baby," gets annoyed at Eliot mocking the geek stereotypes. He likes all the typical geeky stuff (scifi, WoW, Doctor Who have been specifically namedropped already) and isn't as comfortable in a physical altercation. There are other things that make him feel out of his depths too, on occasion. But that doesn't seem to bother him on any deep level, he doesn't feel lessened by it. Someone's gotta beat up the injured guy and he's fine with it being him, he says. And he isn't actually a skinny weakling, just not well versed in fighting.

Just as Eliot subverts the gruff manly tropes with his interest in cooking and his respect for the women he's slept with, or Sophie with the femme fatale being the mother figure, Hardison subverts the socially awkward genius and the hacker uncomfortable outside of their computers. He dislikes when the option to solve things with hacking is taken away from him, sure, but the same goes for everyone else on the team with their respective skills and they all face situations where they have to adapt.

The writers made a very deliberate choice to make Hardison, not just NOT awkward, but very comfortable with people. He has fun with his cons, throwing in silly and ridiculous details for his own amusement, grinning at people, befriending them easily. They write him being taught how to get along with people into his backstory, and it's not just to contrast with Parker or support her learning how to connect with others though that is a part of it. I'm sure meta on his emotional intelligence and his relationship with her has been written, most notably the "pretzels are waiting for you whenever you want them" scene, and that all holds true.

Hardison is a genius. He's pretty young, which could also play into this usually, the overconfidence of youth (except he never faces a harsh lesson and loses that confidence, not really - gets less brash maybe, more technique, but doesn't lose that base layer of confidence). He is skilled with computers, but he is also well-rounded. Not just in the 'exposition-dropping because I'm smart and I know a lot of stuff' way, though that too. He is an artist, a musician, he likes to learn and likes to create and likes to share his work with people. He is not at all a loner, and flashbacks show that even if he didn't always have close friends he wasn't an introvert.

He knows his talents (and they are many) and believes in himself so much, and it's so clearly not some act covering deep insecurities, that whenever he does hesitate or doubt himself the scene instantly gains so much more weight. It doesn't happen often; it doesn't need to. (Not in any major way, not more than the usual moments of uncertainty the entire crew has on occasion.) But when he does really doubt himself, we really do feel it - and then the others reassure him because he always comes through, and then he does just that. Because it isn't false confidence at all, just honest skill at the end of the day.

After he shows Sophie the edited footage of the bank robbery in this episode (done on the fly, out in the open, while ordering around the cops), she teasingly tells him, "You're still a geek."

Hardison just grins and says, "Power of the geek." He knows that is not an insult. Even if someone ever said it to him meaning it as one, he would know they were wrong and wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

Because he knows his own capabilities, trusts in himself, and walks confidently through life.

(And the whole team are so good about supporting one another and, teasing arguments aside, clearly respecting one another's skills. They all are wonderful with this but I especially want to thank Hardison's Nana because she clearly did so much right by him.)

#leverage #rewatch #alec hardison #my meta #watching hardison makes me realize how tired i am of those tropes #i just love seeing that confidence #i love characters who put on a confident front but have insecurities #but this is so so wonderful

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kaediisarchive · 3 years

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Final thoughts on the 2021 Mortal Kombat movie.

LOTS of spoilers under the cut! Do not look at this post if you don’t want to see spoilers!

And remember, this is all just my opinion. It’s not like an actual in-depth review because I’m not a film student; this is just my perspective on what I saw as a fan of this franchise.

POSITIVE

Sub-Zero and Scorpion were great. Opening fight was great.

“Eddy Tobias” namedrop lmao

I love the snow preceding Sub-Zero’s attack. Very foreboding.

Score is AWESOME. My favorite soundtrack is probably the one that plays when Sub-Zero is attacking them in the city towards the beginning.

Sonya rigging her house with a secret bunker and trap doors is smart and fits her character.

I like that the dragon logo has an integral meaning to the story.

Loved Jax vs Sub-Zero. Not mad about the origin change of Jax’s arms. I like that he had to work through his feelings of inadequacy and failure; people don’t just immediately bounce back after something that traumatic. I also like that his arcana manifests to protect Sonya rather than in the heat of battle. It shows his emotional priorities and what separates him from people like Kano who manifest their arcana in a fit of rage.

Sonya “Throw Hands on Sight” Blade lmfao. They nailed her fighting style too and I am happy.

Kano is the best thing about this movie. No competition.

Kotal reference!

Nightwolf reference!

Shang Tsung’s soul magic being black and wispy and foreshadowing Noob Saibot.

KANO DID THE HEART RIP

CHEKOV’S GNOME I’M SCREAAAAAAMMMMIIIIIINNNNGGGGGG

I love Liu Kang in this. He is 1000000% a Wholesome Boi. I like that he’s younger and unhardened and not the fully realized champion version of his character yet. Let him grow into it so it feels earned later on. I like that he’s the underdog, and I like what they’ve set up for him in the future. Also, the casting for him was perfect and they nailed his fighting style, too.

That little “the FUCK” that the Kano actor improvised(?) in the middle of Liu Kang’s lines made me laugh more than it should have. I don’t know why that moment got to me so much but it did.

I love Kung Lao. And they nailed his fighting style, too! Great to see variation that represents the characters (though there were less shining examples, which I’ll touch on later).

LOW SWEEP! LOW SWEEP! LOW SWEEP!

Egg roll scene is best scene.

Kabal! I love his dry humor. And his voice reminds me of Duke Nukem, which I’m not mad about. It complemented his dialogue well.

Not mad about Kung Lao’s death because it was meaningful. His fatality on Nitara was sick, too.

Liu Kang taking the ribbon from Kung Lao’s hat and wearing it in his honor, giving an origin for his signature headband is FANTASTIC.

THE PIT!

FLYING BICYCLE KICKS!

LIU KANG’S DRAGON FATALITY!

SONYA’S ENERGY RINGS!

Sub-Zero was a GREAT final boss. They really built him up appropriately to make him feel like it.

Scorpion’s fatality! And his skull face!

NEUTRAL

Not sure how I feel about Sub-Zero being wholly evil and there being no involvement from Quan Chi. It’s more straight forward for sure. It makes him an interesting (and badass) character, and I’m really behind this portrayal in that he is one of the most believable characters in the movie, but I’m not sure if I like the implications for later films in how this has simplified the dynamic in the entire Shirai Ryu vs Lin Kuei plotline. Having Quan Chi be the Machiavelli was always one of my favorite MK twists. And how do we eventually end the feud now? If Bi-Han / the Lin Kuei were wholly responsible, why should Hanzo EVER make peace with Kuai Liang down the line? The complexity feels like it’s been stripped down a bit, but I do love this iteration of Sub-Zero. I truly do. That’s why this is in the neutral category and not the negative XD.

Why didn’t Jax tell Cole when he saw the mark? Why wait until his family gets attacked? Maybe he didn’t want to do it in front of his family to keep them out of it, but that ends up endangering them more. Not a gripe, just a curiosity.

Sound editing was a bit too intense at times for my taste. I have tinnitus, so...big boomy bass with very mild voices is a chore for my ears to switch between. My ears were ringing within the first twelve minutes.

Torn between “fuck you Reiko” and “Reiko deserved better”. He deserved just a little bit better, but Skarlet says “get fucked” anyway.

I don’t like the “shaky cam” used in the fight scenes. Not my cup of tea. Very hard to visually process at times.

Whatever cosmic force is picking the champions for Earthrealm is doing a shitty job at it.

Why did they change the location of the Sky Temple to a desert? Again, not a gripe, a curiosity.

“We will not see another full moon before the tournament begins” THEN WHERE IS THE TOURNAMENT BUDDY???

Not sure how I feel about the “arcana” concept. It’s an okay plot device but kinda hammy.

Kitana’s fan! But why? Why is it there? I could understand the Kotal and Nightwolf references because Sonya has been researching, but why is Kitana’s fan randomly in an Earthrealm temple? Purely cheap fanservice.

Nitara was really cool. Shame she had to die, but her death was cool and there have to be some characters that get killed off. Wish she had more screentime though; feels like another instance of fanservice just having her show up basically as a namedrop and a quick kill.

The phrase “Are you okay?” was said WAY too much in this film. So much that I actually notices how often it was said, and I usually don’t pick up on these things.

Pretty sure a camera operator fell at one point in a Sonya scene because the camera jerked around violently all of the sudden then stabilized. Whoops.

How did Sub-Zero know to take Cole’s family to the gym? WHY did he take them there?

NEGATIVE

Opening scene was awesome, but it’s emotional impact felt stunted. I feel like the order of events should have been twisted a bit. Hanzo find his wife and son should have been the big emotional climax of the scene, but it felt like a passing moment and gave him no time to mourn and no time for the impact to truly set in with me. It was an “oh no they died” moment instead of an “ OH MY GOD THEY DIED THIS IS SO FUCKED FUCK YOU SUB-ZERO” moment. I dare say that the Legacy web series did it better in spite of their lower budget and overall quality; the series of events had better pacing and gave more emotional impact because of it. I said what I fucking said don’t @ me.

Wish we got more Scorpion. I love Sanada, I love him as Scorpion, but they didn’t give us the time we needed with his character to truly get a grasp of him.

Cole Young is like white bread in a parade of decorative cakes.

Raiden, a normally passionate and protective character whose fatal flaw is that he involves himself too much in events because he cares about the people in his realm and ends up fucking things up because of it, now seems to not care in the slightest. He feels completely uninvolved save for an occasional pop in to give a nod of disapproval. I don’t like this unemotional take on one of the most emotional characters in Mortal Kombat.

Small complaint from my perspective as a martial artist but uh...”Throw your uppercut!” was a bullshit line in a bullshit scene. If you’re locked up with someone like that and the guy has his arms around your neck, you physically cannot uppercut. You cannot fit your arms between his arms because they are cinched tightly around your shoulders/neck. YOUR HEAD is between your fist + bicep and HIS HEAD. In that situation, the guy has also left his body completely unguarded, so the most logical thing to do since you CANNOT reach his head is to go for BODY BLOWS. Beat him until he lets go to protect himself, catch his floating rib with double strikes, or punch the dude in his fucking liver as hard as you can to DROP HIM. Cole is supposed to be an experienced fighter, yet he makes one of the most rookie mistakes a fighter could ever make. Normally I wouldn’t care to point out mistakes in fight choreography or whatever because it’s MK and I expect ridiculousness, but this is the WRONG kind of ridiculous. It’s just NONSENSE.

I have SO MANY issues with Mileena. I’ll make this as short as I can. I don’t like the design of her mouth. I don’t like her weird stacked voice. She shows NO personality, not in her acting or even her fighting style, just an evil minion that got angry because she almost got her ass kicked. The turned one of the principle characters of the entire franchise and a fan favorite into a GRUNT. There is NO mention of Kitana outside of literal “fan”-service. Not even a reference to one of the most important plotlines in all of Mortal Kombat. And then they KILL HER OFF!!! When they do inevitably bring in Kitana WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY GOING TO DO SINCE THEY KILLED OFF MILEENA???? I’m heated and biased and they did my girl dirty.

Speaking of doing characters dirty, poor Reptile. They turned him into an actual animal. What a waste.

Why are they so mean to Sonya if she doesn’t have a mark? She wouldn’t be as much of a “liability” if they would take the time to prepare her and teach her how to defend against fighters that have unlocked their arcana. Mind-numbingly stupid logic.

This movie relies A LOT on prerequisite knowledge to work. It’s like they want fans to fill in the blanks for them. But not everyone watching is already a fan; this isn’t an obscure release, this is a blockbuster movie released worldwide. These gaps in lore and prior knowledge don’t make sense for such a broad audience.

Cole Young literally could have just been Johnny Cage.

Where was Raiden when his temple was being assaulted?

Cole’s arcana is LITERAL PLOT ARMOR IM FUCKING DONE

No but for real that’s the most boring decision they just ripped off Jax’s MK11 heater effect and Baraka’s blades (I know they’re tonfa and they aren’t attached and I DON’T CARE). Also, now he’s suddenly good at fighting again? After being dog shit this entire movie??? And tanks Goro?????

If Raiden is an Elder God in this continuity, why is he allowed to help Earthrealm AT ALL? It seems like favoritism and bends the rules that the Elder Gods are supposedly bound by way too much. They really just shouldn’t have made him an Elder God; I honestly think they just said it to introduce the concept without a fuck given towards the actual lore of the Elder Gods.

WHY DID RAIDEN TELEPORT KANO TO SONYA’S HOUSE AFTER HE BETRAYED THEM I HAD TO REWATCH THAT SEVERAL TIMES TO MAKE SURE I JUST SAW WHAT I SAW WHAT THE ACTUAL NONSENSICAL FUCK

Cole REALLY should not have been involved in that last fight. Especially not after Scorpion shows up. It should have been Scorpion vs Sub-Zero ONLY for the final fight. Cole tag-teaming Sub-Zero with Scorpion cheapens Scorpion’s revenge.

Camera work in the final fight was not good, especially in the first portion. At one point Cole gets thrown into a fence, but it cuts to an awkward inverse angle that makes him look like he’s bouncing off of a trampoline. This continues to happen and ruins several shots for me.

Honestly Scorpion should have just possessed Cole. Permanently. No switching back and forth. No more Cole, only Scorpion.

PREDICTIONS

Lots of dead characters come back as revenants and / or with upgrades.

Kano comes back with cyber eye.

Mileena comes back with full teeth.

Liu Kang becomes MK champion, wins tournament, and kills Shang Tsung. As it should be.

Cole Young helps Liu Kang become champion somehow idk maybe he sacrifices himself or something just please don’t make Cole the champion I will start a riot.

Next movie will start IMMEDIATELY at the tournament since there was supposedly less than a month until the tournament starts in this movie.

New characters coming in will be Kitana, Shao Kahn, Jade, Quan Chi, Kuai Liang, Noob Saibot, Ermac, and Johnny Cage.

OVERALL

This movie was good, bloody fun! It’s not an A++ Oscar-winner, but if you expected that going into it, you played yourself. It was Mortal Kombat; it was stupid, it was gory, and I had a blast watching it. Kano and Liu Kang were the best parts of the movie for me, with Scorpion and Sub-Zero tied for third. Also I popped a lot for the cheap nostalgia hits. I’m overall satisfied with what we got in spite of my complaints, and I only complain so in-depth about the things I love lmao so trust me when I say I’m not actually mad, just nitpicky. I’ve watched it twice now, and I would watch it again. It’s like a 6.8/10 for me.

#mortal kombat spoilers #mk movie spoilers #spoilers tw #[ooc]

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moirasvnchez · 4 years

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*! — && guests may mistake me as ( alexa demie ), but really i am ( moira ‘mimi’ sanchez + cisfemale + she/her ) and my DOB is ( 2/14/96 ). i am a ( musician ) and would like to stay in suite ( 304 ). i won’t be much of a bother because i am ( free-spirited and idealistic ), but i can also be ( ditzy and temperamental ) at times. personally, i like to ( go to the club and shop ) when i have the time to relax, and my favorite snack is ( chocolate covered pretzels ) to have in my suite. thank you for checking in!

yo yo yiggity yo ... it’s me ( jaybae ) .... with muse #3 ! a version of moira has been chillin’ on my indie for months and i hardly use her so i thought i’d bring her home and let the fam have at her 🥰

backstory:

moira came into the world as a happy accident .. mommy was a stripper, daddy was in a band on a small tour. moira’s mom fell in love as soon as he sat at the stage and he was enamored by her. he offered to drive her home after her shift and the pair dated for a few months before moira’s mom was pregnant. neither one were prepared for the life of parenthood ( very wrong time, wrong place ) but they made it work for a while. then moira’s dad scored a record deal and a small tour turned into an arena tour within a few years....the distance and lack of time put pressure on their relationship and they ended it. moira’s dad would still pop up from time to time to see her when he wasn’t too busy.

moira was pretty much raised at her grandparent’s house. her dad became more and more distant ( off doing rockstar things ) and moira’s mom returned to a life of stripping once her maternity leave was over. her grandparents put her on the bus, helped her with her homework and spoiled her as much as they could. the relationship with her mom was a bit strained but moira knew her mom was working for them - she never felt ashamed of her mom’s profession, even when she got older and understood what it was. her dad sent her money every few months and she knew better than to blow it on stupid shit.

the only big purchase she bought with the money was an acoustic guitar. music was really her only hobby and in some way, she felt that the more she learned, the closer she got to her dad. everyone who loves music wants to strike it rich - but she just wanted to be like her dad who she didn’t really know. make him proud. even if he was only around in fragments of her life.

school was never her thing.....EVER. that being said, her grandparents were the type to force her to do her best. Cs weren’t acceptable in their household and she struggled - but the idea of giving her mom and her grandparents a better life ( and possibly reconnecting with her distant father ) helped her keep going. she decided to go to college .. long story short, she dropped out a few weeks into her junior year. she went to a school near harvard and met taline at a sorority party.....the way she felt about taline was exactly how her mom described meeting her dad - it was INSTANT. fast. passionate. moira was skipping class to go see her and surprising her with cute dates.

had been doing the ~music thing~ since she was about 14 but kicked it into overdrive at the age of 18. dropping out of school only gave her more time for music.....i’m not too good at voice claims but i’d say her music is very like alina baraz/kali uchis/a smidge of H.E.R ! she’s been trying to gain exposure for a year or two and although she realizes she could just namedrop her dad and have it handed to her, she wants to EARN it.

PERSONALITY:

free-spirited : independent and non-conventional .... doesn’t really need anyone for anything and definitely is a bit “ out there ” ! doesn’t always approach things normally and probably sees things differently than everyone else sometimes ...... an aquarius through and through

idealistic : i definitely think she’s the “rose colored glasses” label ?? has big dreams and thinks everyone should dream big .. she has moments of getting discouraged but never gets too down

ditzy : i already said she’s not the brightest and she’s definitely a bit of an airhead ... things just have a tendency to go over her head from time to time

temperamental : mimi has a mean streak for sure .. it’s not so much malicious as it is like ?? running her mouth ?? if you come off wrong or she misinterprets you, it’ll probably result in an argument. ( see : the New York “ break a leg “ gifset i reblogged because that’s very Moira )

i’ll elaborate on this more later

HCs:

bilingual ...... speaks spanish and english !

bisexual angel ......... adores women ( “god’s finest creation” - moira probably ) and likes very few men just fyi !

honestly she’s kind of fake deep ?? very much a “this is a sign” person .. likes chocolate covered pretzels because “they’re all about balance” or whatever ... u know the vibes

can drink you under the table ! her tolerance is ridiculous for a girl her size

flirts with anything with a heartbeat if she wants to.......can turn it off just as quick ! her mom taught her how to *tina belcher vc* wink a little, flirt a little and she can use it to get what she wants if she needs to

never really goes my moira .... ususally mo/momo ( if you’re close ) or mimi ( if you’re not close with her and for ~*musician*~ purposes ) !

although she’s been in one or two monogamous relationships in the past, i’m not entirely sure if she still believes in it ! i feel like she’d rather be in a poly or something if she ever settles down to date again buT WHO KNOWS

can play guitar well, a smidge of piano and wants to learn the drums but she lacks the coordination required to play drums.........it’s a sight to see if she tries !

loosely similar to phoebe from friends - hence the reblogged posts !

uMM ya im done for now but i love hcs so expect more things to come about :~) !

some wcs:

erm honestly anything ?? works ?? some things that would work for her specifically are:

music pals

any type of ~creative~ friend where they can gush over their art together !

bad influence

good influence

club / party friends .... moira goes hard so please be prepared for that mess

fwb ... hella fwb probably

muses for her music ... how gross amiright

flirtationships !!!!!!!! hella !!!!!!!!!!!

maybe someone who knows that her dad is famous ( maybe she told them .. maybe they found out somehow ) .. what they do with the info is up to them but she tries to keep it a secret unless you’re a super, super close friend

confidante ?? maybe someone who knows all about her and vice versa ..

rly anything idc dude i just love yall and chemistry is just as fun sometimes

#malnatiintro #hellooooooooo ily all #malnatiooc

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getaroomyouheck · 5 years

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aight bet dmc5 story thoughts

for all yall that wanted to know

obvious spoilers under cut lol

the shit i was most worried about was V’s backstory, specifically that the explanation they’d give for him being vergils human half would be forced. but in actuality it turned out really cool, i think it was explained well and had cool context

actually showing us the specific actions vergil did really made it work i think. showing him shamble to his old home, and impale himself with yamato only to just have V naked pop out + vergil going sicko mode and turning into urizen was really cool to see

plus, V is less like vergils human side, more so his good aspects. his ambition, his guilt, his souls desire to prevent others from getting involved, all of that. and urizen was just like vergils power gluttony and such given full rise

and it actually gives this cool lore detail to the yamato being able to separate man and devil, which retroactively gives nice lore to rebellion too and finally makes that sword more than just “hehe big hit stick”. cause dante thinks about why sparda gave him rebellion out of everything, and eventually realizes that if yamato severs and vergil impaled himself to sever his human and demon sides, rebellion should do the inverse. and so he pulls out his hilt of rebellion and just fucking impales himself. rebellion’s hilt combines with sparda, and we get the demon sword dante + majin form

besides V being vergil there wasnt much left i was worried about. and as a whole the game had a good story with nice highlights. still wacky over the top fun action, but with a couple more loftier storytelling scenes. whether it was V explaining to trish his backstory, V speaking to nero about the story of dante and vergil as dante is impaling urizen, dante driving rebellion into himself, and all that + more. was hype as fuck to see unfold

and hell even a couple emotional moments too. nero’s DT scene being a particular highlight, as it really lets his character breathe and come to life. he namedrops credo and talks about how he felt useless and refuses to forgive himself for his death, only to scream “I WONT LET YOU DIE” to both dante and vergil and going DT

which is perfect characterization for him + calls back to when dante calls him dead weight in the prologue. nero dwelled on that so much, because its actively what he’s been trying so hard to never be again

when he saw credo die, he felt like a dead weight. a useless nothing who let his brother figure + closest friend perish without anything. and he vowed to himself there that he’d never let anything like that happen again. the buildup of legacy as nero began walking also really let the emotion soak in

one of the most fascinating things regarding dmc5 is the lore behind V’s summons and what happens to em after V and uri join and make vergil. as it turns out, griffon shadow and nightmare were essentially just vergils nightmares and night terrors he had as nelo angelo made manifest into living creatures (griffon as he’s speaking to dante literally namedrops nelo angelo it was a really cool moment). hence why all 3 are enemies found on mallet island. they really add some angst to vergil, showing that as he was being tortured and experimented with by mundus he suffered and had so many nightmares over them that they literally manifested themselves into the dmc1 creatures

also griffons last words to dante were really fucking sad lmao. “we were just vergils nightmares. and this is our last battle. godspeed dante, you’ll need it” like shit dude yall making me sad for the death of a demon birb

really the only thing that disappointed me was that neither trish nor lady really have a central role here. like they’re cool and i love their designs and there are some cool interactions between V and trish in a few moments, but as a whole they don’t really do much. what they do is just like shown off screen or through dialogue. and i understand it aint really their story to be told and nico’s more the main heroine of the game than them, but its still kinda disappointing. hoping that there’s a dlc focused on them and such, that’d be cool

besides that small gripe i really enjoyed seeing how the story unfolded. was really cool to go from knowing like fucking nothing to piecing together the pieces and little bits of story till everything became truly clear. and it was cool how many things they pulled from the other dmc stuff into this. mentioning mundus, nell, a bit of dmc2, its cool. def a satisfying story to me, i did not predict it being like this, but im ok with it regardless

very excited to see where they go from here, the ending feels less like a conclusion and more like a new page starting up. hearing nero answer his phone with “devil may cry” really cemented that feeling for me

also as a side note the end credits scene with dante and vergil duking it out in hell is like almost self aware to how fucking ridiculous it actually is lmao. like the 2 are keeping score of their battles and dante wins a clash and says “yes, im 1 above!” and vergil responds with “where’d you learn to count, we’re even.” like the game is 100% acknowledging how ridiculous and like nearly childish their sibling rivalry is lol. even as like 41 year old men they’re still like this

dante even comments on it like “y’know, is this ever even going to end?” or something like that

#devil may cry 5 #dmc5 #devil may cry #dmc #devil may cry 5 spoilers #dmc5 spoilers #dante #nero #V #vergil #urizen #trish #lady #nico #long post

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ryouverua · 5 years

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Trial 6 - Flashfiction (4)

FLIP THAT CHESSBOARD, SWEETCHEEKS!

Trial: 1 / 2 / 3

it’s what kokichi would have wanted

DRV3 HOW DARE YOU HOLD OUT ON THE CUTEST DAMN TSUMUGI SPRITE OF THE ENTIRE GAME

how can mirrors be real if our eyes aren’t real

And we found it in Kokichi’s lab of all places. Why? Had he been able to get access to it ater all? Why was it just lying there so awkwardly - not hidden or neatly put away at all, but just tossed on the floor like an afterthought?

...... thinks about the state of Kokichi’s dorm room

yeah the chance that he left it on the floor like a bored 12 year old or me is not 0%

Wait.... is there??? The only one that stands out to me is the method of applying vs being scouted...

So we go over the events again, or as the game would probably put it, comb over The Longest, Most Ridiculous, Most Despairing Backstory to look for discrepancies.

Don’t look so pleased with yourself!

YES THANK YOU SHUICHI THANK YOU FOR STOPPING HER BEFORE SHE GOT STARTED AGAIN

It.... it doesn’t???

as;dflksdjf

U-Uuuuh Monokuma??? Are you just allowed to namedrop the title like that???

A-Anyway, this one was sort of vague - not sure if the game did too good a job of hiding it or not, but I certainly didn’t clue into this immediately because, well, I’d argue that Junko was ultimately the cause of this? And she was the original Ultimate Despair, even if Mukuro got roped into it with her? This felt a bit like being at a multiple choice exam where there are a few answers that are sort of right but not exactly right and then I cry

AND MUKURO!!! I WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS MUKURO ERASURE, DAMN IT!!! can you tell she was one of my favourites in the first game if not my favourite

“And that’s why, even though you are technically right, you are also wrong, and therefore will not get any points for your answer to this question.” sweetcheeks you sonuvab -

despite the mukuro erasure, consider me team maki

“Can it, nerd.”

It would have been really nice to have Maki in the first game.

We really are going over this piece by piece.

Okay, so now we’re reviewing the first game. They were forced to kill each other, then Junko was found out and killed herself in the end, which led to the eventual end of the Despair side....

Shuichi is clearly onto something that I haven’t quite latched onto yet. 8′D

This makes me think of how cool it would have been to have this text style in the previous games. Have I mentioned enough about how much I like the typography in drv3? Because I don’t know if that’s possible.

OOOH that’s right - I forgot! Or, well, I didn’t forget, but it didn’t really occur to me that we were remembering that they were literally trapped in the school by Ultimate Despair, I guess.

I guess the gist of it is that they’re remembering - well, not witnessing the events, but being told things were one way vs another. They would have been too young to have been alive at the time though, right? It seems to me that, though the game clearly wants us to take it a different way, we can also interpret this as them just being told the wrong thing within the memories themselves as opposed to the actual memories being entirely falsified. What if the reports at the time or the commonly-known story was that they had been locked in by Ultimate Despair, and it’s only the properly researched books like this that have the correct accounts? It’s not exactly an uncommon phenomenon for there to be widely-held mistaken knowledge/generalizations of famous events, unfortunately... 8′D

Anyway, I’m getting distracted because like I said, this is really not the angle the game is going with at all.

BULLSHIT

AND ALSO

WHY WOULD A BOOK EXIST THAT DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS THE MEMORIES YOU GAVE THEM

WHY DOES IT EVEN EXIST IN THIS PLACE AT ALL

I’m seriously fixated on this book!

also

I love Shuichi just casually ignoring Junko!Tsumugi lmao

I’m calling her Junko!Tsumugi I refuse to call her Tsumugi!Junko I REFUSE TO GIVE UP ON TSUMUGI’S AUTONOMY

This.... this one has to be it, right? This was the one thing I remember getting really confused by when they talked about applying! In fact, I had thought the whole reason Shuichi was considered the Ultimate Detective was because of the homicide case and if that resulted in him being at Hope’s Peak, it was because word of that had traveled - but then if it was an application, that means either his parents or his uncle would have applied on his behalf, right?

this was a detail I remember remarking on and loving btw I got really sad when in Chapter 5 it started looking like they were all in the same class

I think more than the others, this is the big one. All that other stuff can be attributed to mistaken hearsay - but this? This is something they would have ‘directly experienced’.

Oh apparently he chose to come... despite feeling awkward about his title.

I wonder if he was pressured into it by his family....?

Or, uh. Let me correct myself. I wonder if, in this mistaken memory, he remembers being pressured into it by his family?

I-I feel like I would trust the book over you guys especially considering the whole ‘we remembered Kokichi Ouma as a Remnant of Despair and got him killed as the fake mastermind’ situation tbh.

well technically ultra despair girls is

That is a good point. I mean, it could quite possibly happen underground, but I suppose the same could be said of the Jabberwock Island one - there’s no reason that should be public knowledge.

“I mean, I know it’s nothing new, but bear with me here.”

H A L L E L U J A H

REALLY

MAKI, REALLY

YOU OF ALL PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW BETTER

FUFCKFUCKING HELL GUYS YOU’RE KILLING ME HERE

sdfkdslfj fukging

noOOONONO

aND YOU! YOU SHUT UP TOO!!!!

“Also have you seen their outfits? Do you realize how terribly they would clash? ‘Oh Saihara, why would that matter what do uniforms have to do with anything surely Kokichi and his uniformed clown posse could just be a branch under the Remnants’ NO THAT WILL NOT FLY WHEN THE HEAD OF THE ENTIRE ORGANIZATION LITERALLY DOUBLES AS THE ULTIMATE FASHIONISTA!!!”

this level of reasoning is possible for saihara shuichi

.... what do you think, everyone?

And he still has the Supreme Leader title, even if these aren’t really their talents... there has to be something to that, right?

Shu -

Shuichi

The words DICE were written in big words over his giant hella awesome throne

He has a checkered scarf which brings about a certain ‘game’ feeling

he literally challenged you to card games

I’m.... I’m just gonna throw it out there, but there’s a pretty good chance the group he led was called ‘DICE’.

YOU SAW THE VIDEO YOU SAW IT DAMN YOU MAKI I KNOW YOU’RE BETTER THAN THIS YOU ARE SMARTER THAN THIS!!!!

“Maki also said he literally said he didn’t know what she was talking about when she interrogated him with a crossbow literally aimed directly at him but surely that’s unrelated -”

s o b s

I 100% bet Tsumugi was not counting on them finding this room. So.... beginning the trial, she tried to do a Kaede/Kaede’s twin mastermind thing. Then she switched tactics to being solely ‘Junko’ and her lackey Kokichi setting up the game with the last survivors of humanity as... revenge for Hope’s Peak, I guess? Or something.

So where are we going from here? Are we about to discover this was all a simulated scenario then?

Sort of like they’re trying to test different outcomes and scenarios - with different talents, maybe? Is there the selected 16 (15? 14?) talents that can be switched around at will, or is there a larger database of students’ talents? That’s what I really want to know.

But “there are an endless possibilities for lies,” a certain person may say.

why are you all ganging up on me also how when two of you are literally the same person and the other one is an AI acting as an extension of you -

It sort of hit me but this is a weird echo of Korekiyo’s trial, with Junko and Tsumugi switching back and forth with each other the way Korekiyo and his sister did. I wonder if there’s something to that, or if it says something about Tsumugi in general...

(one hangman’s gambit later...)

TALENTS ARE NOT THEIRS AND POSSIBLY ARBITRARY CONFIRMED

I WOULD KILL FOR KOKICHI TO POP OUT OF THE GRAVE TO SHOUT IT’S A LIE RIGHT NOW

FUCK YOU BEAR

ghggkhgkh

that is a dangerous precedent to set

But you weren’t planning on revealing this, right??? Right???? Your hand was totally forced! Don’t play this off like it wasn’t!

I swear I had a similar idea when I was coming up with how they could see themselves in photos/pictures if the students weren’t actually who they thought they were - about how their brain filled in the gaps and placed their own faces where they’d expect to see them (like in the funeral scene with the portraits, etc). Glad to know I was kinda right on that regard!

I really like it when they combine Junko and Tsumugi here. There’s probably something to that - when it’s Tsumugi herself acting as the mastermind, as opposed to just being ‘Junko’.

T-Those are some pretty big inconsistencies though? Why would there be incorrect options in those flashback lights in the first place? What was there to gain for their being options where ‘Ultimate Despair trapped the first class in’ and ‘Junko is the end-all of Ultimate Despair’? At least Kokichi’s made sense to have on standby, but the other stuff? Isn’t their existence a bit weird?

It’s... nice to see Shuichi focusing on Kokichi. Being posthumous and all it’s a bit late, but it’s still nice - especially after all that talk of ‘not understanding him’ and ‘the embodiment of a lie’, having him finally clue in to Kokichi’s real place in all of this - a victim of the mastermind - is good. It’s the perfect example of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ and Kaito figured that out last chapter, so it’s long past due for Shuichi to drag himself and everyone else to that conclusion, kicking and screaming if he must.

(he was jealous of Angie)

because he was trying to stop the game!!!!!

Which, honestly, was pretty clever on her part. I think overall Kokichi will come out of this looking the best - he had so little going for him and almost succeeded in his coup - but the fact that Tsumugi was able to counter his surprise attack still says a lot about her own intelligence and her ability to adapt, because in that moment she also had limited options.

THANK

YOU

LORD

WE HAVE GATHERED HERE TODAY TO SAY FAREWELL TO REMNANT!OUMA THEORY

REST IN PIECES AND NEVER COME BACK

Pretty damn successfully, too.

While the fact that her first inclination was to straight-up murder Kokichi was very Not Good, it’s at least good to know that it took the extra nudge of the flashback lights to push her over the precipice. Basically, it took turning Kokichi into a complete monster in her eyes - Despair with a capital D - to strip away his humanity entirely. I do wonder if she still would’ve staged a rescue mission of sorts to rescue Kaito? For that matter, I wonder if Kaito had been on the outside (with the Flashback Light used on him and everything) and it was someone else being held hostage like Shuichi, would he have been able to talk Maki down?

It’s interesting how they’re turning hope itself into a weapon here. I think Junko talked about this in the first game, the idea of giving hope out to maximize despair, so it’s not the first time the mastermind has actively used hope as a weapon - but it’s never felt quite as dirty as it does here.

!!! We’re seeing her as herself in the room!!! I guess it’s the flashback light classroom, but still!

That is so unfair considering they were all being threatened with death, you were straight up messing with their brains and also that airlock exists??? And they straight-up collapsed after being exposed to the outside??? I’m

I think Shuichi managed to break away from that a bit at the end... maybe. He seems more motivated by righting the wrong in Kaede’s case at this point, and of avenging everyone who died - but the same can’t be said of the others.

Man I even wondered what it would be like without Kaito and Kokichi there considering they’ve been the strongest ‘movers’ on both sides - and the answer ended up being ‘I’ll give you artificial motivation to act’.

SHE’S.... REALLY A KILLING GAME FAN GIRL AFTER ALL..........

Oh, this does feel dirty. She’s lusting after them in an abstract way - like pieces on a chessboard. Kokichi was able to compartmentalize and make people take certain actions to an extent, but even he had attachments that he wasn’t able to shake. I knew it felt like she had managed to keep herself from getting too close to them, with the sole exception of the protectiveness she felt for Gonta (which?? I want to know if we’ll hear anything about that specifically???) but this is... wow.

Actually, this is very Komaeda-esque isn’t it? She wants to see them succeed in their battles against each other in a similar way...

Junko only gets that look when she’s actually mad. So if Tsumugi is sporting that... well, she must be smarting a bit underneath all the gloating she’s doing. She was happily spouting off ‘hints’ before, right?

Oh??

me too tbh

OH THE TURNABOUT MUSIC IS HERE

THAT TRANSITION WAS SO GOOD AND SMART WHAT A GREAT WAY TO USE THE PORTRAIT STAND

oooh! OOOOH! OH WHAT A FANTASTIC POINT!

SHUICHI MY BOY YOU’RE ON A ROLL NOW! GET HYPED GET HYPED GET HYP -

AAAAAAAAAAH

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hajimemed

#Ryou plays drv3 #Shuichi Saihara #Tsumugi Shirogane #Himiko Yumeno #Kiibo #Keebo #Maki Harukawa #K1-b0 #spoilers #drv3 spoilers

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berrysphase · 5 years

Text

Nirvana in Fire rewatch liveblog part 18

Ep 40-41

Ah: this is now act IV.

Prince Yu bows his head to the floor in genuine abasement, and, suddenly, after being furious with him and his schemes for the past many episodes, here I am sympathizing with him again. His grace in defeat here is so striking, especially to his wife; if only it weren’t so temporary!

I am never going to not love Cai Quan chugging Shen Zhui's best spirits.

Shen Zhui's moral courage here is exceptional and frankly inspiring. If you hold the position, you should do your job. Having the heart to serve the country well and faithfully, to the best your situation allows, is better than doing nothing.

“Take her away,” Jing says, but xiao Xin rises by herself, backs away correctly, and removes herself. <333

So this bit where Meng and Jingyan recklessly storm the prisons to threaten Xia Jiang about the antidote, it struck me as great iddiness the first time through, and I still haven't changed my mind :/

Oh it is snowing again how very thematic

I love all these places where you can see how un-naive Jingyan actually is. I mean, in this stretch we get a bunch of bits where people around him worry that oh noes Jingyan our straightforward stubborn military Prince is too naive and doesn't understand how fragile the Emperor's favor is, and Jingyan is just like, sigh, let me remind you about the single most formative event of my adult life not to mention the source of my ptsd.

He has a strong, decisive temper that he doesn't bother to rein in at the beginning because he doesn't see the point -- when he's persuaded there is a point after all, and when he starts pays enough attention to court to understand the traps, he does very, very well. (So should MCS have told him the truth earlier? To say his judgement on this matter is suspect is an understatement of rather ridiculous proportions, and I think Jingyan could have done better than MCS gives him credit for. But on the other hand Chiyan is so close to the bone for Jingyan, I wouldn't necessarily have wanted to trust his self-mastery there either, even given all his best intentions.

I swear every time we get to one of Consort Jing's scenes I sit straight up and say “o shit she set that up on purpose”, being able to see how she does it is seriously one of the most amazing things about rewatching. This one is especially jaw-dropping -- one quickly swatted-down offer of help and some carefully timed hand cream get her (1) the emperor remembering to demote Consort Yue and promote her; (2) the emperor finally doing something to stop the bullying of Consort Hui, and just when it seemed like she'd gotten two-for-one the final twist in the conversation lays out the actual end goal: (3) Jingting will oversee Jingyan's case. All of this and the Emperor feels happy and subconsciously a bit reassured that she actually did ask him for something she wanted (the nicely selfless let's all be nice to Consort Hui request) and he was able to grant it, so he goes away feeling happily benevolent. My god.

The irony of Xia Jiang now offering his truthful confession to the emperor and having it flatly disregarded is extremely satisfying.

I discounted Meng's relation of Xia Chun and Xia Qiu's deaths the first time through, since it was a very useful line in an intimidation gambit. But we never see them again. I really don't want both of them to have died under flogging :( and I don't want the only person who mourns them to be Xia Jiang :( at least this is one of the easiest fixits to write ever

Ah, I love that little offhand reference Shen Zhui makes to meeting MCS during his first foray into court. That's fun to imagine.

There are so many little things I love in this “let's get our painfully straightforward Jingyan a proper strategist” bit -- especially the whole interchange where Jingyan asks the emperor, yeahbut did my brother's tactics actually work -- but this whole bit with the emperor encouraging Jingyan to talk to MCS more is all wonderfully amusing and everything and then the emperor says, “This time, because of you, Su Zhe got involved for no reason” and it’s truuuuue and you can see it on Jingyan’s face, it's so good

oh hey, Minister Liu is namedropped again as quietly on Jingyan's side.

YAY LOOK IT’S MU QING the only problem with the middle of the drama is not enough Mu siblings.

I don't have anything to actually say about this scene with MCS and Meng talking about different imagined futures, with all the little subtle shadings about friendship, loss, and use; I'm just writing down that it's here because I love it, enormously.

sssfjdhs okay I do have something to say here after all, the segue from that scene (which is all about what MCS and Jingyan think they owe to each other) to the next, where Banruo tries to pull Prince Yu up from his resignation -- when he asks her, would you still come see me even if I were a non-noble Prince -- that variation on the same strategist/strategee theme, the contrast is so stark, it's brutally painful, it really underscores how very much not in his best interest Banruo is acting. And I'm suddenly there with my heart in my throat wanting Prince Yu not to bite. It's truly masterful how well this show manipulates our sympathy for Prince Yu.

#nirvana in fire #nif liveblog

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fullmetalirin · 6 years

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Fullmetal Alchemist OG vs. Brotherhood: Greed’s Demise (OG 34, BH 14)

We're finally here: the divergence point.

FMA Brotherhood Episode 14: "Those Who Lurk Underground"

Bradley and Armstrong lead a team of state military soldiers to raid Greed's hideout, although Bradley uses it as cover to hunt for Greed. Bradley goes into the sewage passageway beneath the hideout and duels with Greed. Surprised by the abilities of Bradley the Führer, Greed is severely weakened by Bradley who reveals his true identity as Wrath. Roa and Dolcetto attempt to save Greed, but are killed by the Führer. Martel, who is still inside Alphonse, attempts to choke Bradley to death with Alphonse's armor, but she is stabbed by Bradley. Her blood splashes on Alphonse's blood seal and unlocks his forgotten memories. Later, Alphonse reveals to Edward that he managed to recover his former memories, prior to their failed attempt at human transmutation to revive their mother. Greed is taken as a captive to Father, who was disappointed in him after he deserted the rest of the homunculi. When Greed refuses to rejoin the homunculi, he is melted alive to a liquid philosopher's stone, which is then consumed by Father.

We open with MUSTANG because of course we do. He is bothered by peoples' perceptions of him, except he smirks after thinking about them, so I guess not? He reports to the Fuhrer's secretary, who is not important in this continuity, and learns that he's traveled to the south.

The chimeras are taking Al through the sewers. Roa sniffs to find the way.

We cut to Bradley leading a raid on the Devil's Nest.

Greed decides to run away. LOL.

They prepare to chase after him, but Izumi starts vomiting, played absurdly comedically. Life-threatening illnesses during serious battles, so hilarious!!!

Cut to Al struggling with Martel. Where did the others go?

Al looks stunned when Martel lifts his helmet off, but he's been able to move without it before.

Roa and Dolcetto apparently left to find an escape route?

And suddenly Bradley shows up. How did he get here so fast?

Bradley tells the air that he's 60 and his body has started to slow down with age, so he wants to get this done quickly so he can go home. I guess he just likes grandstanding, or he likes bragging about being a special homunculi?

Bradley attacks and it's villain sue time. Despite clearly being several steps away in the previous shot, he's able to instantly slice off Greed's hand as soon as he starts hardening. From there, he just keeps cutting Greed's hands off with his swords that are, I dunno, adamantium given they can cut clean through bone repeatedly without damage. Since Greed can't harden and regenerate, and apparently can't harden unless he's fully healed, Greed is totally helpless during this time.

We cut to Armstrong fighting Dolcetto. He transmutes Dolcetto's hammer into a statue of himself, because Armstrong. Even the statue has bishie sparkles. LOL. Dolcetto throws it away and switches to fisticuffs.

Dolcetto hulks out and… grows horns. I don't think splicing alchemy should work that way. It's pretty clearly only merging existing parts together, not letting you transform at will.

We cut to soldiers gunning down chimeras.

Dolcetto manages to hit Armstrong hard enough to make him bleed.

Armstrong tells him to surrender, but the military show up and shoot at him. His beefy fists can block bullets, apparently. Roa slices through some but not all of the soldiers, who proceed to… somehow completely miss him despite shooting tons of bullets in his direction.

Greed knocks Bradley's eyepatch off and he namedrops the Ultimate Eye. He says it is the reason he was able to dodge bullets on the battlefield and survive long enough to be promoted to his current position. So… Father didn't just install him? What's the point of making a country if you have to appoint your puppet kings through legitimate channels?

Bradley asks how many more times Greed has to be killed before he dies, foreshadowing that their regeneration can be exhausted and also that all future homunculi battles are just going to be people punching them for ages until the author decides they run out of HP.

Martel sees Bradley continuing to just wail on Greed and freaks out. Al tries to keep her hidden.

Roa and Dolcetto show up. Roa does have some bullet wounds, so I guess some did land. He… cuts Al's chains… with his sword that I guess is also adamantium… and tells him to get Martel to safety.

Martel demands Al let her out so she can fight.

Bradley cuts Roa cleanly in half with his magic swords.

Greed taunts Bradley while he's still regenerating because, I dunno, he figures he's going to die anyway? His hand takes ridiculously long to regenerate compared to his brain, which you'd think would be more complex.

Greed gives a speech about how while he's not attached to the chimeras, they're his possessions and he doesn't like Bradley wrecking his stuff.

Greed starts hardening and Bradley charges forward again with super speed. So in addition to being able to dodge bullets and cut through anything, he has super speed so he is not even limited by the range of his magic swords. Greed actually does successfully block the attack, but stops hardening because…?

Bradley stabs Greed, which incapacitates him even though Lust is never knocked unconscious despite explicitly being on her last life later because what is consistency.

Al tries to run away but Martel tries to strangle Bradley, because the irrational woman is too overcome with grief to not immediately jump for the suicide attack.

Bradley is totally unaffected by the strangling even though he is not supposed to have homunculi endurance and stabs Martel to death. It looks really weird; he just sticks the sword in and then blood gushes out all at once.

Some of the blood splatters on Al's bloodseal and this activates his memories of the Gate because…? He did not get knowledge of human transmutation either, so methinks the theory that you get more for paying more is bunk. We then get a shot of him in the created body, implying that thing didn't have a soul to begin with. More on that later.

Then we cut to Al waking up outside. Ed is bandaged and injured. Al says Ed's covered in blood, and then we look down and see Al is too. I think that's an effective sequence.

Al has a breakdown over being unable to save Martel. Ed tries to tell him it'll be okay but it doesn't work.

Bradley shows up to be evil and intimidating. He wants to know if Ed made any deals with Greed, because…? I guess maybe he's worried Greed spilled the beans about Father's plan. But he has no way of knowing if Ed is lying here (unless that's also covered by the Ultimate Sue Eye), so this doesn't seem to accomplish anything but telling Ed he has something to hide. Bradley also asks them if they did human transmutation, which the homunculi must already know if he's already marked for sacrifice, so again this is just giving Ed information.

Bradley offers Izumi a position as State Alchemist. She gets out of it by saying she's just a housewife, but Bradley pointedly says he will return to see if she's changed her mind. Why not just do whatever coercion he has planned now? He has a regiment of soldiers outside already.

Ed mentions he told Hughes about the homunculi. Armstrong gets weird and tells him to be cautious, but nothing more.

Now Al explains his memories have come back. He echoes their earlier cartoon pose about it being awful. He says he didn't learn anything about human transmutation, so it's useless and accomplished nothing. YEP IT SURE DID. The only difference is that now he can do circleless alchemy, because combat upgrades are what really matter.

The brothers then rationally examine how strange it is that the military massacred everyone instead of capturing them for interrogation, and why the Fuhrer came down for such a small operation. Ed says he guesses they'll stick with the military for a while, implying he plans to leave eventually, because military dictatorships will totally let you walk away whenever you want.

Then we get the scene with Father. It is pretty useful to explicitly run over all the homunculi so we can confirm what we know so far. Greed asks why Sloth is missing and we get a shot of him digging the tunnels, foreshadowing that. Why doesn't he ask about Pride, though?

Bradley is apparently new, so was there just not a Wrath before? Greed notes that an aging homunculi is special.

Envy gets mad at being called ugly. The envy demon is vain, geddit, wow such deep symbolism here.

Envy looks more muscular here, more brawler and less prettyboy.

Greed nearly goads Envy into revealing his "true form", but Father stops them. So that's tantalizing us for a future reveal.

Father sits in a chair connected to a bunch of pipes.

Father asks why Greed betrayed him and left, and Greed just says he's only behaving how he was created: greedy. Why is Father purposefully creating things based around fatal flaws?

Greed refuses to return to Father's employ. Father activates some clockwork contraption that lowers Greed into a crucible. As he's melted down, his Philosopher's Stone is extracted into… wine? that Father drinks, using some complicated distillation apparatus. He does realize you get holdup in every step of a process, right? He is losing Philosopher's Stone material every time he does this.

Greed's chains melt as he enters the crucible, but not Bradley's swords. So I guess they really are adamantium.

This is all just way too over-the-top for me. Why does Father need this elaborate getup? It's… intimidating? I guess? But there doesn't seem to actually be much point to it. It's a lot of pretty cruft with no real purpose.

Then we cut to Bradley talking with his family. His wife says he should retire, then Selim nerds out about how Ed is so cool and he wants to learn alchemy so he can help out his dad. I don't… I don't even. Why is Pride doing this. Is he just screwing with Bradley? Does he get off on pretending to be an innocent kid? Is the wife not in on any of this? How did the wife not know she gave birth to a freaky shadow monster? I'm not entirely clear on the mechanics of Pride so I guess I'll have to watch his intro episode later, but this looks really bizarre to me.

Fullmetal Alchemist Episode 34: "Theory of Avarice"

Archer has Edward as well as Izumi and Sig Curtis in custody. Archer reinstates Tucker as a state alchemist under his command and orders his men to take no prisoners hunting down Greed and his associates. As Greed tries to escape with his cohorts, Strongarm burst through the wall and battles with Law until Law collapses the wall, ensuring the group's escape. While Greed and co. recover in a small shack, Lust and Gluttony appear. Dolcetto and Law unwaveringly step up and sacrifice themselves allowing Greed, Al, and Marta (who is still inside of Al's armor) to escape. In a forest, Greed instructs Al to wait for him until sunrise, and for Marta to watch after him while he goes to take care of business. Marta realizes he is headed for Dante's house and tries to go after him, but Al refuses to allow her to do so. When Greed arrives at Dante's, he is greeted by Lyra, who knows his purpose for returning to Dante's. She guides him to a parlor, where he discovers Dante's body split down the middle, seemingly by a sword, and a complex alchemy circle on the ceiling and floor. Before he has time to react, Lyra uses alchemy to forcibly eject the Philosopher's Stone fragments that Greed has consumed in his life. She exits, leaving him in pain, as Ed enters. Shocked at Dante's corpse, he blames her death on Greed. While they fight, Ed discovers the secret to his human shield through logic, and uses alchemy to undo it. He manages to stab Greed in through the chest, which surprisingly causes Greed to collapse in pain. Greed explains to Edward that the only way to kill a homunculus without its regeneration is to physically murder one near the human remains that it was created with, and he also reveals that he let Al go. Greed departs this information with Ed in hopes of ensuring the deaths of the rest of the homunculi, and then he dies, much to the shock of Ed who has never killed before. At sunrise, Marta gets up and leaves Al, knowing that Greed isn't returning. The brothers reunite and, together with Winry, Izumi, and Sig, bury Greed and Dante. They bid Izumi and Sig goodbye, saying they will next find the Ishbalans.

Winry sulks in the meat shop, hoping for a call from Ed.

Archer orders the military to gun down anyone who opposes them. We helpfully get an internal monologue where he thinks he can make as many of them as he wants if he has Tucker, and Greed can't lay a hand on him as long as he has the skull. (So I guess Kimblee did tell him about the weakness?) Eh, kinda tacky. I don't like actually getting into characters' heads for exposition, it's too blunt. It's much more effective when the audience can piece these things together from context clues.

Bido is seen bleeding out in the sewer.

The military guns down chimeras. They catch up to Greed, and Roa stays behind to buy them time. Armstrong cuts them off, and demands they return Al.

Lust says Sloth was responsible for letting Greed escape?

Armstrong's battle with Dolcetto is similar, but the statue doesn't get bishie sparkles. How sad. Armstrong also does not bleed from getting smashed into the wall.

After the battle, Dolcetto caves in the tunnel and escapes with Greed.

We cut to the bar. Soldiers have killed all the patrons. Outside, Ed has slipped off and put dummies in the cloaks.

Greed hides out in a cabin in the woods. We get thoughts AGAIN, this time just him wondering what he can do now.

Lust and Gluttony show up to menace him. They say his only options are to be imprisoned again or be destroyed, because Dante is pissed at him for rebelling.

Roa still slices off Al's chains.

Greed is surprised to see Roa and Dolcetto willing to sacrifice themselves to help him escape. This is where Roa mentions he was fused with a dog and gives his line about loyalty. We don't see them die, just a smash to black.

Al escapes with Greed. Greed tells Martel to stay put until sunrise, and leave if he doesn't come back. This is where we get the scene of Martel trying to escape.

Dante confirms her house is where Greed was born. So she's been sitting here for a while.

Looks like Dante had to split.

I love Dante's theme music. It's so subtly creepy.

Greed looks sick even before Dante activates the circle. Mere proximity to the remains weakens them.

The sealing circle is on the ceiling, which blindsides Greed. Always look up when you’re entering a dungeon! Greed realizes Dante's jumped to Lyra.

The red stones disintegrate when Greed vomits them up. Seems wasteful.

Ah, the circle sigil is Izumi's tattoo. So I guess we can presume she got it from Dante.

Greed smashes Ed's automail pretty bad, and the hand breaks when Ed tries to punch the shield. Ed notes that Winry is awesome because he can still move his arm after that.

Ed figures out how to break Greed's shield, explicitly noting that he can't create something from nothing, so the shield must come from somewhere.

Ed has a breakdown when he realizes he's killed someone.

Greed's body melts into red liquid. We cut to Archer, who notices that the skull has spontaneously disintegrated. Oh, so I guess that actually does answer a question I had: the remains seem linked to the homunculi's life, so they can't just destroy them.

Ed makes two graves. One for Greed?

Ed warns Izumi the military might be after her, and tells her to go into hiding.

Conclusion

On a large scale, these episodes are similar in events, but they're incredibly different in details. Most notably, I much prefer how OG handles the military side of things. It's far more subtle, and raises more questions of what Ed signed on for instead of just pitting him against them. Brotherhood is too sudden: the military is good, now suddenly it's evil, and the only difference is that this might cause problems for Ed. OG's coverage focuses on personal culpability, the ease with which the military can corrupt, the lengths to which the characters will go. Ed has to come to terms with killing people; Mustang must come to terms with the possibility he is starting another massacre. These are hard questions that challenge the characters. In Brotherhood, it's just "You thought Greed was the boss fight, but psyche, this other dude is even scarier!" That's impressive if what's engaging you is who can beat whom, but that's not what engages me about stories.

We even end with a preview of our respective villains, though OG is, as usual, subtler. We know there is some connection between Dante (or at least her house) and the homunculi, and Greed notices that something very weird is going on with Lyra. The pieces are starting to come together.

Even the fights are better in OG, in my opinion. Brotherhood is much too manic and features too many superhuman acrobatics. An even fight is also just so much more interesting than Bradly effortlessly pwning someone.

And I think this is important: Ed gets to defeat the villain. This is something that exasperated me as Brotherhood continued: Ed becomes more and more of a spectator in his own narrative, despite being the only hero I was really interested in. OG keeps Ed at the center of the narrative and allows him crucial victories, and I think that makes OG a tighter narrative overall.

On representation: In Brotherhood, Martel dies stupidly and pointlessly. In OG, she is the sole survivor of an otherwise all-male group, and gets to live for another arc.

Also… now that we've gotten to our first homunculi death, I think it'd be a good time to bring up the theme of irony. Everyone says the homunculi meet ironic fates in Brotherhood. They do not. They just don't, okay? Irony means a situation is different than you expected. "They are the thing they're named after" is the exact opposite of that. You'd have to build up something where they claim to be above their own sin, so it's ironic that they end up succumbing to them or something… but that's not really what happens. They're just either killed by their sin, or killed by someone who embodies their sin better. When you don't actually engage with the sin theme at all and just use them as motifs because you think they're cool, that is not deep meaningful symbolism. "It's just cool" is a fine reason to do or enjoy something, but that doesn't automatically make it have substance. Step back a little, guys, please.

OG is not much better, granted, but I do think it's a lot more meaningful when the homunculi actually do come from alchemists' sins. I always got the impression Dante used the sin theme as a commentary on how or why they were made. Lust was the guy's girlfriend; Sloth was put together poorly (or perhaps it's a jab at Hoenheim, for not coming back to save her?); Pride was an experiment to show how awesome she was; and we know she made Greed, so perhaps that was also a purposeful experiment, perhaps just to make a full set? It's not as blatant because it doesn't matter as much because OG isn't as interested in cool things for the sake of it, but there are ways you can engage with it.

With that in mind, though, I think you can make a case that the homunculi's fates in OG actually are ironic, or at least poetic in a more meaningful way. Let's begin with:

Greed is wasted.

We don't know why Dante made Greed, but we know she did make him. She kept him imprisoned because she didn't want to kill him the first time, but now she cuts her losses and disposes of him. Now, an important component of greed to me is hoarding, the inability to give things up. Greed could have still been useful; certainly, Dante invested all those red stones in him that are now gone. He seemed to be hoping that that would work in his favor and get Dante to spare him, but Dante didn't care. He is killed by a lack of greed. Even narratively, he is wasted: his only purpose is to die to teach Ed, and us, how homunculi can be killed.

#fullmetal alchemist #fma #fullmetal alchemist brotherhood #fma 2003 #liveblog

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henry-hart · 6 years

Text

The Danger Begins s1 ep1

I’m so glad I decided to rewatch this because it made me so happy!!!! (also, to keep you guys from getting uber annoyed with me, i’m just gonna lb on one big post like this from now on lolol)

first off

s1 henry was the cutest thing to ever exist. ever. my heart couldn’t take it bc he’s so grown now but in that first ep he’s this adorable little baby chick ajdksjslk

it was so incredible to see Siren on my screen. Like, within thirty seconds BAM there she was. i felt blessed, like she blessed my laptop

PIPER. MY OVERDRAMATIC DAUGHTER. I miss her “I am NOT okay!!!” catchphrase akdjlsj

her “so we’re living like animals now” reply to being told to wait for her video to load---same girl, same.

Henry at 13 was a million times more proactive about the whole job search than I have ever been and I’m 22 sksjskjsk

his whole “I’m not good at anything. I’m a big ball of average”---I feel that lol

“No special skills needed.” “That’s me!!”

okay one of Char’s first lines was “One day when you two are cleaning my pool bc you failed this algebra test...” and it doesn’t get more iconic than that

GOOCH. I HAVE MISSED YOU.

Ray just coming in with all these ridiculous questions lolol poor Hen

“I’m 13. I’ll be 14....on my next bday.” ajskjsksljk

“Ah, so you’re aging sequentially. I like that. The name’s Ray.” “Nice to meet you, Ray. I’m Henry.” “You ask a lot of questions.” “I....don’t think....I’ve asked any questions...????” loved it

I laughed when Ray changed into his uniform and the zipper got stuck (that never happens again????)

“Did you have to melt my phone???” Hen, sweetie, hate to break it to you, but your phone gets broken.....preeeeetty much every ep (need me a bank account like that where I can steady get new iphones)

WhAt Do YoU mEaN nO sPeCiAl SkIlLs HeNrY???? yOu NoTiCeD tHe TaToO!!!!!! u smart lil cookie

Ray was all “I’m getting old. I can’t do this forever.” Two things: 1) RAY DID YOU JUST REFER TO YOURSELF AND OLD IN THE SAME SENTENCE??? 2) why is this never mentioned again??? Like, Ray got a sidekick to pass the mantle onto someone younger to keep protecting Swellview when he’s done. We’re like 4 yrs down the line, and they haven’t even hinted towards CM retiring??? (I know that would mean the end of the show, but they could at least bring it up every now and then)

OK. hated the toddler then. hate him now.

Props to the props department (ha ha get it???) for all the junk in the store. It’s all so strange and doesn’t make sense and fits the show so well (also it seems like each ep has diff junk??? that’s impressive)

“They seem like nice kids.” “Yeah, they’re names are Jasper x Charlotte. I’ve known them ever since--” “Get rid of them.” “I’ll get rid of them.”

DAWWWW Jasper x his buckets :’))))

“I told you Canadian money upsets ppl!!!” Ah Char (I wonder if Riele comes up with some of these Canada jokes??)

OMG I FORGOT ABOUT HEN’S HORRIBLE TEST WARDROBE. IMAGINE IF THEY HAD KEPT ONE OF THOSE IDEAS AKSJLKSJ (there really wasn’t any need for a whole test wardrobe tho--just style an outfit to fits Ray’s. His obvs works out well for him) (I know that’s what they ended up doing lolol)

Okay, Ray’s “Oh man. I ate a lot of fruit.” line KILLS. ME. bc when i first watched this ep, every time the scene changed and Ray was shown w/ a diff fruit, I was like, “Why...is he eating so much fruit????” bc they’re all diff and he even eats a whole pineapple--outside peel and all. BUT I WAS THINKING IT AND THEN HE SAID IT AND IT MADE IT ONE MILLION TIMES FUNNIER.

LIL BB HEN IN HIS SUIT FOR THE FIRST TIME. I CRY. HE’S SO TINY AND HAPPY

“Chew gum. Blow bubble. Fight crime.” Ray wrote those instructions. I just know it. aksjskl

“And what does a single flashing light mean?” “Just to shoot me a text, you know, whenever.” aksjklsk

HENRY JUST GAVE HIS PLEDGE. THEN. HE. SAID. THE. ICONIC. “FEELS GOOD” FOR. THE. FIRST. TIME. I’M CRYING.

Hen not knowing how to get the tubes to work and just jumping up and down making noises aksjlsk

“Affirmative.” “That means ‘yes’.” “I got that.” and so the sass begins lolol love it

“Awwww no! That was my favorite bridge!”

“I hate my life and I am NOT okay.” i feel u Pipes

the sass is strong in those Hart kids. Siren x Jake can’t catch a break aksjslk

Siren. Hart. Is. So. Beautiful. her hair just looks so good this ep

“I’ll run away. I’ll do it.” ajskjskl Pipes chill

Jake....Siren...that’s....your son on the tv screen...like.....that’s literally your child’s face.....the product of both of your genes is right there.....plastered on the screen.....how do u....not....recognize him?????

“Two ppl said they might come.” “Who?” “Sidney Birnbaum and Oliver Pook.” “Ew.” “Those guys eat bugs.” “So? They’re people.” I just love the kid’s line delivery here lolol

I just want everyone to know that s1 Henry is the cutest. I already said it, but I’m saying it again.

Henry panicking bc he doesn’t want C x J to keep reading about KD but he also doesn’t know what to do so he just throws a glass and smacks C’s phone out of her hand and clean across the room ajskjslk SAME

Jace was so.....twitchy in the first two seasons. He’s really mellowed---which I understand it happens when you get older---but it’s just so funny to see this little bean with all his crazy expressions and loud outbursts and rapid movements lolol

Hey Lelani? You’re hot (give me ukelele lessons pls)

“The toddler’s men stole 5,000 packages of diapers. Can you guess why?” “Uhhhh???” “To bombard the diapers with radioactive zenite particles.” “.....I would not have guessed that.”

also Ray getting lower to the ground as he talks and Hen just following is so funny to me. Ray was really extra in that first ep

RAYMOND MANCHESTER HOW DARE YOU GET MAD AT HEN FOR WANTING TO GO TO HIS BFF’S BDAY PARTY INSTEAD OF FIGHTING CRIME. HE IS 13. AND YOU WOULD LATER CALL HIM UP WITH THE EMERGENCY ALARM PAST 12 AT NIGHT FOR CORNDOGS, SO I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT.

“Okay. Okay. It’s cool. You go to Jasper’s party. I’ll handle the toddler by myself. Don’t worry about it.” “Are you sure?” “Yeah. I’ve battled the toddler alone before--almost killed me, but whatever.” and u still want to take a 13 yr old out there??? Ray.

“No, I’m not bringing the muffins!” but u said u would

okay, but the news jumping from CM’s kidnapping to a report on why squirrels love nuts???? TOO tru (they really do that “here’s something serious. kids are dying. now here’s this pointless and meaningless crap” lolol)

“I can’t talk! I’m naked!” friends anyone??? (“You can’t come in. Ross is naked.” “Why’d you tell her I was naked???” “I couldn’t tell her I was naked. She’s allowed to see me naked.” “Why does anyone have to be naked???”) (sorry i just love friends akjslkjs)

I FORGOT WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO HAVE SIDNEY X OLIVER ON MY SCREEN. I LOVE THEM.

I hate u toddler. just in case you were doubting.

Jasper unknowingly saving the day by downloading that sound effect app on Hen’s phone *claps for him*

Henry just....completely kicking butt on his second day???? That’s my son.

“Captain Man!” “Henry!” “It’s Kid Danger.” :))))) I’M SQUEALING. I’M SO PROUD OF HIM. HIS LIL POINT TO RAY AND THAT SMALL SMILE. TOO. CUTE. (also Ray just namedropping like they don’t have identities to protect)

“How do I get you out of there?” “I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve been stuck in a baby bouncer hovering over a bottomless ball pit.” CALL SUPERHEROES OUT, RAY. all these extravagant traps they’re caught in and they just....know what to do??? Doubtful. (bottomless pits are impossible, but you know lol)

Ray swinging around everywhere in that baby bouncer was hilarious alkjdlksj

that spitting device is the literal WORST thing i have ever seen. i freaking hate spit.

God, i wish the toddler had stayed tf down there in that ball pit. i wish that bottle had blown him to the center of the earth. (sorry i just really don’t like him akdjslj)

“What do we do with this? (the bottle bomb)” “We give the baby his bottle.” “Ah. Good call.” “Hey.” “Suuuuup.” “Hurry.” “Oh, right.” aksjlsksjl there are some really good moments in this ep

Ray shielding Henry was <33333 (it would be really messed up if he hadn’t considering he’s indestructible, but I like to think that he chose to)

AJKSJSKLSKSJLK HENRY’S FACE WHEN RAY TOLD HIM “GOOD JOB” WAS SOOOOOOO PRECIOUS. He looked so shocked. Like, “CM thinks I did a good job????”

It’s like, Henry’s second day on the job, and they’re just namedropping right and left. Why be careful???? It’s not like they have secret identities or anything.....(they steady use their real names. i guess they don’t really have to worry. C must be the only smart person in Swellview bc no one else seems capable of figuring it out. I mean, not even his parents recognized him ajksjslk)

If you need any proof that Ray is a good guy, just watch this ep. His willingness to show up to J’s party despite only knowing Hen for like two days is a solid testament to his character. This is the Ray I know and love.

awwwwww poor Jasp. your party isn’t a flop. It’s about to be lit af because your bff is HENRY FREAKING HART, THE SWEETEST BOY TO EVER LIVE.

Ray, your excuse is horrible. “My van broke down across the street so I decided to come into this house and into this basement.” alskjlskj what is that????

“You’re CM!” “Thank you.” “You’re my hero!” “Of course.” oh Ray

Henry’s just watching J freak out over CM, watching how excited and happy J is and knowing he did that for him, and it’s just----my heart is all ajkdjlsjks

Char is the cutest in this ep. she’s fangirling over CM, and it’s so weird bc now she can’t stand him lolol

Hen x Ray pretending they don’t know each other. SO. PRECIOUS. Ray’s face is so sweet and they share this secret smile and just GAHHHH

J asking CM if he can hit him w/ a bball bat alksjlk “Remember kids: never do this to anyone but CM bc regular ppl could be badly inju--AHHHHHH.......I wasn’t done talking.” “Did that hurt?” “Yeah. But I’m okay.” the way Ray says yeah cracks me up bc it’s like, duh it hurt. it was a bat hitting my head lolol

“Hey, CM?” “Yes, boy?” “Would it be ok if Jasp texted a few friends and told them you were here at his party?” “Suuurrreeee. I love being used.” Ray kills me. cooper x jace have some of the best line delivery/comedic timing akdjslkj

*J is shaking CM’s hand* “Thank you so much! This is the best day of my life!” “Ha ha, are your hands always this sweaty?” “Yes sir.” “He takes medicine for it.” “Wellllll, it’s not working.” *wipes hand on J and leaves wet mark* ajsklj poor Jasper

Henry brought the muffins after all <33333 “Muffins.” “Yeah.” (you can tell Jace x Sean were already good friends. so cute.)

Hen x Char got Jasp the bucket from the shop that Gooch wouldn’t let him have. Dawwwwww

“For awhile there, I thought you weren’t gonna come.” “Come on, man. I’ll always be there for you.” then. they. hug. they’re. so. cute. i. love. solid. friendships.

HENRY’S LAST LITTLE LOOK AT THE PARTY BEFORE HE LEAVES IS THE BEST THING EVER. THE LITTLE NOD HE MAKES LIKE, “YEAH. THIS IS GOOD.” LIKE, HE’S PERFECTLY OK WITH MISSING OUT SO LONG AS EVERYONE ELSE IS HAVING FUN. AHHHHHH. I LOVE HIM SO MUCH. :)))))) <3333333

that was a perfect way to end an ep

I’m glad I watched this. I’ve forgotten most of the earlier episodes which is a crime because they’re so good. It was hard to see Jace so little when he’s so grown now!!!!! My heart couldn’t take it. But lil Henry is precious and I love him. Stay tuned for more rewatches!!!! xoxoxox

#sorry if this was long or incoherent #it was a wild ride #i had to stop watching halfway thru bc of some stupid crap going on #but i finished and here we are #this was fun #watching hd makes me happy #i'm gonna do this for every ep #maybe #aksljlks #hd rewatch #the danger begins #episode synopsis

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fuck-customers · 6 years

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Few Months worth of BS

So a mix of be hardly getting on tumblr anymore and submissions being closed whenever I am on has caused a pileup of BS stories from both jobs, enjoy.

Note- Job 1 is gas station cashier, job 2 is Tiny SeaTzars

1. Job 1- it’s like 9am, i’m barely awake and this dude who looks old enough to be my dad comes in. He’s nice enough, pleasant guy, buys his stuff and leaves. Comes back in like 5 seconds later to ask if i’m married. I was 17 at the time so I said “Sir, i’m 17.” and he immediately backpedaled thank the heavens. Creepy enough, yeah? Nope! His first thought was to say “I’m so sorry, it’s just my wife recently passed and I’ve been looking.” To which my manager (my mom) pops around the corner and says “Well you’re looking in the wrong places sugar.” In a lovely tone that screamed “You’re 3 seconds from joining your wife”. He left redder than a tomato and that incident has become a running joke with everyone.

2. Job 1- Slow day so far, mostly just pissers. (peeps who use the bathroom and don’t buy anything) Dude comes in looking like hell. Fills his own cup up from our fountain and gets pissy when it rings up a whopping $2, says it’s a refill. I tell him we don’t have refill prices. So he goes and switches it out to one of our cups. Then he wants to pay with a card, gets even more pissy when I tell him there’s a $5 minimum on cards, says “that’s bullshit, since when?” Well ever since the card fees aren’t worth it on under $5 purchases, so always. Best part of that is we have LARGE signs on both sides of the door and ON THE FRONT of the fountain machine that say “Due to fees, there is a five dollar minimum purchase requirement on all cards, thank you for your cooperation!” He gets pissed beyond words, my manager tries getting him to calm down, he says “Not right now, you really don’t know the kind of day i’m having.” Things escalated quick and next thing I know he throws his full cup of soda on the floor and stormed out cussing up a storm. I ran after him and got his plate number as my manager called the cops but they couldn’t get anything from it so he’s never been found and ugh. Prick. Prick is all I can say.

3. Job 2- Someone actually called Tiny SeaTzars to ask for the hours of the CFK (backwards) next door. Just… really?

4. Job 2- We have a new dude, on like his second week. If a pizza is expired (been in the box for over an hour) we workers can eat it. Boy he was happy about that. Thing is, he’s almost always eating. Wasn’t working Friday but got told Saturday. It’s about 6pm, y'know, near peak rush hour when we can easily make a $2k hour, and he’s in the back leisurely eating pizza. Everyone else is busting their ass and he’s eating. Makeline dude had to leave his post to get sauce (because SOMEONE wasn’t at his post where he could be asked to get it for him so makeline doesn’t have to LEAVE THEIR POST IN THE MIDDLE OF A RUSH) and found him and chews him out, and thankfully he got a writeup for it. But just??? Bruh what level of stupidity/obliviousness do you gotta be on to see everyone rushing and running around you and think “Oh, time to eat some pizza.” ????

4. Job 1- Lady I don’t know comes up to the pump and sets of the bell that says someone’s trying to get gas. We have some regulars that we just release it and they’re trusted to come in and pay after, otherwise we’re prepay. However, I have never seen this chick before since I’ve worked here so not doing that. I tap her pump on my screen to shut it up and wait for her to come in. She does, all smiles, and says hi. I ask what I could help her with, she gets a confused look on her face and says “I need gas.” and I tell her we’re prepay. Bitch mode starts to wind up and she asks in a pissy voice “Really? Since when?” and I tell her “Since the station opened.” and then she says “Hmph, okay, I’ll talk to Sean (store owner) about that.” and leaves. Like, okay? We’re prepay, you’re not gonna change that by talking to the boss, who will tell you we are prepay. I don’t get people who think they can namedrop my boss to scare me??? Like “I know Sean.” Yeah, he runs a mechanic shop, half the county knows him, your point?? Best part is when they mispronounce his name or get it entirely wrong. “Yeah, me and Shane have been friends since we were kids.” Well good for you and Shane, but that ain’t helping you with SEAN.

5. Job 2- Lady calls in a 10 pizza order to be picked up the next day at 10am. We don’t open until 10:30. I try telling her and she get’s angry but tried meeting in the middle for 10:15. Talked to my managers and they said no way before 10:30. Tell her and she gets so pissed. “For such a big order you can’t get there 15 minutes early to open?” Okay first of all, do you really believe that we get here at 10:30 and open up? What the fuck are we going to sell?? We need to count down the registers, prep the toppings, make sheetouts and stock the hotboxes. We’re here at 6am or better just so we CAN open up at 10:30. We can’t just open the doors at 10:15 because if there’s more customers waiting around we’ll have to serve them when we’re NOT ready because we let you in, and then it snowballs into “well you were open this early yesterday/last week/blahblah” and then we get in trouble. In the end she cancelled her order and asked for corporates number.

6. Job 2- Sunday after-church rush. Coworker calls in to ask for when he works next. Manager flat out tells him to get up and come check for himself because we can’t stop and look for him right now and hangs up. Seriously dude, literally EVERYONE knows to take a picture of the schedule when it’s posted. You hang around for half an hour before you leave every day anyway so wtf is stopping you from being an adult and taking a picture of your hours?? He called back like three times over the next few hours and we finally slowed down and told him but my god how stubborn and lazy do you have to be.

7. Job 1- Dude and his friend come in, one goes the the bathroom, the other gets some candy (which is RIGHT on the other side of my counter) and then goes looking around the shelves for other stuff. Buddy comes back to pay for gas and other guy leaves. I tell bathroom boy to hold on and I do a quick survey of the shelves find nothing, then go out to their car and see candy snatcher reclined in the seat eating the Reese’s he just took. I tapped on the window and the dude about jumped a foot in the air. I said “So, do you wanna pay for that or should I just go on and call the cops on you for shoplifting?” and luckily the dude doesn’t try fighting it and comes back in and tells his friend to pay for it. Friend is notably pissed and just glares at him. Tells me to just put whatever change is left after the candy in gas and heads out. Sincerely hope his friend at least thunked him in the back of the head for trying, and failing, at being a petty candy thief.

8. Job 2- Ever since I’ve gotten glasses my eyes have been bloodshot almost a constant 24/7. Eyedrops clear it up for maybe an hour or two. The first few days the “are you high” question and jokes were kinda funny and amusing, but it’s been two months and it’s still going on. I would just stop wearing my glasses but I need them to legally drive (astigmatism in both eyes) so ugh.

9. Job 1- Once again, the station is prepay. It’s written on every pump in very large letters above every handle. Please tell me why these 5 asian guys (I think relevant? They didn’t seem to understand me well so maybe language block?) could not get it through their heads that they have to pay before they get their gas. They come in saying the pump isn’t working, I say we’re prepay, you have to pay before you get it. One of them goes to hand me his card and I ask how much in gas he’d like. Confusion. Ended up having to explain what prepay was (felt like a tool because of it) and they ended up leaving saying “Okay, we go to station down the street.” And I just.. Okay? Every station in the county is prepay but okay, you do you. Honestly this is more of a “I hope I didn’t offend them” than a fuck them thing. Felt bad I couldn’t help them.

10. Job 2- We ran out of green peppers, so one of our supremes is off the menu unless they’re fine with no peppers. Dude calls and wants the pepper supreme. I tell him we’re out of green pepper and he goes into upset toddler mode.

Him: “Out of peppers, are you kidding me? How does that even happen?!”

Me: “Well, it’s kinda a supply and demand thing, Sir. If it’s a popular topping we’ll run out of it quick.”

H: “How can you run out of peppers it’s a pizza store you’d think you’d be able to tell when to order more of a topping!!”

And we don’t order it ourselves? We take count and tell our District Manager that we need things and he’s supposed to order them for us? (Dumb system I know but it’s what’s in place)

In the end he asked for a manager and just hung up when he said the same thing. Found out he left a review on google about us. “Horribly unprepaired for the simplest of orders.” okay buddy, take the one star review and shove it up your ass.

11. Job 2- This one girl I go to school with got hired on. She seemed nice enough, we never talked before but apparently she knew me. She’s a decent worker (few nit-picky things, nothing bad) but… She makes me want to hit her sometimes. I get it, you’re trying to be funny/bubbly/joking/whatever, but I don’t know you well enough for you to be making jokes off of my appearance? I’m aware I that have a slightly larger than average head, I don’t like attention being drawn to it, especially randomly? We’re stretching dough and she just randomly says “You got a big ass head you know that? A big ass head.” and laughs. Like… Thanks, it’s not like that was a point of ridicule in the past or anything. And then while we’re washing dishes she gets mad and threatens to beat me for, wait for it, splashing her with water.

At the sink.

While doing dishes.

And she’s too extra with her reactions. Little extra is funny, I admit, but she is over the top. I was washing deep dish pans and a flake of bread flew off and hit her with some water. She spat and did that little “pthptpthpthtpht” thing for almost an entire minute, then went on to say “We gonna throw hands if you do that again” I just… Kindly shut the fuck up and let me to dishes by myself if you’re gonna be such an extra [word that almost got this post deleted] like that okay? Just kindly fuck off.

I have plenty more but I feel like this post is too long as is. Enjoy my suffering and expect more to come.

#submissions #fuck customers #cashier problems #fuck coworkers #submission

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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A Tale of Two Pietros: Explaining the MCU X-Men Problem With a Mutant Speedster

https://ift.tt/3jFtUYS

This article contains WandaVision spoilers.

Since his creation by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee in the mid-60s, Quicksilver has been a fairly important part of the Marvel Universe. The mutant speedster started as a member of Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, then became one of the earliest members of the Avengers. Over the decades, he’s married into the Inhumans, joined various X-teams, been a mentor to the Avengers Academy, and had his parentage retconned several times over.

He’s never been the most popular character in the Marvel Universe, but due to some legal complications, he became the focal point between two rival movie studios. It’s those complications that make his appearance in the fifth episode of WandaVision such a huge deal.

But let’s get to where this all started. As hard as it may be to believe now, b ack in the ‘90s, Marvel Comics was on the verge of bankruptcy. One way to get some money together was to sell the movie rights of its various characters to whatever studio was willing to pay. After all, shared cinematic universes weren’t really a thing back then.

Not every movie got made, of course. There were instances of studios sitting on rights and not doing anything for so long that they had to give them up. For instance, New Line Cinema had the rights to make a Venom movie, albeit one where they couldn’t reference Spider-Man directly in any way. Such an idea was worth a laugh in the ‘90s, but Sony actually pulled it off 20 years later, so go figure.

Studios would only have so much time to make a movie before the rights would revert to Marvel. By the time Marvel decided to get into the movie making business themselves and kick off the MCU concept, the field had settled. Sony had the Spider-Man franchise and had just finished Sam Raimi’s initial trilogy, preparing for a fourth movie that didn’t work out and would ultimately be replaced by a reboot. Universal had a complicated hold on the Hulk that lent itself to a unique partnership with Marvel. Fox was able to make the X-Men a successful franchise, but had less success with two attempts at the Fantastic Four franchise.

Essentially, the entire Marvel Universe had to be categorized into different properties. A lot of these were pretty easy. Doc Ock? He was clearly part of Spider-Man’s corner and could only be used in Spider-Man movies. Dr. Doom gets around as a villain in the comics and fights just about everyone, but at the end of the day, he’s grouped in with the Fantastic Four and could only be handled by Fox. But it wasn’t as simple for other characters.

One major complication was what to do with Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. Which corner of Marvel did they truly belong to? They were technically under the X-Men umbrella as the mutant children of Magneto. Quicksilver himself was a major member of X-Factor.

On the other hand, the two were also huge staples of the Avengers. They were Avengers longer than the likes of Hulk and Black Widow. Scarlet Witch was even the centerpiece in one of the most important Avengers storylines of the early 21st century.

20th Century Fox and Marvel Studios finally came up with an agreement. Both sides had the rights to the Maximoff twins, but the Avengers movies couldn’t describe the two as mutants or mention Magneto and the X-Men movies couldn’t bring up the Avengers or, uh… Yeah, this was pretty much on Marvel’s side to be creative.

Around the same time, each studio cast their Quicksilvers. Marvel had Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Fox had Evan Peters. Marvel cast Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch while Fox declined to actually use the character, likely due to how hard to write her powers could be at times. The most they did was include an unnamed little sister for Quicksilver, but director Bryan Singer insisted she wasn’t Wanda.

LAP 1 – CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER

Fittingly, with each studio having their own speedster, there was a race to be the first to get their Quicksilver on the big screen. It was really Fox’s race to lose, considering X-Men: Days of Future Past was the seventh X-Men movie and the most the character has ever gotten beforehand was an Easter egg namedrop on a computer monitor in X-Men 2. At least Days of Future Past was going to be released nearly a full year before Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Marvel still won the race, though. Weeks before the release of Days of Future Past, Captain America: The Winter Soldier hit theaters with a post-credits scene that revealed Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Quicksilver and Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff to the world. And while they were indeed showing off their powers in those brief moments, it wasn’t because they were mutants, but rather had been altered by Baron Strucker and HYDRA using Loki’s scepter from Avengers.

LAP 2 – X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST

Fox got their chance later that year with X-Men: Days of Future Past. Overall, Evan Peters’ Quicksilver didn’t get too much screen time, but he was definitely considered a highlight by fans.

Referred to as Peter Maximoff in this continuity, the speedster is a little more laid back than other characters in the X-Men series. Not only does his power give him a feeling of casual superiority over others, but the unbelievability of it all makes him feel almost untouchable. His high-speed crimes would come off as more of a myth that nobody with authority would logically believe. He’s recruited by Xavier, Wolverine, and Beast to break Magneto out of the Pentagon, which he does for the sake of the challenge.

It’s there that he shows his stuff in a slow-motion segment set to Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle,” displaying seemingly endless charisma as he protects his allies from armed prison guards and spends his perpetual head start straight-up fucking with their would-be killers. It’s a fun moment in a film about dystopian genocide and Peters makes Quicksilver really likeable.

He doesn’t really get to do too much otherwise, though he does make a remark to Magneto hinting that the Master of Magnetism is his father, but that’s as far as it ever went.

LAP 3 – AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

2015 gave us Avengers: Age of Ultron, which opened with the Avengers crushing the remnants of HYDRA while Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch got away. Still, Quicksilver was able to scrap with the Avengers and start up a rivalry with Hawkeye while Scarlet Witch could screw with Iron Man’s mind and increase his paranoia to dangerous levels.

In the comics, Quicksilver has been best defined in an issue of X-Factor where he described his demeanor by comparing himself to someone stuck in line at the ATM, having to wait behind an idiot who doesn’t know what they’re doing and keeps taking forever. That’s his every waking moment and Taylor-Johnson certainly tapped into that with his performance.

WandaVision: How Monica Rambeau Fits in the MCU

By Delia Harrington

WandaVision: The Endgame Is In Sight

By Don Kaye

In terms of action, Taylor-Johnson’s Quicksilver wasn’t quite as fun as Peters’, but he had his moments. The closest thing he really had to the slow-mo rescue scenes was a short sequence that had him punch Captain America and foolishly attempt to pull Mjolnir out of the air. There was a feeling of playfulness underneath the character’s resentment at times, but he wasn’t quite the goofball of Peters’ version.

He also didn’t come off as ridiculously fast as the X-Men Quicksilver, even though that was probably for the better. Sometimes a speedster can be impossible to write for and believe in. Taylor-Johnson’s version was still impressively quick and a danger to any enemy, but he didn’t come off as unbeatable.

Unfortunately for this version of Quicksilver, his relationship with Scarlet Witch was arguably his undoing. The Quicksilver of the X-Men films wasn’t held down by his siblings and got to stand on his own, but MCU Quicksilver was treated as an extension of Wanda and her story. That made him expendable by the time the movie was ready to wrap up.

The Maximoff twins went from being Ultron’s lackies battling against the Avengers to betraying Ultron and joining the good guys. In the end, Quicksilver sacrificed himself to save Hawkeye, and despite his gift for speed, it was a believable death, and felt far weightier than the way such character exits had been approached in the past.

As far as the MCU was concerned, Pietro Maximoff’s story was over. Wanda, however, had a new life waiting for her as an Avenger.

LAP 4 – X-MEN: APOCALYPSE

In the X-Men universe, Quicksilver showed up again in 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse. It took place about a decade after Days of Future Past, reminding us that Peters’ Quicksilver is like thirty years older than Taylor-Johnson’s Quicksilver. Ah, these X-Men movies and their screwy timeline.

Quicksilver’s arc in this film ultimately showed the innate problems of the later X-Men movies. When Magneto joined the mad mutant Apocalypse as one of his Four Horsemen, Peter Maximoff finally realized that Magneto was his father and tried to find him. This led to another fantastic slow-motion scene where he single handedly evacuated the X-Men’s school during an explosion to the song “Sweet Dreams” by the Eurythmics.

But Quicksilver’s larger arc in the movie remained unsatisfying, and he and Magneto never came to terms with the question of their relationship. Peter may have survived the final battle with Apocalypse, but he also was ignored in what should have been his big moment. Magneto and Quicksilver’s relationship was a card only Fox could have played and they fumbled it. It remains a missed opportunity for both characters.

Funny enough, around this time, Marvel Comics was going the opposite direction and placed a narrative wedge between the characters when Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver discovered that Magneto wasn’t actually their father after all. Though at the same time, it came across that Scarlet Witch may have altered reality to make that true. Regardless, it looked like Marvel was trying to go out of their way to sever Magneto from the twins’ existence.

FINAL LAP – DARK PHOENIX

Outside of a hilarious cameo in Deadpool 2, the Fox version of Quicksilver next appeared in 2019’s Dark Phoenix, the final film in the main X-Men franchise. Quicksilver only has about two and a half minutes of screentime. Halfway into the movie, he makes a slow-motion run at Jean Grey, loses his footing, tumbles, and is forgotten about for the rest of the picture. And his connection to Magneto? Never even mentioned.

Back in the MCU, Pietro remained just a memory, one more trauma stacked upon trauma in the life of Wanda Maximoff. There was already the death of her parents and the horrible experimentation. Soon after, there was the trauma of the innocent blood on her hands, her incarceration, and her role in the death of Vision. It wasn’t until the third episode of WandaVision where Wanda even talked about her long-lost brother.

Wanda could puppet Vision’s android corpse and surround herself with people forced to be friendly to her, but the horrible loss of her brother was something she couldn’t undo. Or it was something she refused to undo. While we still don’t get the reasoning behind what’s going on, the Evan Peters version of Quicksilver popped into Westview, NJ to see his long-lost sister, all while acting like Uncle Jesse from Full House.

We have four episodes to go, but we’re left wondering what this truly means. Will Peters’ Quicksilver outright be a replacement for the disgruntled counterpart who died at Ultron’s hand? Will the joke run its course and he’ll be sent away where he came from? Will this be the big moment that instigates the existence of mutants in the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe, giving credence to the overused internet joke of Wanda demanding, “No, MORE mutants!”?

Whatever it is, it’s a special moment. The Evan Peters Quicksilver not only finally has a super-powered relative who seems to give a damn about him, but as the first link to the X-Men in the MCU (big or small, we’ll see), he finally gets the spotlight he deserves.

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Now let’s see how long until Deadpool finally shows his scarred face.

The post A Tale of Two Pietros: Explaining the MCU X-Men Problem With a Mutant Speedster appeared first on Den of Geek.

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gingerly-writing · 7 years

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Hello? I'm currently trying to write a superhero novel and I'm extremely bad at it. Can you help me, like just give a few tips? I'm really excited about this project so your help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Hello dear Anon! You have definitely come to the write (hehe) place. I have so much advice (and hard lessons learnt) to share that I almost burst with information when I saw this ask in my inbox. I’ve tried to trim it down a bit so I don’t clog up people’s dashes, but this is still gonna be pretty long. (Also, this is my 4,500 post on this blog, quite coincidentally, and I also just passed 700 followers. Consider this advice post my celebration!)

This is a novel, not a comic book series.

You won’t be able to convey every awesome aspect of your characters’ looks without boring the reader to death.

Some tropes don’t translate well. At all.

Nothing is wholly original, not anymore. But you can still come up with something you can comfortably call your own.

Action scenes will either become your trusty sidekick or your archnemesis (and each one can turn out to be either).

LESS. IS. MORE.

1) This is a novel, not a comic book series. Even if you write a whole series of novels, you don’t have the page space to waste on the tens or hundreds of smaller villains you might find littered across a Batman series. First of all, everyone your hero encounters has to be fleshed out at least somewhat, and that takes up both space on the page and in your reader’s mind as they try to keep track of everyone you’ve introduced. If you need to make your hero seem as though they’ve been around for a while and save a lot of lives on the regular, have them namedrop villains they’ve defeated or muse about just how many civilians they must have saved over the years and how that makes it all worth it.

What I’m saying is, you need a coherent plot. Obviously the journey from A to B needs ups and downs, but those probably shouldn’t consist of 18 minor villains with the Big Bad at the end unless all the attacks turn out to be related. Keep your plot tidy, and remember, this is a novel. For the first book at least, you might be better off sticking with one supervillain/group as your major antagonist, with subplots constructed from other, less major conflicts (tension with law enforcement, other heroes, collapsing marriage, love interest, high school issues etc. etc.). In my first attempt at a superhero novel, I had my hero (Ace) fighting gangs and cleaning up the streets, saving kids from their own stupidity, dealing with a new addictive and highly highly dangerous drug pouring into his city, trying to uncover who or what the Crime Syndicate was, fending off the police who were trying to arrest him, and a bunch of civilian life problems too, including his mother and best friend trying to work out what he was hiding, passing university and finding a job, all on top of tracking down and fighting his newfound nemesis. This is a slightly exaggerated list, but you can see what I’m talking about. Too much going on can kill your coherency, even if it’s the kind of winding plot you’re used to seeing on comics.

My tip here: pick one main villain, or gang, or anti-hero etc. –pick only one major villainous entity. Stack in one to three sideplots. Make sure everything is coherent and leads your hero from A to B, whether they know it or not. It might be a superhero novel, but it’s a novel above all. Stick to your basic plotting rules, and you’ll be a-okay.

2) You won’t be able to get down every aspect of your character’s awesome outfit. This is another rule applicable to everything, but it’s especially hard to resists in a genre where a hero’s public image is often built from their outfit and powers as much as what they stand for. But imagine if you had to read a block paragraph description of Batman’s outfit? He wears all-black, with a cowl covering the top half of his face that has pointy bat ears which electrocutes you if you try to take it off. He also wears eyeliner to cover the skin around his eyes. He never smiles, and his voice is a deep growl. His chest plate is black and decorated with false abs and a bat-symbol, which is yellow or black depending on whether he’s in camouflage- YAWN! I’m bored just typing all that out.

Pick defining characteristics for all of them. My villainess has candyfloss pink hair, a slow smile and a dappled black outfit fit for a thief. My hero is half-Japanese, wielding a glowing blue sword (which might become a shield in the edits) and donning his heirloom hero suit of black and matching glowing blue. It’s not a lot, and I drop in other details here and there (she carries smoke bombs and knives in her boots, he can’t wink), but sticking to core, important details when describing their outfits in particular can give a pretty clear idea without choking the reader.

3) Some tropes don’t translate well. At all. Put aside the rampant racism, the homophobia, the general mistreatment of many minorities in the comic industry. Put aside the America-centrism and the fridging of ‘pure’ girlfriends and the slutty villainess alike. These are all problems, but they also exist outside of the superhero genre.

Here, I’m talking space radiation giving people powers, killing their loved ones, serving the plot in any which way. I’m talking Superman’s 800 superpowers and Luthor’s inability to figure out his secret ID despite being the smartest man on the planet. I’m talking fallacies of logic, stretching the suspension of disbelief far past breaking point, Gary Stus galore. I’m talking Guy Gardener’s bowlcut. Y’know, just generally bad writing.

You’re going to have to come up with more original power-origins and better haircuts than they did in the Golden Age, I’m afraid. While I genuinely wish I could get in the invisible brainwave-controlled escape boomerangs from Captain Boomerang in the Silver Age, it doesn’t work so well in a pseudo-serious novel. But work a little harder at your worldbuilding than the golden oldies had to, and you’ll have everything down pat.

4) Nothing is wholly original, not anymore. But you can still come up with something you can comfortably call your own. This is linked to point three. Everything has been done. Every superpower, every storyline, every outfit, magic item, warping of genes. You name it, someone, somewhere, whether inside or outside the big comic houses, has done it. This is common with all ideas, but with superheroes you know some all-knowing jackass will pop out of the woodwork like ‘actually this was the plot of Assman #236 in 1987 and your just a hack’ if you ever publish your work.

Fuck ‘em. You might not be able to create something wholly original, but you can create something with a twist. From your superpowers and gadgets, to your plotlines and your worldbuilding, to your hero leagues and villain cadres and your mob squads –you can create something fresh, something we’ve never seen before, something that will open mouths and eyes and hearts. Everything can be original if you take it and play.

5) Action scenes will either become your trusty sidekick or your archnemesis (and each one can turn out to be either). Some will flow from your pen (or keyboard) as though the Muses themselves are scribing your words with golden ink. Other times, you will want to strangle every one of your characters, and throw their weapons, your writing implements and yourself out of the window. The real problem is that action scenes tend to be crucial to this genre, and you never know which fight scene is going to bite you in the ass.

It’s okay if you’re terrible at them (like me). Sketch what you need out of the scene in terms of plot, and then research to your heart’s content (while remembering this is a genre built on ridiculousness and you can stretch reality as far as you need). Then, as with wit, remember you don’t have to be an expert fighter. Unlike your characters, you can write and rewrite and play and mess with until everything is exactly how you want it.

LESS. IS. MORE. I think this is the sum total of my advice, though bear in mind that I’m a massive overwriter: if you underwrite, you might need to flip some of this advice on its head. In my experience, keep your original plot tight, because it will expand with heroic shenanigans and villainous sideplots. Keep your initial character description to key characteristics, and build in the cool, extraneous details over time. Watch out for some of the good old tropes (and not just the bigoted ones) that simply don’t translate well into a modern novel. Play with your assumptions, your tropes and anything else you can get your hands on, but don’t be too afraid to hang onto some of the old classics: this is a genre known for its fun tropes, after all.

If you need any more general writing advice, feel free to come back! You are talking to someone who wrote 60,000+ words of my core superhero novel and scrapped every single one of them, who’s plotted out seven superhero novels and counting, and who may or may not be far too in love with this genre.

But over everything else, remember to take all advice -including and especially mine- with a large pinch of salt. Come talk to me off anon if you just want to chat about superheroes, I don’t bite (and I really, really love superheroes).

Thanks for the ask!xx

#advice #my advice #heroes and villains #superhero novels #amwriting #writing advice #mine #superheroes #supervillains

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