#Knowing they’re finally a real family and getting a timeskip to how they look 10 years later is all I ever wanted wanted for the finale😭💕

[kaiiscottage]

꒰when the adopted daughter raised by queer parents grows old <3꒱ྀི

[warrioreowynofrohan]

The Silmarillion as a TV/Netflix Show (Part 3)

Links to Part 1 and Part 2.

Part 3 is where Men show up, and this is the point where the time-frame issues around adapting The Silmarillion become really challenging. Because in Season 2, you could have longish periods of time passing, a season taking place over the space of decades, without really drawing attention to it - your characters don’t age. But unless you want to really draw out the events of the Silm, you’re going to end up with whole generations of Men aging and dying within the space of one season. Which does have the intriguing potential of essentially getting the audience to view Men - us - from the Elven perspective, and see the brevity of human life the way the elves percieve it. For the most part, I’ve dealt with the issue by shortening the time frame and incorporating one timeskip, so the events can be concentrated into two periods rather than spread out evenly over more than a century.

(Technically, there are also about 150 pretty quiet years between the end of the previous season and the start of this one. Whether we tell the audience that is an open question - on the one hand it could deflate the tension a little; on the other, it explains some things like Aredhel’s restlessness, which could come across badly if she’s pushing to leave the city just a couple episodes after it was established.)

Episode 1: Teenage Glaurung sneaks out of Angband and is driven back by Fingon and a party of horse-archers. This is an effective warning of things to come, as he’ll show up again at the end of the season in the Dagor Bragollach; plus, it lets the season get started off on an exciting note. Finrod and Thingol both have foreboding dreams (Finrod’s of the fall of Nargothrond and an oath; Thingol’s of trouble coming to Doriath from Men), and Finrod talks to Galadriel about him. Rumours reach Beleriand (likely via the dwarves, as Nogrod and Belegost have relations with Khazad-dum) of a new people on the other side of the mountains.

Episode 2: Finrod, on a visit to Maedhros and Maglor (and interesting in asking the Laiquendi about the new rumours) encounters Men in Ossiriand. The Laiquendi dislike them because they find them disruptive to nature, and Finrod negotiates that the Laiquendi will not bother them and that the Bëorings can establish a settlement further northwest, which becomes Estolad. Haleth’s people are in Ossiriand at the same time and settle in Caranthir’s lands; Caranthir tolerates/ignores them. At the end of the episode the people of Hador (much more military and well-armed) also arrive in Estolad.

Episode 3: Aredhel leaves Gondolin. The arrival of Men fits into this nicely, because it gives her an incentive beyond mere restlessness. What we see of her suggests she’s adventurous and impetuous, and she would be interested in meeting this new group of people, in addition to wanting to see her cousins. And she can make the case to Turgon that knowing more about them would be beneficial to Gondolin. Turgon lets her go partly because he can’t really stop her and partly because Idril has a foresight that Men will be beneficial to Gondolin in some way. Aredhel’s group encounters monsters in Nan Dungortheb; she survives (and has some exiting vattles with giant spiders and other unpleasant creatures) and makes it to Aglon; the rest of her company do not.

Various elves, curious about Men, visit Estolad, and we have several scenes of the various elven main characters (Sons of Fëanor; Fingolfin and Fingon; Thingol and Melian) discussing the situation.

Episode 4: Aredhel, on her way to see Estolad, attempts to cut through Nan Elmoth (seriously, it’s directly to the north of Estolad) and becomes lost. She meets Eöl. Whether there are plenty of different interpretations for their early relationship, I think it works best for the show (and gives Aredhel rather more agency, and makes Eöl less out-and-out evil) if they’re genuinely infatuated with each other at the beginning. Neither of them has met anyone quiet like the other before! Falling in live with a mysterious stranger does seem like a reasonably in-character thing for Aredhel to do. Let him tell her the story of how Thingol and Melian met (in those same woods) and make some appealingly-flattering comparisons. Leave it ambigous as to whether Aredhel’s inability to find a way out of Nan Elmoth is due to Eöl’s magic or to the general enchantment surrounding Nan Elmoth.

The Noldorin rulers of Hithlum and Dorthonion, both out of desire for closer relations between elves and men (it’s fascinating to finally meet the Secondborn!) and an understanding of their military value, invite the houses of Beör and Hador to live in those lands.

Episode 5: The Men of Estolad debate whether to accept the elven-lords’ invitations, or whether the presence of Angband makes Beleriand too dangerous and they should head back east of the mountains. We get the moment at a community meeting where someone who looks like Amlach claims that both the Valar and Morgoth are a fiction and the real problem is with the Eldar; but Amlach says he wasn’t there, to great discomfitment. Some of the Men leave for the east; some leave for the west; Anlach goes north and joins Maedhros’ forces.

The debate, while interesting, doesn’t fill an entire episode. There’s also room in this episode for the Orc attack on Haleth’s people, the death of her father and brother and her desperate defence; and their (belated) rescue by Caranthir.

Episode 6: Haleth’s people head west through Nan Dungortheb (with more battle sequences!), and after their arrival in Brethil, Finrod negotiates with Thingol to let them stay there. Some scenes with young Maeglin in Nan Elmoth, as several years have passed since the previous episode. The houses of Beör and Hador settle into Dorthonion and Dor-lómin, respectively.

Episode 7: Timeskip from the previous episode. Beör, now living in Nargothrond, is elderly, while his grandson Barahir rules the Edain in Dorthonion (yes, I think I’ve condensed things by a generation). Death of Bëor. In Dorthonion, Aegnor and Andreth meet, fall in love, and break up. The juxtaposition with Beör’s death highlights the difficulties inherent in relationships between elves and mortals.

Maeglin, now an adult, is becoming weary of life in Nan Elmoth and expresses interest in meeting Aredhel’s kinsfolk, including the Sonnof Fëanor. Eöl reacts sharply and threatens to chain him up if he tries it.

Fingolfin calls a council of the lords of the Noldor to discuss an assault on Angband aimed at going beyond a siege and winning the war.

Episode 8: The council of the Noldor-lords is held. Considerable debate about whether to try to outright overthrow Angband. Fingolfin, Fingon, Angrod, and Aegnor are in favour; the Fëanorians, Finrod, and Orodreth are opposed. (Turgon, obviously, is not present.) Maedhros in particular is opposed on the basis that it’s impossible, being the only member of the group who has actually seen the interior of Angband. The decisions is ultimately against a direct attack on Angband.

Aredhel and Maeglin talk, and it becomes apparent that both of them are feeling rather like prisoners and Aredhel misses her family and Gondolin (and sunlight, and freedom).

This episode is also a good place to introduce Beren as a young man, since he’ll be one of the main characters in the next season.

Episode 9: Eöl visits the dwarves in Nogrod for a midsummer feast; Aredhel and Maeglin take the opportunity to escape. Eöl follows them to Gondolin, is captured, tries to kill Maeglin, does kill Aredhel, and is executed. This is dramatic enough to trick the audience into thinking it’s the climax of the season (well, at least if they’re not very genre-savvy; the subject matter of the previous episode is what we call ‘a hint’.)

Episode 10: The early parts of the Battle of Sudden Flame (Dagor Bragollach): Glaurung (now full-grown), the deaths of Angrod and Aegnor, desperate fight of Maedhros to hold Himring in the east, defense of the fortresses of the Ered Wethrin in the west. Ends with the Duel of Fingolfin and Morgoth and Fingolfin’s body being brought to Gondolin. (Poor Turgon has now lost two immediate family members in the space of two episodes. This contributes to him feeling very attached to Maeglin, the one family member he’s gained.) Season ends with a final pan out from Gondolin to show the entire north being on fire and full of orcs.

This episode is going to need a serious special effects budget.

[traincat]

I know you've already sort of discussed this but could you please explain the marvel 2 in 1 ending... what I'm getting is that the gist of it is that Reed and Sue are just like 'lol whoops I guess we sorta forgot about u'... which is really kinda anticlimactic and abrupt. Did I read it wrong or something? All that build up and angst just for it to go down the drain... is there something more to it that I'm missing that you know of?

I can explain it, but the answer’s not going to satisfy you, because it doesn’t satisfy me. Long story short: there were implications there was something more to the story than Marvel Two-In-One’s final two issues said, but Fantastic Four hasn’t followed up on that like, at all, and shows no signs that they’re going to anytime soon.

In the interests of putting all of the pieces together, I’m going to lay out everything that happened between the cancellation of the Fantastic Four title and now, because there are a lot of fuzzy periods. The Fantastic Four disappeared from the Marvel universe and from the shelves back in 2015, following Jonathan Hickman’s Secret Wars event. In Secret Wars, the multiverse has been destroyed and cobbled back together into Battleworld, a realm where Doctor Doom rules as god king, with Sue as his wife, Ben transformed into a huge wall, and Johnny as Battleworld’s artificial sun. It’s a real fractured fairy tale. At the end of Secret Wars, Reed defeats Doom and reunites his family. Using Franklin’s mutant ability to create entire universes and the Molecule Man’s powers, Reed, Sue, and the children of the Future Foundation set out to recreate the multiverse. Ben and Johnny are sent back to their own Earth with comment that “their stories aren’t done yet.” Doom is also sent back with his scarred face restored. 

The cancellation of the Fantastic Four at this point heralds the first time Marvel had been without a Fantastic Four book on the shelves since 1961. We know – partially because it was painfully obvious, and partially because Jonathan Hickman spilled the beans – that the Fantastic Four comics were cancelled because of a film rights dispute; aka, Marvel Studios and Disney didn’t have the film rights, and Ike Perlmutter threw a fit about it. Instead of doing their best to put out a good book that would draw in comics audiences, Marvel instead cancelled Fantastic Four, citing low readership. Marvel has denied this, but the truth is pretty obvious, especially with how the Fantastic Four’s return to comics just so happened to coincide exactly with when it became extremely clear that the Disney-Fox merger was going through. So right from the start we had this very inorganic reason as to why the Fantastic Four were hung up. Reed, Sue, and the kids were retired out of universe under the excuse that they were rebuilding the multiverse – which, to be fair, does work as a pretty good excuse. Johnny and Ben, on the hand, were kept in-universe and distributed to other properties, probably because of Ben – who, let’s be honest, is the most popular of the Fantastic Four and the moneymaker here – and because it made more sense to keep Johnny and Ben than just Ben. 

Immediately post-Secret Wars, there was an eight month (iirc) timeskip in the main Marvel universe, meaning that books that picked up after the events of Secret Wars picked up significantly after it; we see very little of the Secret Wars fallout. Here’s what we do know concerning the Fantastic Four: Reed, Sue, and the kids were largely believed to be dead, although Johnny in particular initially refused to believe that. Sometime during this timeskip, Johnny and Ben had some kind of fight. We don’t know what it was about. Honestly, at this point, we’re unlikely to ever know what it was about. Whatever it was, it was bad enough that Ben and Johnny severed all communication and Ben left the planet to join the Guardians of the Galaxy. What followed was the longest separation between Ben and Johnny that we’ve ever seen in canon. Johnny and Ben are famous for squabbling, but their fights rarely last longer than a few days at most; they’re extremely close, to the point that when Ben was presumed dead, Johnny’s coping mechanism mirrored Ben’s long time love and current wife Alicia’s. This post-Secret Wars separation between them lasted longer than when Ben thought Johnny had gotten together with said longtime love Alicia (it was a Skrull in disguise, but nobody would know that for like 80 issues). This separation between them is completely unprecedented, and like I said, we have no idea what caused it.

This scene from Infamous Iron Man #9 is the closest I’ve gotten to determining a root of the fight – note Johnny says “my family”, all handily bolded for emphasis. Not “our family”, “my family.” Ben is the only member of the Fantastic Four not related by either marriage or blood to any of the others, which has been a very occasional sore spot in the past. But even this scene doesn’t quite make sense – it’s hard to imagine Ben and Johnny having a months long separation over this alone, and to make matters more confusing, before Infamous Iron Man #9, Johnny had tried to get in contact with Ben only to be rebuffed. In Infamous Iron Man #9, Ben gets in contact with Johnny only for Johnny to practically run away from him. Already the new dynamic here feels like it needed more attention in the narrative than it actually got.

I think part of the problem with this whole return of the Fantastic Four storyline – the actual return especially, but even the lead-up – is that it was never established what was keeping Reed and Sue from coming back. On top of that, if they had the power to send Johnny and Ben back, why weren’t they able to send them back with some sort of memory or guarantee that Reed, Sue, and the kids were okay? It would have been very easy to say “well, a supervillain did it!” You know, the easiest comic book plot excuse of all time. But they didn’t do that. And that creates a problem when it’s a well-established fact that Johnny in particular tends to fall into a deep depression and displays signs of self-harm when the team isn’t together. (Fantastic Four #191-193, Robinson’s Fantastic Four run, Ben’s death in Waid’s run.) Which is exactly what happened this time, too, both during the timeskip and in the lead-up to Marvel Two-In-One (2017). 

Marvel Two-In-One (2017) was essentially the test run for the return of the Fantastic Four. The original Two-In-One was to Ben Grimm what Marvel Team Up was to Peter Parker: essentially a team up book that revolved around one character. So it made sense to relaunch it starring Ben and Johnny. In Two-In-One, Ben discovers Johnny at the end of his rope, pulling life-threatening stunts in his grief and depression, and, willed a multidimensional travel device by Reed, decides to – to the best of his knowledge at the time – lie to Johnny and say that Reed and Sue might still be alive. Learning that they’re both losing their powers and will continue to do so unless they’re reunited with Reed and Sue, as their powers depend on the four of them being in the same universe (an interesting concept, though not one we’ve seen before), Ben and Johnny set off, with a worryingly helpful Doctor Doom on their heels, on a multiversal roadtrip to find their family – one Ben thinks will fail from the start because, as far as he knows, Reed and Sue are dead. It’s a really good concept, and a great concept that starts to fall apart as soon as the notion that Reed and Sue aren’t dead starts to float to the surface. In Two-In-One #9, stranded powerless with Ben in the desert in another universe and facing death, Sue appears to Johnny.

(Marvel Two-In-One #10) This brief contact is apparently enough to reignite Ben and Johnny’s powers to full strength. Sue says that her and Reed’s powers were gone, which does seem to track with the plot – except Johnny and Ben lost their powers over a prolonged period of time, not all at once. If Reed had realized he and Sue were losing their powers, he should have come to that conclusion far before this point in time. You can say the times don’t add up because different universes (which the “you haven’t met the Zaklons yet” line would seem to imply), but with no explanation about how Sue was able to contact Johnny – however briefly – at this point, it does make it seem like Reed and Sue could’ve made contact with Ben and Johnny at any point… and simply chose, for whatever reason, not to. Which is, ultimately, the story Two-In-One goes with. 

(Marvel Two-In-One #11) In the very next issue, Reed’s reasoning for why they didn’t take Ben and Johnny with them is that… they would’ve been bored by the science aspect of it all. Which is, I’m going to go ahead say, very out of character and not in the spirit of the Fantastic Four. They’re explorers, and they explore together. This seems like a weirdly brusque excuse to write off the absence so they can get back to the status quo as quickly as possible, using Reed’s science-obsessed image to make him the fall guy. Additionally, in this issue (which I have to say, I overall like – I wrote a whole Doom/Reed fic based off of it), Reed also offers another reason why the world had to believe he and Sue were dead:

In Marvel Two-In-One #11, Reed and Ben visit an alternate universe Doom who exists in a universe where his own Reed is dead. This Doom is a pretty okay dude at the moment – in fact, he and Reed had become, through Reed’s private multiversal travel, close friends. Using this (pretty flawed) logic of “Reed dead = Doom good??”, Reed deduced that if his own Doom thought Reed was dead, he… too would be good? Look, I don’t hate this. I’m a big Doom/Reed fan and the whole thing is pretty shippy and it also depends on Reed having an enormous attachment to Doom and an enormous desire for his own Doom to be like this other Doom, who is his friend. But as far as “why did Reed and Sue stay away as long as they did” explanations go, “Reed was kind of bonkers in love with Doom” is not the direction I expected things to go. Besides, it doesn’t really work, and it doesn’t really work for one big reason: Fantastic Four (2018) #1, the actual return of the Fantastic Four, was published before this, and Fantastic Four (2018) #1 implies a hugely different story.

Fantastic Four (2018) #1 sees Johnny and Ben returned to their home universe after the events of Marvel Two-In-One #10. The reader has no idea how they got there or what they’ve been doing since they got back, or even how long it’s been since they’ve been back. Despite the Sue sighting, at the very end of the issue, Johnny becomes convinced all over again that Reed and Sue are dead, up until… 

(Fantastic Four v6 #1) The staging here is important – Reed and Sue’s battle-ripped uniforms, and the cryptic lines between them, like Sue’s “what you plan to do… seems impossible.” This is compounded by dialogue between Franklin and Val in the next Fantastic Four issue:

“You think you can boost that signal enough… to reach Earth?” “Home? I’m good, but there’s no way I’m that good.” This would definitely seem to imply that, for some reason, Reed, Sue, and the kids can’t contact their home universe, or Ben and Johnny at all. I’m admittedly biased in favor of this version: the more time went by without Reed and Sue contacting Johnny and Ben and leaving them on their own, the more obvious it became that this was the best solution, to create some comic book reason why Reed and Sue simply couldn’t return home. But Fantastic Four (2018) #3 and #4 never really explore this more, and the subject gets dropped altogether, which makes for a very unsatisfying read. The Fantastic Four simply return home together and, some frankly too quickly brushed off anger and resentment from Johnny in Marvel Two-in-One’s closing issue aside, this gets swept under the rug in favor of the Fantastic Four just being back now! Hurrah! Pay no attention to the film rights hungry Mouse behind the curtain! 

If I wanted to, I could make the explanations presented in Fantastic Four (2018) and Marvel Two-in-One (2017) mesh – Reed has massive guilt issues stemming back to the accident that granted the Fantastic Four his powers. He has a bad habit of taking responsibility that isn’t necessarily his, and of not being 100% truthful in situations because he feels it’s for the best for everyone. (The massive amount of time he takes to reveal his powers are failing during Fraction’s Fantastic Four run, or in the two instances during Waid’s run where Reed uses cruel words to distract both Ben and Sue from his plans to sacrifice himself for them.) Reed might have chosen to take the blame on himself – come up with a story he knows will anger Ben, say that he thought he and Johnny would have been bored, because he felt it was somehow easier than admitting that he and Sue found themselves in some kind of situation where they simply couldn’t get back, and couldn’t contact Ben or Johnny. It’s a way of taking 100% of the blame on himself, which would be a very Reed thing to do. But that would be me doing the book’s work for it; this is absolutely not established within the actual canon as of the time of my writing this.

Honestly, I don’t think we’re likely to see this explored more any time imminently – the Fantastic Four were banished from the stands because of film rights. They came back because for three years dedicated fans asked where the Fantastic Four were, yes, but also because of those same film rights. Now that they’re back, there seems to be this huge rush to pretend it never happened: the Four are back together, and that’s that. It’s very unsatisfying, but it’s clear Marvel cared more about pushing the Fantastic Four back together as quickly as possible than writing a coherent, satisfying story that put together all the pieces of their in-universe disappearance.

[franruto]

sasuke + the mountain goats songs

if this read more doesnt work on mobile im so sorry

so i was thinking about how many tmg songs could be applied to sasuke and i decided to make a list. tmg has an absurd number of songs and im doing this just from my fave albuns + a quick check so this list very probably isnt even complete. also, some of these songs are more sns than just sasuke but o well. if u have suggestions to add lmk

- no children: this might be the most sasuke song ever made. im going to put just the last part here but please listen to the whole song

I am drowning, there is no sign of land You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand And I hope you die I hope we both die

- autoclave: i lov this one and all of it is sasuke too so listen to the whole thing

When I try to open up to you, I get completely lost Houses swallowed by the earth, windows thick with frost And I reach deep down within but the pathways twist and turn And there's no light anymore and nothing left to burn I am this great, unstable mass of blood and foam And no emotion that's worth having could call my heart its home

- heel turn 2:

Get stomped like a snake Lie down in the dirt Cling to my convictions Even when I get hurt

(...)

Spend too much of my life Now trying to play fair Throw my better self overboard Shoot at him when he comes up for air Come unhinged Get revenge (...) Let all the trash rain down From way up in the rafters I’m walking out of here in one piece Don’t care what comes after Drive the wedge Torch the bridge

- game shows touch our lives: gives me sad sns feelings

Shadows crawled across the living room's length I held onto you with a desperate strength With everything With everything in me And I handed you a drink of the lovely little thing On which our survival depends People say friends don't destroy one another What do they know about friends? Thunderclouds forming, cream white moon Everything's going to be okay soon Maybe tomorrow Maybe the next day 

- oceanographer’s choice: this is one so fucking sad, it makes me think about sasuke trying to break his bond with naruto 

I don't know why it's gotten harder to keep myself away Thought I'd finally beat the feeling back, it all came back today And then we fell down and we locked arms, we knocked the dresser over as we rolled across the floor I don't mean it when I tell you that I don't love you anymore Look at that, would you look at that? The way the ceiling starts to swerve What will I do when I don't have you? When I finally get what I deserve

- up the wolves: i really like this one for sasuke & i love john darnielle’s comment on it too so i’m going to include it here. “Part of me wants to say look it's about revenge, but as soon as I say that... no, that's not quite it. Part of me wants to say it's about the satisfaction of not needing revenge... and I say no, thats some new age stuff. I think it's a song about the moment in your quest for revenge when you learn to embrace the futility of it. The moment when you know that the thing you want is ridiculous and pompous and a terrible thing to want anyway. The direction in which you're headed is not the direction in which you want to go, yet you're going to head that way a while longer anyway cause that's just the kind of person you are.”

There's bound to be a ghost at the back of your closet No matter where you live There'll always be a few things, maybe several things That you're going to find really difficult to forgive

(...)

I'm going to get myself in fighting trim Scope out every angle of unfair advantage I'm going to bribe the officials, I'm going to kill all the judges It's going to take you people years to recover from all of the damage

- cry for judas: listen............

Some things you do just to see How bad they'll make you feel Sometimes you try to freeze time 'Til the slots are a blur of spinning wheels But I am just a broken machine And I do things that I don't really mean Long black night, morning frost I'm still here, but all is lost

(...)

Sad and angry, can't learn how to behave Still won't know how in the darkness of the grave

- outer scorpion squadron: ok this is darnielle’s comment on it again and he says it better than i could: “This is a song (...) for people like me, who have a strong indwelling evidently permanent urge to damage themselves or cut themselves off prior to some accomplishment or arrival at a place of comfort and happiness. I didn't succeed in my goal to not bum everyone out, but... In short, this is a song about trauma, and surviving it”.

If you really want to conjure up a ghost Cultivate a space for the things that hurt you most Rake the sands until they surface Bind their tiny eyes Stake out your position, let your armor fall Stay put 'till they find you, it won't take long at all Rake the sands until they surface Up they come, gone translucent They're coming up no matter what Fools rush in and the doors slam shut Ghosts of my childhood, stay with me, if you will Find a place where there's water, hold you under 'till you're still Rake the sands until they surface Don't let anybody call them ugly 

- the young thousands: ok this one makes me think of pre timeskip sasuke who continues to live in his parents house and also has a lot coming in his future

Boats ease into the harbor bearing real suspicious cargo And the sunlight on the water sets a switch off in your brain The things that you've got coming will consume you There's someone waiting out there in an alley with a chain The ghosts that haunt your building are prepared to take on substance And the dull pain that you live with isn't getting any duller There's a closet full of almost-pristine videotape Documenting sordid little scenes in living color (...) The things that you've got coming will do things that you're afraid to There is someone waiting out there with a mouthful of surprises The ghosts that haunt your building have been learning how to breathe They scan the hallways nightly vainly searching for a sign

- hebrews 11:40: this is one of my faves tmg lyrics. think sasuke w/ orochimaru period

Bright candles in the manor Where the curse takes hold Bodies reassembling down where the worms crawl Make your own friends when the world's gone cold It gets dark and then I feel certain I am going to rise again If not by faith, then by the sword I'm going to be restored Build fires to keep the beacon flashing where the earth lies flat Blood calls to blood as the hours draw down, invent my own family if it comes to that Hold them close, hold them near Tell them no one's ever going to hurt them here

- deuteronomy 2:10: this one is esp relevant bc of The Last Uchiha stuff

Feel in my bones just what the future has in store

I pace in circles So the camera will see Look hard at my stripes There'll be no more after me

I have no fear of anyone I'm dumb and wild and free I am a flightless bird And there'll be no more after me

I sang all night The moon shone on me through the trees No brothers left And there'll be no more after me

- absolute lithops effect: i like to think of this one as sasuke healing

After one long season of waiting After one long season of wanting I am breaking open My insides are pink and raw And it hurts me when I move my jaw But I am taking tiny steps forward

After one blind season alone in here After one long, sweltering summer I'm going to find the exit And I will go to the house of a friend I know And I will let myself forget With a little water and a little bit of sunlight And a little bit of tender mercy, tender mercy

- rain in soho: i might just be indulging here because i listen to this song 10 times a day and its overall feel reminds me of sasuke

No promise sweeter than a blood pact Nothing harder to go through with than a vanishing act No morning colder than the first frost No friends closer than the ones we've lost Nothing sharper than a serpent's tooth Nothing harder than the gospel truth Though you repent and don sackcloth and try to make nice You can't cross the same river twice

(...)

No town more barren than our town No haven safer than the one they tore down No greater love than to lay my life down for a friend No sweeter pleasure than to see the credits clear through to the end

ok so this is the moment where i give up because holy shit. some honorable mentions that im too lazy to go into detail (keep in mind some of those have just like one line that reminds me sasuke): this year, the house that dripped blood, old college try, choked out (i SWEAR no double meaning intended), prowl great cain, magpie, heretic pride, all up the seething coast

@yondaiime hello im tagging u here 

[periodicreviews]

RWBY Volume 4 Episode 10

Oscar, the farm boy, has bothered me since episode 1. In this episode he continues the trend of characters going from depressed or emotionally traumatized, to mostly stable, without the viewer being shown much of the process. I can understand not wanting an entire season of depression but I appreciate seeing characters working to overcome pain. There has been some of that, but it’s still very lacking. We already had the one timeskip but it still feels like important things are keep getting skipped.

 Farm boy is at it again

When we last left Oscar, the farm boy, in episode 7, it seemed like his life was falling apart. In that conversation, he seems briefly to consider that Ozpin is real and that he may be who he claims to be. But as the scene comes to a close, Oscar angrily shouts “Get out of my head!”, and the scene ends much the same way it began.

Now in Episode 10, we see Oscar leaving his family home. We can’t know if he says goodbye to his parents or not, but if you had to explain to your parents that you were leaving on a journey because another man in your head told you to, you would probably sneak out. He seems to have a decent relationship with his mother (the only parent we hear) and one could imagine that a decision like this would be difficult. I guess it’s possible he just lied that he was going to the store or something like that.

As Oscar is leaving, he says this line to Ozpin:

“Everything you’ve told me is crazy. It doesn’t feel crazy anymore. It feels like I’m doing the right thing.”

That is what I took to be as the “resolution” to the internal conflict demonstrated in episode 7. Personally, this isn’t enough for me to believe he has sufficiently dealt with the idea that he is sharing a body with another person, given his behavior in episode 7. I know that time has passed and the audience has to assume that this recovery took place now that he seems stable. But I would’ve liked to have seen at least a little bit more of that, given that he was so upset previously.

By skipping over important character building moments in order to get Oscar from point A to B in time for the finale, the crew is weakening the character or at least making it harder for me to feel immersed. I get that they can’t show everything but just one additional scene of Oscar debating Ozpin, this time much calmer but still frustrated or hesitant to trust him, would’ve helped make it more believable that he would just leave everything he’s ever known one day. They alternatively could’ve made the episode 7 conversation more productive rather than going in a complete circle with Oscar more upset at the end than when the scene started.

At least with Yang, they set up her depression in in episode 3, her dad says a joke in episode 4 that makes her not as depressed, and then she has seemingly fully recovered in episode 9. She may not be fully recovered, but in any case, there was at least a midpoint between depression and recovered.

That’s not to say that I think they handled Yang’s story “well”, I think it deserved a lot better than what it got. But even that is still a step above how Oscar’s story is unfolding.

Later on we see Oscar doesn’t have a raincoat/umbrella, he’s short on cash, and it’s purely out of luck (the writing team) that an important character stops by to not bring his journey to a close right there. Seems like a rough start. Maybe that’s their point and I’d love for there to be some payoff later on when he realizes he’s completely unprepared for the World of Remnant. Regardless, RWBY has never focused much on the logistics of travel so I’m not going to write a paragraph on how RWBY V4 is the worst because Oscar can’t buy a train ticket.

 Kuroyuri

The Ren and Nora stuff didn’t really get to me. I realize most people seem to have really enjoyed it and were emotionally engaged and that’s great that they got something out of it.

The impact was so large that it seems there are very few comments regarding Oscar. I guess I’m a little worried that the crew reviewed viewer response to this episode, didn’t see many complaints about Oscar, and therefore feel that people didn’t have any problems with it. But even if they did, there’s not much they could do now that Oscar’s journey is in progress.

I was not really a fan of the voice of young Ren. She seemed to have an accent that sounded British at times but also seemed like something else. This isn’t me hating on the voice actress herself, just questioning the voice director’s decision to pick her and to be satisfied with this performance. Actors can only deliver what’s asked of them.

The accent seems strange in the context of the rest of the villagers’ voices, including Ren’s parents. None of these people seemed to have a similar accent, which would maybe make it more believable even though present-day Ren doesn’t have that accent.

I saw one comment explain the accent that “Wouldn’t your voice change after growing up, watching your family be slaughtered, and moving away from your village?” It didn’t say exactly that, but it used those three reasons. I can buy the “moving away” reason, and even partly the “growing up” reason, but emotional trauma seems like less of a factor in one’s accent. If the accent had led/contributed to something terrible or you just didn’t like it, that absolutely makes sense. But Ren still wears an outfit in the same style of his parents, so he isn’t trying to escape from all of his past. Regardless, I’m not here to argue with this one commenter.

 Team RJ

Ruby and Jaune search the town and don’t find anything that will help Qrow, but they don’t seem to be in a rush to find another village or anything. I understand practically, the writers are setting up the big showdown between RNJR and the beast that killed Ren’s parents. But they didn’t even throw in another line about “we’ve been walking for hours, my arms need a break” or “It looks like Qrow has stabilized” (not that they’re trained to be able to notice that).

Qrow is just chilling out, under that dead tree, possibly in a coma or something. No big deal. Ruby then feels like it’s a good time to question their entire journey.

I do appreciate the conversation between Ruby and Jaune since this appears to be the first time the journey has gotten actually tough. It feels logical that Ruby would express this kind of regret and Jaune would respond as he does.

 At the end of this episode, it felt like nothing really happened. I realize a bunch of stuff did happen, but it still just felt like a pure setup episode for the next two. Not that that’s unique or anything, just how I felt about this particular episode.