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prongsmydeer · 1 year

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Ayesha Liveblogs She-Ra S2-S3

“Wow, Flower Princesses can’t aim.” Mermista said we believe in power profiling LMAO also how many flower princesses could there possibly be

You know, I was expecting more emotional consequences from last season’s interactions for Catra and Adora

“Is the one you call Catra... not mean?” “No, she is.” Update from 1 minute later: The consequence is that Adora must work through her feelings through Codependent Romantically-Charged Unhealthy Friendship Simulation

“Can you teleport anything you want? Like a cannon? I can make ice cannonballs.” Hahahah awww Frosta wants to be friends

“When you grow up with someone, they just know how to push your buttons.” “I can relate. I also have buttons.” Light Hope really is deLightful lmaoooo

Catra’s emotional consequences are her becoming a peer mentor for Gaslighting Gatekeeping and Girlbossing

Also I can’t wait to see Kyle’s inevitable defection into the Rebellion

I love how often Bow says exactly what I’m thinking:

Why is Mermista bullying Perfuma LMAO is this her way of inviting her to become a throuple with her and Sea Hawk

“Maybe we should hold hands and think healing thoughts.” ARE they flirting? It really seems like they’re flirting

Frosta is readily demonstrating the problem of having 10-year-olds in your army with her inability to listen to a single order

“I thought I could help and be the Rebellion’s tech master.” Not to make everything about how much I love Bow but I love Bow

“Why can’t you be what I want you to be?” It’s a Miraculous Lucky Charm situation, Adora; your sword is telling you you need to be better hydrated and to use less brute force

WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH THE FOREST REGROWING BECAUSE OF THEIR TEAMWORK. I KNOW IT’S ONE EPISODE INTO THE SEASON BUT I LOVE A MAGICAL GLOWING FRIENDS MOMENT:

“When they’re ready to roll out, I’ll be at the head, and you’ll be here, rotting. Thanks, I needed this.” You know those posts that are like ‘traumatize ur parents BACK’ that’s Catra and Shadow Weaver

“Entrapta’s alive. And we left her behind.” THE FACT THAT THIS IS BOW’S FIRST THOUGHT RATHER THAN THE RECOGNITION SHE IS HELPING THE HORDE. I LOOOOOVE BOW

The fact that Dryl has been forced to cede to the Horde just because Entrapta has no strength of character. Dissolve the monarchy!!!

“He is apart of you. Your destines are intertwined.” I won’t lie, I wasn’t expecting Horsey to have such a significant role

“We’ve got to save her.” Glimmer my love... your friend sucks kjghkjgh

I really am trying to give Entrapta some grace mentally, cause I get it, she’s like 16, her friends abandoned her, she’s got a hyper-fixation on alien tech, these guys offered her new friendship and encouraged her technological growth... but it’s not a good enough reason to like. Colonize and oppress a planet. Like, okay, Entraptylo Ren. Have some perspective, my girl. LOL

Hahahaha Light Hope having to reboot for her software update

“But [the Watchtower] was destroyed by Mara when she lost control and attacked Etheria.” I am so interested in them explaining Mara’s story. I love a legend inside a narrative. Avatar Wan was by far the coolest part of LOK, I am not accepting constructive criticism at this time

This fight with Catra and Scorpia really suggests that Bow should work on his hand-to-hand. He’s a mid-range fighter compared to Glimmer and Adora’s close combat

Perhaps Adora, like me, just doesn’t really know what to do with a talking horse:

“We took a hostage! We’re supposed to be the good guys.” Bow did this show not literally start with you and Glimmer capturing Adora LOL

Not directly related to the content, but it does bother me that the captions don’t match the audio. Like they shorten Scorpia’s “Catra, you beautiful genius, I’m coming,” to “Catra, I’m coming.” Why! Shouldn’t it be accurate? Those aren’t filler words or stuttering that might take away from the readability, it’s literally the way Scorpia is addressing her

I too, like Swift Wind, appreciate the toppling of unjust hierarchies

Entrapta really has -1,000 empathy. Casually telling Bow and Glimmer about hacking the Black Garnet which almost killed Glimmer’s mother. With peace and love. Get some help.

“I saved a little magic, just for you.” [Blows raspberry] I think Glimmer should be a little spiteful, as a treat

I want to see the shady backstory between Mara and Light Hope!!

“Who needs Entrapta? You’ve got Bow, tech master and premier member of the Etherian Maker Community.” I love that Bow’s narrative arc is him being Rebellion tech whiz who is all empathy, all the time

“Thus far, your performance has been lacking.” Wow, so the emotionally-malnourished 10th grader you made your General HASN’T changed the tide of the war in two episodes? Who’d have thunk it, Hordak?

You know what’s genuinely a little funny. I think Catra came because she wanted parental attention (to be yelled at) and Hordak entertained her because he wanted someone to yell at. New fucked up father-daughter dynamic unlocked

“Nothing gets past us,” said Glimmer, which I’m sure isn’t foreshadowing

I’m sorry I’m so sassy about Entrapta but I cannot believe she has more moral quandary over whether to go into Hordak’s sanctum than about orchestrating the downfall of society lmao

“Portals aren’t theoretical, they’re real. And I’m going to open one.” I love how quickly Hordak has embraced Entrapta as his lab assistant hahahah. Finally something funny!!

“Etheria is the only planet I’ve encountered that does not seem to understand [that there are countless planets and galaxies].” Is Hordak’s story about how he wants to go home like E.T. I’d laugh so hard

“You are the one bothering me, Force Captain, with your unwanted intrusion. I am working. With Entrapta’s assistance.” Daddy Hordak’s got a new favourite daughter

Also. Why is Glimmer the only Princess with parents? Are the rest of these gals orphans? Like Frosta for sure bc she took the throne at age 8, but all of them??

“I need [Catra’s gift] to be something that says ‘Thank you,’ but also, ‘We are soulmates tied together by the beautiful threads of fate.” Scorpia’s adoration of Catra is very sweet

It kills me that in their DnD war simulation campaign, Bow imagines everyone in outfits accurate to their 80s design. I truly love him to pieces:

HAHAHAHAH PERMISSION FOR THE REST OF THE STORY TO BE TOLD ONLY FROM BOW’S PERSPECTIVE:

Bow: It looks like I’ve got you meow, evildoer.

Catra: I’d paws to reflect on your upcoming death if I were mew.

Bow: I don’t know, I’m feline pretty good right now.

“Adora, isn’t this all going a little overboard. We’ve faced the Horde before. What’s the worst that could happen?” said Bow, as if Glimmer’s father didn’t literally DIE in battle

Fjkfhkjhfkjfh apparently Glimmer is still team pro-improvising. RIP Daddy Glimmer

Hahahahaha @ them taking halfway through the second season to identify Rogelio the Lizard Guy

Love that there is no justification or explanation for why Perfuma can create sentient plants:

DID GLIMMER JUST MURDER ROGELIO THE LIZARD GUY. SHE THREW HIM OFF THE TOWER OMGGGG

Update from a minute later: Rogelio is fine. We did not witness a live casual murder by one of the protagonists just yet

“All in favour of blaming this on Kyle?” We continue the inevitable steps towards Kyle’s defection LOL

Legitimate question. If they glow every time their teamwork is good, would that become their main metric for how successful they’ve been? Like if you’re not glowing, the plan isn’t going well?

“Mermista cancelled our plans this week, and she’s hanging out with her other friends and didn’t invite me to join.” HKJHGKJGH Mermista told Seahawk you’re not invited to my weird flirt-bullying with Perfuma, actually

I’ve been wondering if Scorpia’s feelings for Catra were romantic or not (it seemed romantic, but like, could easily be read also as just loving her a lot as a friend) but this Arctic After-Hours Invite seems very clearly to be a date hahaha

Interesting that She-Ra is impervious to the cold! How exactly do these powers work lmao

“Maybe there’s scientific truth to the rumours about strange things happening in this region,” said the Magical Technology Princess to her two friends, who are half-scorpion and half-cat

1) Why have I never noticed Sea Hawk fighting with a lightsabre!!! Is that new? 2) I love him asking Scorpia if he’s cool mid-fight and her going, “Potentially.”

“Looks like you’re mine now, Adora.” Gay and rude. Catra’s only two personality traits

“Yay! It’s a girls’ night in.” It’s interesting that infecting her sword has effectively made Adora drunk LOL

I won’t lie, I paused to watch some other stuff, so I forgot about the terrifying snow monster hahahaha

It’s so funny that Sea Hawk just politely announces he’s come to rescue Adora instead of you know, attacking with his laser sword. I am wondering if he is the diversion:

“Whatever the Horde is giving you, it’s not worth the damage you’re doing to Etheria.” Bow brought logic to a magical science fight

“Does she even understand how much I do for her?” “Exactly, it seems like the only time anyone wants to hang is when they need me to give them a ride or do something for them.”

1) It is so funny that Sea Hawk is bonding with Scorpia but please don’t tell me he’s going to join the Horde. I will lose my mind

2) Isn’t the way you met Adora, Glimmer and Bow literally bc they needed a ride to Mermista’s place? Why are you surprised that continues to be your role?

3) You’re in the Rebellion! Of course people need things from you, Sea Hawk

4) However, I get that you need some good friends who want you around. Maybe u should expand your social circle beyond miscellaneous rebel princesses lmao

“I don’t need their opinions to validate me. I’m Sea Hawk.” “And me, I am brave, strong, and give great hugs, and I’m loyal.” YEAHHHHHH SEA HAWK AND SCORPIAAAA

“I’ve got control of Adora. I am not giving that up.” I wonder how many of Catra’s problems could be solved by getting some therapy

Sea Hawk telling Scorpia that caring is the greatest adventure of all. It is cheesy and I am WEAK and soft-hearted. I love them <3

“You can’t expect me to out-cast Light Spinner, the greatest sorcerer to ever walk the halls of Mystacor.” I can’t believe we’re getting Shadow Weaver backstory AND finding out that boys can do magic

I don’t remember if they’ve ever said his name, but based on him needing to a relevant character, and on his similar appearance to Castaspella, I’m gonna say that Micah must be Glimmer’s dad.

Are we to gather from the lines and circles on Hordak’s back that HE is First One’s tech? Is he Mara or Light Hope’s weird boyfriend? I don’t know how I’d handle that

Daddy Hordak has really found a way to recreate Catra’s exact Favourite and Scapegoat childhood trauma. He’s really embracing his place in the parent dynamic

[Light Spinner, but also me, voice]: I’ve only had Micah for one day but if anything happened to him I’d [redact] everyone in this room and then myself:

“You’ll make [the Guild] see [the threat of the Horde]. If anyone can do it, it’s you!” Awww so Shadow Weaver wasn’t ALWAYS a terrible influence on teen lives. It’s a fun spicy update that we get later on

“Why do you really want to keep her around?” Stockholm Syndrome and Mommy Issues

I can’t believe that Shadow Weaver’s origin story is that she got Alphonse Elric’d by trying to do dark magic with a twelve-year-old

“I had to earn my power. Fight for it. Why should it be any different for you?” “I was a child when you took me in. What could I have possibly done to deserve the way you treated me?” Yaddah Yaddah Generational Trauma: The Sequel

“Serenia. Portal. Mara.” I’m doubling down on Hordak as Mara’s Weird Boyfriend

Are we gonna find more about Bow’s family!! I LOVE BACKSTORIES. WHAT A FUN COUPLE OF EPISODES

“Adora! Glimmer! We’re so happy to finally meet Bow’s school friends!”

Bow having two dads is actually one of the few things I knew about this show going in, but I am SO happy that they are depicted on screen, and not just like, mentioned. <3 YEAHHHH SHE-RA!!!

KJHGKJHGKJHGJK I CANNOT BELIEVE BOW NEVER TOLD HIS PARENTS HE WAS IN THE REBELLION OH MY GOD

This scheme has really forced me to remember that Adora STILL only wears her Horde uniform as her everyday outfit. HOW DO BOWS DAD’S NOT NOTICE JGHKJGHKGJH

“Youngest of 13! All historians just like us.” THIRTEEN??? THAT’S SO MANY SIBLINGS. ALSO HOW ARE YOU HISTORIANS THAT DON’T KNOW WHAT A HORDE UNIFORM LOOKS LIKE OH MY GOD

“So I did the only thing I could. I secretly taught myself archery, ran away and pretended I was at a made-up boarding school.” “That seems really elaborate, Bow.” Honestly. Honestly! Life mood for wanting not to upset your parents but still to live your life in way that reflects your values and identity

Yaddah yaddah parallel journeys to queerness in youth while inverting the heteronormative structures in which they usually take place

From 5 min later: “I act like someone I’m not with my family because the truth would hurt them.” LIKE HELLO???? BOW!! I LOVE HOW CLEARLY THIS WAS WRITTEN BY A QUEER PERSON

And: “I’ve tried to tell them before but they don’t want to hear it. So, I pretend.” AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

HAHAAHAHA funny how they did not have a way to organically bring up Lance and George’s names so they made Bow first-name his own dads

“We’ll find Shadow Weaver, the two of us, and not a word of it will leave this room.” I KNEW THE iROBOT BABY RECORDER WOULD BE LISTENING

HKJFHKJGHKJGHKJHF Bow’s historian dad having a First Ones tattoo that says, “Lunch.” Poetic cinema. This is why u should never get a tattoo in a language you don’t understand

“Adora is a sixth major in She-Ra?” I love how quickly Bow’s lie has fallen apart

I’m losing my mind that the thing that signifies Bow returning to himself his him wearing a crop top. Also his dads SCREAMING as he rips his shirt

“You only listened to me if I said what you wanted to hear.” [...] “We love you the way you are, Bow. And we’re proud of you, no matter what path you take in life.” CRYIN’

“This was a test, and you failed.” I won’t lie to you, I took a long pause from this show purely because I knew whatever emotional trap Daddy Hordak laid out for Disgraced Daughter Catra was going to make my heart clench LOL. Delayed this two minute scene by weeks

Shadow Weaver said: I will not let Daddy Hordak take the terrible surrogate parent spotlight. Time to haunt Adora’s room like a sleep paralysis demon

“Technically it’s the spare room. But it is more than adequate as a holding cell.” You’re telling me with guards as attack-happy as in S1, you’ve NEVER imprisoned anyone in the castle? I CANNOT BELIEVE. AREN’T U IMMORTAL ANGELLA. SURELY U’VE BEEN RULING LONG ENOUGH TO CREATE SOME KIND OF JUSTICE/REHABILITATION SYSTEM ON BRIGHT MOON. DIDN’T YOU FIGHT A WAR!!!

“Shadow Weaver is dangerous. I will not let that woman near you.” Angella said: Maternal bond with Shadow Weaver ended, Adora. Now I am your best mom

“You will answer for the crimes you committed during your time as my brother’s teacher.” I’m glad that the Micah thing is coming into the main narrative because I keep forgetting if they confirmed it before bc I’ve stopped watching this episode for months at a time LOL

“I have to believe that others can change too, even Shadow Weaver.” Ohhhhh Adora <3

Adora referring to Shadow Weaver as the woman who raised her :’( I’m with Angella, Adora deserves to not be around these adults who only want to use her

Shocked that Shadow Weaver is being honest about Hordak’s plan. Shadow Weaver said manipulate, momtrauma, military defection

“You were bought through a portal from another world.” AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH?????????????

“I was a baby! Babies don’t remember things.” “Interesting, I will make a note of this.” Light Hope’s not wrong about her assumption though, there are studies on trauma in infancy. This is truly the story of how your fucked up childhood can come back to haunt you later on LOL.

“Don’t I get a say in what happens to me? Don’t I get a choice?” “No, this is your destiny, you do not choose.” 1) The heartbreak in Adora’s voice as she’s finding out she’s a First One is killing me and 2) WRONG

KJGHGKJHGJH Catra dunking on Hordak in front of his entire army. She’s right, he is incapable of defeating teenagers

Bow tapping Adora on the head reassuringly with his Space iPad to let her know they’re there for her as much as they’re there for the Rebellion. I love himmmmmmmmmm

I have this series on 1.25x speed atm because it’s so hard to focus and let me tell you. It sounds normal. So I stand by the view that they just pace the dialogue too slowly LOL

Bizarrely, the more screentime they get, the more invested I am in the father-daughter relationship of Entrapta and Daddy Hordak. He really does seem to care for her. If it was just her value as a tech person, he wouldn’t have listened to her about changing his plans for Catra to go to the Crimson Waste instead of Beast Island:

THE STAR WARS BAR??????????? ARE WE ON TATTOINE???

Why is the proportion of furries in this bar so much higher than in any other place. Furry Exile Wasteland

I’m with Adora in terms of immediately admiring Huntara. I think it’s the voice and how she stepped in to protect the kids. Also maybe the ponytail

However. I believe her when she says no one should be trusted, including herself LOL

IFjkfjfkjfkjfh is that a smaller Hordak inside a test tube? Daddy Hordak making a new clone baby????????????? Saving an old baby???????

“We should say something.” “NO! We are supporting her.” LMAO @ GLIMMER AND BOW. When ur friend is making bad decisions but u don’t want to alienate them gkjhgkjhgjhg

“Paralyzing darts. But you probably figured that out, being a fast learner and all.” Best Friends Squad said: Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal, Huntara

Why is Hordak and Entrapta’s relationship so fucking endearing???? It’s killing me as he hisses while she tries to force-feed him soup:

Are they still morally bankrupt. Yes, I do think so. Are they very funny. Also yes!!!!

“I am not discussing this.” “Your armor, it’s holding you together.” “It’s none of your concern.” Maybe I wouldn’t feel this way about Hordak if I didn’t have Repressed Immigrant Father Syndrome kjhgjhgkjhgb

“I am a clone. A clone of the Emperor of the Known Universe.” HELLO???????? I THOUGHT HE WAS CLONING, NOT CLONED. IT DOESN’T EVEN SOUND LIKE A WORD ANYMORE

“And Horde Prime will see that he was wrong. I am not a defect. I am worth something.” WOW, IT REALLY IS THE STORY OF YADDAH YADDAH GENERATIONAL TRAUMA. EVEN HORDAK’S PROBLEMS ALL CIRCLE BACK TO DADDY ISSUES

HOWEVER. I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN ALL OF THE DEATHS ATTRIBUTED TO THE HORDE. [Insert coolmotivestillmurder.jpg LOL]

LOTS OF PEOPLE HAVE CHRONIC ILLNESSES AND DISABILITIES HORDAK, NOT ALL OF US COLONIZE SPACE

Side note: Adora and Hordak are really carrying the voice acting for this season so far. Like Adora’s yelling at Light Hope and Hordak’s “I am not a defect.” AHH!!!!!!

Also I really do love how they animated this cutaway sequence. Conveying the energy of Hordak’s past without necessarily revealing everything, and giving us a sense of how Hordak views himself and his history:

“I do not need your help.” “Everyone needs help sometimes.” Entrapta said: I’m here for you, Daddy Hordak!!! The generational trauma ends here, as I am impervious to criticism

You can tell that she really doesn’t absorb criticism by the fact she talks about her homies abandoning her like she had nothing to do with it LMAO. THEY THOUGHT U WERE DEAD, FOUND U LATER, GAVE U THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT AND U SAID ‘ACTUALLY I PREFER SPACE COLONIZATION INSTEAD XOXO’

“No matter what you say, you are not a failure. Any who discount you are utter fools.” Wow, Hordak’s using his words. Growth?

Awwwww I love that Adora’s comment from last episode about people can change is immediately coming to fruition with Huntara. Ex-Horde mentor!!!

“I’m looking at the Crimson Waste, the place Hordak sent me to die. I have no idea what you’re doing, as the last thing I told you was to leave me alone.” Scorpia’s just here to love you, Catra

Fhkjghkjghkj I feel like Catra and Scorpia fit in better at the Star Wars Bar because they are also Criminal Furries

“But me? I’ve already lost it all,” said Catra, as if her homie Scorpia who would go to the ends of the galaxy for her wasn’t standing right there

Same energy as Kakashi saying everyone he cares about is dead when he has at LEAST four friends

“Who’s the strongest in the Crimson Waste?” “LASHOR.” Tung Lashor said my love language is words of affirmation

Wild how so far Catra has been achieving victory over all these adults through no other skill than bullying jkhgjghkjgh. Although $10 says she wins this battle through the convenient paralytic darts she asked for earlier

Update from 1 minute later: Alright, I owe you $10. Bullying it is

“This is the one place they’ll never find us. I saw what they would do. The deaths that would follow.” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Assuming ‘they’ is the army of Horde Prime? But it would be interesting if it were someone else. I really, really want to see more of Mara’s backstory

You know. This past two and a half seasons I have been assuming that this would lead up to a Catra and Adora relationship because they are the main characters. But they have also made it clear that Scorpia likes Catra and based on this episode, it does seem like Catra is starting to respond to those feelings:

“So why would we go back? Let’s stay here. Forget Hordak. Forget Adora. Forget all of them. We could rule the Crimson Waste together, just the two of us. We could, you know, be happy.” Scorpia is shooting her shot

“We are going back. We are going to open a portal. And we are going to crush them all.” Wow. Didn’t take much to sway her in the other direction

Hordak 🤝 Catra 🤝 Entrapta

Pretending like your abandonment issues are a good reason to colonize space

Speaking of abandonment issues. LMAO @ BOTH HORDAK AND ENTRAPTA NOT WANTING THIS PORTAL TO DISRUPT THEIR FUCKED UP LITTLE FOUND FAMILY

“Before I started ‘rushing in,’ the Rebellion hadn’t made a move in years. You need me.” I feel like what I’ve learned is that Glimmer is usually not the best judge of what to do, unless she’s directly defying Angella, in which case it is the right call kjghkjghkgjhgkjh

“I could not have lied to you about who you are, because I have never known or cared about someone as inconsequential as you.” Daddy Hordak said Shadow Weaver got full-custody of Adora in the divorce

Glimmer hasn’t really learned much from her dad’s journey with having Shadow Weaver as a mentor. This is what happens when you keep secrets from your kids

Adora trying desperately to reason with Entrapta while Entrapta continues to facilitate the downfall of the planet. Just Quirky Girl things:

You know, thus far this seems to be amounting to a rough day for everyone involved

“If we open a portal, the anomalies will be catastrophic. It’ll unhinge time and space, creating a warped reality that will collapse in on itself, erasing us from existence.” OH, SO NOW WE CARE ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS TO THE PLANET. WHERE WAS THIS THE PAST TWO SEASONS, ENTRAPTA?

“Adora gets everything she wants.” LIKE ALL OF EXISTENCE NOT EXPLODING, CATRA? WHY ARE YOU ALL SO STUPID LMAO

[Insert Guardians of the Galaxy, “We’re the idiots who live in it.” LOL]

“Who do you think let the princesses in?” “She wouldn’t--” LOL @ CATRA TRYING TO RUIN ENTRAPTA AND HORDAK’S WEIRD FAMILY. Catra said: If I can’t maintain any meaningful relationships with the adults in my life, NEITHER CAN ANYONE ELSE

“Wow, I can’t believe you like me, that is so embarrassing for you.” [Laughing and playfighting] “Stop it, get off! This is not because I like you.” If Adora and Catra do end up together it will be a tough pill to swallow considering Catra has been so SO MEAN TO HER this whole time like she literally broke reality rather than listen to people side with Adora LOL

“I don’t know what it is, but I do not like you.” It’s because your crush is obsessed with her, Scorpia

“If you get us out of this, I promise I won’t hate you. I will just dislike you a reasonable amount.” I kind fo love that this has turned into a Buddy Adventure for Adora and Scorpia:

I like that Adora is connecting with people (Scorpia, Lonnie, Madame Razz) every step of the way <3

“Don’t you get it? I am never going to go with you.” I know I’ve called Catra Space Lesbian Furry Sasuke, but truly that is unkind to Sasuke bc it’s absolutely understandable why Sasuke does what he does, but Catra barely has a whisper of a motive for her actions. What? You miss Adora? She’s right there extending her hand every time. Shadow Weaver doesn’t love you? Tough. Glimmer and Bow are the only kids in this show who have parents. You got an inferiority complex? Surely the legions of followers and the putting down everyone you meet helps. You were raised by the Horde? So the hell was everyone else, you don’t see them collapsing reality. Get! Some! Help!

“That’s alright, dearie. You don’t need to understand. You just need to remember.” I love Madame Razz

MICAH <3 At least one good thing has come out of this!!!!

It is tragic though, that in order to preserve the world, Glimmer will have to give up her father

“You’re a great fighter, a genius inventor, and you shouldn’t worry about what your dads think. They’re proud of you, just like I am. And Glimmer, you never give up, and you never admit defeat. I know making friends is hard for you, yet you’re the one who pulled us all together. I’ve never met anyone like you.” ADORA TALKING ABOUT ALL THE REASONS SHE LOVES HER FRIENDS <3 SWEET GIRL

Ohhhhhhhhh Angella’s goodbye to Micah is killing me. They love each other so much

MICHAH CALLING OUT TO ANGELLA “I’M NOT” IS DADDY GLIMMER ALIVE??????????

“But whoever shuts the portal down can’t leave.” AHHHHH is Angella going to strand herself here? Poor Glimmer!!!!!!!!!!!! She’s going to lose both her parents at once

You know, I actually thought now was gonna be the time that Horsey’s fate and Adora’s intertwined

“You made me this.” SHUT UP CATRA, YOU MADE YOU THIS!!!!!!

“I didn’t make you do anything. I didn’t break the world, but I am gonna fix it. And you? You made your choice. Now live with it!” YEAHHHHHHHHHH ADORA

“And now I choose to be brave.” ANGELLA NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Does this mean Shadow Weaver is the only adult figure for these princesses now? Oh how the turn tables

“So that’s where you’ve been, little brother.” Not only did Glimmer lose both of her parents, but also the plan didn’t really succeed? What a deeply sad ending to this season omg

#ayesha liveblogs she-ra #liveblogging #she-ra #television #long post #finally finished season 3!!!#2 more seasons 2 go #ayesha says things

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makeste · 3 years

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Open for movie speculation? :) The new key visual was released today and if you don't want miniscule spoilers then I'll gladly spend the time asking how you're doing in these times and how you light up my saturday with your posts that never cease to make me laugh haha. I do hope you're doing well :) So here's the wee spoiler (or should I call it a spoiler?) the antagonist(?) is called "Flect Turn", hope you have a nice week :)

so as usual, I'm late in responding to this, but I just wanted to clarify that my "no spoilers, please" policy pretty much only applies to the new BnHA manga chapters, and that's specifically because of the weekly reaction posts. I know part of the appeal of a liveblog is watching someone else's reactions to all of the surprises and twists and wtf moments, and so I try to preserve those each week. if I wasn't liveblogging the series I would probably be reading the leaks along with everybody else to tell the truth lol.

so that said, feel free to send me spoilers about the upcoming movie! out of respect for those who do want to avoid being spoiled, I'll tag those posts (and this one) with "bnha world heroes' mission spoilers" and "bnha movie 3 spoilers" so people can blacklist those tags if desired. but I personally have no objection to them; back when Heroes Rising came out I already knew all of the plot points and had read detailed spoiler summaries well before I finally got the chance to watch it myself. it definitely did not take away from the experience at all, and in fact I'm kind of glad I knew about the end twist ahead of time because I was able to devote more mental energy to analyzing and appreciating it rather than still being all "!!!!" from the shock lol.

so yeah, I've been trying to stay up to date with the news about WHM as well. here's everything I think we know so far:

the movie will take place during the Endeavor Agency internship, as expected.

the bad guys are a terrorist organization called "Humanize", who believe in the Quirk Singularity Doomsday Theory we first learned about during the Remedial arc. as a refresher, basically the idea is that as quirks continue to evolve with each new generation, they'll eventually grow too powerful for humans to control and will destroy the world or something lol.

anyway so Humanize hears about this, and they're either like, "man that sucks, we should just kill everyone with a quirk so it doesn't happen", OR they're like "man that sounds awesome, we should totally expedite that." like, I'm really not clear on this part lol. but either way, they apparently come up with a plan to cleanse the world of quirk users by planting magical plot bombs called Ideo Trigger Bombs, which make people lose control of their quirks.

as mentioned, the bad guys' leader is named Flect Turn for god knows what reason lmao. I'm guessing it's some kind of weird play on the word "reflect" (especially given his character design), and based on that, as well as the Ideo Triggers, I suspect this guy has the ability to somehow turn people's own quirks against them. you can see him at the bottom of the key visual anon mentioned, here.

anyway so the heroes are all "hmm, pretty sure the end of world = bad" and so they all decide to band together under this "W.H.A." umbrella (which I'm still assuming stands for either World Hero Agency or World Hero Association or something like that) to deal with the bombs.

as shown on the key visual, in addition to the Endeavor Agency trio, the movie will also feature the kids from Ryuukyuu, Fat Gum, Gang Orca (who has Jirou and Shouji interning under him for anyone who lost track), and Hawks's agencies.

the movie will also feature a new character named Rody Soul, who's this weird steampunk Dickensian urchin-looking guy with a ponytail lol. he apparently teams up with the trio following one of the bomb incidents.

most of the movie will apparently take place in a fictional country called Oceon (this is why nobody could quite place where that bridge in the trailer was from lol).

at some point Deku gets framed for murder idk. just Deku things.

and last but not least, as usual there will be a special manga tie-in release, in this case titled "Volume W(orld Heroes)". looks like the initial release will be exclusive to theater-goers in Japan, but I'm sure someone will get their hands on it and post it online, and Viz will eventually release it in English as well (they did the same with the previous two tie-ins). it'll include behind-the-scenes sketches, a new Horikoshi interview (probably the part I'm most looking forward to), and of course, the new movie tie-in chapter. as with the previous tie-ins (Volume Origin and Volume Rising), this will be written and drawn by Horikoshi himself. I'm hoping that it will feature the trio, but the other movie tie-ins featured All Might and Nine, respectively, so it's probably more realistic to assume this one will focus on Rody. ah well.

I think that's it. I haven't really done much speculating about the plot either tbh, though what we've learned seems pretty straightforward. Deku probably either gets framed for one of the bombs, or gets caught up in one of the blasts and loses control of OFA. or maybe they'll save that part for his fight with Flect at the end. god, if we get a scene where he goes on a Blackwhip rampage with a big screen budget I will lose my whole damn mind. especially if Kacchan and Shouto have to work together to stop him. can you imagine omg. but I should really rein myself in before I start getting way too hyped up over a bunch of wild hypotheticals. this is why I try not to speculate lol.

#bnha #bnha world heroes' mission #bnha movie 3 #bnha world heroes' mission spoilers #bnha movie 3 spoilers #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #makeste reads bnha #asks #anon asks #also thank you very much anon; I'm doing well and I hope you are too!

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duhragonball · 3 years

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Hellsing Liveblog Ch. 35-40

This is the one-part “Xanado”, and the five-part “Final Fantasy”.

So last time, we saw a Millennium team led by Rip Van Winkle take control of a British aircraft carrier, which forced Hellsing to send Alucard to deal with the situation. He accomplished his mission, but now he’s stuck on the boat by himself, because vampires can’t cross running water. I suppose Hellsing would have arranged a second aircraft to pick him up, but they’ve got bigger problems on their hands. Just as Alucard finishes off Winkle, reports come in of communication breakdowns all over Great Britain. Military, intelligence, police, all out of reach. Integra recognizes this as Millennium’s next move. By taking out the communications networks, they ensure a clear shot for their invasion force to move in. But how did they pull this off?

Simple, they did it the same way they arranged all those vampire attacks during the summer, and the Valentine assault on Hellsing Manor, and the Brazillian Police raid on Alucard’s hotel suite, and Lt. Winkle’s takeover of the H.M.S Eagle. They convinced a bunch of Brits to betray their country in exchange for being turned into vampires. The only real surprise here is the sheer breadth of treachery this time around, as Millennium must have created dozens of sleeper agents throughout the country, each tasked with hijacking or sabotaging key defense systems. And Vice-Admiral Penwood’s command is no exception. Those a-holes who gave Integra a hard time earlier? Turns out they were in the tank for Millennium all along, and now that the invasion force has arrived, they’ve revealed their true colors. At first, they’re pretty thrilled to have captured Integra Hellsing herself, but she calmly informs them that they’re minor league vampires at best, and they’ve foolishly revealed themselves in the presence of expert vampire hunters.

And Walter calmly slices them all up with his magic wire powers. Cool.

But that’s not going to stop the one thousand vampire soldiers currently heading into British airspace. I think the most striking visual in this part of the story are the expressions of sheer excitement on these guys’ faces. They’re just so thrilled for what’s about to happen, and when you consider how long they’ve waited, it only makes sense. It’s almost infectious, until you recall just what it is they’ve come here to do.

Meanwhile, Alexander Anderson watches the Millennium blimps roll in. Oh, right, I forgot about him. Back in chapter 25 he was still in Brazil, trying to locate Millennium’s HQ, but all he found were human agents trying to stop him, which he found rather insulting. Then Maxwell contacted him to explain what he learned from the summit with Hellsing, and he ordered Maxwell to come to London in preparation for a great crusade. But unlike the Crusads of old, their enemy is not Allah, but Mars, since Millennium is so devoted to war. Anyway, Anderson’s here and ready to rock.

Meanwhile, the people of London finally spot these blimps rolling in, and it’s pretty horrifying stuff. We’ve already seen the carnage that can be wrought by a few vampires, and now it’s a thousand vampires, and they’re all Nazi soldiers to boot. The sense of dread here is just palpable.

Aboard the flagship (flagblimp?) the Major starts giving his men their orders, and they even have a stupid invasion handbook for the occasion. Warrant Officer Schrodinger lost his and has to share with the Captain. I suppose this is intended to alleviate the tension, except, no, it really doesn’t. These guys are all horrible monsters in every sense of the word, and they’re about to do awful, unspeakable things. Schrodinger’s comic relief moments only make it worse.

The Major gives an extra-long speech for the occasion, basically outlining all the buildings and people in London that he wants his men to destroy (tl;dr: “all of them”). He then assigns Lt. Zorin Blitz to take one of the blimps with a contingent of men and head for the Hellsing mansion on the outskirts of town. She figures that’ll be an easy gig, since Alucard is away, but the Major warns her not to underestimate Integra Hellsing or Seras Victoria. He doesn’t exactly explain his concerns about Seras, but the mere fact that she’s Alucard’s servant is probably reason enough to be mindful, and Integra is Alucard’s master, and she comes from a long line of vampire hunters, so the Major considers them both to be archenemies on the same level as Al himself, despite their inexperience.

So the Major explicitly orders Zorin to go to the mansion but not to attack. Her task is to observe an wait for the Major’s order. This will be important later.

Then the Major orders a bunch of V-1 and V-2 rockets launched at London. I mean, geez, were the hundreds of vampire soldiers not enough? Did he think he needed to soften the city up first?

Then the troops jump out of the blimp to begin their assault. They look like they’re parachuting down, but I don’t think any of them are wearing parachutes, since they shouldn’t need them. It’s almost pathetic the way they talk to each other with all of this professional military talk and congratulating each other on a successful landing. London is virtually defenseless and this is a slaughter, not a battle, but they’ve been psyched up for this for 55 years.

Back at Penwood’s base, Integra warns him to flee before the main invasion force arrives, but Penwood insists on remaining at his post. He confesses that he’s completely incompetent, and he only has this position because of his inherited title, but he refuses to abandon his duty, since that’s the only honorable thing he can do. Integra leaves him a gun with silver bullets and wishes him well as she heads for her own duty. Penwood orders his men to evacuate, but they refuse, since Penwood can’t actually operate any of the equipment here.

So now we get an extended sequence of Milennium marching through London, basically sacking the city and slaughtering anyone they meet. This is accompanied by the lyrics to “Akuma Stocking” which I think was used in the anime adaptation as well. There’s a lot of gory scenes here, but the three main visuals that stuck with me in the anime are these:

First, this motherfucker eating a baby.

Second, all the Londinian civilians they bite end up rising up and transforming into ghouls, who then join in the slaughter. It’s easy to forget about ghouls at this point, but Millennium never forgot. Their artificial vampires can’t turn virgins into new vampires, and I think that may be by design. They were counting on their victims rising up to compound the horror.

Third, just a lot of bayonet-usage going on here. You’d think they’d be content to bite and shoot people, but these guys seem to enjoy hoisting up their prey to show them off. It’s a horrific nightmare and there’s no end in sight.

Integra and Walter speed home as fast as they can, but they stop to take out a Millennium soldier in a shootout with London police. She can’t save the cops, but she does avenge them.

Back at the Naval base, Penwood sends out a final transmission as he expects the enemy to enter his post at any moment. His men are all dead, with the last one shooting himself to avoid becoming a ghoul. He tells anyone who can hear him to resist and do their duty. Then he recalls his first meeting with the young Sir Integra. Back then, he found it ridiculous that a 12 year old should be in charge of Hellsing, but she quickly puts him in his place, and established that she would be asking him for favors from then on.

But Penwood won’t be granting any favors to the Kraut bastards who storm his post. Instead he sets off the explosives they set up earlier and I guess they all die together. I wouldn’t have thought an explosion would kill these vampires, but they are a lot less formidable than Dandyman or the Valentines. Luke couldn’t regenerate his foot, for example.

When Integra shot that one vampire, she gave away her position, and now Millennium is on her trail. Just when it seems they have a clear shot at escape, someone blocks their path, and Walter tells Integra to take the wheel and find another route. He’s going to stay behind to fight this guy, but he doesn’t think he can hold him off for long.

Integra does as he asks, but orders him to return alive “at all costs.” Hmm.

Walter uses his wire power, but it turns out this is the Captain, and he’s apparently powerful enough to foil his attack. Walter recognizes him, presumably from when he and Alucard fought the proto-Millennium in the 1940s.

And then the Major flies along in his blimp and confirms it.

Meanwhile, Integra gives the Last Battalion a merry chase, but eventually she crashes the car and seems to be cornered. One asshole tries to get closer to finish her off, but she decapitates him with her sword.

His comrades accuse her of being a “sore loser” and tell her to give up, but she mocks them all for being cowards who surrendered their humanity. She’s hardcore, she’s hardcore.

But before she can fight all these vampires alone, somebody comes along and throws a bunch of blessed bayonets at them. These did a number on Alucard and Seras, but they didn’t cause any lasting harm. Seras was even able to pull them out without too much trouble. But this shithead just disintigrates on the spot. Remember, the Last Battalion’s main advantage is their number. Individually, they’re not terribly impressive, at least as vampires go.

But yeah, it’s Alexander Anderson, along with his two sidekicks, Heinkel Wolfe and Yumiko Takagi, the stars of Kouta Hirano’s earlier manga, “Cross-Fire”. We’ve seen Heinkel in Hellsing before, but I think this is Yumie’s debut here. They chastise Anderson for interfering, since they were only sent to observe, but Anderson is too fired up by Integra’s fighting spirit, and he wants to kill some vampires, dammit.

Turns out there’s quite a few of these Iscariot guys here, maybe all of them, but Anderson starts doing a whole routine with them, as they chant all this stuff about how they’re assassins in the tradition of Judas, the disciple who betrayed Christ. I’m not sure I get much of this, but it’s nice that Hirano put some thought into Section XIII as the super-secret death squad of this fantasy version of the Vatican.

And that’s all we have for now.

#2021 hellsingliveblog #hellsing #sir integra hellsing #alexander anderson #walter c dornez #seras victoria #sir shelby penwood #the major #the doctor #warrant officer shrodinger #the captain #zorin blitz #heinkel wolfe #yumiko takagi

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lampmanliveblogs · 4 years

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Escape of the Palisman

Post-Episode Discussion

Better late than never. Might as well be my catchphrase. And if you close you eyes and listen really hard, my dear readers, you can hear the quiet cries of the people who follow my fanfics.

Ahem.

As per usual, I went back and rewatched the episode. A bit later than I usually do, but hey. I also went back and quickly read through my own liveblog, just to remind myself of what I talked about so I don’t repeat myself too much here. I think I touched on most of the things I wanted to discuss about the episode, so I’ll mostly be doing some light speculation here.

I always figured the Bat Queen would return eventually. She gave Eda that whistle and promised her a favor in the future, so it was kinda a given. I thought that she’d be the one to help the gang out of some sticky situation in some future episode, either in the season finale, or in some future season. I didn’t expect to see her again so soon (maybe aside from some cameo or minor appearance), much less to get character development and backstory.

I briefly pondered about it in the liveblog itself, but I think it bears repeating. When Bat Queen said she used to belong to a giant, was she referring to one of the giants whose corpse makes up the Boiling Isles? Or is it some kind of other giant? After all, the show did make a point out of showing us that giant student at the start of the episode. On the other hand, Bat Queen’s comment about it being thousands of years ago since she was lost makes me thing that she might very well be from way back when those Island Giants (for lack of a better term) were alive and… doing whatever. Whatever the story behind it is, I can sense some delicious lore behind it so I can’t wait to learn more. Although… some feeling in my gut makes me think we won’t be getting Bat Queen’s full backstory this season, but maybe in a future season.

Something I think is going to be brought up a lot sooner however is Eda’s curse. This episode established that it is indeed getting worse and that the elixir against it is either loosing its effect… or that it has already stopped working entirely. Neither option is good. King could control Eda for a little while and was able to turn her back into herself with moderate difficulty… but what’s to say it won’t keep getting worse? Perhaps, eventually, she’ll be completely consumed by the curse and turned fully into a monster?

In Conclusion

This episode set up a lot of future plot lines. However, even while being busy setting up the future playing field, it also managed to tell a story of its own, with Luz having to make up for her mistakes and take responsibility for her actions and King… being King.

(i might talk a bit more about king in the next episode’s discussion, whenever i get around to writing it)

Overall, a pretty solid episode. It had some drama, some lore and some funny moments as well. Good.

For those of you reading this as it’s published: I’m doing well enough I suppose, but work is making sure I stay tired. And on my days off, I try to focus on getting my fanfiction projects up and running properly again after my burnout a few months ago. In short, I’m staying busy. Don’t expect frequent updates in the coming weeks.

Still, I’ll always try my best and keep going. We’ll meet again. Until then, take care of the planet Earth and remember that anything can happen in space!

<--Previous Episode: Something Ventured, Someone Framed

Masterlist

Next Episode: Owl Pellets-->

#the owl house #liveblog #the owl house liveblog #toh s1e10 #escape of the palisman

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preservationandruin · 4 years

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Rhythm of War Liveblog, Part One Part 2 (Chapters 3-8)

Previous Post Next Post

[to the tune of Things I Bought At Sheetz] Now It’s time for Notes I Took At Work. This is going to be a weird experiment, because I read these chapters while at my job and took extensive notes on my reactions, which I’m now going to try to condense into something coherent.

Navani revels in a successful invention, Shallan encounters a very bad cult, I quote--of all things--Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, A Certain Fucker reappears, Leshwi becomes a character I like, Shallan finds a journal, I digress on Renarin’s abilities, and everyone is rightfully worried about Kaladin. Content warning; discussion of suicide and suicidal tendencies

Alright, we open Chapter Three with Navani’s AIRSHIP, which is a kickass sentence. She’s leaning over the side of the ship, to the distress of one of her fellow scholars who attempts to appeal to Dalinar to get her to stop.

“It’s Navani’s ship, Velat,” Dalinar said from behind, his voice as steady as steel, as immutable as mathematics. She loved his voice. “I think she’d have me thrown off if I tried to prevent her from enjoying this moment.”

This is great both because Dalinar and Navani are great, but also as a contrast to Gavilar saying that Navani doesn’t accomplish anything herself, she just pretends to be an inventor and stays behind other, smarter people. Dalinar says no, this is Navani’s ship, this is her victory. The ship��s base design is one of the chasm bridges; it’s operated on the same principles as spanreeds, a kind of sympathetic link where you link two fabrials and whatever happens to one, happens to the other. Just augmented with aluminum and a LOT of pulleys and hard work.

My notes also say “Eat Shit Gavilar” which i think is just, a general note.

Anyway she also wishes that Elhokar was there because he loved being up high and also watching her draw...so now I’m feeling emotions, and if that wasn’t enough, I get hit in the feelings again because the name of the ship is the Fourth Bridge, after Bridge Four because of the time they saved Dalinar and Adolin at the tower, and it not only has the Bridge Four glyph inlaid but the original bridge inlaid.

We see Dalinar and Lirin interact (my notes call this a “Dad convention”) --Lirin, of course because he’s Kaladin’s father, doesn’t really defer to Dalinar at all but does see the potential of this platform as a movable hospital; he’s discomfited by the reminder that Edgedancers are usually used for that now. Lirin really is a practical man who doesn’t believe in heroes or hero stories, which is unfortunate because they’re coming to life all around him. Also Dalinar calls him Lirin Stormblessed which is pretty funny because Lirin is Not Having It.

Also, we get this great line from Navani about Lirin and Kaladin:

However, as she stepped up beside Dalinar, she caught Lirin’s eyes--and the familial connection became more obvious. That same quiet intensity, that same faintly judgmental gaze that seemed to know too much about you. In that moment she saw two men with the same soul, for all their physical differences.

This is really interesting in light of how Kaladin and Lirin are at the moment arguing; they both are at their core very driven, caring people who want the best for their community, but they are at odds for the best way to achieve that in part because they’ve had such different experiences; Kaladin’s life hasn’t let him be the surgeon Lirin is.

For more changes in the year since we last met these characters, Dalinar has learned how to recharge stormlight and open perpendicularities at will, which essentially makes him a portable battery for the Radiants. That’s super useful. Navani likes observing the process, hoping that somewhere in it is a key to how Urithiru functions; she knows that it used to be powered by the Sibling, the third god-spren of Roshar, but after the Recreance the Sibling either died or fell so asleep the spren treat it as having died.

That’s interesting; the Sibling has been something I’ve been wondering about a lot, and confirmation that it was tied to Urithiru seems to preclude it being a godspren of Odium like I’d thought for a bit (and in any case, Odium has the Unmade and doesn’t seem the time to fragment himself into a godspren). Another spren of Honor or Cultivation? Or perhaps a spren of both? More importantly, if it really is dead, is there still a way to revive Urithiru? Last book talked about possibly recruiting Sja-anat; if we do, could she serve as an alternate power source for the tower?

We also get the Mink, the Herdazian general, slipping up on Dalinar and Navani without them noticing and also calling Dalinar the fuck out for the many atrocities that his armies and nation had unleashed on the Herdazians, which Dalinar can’t really refute. I like this guy, honestly; I’m not sure what’s up with him, if he’s just really good at sneaking around or if he has something Up With Him, but I like him.

Back with the Three (Shallan/Radiant/Veil), they wake up to find themselves in the chasms with an EXTREMELY melodramatic cult. They’re looking for proof Ialai is now running the Hypocrites Association--sorry, the Sons of Honor; Radiant refuses to move against Ialai without proof, even though Shallan and Veil both kinda wish Adolin had killed her at the same time as Sadeas and saved everyone some trouble. Anyway, the Hypocrites association wear deep, fancy hoods that leads to a great Shallan thought:

Shallan had a fleeting thought, wondering at the seamstress they’d hired to do all this work. What had they told her? “Yes, we want twenty identical, mysterious robes, sewn with ancient arcane symbols. They’re for...parties.”

They claim both to have guided the return of the Radiants and to be overthrowing Dalinar, which is hilarious because Dalinar is a Radiant so the only real extrapolation here is that, in the fantasy where they’re right about any of this, they brought the radiants back and lost control of the situation immediately and now are recruiting random strangers to try to help rein it back in. Which is still not a good look.

Oh and also they claim to be “something greater” than the Radiants, and I really doubt they’re the Heralds, so everything they say is horseshit, as is proven a second later when they test if Shallan is wearing an illusion with a device she herself sold them at an exorbitant price. And then claiming that Radiants can’t tell untrue oaths, right in front of Shallan, who is bonded to a liespren.

They’re just a very bad cult.

Also they say Ialai is the true queen, which raises many questions to me about the line of succession that gives them THAT math, especially with Gavinor alive and there. Like, somehow Sadeas’s widow gets priority over the last king’s living child? I know they’re just a stupid cult but guys, that’s not how lines of succession work in monarchies.

Anyway, Shallan hears them say that they have a mole in Dalinar’s inner circle--bad--and goes off-script, taking control to say she’s not who they think she is, and we cut back to Kaladin for the next chapter, which is called Broken Spears which prompted my note of “I don’t trust like that.” And then instantly I started laughing because of this quote:

[The windrunners] hung in the air like no skyeel ever could: motionless, equidistant.

This is not a particularly funny line unless you, like me, have never been able to forget a line from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy:

“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.”

So there’s that.

Kaladin has apparently fought with Leshwi before at this point (she is, iirc, the Fused who was one of the main points of contact for Moash during his arc in Oathbringer); last time, Rock’s daughter Cord managed to shoot her down. The Windrunners, like the Edgedancers, have grown in number; there are about 50 knights, now, and five times that in squires; the problem is that there aren’t enough willing honorspren to bond. Kaladin mentions that “almost all” of Bridge Four had bonded honorspren and that he knew one honorspren who was willing but unbonded, all of which leads me to believe that Rock hasn’t sworn the Oaths yet.

Meanwhile, these Fused--the Heavenly Ones--prefer one on one battles, as Kaladin noted in earlier chapters, so the Windrunners do the same; as long as they do this, the Heavenly Ones will keep to the ideals of honorable combat and will not gang up on the Windrunners. Again, it shows that they are both the orders that deal with Honorspren, even if the Heavenly Ones deal with...void-honorspren, I guess.

Also, it’s another nod to the idea of if there can be such a thing as honorable combat in a war. Both the Heavenly Ones and the Windrunners are trying for it, clearly, but is that sustainable?

Leshwi is in fact there, with a very cool aluminum-edged sword that can absorb stormlight into a gem at the hilt. She, along with the rest of the Fused and apparently the Heralds (Shalash and Taln are both in Urithiru), are stunned by the Fourth Bridge; fuck yeah, Navani and her team. She’s so cool, guys, I love Navani. Also, everyone is worried about Kaladin.

Shallan, meanwhile, is ad-libbing having even more information, which leads to a hilarious moment of her being accused of treason by a member of the cult who are trying to overthrow the current queen, so...there’s a reason I’m calling them the Hypocrites Association, alright? Anyway, Adolin decides it’s time to attack, and Radiant and Shallan manage to bluff their way into being taken along to the hideout as the Hypocrites Association retreats.

With Kaladin again, we get that the Fused see him as a particular challenge they enjoy fighting, although Leshwi always has first dibs; he fights another Fused and manages to disarm him, but decides not to kill him because killing him is pointless. Also, the teleporting fucker comes back, and yes, that is what I’m calling him until further notice.

Something happened in Aimia that led to Cord getting a set of shardplate. Is this the Dawnshard novel? Is that what happened in Aimia? I’m going to read it next regardless but now I’m curious about what happened on the Radiant expedition to Aimia.

So it turns out that the Hypocrites Association has a secret passage into and out of the chasms with a hidden door, which was probably a bolthole for escape that Sadeas put in early during the war at the Shattered Plains. His keep is also noted by Veil to be fortresslike; she notes that he was a cunning man, not just the blowhard that Shallan had taken him for. Ialai is now the sole remaining leader of the dissident Alethi army; while Radiant wants evidence against her that can have her be taken in, Veil is here just to assassinate her and have done with it.

And honestly there is a nice symmetry in Adolin killing Sadeas and Shallan/the Three killing Ialai.

Anyway, we go back to Kaladin as Leshwi fights Sigzil now; she manages to spear him through the chest, and I swear to god if any of the original Bridgemen actually die, I’m going to kick Brandon Sanderson’s ass. Those are my BOYS. In any case, Leshwi doesn’t kill Sigzil, because Kaladin spared one of the Fused earlier--honor in combat, again. There’s definitely a whole essay I could discuss about this opening few chapters and the idea of if continuing a fight is the right thing to do and if that fight can be continued in a way that is moral, but I don’t have the time for that, I’m trying to do NaNoWriMo and read this book.

I’ll shelve it along with the Oathbringer and the idea of personal responsibility essay.

We go back to Navani and get another real sense of how well she knows her team; she knows the personal tics and oddities of all the ardents and scholars who are helping her on the Fourth Bridge, which is nice to see. We also get that Renarin is here, distracting crying children by having Glys form a ball of light, and Navani has this observation:

Renarin claimed the spren [Glys] was trustworthy, but something was odd about his powers. They had managed to recruit several standard Truthwatchers--and they could create illusions like Shallan. Renarin couldn’t do that. He could only summon lights, and they did strange, unnatural things sometimes...

Really excited to see how Renarin’s powers develop similarly to or different from standard Truthwatchers; I agree that Glys is probably trustworthy because Renarin is the best judge of that at the moment and also because “the corrupted spren turns out to be evil” isn’t a very interesting plot development compared to “there can be good corrupted spren”

And then I got yanked forcibly off-topic because guess who fucking showed up. Moash decided to show his backstabbing, treacherous little face again, wearing--of all things--a uniform cut exactly like Bridge Four’s but in black rather than blue, which is just a stupendous dick move. Navani is the one who sees him, too, and we get a sharp reminder that he murdered her son.

Kaladin doesn’t hear the alarm that Navani raises, though, because he’s busy fighting Leshwi, something he seems to genuinely enjoy as a test of his skills. He pushes his home-field advantage here, managing to distract Leshwi to the point that they both seriously injure the other; Kaladin is grinning throughout, which is actually somewhat disturbing. To me it reads like Kaladin’s stopped caring about his own life in favor of trying to help others at any cost, but I’m not sure if that’ll play through as an accurate read.

In any case, someone set Roshone’s house on fire, and the teleporting fucker is there and actively attacking civilians. Leshwi is pissed off to see this and gestures for Kaladin to go and deal with that rather than continuing their fight; at this point, I really started loving Leshwi as a character. I’m a sucker for a good principled antagonist lady, they’re just a good trope.

Anyway, we get to Chapter Seven. Navani’s epigraph notes that zinc makes the spren in fabrials more active, while brass quiets them. So...you could say...that brass soothes them...while zinc...makes them riot....

Anyway, back to Ialai, Shallan notes that she seems extremely worn and tired, and she claims to support Gavinor to the throne--with herself as regent, of course. She and Shallan proceed to have an entire conversation in wine metaphors, talking about who they are working with or for, and Ialai assumes that the Ghostbloods sent the Three to kill her, claiming they want the Sons of Honor out of the way and will send her after Restares next. Veil instantly switches her vote to not killing Ialai bc she doesn’t like to be manipulated, and Adolin kicks down the door.

Ialai tells Shallan to search her rooms for “the rarest vintage” before the Ghostbloods can, and then--before she can even leave the building--she dies of poisoning, implying there’s a mole somewhere in Adolin and Shallan’s people. That’s not great, and the Ghostbloods aren’t fucking around in the slightest with her.

Meanwhile, with Kaladin, the teleporting fucker took Godeke--the one named Edgedancer here other than Lift--hostage to lure Kaladin inside, where he uses a strange, void-fabrial to drain Surgebinder powers in the room. And then makes a critical error in thinking that that will be enough:

The Fused laughed and spoke in Alethi. “Radiants! You rely too much on your powers. Without them, what are you? A peasant child with no real training in the art of warfare or--” Kaladin slammed himself against the soldier to the right.

Oh you poor idiots, Kaladin was a prodigy with the spear LONG before he was a Windrunner, went most of his army career without bonding Syl, and--crucially--one of you is carrying a physical spear. Checkmate, assholes. Kaladin quickly beats most of the ones there, including killing the teleporting fucker before he can teleport again, and lets the last one go--of course--before helping Lift get Godeke out and telling her to get the void fabrial to Navani.

Meanwhile, he’s going to go make sure Roshone is alright, where I have the very prescient note of “I bet actual money Moash is killing him as we speak.”

Ialai’s probable method of death was blackbane poison in her bloodstream; one of Shallans’ people examines the body for it, while Shallan goes to search ialai’s rooms.

Another epigraph note, this time about bronze and heliodor being used to make warning fabrials. Scadrial really was just a primer on the uses of various metals with investiture, huh?

Meanwhile, Kaladin finds the prisoners below the manor killed with a shardblade, and spins around to find Moash slitting Roshone’s throat before making what I called, in a late-night worktime daze, “just a series of rat bastard moves. Hate that guy. Just honestly hate that guy.”

Specifically, he surrenders so that Kal cannot keep attacking him--because Kal’s a good person--just after taunting him for wanting to rescue someone.

Back with Shallan, Veil is pushing her again to continue remembering their past, but she still resists; she finds a rare Shin wine in Ialai’s store, before using that to find a pattern on the floor of old, shadowyears-era glyphs with maps of the ten Epoch Kingdoms, under one of which is a notebook of Ialai’s; she tucks it in her safepouch, and we go back to Kaladin.

I really think the arc for Kaladin in this book is going to be accepting that he can’t save everyone, particularly from themselves, because he pauses and remembers how Moash had been a friend, but even more than that, he had been Bridge Four--someone that Kaladin had sworn to protect, and he’d failed:

Kaladin had failed Moash. As soundly as he’d failed Dunny, Mart, and Jaks. And of them all, losing Moash hurt the most. Because in those callous eyes, Kaladin saw himself.

Kaladin can’t keep blaming himself for Moash’s choices, because Moash chose to do this, and was given ways out, and didn’t take them. It’s not Kaladin’s fault, and believing that it is is going to get Kaladin killed.

And then, Moash winds up and delivers a grade-A Odium-powered Breaking Speech:

"They're going to die, you know," Moash said softly. "Everyone you love, everyone you think you can protect. They're all going to die anyway. There's nothing you can do about it." [...] "Do you remember the chasm, Kal?" Moash whispered. "In the rain that night? Standing there, looking down into the darkness, knowing it was your sole release? You knew it hen. You try to pretend you've forgotten. But you know. As sure as the storms will come. As sure as every lighteyes will lie. There is only one answer. One path. One result. [...] I've found the better way," Moash said. "I feel no guilt. I've given it away, and in so doing became the person I always could have become--if I hadn't been restrained. I can take away the pain, Kal. Isn't that what you want? An end to your suffering?”

Odium’s deal all over again--he will take away your pain and your responsibility for your actions, but the price for that is your integrity and your honor. It’s so insidious, especially because Moash is exploiting the fact that Kaladin was suicidal to play into the idea of life being hopeless--he’s implying that Kaladin’s suicidal impulses were right and then offering another way out. It’s so, so so so awful, and Kaladin can’t even bring himself to fight it, because it’s coming from an unarmed man and it’s targeted so directly at him.

“The answer is to stop existing, Kal. You’ve always known it, haven’t you?” Kaladin blinked away tears, and the deepest part of him--the little boy who hated the rain and the darkness--withdrew into his soul and curled up. Because...he did want to stop hurting.

He wanted it so badly.

Ugh, Moash’s whole thing here is just seeding that suicidality back into Kaladin--because frankly, most of the time? When someone is suicidal, in my (admittedly limited and personal) experience? What they genuinely want isn’t to die--they just want not to hurt anymore, and they see that as the only way.

Light exploded into the room. Clean and white, like the light of the brightest diamond. The light of the sun. A brilliant, concentrated purity. Moash growled, spinning around, shading his eyes against the source of the light--which came from the doorway. The figure behind it wasn’t visible as anything more than a shadow. Moash shied away from the light--but a version of him, transparent and filmy, broke off and stepped toward the light instead. Like an afterimage. In it, Kaladin saw the same Moash--but somehow standing taller, wearing a brilliant blue uniform. This one raised a hand, confident, and although Kaladin couldn’t see them, he knew people gathered behind this Moash. Protected. Safe. The image of Moash burst alight as a Shardspear formed in his hands.

FUCK YEAH, RENARIN.

I’m gonna end this section by just discussing what happened here, because there’s a lot to unpack there. We’ve seen Shallan use her illusions to create versions of people who they could be, but this isn’t doing that--if you look at the cause and effect, it’s not that Renarin created this illusory Moash, but more that the light Renarin created called forth that Moash from this one.

More than anything, it reminds me of the effects of Gold Allomancy--creating a past version of the self, splitting the self into who you are and who you were, or who you are and who you could have been. This is not a version of Moash that could exist. He’s burned too many bridges and killed too many people in front of their infant children for that to happen.

But it could have been Moash. It’s not calling forth the truth, really, it’s showing an alternate path. It’s strange and I can’t wait to see it explored more, and it shakes Moash to his core--because of course it does. Moash’s entire speech was saying “there are only two ways out, dying and giving in to Odium,” and Renarin’s light showed that that was a stark fucking lie. There’s the third choice of deciding to stand up and protect people anyway, and it was a choice Moash could have taken, and that kills him. It eats him up inside; it’s the pain that Odium can’t fully take away.

As Kaladin said to Amaram: if what Odium says is true, if what you claim is true, than why do you still hurt?

#fuck yeah bridge four #rowliveblog #row spoilers #navani kholin protection squad #kaladin has a saving people thing #fuck moash #renarin kholin kicks ass #leshwi is unfortunately VERY cool

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tfw-no-tennis · 3 years

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mtmte liveblog issue 9

back at it again, and its time for the shadowplay arc, HELL yeah

oh I'm so excited i love this arc lets DO this

oooh its nightbeat and quark!! way before they become relevant, which is so cool

‘one of those recepticon fanatics’ lmao imagine if they were...the recepticons. just doesn't have the same ring to it

god i fucking love all the politics of mtmte. i love how they’re talking about the senate here before we really get to See how bad they were (we heard a bit about it from whirl a few issues ago, and now here)

love how nightbeat is pretty much agreeing with the decepticon ideology here, even if its clear that he isn't Actually a decepticon - it just drives home the fact that, in this story, The Decepticons Were Right About A Lot Of That Stuff (or at least, they had a reason other than ‘destruction’ for rebelling).

AND THEN THERES RUNG!!!!!!! WITH HIS MODEL OF THE LOST LIGHT....god i fuckgin LOVE the continuity in this story bc the first time reading this ur like oh ok rung is old yea makes sense...but then later all the time travel stuff happens and then its like OHHHHH

damn poor rung nightbeat can rlly tell he's lonely just by looking at him vbhjdkdfhbjsjkdf geez. also nightbeat that's ur mystery stick bf from the future js!!

quarks extreme POV on all of the stuff is so interesting, and makes so much sense bc of Course he would think that as a non-combatant scientist who, due to his functional value in current society, wouldn't really benefit much from a revolution - in fact, he’d probably lose a lot. and that’s the sort of thing where you’re like, ok well think about everyone else dude, have some perspective - but at the same time, quark did suffer a pretty terrible fate, so his fears weren't entirely unfounded...augh, its so fascinating...im sorry I'm not gonna shut up about space robot politics this Entire time

HOW did nobody notice that dead body before now

ratchet spray-painting the hands he stole from pharma to match his own paintjob is like...kinda gruesome if you think about it hvbhsjkdfbkjdf

i love rewind sooo much oh my god

he rlly stashed rung’s comatose body in a wheelchair behind the bar hbkjdhfbshjkdf rewind

rewind and chromedome’s tag-team explanation....ough hhhhh THEM

wait a sec, rewind, you have medical records in your database? that is, at least according to regular medical laws, very illegal lmao. my favorite long-running theme in mtmte: the fact that hipaa and osha laws on cybertron are either basically nonexistent, or just universally disregarded

what the actual fuck is up w/cybertronian time units. that shit is wack as hell

ooh i love how chromedome looks different in the flashback - no shoulder tires! - that's a cool detail

how come prowl just said ‘minute,’ rewind was busting it up w/all the wack ass fantasy time units just a second ago. geez

also goddd i love the scenery of pre-war cybertron, its SUCH a cool setting like, visually and aesthetically and politically

like, i adore details like the sign in the bg that says ‘everyone’s shape serves a purpose.’ really adds to the ‘society on the precipice of civil war currently controlled by an increasingly-desperate faction who are doling out propaganda like crazy in an attempt to maintain their image and control over the populace’ vibe

good ole murder mystery setup. love it!

pre-war prowl is such an interesting character. actually prowl in general is such an interesting character...I kinda wrote him off during my first read of mtmte (and even a little during my second readthru) as just this dude who’s an asshole (espec bc my prev tf experience involved watching tfa as a kid, and this prowl is very different from tfa prowl lol)...but prowl is SUCH a multi-faceted and interesting character, even in the relatively little we see of him in mtmte

plus it was interesting to learn later that prowl was one of the characters that jro wanted for mtmte and didn't get, and MAN i wish he got prowl bc I would've loved to see what jro would've done w/prowl on the lost light, that would've been amazing. like, just imagine the arc he would have...I have no idea what that arc would BE, but I know it would be awesome. plus I’d be really interested to see how prowl would factor in, relationships-wise, amongst the crew of the lost light. so much potential!

anyways. I'm in a very talky mood tonight it seems. its currently 4 am so that kinda explains it. ok, moving on!

chromedome and prowl bantering....in their own morbid forensic-cop way...

skids bvhjdbsfjasf. speaking what we’re all thinking: is prowl gonna keep showing up in mtmte despite not technically being part of the cast??

swerves drawing of prowl lmaoooo

AND THEN REWIND IN SOME OF MY FAVORITE MTMTE PANELS....fuckgin cracks me up every time god. rewind was rlly about to flip their entire ass table just to demonstrate that prowl is a serial table-flipper...and then he cant even make the table budge and he just stares at his hands like ‘how could you betray me like this’ hvbajkhhsfdhksdf PEAK hilarity

drift hvbshfdjbasdfj his forcibly cheery expression even tho he’s being harassed by rodimus, who is a big whiny toddler w/drift lmao

rodimus is the type of guy who, upon drift not replying to one of his texts, would post a whole twitter thread being all like ‘these days u cant trust any1 to hav ur back...u think u kno someone and then they just ghost you...(1/14)’

again, rewind, HOW and WHY do you just Have medical reports, oh my god, somebody please call a hipaa agent I’m scared,

ratchet interrupting the story to give a quick medical PSA....that's Such an on-brand thing for Me to do that I feel like jro is assigning me ratchet kin as I read this

also, hey, its sonic and boom, those two decepticons from delphi! nice little continuity there

AND HERES ORION PAX SUPER COP

can’t believe idw made my dad optimus prime into a cop. smh. shouldn't be that shocked tho, I feel like half the idw characters are cops

orion rlly hit them w/the omae wa mo shinderu arrest strat

orion: I cant believe you're beating this guy up. anyways, now I'm gonna beat YOU up,

when ratchet puts his hand over drifts mouth and then gets spray paint on drifts face bhjdfsvsdjhfgbjdskf

pre-war ratchet and drift ;_; ratchet’s little inspirational speech...the fact that he tells drift that he’s special...the fact that drift remembered all of this even after 4 million+ yrs...it gets me bro it GETS me

ALSO the layers in the fact that drift then goes on to become a well-known murderous decepticon...so this little scene of him and ratchet in the past gives a lot of context to ratchet’s general attitude towards drift - ratchet clearly feels at least somewhat responsible for all the blood on drift’s hands, since he saved drift’s life way back in the day

the whole relinquishment clinic thing is such cool worldbuilding, bc of course that's the kind of thing that would develop in a society of robot aliens who are only allowed to work within the rigid confines of their alt mode

I love the whole matrix thing bc its kinda like being the pope or st but also you have a ton of political sway, so its a super important position, so of Course the corrupt senate would want full control over that power, and would assassinate the current prime to try to get their own guy in

god vhbhjsdkbgshjdf rodimus is such a dick lmao poor drift

HHHHH I love that the cybertronian version of an autopsy is taking the dudes body apart into the smallest components and laying them all out. that's so fucking cool

hmmmm chromedome maybe you should Not be interested in mnemology, how about that,

oh god. time to start being sad about op and senator shockwave. oh god

senator shockwave more like senator sexy

also the first time I read this I thought I had just missed his name and like halfway thru the story I went back and scoured the pages looking for it hbvhsjdfbshgfdsbj then I was like oh ok so we’re maybe supposed to just know who this guy is from another comic? but NOPE it was very deliberate and I only realized very close to the end that they were setting up some sort of reveal

its funny bc normally I'm not a huge fan of stories where politics play a huge role but I fuckgin love it here, the politics and worldbuilding is all so interesting and also balanced out with a healthy dose of cool sci-fi hijinks, so

lmao there's chromedome being obsessed w/people making the ‘pfft’ sound

also wow yet more hindsight, maybe you Shouldn’t be so interested in the Institute, chromedome,

OHHHH shit I forgot abt the red alert stuff happening at the same time as this :( :( :(

AUGHHH what a fucked up situation. god

oooof i gotta continue now!! what a solid issue, I love the shadowplay arc

#lj rereads mtmte

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icharchivist · 4 years

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there’s a plotline i completely neglected to mention in my liveblog and it’s coming to bite me in the ass being super important now lmao, so, just in case it becomes relevent again, so a summary for the few people who follow my liveblog:

Since the Eternals are protecting a town made of children, where orphans had found refuge (Feower and Tien grew up there as well and are among the oldest of the orphans, thus they have a responsability toward them), one of the thing that happened was that a “new orphan” joined the town: a draph, adult man, very tall, very huge, but with the mind of a child, who is still troubling grasping concepts and all, called Mugen.

Originally not sure what to do with him and how he arrived here, as he says he was aboard a merchant ship to help with discharging it, and that hearing of an orphan town he thought perhaps he could have a home here, the Eternals ended up accepting him in because he was definitly a lost child before anything, and they could feel (thanks to one of their members, Niyon,who can hear the sound of his heart) that his intentions were pure.

But Mugen isnt completely stable either. During a previous battle a child was hurt and it angered him so much it unleashed a huge wave of power where he couldn’t distinguish friends from foes and ended up causing a lot of damage, out of control.

When he woke up, he was terrified to lose control again, crying. Each Eternals ofc had their own reactions to it, but especially a group of them that are attached to him now could feel for his situation.

While not being close to him either, Seox was one of the few to reach out to Mugen after the incident because Seox knows the guilt that comes from losing control and hurting the ones you had sworn to protect, which led to a very sad and angsty dialogue for the both of them, both of them wanting to protect their loved ones, but at fear with this part of them that could go Bersek.

ANYWAY while the town was under attack by the Magasin, Mugen went in the streets to find out if there was more poisons that had snuck into it... and ran into Nehan, the survivor of the Karm’s massacre and the cause of Seox’s last loss of control.

And from here, we learn that they actually came to that Island together and that Mugen was under Nehan’s care. Mugen doesn’t seem to have bad thoughts in mind and happily tell Nehan that there they could find a home because everyone is so nice with them.

But Nehan sees Mugen’s friendship with the Eternals as a betrayal, and immediatly instead told him that he hates him, that he never want to see him again.

which already makes Mugen emotionally at lost and unstable.

Worse is that since Nehan works for the Magasin (now we learn bc he was “bought” as a kid by the mafia family, yikes), he wears their uniform, and from afar, Tweyen saw Nehan distress Mugen and thought the Magasin was trying to hurt him - so she fired her arrows at Nehan without thinking twice.

But, still feeling affection for his comarades and still unstable due to his emotions being at lost and seeing Tweyen, whom Mugen does care about, fire on Nehan, whom Mugen still cares about, it unleashed this power that led Mugen to go bersek to start with and Nehan escaped.

The Eternals tried to fight Mugen to calm him down, and make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone, and Rei, the head of the mafia family Feower and Tien reached out to to protect the town (yaknow the one who forced Feower to attack Tien with her mind controlling power just to test him before agreeing to help them), arrived and put Mugen to sleep.

anyway now the plot is that they’re all trying to understand what happened for Mugen to snap and they expect he won’t answer properly once he awakes, so Rei proposed them an alternative where the people who cared for Mugen the most are sent into his mind, so they can try to reach out and help them.

So the MC, Lyria, Tien, Tweyen, and Fif were volonteered to go into Mugen’s mind to help him as their friends. Niyon is coming along so her hearing can be of help. On top of that was added Seox, due to him having had a conversation with Mugen about the fear of losing control that may help Mugen.

So currently we are in Mugen’s mind trying to pieces all of this together.

so huh yeah if i post anything in that setting that might be something i should update about so- here we are.

#ichablogging gbf #ichablogging seedsofredemption

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waterlinkedgirl · 5 years

Text

Shinteni ch. 262-264 liveblog

In which I basically half (3/4) translate the chapter and half (1/4) point out the things I like. There are maybe slightly easier to follow if you have the scans by hand, which *are* in fact online by now (just do a jp search for jump square issue 6 ^^) I def plan on making this a thing btw! So without further ado, let’s get to it! (quick note before we start, I abbreviate Oswald Delon’s name as Os, so don’t get confused!) Long post below the cut.

I'm amused that Momo goes 'whoa he can even duplicate himself more than Eiji-senpai' esp since we had an another story ova with... slightly more duplications syjsrthstgstgh but that's not conform the manga, so it's cool

I feel this reminds me of a certain kamehameha meme. So if you haven’t guessed these are actually dolls and the mastermind is--

I’m laughing, Os did this in a certain Houkago too. OK SO THE QUESTION IS did Konomi make the houkago canon, or did he communicate the future developments to the houkago person

'hurry up and go clear the field of those dolls' you go, referee France is so deliciously extra

Yanagi's nose has power today

I still remain this is a very cool panel, like, man, look at that perspective. It’s interesting, because you don’t expect the ‘where did he go?!’ (above) trope to apply to tennis, yet here we are, hehe.

MUKAHI FEELS OFFENDED BY THE JUMP BTW (or impressed, but the latter is funnier)

so Sanada immediately uses rai on the shot Os put perfectly on the baseline, Os immediately knows to use the underside of the racket, however Sanada also immediately pulls one dragon strike that'sa lot of head-on, hahaha Sanada has balls! (and makes a pun on them echoing the technique Os used earlier) Whereas Os... Uh, good luck srtjhsrtgshrtfg it's kind of cute how Os mangles his jp but Sanada also, in hiragana, addresses him as ‘ojaaru’ when you’d expect him to use the proper name instead of the nickname.

I've kind of missed that smirk

it's fun how Momo and Eiji get shown twice to be amazed and point, basically confirming Os as the acrobatic rascal player.

’Increasingly-More-Net no jutsu’ (thx, Holy ^^) Os what are you-- don't give me that 'With that the opponent will become aware of the net being higher than usual and make the ball go out,' random spectator, you don't. You don't get to put another net on the court xD

Sanada says he’s seen enough of this farce and Double Black Dragon strikes the ball in to make it 6-4 for Japan. Yukimura has a note in, saying that the opponent might be able to make full use of his various expressions of his ninjutsu tennis, but that with the current Sanada, finally after a long time put in singles again, none of them will work.

It’s never a good sign when the chapter title ‘ Revival of the Emperor’ drops immediately on the second page of the chapter, when Sanada’s ahead with 5-0.

ah, Os seems to have a breakdown about having practiced ninjutsu for (I presume) the past 12 years (either that or since he was 12 .-. I'm fuzzy) but saying it's impossible after all for a foreigner like himself to become a ninja To which Sanada tell him to pick up his racket-- and he tells him that “The act of dropping your blade before the battle is finished is against the bushido code!! In that, it does not matter whether you’re a foreigner or not.”

I feel like the sentence Os throws him in thanks could be interpreted as a pun by Konomi on Os’ nickname but my translation skills/ninspeak are insufficient to really trace it >.>

Tanegashima says that Sanada’s patience has really grown stronger. By only being chosen to play doubles, he's faced his own tennis head-on and reached an answer. When it comes to heart, body, and technique, if you combine them, he’ll lose to no-one.

After a tight rally, Sanada’s shot goes out, (while Os’ heart is racing like, ‘that was dangerous...!’) and the score is revealed to be 1-5 for France-- Os has taken a game. It’s Sanada’s serving game, and he’s serving for the match. (the note at the bottom of the panel explains that this is basically when you only have to keep your service game in order to win)

Oswald says in true shounen protagonist fashion) that for his grandma in the village, he’ll hit any number of shots back de ojaru (”But I thought ninjas always ended their sentences with de gozaru??” yes.)

But Sanada’s serve, of all things, goes out! Sanada tells himself he’s put too much power in, and yet, his serves keep going out and out, until it’s 2-5 France. Marui says he's never seen Sanada miss so many serves in a row before.

I agree, Yukimura.

--When we have a scene with Sanada correctly identifying the thing on Os’ racket being an elusive 290 gr Southern style Iron Paperweight Doll, to which it is Yanagi’s turn to nerd out;

“While not at all an expensive object, it’s a hard to obtain thing because of its popularity during its peak-- It’s what we too have always looked for”

Os is gracious and has two! So he says he’ll give one to him as a present de ojaru, Sanada accepts gratefully.

To which France tells us that it has finally started. Os’ scary style of tennis isn’t at all those flashy ninjutsu, but--

The ‘Gosha (lit. 5 vehicles) no jutsu’

Ohmagari recognizes it, and says this match might become dangerous after all.

(he’s grown up so fast ;v;)

Os returns the double Dragon Strike (on his own!)

(meanwhile, Yukimura is beautiful--) Kirihara yells that he must really be a ninja to be able to get to it, to which Yukimura responds with “No... There is doubt in Sanada’s shots.” And it becomes 5 all as Sanada’s shot hits the net.

Out once more, and Sanada rams his racket into the court in anger;

Kaidoh comes in with “what happened to ‘ishiki goryou, kannin juuryou’?” which extremely loosely means (Opinions are worth five, patience ten) that it’s important to listen to other people, but also to endure your anger and be patient (which... Sanada does not seem to be doing)

So we finally get the explanation for the ‘gosha no jutsu’ from Ohmagari; “It’s a most scary psychological skill with which you can cleverly control the opponent’s emotions; his feelings and heart.”

Translation by @imperfekti! “‘Kisha’ creates an opening by praising and flattering the opponent. ‘Dosha’ creates an opening by angering the opponent and making them lose their composure. ‘Aisha’ creates an opening by showing the opponent a piteous appearance and conduct, inviting sympathy. ‘Rakusha’ creates an opening by gifting them with something that attracts the opponent’s interest and using that weak point.” Kite: “…Oh? Isn’t one still missing, Oomagari-senpai…?” Osval: “Even though you fought and lost to Echizen-kun once… Isn’t it hard being S2 after him?” Oomagari: “And the most scary one is ‘Kyousha’… By conveying the realities the opponent doesn’t want to experience, and their worst predictions, breaking their fighting spirit.”

Yukimura’s hair is simultaneously too straight and too messy, haha.

The French themselves reveal that mr. PariColle was done in by ‘Rakusha,’ that even the prince fell happily to ‘Kisha,’ Jonathan himself to ‘Aisha’ thanks to that story about that fawn, and Edgard explains that ‘Dosha’ made him lose his temper and caused him to show an opening. Os makes a shot, and Sanada doesn’t reach for it at all. Camus, I presume, says that “He took all of them. It’s pitiful but this match...”

Unpredictable, like the shadow.

Sanada hits it back, in the lines. Os is unable to react.

Byoudouin makes a mental monologue about how Sanada was finally chosen for singles. And that, in order to defeat his opponent on the same battlefield, he had his blade drawn on the jutsu from the beginning. He was just pretending.

“It's the end. I will show you the philosophy of my tennis!”

Sanada was very cool in these chapters, haha! I was a bit worried that the match might be played for mostly comedic relief, as his opponent is literally a weeaboo, but I feel it’s good that Konomi used Oswald’s endearing appeal this way. Truly, the horrors of comedy tennis. (or at least, something that runs on the same principles, except a bit more detailed.) I’m not too sure how to feel about Sanada only pretending to have his balls go out, but I feel it should be a sign of Sanada having a good look at his own style of tennis. By simply not being affected, he could have nullified Oswald’s psychological game... but perhaps, he’d have shifted the battlefield to one more advantageous to him, and we know that Sanada dislikes to throw away a head-on battle. Even if, in this case, it causes him to be as dishonest as his opponent.

#Sanada Gen'ichiroh #prince of tennis #shinteni spoilers #Oswald Delon #why is 'kakatta' such a vague word to translate #it can mean like 80000 things #long post

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theythemsam · 5 years

Text

spn 5x22, liveblog, collected posts (all 20 of them) or as i like to call it: a very good episode, one of the best, i cried like a baby, but also Dean’s a homophobe again in this one and i don’t care that he just lost Sam, i am coming to collect his kneecaps

God, like I cannot imagine how hard hitting that episode must have been when you like thought it was the series finale. Like it starts out with Carry On My Wayward Son and then you get the background story of the Impala, like I Would Have Been A Crying Mess Immediately!!!

#like I know im gonna cry anyway asdfghj

Sam sitting on the hood of the impala is always very good

#hes a gay he has to perch!

Dean realizing that this is Sam’s free will and that he cannot allow or forbid him from doing this, but he can support him whichever road he chooses? You know what that is? Growth!

#god now im emotional about Brothers Feels TM

Cas snoring in the backseat of the Impala

#me trying to not feel sadness about any of this: TFW Roadtrip!!!

Cas is so awkward and adorable, I LOVE HIM

Ahhhh Sam just breathing and the demons die. I love my powerful strong badass son!

Lucifer!Sam folding his hands, just fucking going “You Know I Had To Do It To ‘Em” asdfghj

I love the entire mirror thing that they use to show possession

#It’s just very seksy of them

I hate Lucifer so much, but the entire mirror speech is so good

The reveal that Sam has been surrounded by demons all his life is just the worst

#i am honestly crying now #like theres tears on my cheeks

Oh awesome! Dean with MORE homophobic slurs

#me in tears: wow this episode is so good I love it so much so far there hasn’t been a single moment that I didn’t love #dean: Listen up you junkless sissy #me already brandishing a knife: I will slaughter you to death #maybe that will give sam the anger to overthrow Lucifer #i think imma make a gifset one of these days and then reach through the screen and just end dean Winchester #like not just his life but his whole existence #with the power of my dyke rage TM I can and will tear him into tiny little atom sized bits and piece and then just spread them out across the universe

Dean being just the biggest drama queen and interrupting the Show Down Of The Century, radio turned up load, baby purring is still good even if I’m pissed as fuck at him for his homophobic crap

Hey, Assbutt! Iconic quotes by the gay and happy angel!

#i gotta watch the gag reel again for assbutt mark!

“No one dicks with Michael but me” has very big sibling energy and as much as I don’t care about the archangels – never did, never will – that’s still very good

The continuous shot of Lucifer!Sam dragging Dean off the hood and then punching him hard is so good

#i love fight scenes when they are well choreographied!!!

Why does Dean always choose to use homophobic slurs right before he has immensely heart wrenching scenes? I cannot be angry at him when he says “it’s okay Sammy, I’m here, I’m not gonna leave you” its not possible for me, but I’m still pissed!

Sam seeing the army man, remembering all the love, his life in the impala, using that to gain strength and then wrestling control back from Lucifer is truly a piece of amazing story telling

#also no im not crying my roommates are just cutting onions in the kitchen im sure of it *sniff*

Aaand into the cage they go

I love that Cas is back and stronger than ever before

#ready to save some parts of the day #not looking forward to season 6 & 7 bc they really assassinated his character there ugh

Anyway, yeah I was right, most of this episode is immensely well structured, meticulously planned through and a treat of a finale.

Except for Dean using homophobic slurs of course.

#forever bitter about that #like yes this is definitely one of my fav episodes #but that really fucked it up for me

#enjoy your retirement with lisa you asshole. be a civilian without kneecaps!!!#collections #spn 5x22 #me: wow this episode is gonna make me cry maybe ill even feel 1 emotion for dean thats not lesbian rage #dean: calls cas a sissy #me brandishing my dyke knife: time to scare 'im real good. scare 'im right in the kidney #but also people regularly use homophobic slurs against cas... which is very gross but.... I Love My Gay Son Who Is In Heaven!#sam liveblogs

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neuxue · 7 years

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Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 21

All in all a mixed bag of a chapter, in which Perrin reaches some decisions and Faile remembers, I still dislike Rolan, and Borderland sayings are A Problem for me

Chapter 21: Embers and Ash

Last weekend, I went to my favourite bookstore and bought an actual, physical, hardcover book for the first time in years. That book was The Book Of Dust Volume One: La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman. The first book of the companion series to His Dark Materials, the final book of which I queued for (and then promptly devoured) at a different bookstore, seventeen long years ago. Some of you may know the extent to which my love for this series is deep and abiding; the rest of you need only know that it was my Hogwarts letter and my magic wardrobe and my invitation to the world of magic and fantasy and wonder all rolled into one, and my love for it is deep and abiding.

I was never, until around this time last year, sure that we would ever be getting The Book of Dust. (In honesty, there have been times where I was unsure whether I wanted it; I’ve always been a bit skeptical of post-facto additions to canon). But now suddenly it’s here¸and I have it in my hand, and after a week of it taunting me from the bookshelf I finally have a few hours in which I can sit down and get some reading done.

Why am I telling you this story? So you will understand the LEVEL OF COMMITMENT I AM MAKING when I say that I have decided I’m not allowed to read La Belle Sauvage until I get at least through chapter 22 of The Gathering Storm. Which means I may never get to read La Belle Sauvage, because Chapter 22 is the one you all keep telling me will kill me.

But THIS IS MY PROMISE, AND I WILL KEEP TO IT, BY MY HOPE OF SALVATION AND REBIRTH.

So here we are. Chapter 21: Embers and Ash. And I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t point out that that’s a lovely chapter title. I’m not usually one for ranking favourites of things because usually I fail miserably, but once I’ve finished the series I might have to go through and rank all the chapter titles in order of awesome.

Perrin opened his eyes and found himself hanging in the air.

Oh great, we’ve moved beyond even cliffs and garden walls. Levelling up and NOT IN A GOOD WAY. LEVEL DOWN. ABORT. ABORT.

He felt a spike of terror, floundering in the sky.

I’d say ‘at least his survival instinct is intact’ but the past…oh…ten books or so have proved that to be utterly false.

(I say this as someone whose frequent activities include rock-climbing and flying trapeze, and whose recent google searches include ‘bungee jumping near London’ and ‘skydiving prices London’ so it’s possible I’m a hypocrite).

He waved his arms reflexively, as if to swim

Yeah I know swimming is my first instinct when suspended in midair as well, Perrin. Seriously, what the fuck? Also the more I think about it, the more hilarious this whole image is to me. Someone skilled at art and/or gif-making, please make some kind of visual representation of Perrin doggy-paddling in midair. In his pyjamas.

Well what do you know, we’re in the wolf dream. And after Perrin’s last chapter I’m optimistic that maybe he’ll finally commit to it properly. He’s danced on the edge of learning to use Tel’aran’rhiod since TDR and it’s about time for him to enroll in an actual crash course.

Pun only somewhat intended.

He took a deep breath, then closed his eyes and imagined himself jumping.

It’s okay, everybody falls the first time.

Nope, not Perrin. Perrin wins the Matrix Tel’aran’rhiod and sticks his landing perfectly.

This time, those dark storm clouds remained. They boiled, spun, and shot lines of lightning between different thunderheads.

The true difference between Sanderson and Jordan: Sanderson capitalises everything and Jordan pluralises ‘lightning’.

But the storm is not transient, not even here in Tel’aran’rhiod.

Actually, the interesting thing is that it’s not transient in Tel’aran’rhiod, where most things are, but it is mercurial and unpredictable in the real world. Those black and silver clouds from the prologue that hovered in the distance, then appeared instantaneously overhead, then vanished again…it’s a perfect reversal of how things are supposed to be. A storm whose reflection in the World of Dreams shows its gravity and permanence, while in the real world it is terrifying in part for its caprice. But even in the real world, it is not fading or vanishing or blowing over easily. The storm is gathering and everything is darkening and lightning hovers on the horizon, as it does here as a now-permanent feature in the skies of dreams.

It comes, Hopper agreed. If Shadowkiller falls to the storm, all will sleep forever.

If he falls to the storm. “I am the storm.” It’s not so much a question of whether Rand will be hit by the storm when it breaks as it is a question of whether he will be consumed by it, inside and out. “There is a rage in him fit to burn the world, and he holds it by a hair.” There is so little holding him back now, and so much power and anger within him. Master of the lightnings, rider on the storm. I’ve always linked Rand to the wind from the beginning of each book, for some reason (well, I know why I’ve made the link in my head; whether it was intended by Jordan is a different question but I’m inclined to think so), but now even that wind has become a tempest, and this time there was something wrong with the wind, and there is a storm gathering and Rand stands at the centre of it, and walks a razor’s edge between commanding it and being consumed by it, destroyed from the inside.

Perrin’s confused. It’s okay, Perrin. When you get home from dreamworld, just google ‘pathetic fallacy’ and also maybe ‘fisher king’ and things will start to make sense.

Or just when in doubt apocalypse.

Two legs, Young Bull? Two legs are slow!

Excuse you, ~legs are required for jumping, dancing, strolling along on those…what’s that word again? streets……~

“I have to keep control, Hopper,” he said. “When I let the wolf take control…well, I do dangerous things.”

Ah yes, this again.

Although, having said that, this actually isn’t a trope I get tired of, for the most part. This question of control, and the fear of losing it balanced against the knowledge of or desire for the power that such a surrender could bring; the fear of what lies beneath the surface, of what hides beneath who you want to be and curls itself around who you are; the navigation of lines and boundaries and balance.

Perrin wants control, but what he needs is something closer to balance, and understanding. And the desire for control, and the almost instinctive reaching for it feels more like a kind of denial. There is something within him that he fears, something within him that clashes with who he wants to be or thinks he needs to be, and so instead of allowing himself to explore and understand it, he suppresses it, denies that part of himself, and calls this control. And it feels like control, on the surface. But it isn’t; true control can’t be gained by simply suppressing. It comes more from knowing and accepting and understanding, from the ability to balance.

It’s not unlike Nynaeve and her block. She was, on some level, afraid of the power she had, and so she shut it away from herself, so that she could only access it when anger eroded those barriers. She could only access it when she ‘lost control’. But it wasn’t until she learned to surrender and accept that she was able to learn true control. To embrace the Power as a part of herself, and guide it as she willed.

That’s the difference, it seems to me. You can suppress something, and refuse to look at it, and hold it at bay with as much willpower as you can muster, and if you’re lucky it might not break through the barriers you’ve built and wreak havoc. (It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that way. If ‘losing control’ means letting this thing run rampant, unable to do anything to guide it or mitigate it because you’ve spent all your time and energy trying to push it away, then losing control is indeed something to fear). Or, you can do the much more difficult thing, and look it in the eyes and know what it is and learn how to use it, or how to accept it as a part of yourself, which is a very different (but arguably more effective) kind of control. It’s a control that comes from balance, rather than its absence.

But that’s what I see as Perrin’s issue. He’s always been afraid of losing control to the wolf, and because of that fear he’s never allowed himself to actually explore the wolf aspect of himself. So he doesn’t fully understand it, and yet he can’t rid himself of it, so he ends up in this ongoing situation where he tries to hold it at bay but invariably can’t do that permanently, which leads to these moments of ‘losing control’, which only serves to exacerbate the fear, which…oh hey there vicious circle.

Hopper, meanwhile, is attempting to convey either ‘please find some chill’ or ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about’ with a single expression.

There were wonderful things about what had happened to him since leaving the Two Rivers.

But he couldn’t continue to lose control. He had to find a balance.

Yeah, pretty much. Well done for articulating that to yourself, Perrin. And I think finding that balance will go a long way towards solving the issue of control. But we shall see.

Throwing away the axe had made a difference. The axe and the hammer were different weapons –one could be used only for killing, while the other gave him a choice.

I think I liked this better when it was just implied, rather than stated outright. There have been a few times, now, where I’ve felt this way in this book. I think in part it’s a Sanderson thing, because it feels very like how he handles some of this in his own books. Only there, it’s consistent with the overall storytelling method, and characters, and modes of characterisation, so I don’t particularly mind it. My personal preference is for things to be left a bit more open, and for authors to leave more to the reader, but I think in his own works Sanderson is certainly able to leave enough unsaid that the things he does explain clearly – usually pertaining more to characters’ states of mind or personal journeys and conflicts – don’t feel like clumsy storytelling, at least to me. It works, because it’s how he writes. The thing is, it’s not quite how Jordan writes. Jordan does give the reader a fair amount of explanation sometimes, but through slightly different methods – most of which are informative but slightly less direct. So in that context, statements like this, that just hand the situation to you, feel…clunky. Like they were pulled unaltered from an outline, or else like Sanderson felt clarification was needed, but relied – understandably – on his own methods to do so.

But this is also one of the things I actually expected of the authorial transition, just from having read Sanderson’s books. It’s one of the ways in which he and Jordan are very different as writers, and it’s definitely something that was on my mind as I started reading TGS. Which means there could absolutely be an element of confirmation bias at play here, but it also means I’m not overly surprised and therefore not all that disappointed by it at the end of the day.

“But I need to know this place, Hopper. I need to learn how to use it, control it.”

Men, Hopper thought, Sending the smells of dismissiveness and anger. Control. Always control.

Hopper definitely has a point there. I suppose it makes sense, given that each of us is the only constant in our own lives, and even that is up for debate, as I’m not sure anyone is truly immutable. So from that perspective the need for control makes sense, because especially if everything else is changing, it seems only natural to desire some kind of anchor. Maybe you have to be able either to trust in yourself or trust in your surroundings, and if we can’t have one we seek to impose the other. Maybe I’m just talking out my arse. But hey, that’s the whole point of this, isn’t it?

Perrin does his usual trick of pulling himself here too strongly because Perrin has no chill, Hopper tells him to leave and maybe find some chill, Perrin gets kicked out of dreamschool. Damn it, I was hoping for a little more progress but I suppose the very fact that Perrin’s actively trying to learn is a good start. Still, KIND OF UP AGAINST A DEADLINE HERE.

Oh man can I tell you how glad I am to see Faile out of that fucking Malden storyline?

Though there was that odd edge to his eyes. Not a dangerous edge, just a sorrowful one. He had grown haunted while they were apart. She could understand that. She had a few ghosts of her own. One could not expect everything to remain the same, and she could tell that he still loved her – loved her fiercely. That was enough, and so she didn’t worry on it further.

And Perrin for his part seems able to see that Faile does have some ghosts of her own, and also accepts it. Malden was a shitshow but at least we’re getting some character growth and maturity out of it. Not that you can’t get those through other ways, but look, at this point, I’ll take what I can salvage from that whole…deal.

One of the things I genuinely like about how Perrin and Faile are handling the aftermath is that they both truly seem to understand. They understand that the other has been through some shit, and that they’ve been hurt in ways that may not be immediately obvious, and even that there are some things they don’t understand. But neither blames the other for that. Perrin doesn’t blame Faile for whatever happened in Malden and for whatever she had to do, even though he has no idea what exactly that might be. He may assume the worst – whatever the worst is, in his mind – but he makes it very clear that he isn’t holding that against her. And Faile, for her part, understands that Perrin has also probably dealt with some things that she doesn’t know the details of, but where that once may have incited insecurity or jealousy, now it’s just…part of the way things are, and she loves him and knows he loves her and that’s enough.

“I didn’t sleep with Berelain,” he said, voice gruff. “No matter what the rumours say.”

Dear, sweet, blunt Perrin. “I know you didn’t,” she said consolingly.

Honesty! Communication! Conversations in which characters just get straight to the point and state something clearly! Relationships that include a stronger and stronger element of trust!

You know, maybe it’s not actually all that suprising that, given this is the Wheel of Time (and Absolutely No Communication), it took a two-month slavery interlude, four books, and a battle to achieve something like that.

Snark aside, it is genuinely nice to see.

“Perrin, haven’t I explained this? A husband needs to know his wife is jealous, otherwise he won’t realise how much she cares for him. you guard that which you find the most precious. Honestly, if you keep making me spell things out like this, then I won’t have any secrets left!”

That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to me and I’m not sure how much sense it makes to Perrin, but the important thing here is that she’s explaining her thought process and behaviour rather than assuming he will know what she’s doing and why. They both seem to have come a long way in that regard – mostly, I think, by realising that the other person just doesn’t know. They’re more aware of the fact that they’re coming from two very different places and sets of expectations and cultural norms and perceptive filters, and where that was once a source of tension and unintentional hurt on both sides, they’re now making an effort to be more honest and open and understanding, and to trust that, at the end of the day, they love each other.

It was as if she hadn’t quite understood what it was to be a lady until Malden. Oh, she’d had her share of victories. Cha Faile, the people of the Two Rivers, Alliandre and Perrin’s camp members. She’d put her training to use, helping Perrin learn to be a leader. All of this had been important, had required her to use what her mother and father had trained her to be.

But Malden had opened her eyes. […] She had been humiliated, beaten, and nearly killed. And that had given her a true understanding of what it was to be a liege lady.

I have two problems with this. The first, and lesser, is that it feels like Sanderson again explaining a little bit too much – telling rather than showing. A little annoying, but I can deal with it; I think what irks me about it is more that it’s trying to paint Faile’s section of the Malden storyline as necessary and All About Her Character Development rather than…Damsel in Distress who is blocked at every turn from doing anything at all to rescue herself, is forced to rely on a man who may or may not ask a price for that safety, and in the end is rescued by the man who is placed at the centre of this storyline because we all know that the best way to hurt a male character is to kidnap, rape, or kill his female love interest. It’s not about her; it’s about him. At least have the decency to own up to it.

(The fact that Perrin as a character chooses to reject this notion, and acknowledges that Faile suffered and her pain is her own and he has no right to usurp it or hold her responsible for his own suffering by extension is a huge credit to him and to the way he’s written, and I appreciate it to almost an absurd extent, but it doesn’t solve the rest of the problem).

This brings me to the second thing about this that bothers me: She had been humiliated, beaten, and nearly killed. And that had given her a true understanding if what it was to be a liege lady.

Discovering strength in times of adversity is a trope for a reason, and that’s not what I have a problem with, because I think there’s a great deal of truth to it, and it can make for some excellent stories. No, my issue lies more in the specific kinds of adversity typically given to female characters, as well as the fact that this once again feels almost like retconning Faile’s storyline for the past few books to make it seem more palatable and more necessary and less All About Perrin.

Why is it that female characters must so often discover their strength only when they are humiliated and degraded, while male characters get to at least bear their pain with dignity as their arcs unfold?

I should clarify that this is an issue I see more in the genre as a whole than in Wheel of Time specifically. This series is definitely better than some at providing equal-opportunities Pain And Suffering For Everyone. The (male) protagonist is locked in a box and beaten (though even then, the humiliation aspect is far more subdued; the focus is agony), one of the (male) secondary protagonists is raped and humiliated for an extended period of time, and a (female) major character faces daily beatings with her head held high and is forging a remade Tower around her in the process.

But.

There’s still an imbalance there, if you stack it all on the scales. And without the rest of the genre exacerbating the issue, this might not be as much of a problem. Unfortunately, though, it’s one of those things that has become frustrating for all the times it’s occurred elsewhere, so now every time it shows up it’s just nails on the damn chalkboard.

Perrin learns leadership by having it thrust upon him in times of emergency. Lives are lost and he holds himself to blame, but he isn’t torn down before he’s allowed to grow. Faile, meanwhile, apparently doesn’t truly learn leadership until she’s enslaved.

Rand is captured and beaten. Egwene is captured and spanked. There’s a difference, much as I still love Egwene’s current storyline.

And then you get the genre as a whole, where the easiest way to generate a tragic backstory for a female character is to rape her. The easiest way to generate a tragic backstory for a male character? Hurt his wife and children. Hang on a second. (Oh, and then there’s the part where said male character is justified in having a vengeance-driven plotline, while the female character who is herself violated is usually punished in some way by the narrative for wanting that, and instead has to learn to love, or to forgive and move on).

Plus there’s the fact that male characters tend to have a much more diverse range of tragic backstories –and sometimes they don’t have a tragic backstory at all. They’ll face challenges and difficulties, but a male hero can make it through a story without degradation, without being actually knocked down himself. Whereas if a female character is written that way, the most common criticisms are that she’s ‘unrealistic’ or ‘too powerful’ or ‘hasn’t earned her ending’. Check out what people have to say about Rey, who is probably the best recent example I can think of of a heroine who gets to just be a hero.

Where are the female heroes who dedicate their lives to vengeance and justice for the ones who murdered their husbands? Where are the female heroes who are unjustly exiled and become noble stoic wandering badasses? Where are the female chosen ones for whom the weight of prophecy and saving the world is pain enough? Where are the female Aragorns, the female Jon Snows, the female Asriels, the female Han Solos? There are entire archetypes that are virtually nonexistent for female characters.

It gets tiring to only see certain roles ever given to male characters (and derided when someone tries to give them to a woman), and it gets tiring to see female characters robbed of agency and dignity in order to progress, while male characters get to hold on to a great deal more of these attributes. Wheel of Time is a lot better than some – in large part due simply to the fact that there are so many women – but it’s not exempt.

All of which is to say, the notion that Faile only discovered what it truly means to be a liege lady while she is enslaved and humiliated and slapped by the narrative every time she tries to reclaim some semblance of agency is…irritating.

Being a noblewoman meant going first. It meant being beaten so others were not. It meant sacrificing, risking death, to protect those who depended upon you.

Okay…and what part of that requires slavery and constant threat of sexual assault and routine humiliation and dependence on a man to rescue and protect you?

Remind me why she can’t learn these same things by braving Trollocs and Whitecloaks to go recruit an army that she leads back to the Two Rivers? Or by co-leading her and Perrin’s people as they take on the twin threats of Masema and the Shaido? Or maybe by being the one to secure that tenuous alliance with the Seanchan, at great risk? Or any number of other options that don’t involve being tied up naked on a table. For instance.

“I don’t care what happened to you,” he said.

She sighed. No, not asleep. “What happened to me?” she asked with confusion.

He opened his eyes, staring up at the tent. “The Shaido, the man who was with you when I saved you. Whatever he did…whatever you did to survive. It’s all right.”

This is the part I like. This absolute understanding that whatever happened and whatever she did, it’s not for him to judge or claim or even ask her about. And he goes out of his way to make that point – not because he wants an explanation or because some part of him is holding it against her, but because he wants to make it clear to her that his silence isn’t in any way a condemnation. It’s okay; it’s not about him; he understands. I am absurdly grateful that this is included – multiple times – in this aftermath, especially because so much else about the whole thing frustrates me.

When the gai’shain women had started to be in danger, the Brotherless had chosen and protected those they could.

Those they wanted to have sex with, you mean.

They hadn’t asked anything for their efforts.

Bullshit.

Well…that wasn’t true. They had asked for much, but had demanded nothing.

If only it were that simple.

It bothers me, this massive oversimplification that’s apparently supposed to make us think it’s all okay. He didn’t outright demand anything, so it’s all fine.

But coercion’s a lot more complicated than that, and this explanation entirely fails to recognise the huge power differential in the situation. Did Rolan force her? No. Did he allow her to believe – without saying or doing anything to reassure her to the contrary – that her continued protection could well depend on his continued interest in her? Absolutely. Faile thinks at various points of how to balance maintaining his interest, of what she might have to do, of what it might come to.

And that is fucked up. “Hey, I can keep you from being raped by these other guys, but only while I think I have a chance of sleeping with you myself.” And even if he would have continued to protect her anyway, he doesn’t tell her that. So while the constant threat of rape may have decreased for her, there’s absolutely still an implicit threat hanging over her head that he does ABSOLUTELY FUCK-ALL TO MITIGATE.

He didn’t demand anything, so it’s fine. He just kept her in a situation where at any moment he could have demanded whatever he wanted and she’d have been hard-pressed to say no, because that might mean foregoing his protection. He let her live with that hanging over her head, this sense that at any moment it could escalate beyond her control and there would be nothing she could do about it. Accede to him or take her luck with the rest. At that point, it may be a ‘yes’ but it sure as hell isn’t freely given consent.

If you feel like your safety depends on someone’s sexual interest in you, it doesn’t really matter whether they’ve made demands or requests. And I hate, hate, the way this reduces it to a simplistic black-and-white ‘he didn’t rape her so everything is fine’.

I may have mentioned I’m not a fan of Rolan.

She had never so much as kissed Rolan, but she had used his desire for her as an advantage. And she suspected that he’d known what she was doing.

Wait, really? We’re really doing this? She was a slave and reliant on his protection, and he continued to pursue her despite her refusing him, but we’re going the temptress/seductress route here? Because it wasn’t his fault,it was really her, she was using her wily feminine wiles and he couldn’t possibly be held responsible for his actions in the face of wily feminine wiles and so really she was the one taking advantage of him, the poor guy. Power imbalance? Slavery? Coercion and a sense of entirely conditional safety? Nah, she led him on and used him and he was powerless to resist her. Of course. So really he’s the victim here.

Fuck that whole narrative and the horse it rode in on with an unlubricated chainsaw.

Of course he knew what she was doing, because he created the entire damn situation in which she felt as if she needed to do it, and still did absolutely nothing to give her any indication to the contrary.

[Perrin] had changed during these two months, perhaps as much as she had. That was good. In the Borderlands, her people had a saying: “Only the Dark One stays the same.” Men grew and progressed; the Shadow just remained as it was.

This, I like. The Wheel of Time turns…and ending that, ending change, is just another kind of annihilation that masquerades as eternity.

Also, character development! Self awareness!

“Has anyone discovered what happened to Masema?”

‘I don’t know; has anyone discovered what happened to that knife I…misplaced? Seen it anywhere? Shame, I liked that knife.’

“Blasted colours…I don’t want to watch you sleeping, Rand.”

I don’t know, I’d be grateful Rand is getting any sleep at all, really. Also, just talk to Mat. You could be getting a much more awkward display. Take what you can get.

“What happened to your hand? Light-blinded fool, take better care of yourself…You’re all we have…”

Ah, this is…there’s something almost achingly soft and gentle about this, about the unfiltered moment here where Perrin’s barely even aware of what he’s saying but this is what he says. Where you see Rand’s pain not even through another’s eyes, but a step removed from that, and it serves as a lovely sad reminder of how very human Rand is.

And it’s striking, because when you actually see Rand in the story, either through his own eyes or someone else’s, that’s…not really how he comes across at this point. Especially to other characters, but even to the reader his pain has become something of a constant, a part of the status quo. And his humanity is slipping. He can’t let himself feel any of this, and those immediately around him can’t see it, and so you just…don’t. It takes a moment like this to evoke the memory of the Rand from the beginning, of the boy who was Perrin’s friend, of the fact that all their hopes rest on this young man who has been pushed far too far, beyond all reasonable endurance, who is coming apart and yet can’t let go. He’s all they have, but there’s a fondness that comes through here, a gentleness, that says not ‘saviour’ but ‘friend’.

Faile’s off on some midnight errand; what else is new.

Chiad smiled back. “He did not expect that one of the men he killed would turn out to be the one to whom Bain was gai’shain. I do not think Gaul is happy to have both of us serving him.”

I do not think I’m happy to have both of them serving Gaul. How come he gets to carry his spear to the Last Battle but they don’t? Why do we have to resolve this love triangle by making both fighting women put aside their spears to serve the man? I mean, this is not the hill I’m going to die on, but…sigh.

Faile unwrapped the bundle. The contents weren’t anything extraordinary. A small handkerchief of yellow silk. A belt of worked leather which had a pattern of bird feathers pressed into its sides. A black veil. And a thin leather band with a stone tied at the centre.

Ah. That’s what Faile’s midnight errand is. They’re holding a funeral.

“Four people are dead,” Faile said, mouth suddenly dry. She spoke formally, for that was the best way to keep the emotion from her voice. “They protected us, even cared for us. Though they were the enemy, we mourn them. Remember, though, that they were Aiel. For an Aiel, there are far worse ends than death in combat.”

I…this is lovely and on one hand I absolutely understand why it’s here, but on the other hand I’m really, really not here for the redemption of Rolan. Or rather, for the narrative insistence that there was nothing that needed redeeming. I do not come to mourn Rolan, I come to bury him.

Faile had distracted Rolan at just the right moment, making him hesitate. He’d done so out of concern for her, but that pause had allowed Perrin to kill him.

Had Faile done so intentionally? She still didn’t know. So much had been going through her mind, so many emotions at seeing Perrin. She’d cried out, and…she could not decide if she’d been trying to distract Rolan to let him die by Perrin’s hand.

This part works for me, far better than much of the rest of the scene so far. Faile replaying the scene over and over in her head, still not sure of her own motives in that single instant where there was no time to think, only to react. Knowing that this resulted in Rolan’s death, and just trying to work through it. It’s not even a mourning so much as a processing, and it feels raw and honest and it’s one of those questions she’ll probably never have an answer to.

And here, I find that it doesn’t matter so much that I personally cheered when Rolan was killed, because this is entirely about Faile. It’s not about who exactly Rolan was, or whether he’s someone we should like or feel sorry for; it’s just about…those split-seconds in which everything changes and someone is dead and there’s blood on her hands, and friend or enemy he was known to her, and she’s human. There was nothing else that could have been done […] But that made it more tragic. Faile steeled herself to keep her eyes from tearing up like Lacile’s. She hadn’t loved Rolan, and she was glad that Perrin was the one who had survived the conflict. But Rolan had been an honourable man, and she felt…dirtied, somehow, that his death had been her fault.

…No. Sorry, this is where the scene has lost me again. Rolan is not what I would call an honourable man, for all the reasons I’ve gone into at length above. And this notion that Faile feels dirty, feels like she is at fault…it makes me sad, actually. Because we see her feeling shame or guilt, and we see this polished version of him in retrospect that paints him as honourable and his death as a tragedy, and so once again it’s as if the whole thing has been flipped on its head to make him the victim. When there’s never really an honest examination of what he did. I’m not trying to say he deserved to die for it, necessarily, but the lens through which this whole thing has been shown treats him as virtually blameless, and leaves Faile with this feeling of guilt and shame and sorrow. We don’t need more of that. We’re already far too proficient at seeing the Rolans of the world as paragons of honour and pitying them their suffering at the hands of women they’ve wronged.

This shouldn’t have had to be. But it was. Her father had often spoken of situations like this, when you had to kill people you liked just because you met them on the wrong side of the battlefield.

I may have mentioned this one or two hundred times, but I will eat this particular trope up with a spoon. Enemies-by-circumstance, betrayal-by-necessity, enemies-to-friends, friends-to-enemies, the whole notion of ‘the wrong side of the battlefield’. Love it.

But that’s not what this feels like to me. I can’t see Rolan in that light; I don’t see him as one who was a friend, but as one who was simply a different kind of threat. I can’t put him in that tragic role because I hate him for the choices he made and the things he did to Faile, for the position he put her in.

And this whole concept – when you had to kill people you liked just because you met them on the wrong side of the battlefield – could be show so much more powerfully through so many other characters. You have Tylee and Perrin, who have already laid the foundations for this, if one were so inclined. You have Mat and Tuon and “You are not my enemy, but your Empire is.” You have Gawyn, who has fought and killed men he liked and respected, and whose choices have torn him apart. Hell, you have that lovely scene with Ituralde and General Turan. The Seanchan as a whole are a ready-made device to set up all kinds of these small tragedies, if you want to use them. You have a Black Tower of divided loyalties, and no doubt plenty of Soldiers and Dedicated whose chosen ‘side’ is little more than an accident of circumstance. There’s not exactly a shortage of options here, and the fact that this is the one highlighted is…odd to me, and weirdly disappointing.

If she had to go back and do it again, she would take the very same actions. She wouldn’t be able to risk Perrin. Rolan had to die.

But the world seemed a sadder place to her for the necessity of it.

Once again, I am wholeheartedly on board with the overall sentiment being conveyed here, in the abstract, but I so strongly disagree with the way it’s applied in the specific.

Maeric’s death felt like a tragedy. Singing, the Moshaine Shaido ran to dance their deaths felt like a tragedy. The existence of the Brotherless feels like a tragedy. Even the deterioration of the Shaido, and the loss of their identity as Aiel, and the way it has slowly destroyed them from the inside, feels like a tragedy.

If you want to play with the tragedy of circumstance and inevitability and situations in which there are no good choices, in the context of the Aiel, you already have the Rhuidean sequence and everything that follows on from it. You have the Shaido as the continuation – yet another change, from what they once were to something unrecognisable, while all the while fighting to hold to that core of I am Aiel! You have the Aiel leaving the Three-Fold Land and not knowing if they will return; you have their questions of identity and what comes next; you have those who cannot accept the knowledge of who they were and so instead must betray who they are, by breaking bonds of clan or society. You have the deaths of so many Shaido at Dumai’s Wells, in a battle that definitely makes the world seem a sadder place for the necessity of it. You have all of this; you don’t need to glorify a sexual predator.

“Dead by our hand,” Faile said, “or simply dead from battle, these four showed us honour. As the Aiel would say, we have great toh to them. I don’t’ think it can be repaid.”

You. Owe. Them. Nothing.

That’s the whole damn point. That’s where the whole coercion aspect comes in; in creating a sense of guilt for not repaying, in creating a feeling of obligation or necessity or debt, the coin of which is made very clear even if it is not demanded.

“But we can remember them. The Brotherless and one Maiden showed us kindness when they didn’t need to. They kept their honour when others had abandoned it. If there is a redemption to be found for them, and for us, this will be it.”

This whole scene, just taken as itself and without everything that’s attached to it, is beautifully done, and strikes such a lovely tone.

I just can’t appreciate it because I so fundamentally hate so much of the message it buys into and conveys, and it frustrates me that there’s absolutely no acknowledgement of that.

“Kinhuin had only just started looking out for me,” Alliandre said. “I know what he wished for, but he never demanded it. […] Even if I turned him down, he would have helped us.”

That last bit would go some way towards making this a little bit better if I had any faith at all that it was true. And we didn’t see much of Kinhuin, so maybe he really was a decent guy. But what we did see, of Rolan, did not…really match that. He didn’t say he wouldn’t help Faile if she turned him down, but he sure as hell did not say he would, and he made his interest in her and his…courting…of her so much a part and parcel of his protection of her that it would absolutely have been a risk to trust that he’d continue to protect her anyway.

Also there’s the fact that he didn’t stop asking her and pressuring her even when she did say no, which is bad enough when there isn’t the whole slavery issue thrown into the mix, but as it was she had no way to get away from him and he showed that ‘no’ didn’t mean a whole lot to him.

So in conclusion, nice try but I’m not really buying it. At least, not as a blanket statement for all of them.

“Maretha hated what the other Shaido did,” Arrela said. “But she stayed with them for her clan. She died for that loyalty. There are worse things to die for.”

That, there, is much closer to what I do actually find sad about the Shaido and the whole situation of those caught up in this. That’s the tragedy. Just…remove the part where Rolan and the others kept asking for sex and this whole thing would be SO MUCH BETTER. Agh.

The past was a field of embers and ash, an old Saldaean proverb said, the remnants of the fire that was the present.

That is beautiful.

And maybe it’s only a Saldaean proverb, rather than a Borderland one, but it reminds me so strongly of:

“Burning your future? It will sorrow a great many, I think, when you die in the Blight.”

“Burning my past,” [Lan] said, rising. “Burning memories. A nation. The Golden Crane will fly no more.”

[…]

“You said you burned your past. Let the past have its ashes.”

So…there’s that. I’m not sure I even have a point to make here except that this scene in New Spring destroyed me and that thought from Faile brought it immediately to mind and I’m fine, everything’s fine, this is completely 100% okay, I have no problems at all being reminded of Lan burning his past and not believing he has any right to a future because his life is tied to that fire.

(The past is a field of embers and ash, but the Golden Crane flies for Tarmon Gai’don).

Anyway. Back to Perrin.

He stared up in the darkness, trying to make sense of Hopper and the wolf dream. The more he thought about it, the more determined he grew.He would march to the Last Battle – and when he did, he wanted to be able to control the wolf inside of him. […] He had some decisions to make. They wouldn’t be easy, but he’d make them.

And so Perrin at last is taking his final steps on the road that will lead him to the finale. He isn’t lost anymore; he still has decisions to make and things to learn, but he knows now what those are. He knows what he needs to do and he’s not running from it anymore, or pushing it away. He’ll face what comes and he’ll face it on his feet.

He was going to have to let Faile ride into danger, perhaps risk her again.

Yes. And given the storyline of the past few books, that’s…an impressive realisation for him to come to. Not an easy one for him to accept, but once again, at least he knows it now. Besides, those are her choices to make.

The decision to face his problems brought him a measure of peace

Yes. That’s the real closure of this previous arc, here. The decision to finally face, head-on, what comes next. To acknowledge what that will require from him. Now he can move forward.

Next (TGS ch 22) Previous (TGS ch 20)

#this was actually a lovely chapter #despite my issues with some of it #Wheel of Time #neuxue liveblogs WoT #The Gathering Storm

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i-sveikata · 7 years

Text

Gabby liveblogs the new teen wolf ep

i mean technically it’s not liveblogging since I’m in australia and the delay obvs but here we go guys prepare for death:

-lololololololo the fuck they always gotta start it at the school cause they cant afford another set anymore

-whut scott is the assistant coach???!!!!!

-omg hayden left?????? why do they literally just remove all of their female characters with nonsense explanations??? hello kira???? havent seen her in a while. do females not exist in beacon hills?? apparently even being a love interest isn’t a good enough reason to keep the gals around anymore dear god.

-’you want my whistle? who gave you a whistle???’ omfg coach finstock is the best

-the fuck was that supposed to be a wolf on the field or a coyote??? or malia???? legit can’t even tell, oh nvmind scott and liam followed it into the woods found a pack of dead wolves with weird bugs that are crawling out of their eyes, naturally.

-malia heading out to paris and not wanting to help anyone with the problem is goals. but you know there are other ways to write female characters without making their only interest being climbing dick you know, we can have depth.

-liam and scott bonding, lol, they cute and feels, scotty all worried he’s losing control, making him repeat the werewolf mantra dear god this is dorky. giving it instrumental impressive music wont change that friends.

-lol, ‘i got ducktape’ this is me.

-oh goody more mental asylum stuff and weird frozen mummified rock shit, is this a throwback to pompeii or what?

-yeah touch the petrified ashy human corpse thing, that’s a great idea obvs like what is even happening right now.

-of course some dude exploded out of it, why are we even surprised people? oh that’s right we’re not. wait who the fuck is that? no wait, i can guess, it’s another mediocre white guy.

-’i like latin’ liam you dork, oh poor kid ‘this has been a really hard year for me’ ‘if you want to talk about your girlfriend guidance hours are posted’ damn girl that’s brutal.

-interesting that all the youngins are getting a senior registration and applying to colleges scenes talking about their futures at school but for the veteran characters we barely got a sentence about it.

-’you can see me right’ omg lol corey are you having some visibility issues.

-who wants to guess this new college guidance lady is probably not human- lol the music just changed and went all sinister like bruh we already got this, literally every new character we meet ends up being evil like cmon.

-who the fuck is this nolan kid- yet another mediocre white boy!!!!!- are they going for the olympics in white boys what is this shit- oh god she wants to talk about the animal attack on the field.

-lol him being like ‘that was no animal’ jesus fucking christ honestly am i in deja vu land are we just repeating tired drama from the first season now.

-liam how do you not know what a scarab is????? have you not seen the mummy what kind of kid are you??

-haha that girl screaming ‘why does this keep happening to our school’ when all the rats show up is the real shit.

-mediocre other mummy white boy appears in the classroom, stares a bit and tries to look interesting and then leaves. wow lifechanging moment.

-naturally liam and mason end up in the pipes again, because where else would teen wolf film things that happen.

-lydia making a bestiary yeah girl. Her mama isn’t being very smart saying no to that- who’s guess is it she dies almost immediately??? yeah girl leave that paperwork in mamas desk.

-scott trying out his weird electrocution kink with his mum, i am uncomfortable, but also teaching her the ways of electrocution is vaguely sweet.

-mama mccall gonna cover all the werewolf shit when scott is gone i love it. family bonding stuff yeaaaaaahh. oh shit she electrocuted him whilst hugging. family fun times.

-’i held the button, didn’t I?’ ‘you held the buttton’ BEST

-rat king ew is that what they said. gross. lol malia making liam smell the gross dead rat.

-REROUTED. malia is determined to get on a plane to get that french dick apparently.

-how the fuck did mummy white guy end up in the sheriff station???? do the deputies no longer exist?? wheres papa stilinski???

-parrish on the creepy white dude, all is well apparently.

-liam and mason bringing mama mccall a nice dead rat. bring her dinner you sick bastards.

-the fuck??? hallways in flames, parrish meeting another possible hellhound??? what is trying to be said here, fucked if i know.

-weird white guy has some kind of blood kink, sniffing all the injured people in the hospital because of reasons.

-idiot dudes punched liam in the face and he lost his shit. some mantra kid. use the werewolf force. freaky white mummy guy looming in the hallway behind him, cue demon suspense music while he chases for liam now in a closing elevator.

-ANDDDDDD the door closes before mummy white dude can get to him. shocker. i am on the edge of my seat with surprise and anguish obvs

-lydia showing up to get scott? i thought in the last ep stiles said hed be driving down to campus with lydia together???? does that mean she did and came back for some reason?? or stiles miraculously teleported there on his own. wow i love continuity. good thing im watching teen wolf huh.

-all the lights go out, because its lydia this is teen wolf and EVERYTHING MUST BE DARK AND HARD TO SEE AT ALL TIMES.

-phones ringing are always the most suspenseful thing to happen to me as well, love hearing that dialtone and having a wind machine suddenly blowing hair out of my face before appearing back in... wow you guessed it- the school!!!

-ohhhhhh spideyweb time. love it. gotta touched those creepy webs because otherwise what else could lydias banshee powers possibly do. lots of screaming. love that. was that gunfire? idk here this is stupid.

-ah yes, lydia miraculously finds the perfect bit of web to touch because of unexplainable reasons.’ YOU LET IT OUT YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO RIDE WITH THE HUNT FOREVER’ k thanks im hanging up the web now byeeeeeee.

-how does nobody lock the fucking school doors at this point. parrish and mummy white dude just walked straight in.

-’what are you?’ ‘you know what i am im the same as you’ lololololololololl this is gonna be some weird hellhound pissing contest.

-’something you let out, something that needs to be stopped’ oh goody something new an differernt for us. so innovative.

-ah yes, the pissing contest begins. or fire contest i guess? idk?/ and oh hey the guidance counsellor lady was not as she seemed!!! wow, i never would have seen that coming in my life. thanks

-hey guys when you take away the fire, it’s just two shirtless dudes homoerotically wrestling with each other.

-oh well time for parrish to sleep it off,

-’if the wild hunt couldn’t keep you nothing can’ this is literally sounds like the fucked up adage ‘if i cant have you no one can’ and i am uncomfortable.

-oh boy white mummy guy isn’t after liam- i could never have guess that would happen.

-’it must be stopped nothing else matters’ wow, no, because here I was thinking just let the monster run free and kill people and pile up bodies and stuff. isnt that what teen wolf is about.

-OMG SCOTT GOT INTO THE JEEP AND FOUND A ‘BE GENTLE’ LETTER FROM STILES THIS IS THE HIGHLIGHT OF THE EP I SWEAR

-what the fuck lydia, popping your ass up in the middle of the headlights like some kind of ghost haunting, ‘we cantt leave’ bruh you need to chill.

-of course they need some scene with mason giving liam a pep talk like hes the most important character in this show, yeah id totally believe that. hey heres an idea instead of making it about comforting him for losing his girlfriend, how bout you dont write his girlfriend out, there i fixed it.

-malia’s flight no longer delayed!!! haha that squeal of excitement, omg she yelled ‘Oui Oui’ i gotchu girl leave this hellhole while you can.

-opp and heres scott and lydia out to ruin her fun. ofc.

-”no, no nonononono no, its just rats and wolves- and maybe a little bug problem’ see shes got the spirit. let her get french dick in peace. but also, how the fuck are they gonna explain her and scott hooking up in the future because idk what a fucking ride.

-goes to the window instead because her friends are trying to cockblock her- shes DETERMINED PPL U CANT STOP THE DICK.

-lol scott steps aside and then lydia moves into malias way MY GOD before scott pulls her back out, fuckin i cannot.

-two seconds of disappointed looks but cmon guys lets not pretend that malias an independent person who can make decisions outside of the group- aaaannnnnn shes back. wow. quelle surprise.

-but hey at least she hit scott in the face with her bag, get it girl.

-injured white mummy hellhound staggering through the woods then shift to lydia, malia and scott in the car ‘we opened a door to another world and something came out with us’ THIS IS LITERALLY THE PLOT FOR SEASON 3? 4? THE ONE WITH THE NOGITSUNE CMON PPL.

-of course guidance counsellor college lady is gonna kill white mummy hellhound boy. i support her.

-’what kind of price a big price?” ‘big’ wow, A+ dialogue here, someone give them an emmy for this shit.

-oh no guidance counsellor lady in trouble. bu t of course when push comes to shove, shoot white mummy hellhound boy in the head. but white guy actually died for once???? props. lets see how long hell stay dead before theres a reason that makes no sense to bring him back. cough cough theo.

-two seconds later cause apparently thats enough time for her to escape without the Gang sans stiles noticing. even though two of them have increased hearing and sense of smell?!!!??!! because it wouldnt be teen wolf otherwise.

-lydia ‘i thought you couldnt kill a hellhound’ WHEN WAS THAT EVER SAID??? I LITERALLY DO NOT REMEMBER THAT BEING STATED???

-scott, picking up the bullet casing which apparently killed an unkillable hellhound but hes just so good its not an issue. oh hey, is that a fleur de lis?

-’argent’ ooooooooohhh more suspense. dont think i can take it.

-’the sound of someone who’s never lifted a hand against a human being’ you can says shes a hunter lydia, her trunk was full of murdery shit we get it.

-also whats with teen wolfs repetitive need to make girls have an emotional distressing response to something before they go all ‘i kill you, ill kill everyone, ill kill myself idgaf’ and their expression goes all Tough Girl. like cmon. u realise girls dont all react the same way to the same things right?

-but hey props to guidance lady for not dying, though i mean she’s a girl and shes not white so lets assume her chances arent strong for future eps.

-lol all three of them sitting on scotts bed together. is it just me or should they all just make out, im just saying.

-’can we say we forgot?’ omg lydia PHRASING, u literally forgot stiles barely a few eps ago, dont crush him already.

-’we almost lost him last time’ i just love how the girls have all the emotional lines and scott just gets to sit there a nod like stiles hasnt been his best friend for years and years. but apparently connection on teen wolf means only if you want to fuck each other since scott magically forgot stiles without much effort and the entire season was about lydia getting him back even though they literally werent even dating and theyd given no indication shed even liked him when he was taken. but suddenly shes magically interested in him and the connection with scott, his best fucking friend for life somehow wasnt strong enough and I AM SALTY.

-malia- ’if this turns out to be somthing big and we don’t call him-’ ‘he would kill us’ hey look Scott got to say something accurate about his best friend, yay!

-’you guys didn’t hear his voice, he was really excited to be there’ aww scott, but seriously you asshole writers are still telling me their connection wasn’t enough for scott to bring him back? for shame.

-’lets just play the voicemail’ lol here comes the swelling emotional music.

-but seriously fuck you guys, heres stiles telling scott to leave beacon hills behind him and that its not his responsibility and not to worry about it and take stiles’ jeep (which we know he loves more than anything) and drive, and the instrumentals are getting really emotional showing stiles at the fbi and youre still trying to tell me that scott wouldnt have remembered his best friend without lydia???? fuck off.

-omg the nerd stopped at the fbi seal and straightened his tie i fucking love it.

-seriously whats with this music??? like stiles just won the damn noble peace prize or something just for showing up. its no wonder ppl think scott isnt the main when the writers give stiles all these storylines and attention, like this is not subtle ppl.

-stiles constantly interrupting the fbi dude in the middle of the presentation gives me life omg.

-’one recent manhunt had our crisis response team chasing down a bizarrely feral unsub in the wilderness of north carolina-”

-OFMG LOL ITS DEREK

-STILES SPAT WATER EVERYWHERE THIS IS GREAT

-are they literally trying to sell that this is current??? like that is clearly season 1 footage of derek what the fuck is happening right now. why cant he just have a vacation for fun, why do the writers have to ruin everything for him but nope, mass hunting derek time ofc,

-the way stiles put his hand over his mouth as if that would cover up the fact that he literally spat water everywhere. smooth stilinski.

-omg the presenter dude look down at the list of names seeing Mieczyslaw Stilinski and legit being like ‘uh... young man’ thats awesome.

-’just got a little excited’ honestly what the fuck teen wolf. you baiting sterek fans or what?

-stiles trying to find out what they’re after him for- ‘Murder’ but what type of murder. “Mass murder’

-suspenseful music AGAIN jesus fucking c h r i s t.

-OMG now they’re just zooming in on dereks tattoo, increasing the music. dude we fucking get it, thats derek hale and you, the writers, fucking hate him. chill.

#teen wolf season 6b #spoilers #semi live blogging #i have a lot of feelings apparently #this is one hundred per cent sass lets be real here #lololol what a laugh really #teen wolf spoilers #6b spoilers

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