#I need the stakes man

[timethehobo]

Sketch. Wish the game was brave enough to properly wound the Squad after fighting a League member at the very least. Would’ve upped the stakes imo.

[ratatatastic]

Vanha Kauppahalli date: en full, a 2 minute 50 second masterpiece...

Primetime Panthers | 11.6.24 (x)

[redeemed-wren]

I'm hoping episode 3 let's Ruby see the dark side of the Doctor. I feel that adds a very important dynamic to a Doctor-companion relationship, when they see how dark he can be and still choose to travel with him early on.

Rose watching Nine drag Cassandra back to die. Eleven yelling at Amy "Nobody human has anything to say to me today!" Donna begging Ten to stop drowning the spider babies, and then again to go back and save someone in Pompeii.

Fifteen has been FUN and I know he can do emotional range, I've seen his fear and his tears already. But I want to see him dark, and I want to see Ruby respond to that. I think it would add a LOT of depth to their relationship and is something missing.

Plus showcasing the Doctor's flaws (selfishness) will make him a much more interesting character. I want to see some conflict between the Doctor and Ruby.

[danaclese]

How high should the stakes be in a Batman story?

This high.

The whole world is on the line. A man with a gun. A helpless family. A tired, injured, Bat in body armour. Possible but narrow odds,. Barely any time. The whole world on the line. And Bruce understands that, because his world was destroyed once.

[uncanny-tranny]

At this point, gender nonconformity is about what the person says their experience is.

If a woman with a beard or a man with lipstick and a mustache says they're gender nonconforming, then they are! If a woman with short hair or a man with long hair says they aren't, they aren't! And that's not even getting into the awesome nonbinary, abinary, genderqueer, intersex, and general genderfuckery that may both be and not be conforming.

So much of what is even considered gender conforming or gender nonconforming is based on a world of exclusion. When we start defining one's conformity with whether they fit into white cishetero perisex standards or not, we play into the idea that there's only a very narrow window of what is considered worthy of time and thought.

[chloecherrysip]

We're going to save your brother.

[bruhstation]

of fucking course the best, most harrowing, most gut-wrenching tugs character only appeared in one episode (a bit of ramble in the tags)

[seaglassdinosaur]

It’s the fact that he didn’t have to be miserable.

All of his agonies about his weakness and monstrousness and lack of control was self-constructed, self-inflicted and he didn’t need to be miserable.

[lunar-years]

While I’m complaining I’ll say the hate on Luke Combs for the success of his Fast Car cover has always been aggressively annoying, given Tracey Chapman has openly stated she likes the cover and loves the paychecks it brings in AND she made an extremely rare appearance at the Grammys to perform it with him, so there are clearly no hard feelings there whatsoever. And yet people continue to speak over her and make a problem where there isn’t one.

[hephaestuscrew]

I'm still thinking about that scene in Victoriocity S3E7 where Fleet runs back towards the Beast so as to lure it into the path of the train...

Clara's exclamation of 'Teamwork, Fleet!' after Fleet says he's got a plan reflects her conviction that any plan that Fleet has will be a shared plan, something they do together.

This conviction is a kind of trust, and that trust is part of the reason Clara takes a moment to realise Fleet has headed back towards the Beast. She trusts that he's following behind her. She keeps talking to him, her words full of optimism.

When she realises Fleet isn't there, she immediately realises what that must mean he's done, and her voice sounds more small and scared than I think we've ever heard it before.

Fleet's attempt at self-sacrifice is a kind of betrayal of Clara's trust, but when he echoes her celebration of their teamwork in a more somber tone, I think it suggests that he understands the weight of that betrayal.

If Fleet's plan is that Clara won't realise he's gone until it's already too late, then he thinks "Teamwork, Clara" will be the last words he'll ever speak to her. In what he imagines will be their final conversation, Fleet affirms Clara's understanding of them as a team who work well together, even as he is making a choice that rejects the possibility of their teamwork in this scenario. It's a recognition of what their dynamic has meant. It's a goodbye and an apology, even if Clara doesn't understand it as such at first.

I don't think Fleet sounds scared as he initially faces down the train. When he shouts "Yeah, this way, you stupid machine! Come on then!", he sounds defiant and grimly determined.

In fact, I don't think he sounds afraid until Clara appears, until she might be at risk of being in the path of the Beast or the train as well. It's when he shouts "Clara, stay back for God's sake!" and "Please, get back!" that there's real fear and desperation in his voice. He can confront the idea of giving his own life, but not the idea that doing so might put Clara in danger.

Another thing about these lines is that the move from 'stay back' to 'get back' suggests that Clara didn't obey his first instruction but got closer to him (and therefore to the path of the Beast and the train) between those two lines.

Then Fleet gives what might be another attempt at his last words: "I'm sorry! I'm sorry."  A repeated apology before an attempted self-sacrifice is an implicit acknowledgement of how much losing him would hurt Clara. He regrets causing her pain.

Even so, he's accepted that he is about to die and that it'd be worth it to destroy the Beast. But Clara very much hasn't accepted either those things. She's still trying to yell over the noise of the train; she's pulling off her ring to throw at him.

I think it's a good illustration of how Clara's optimism is a kind of strength. She always believes that they can "make a new plan" and that it'll be one in which no one has to die. I think Archibald Fleet needs someone like that, someone who'll tell him to drop to the ground when his death advances from both sides, someone who - even in a dark tunnel with an murderous metal monster and a speeding train - won't stop shouting that there's hope.

[agniyagrif]

Idk how about you but for me personally every vampire is ace until said otherwise

And Shilo aroace because yeah

Idk, i just wanted to share)

[kiseiakhun]

Anyway, I think the worst thing Geoff Johns did to Hal's character is that he just made him boring. The fun thing about Hal is that he's the worst man to walk the earth. He's a trainwreck in the making. Every day he wakes up and thinks nothing and makes 20 awful decisions and messes up everything and goes to sleep content in a job well done and it's great. Hal is the Worst Man Ever™. He's a donkey in human form. By all means his personality and skillset makes him the perfect supervillain but he's a hero and he's imperfect and he claws himself back from the brink long after most people would've given up because that's who he is. That's at the core of his character. Even when he's below rock bottom, he never gives up, and god does he hit it, over and over again.

Johns just... erased all that complexity by making Hal the bestest greatest most precious lanterny lantern ever. Suddenly everyone loves him and treats parallax as just a 'hehe! Whoops!' and it sucks because if you take away the fact that Hal is a garbage human being he's just BORING. He's just a boring stereotypical stoic superhero. Who wants to read that! Who wants to read about Universe's Best Most Precious Greatest Man Gets Praised And Solves Every Problem And Is Never Wrong. Like at least when batman does it they try to give us a detective story. Usually it's not a good detective story but they at least try. Hal doesn't need to do detectiving. He can solve pretty much anything with the ring on his finger. He's invulnerable and powerful and perfect and let's be real, at this point he barely has a secret identity. There's nothing adding stakes to the story, not when Hal the best boy is here.

It's so fucking boring!! It's genuinely an injustice to his character. Hal's much more interesting when he makes every single bad decision, ever, and then has to dig himself out of the hole that he dug. That's someone I can root for. That's a character I can develop complex feelings about. If you just hand me the perfect being in creation I feel nothing. I'm already bored.

[longagoitwastuesday]

I am liking Jujutsu Kaisen, way more than I imagined I would, but I foresee it will let me down and it's keeping me from enjoying this as much as I could haha

I think the characters and dynamics are well set, and I think many of them have an incredibly good and deep potential, but I would be willing to bet they'll not get a proper development, enough for them to really hit. A well assembled set of gears is not enough to make the movement go, you have to wind the clockwork.

I think Gojo and Megumi have a fascinating and very complex dynamic, but I doubt it will be given the time and care that imo it needs to actually work. And it is going well enough for now! One could see the intimacy between them was deeper than the one Gojo had with, say, Yuji and Nobara ever since the very first few episodes despite the fact Fushiguro too was a first year. But the pieces forming what they have are extremely complex, and it just wouldn't be realistic if it doesn't show, even if in a not showing way, or if it doesn't have consequences or implications.

It's one of those dynamics that shape one's life, the way one regards the world, the way one establishes or not relationships with other people. It's one of those dynamics that could be full of fondness, gratitude, resentment, admiration, trust, and that imply intimacy, the good kind or the bad, even if in just the knowledge of someone who's been a constant through your life. It could, and would, imply a myriad of feelings, and probably in such a mix it could imply contradictory feelings too. Even the nothingness would weight, even the nothingness would be significant and meaningful.

Gojo took Megumi and his sister under his wing, the son of a man who murdered him, because of both selfish and selfless reasons. Megumi looks like Toji. What does Gojo feel about this? How does Gojo deal with this? How does Gojo go about taking care of Megumi? Would he walk him to school? Make him breakfast? Celebrate his birthdays making him blow candles? Did he take him to the zoo? Does the relationship between them feel professional or is it something more? Gojo appreciates his students, but is Megumi to him just another student? When Gojo faces Sukuna in Megumi's body, did he see the kid he raised, or does he just see Sukuna in one of his students' body? Did he have one faint wavering instant? And how does Megumi feel about this? Is he resentful of him? Resentful of the situation? Of the selfishness behind his actions? Does he feel like a pawn? Is he grateful? Does he resent feeling grateful? Would he rather not? Does he love Gojo? Does he feel nothing about him other than what he could feel about a teacher that sort of annoys him but knows he's reliable in his strength? Does he think it unfair, cruel or unfeeling that Gojo is close, closer perhaps, with Yuuji or Yuta, considering their story? When Sukuna slices Gojo in two, does the remnants of Megumi's soul tremble?

And not just Megumi and Gojo. Yuuji and Nanami, Gojo and Nanami, Yuuji and Fushiguro, Nobara and the boys, or Nobara and Maki, Todo and Yuuji or Yuta, Gojo and Yuta, Megumi and his sister. Gojo and Geto, even! If the pieces are well set, the dynamics are intriguing, interesting, and have potential to be deep, but then the characters have like two plot relevant scenes that punch you hard, but little more, it's not nearly enough. Especially not nearly enough for the enormity that is shonen dynamics and situations. And the potential existing at all, and then not delivering, makes it all the more frustrating when you're left with something mediocre that could have been so good.

The development of dynamics through not only a few plot relevant gut wrenching moving scenes, but also the smallness of life, is important. The friend who recommended this to me said that those things were just unnecessary filler, but I disagree. I think there's a big difference between a large amount of anime-only filler episodes whose existence is based on the fact they had run out of manga chapters to animate, and moments of quietness. The low stakes character-driven moments of quietness can be so telling and so insightful, and they are so satisfactory when brought back later in higher stakes situations. My friend teased me there was no scene of Gojo making breakfast to Megumi, that it would be an idiotic idea, but it would be so telling. How he makes breakfast, what they eat, if he tries hard or if it's all mechanised, if they have personal bowls or if they use whatever, if he just buys them some pastry on the way to school, if the way they have breakfast changes through the years, or if he doesn't make them breakfast at all! All that would be very insightful on their dynamic and its evolution. All that would give a glimpse on how they regard each other and why, even in the present. All that could become meaningful in tense situations and high stakes scenes.

These moments also let the plot breath; if a lot is happening all the time, if every character is always experiencing trauma after trauma, the entire story is so emotionally draining that at some point you don't even care all that much. Besides, these nothing moments or low stakes plot arcs, besides deepening and developing dynamics, also let some in-world time pass, which would make the intimacy and bond between characters more believable imo; between Yuuji eating Sukuna's finger and their last confrontation in December how much time has passed? A few months? Am I truly to believe these characters are so everything to each other in only a few months?

Without some smallness, some repetition, some daily life, some low stakes not plot-centric development, the dynamics don't hit, they don't truly feel fleshed out, and dynamics as complex as the ones Megumi and Gojo have, or as supposedly meaningful as the one Megumi has with Yuuji or his sister, should be fleshed out if they're going to exist at all. Otherwise they'd risk making the writing feel awkward and fake. Besides, if the dynamics felt well fleshed out and realistic, they would shape the way the characters interact and act, and how they deal with situations, thus being plot relevant.

The shonen genre has so much happening all the time, the stakes are so high, the dynamics are so rooted in big events and the relationships carry enormous weight and implications. Yet they barely get developed, and it feels so stupid, so plain, the absence of something so important noticeable like a constant void, a shapeless nothingness present in every scene. It makes the characters feel like cardboard figures. Jujutsu Kaisen is already getting a better job than many, but I doubt it will do enough for what I've heard, and I fear I am bound to feel let down, and bound to feel unmoved.

After all, if not enough time and care has been given to develop a dynamic, I am not going to feel pressured by the high stakes; if not enough time and care has been given to develop the dynamic between Megumi and Yuuji, as good potential as it has I am bound to feel little for this last confrontation between Sukuna and Itadori, and his effort in getting Megumi back.

[rockatnothing]

Kinda a shame Wandavision wasn't 22 episodes with loads of filler episodes in each decade. I'd love to see all of the sit com plots in each EP.

Plus more Agnes/Agatha. And not to sound like a lesbian but I'd love to see more development on Monica becoming fully on Wanda's side and the queer baiting scenes between them that fueled that. Like I definitely see a sapphic reading of Monica becoming obsessed with Wanda as she relates deeply to Wanda's grief and wanting to protect Wanda to protect herself becoming attracted to Wanda. Plus it'd be fun to see Agatha and Wanda become close as neighborhood besties over more episodes. Plus more borderline queer baiting to them cause of course. Then the betrayal of Wanda finding out she wasn't in control of Agatha and the betrayal would have been more intense if we had that furthered established emotional connection.

[janumun]

Hey Pickle!! ^~^ I hope you've been well! Soooooo I have one teensy little question.... Excuse my language here but.. HOLY FUCK, ON A CHRISTMAS CRACKER HAVE YOU S E E N SYLUS?????? I SAW THE TRAILER FOR HIM TODAY AND IT WAS ENOUGH TO MAKE ME DOWNLOAD THE GAME AND MAKE ME MAKE AN ACCOUNT!

OH, OH. Have I ever seen a man that dangerous and FINE. 🥵 No, I have NOT.

I don’t think I’ve ever been baited this hard by a joseimuke man but I can’t say I’m complaining! 🥴 LOOK AT HIM

I am down bad, first and foremost, for one of the other LIs, Rafayel, but Sylus is proving to be a horrendous bias wrecker so far 😂 Hold me tight, Rafayel, ILY

I’m so happy Sylus got you to download the game though! Incinerating, panty melting men aside, the story and worldbuilding is great. Each boy’s individual lore is well-written: angsty, bittersweet at times. Soft and sensual at others. It’s an entire package. I’m definitely enjoying the story much more than it’s previous sister game MLQC.

Feel free to scream to me and tell me how you like the game so far, in public or private any time, you like, I would love to gush about it and hear your thoughts! 😆💕💕

[Great icon by the way 🫣👍🏽]

[sn0wbat]

oleander.