#[ the trainwreck: deviations ]

[alittlebitofloveliness]

Metas & Thoughts Masterpost

Reworking my pinned and this is mostly so stuff is easier to find lol

Dallas Winston Should Not Have a Hot Actor

Ponyboy Has An Addictive Personality

Steve and Ponyboy are Actually Good Friends

Thoughts on Steve and Evie

The Outsiders and Attatchment Styles- Planning to Revise

Darry Curtis Needs a Break

Steve Randle Also Needs a break

Steve is an Integral Part of the Story and Always has Been

Darry's Nickname Being Superman is Rough

The Outsiders is Very Different When Viewed From a Feminist Lense (a reply to a confessions post)

This Tim Shepard Moment is My Roman Empire

Johnny and Steve are Abuse Victims and Narrative Foils

Cherry and Soda are Narrative Foils and No One Talks About It

Sandy is No Worse than Any Other Character and We Need to Stop Saying Otherwise

Misogyny Runs Rampant in the Fandom and We Need to Discuss It

Johnny Couldn't Survive Without Ponyboy

If Ponyboy Died but Johnny Didn't, Dallas Would Survive the Book

What if Pony Died Instead of Johnny?

What if Dallas Died First?

Ponyboy's Mental Health is a Trainwreck

Darry Doesn't Parent Anyone But Ponyboy and He's Really Bad at It

Dally Doesn't have a Father Figure- But it Would be Cool if it was Buck

Two-bit's Interest in Marcia was Genuine and a Clear Deviation from his 'Type'

The Fandom Forgets These Crucial Things Too Often

Ponyboy is the Baby of the Curtis Gang

Pony is the Baby of the Curtis Gang pt 2

Ponyboy is Fourteen not Four

Darry and his Dad Have Some Interesting Foiling

Darry is Pretty Gay

Two-Bit is More Than Comic Relief

Most Greaser/Soc Ships are Fun but Unrealistic and the Same is True for a Lot of the Gay Ships

The Shepards would be Different People if they were Socs

Curly and Angela Saved Tim pt 1

Curly and Angela Saved Tim pt 2

Dallas and Two-bit are both Violent Creatures, They Just Express it Differently

A Potential Future for Darry

Yes, Ponyboy idealizes Soda

Patrick Swayze as Darry Curtis

Soda Doesn't Die in Nam But Pony Wouldn't be Able to Survive if he Did

Two-Bit is a Tragic Character

Two-bit is Tragic But His Sister is Even More Tragic

Ninth Grade Probably Sucked for Soda

Two-bit As a Protector

The Book and the Musical are Different Stories and Should be Treated as Such

[aquaburst3]

By popular request...or an anon commenting me last night about enjoying me creating posts about the flaws in TWST and wanting me to talk about the worldbuilding aspect specifically along with me having some free time between jobs, here it is!

Disclaimer: Keep in mind this is all personal opinion. If you enjoy the worldbuilding in the game and find zero problems with it, great! I don't care. You are entitled to your opinion and I am entitled to mine.

Where do I even begin? The shorter question would be, "What isn't wrong with it?" xD But seriously, oh, boy—there's a lot. Hell, this is pretty much my go-to example how NOT to write an urban fantasy world.

The closest thing I can compare the world of TWST to is the movie Bright—and that's NOT a good thing. For those of you who never had the misfortune of watching that late 2010s trainwreck, it's about a cop played by Will Smith teaming up with an orc to retrieve a magic wand. Sounds cool, right? However, like with TWST, the worldbuilding is something to be desired. It's an alternate universe where two thousand years ago there was a big war between The Nine Races where the orcs supported the Dark Lord, but an orc defected and lead an army that defeated him. Despite everything, it's pretty much exactly like real life with a few added fantasy elements. It even brings up real world pop culture references, containing such cringey and problematic lines like, "Fairy lives don't matter" after the Will Smith cop squishes a pixie that's on par with a raccoon in that world.

The worldbuilding in TWST feels like that. It's exactly like real life but with a few Disney and fantasy elements slapped on top, like magnets on a fridge. There is hardly any deviation from real life. Things like planes, cell phones, methods of measuring, days of the week, etc all exist just as they do irl. When you stop and think about it, half of these things shouldn't exist and the other should be a little different.

Yana also never thinks of the implications all of this alternate history. Magic always existing and the Greek gods being real should have a huge ripple effect, creating a completely different history compared to real life, but yet it doesn't. Hell, the whole idea of knowing that the Greek gods are real alone would massively change world history, since they would be a proven concept, snuffing out every other religion in existence! The world should be more massively different than ours with Disney sprinkled on top. There's no imagination about how a world like this would work. To quote Lindsey Ellis, "You cannot import elements from our real world without including all of the history that comes with them. You can, but it's lazy, and it sucks." xD Sure, you can write a fantasy world with cars and stuff, but the histories and the ways those exist in those worlds cannot be the exact same. There must be some divergence for it to make sense.

None of the new worldbuilding elements sense or feels woven in. It feels like Yana tossing out whatever idea she comes up up with at the wall and seeing what sticks. A lot of it starts to fall a part or even contradicts itself.

Take the whole Stitch or Tsums events. The existence both of these imply that aliens exist. That brings up a lot of questions like...

What is this world's policy for alien life?

Are aliens well known entities for this world?

What are other's reaction to this?

How did his story play out in this world if that's the case?

Everyone in this world has a Disney counterpart, right? If that's the case, wouldn't that mean there's some TWST version of Stitch running around Night Raven?

Is any of this ever addressed? Nope. That's stupid. World shattering shit like that should be addressed. While I know these are probably more than likely corporate mandates, especially since Tmus are a Japanese Disney product while Stitch is super popular in Japan, she could've added a disclaimer saying that it's a crack au that has nothing to do with the canon. The fact that these are both canon is mind boggling.

Plus, both of these events create a giant plot hole. If aliens are known to exist in this world, then why the fuck can't Yuu go home? If aliens exist, wouldn't there be portals and other ways for them to go home? It just makes Yuu and the rest of the cast look like total dumbasses for never thinking of this!

It goes beyond stupid events, but happens in general. The game routinely brings up similar elements without thinking of their implications on the game as a whole. Take the whole existence of STYKs. It was never once brought up or foreshadowed in the game, but brings about a lot of questions that are hardly explored. Like if this has existed for hundreds of years, how the fuck hasn't anyone heard of it? If STYKS is attached has a branch which is like our world's, someone should've blew the whistle eons ago. Surely, someone as smart as Idia or another mage should've been able to hack them and expose that to the public. Right? Wouldn't there be more of a public outcry for stealing people away, including royalty? Wouldn't there be government oversight about this? None of these questions are never addressed. Yet that element is slapped in without a second thought. Same also goes for all of the new lore in regards to Lilia's past, those pointless prophet dreams or how Playful Land works.

The magic system and how overblot works also fall apart the more you think about it. According to the light novel, only one out of ten humans is a mage. The percentage goes up in other races, but it remains about the same. But that makes no sense. TWST isn't like the HP universe where mages are isolated from the outside world, they are a part of society. Wouldn't it be the DOMINANT gene after over centuries of mages fucking mortals? I think it being more like the ATLA or BNHA universe where mages are the majority would make a lot more sense. That's what I did in my fic. Hell, it would make the world more unique, because usually fantasy stories have it where mages are a minority.

How overblotting works is never fully explained. All that we know, despite being on the seventh fucking story arc, is that whenever a mage uses Okay, sure. But there are times where that isn't the case. Characters who hard use up any magic like Leona and Vil overblot. Even if you argue that they were emotional during those bits or something, wouldn't the other part play a bigger role, since they used up so little magic in those cases? How in the fuck is that unknown concept to the general public? Wouldn't that be common knowledge? Diseases like Alzheimer's aren't something that everyone experiences, but this existence of those things are still common knowledge. Hell, why is it extremely rare in the first place? Wouldn't it be more commonplace? I feel like having it be a biological consequence of a mage using up too much magic and it being a well known down side to the world like how it is in my writing makes a lot more sense and is much simpler.

The lore around the fae also make zero sense. Common elements in fae lore like never thanking them or accepting gifts from them for you owe them a favour to cream and honey making them drunk are never brought up or mentioned. These are not random tropes brought up in shit like Baldur's Gate 3, but ingrained shit to the fantasy genre. You can't strip them out, because it is what makes the fae, fae. Hardly any types of fae from folklore are ever brought up outside of dragons and Tinkerbell style pixies. Characters like Vil who act very fae like are completely human. To be honest, I genuinely get the sense that Yana has done no research into this topic at all, because that's how out of touch they seem compared to how they are in folklore and other fantasy series. But if that is actually the case, then she should've looked into it more or consulted another writer who knows a lot about it.

Plus, the whole idea behind Briar Valley also makes no sense. They are completely isolated from the rest of the world...because…well, nothing, besides possibly vague hatred of tech. That's dumb. Countries don’t isolate themselves for no reason. There is always some sort of explanation for them to do that, whether it's manufactured for political gain like Panem or out of protection like Wakanda. Seriously, am I the only one that thinks that Brier Valley is just the fantasy Amish? As for the Spinning Wheel Wars, that will be explored in more depth as the fics go on.

If you want to see a world similar to TWST done right, watch The Owl House. That series, too, has a modern fantasy world. Unlike TWST, it seems like a fantasy world with modern elements instead of the other way around. Despite having phone-like devices and manga, it feels like stepping into another world.

Either way, if you wondered why I came up with completely different worldbuilding for my fics—this is exactly why. The worldbuilding in this game is pure dogshit. I wanted to create something leaps and bounds better than the bullshit we got. The fact that me, an amuetur writer, gets complimented and praised for the worldbuilding in my fics and it being better then the game is truly sad. Yana is a seasoned professional with a published manga with dozens of volumes under her belt, she should be better at this than me, not the other way around! Same goes for @stormkitty97, because she helps me brainstorm ideas for my shit and uses it in her writing, too.

The biggest sin of all is that there are some genuinely really cool ideas in TWST. The idea of turning into a monster whenever you use up too much magic is terrifying. The story could've done so much more with that if it made more sense!

As much as I might get hate for saying this, Yana reminds me a lot of Stephanie Meyers in the sense that she can come up with cool concepts and ideas, but has no idea how to execute them properly. I would love to see a better professional writer tackle a concept similar to overblot, because it would be cool and scary in the right hands.

I think one big lesson that amuetur writers like myself can learn from the worldbuilding in TWST is that if you are a "Pantser", aka someone who writes on the fly, like Yana, great, all the more power to you. Hell, I confess that I'm more like Brandon Sanderson in the sense that I'm a mixture of both a "Pantser" and an "Architect" Writer, and I came up with some elements of my worldbuilding on my TWST fics as I was writing like the characters being able to teleport. But for fuck's sake, have a solid plan for your worldbuilding and stick with it. Because constantly throwing ideas at the wall beyond the outlining stage will eventually make these contradictions arise and make your world fall apart. Also, if you are building a modern fantasy world like TWST, always think through the implications each element bring. Adding in elements from our real world will always drag along all of the history tied with it. Having your modern fantasy world seem like TWST or Bright is the last thing you want.

[jimquisition]

The taste of Skull Island still lingers bitterly on one’s tongue, yet those fine monsters at GameMill Entertainment have already offered another scrape from the barrel’s bottom. The Walking Dead: Destinies takes the AMC television series and runs it through a thresher to create a hurried and barely coherent cliff notes version.

There is, however, a twist. Dotted throughout this trainwreck of a game are binary choices allowing you to decide the fate of characters in ways that may either follow or deviate from the original story. With this conceit, Destinies manages to make perhaps the most valuable contribution to The Walking Dead as a franchise.

You can kill off Carl Grimes.

You can do it pretty early, too.

[sensessences]

i have to gush about this colleague at work. this man is so SWEET! he is so attentive, charming, he is like a flower. this is such a charismatic, kind, chill pretty gay man and GODS am i refreshed by his keen and kind composure. after the trainwreck that was that other colleague from training whom disappointed me deeply by being a misoginistic almost-pedophilic creep (can't believe i ever found that man mininimally nice to look at) it is SO refreshing to work at a space men are not only majorly gay but also aesthetically nice to the eye AND treat me like a human being. i am so grateful i am experiencing this relief and am able to finally have a job to, after a long time, pay my bills and not have to rely on others to eat. i am so grateful i am working in times where the people around me treat me nicely and are not (or have been, yet) creeps around me. i am so grateful i have managed to, despite within much chaos and overgiving of my part, develop a routine that involves so many different people and spaces from before. in a way that i feel more integrated, less alienated, and with a minimal value. within a minimal sense of what i do and my role there and how i can contribute. maybe it is not much, nor as much as others may have expected, but i know what this means and what it means for me. what it means this independence, what it means to be able to be logical about things, and to be able to show myself i can do beyond what i did in the past.

this past few weeks were the rough of survival and a lot of effort with the current comprehension of a soft part of forgiveness. like anything, there is always a tougher side and a softer side to things. simultaneously, i am currently on a hum of understanding of forgiveness after much work of my will, body, and conscience.

lately that shame has been resurfacing in me in a more of a... self inquisitive tone. i saw a man refering to shame as the selfish self punishment whilst remorse is what allows us to feel for the other, and i feel i am constantly everlastingly at odds with how much i can do vs how much i think about and wish to do for others.

i miss everyone all the time, and i pinch at my own ear constantly for that all the time.

one of my many flaws is the neuroticism and anxiety steeming from fear where i can get overly critical and nit-picky about matters because i fear that if i dont take accountability (and/or the other person too) the connection will be doomed by its miscommunications, misunderstandings, and more. no matter my good intentions, it often rather does a disservice by troubling further muddy waters and i corner/pressure people and they leave or abstain.

once upon a time i learnt from a girl that to press her further only distances her from me.

once upon a time i also learnt from a girl that to not be well aware of ones context and/or limits is to be taken advantage of.

at the current situation, the two girls would have come at war - which they did, for months, until we parted ways.

i am not proud nor happy (though a little now better aware) of how this urgency and priorization of one another's feelings and senses of what is just is not a panaceatic approach to every intimate interpersonal conundrum.

i like those jungian phrases that say "until you make the unconscious conscious, your vices/ills will rule your life and you will call it destiny" along with the "people often use intellectualism to escape experience and truth". to which then make me inquire how is it fallible to put effort in being in tune with feelings and being open (and demanding in relationships the other to be so). but then again, that too is its own logic, and to which a minucious approach misses the point of instinct, experience, and the overall inherentness that people are each so peculiar and beautiful not for our patterns but our deviations.

[tazova]

I've never felt LOVE™. Even towards my parents.

I just kinda care/respect people on different lvl.

I did try relationships, but it always started like 'this is a genetically good, psychologically stable individual'. And I was always so devastated, when our 'relation' couldn't last long for obvious reasons.

The situation is even worse,'cause as a woman I could just simulate interest. But this stupid brain got traumatized over mediocre incident, I can't tolerate even an idea of intercourse (towards me).

I learned abt asexuality from medicine book, that was an old one I believe, since they called it sexual deviation. But symptoms were matching, so I agreed with this term and get on with my live.

Rn I am too deep in a Trainwreck of my live to even try dating. But I hope that I will find a mate, that I could trust enough to make children. I want to become a mother so bad.

any experiences to share about how you find out you're asexual / aromantic ?

[interroughbang]

Girl 1 music versus Girl 2 Music

“See You Again (feat. Kali Uchis)” by Tyler the Creator is a great song. Watching people sort gender presentation by the lyrics is less than great.

If those first two sentences seemed absurd, it’s because they are, all things considered, to the average person. The context will not make it much better, but instead dismantle this concept and piece together what happened to make such a thing reality. It’ll be a long walk; stay with me.

We’ll start at the beginning. For hundreds and hundreds and even thousands of years, there has been a concept of “those” people, a disparaged “other”. The evolution of a stratified society and predefined societal roles exacerbated the issue of classifying people as well as it did the issue of classifying those who fail to fulfill a role, or who fulfill a role we particularly dislike.

Unfortunately, a lot of the burden for classified ‘others’(so to speak) has fallen onto women. Certain definitions of proper, traditional femininity are utterly stifling in their restrictions and equally punishing for deviation from said restrictions. There are ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways to be feminine. Though this is less restrictive (perhaps just restrictive in a different way)—nowadays, the roots of policing and judging women for how they exist while being women persists. As far back as 1851, editorials warned of women with “an obvious tendency to encroach upon masculine manners, manifested even in trifles, which cannot be too severely rebuked or too speedily repressed”. They were certainly rebuked. Victorian women couldn’t even ride bicycles for a while without being mocked for ‘bicycle face’, or being told that their organs would get jumbled to death if their fragile uterus dare brave the ride of a velocipede. The emerging trend of wearing bloomers (billowy big pants) met harsh criticism as well—how dare women engage in such mannish behavior…like…. pants.  This policing of women’s’ existence has always had its ugly trivial side. On the more extreme side of things, suffragettes fighting for women’s’ right to vote were cast as angry, cruel women that would die alone and unloved for their inability to surrender their lives to men. For a modern equivalent, turn to the more recent ‘snowflake’ trope. It gets its name from the phrase ‘special snowflake’, a phrase borrowed from children’s books that used snow as an analogy for all people being unique, and therefore special, in their own way. The ‘special snowflake’ as a stereotype gained popularity in 2016 and 2017. Women and LGBTQ+ folks who people decided were a little too unique were slapped with this label. Easy bullying. Anything from using they/them pronouns to being visibly queer or even just protesting a misogynist joke would get you thrown in this bin. I myself was, confusingly, labeled a snowflake when I did a class presentation by myself since my groupmates had done nothing. Honestly it made no sense. The snowflake thing by itself didn’t either, though—it was just slapping a target onto the back of people that society could easily deem nonconforming. Such people using the ‘snowflake’ term thought the nonconformist existence of minoritized folks was only acceptable as a punchline. Why else would it be okay to be so strangely un-average? Women had possessed the right to vote for almost 100 years by 2016, but heaven forbid a woman wanted to exist in a way that was noticeable.  

Luckily that trend is long gone. What took it’s place is markedly less of a bully tactic, but still a strange, ambiguous way of categorizing people, and yet another stereotype. Forget the preppy girl, the jock, or the nerd, and make way for the trainwreck that is ‘girls who say hi v.s. girls who say bruh’. I could not make this up. It’s essentially a trend from a couple years ago that made jokes about stereotyping feminine girls (often with the connotation of them being innocent and/or weak) and ‘cool’ girls who are apparently less feminine or something…. essentially a more convoluted ‘type a’ and ‘type b’ for women. As if there wasn’t already enough of that. This is where the music mention from the beginning comes back—the ‘hii’ versus ‘bruh’ girl meme would compare any characteristics from appearance, speech, favorite food, and taste in artistic media between these stereotypes, essentially filing any sort of thing someone could be or enjoy into a category. Hopefully you, reader, can see where this can get messy. Take some real examples:

Already weird and abstract. Back to where we started: “See You Again”. Again, a great song. What happened after the bruh/hi girl thing was that people started to repeat that by categorizing people based on which line of the song’s ending people would sing. “See You Again” ends with Tyler singing “okay okay okay okay” and Kali Uchis harmonizing with some ‘la’s. Literal sounds reappropriated into a ‘type’ of girl. Every action of a woman categorized. In googling examples the first suggestions for ‘okokok lalala girl’ were ‘quiz’ or ‘test’ or ‘difference’—as if one should want to know, to categorize themselves, to fit into being one type of girl or the other and match the media they enjoy and consume to that.

Different iterations of stereotypes persist, of course, it never really ends. Now I often see labels or memes of people’s taste in art as being some sort of nameable, Pinterest-searchable aesthetic—Lana Del Rey is ‘coquette’, Radiohead is ‘femcel’, and with these words go not only music but fashion, speech, body language…sound familiar?

Though definitely strange to process, it isn’t entirely unheard of that this happens. We humans are communal creatures, and undoubtedly finding identifiable communities of shared interest are helpful, but there are caveats to what sort of categorization is helpful and what is a symptom of needing that categorization. I bear no ill will to coquette or femcel or hii or any sort of girl. What I do bear a bit of distaste for is that we live in a world that will try to shove women into a box to make their differences acceptable—one must conform to something.

Let it be known, reader, that no woman—or anyone else for that matter—needs to conform to anything. The very idea of conformity has been fabricated from the start, since ‘woman’ and ‘man’ were conceptualized as separate genders rather than subsets of genetic phenotype. There is nothing to conform to, rules are made up, categories are for fun and magazine quizzes, not the great aggregate mass of human expression.

And “See You Again”, by Tyler the Creator and featuring Kali Uchis, is just a good song. Nothing more. Sing whatever part you want at the end. All it means for who you are is that you decided to sing it.

I send you off with a r/3amthoughts post that highlights the silliness of all this.

Additional citation:

[galedekarios]

HANK: Step away from the ledge!

[arda-ancalima]

Prev tags:

#klint and barok to me have the exact same Structure and Underlying Functions #that seem to present very very differently #barok's reaper grumpiness is a combo of an act and ptsd #klint is very calm very chipper and very ^v^ all the time #inside he is a trainwreck of rage and self-control so iron-tight if he loses his grip on himself for a moment #he'll vault over a desk and come kill you himself #man has the shortest of tempers and HATES people touching his stuff or deviating from his instructions #world's twitchiest man #still cheery and chipper though even if he has to be at a crime scene for 4am

Love headcanoning Klint as someone with a short temper because it's not the sort of thing you say about a dead man who was, by all means, known as a kind and dearly loved person who did a lot of good in his life. But I think it parallels Kazuma well and contrasts Barok's "constantly grumpy" with a more "constantly smiley but watch out"

[atlantethan]

Here’s a thought: Adaptations of long book series, like John Carter of Mars, Dinotopia, Percy Jackson, and Mortal Engines should be TV series and NOT movies. You need only look at Game of Thrones in order to see why this is the better solution.

[nanjokei]

the deen higurashi animes are not that bad people just watched them when they were 11, heard people say they were bad, then read the vns much later and went "well its not exactly 1:1 so it really is bad"

you really have to appreciate the work chiaki kon did to make the original higurashi anime coherent in 26 episodes. sure its not perfect, but compared to most vn adaptations, are you kidding? deen higurashi is perfectly watchable. it's no clannad but i consider it a successful vn anime adaptation that stands in a field of failed vn anime adaptations. it is great as long as you stop after finishing kai and do not touch anything that came after it

also this is only tangentially related but since i see people sometimes lying that ryukishi may not approve of this, or especially of the umineko anime. not true! the umineko anime is a different matter because the production of that anime was a mess, the story was releasing AS THE ANIME WAS AIRING, and ep4 was horribly adapted by virtue of it literally COMING OUT LITERALLY AS THE ANIME WAS AIRING. ngl though, as much of a mess it was, it was one of the first anime i genuinely followed from the first episode to the last as it was airing. and what an anime it was. absolute trainwreck, everyone was happy that EP3 was actually adapted pretty well after how goofy EP1 was and okay but derpy EP2 got sometimes, then came EP4 and uh. haha.

but i digress... my point with this^ is that a lot of people have delusions of grandeur of original authors hating an anime adaptation just to justify their own hatred of it. i see it all the time, especially with old adaptations of shounen manga superseded by either remakes or sequels (rare, but i'm thinking of bleach here). people have this long standing urban myth that togashi HATES hunter x hunter 99, but the only recorded opinion we've ever gotten of it is that his assistants would watch it while he worked away on the manga itself, so he didn't have an opinion on it. a lack of an opinion does not signify an opinion. if anything, there are more clues pointing to togashi being involved in the anime in at least some capacity— namely the bonus stage arc, which has foreshadowing for things that hadn't even happened in the manga yet at the time, and was allegedly based on scrapped drafts that togashi had.

really, lately "mangaka is involved with every step of the adaptation" has become synonymous with quality, but manga artists are manga artists. not all of them know what decision is right for the animated medium. i have yet to see an anime turn out especially good because the studio kept the mangaka in the room making whatever level of decision they can claim happened. (to be honest, i kind of doubt it anyway, but i don't care.) it's dumb, but i miss the era when adaptations were actually about adapting to a new medium and having *shudders* oh noooo spooooky filler to help the story flow better, or hell just diving deeper into certain scenes and expanding on them, rather than having a big jack off contest about who can draw the closest to the manga without any deviation so a bunch of salivating geeks on twitter would tweet at any public figure involved in the anime with either praise or insults both 100% lacking in any critical merit

at least.... can we stop animating at 300 gigasharts per second to appeal to twitter shounen meatheads so we can get anime longer than 13 episodes again. im fucking sick

[rarepears]

Liu QingQui wakes up in the caves with the 4th peak lord, who he's pretty sure he's only ever seen ONCE since they became peak lords, shaking him frantically.

It takes about two weeks of him being stuck with the 4th peak's disciples hanging all over him while the peak lord is doing peak lord things with Yue Qingyaun before anyone actually thinks to tell him he died.

(LQQ was too much of a himbo to work it out on his own.)

Liu Qingqiu you say...

Shen Qingqiu and Liu Qingge both died in the caves that day, together, in the midst of a qi deviation in which Liu Qingge was trying to kill his martial brother and Shen Qingqiu, with his hand stretched out to touch Liu Qingge's chest, attempted to give Liu Qingge a qi infusion to calm Liu Qingge's rolling storm of qi.

Because they died together, qi intertwined, Shen Jiu wasn't expected it, but he should have known that his luck was so foul that this would happen.

This being that Shen Qingqiu and Liu Qingge's souls were still separate, but they shared the same ghostly bodies now.

They were now-

Liu Qingqiu.

-

(And then to their horrors, they both are no longer peak lords but are disciples of the 4th peak because they need to relearn how to use qi using the ghost cultivation methods as well as having two souls and two minds coordinate one ghostly form.

it's a trainwreck.

[killedbyhotpants]

Rating every version of Cobra Commander from GI Joe media I have consumed thus far...

GI Joe: Retaliation

I don't care for the first movie enough to talk about it. The second movie didn't make any sense, they immediately killed their main protagonist, I think Zartan was the president, all the baddies were put in waterjail... It was a great batshit insane experience. CC had exactly zero substance as a character but damn he looked cool in that getup, walking in slow-mo towards the camera. No idea what he was trying to accomplish but he looked good doing it. 8/10

GI Joe: Resolute

Very evocative of classic comic/cartoon CC but if you gave him a cute outfit and a sword, and let him say 1 swear. I like this boy's feral energy. His voice is kinda hot. 9.5/10

GI Joe: Sierra Muerte

So in this comic CC is told that he's dying and Doctor Mindbender prescribes a full-body transplant. CC spends just about every second of this comic being extremely dramatic and/or having an existential crisis. It's absolutely hilarious. Thoroughly enjoyed every panel of this dramatic bitch. 10/10

GI Joe: Deviations

Again a CC more wacky than serious. This CC has successfully taken over the world and is miffed that he can't go around spreading mayhem like the good old days. His outfit is wild and I love it so much. He is a sassy baby who I adore. 11/10

GI Joe: A Real American Hero

Ok now this... This is beautiful. This absurd screechy boy has the best voice, the best janky animation, and THE GREATEST stupid world domination plans of all time. I could literally watch him all day. 100/10

GI Joe: A Real American Hero (but like, the comic by Larry Hama)

Listen... Listen. These comics are both good because they're ridiculous beyond imagination, but also good because they tell great stories with really fun cinematic art and action sequences? Like yeah CC calls people clams and it's great but I've also found myself feeling real human emotions over this filter-less trainwreck of a terrorist? I really have a soft spot for these comics and love this iteration of CC idk what else to say. 101/10

[babyspacebatclone]

New post in the series “Things I need to write before my brain lets me go to sleep.”

How I would write The Emoji Movie to not just be a pointless trainwreck.

(Why???? I give myself bizarre challenges as writing exercises. I kinda liked the results of this one.)

Not going into all the changes, just my big three.

Smiler’s motivations are reworked. On one hand, she really is a reasonable authority figure in trying to keep the texting app from becoming unstable/deleted. On the other hand, she enforces the “don’t deviate from your purpose” specifically to serve her own needs. She wants there to be a finite amount of expressions, particularly “happy” expressions. If there is a fine grain of detail between the meanings of 🙂😀😄😁😆☺️😊😌😋, them there’s reason to use nine different smile emojis instead of just one - her. She’s willing to enforce this rule for the other emotions to maintain her monopoly on happiness.

Jailbreak expands on the entire “Being a princess sucks.” As in, she talks about (in kid friendly terms) how she’s not satisfied being a figurehead member of a ruling class who’s only in power as long as others give them power. In her words, “If I’m going to be noticed, it’s going to be for what I do, not for what I am or look like.” Obviously, more emphasis on her actually having useful hacking skills as well. One point is her having a little light graffiti tag sign she makes by drawing in the air that she leaves as her calling card.

And the big one I find brilliant:

Gene’s reward at the end of the movie is to be the app icon. Every update, the expression on the app changes, which obviously Gene in this setting is best suited for. It’s a position of respect, but also takes away his pressure to conform - of course, in universe, he’s the one making the choice of expression, and able to do ones he feels he’s awesome at.

[themattress]

I honestly feel like these results make perfect sense. SuperS is obviously the most underrated so of course it doesn't get many votes, and nor does Classic (which is Dark Kingdom arc, not Dark Moon!) since it's that good and the praise it gets is warranted.

S is absolutely the most overrated season. Yes, praise for Sailor Stars is baffling to me, but it doesn't come up half as often as praise for S does. S had a solid first 22 episodes, Haruka and Michiru were great at first, Hotaru was good when the series finally got to her, and Professor Tomoe was utter perfection the whole series through. But other than that, there were problems in the direction of the series even to start with, the main characters were showing clear signs of Flanderization, and the head writer swap not only wrecked the quality of this series but the whole anime going forward, making it even more formulaic and even more deviating from the source material than it was before. S was, tbh, a major trainwreck.

As for R getting a lot of votes, that tracks too. R is commonly praised, but fans who don't like it really don't like it. They don't like Chibiusa's bratty attitude, they don't like time travel as a plot device, they don't like the infamous Usagi-Mamoru break-up, and they don't like (why I'll never know) the Makai Tree arc that the series opens on. Of course they would vote for it.

Lets have some fun on the 31st Anniversary of the 90's anime( March 7th 1992) premier shall we?

Which arc do you feel like is the most Overrated?

Let's define Overrated

Overrated- rated or valued too highly.

So which Season you feel like the fandom hypes up so much??

I'm also going to do one for Underrated so I'm just running this poll for a day and not for a week.

[pseudophan]

no but seriously why is the jonbenet ransom note funny to you you fucking weirdo? don’t get me wrong I do love you nora but sometimes you puzzle tf out of me. and honestly I’m tired🚶🏻

FBEJXHFB listen i know it sounds bad but considering the people you'd feel bad for is the family and there's like a 99.9999% chance jonbenet's mother wrote the ransom note it's like... i'm ok with laughing at it because holy shit what the fuck is this

for the record: it was written on three pages of patsy's notebook with patsy's pen and there was evidence of previous drafts done in the same notebook. oh and it was her handwriting, i believe handwriting experts matched 22 or 24 out of 26 letters to patsy's handwriting and you can make a case for a match in court already with only like 12 or 14 matches

you know how ransom notes are always super short and to the point? like. we have your daughter, meet us here, pay us this amount, or else. that's all you need. meanwhile, this trainwreck:

"Mr. Ramsey: Listen Carefully! We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction. We respect your business, but not the country it serves.

At this time, we have your daughter in our possession. She is safe and unharmed and if you want her to see 1997, you must follow our instructions to the letter.

You will withdraw $118,000 from your account. $100,000 will be in $100 bills and the remaining $18,000 in $20 bills. Make sure that you bring an adequate size attache to the bank.

When you get home, you will put the money in a brown paper bag. I will call you between 8 and 10 a.m. tomorrow to instruct you on delivery. The delivery will be exhausting so I advise you to be rested. If we monitor you getting the money early we might call you early to arrange an earlier delivery of the money and hence and earlier pickup of your daughter.

Any deviation of my instructions will result in the immediate execution of your daughter. You will also be denied her remains for a proper burial. The two gentlemen watching over your daughter do not particularly like you so I advise you not to provoke them.

Speaking to anyone about your situation, such as police or F.B.I. will result in your daughter being beheaded. If we catch you talking to a stray dog, she dies. If you alert bank authorities, she dies. If the money is in way marked or tampered with, she dies. You can try to deceive us, but be warned we are familiar with law enforcement countermeasures and tactics.

You stand a 99% chance of killing your daughter if you try to outsmart us. Follow our instructions and you stand a 100% of getting her back. You and your family are under constant scrutiny, as well as the authorities.

Don't try to grow a brain John. You are not the only fat cat around so don't think that killing will be difficult. Don't underestimate us, John. Use that good, Southern common sense of yours. It's up to you now John! Victory! S.B.T.C."

[theuncurrentdispatch]

At the end ATWQ, *SPOILERS* do you have any thoughts on why, in-story and writing/meaning reasons, the Associates reject Lemony at the end? Is it because he became an adult or was becoming an adult as conceptualized in the story? Or was it something else?

Whether or not Snicket became an adult is a complex question. His “apprenticeship [is] over” (4.291), but the last thing he tells anyone before disappearing is that he’s “not old enough” (4.288), an assertion laden with irony and a callback to the Bombinating Beast not attacking him in SYBIS because it’s “not old enough” (3.221) to harm anyone. By the end of ATWQ both the Beast and Snicket have aged out of this inability and Snicket has fulfilled his destiny of becoming Hangfire’s disciple. Hangfire, ATWQ’s largest-looming embodiment of adulthood, may look “peaceful” and “as if something at last was his” (4.252) during the Beast’s siege because he’s completed his true objective of passing on his legacy. In SYBIS, the “box of matches in [Snicket’s] pocket” implied his potential to turn into an adult arsonist like Hangfire, and he’s held back only by childish beliefs like “adults should[n’t] be encouraged to smoke” (3.27). In the climax of WITNDFAON, Snicket now likens Hangfire to his “teacher” (4.245) and credits him for instruction on how to “play” (4.248) the Beast statue and unleash his potential for destruction. 

I’ve always held it as a weak deus ex machina that ATWQ’s master of treachery could be defeated with a deception as plain as “what’s that behind you”. I can only justify it as the metaphorical gateway into Snicket’s “wild, lawless” place, that he commits a sort of ur-deception or “very old trick” so archetypal that, like “the old myths and superstitions” (4.246), its recounting requires the Association of Associates to recite it like a Greek chorus outside the derailed train. Snicket’s apprenticeship in Stain’d-by-the-Sea ends not just because he murders Hangfire, but because he tricks Hangfire with malicious intent, because he summons the Beast, and because he reveals previously suppressing Hangfire’s identity. Eve’s original sin wasn’t a magicked apple but the indelible knowledge that she had the ability to disobey and, what’s more, to lie about it and to implicate others. 

After Snicket’s misdeeds culminate in a literal trainwreck (in the shape of “a dead serpent” [4.259] that recalls Eden’s lech), Snicket finds that “friend or enemy, associate or stranger, [everyone shrinks] from [him]” (4.258) like he’s “a moving shadow, casting darkness over everyone” (4.286). In essence, he’s like Armstrong Feint. Note the lone cross in Seth’s opening illustration to chapter thirteen, after Snicket reflects that Hangfire was the only person “brave enough to face the beast directly” and who Snicket classifies among “heroes [and] villains” (4.252). It’s uncertain whether Snicket views himself as more “like Armstrong Feint, someone once kind and gentle who lowered himself into treachery, or more like a mysterious beast, hidden in the depths and summoned to wickedness” (4.290), but he now empathizes with both figures. Daniel Handler and I are technically Jewish, but feel free to interpret Hangfire as a Christ figure martyred by his inability to overcome humanity’s disbelief in his message, and Snicket as his reluctant disciple as he records the man’s story in a tetralogy mirroring the four gospels. 

The series ends with Snicket’s coat housing the Beast statue (and presumably the same box of matches) even as Snicket muses that “long ago, [he] had made a promise to return the statue to its rightful owner” (4.289). Snicket told Theodora in WCTBATH that the Beast “has been associated with the Mallahan family for generations” and that they’re likely the statue’s “rightful owners” (1.93-94). But Snicket doesn’t give the statue to Lady Mallahan’s only competent descendant, nor would Moxie likely want something she now knows brings with it only destruction and covetous frenzy reminiscent of the Maltese Falcon. Despite his misgivings about alienating his friends, Snicket never offers up the totem of chaos, and alongside his warped notion that he “think[s he] kept [his] promise” (4.277) to help Ellington find her father by unmasking and killing him, it’s quite possible Snicket also believes he’s fulfilled his promise to find the statue’s rightful owner: Himself. A statue only capable of chaos would “rightfully” belong to someone capable of chaos, and by tricking Hangfire with malevolent intent, Snicket has wrested ownership of the statue from Hangfire like Malfoy wrested ownership of the Elder Wand from Dumbledore. Even the Beast, raised and nourished by Hangfire, recognizes Snicket’s authority over the hand that fed him; Hangfire points uselessly at Snicket when he speaks his last words, but the Beast only obeys Snicket’s wordless pointing to leave, after looking over “[Snicket and] the statue in [his] hands” (4.254). 

As discussed in my earlier essay, Snicket never shakes the feeling that he, like Ellington, will always be an outsider to the residents of Stain’d, Associates included. Snicket’s not surprised in the climax that “the Mitchums of the world just bicker” while ignoring evil, or that Gifford and Ghede think it's “not [their] job” to intervene in a wrongful arrest. What ultimately drives Snicket from Stain’d is alienation from his friends. The Association is horrified by Hangfire’s murder because, unlike Snicket, they had only learned his identity moments before his death—And his identity is that of the absent parent, a specter that haunts each Associate. The Association relies on hope, but Snicket quietly believes that “Moxie’s mother [will] never send for her” and “Pip and Squeak's father [is] gone forever” (4.288). That said, the Association’s schism isn’t about Snicket’s deviation from the group’s strict moral code. Moxie laments that Snicket “didn’t have to feed [Hangfire] to that creature” (4.270) while simultaneously dismissing Feint’s orphaned daughter as “deserv[ing] to be in a prison cell” (4.279) for a murder Ellington didn’t commit. Snicket is ultimately as repulsed by the Associates’ hypocrisy as they are by his.

This brings Snicket to his second epiphany, that not only has his apprenticeship ended, but it’s now his responsibility to document its events. This is a postmodern concept of penance, to make amends not to the man Armstrong Feint (by, for example, rescuing his daughter) but to Feint’s story, lest he be erased a second time. Handler distinguishes between signifier and signified several times in the denouement: The town’s ink becoming “weaker and fainter” made the facts it represented appear “less certain” (4.263); Moxie equates Snicket “destroy[ing]” Hangfire to destroying a book and its “important secrets” (4.269); the Beast’s and Snicket’s actions have erased Hangfire’s meaning like “spilled ink across paper” voids the meaning of the words (4.249). Feint and his words “have vanished,” and though Snicket “wish[es]” his actions would too (4.254), he knows these actions obligate him to record his wrongdoing. Snicket ends WCTBATH with “practically none of” its events entering his official report (1.252), and this pattern persists through the second and third books. It’s only after “destroying” a man that Snicket pledges to revive Feint and his story in a fragmentary plot for the librarians. After all, “paper will put up with anything that’s written on it” (4.272), whether it’s spilled ink that destroys important secrets or words that resurrect a dead man “the way an idea moves from a book to your mind” (4.248).