#Me when random side characters with 0 plot relevance

[kindheartedgummybears]

I am Ellie Anne Swan's one and only fan and ykw I'm okay with that. *I turn away, a single tear falling from my eye as I dramatically walk away.*

[sarka-stically]

im mad enough to make 2nd post and I barely post ever. this show was never high tv but this ep rly spat in the face of everything i liked about it. usually i try to be positive but here you got random list of all things terrible in no particular order (vaguelly chronologic who knows)

ALSO I dont take them probably assuming they would have more eps and then scrambling to fit the story in one episode as decent excuse... the stakes they set up in ep7 werent impossible to fix with one ep, they just wrote terrible episode

ed's entire character arc of 2 seasons being rolled into tiny ball and thrown in the trash. and no he isnt slipping or spiralling again, it isnt him being hot protective husband, this is him, character who spent 2 seasons trying and failing to be better and finally decided that the healthiest thing to do is to just drop the lifestyle that brings out the worst in him and pursue simple life THROWING IT OUT after finding out its not as easy as he assumed and he would have to work for it??? incredible fucking message david jenkins, if being better version of yourself is just lil bit inconvenient its not worth it go back to your crappy ways.

and NO its not him slipping, the tone of this whole thing is very distinctly victorious. and also NO the path he took now is not in any way different or better than the one he left. there is even fun triumphant vibe to him KILLING PEOPLE which was always treated as sth BAD for him??? literally absolute nonsense

what the fuck was that plot?? why are all pirates arrested?? when all they did was sink those ships?? i know this show tends to be cooky and silly and cartoony, but this was just absolutely random unexplained jump of stakes.

WHERE THE FUCK are all the other husbands of jackie. this is barely valid complaint but this stupid ep rly makes it look like swede is her only husband and I dont appreciate it

why the unholly hell did they spend entire season actually setting up crew as important, give them their own opinions and relationships to their captains, have izzy even mention that THE CREW is what its all about.... and then have them barely have any speaking roles in this episode and 0 plot relevance

that fucking PLAN??? WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT??? im sorry why the fuck did their plan include walking through the biggest swarm of brits while having mr noseless richie UNSECURED amongst them??? why even BRING HIM other than to have him there specifically so he can be the one to shoot izzy for future drama???

izzy. death.

i genuinely could be FINE with izzy dying if they wrote it decently. and id even be fine with it in this episode. if they made it fucking meaningful... but they had my man, mr famously skilled pirate catch random bullet because he is incompetent actually... bullet into the side of the body that ofmd physics say is survivable easily??? and then give 0 attention to it??

ed being there while he dies??? this truly makes me just feel like they killed him only so in hypoteticky s3 they can woobify poor ed some more... or even give him excuse to be narrativelly clean of any atrocities he does in name of revenge

but it makes no. fucking. sense. ed shluldnt be there saying ur my only family, ed has not treated izzy as family ONCE in this entire show, ed barely talked to izzy after first 3 episodes, he is NOT the person on that ship who cares about izzy the most of all. if anyone should be there while he fucking DIES its the crew. who has shown constantly through this season that they care about him, who he made whole speech about in THIS SAME EPISODE. im sorry frenchie did NOT carry izzy back on the ship to drop him on the floor and have ed who I REPEAT HAS NOT SHOWN HE CARES ABOUT HIM AS MORE THAN AQUITANCE SINCE LIKE EARLY S1 be the one to be there in his last moment.

I get izzy wanting to make amends but BOTH OF THEM SHOULD BE APOLOGISING, HE SHOULDNT VE BEGGING FOR FORGIVENESS and ed shouldnt be framed as blameless in their relationship in izzy's last moment.

and what made me genuinely laugh was izzy saying that the crew is ed's family. they are literally NOT. everyone who was aboard the revenge either hates him or is scared of him, and I dont think they had enough reason to change their minds as ed hasnt rly spent any time with the crew and shown only care for stede. they are NOT ed's found family and this payoff and this found family line is so ridiculously not set up and not narrativelly deserved it makes me laugh.

overall absolutely ridiculizs episode it made me laugh and it made me angry and it also made me angry how quickly we move past that

[steve0discusses]

S5 Ep8: The Saga of Grandpa Muto’s Mysterious Broken Ass

Getting ready to eat some Devlin eggs this Easter Sunday, feeling festive, and I figured it’s time to post this one a little earlier. Also, because it’s done, which I wasn’t expecting. It’s a slightly longer episode this time, but still, eh, pretty short.

We’ve come off of the very predictable, but still kind of disappointing downfall of Joey Wheeler, and onto a Rebecca arc. Which I’m sure won’t be annoying at all.

The lesser Roland--who’s name I do not know, but the one that wears the weirder sunglasses and seems way smarter than Roland, but clearly isn’t the favorite--lets us know that Zigfried has been going by an alternate identity for years and years. Which like...who cares? It’s not like the Kaibas have always been Kaibas. This is old hat to them.

So Seto sets him off on a quick bribe run, opening a list of different politicians and saying “Oh, this one’s super easy, go for it--he’s in my ass pocket, this guy. Hate this guy.” and it was...that easy for Seto to glide right into that Gozaburo lifestyle that he insists he totally doesn't do anymore. But youknow, with Seto Kaiba there really isn’t any good or bad just win or lose.

On the other end of the park, the choo-choo blue eyes white dragon train pulls in from death mountain, and once again the seating arrangement was really mystifying. Yugi in the very front, all alone. Tea sitting next to Tristan for some reason. Duke sitting next to Joey Wheeler, when I’m pretty sure Duke is probably the least comforting person in this entire group.

In fact all Duke had to say to comfort Joey was “you lost because you went up against a professional duelist!” and it’s like...at what point do you become a “professional duelist?” The game is fake. How many times do you have to save the world before you’re a “professional duelist,” Duke?

Course...maybe he has to get a high school diploma first...

Anyway, Joey spent the last part of this ride sobbing into the seats next to Duke Devlin while everyone else went “weee!” around the...molten pools of lava in this literal volcano that the Kaibas are pretty sure are a really good idea.

(read more under the cut)

Speaking of loss.

Grandpa Hawkins runs over to inform us that not only is no one watching his Grandaughter, but also, he lost a grown ass man because he decided to look for a doctor, couldn’t find a doctor, did watch Rebeccas match for a little while, listened to the part where she was like “I dedicate this match to my true love and boyfriend Yugi Muto with this sonnet I just wrote” and was like “normal thing to say!” and then finally found a doctor, who was like “well he’s not here so clearly he’s cured!” and charged Hawkins a bill despite Grandpa being no where to be found.

I can’t imagine the review that Hawkins is going to leave on Yelp.

Stepping away from thinking that Grandpa ditched his date with Hawkins to go on another date with some random theme park hussie, Yugi decides to ditch Rebecca, because he has way too many fake relationship plotlines in this group to juggle in his already double-stuffed brain.

And Rebecca takes it as if she kind of assumed this would happen.

Also in the actual canon of the show, Hawkins did not tell her that Grandpa was missing, or that Yugi would probably not be coming. Man these people love lying out their ass.

Speaking of being just completely flat on your ass, which happens so much this episode, they stumble upon Leon, who once again kind of comes out of the last place you expect and goes “Hello guys, I regret to inform you I still exist and I really need you to start noticing me already. I swear I will become plot relevant any day now. Please don’t forget I exist.”

...The Kaibas sure did make a tiny town. That sure is the only thing here.

Straight up, the Kaibas don’t know what fun is, and that is canon. And when I look across this landscape, I can only think of that one scene in Arrested Development where they made a very tiny city to convince investors that their housing development was actually legit and very real. And like I feel like the Kaibas would absolutely do that, too.

It’d be good for the gram...but this was before social media was a thing so what is this for?

I mean Leon sure the hell doesn’t know.

Local sad boy genius, Leon, here to get ignored by Rebecca despite being exactly her age, just like other local sad boy genius, Mokuba.

I really called it when I gave him Mai’s font color, huh? Good that even when Mai isn’t here, we can still have a chronically friendless character. But he is like...a lot more adorable than Mai was. Leon is just a lot more likeable. And again--really good hair color. Helps that he doesn’t want to constantly murder Joey Wheeler for no reason.

These kids came out of nowhere and can I just say it’s a really good thing someone woke Leon the hell up before the cameras arrived because that would have been SHOCKING if they all thought he was dead.

I love this boat.

Also Joey makes this observation and it was really funny the way he said it:

The sign that hangs above the park entrance that says “no one kidnapped in 1 days” flips back to 0.

I mean, we all know it’s Vivian, because it’s this global tournament where everyone is defined by stereotypes. But, I want to know how she got the panda stationary. That’s pretty good. There’s a side of me from my 11 yo self that never got over my sanrio phase collecting cute stationary with matching stickers and jelly pens to write 1 (one) letter and stuff it into a friend’s locker (and then have them say they cannot read my handwriting) and that part of me loves panda stationary.

Like if I got matching stationary with like...the matching stickers on it...in my ransom letter...damn that’s like seriously sentimental stuff. I’d feel a little ambiguous about that.

This town is the exact size that California was last season where you could just leap skip from Death Valley to San Fransisco.

And later we are...one step closer to Vivian. And if it’s not, and it’s actually like Bandit Keith on the other side of this door, I will be very happily surprised and this will be my favorite arc.

Also...please note that Joey is still wearing this duel disk after he’s completely done dueling.

Joey, please. It’s over, Joey. You live that Duke Devlin life now, retire the disk.

Anyway, until next time, this is the link to read these from the first to the latest:

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

[somniferouseyes]

Dragon Quest XI S: A Lovingly Crafted JRPG

I had never played a Dragon Quest game before, but I had played many JRPGs. After hearing much about this one, I finally decided to cave and give it a try. What I found was one of the most lovingly crafted JRPG experiences I think I've ever played.

Spoiler-free review below:

=== The Good ===

Player options and quality of life features abounded throughout the game, allowing me to play almost exactly how I wanted to. Hell, I could even change the visual style of nearly the entire game on a whim! Not that I used this feature, as I wasn't too fond of the aesthetic or gameplay changes introduced when switching to 2D, but it's certainly a feature worth praising in my opinion if only for the sheer work put into making a game playable in two entirely different art styles.

Going back to the quality of life choices, I think the only game I've played that's come close is Bravely Default, with its option to modify random encounter rates (0%, 50%, 100%, 200%, etc.) which I recall being blown away by, especially coming from a franchise like Pokemon where you need to purchase hundreds of one time use items to avoid random encounters. Even just looking at the core gameplay of this game you can see the time and love put into it. The skill tree for each character is unique and the options you have within meaningful in a way I rarely see in games these days. It doesn't feel bloated with tons of worthless abilities and stat upgrades the way skill trees often do. I don't want to get too deep into it all because it'll take forever to but suffice to say I was thoroughly impressed by what this game offered to any JRPG fan.

And last, I really enjoyed the cast of characters overall. They were pretty unique and colorful amongst themselves and most offered compelling backstories and character motivations deeper than I expected from a game like this. My favorite was probably Erik. From the very beginning of the game I remember wishing that I was playing as him instead of some weird mute He-Man haircut kid. Erik was just so much cooler than Hero, and eventually had a fantastic backstory revealed that really lent a lot of color to a character that otherwise could have been a little flat. Least favorite has to be Sylvando. I honestly really liked this dude up until the end of the first segment of the game, but after he shattered all the atmosphere and plot pacing the game had with his dumb little side story (which continued to be relevant fairly late into the game for some godforsaken reason) I just couldn't deal with him. Nearly every time he appeared on screen he managed to break the immersion I had with his obsessive cheerfulness and incredibly stereotypical gay man persona. It just became too much eventually. I can respect his motivations, but wow he started to grate on me very quickly.

=== The Not So Good ===

Unfortunately the game was not without some significant issues and annoyances. While I think it's nice looking overall, I personally struggled to get too into the overall art and style of the game. I understand it's iconic for the series at this point, but scattered throughout the game are relics of past games in the form of ancient looking menus, dated sound effects, and some other strange choices that feel as if they only exist to scratch the nostalgic itch of the core fans of the series. Which isn't a major major issue I suppose except compared to the rest of the game some things just look... bad. Kind of disappointing.

Far more disappointing, however, had to be the music and sound design of the game as a whole. I know it's been said over and over by just about everyone, but it was incredibly hard to get past the fact that nearly EVERY area had music pulled from what felt like a playlist of maybe 3-5 tracks total. And even worse, none of those repetitive tracks were all that great to begin with. On top of being repetitive, it outright ruins the mood in a few sections of the game, and I found myself turning the music volume wayyy down just to avoid being blasted by the same shitty tracks over and over.

A smaller nitpick related to the previous: Why are the parts of cutscenes where characters sing entirely void of voice acting? It's so jarring to be listening to people talk and then they go to open their mouth to sing and I'm just stuck reading lyrics on the bottom of the screen. Just a very confusing design choice. I don't get it at all, as it really took me out of the few scenes where it happened.

=== Conclusion ===

Despite its shortcomings, I feel that altogether this is easily one of the best JRPGs I've played. I think if it had a larger (and better sounding) pool of music to pull from and better plot pacing around the middle of the game it just might be the best. It's truly impressive what the team managed to create here. Would 100% recommend to anyone wanting an old school turn based RPG to sink dozens of hours into.

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

ASM v5 #33/834 Thoughts

I er...I kind of hated this actually...

Let me get the positives out of the way. The art is nice, in fact it’s an improvement over the last issue.

The moment of Teresa blowing apart Silver Sable’s head was suitably shocking.

The future predicting software is intriguing in general and as a plot element building towards the 2099 event.

Seeing Spencer again mine old continuity by bringing in the obscure and generic villain Hitman in an organic way was nice.

Seeing Betty rise to foreign correspondent and in particular in connection to Latveria (whom she has history with) was also nice.

Everything else...sigh.

Okay, let me start off with some of the more petty gripes with this story.

On principle, seeing Zdarsky and Slott era continuity come into play irks me. Teresa’s mere existence in fact irks me as I’ve been vocal about before. Calling back to the shitfests that were the Osborn Identity and Ends of the Earth was maybe even worse. Not to mention the story encouraging me to actually read Slott’s current stuff on F4, which MAYBE I will do if I need context for this story but frankly I’m not paying for the displeasure.

Also, these are nitpicks, but I noticed not one but two spelling mistakes along with a questionable editorial box. It advises readers to check out ASM Worlwide volume 6, the trade that I presume is relevant to the plot elements referenced. Wouldn’t it have just been more accurate for future customers to have listed the individual issues? That trade won’t be available forever.

Let’s move onto the more serious stuff.

So Spider-Man’s sister might be a straight up killer and he isn’t concerned about this? At least with Kaine he presumed he was on a redemption tour, Kaine was trying to STOP killing people. Spider-Man isn’t sure if his SISTER meant to blast a hole in a woman’s head or not, and it’s treated as incidental and nonchalant.

The Foreigner’s characterization is seriously, seriously questionable.

The Foreigner is a really, really, really bad dude and there is really bad blood between him and Spider-Man. This guy was not only (knowingly) having an affair with Black Cat when she was also dating Peter, not only working with Felicia to frame him and ruin his life so Spidey would become one of his agents, but was also directly responsible for murdering his friend Ned Leeds! Not to mention he’s an assassin and a mercenary and Spider-Man has typically held such people in notable disdain.

Spider-Man’s nonchalance towards him and letting him go are extremely questionable to say the least.

But that wasn’t even what raised my eyebrow the most about him. It was the fact that he’s practically cooing over his ‘love’ Silver Sable. Frankly as originally depicted the Foreigner was implied as far from the romantic type. He was essentially an evil James Bond, except in charge of his own particular organization. The notion he felt deep feelings of romance towards women is again very questionable, especially given how he’s tried to MURDER his ex-wife Silver Sable at least once or twice.

It’s not IMPOSSIBLE for him to have transitioned into who he is in this story, but Spencer doesn’t depict that transition, it’s played as though he’d always be like that. Maybe I’m just missing developments from Coates’ Captain America run and people need to inform me, but that’s no the Foreigner of the 1980s-1990s.

In fact ‘maybe I’m missing something from these stories’ sums up a lot of my attitude towards this book.

I skimmed at best the Osborn Identity arc because fuck that shit is why. So to see in come back in full force, to see this story about Spider-Man illegally invading a foreign nation with his G.I. Joe Spider Army  is just bad and I thought we’d moved past this shit.

As I didn’t pay close attention to that run and paid 0 attention to the Silver Sable ongoing series it set up I can’t speak to whether or not revealing the Silver Sable of both was an LMD hold up to scrutiny. My gut tells me it doesn’t.

It’s also kind of just...lame.

I love Silver Sable. I think most readers at worst are indifferent to her, so bringing her down like this and making her reliant upon the kindness and care of her ex husband who’s tried to kill her plays as very insulting to her character in my eyes.

I also don’t see the point of it narratively. From what I understood Latveria is making aggressive moves into Symkaria’s territory. Okay. And Silver Sable’s rival for the sovereignty of Symkaria (who’s under house arrest) is growing in power and so Sable needed the LMD to fool her people into thinking she was fit to rule. Ummm...And now the Countess is hiring Chameleon to assassinate Doctor Doom...Um....

Why does any of this demand Sable be disabled (if you pardon the pun)?

Couldn’t you just have Symkarian extremists decide to take out Doom for the sake of their country against Silver Sable’s wishes?

Why retcon Slott’s retcon of Slott’s own story to say Silver Sable didn’t die but when she showed back up all healthy that was just an LMD?

I get Spencer might dislike Slott’s run and wish to subtly tear it down, but we don’t need to tear down all of it just for the sake of it.

I also simply don’t care for seeing so much international intrigue in Spider-Man stories. It worked in Assassin Nation Plot back in the 1980s because back then such things hadn’t been done all that much in Spider-Man stories in recent years. In 2019 though Globe Trotting Parker Industries crap is a very recent raw wound and it WAS the status quo for a very long time, a toxic one at that.*

It doesn’t help when there are scenes of Peter at ESU side by side with the former mentioned scenes. The juxtaposition brings home how this is atypical for Spider-Man and best avoided.

Speaking of which let’s talk about the ESU stuff. I said the technology to see into the future was intriguing, and it is, but I do very much question the relative realism of it. It’s not that I can’t believe that someone in the Marvel Universe could invent such a thing. I just question some random grad student using university resources and a busted Apple Watch from over a year ago could tap into the infinite possibilities of the multiverse, even on a small scale.

By the way, have you noticed anything about this post?

Oh yeah? I’ve barely mentioned the guy on the goddam cover!

And that’s mainly because he’s only in three pages!

In fact between these two issues (that’s 44 pages total btw) Spider-Man 2099 is only in them for seven!

7/44 pages for the character reintroduced 8-9 issues ago, who’s a centrepiece of the event this is all leading to, who’s referenced and featured on the covers and solicits of this whole story?

That’s pathetic.

They’re not even 7 good pages either.

Miguel shows up disorientated and weak and just kind of flails around in an attempt to escape.

That’s it!?

*shakes head*

Pathetic.

Maybe these last two issues will be super duper important, but frankly I’d recommend reading them for free or even reading summaries rather than actually picking them up yourself.

*Not to mention I question in the Marvel Universe if Chameleon could just walk into the UN in disguise, especially considering he’s been caught out at this before in Ends of the Earth.

[achingforthestars]

some things i liked and did not like about the rise of skywalker ***spoilers***

now having seen it and having had the time to sit and talk and collect my thoughts, i have a list of the things i didn’t enjoy and, amongst all this negativity, the things i did. 

contains spoilers of course!

things i did not enjoy:

finding out about palpatine off-screen

so stupid! this was one of the things i disliked the most because of what a cheap, lazy writing choice it was. i wanted to see the characters have to put it together, have to work for it and then when facing palpatine, have it be on their terms instead of his? instead we get him announcing his presence and kylo meeting him in the first 3 minutes. 

treatment of characters

i made a post about this. just so much wrong, so many deserved better, most of all rose, rey and ben. a lot of the characters were treated as afterthoughts. 

implied finn having feelings for rey

dumb. overdone. tired.

knights of ren

felt cheap and underused. learned nothing about them, it was something i was waiting 3 movies for and the final chance to show them was wasted. 

the resistance is back to perfect! 

i understand that this was due to the timeskip, which i guess was necessary, but i felt that it was kind of cheap to not show any sort of struggle. a year has passed and BAM they’re right where they were in TFA. the losses faced in TLJ very much felt erased. 

the pacing

awful. just awful. things felt too rushed or too slow pretty much through the entire movie. 

the visuals

much less well-done than TLJ. the use of colour and light was much weaker in my opinion, the locations more generic, and the imagery lacking. that said, palpatine’s lair was so fittingly creepy, and the reylo moment on kijimi/kylo’s ship with the black and white juxtaposition - those were nice. 

irrelevant or convenient plot elements

zorii bliss was not a necessary character. chewie was conveniently on another transport. d-0, while super cute and funny, was also just a deus ex machina. hux being a spy - could have been entirely removed but oh, finn and poe need to get off the ship somehow. rey’s return to ahch-to was rushed, her interactions with luke could have been on any other planet. she did not need to pilot luke’s x-wing specifically but they forced it. lando - lando was basically a consolation prize for chewie with little relevance. pryde literally could have been replaced with hux and made for a more interesting narrative. 

snoke clones

what the fuck was that?

the fleet

somehow the entirety of the fleet was magically stored, 100% operational and with fully functioning crew, under the crust of some random planet? and every single one of those ships has planet-destroying capabilities? 

the other “fleet”

where the fuck were these allies in TLJ, huh? i get that it’s the last stand and maybe more people showed up because of that but damn. 

leia’s absence was felt

i understand this was not in the control of the creators but truly, i felt like there was a gaping hole where leia should have been. 

the Trio

i enjoyed their banter but it felt inconsistent through the movie. rey and poe didn’t get along one minute, the next they’re fine. if this had been introduced and pushed in previous films, it would have made more sense and felt less hollow. as it stands, it felt like a forced attempt to call back the OT vibes that just fell flat.

rey palpatine

ugh. let’s reduce strength to a bloodline and in the process ignore what was set up in the last movie. yay! also, palpatine fucked someone at some point and that is utterly disgusting. 

rey skywalker

felt forced. she did not need to take the skywalker name.

kylo’s transition to ben.

before anyone jumps on me, i want to clarify that specifically i am referring to the speed of his transition from ruthless supreme leader to full on ben. i loved his redemption, i just wish i could have seen him do it more gradually and with a bit more struggle? he just goes from “i will find you rey and turn you dark like me” to “i am ben solo” so quickly that i found it a bit jarring? 

palpatine’s constantly changing plans. 

kill rey, no wait, take the throne rey, no wait, let me kill you both and take the throne myself. pick one you crusty fuck. 

force dyad

honestly why establish it if you’re going to ignore it in about 2 seconds?

inadequate expression of star wars main themes

the ideas of hope, of redemption, of love and of family - all central to star wars, and none properly delivered on. 

ben’s death. 

heartbreaking. he deserved love and happiness and a life. that’s all i can say about that. however, in a transition to things i liked: if he had to die, i’m really pleased that it was with an act of love. he chose to make a sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice, for his soulmate. i don’t like that he had to die, but i can find peace in the way it happened - on his terms, on the light side, in the arms of the woman he loved.

things i did enjoy (a lot actually):

babu frik

was so fucking funny. that is all. 

c-3po.

also surprisingly funny for a droid i’m usually annoyed by?

jannah

i surprisingly really loved her character. i thought she might be an addition like zorii bliss, but i enjoyed naomi ackie’s acting a lot. she felt much more genuine. however i do think there was a missed opportunity in working on her and finn’s shared background as ex-stromtroopers.

force healing abilities

i thought were super cool! i really liked healing the serpent, it was a nice subversion of the expectation to be trapped and outrunning a monster through a labyrinth of corridors. loved how when rey healed kylo, she healed his scar too. just also it’s always nice to see new things being done with the force.

force fighting. 

it was lovely to see force techniques being used in the lightsaber battles (as compared, for instance, to the throne room fight of TLJ); and also to see force-aided physical feats like jumps that don’t look like naruto-style ninja backflips. definitely felt more real.

poe’s moment in the x-wing

taking in the damage and destruction all around him. i felt the weight he was feeling in that moment.

rey picking herself off the ground

after palpatine drains her and kylo’s life force. i loved her moment of peace and centering, gathering the strength to do what comes next. while i didn’t love the voices of the previous jedi, it made for a lovely sequence of “i’m not done with you yet” and showcases her strength.

the moment with ben and han

gorgeous scene echoing han and ben’s last interaction in TFA. just an amazing callback with such different emotion and the final turning of ben back to the light. i really loved this bit.

adam driver’s acting performance in general.

absolutely the best, the most amazing, performance of the film. if nothing else, the switch from kylo to ben, despite having zero dialogue, should speak for itself. he managed to convey a completely different personality through his mannerisms, physicality and visuals alone. oh, and the death/ressurrection scene! the absolute desperation with which he crawls to the woman he loves. the infinite depth of emotion adam manages to transmit through only his eyes and his facial expressiveness. he deserves an oscar nomination for this in my opinion. 

reylo kiss

i don’t even need to explain this. the smile. the pure happiness, the tender touch, the moment of just love and joy and letting themselves be together, finally. i could not have asked for more of a beautiful first kiss. we’re ignoring what comes after. 

overall impression

tros fell flat. i lived for ben’s redemption and reylo, but this was not enough to make up for the mistreatment of most of the characters, the poorly coordinated and frankly rushed structure, and most importantly, the failure to deliver on its themes of family and hope. i felt like it tried to do too much and achieved too little. 

[calisotadreamin]

PKNA Issue 0/1 “Evronians”

Note: I recommend reading the issue before you read my analysis. Every issue of PKNA can be found in english scanlation by Banker.

Script/plot: Alessandro Sisti, Ezio Sisto

Art: Alberto Lavoradori

inducks

Index post for this essay series

I talked about how confusing it was to read a few random PKNA issues in the introduction, but the very first issue the first issue of PKNA must have still been a surprise. Just looking, at the cover, readers will probably recognize PK himself, but who are the alien guys he’s fighting? And It’s issue 0, what? It turned out to be first of three issues numbered 0, making it even weirder.

And if you read the first couple pages, any confusion will not disappear. Wordlessly, it depicts an alien race being invaded by another. You don’t get any explanations on what these beings are at all.

It is not until we get to meet a very familiar face, that of the Duck Avenger that things start to make sense. Not that he can explain them, he is as confused as the first-time reader. But soon things are revealed.

To jump ahead a bit, The evil alien invaders are the Evronians. They who live on feeding on the  emotions of other beings. When their victims are completely drained, they become coolflames, mindless slaves of the evronians.

This is the first real taste that this comic is going to be dark. That concept alone makes them of most if not the most dangerous and fearsome villains in duck comics.

Yet the comic is not very serious. The tone is not far removed from a regular paperinik story. This is how DA reacts when his weapons prove useless against the coolflames:

Much of this comic is about Da finding the solution to this problem. Donald gets once again forced to work for Uncle Scrooge. This time in a mysterious and high-tech tower that Scrooge now owns: Ducklair tower. This comic is one of the few that Scrooge plays any kind of role actually. So get a good look at him, he won’t appear much in this series.

Donald idly counts the amount of floors in the building, and finds there is one floor more than the 150 there should be, so as the Duck Avenger, he decides to investigate this mysterious 151th floor.

There he finds One, a AI built by the tower’s creator: Everett Ducklair. He was a brilliant inventor, but his creativity led him to create dangerous weapons. So he sold all his belongings and went to a monastery.

This is all rather whimsical, of course. One himself is a humorous character, well-meaning but pompously full of himself and very snarky.

Even Everett’s compulsion to create weapons is largely treated as a comical thing. Yet One and Everett’s inventions turn out to be the solution to DA’s problem with the evronians.

Now here is where One’s character probably becomes controversial. He essentially replaces Gyro as DA’s gadget supplier and that might irk some people. Now, this isn’t a problem for me. I wouldn’t like Gyro to be  written out of the regular PK stories, but for a side venture like this, it works just fine. One’s personality is so different from Gyro’s that he brings something new to the stories. And it is a likable personality. His sense of humor, his inflated sense of self-importance combined with a genuine affability and intellect is just so loveable.

Anyway, this solves the actual plot of the comic. With One’s weapons, DA becomes capable of fighting back and everything is resolved in an epic fight scene. Yet the Evronian threat remains. As DA puts it:

Despite this issue being essentially a lot of set-up for the series to come, it works as a semi stand-alone story, with a beginning, middle and end. Hero is defeated by new villains, (Evronians), but through ingenuity finds the solution and a friend (One) and becomes capable of defeating the villains. It makes perfect sense as a plot. And the jokes just work. This issue sets up one of my favourite running gags in the series: the soap opera Anxieties, which Donald is a fan of.

But we can’t leave without mentioning another thing that is established here: the Channel 00 news crew.

However, these characters don’t really impact the story all that much in this issue. They will only become plot-relevant in later issues, in which their personalities are explored more.

One is Angus Fangus, a disagreeable and self-important reporter from New Zealand, that now works for the Duckburg news channel 00. He is clearly inspired by J. Jonah Jameson from the Spider-Man comics. He becomes an enemy of the Duck Avenger who creates deceitful propaganda against him. But just like Jameson, he eventually come to show his sympathetic side.

Another is Lyla Lay, another Channel 00 reporter. I won’t explain what her deal is, because that is only explained in the next issue. I’ll just say that I like how she is drawn here. Very thin, angular and cartoony, unlike the very humanized and sexualized design she gained later. Alberto Lovoradori’s art in this story is incredible in general, btw.

Anyway, Lyla is very mysterious. What even happened here? We’ll find out the answer when we look at the next issue, see you then.

[tobiohchan]

I’ve been on a streak of good book picks but it finally ended.......I made the mistake of reading this one and now I’m so peeved that I have to rant about it lol

I don’t want to outright name the book bc I would feel bad so if u wanna know DM me (off anon). I mistakenly thought it was on my to-read list so I bought since it was on sale. Big mistake. Will be trying to return it. To be fair, I DID read the entire thing but ONLY out of the hope that it would get better. And I’m sure y’all can tell that no, it did not get better.

What’s it about: a witch and a witch hunter get married, but the witch hunter doesn’t know she’s a witch and the witch married him to protect herself from other witches. Yes it’s hella hetero. It mentioned lesbians once and it was probably just to throw it in there for shits and giggles. 

Narratives: for whatever reason the book is written in first person pov which is like. Fine. But why the narratives switch between the witch and the witch hunter was in my opinion completely useless. The idea of having different perspectives tell the story is to gain information that another pov wouldn’t give. The whole story could’ve been from the POV of the witch and it would’ve given the same info. More so, it already was mostly the witch POV anyway. My point is, this book could’ve absolutely been read way more smoothly had it been not first person pov in general.

Style: I literally thought i was reading a poorly written fanfic. It was like bringing every known ao3 trope under the same story. They tried to make it dramatic by having short sentences and one line paragraphs but I’m sorry, it gets old after the first three times you do it, let alone writing the WHOLE book like this. And btw, this intends no offense to fanfics - what I mean by fanfics is the context under which fanfics are written: they are stories all about well-established, fleshed out and deep characters within an intricate, built-up world. Meanwhile, this book was entirely written as if it was a fanfic - there was no world building, no deep characters or development. I will get into this more so in my following points.

Characters: am I supposed to hate every character? I do tend to get attached fairly easily, but come on, no character was in depth enough for me to even latch on. The main characters had no real “built up” revelations or developments. The witch was supposed to “go against the norms of womanhood” which is extremely boring considering how often it’s done. Sorry! I have the audacity to think that we’ve already moved past these issues! Moreover, if you’re gonna try to make her a badass, WHY is she still being saved by the guy? Why is she so powerless when it comes down to the most crucial moments? Why is the guy still being protective, why is he wiping her tears, etc ??? Going further onto this point - okay, you wanna have this feminist witch cult and want to show that women deserve to be treated better, then WHY the HELL are you making literally all of them the bad guys??? This is counterproductive. And the witch hunter? Lame. I felt no heroism from him despite the fact that his character was literally supposed to be “the hero” of the witch hunters. All other side characters: it’s like they get introduced, appear only to move the story along, and that’s it. They have no real relevance besides their existence in a certain scenes. There were “attempts” to forge their bonds with the main characters, to show how they’re related or what their relationships are like, but this was long forgotten after the first few chapters of the book. Again, the plot only revolved around the sexual tension of the main characters; the side characters’ motivations, their actions, their relevance to the story was completely undermined. 

Plot: the “plot” was clearly irrelevant and unimportant when compared to the sexual tension between the witch and the witch hunter. Like apparently the sexual tension or the “romantic progression” of the two was most important. And I say “romantic progression” in quotations because, what the hell, it was SO poorly executed. Like they basically fell for each other after they had sex. Everything leading up to it was a bunch of bullshit. None of their flirting could be considered “witty banter”, it was a half-assed attempt at such and all it did was make me roll my eyes so often I got a headache. Nothing in the story’s plot built on each other, it was a bunch of “and this happened, and then this happened” etc. What was supposed to be the plot was forgotten for more than half the story where you’re forced to read about how they “fell” in love. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind love stories. But at the very least you have to make the ride worth while. For the first maybe 70 pages there is introductions of characters and you see the general line of the story, for the next 300 pages it is all about the sexual tension - the plot is completely forgotten - finally, around the 400 page mark you’re back to the plot. Now you might say “hey! that’s still some semblance of a plot”. Ok. Except the fact that everything that happened was like someone pulling random answers out of each minor character’s asses. The book had to end at some point, right? Well for the final climax ending of the story, EVERYTHING was pulled out of someone’s ass. I had hoped for the sake of this book that the ending would shake me out of this state of constantly rolling my eyes, but the more I read on, the more I ended up skipping literal paragraphs because I was so damn tired of this book. Pretty sure the ending was made up at the last minute just to end the damn thing, but that’s just me! 

Final Thoughts: The wildest thing about this to me is that this book is apparently popular, majority of the ratings are 5 stars. To me, this was a waste of my time but I don’t have the heart to give it 0/5 bc even I took the damn effort to read the whole thing. 1/5 stars. What the FUCK did I just read

[airlock]

airlock grades the Punchable archetype

so far, a majority of the Fire Emblem villains I’ve covered in this series are the sort who are meant to be liked, forgiven, sympathized with... these here are not those ones. these are the ones whose singular purpose in the narrative is to piss you the hell off. so, which of them played that role to excellence?

(do note: under cut are spoilers for… everything, and also a significant amount of me criticizing or blamming characters that you might- okay, yeah, no, you probably don’t like anybody on this list, but you may still strongly disagree with my opinions of them. you’ve been warned! ha, no way these fools would set about reading the whole post now... what!? impossible!)

a foreword

so, to be very specific, I’m not rating every flatly irritating miniboss here; the definitive aspect here is that the character has to be a recurring one, whose extended screentime never quite ends up giving them a chance to be something other than vile. but more important than the hair-splitting here is giving some consideration to how exactly I’ll be doing the rating; after all, I’m not supposed to like any of these people, but there’s still better and worse ways to be despicable as a character.

I’m running pretty much on two central critteria: is this character entertaining, and is that character satisfying to take down. it’s more important to hit one than to hit both; a character who hits neither is significantly more likely to be a pure waste of bile, however.

without further ado, let’s start gritting those teeth!

fuck this guy

(9/10)

directly enabling the single most badass scene in all of Book II obviously lands you on the upper echelons of this here character type. but that’s just the effect; we should peer into the cause of what makes him work so well!

of the critteria I mentioned, Lang goes for the latter: he’s not only quite satisfying to defeat, it’s also great anytime someone finally talks back to him and puts him in his place. that’s because he’s not the sort of character for whom this sort of thing is a given. a lot of the ones we’ll see ahead of him are incompetent toadies on top of being amoral, but not this guy; he knows exactly what he’s doing, relying on the backing of the most powerful nation in the continent to plunder, raze, and oppress to his heart’s content. the business of doing something about this dipshit gets severely delayed by the dire consequences of crossing him -- until Marth finally decides that enough is enough.

and THEN Jagen tells him to meet him 9 PM at the Grustian denny’s parking lot for an old man brawl-

fuck this chin

(3/10)

I struggle to understand ol’ Kaga’s obssession with jealousy as a villainous character motivation, I really do. it’s one entirely realistic thing to envy someone for having riches, fame, status, influence, the attention of one’s crush, or other such things that are more or less objective and palpable. it’s also entirely a thing to have an inferiority complex and fear or spite people one perceives as being more talented, better looking, stronger, smarter than oneself. but the way these characters are written tends to come across like they’re furious because they’re underwritten gonk and not everyone else is.

... which hey, would be a pretty upsetting thing if it happened to a real person, but I don’t think meta-commentary is the point here, is it? I sincerely hope it isn’t...

fuck this lady

(7/10)

the second leg of Genealogy of the Holy War finds you facing the same sorts of enemies most of the time: half of them are Satanists, and the other half are unfortunate innocents trapped in the crossfire of courtly intrigue. it’s exactly because of this that the arc desperately needs a villain like Hilda.

Hilda is just someone who doesn’t particularly mind if the most effective path up the social ladder involves destroying her relatives, daughter included, or capturing children and forcing them into murder tournaments. how is the imperial machinery of tragedy and death supposed to run without someone like her cranking a couple of the levers? er, I mean, you don’t really crank levers unless you’re doing something weird, but... okay, moving on

amidst all of the battles you might struggle to feel were worth fighting, Hilda here serves as a reminder, as a face of every reason why the Empire is the enemy and must be defeated.

and yes, making Tinny kill her rocks

fuck this guy IN AMERICA

(2.5/10)

not too long ago I would have dropped him a straight zero, but I’ve recently been reading through the Project Exile text dumps for a new Thracia 776 fanslation and what can I say, they put good work into making him tick properly and I essentially have no choice but to keep that sort of thing in consideration when making the ratings, being that all of the other villains are also characters I only have indirect contact with through a translation that may have improved or worsened things.

but the good work is no miracle -- although given much-needed entertainment value, this guy is still who he is: practically a standard-fare asshole miniboss who ends up getting three whole chapters to chirp into. and to make matters worse, you only actually get the payoff to him in one of two possible routes!

I am strong, I am clever, I am handsome, and most importantly, fuck me

(4/10)

I can’t possibly deny that his antics are some of the most hilarious on this list; the ridiculous speeches, the facial expressions from the manga, the fact that he gets demoted on screen... and I mean, they got Kaiji Tang to put voice to his high drama on Heroes, on top of it all!

alas, it just really spoils the fun to a significant extent that his very introduction in Binding Blade sees him macking on a captive prepubescent girl. however entertaining it may be that she snatches his wig on that occasion anyway.

fuck this morph

(5/10)

yeah, some people wish. notably including Brendan Reed-

the thing with Sonia is that she’s a little less believable than most folks in this archetype -- specifically because she’s not, like, working within the structures of power that would let her get away with being as much of a dip as she wants to; she’s earned her influential position by seducing the boss, which is hard to buy when, however attractive she may be, she never has a single positive interaction with anyone and nobody trusts her (barring Ursula on both counts, but she’s not the one who needs to be brought on board anyway). I realize what a phenomenon it is to think with one’s dick, but come on; surely, you don’t let your new friend with benefits tell you how to do your job just because she’s that good in bed or something.

that said, although her overall spot on the plot feels weakly implemented, she still makes for a tremendous bulwark to overcome specifically within Nino’s subplot. what a powerful confrontation against a lifelong abuser she provides in the end!

do not fuck this guy what is wrong with you

(3/10)

Valter is just uncomfortable as a character, which is limbo as far as emotion-inducing goes; it’s not particularly entertaining, and nor is it artfully terrifying in the way that Orson is. furthermore, I normally praise Sacred Stones’s antagonists for averting the way of behaving like a plot device, but this guy is the exception; he seems to primarily show up to cause trouble because trouble needs to be caused.

I feel like he’d have made for a far stronger character concept if his backstory had been handled differently, being more specific in what part of his mind broke when he held the cursed lance, instead of just being “now he does bad things and talks like he’s vaguely horny throughout”.

at least he’s quite a bit entertaining in Heroes where he gets voiced lines and no particular characters or plots to interact with -- but if that’s what it takes to make the character shine, it doesn’t really say good things about him.

fuck beauty

(5.5/10)

so, the truth come out: does this guy is deserve becoming the absolute teacher’s pet he’s been since Radiant Dawn? my verdict on the matter is: not really.

I mean, Path of Radiance actually writes him into a solid niche; for all the big words he emits about being a patron of beauty, he’s ultimately just the same kind of petty, ostentatious garbage that poisons the governance of Begnion, and finally taking him down for good and all makes for an excellent dive after all the work it takes to set the light of justice on him -- not just in Day Breaks (oh gooooooooddd) but over the course of the several chapters it takes.

it’s all downhill from there, though. his appareance in Radiant Dawn is not only unecessary, but also a deviation from the established writing to focus on pallid, ineffective jokes, like someone invented Heroes writing before the thing itself happened. he fights on your side because now he genuinely cares about beauty and art to the point he’ll fight a goddess over it? yeah, that’s not who he was.

and seriously, one strongly gets the impression that, in that appearance onwards, the punchline is just supposed to be that he’s fat, bald, wordy, and has a shitty mustache -- which, besides being blatant fatphobia, is seriously stale; “it’s funny because he’s ugly” is, like, at least two random minibosses per game, usually more.

fuck the senate

(2/10)

although he jabs a lot of the buttons that should make for an entertaining and stalwart hate sink, it ends up not really working.

his narcisism lacks the performatic grandeur of the likes of Narcian; it lands as pastiche at best, and common annoying smugness at worst. and although he’s powerful and influential enough to cause a bunch of problems, he’s introduced at a weird time that fails to make his specfic capabilties relevant to opposing the protagonists, and he ends up not doing a lot more than severely inconveniencing Zelgius (who is on his team) a couple times.

at least, the battle dialogue against him in Part 4 still provides some of the most fierce drags in Radiant Dawn

fuck the valm arc

(0/10)

seriously, fuck it

but ahem, onto the guy in question: he’s an annoying waste of writing space that doesn’t seem to be intended for any reason other than making the rest of Team Bad Guy look good, plain and simple.

you might be thinking, airlock, this is the third Awakening villain you blammed in four posts, are you just biased? the answer is: yes, but even if I were being perfectly fair, let’s be real, antagonists are just not one of that game’s strengths, overall. that just happens sometimes; I can really say the same thing of like Thracia 776, y’know?

fuck playing f- yeah, okay, that’s just low-hanging fruit

(??/10)

honestly, from this distance, none of Fates’s fixed antagonists bar Anankos really give me the impression of not just being despicable pastiche, but I’m guessing he’s supposed to be the one who actually intended to take it as a niche?

so, I’m just going to assume you hated this, but how was it? are you glad it’s over, or do you regret having read it at all? we’re probably not going to be spared from one of these characters on Three Houses, but specifically how much would you like to hate the one that comes along? to be honest, your thoughts aren’t remotely as good as mine, so I wouldn’t bother replying or reblogging to share them, worm. what? you’ll do it anyway!? how dare you! do you know what I’m capable of!?

[bigskydreaming]

Whats Nightwing and Deathstroke's dynamic? Why does it make you wince? Im not very familiar with it.

Nightwing and Slade actually have a really interesting and compelling dynamic in a lot of ways, that can be really good when written well and really terrible when not. My biggest issue is it is that its not sexual in the comics (Slade is a good thirty years older than him) or in other adaptations that have a version of it, like the Teen Titans cartoon. But fandom being fandom, Dick/Slade is a bigger ship than like, half his actual canon ships, so any new take on it always comes with a big sigh at all the new Dick/Slade shipping that’s gonna crop up or have a resurgence cuz of it. And I’m annoyed enough with YJ right now that I’m not giving them the benefit of the doubt that they’ll do anything new or interesting with it that’s worth having to wade through pages of new Dick/Slade noncon in the months afterwards. Its a ship that generates a lot of non-con fic in particular, or at least my old favorite, ‘dubcon’, with the dubious part of the consent referring to the fact that it usually involves mind control or brainwashing, both tropes that show up a lot in their interactions anyway. (Not that there’s anything dubious about this NOT allowing for consensual anything, just that people love to call it dubcon because….fuck if I know).

But anyway….in the comics, Deathstroke is a mercenary who’s one of the Titans’ earliest and most iconic enemies. Though at various times and depending on who’s writing him, he’s sometimes an antihero and even a semi-trusted ally of the Titans (usually with Dick specifically), other times a villain but with his own personal code of honor that means he won’t help the Titans or other heroes but he’ll refuse to take jobs that would pit him against them, and other times he’s full on remorseless and sadistic villain who hates them all and wants them all dead.

He also had three kids, his son Grant (the first Ravager), his younger son Joseph (Jericho) and his youngest, their half-sister Rose (the second Ravager). Basically, the first time he interacted with the Titans was when the supervillain group HIVE put out a contract to have the Titans all killed. Slade turned them down cuz of his personal honor code and how young the Titans were, but his son Grant accepted the contract in exchange for HIVE giving him superpowers to help him fulfill it. The process didn’t work right though, and when fighting the Titans, Grant’s powers overloaded and killed him.

Slade blamed the Titans for this, and vowed to finish the contract and kill them as some twisted way of honoring Grant. He doesn’t do Logic so good, well no, its more like he doesn’t really do parenting so good, as in he tends to have fuck all to do with his kids 364 days of the year, but then something bad happens to one of them and suddenly he thinks he’s Dad of the Year and going 0 to Homicidal in six seconds flat is the way to make up for all the times he’s let them down or screwed them over, instead of just…not Doing That.

So Slade recruited a young meta named Tara Markov (yup, that one) and trained her as his apprentice specifically to help him get revenge on the Titans. At his prompting, she joined the Titans as a spy for him, feeding him intel and plotting against them in one of the best known comicbook storylines of all time, The Judas Contract. It was up there with some of the X-Men’s best known stories like the Dark Phoenix Saga and Days of Future Past. (In the 80s actually, the Titans comic book was almost as popular as Uncanny X-Men at the time. Like way more than the Justice League. They were DC’s big hitters, popularity wise - specifically the lineup that for the most part was centered around Dick, Donna, Starfire, Beast Boy, Cyborg and Raven, with other members like the original Titans and later ones like Pantha and Wildebeest coming and going at various points in the 80s too).

Ultimately, Tara made her move and betrayed the Titans, enabling Slade to kidnap each of them one by one and turn them over to the HIVE….all except for Dick. In the meanwhile, he was approached by Slade’s ex-wife Adeline Kane - who has an equally all over the place dynamic with Slade, like sometimes she’s his worst enemy and other times she’s manipulating events behind the scenes to help him without him knowing, because she still loves him…it basically just depends on who’s writing her, same as with Slade. Also, Kane is Adeline’s maiden name, she’s distantly related to Kate Kane aka Batwoman in some extremely complicated manner I can never remember, but that’s mostly just trivia. I can’t remember a time its ever been relevant to a story, and it has nothing to do with Slade’s interactions with Dick.

ANYWAY. Point being, so Adeline, who blames and hates Slade at this time for their son Grant’s death, along with their other son Joey, seek out Dick and offer their help rescuing the Titans and defeating Slade. Joey is a metahuman as a result of Slade’s altered DNA (he has regenerative powers and is actually immortal, due to experiments the army did on him while he was a soldier). So Joey was born with powers although they didn’t activate until he was a young adult. His codename was Jericho and his power lets him possess peoples’ bodies. He’s also mute, and I’m half expecting him to show up in YJ fairly soon. If not this season then hinted at by the end of it. Also wouldn’t surprise me if they had plans to have him be gay in the YJ universe. He’s a character who was coded as gay practically from his debut. Joey/Dick is actually probably Dick’s oldest and most enduring slash ship, for the record.

So Joey works with Dick to rescue the Titans and defeat Slade, who’s captured and goes on trial for kidnapping the Titans. Joey ends up joining the Titans in the aftermath, and Adeline’s yay good, this was my Sekrit Plan all along, I did all this solely in the hopes that you would end up a superhero and have positive influences and not end up a murdering douchebag of flexible morality like your dad cuz fuck that guy, am I right Titans?

Did Adeline really just do all of that because she wanted her son to have more friends? Like…idk honestly it could go either way. Like….it IS the kind of thing she would do, tbh, so its as likely she was telling the truth as it is she just wanted to screw Slade one last time to avenge Grant and then was like hey if I take credit for my kid ending up a Titan now, I could probably play the “you owe me one” card later if I ever need to. Addy does like handing out “you owe me one” cards, just to be safe. Never know when you might need one.

The thing all this has to do with Dick is like, so it basically ended up being Dick versus Slade in the big finale, while Joey was rescuing the others and helping them face off against Tara. And for whatever reason - with multiple takes on this offered by multiple writers in the decades since - something about Dick just stuck with Slade and he’s had a kinda fascination with him ever since. Like he’s always talking about how much more he could teach Dick than what he already learned from Bruce, trying to convince him he’s got a killer instinct that Bruce just suppressed and its holding him back, blah blah, like saying he’s good, but Slade could make him great, so he surpasses both Bruce and Slade. TBH, he spends WAY more time obsessing about Dick and getting Dick to join him than he bothers paying attention to his own kids. 

It really isn’t inherently sexual though, its a weird kinda pseudo father/son, pseudo mentor/mentee type thing. And its not entirely one-sided, because Dick at various times IS…tempted? Kinda? Like whenever Dick’s having some kind of crisis of conscience, or he’s pissed at Bruce or is questioning the effectiveness of superheroes or why they do the things they do or what does it all matter blah blah blah like omg I love you Dick, I really do, but sometimes you are such a drama queen, my god, blast some My Chemical Romance, experiment with drugs and chill out already, its not that deep. (LOL I kid. Well mostly). But point being, every once in awhile something happens that puts Dick in a funk and makes him second guess himself, and he spends like….a month being convinced he should reinvent himself as the anti-Bruce, that’s the solution, and this usually sends him in search of Slade except he’s always like ‘OH FANCY MEETING YOU HERE, THIS IS TOTALLY RANDOM AND NOT ON PURPOSE’. 

And Slade likes to take any opportunity to try and convince him like BE A BAD GUY DICK, KILL PEOPLE FOR MONEY, ALL THE COOL KIDS ARE DOING IT. Except inevitably Slade does something that pisses Dick off and Dick snaps out of it and is like NO, IM A HERO AND THIS IS BAD, I REMEMBER NOW AND I’LL NEVER JOIN YOU, YOU’RE NOT MY REAL DAD I HATE YOU! And then they fight again, but with swords, not words, and then they’re like crap, we’re too well matched, this is going nowhere, you’re a worthy opponent, the only one I can truly respect, blah blah and then they call a breather and Slade’s like hey kid, wanna grab a beer and Dick’s like yeah but only if you promise not to kill anyone. And Slade’s like ugh fine.

And then Slade’s all, look kid, its been fun but its time you went home to your real family and your real life, this isn’t you, you’re a hero, I can’t try and turn you into something you’re not, its Wrong. And Dick’s like….umm yeah, I know, I literally JUST said that, how hard did I hit you? And Slade’s like NO SHHH, DONT TRY AND ARGUE, GO, YOU GO NOW, GO ON, LIVE YOUR LIFE, YOU DONT BELONG HERE IN THE DARK WITH ME, YOU’RE ONE OF THE GOOD ONES, GO BACK TO YOUR OWN KIND.

And Dick’s like no seriously dude, I already called my dad to come pick me up, what are you even on right now, are we having the same conversation?

Slade, sobbing paternally: I HAVE TO LET YOU GO, ALL I EVER DO IS HURT MY KIDS, I’M A TERRIBLE FATHER, ITS NO WONDER JOEY HATES ME.

And then Dick awkwardly slips out while Slade’s mid monologue, with his head thrown back yelling up at the sky and shaking his fists like WHY GOD WHY IS THIS THE WORLD WE LIVE IN WHY - because the thing about Slade is he’s actually even MORE of a drama queen than Dick, he just hides it better. Most of the time. But seriously tho.

Anyway yeah, this is like…a pattern with them basically. And Slade’s like, you’ve inspired me, I see in you the man I could’ve become, maybe even that I can still be, and he like doubles down on his personal honor code and becomes a Mercenary With A Heart for a couple years and even helps out the Titans every now and then (basically just whenever Dick’s in trouble and he goes on a killing spree, like NOBODY IS ALLOWED TO MURDER MY KIDS BUT ME - also by this point in time, Joey had died because Slade literally killed him, I forget why, it was a dumb story, but its okay Joey came back, its not like his name is Uncle Ben. But yeah, killing his kids is kinda a thing with Slade too, and he’s very proprietary about it).

And then he falls off the wagon and is like fuck, I forgot how much I like murder, ugh, you should have never tried to make me change, THIS IS WHO I AM, and Dick’s just like….I literally do not know where you’re getting these conversations from, like am I there when you think we’re having them, am I just blacking out…do I need to see a doctor??? And Slade’s like YOU WILL RUE THE DAY YOU EVER MET ME, GRAYSON, FROM NOW ON I AM THE TITANS’ MORTAL ENEMY and runs off all dramatically while Dick’s like…..wut, and all the other Titans are like srsly, dude, what is WITH you too, and Dick’s all I DON’T EVEN KNOW, HE’S JUST LIKE THAT.

In all seriousness though, ultimately my take on their dynamic is that for Slade, Dick’s a combination of seeing himself and Grant in Bruce and Dick’s dynamic, and its like….all about his regret and missed opportunities. Like, he tends to be super judgey of Bruce and critical of how he trains (and raises Dick) and passive aggressively like *I* would never do that and Dick just kinda lifts an eyebrow and is all, you’ve literally killed two of your three kids. 

But like, Slade kinda views himself as the anti-Batman and thus Dick is inadvertently cast as Grant, but its like Slade can never decide if he thinks Bruce is actually holding Dick back from his full potential and he wants to push Dick the way he thinks Bruce refuses to, or if like, he blames Bruce for getting Dick involved in this life, the same life that got Grant killed, and wants to protect Dick from Bruce and from the same thing happening to him. So its this weird mix of Slade manipulating Dick sometimes and pushing him way further than even Bruce ever does and saying its for his own good, but also randomly mixed in there are these bouts of extreme protectiveness, and there’s like zero rhyme or reason to which he is on any given day and there’s never any way to predict where Slade will land and so it always fucks with Dick’s head in a big way, he’s like…I’m getting whiplash.

And then on Dick’s end, like, the thing about Dick like I’ve mentioned before is he’s a huge people pleaser? Like he’s a very empathetic caretaker type personality who sinks a huge amount of his identity into being everything for everyone, to the extent that he tends to lose sight of himself in the process, sometimes. And he’s also a perfectionist who was raised with the most demanding father of all demanding fathers ever, and has a lot of abandonment issues and insecurities that Bruce’s mutant power is to trip over and set off in the worst possible ways.

And so I think the reason Dick keeps seeking Slade out every now and then is not because he ACTUALLY wants to ever take Slade up on his offer and genuinely become his apprentice or partner and like, turn his back on how he was raised. I think the point of it for Dick is the fact that each and every time he ends up affirming for himself no, wait, this ISN’T actually what I want, I just needed to be reminded of that, to remember that. That he always pulls himself back before going too far. And at the same time, I do think on some level he likes that Slade is this kinda constant in his life, that at the end of the day Slade is like…so fixated on his potential and his achievements and his worth as a fighter and a hero, because like….Dick Grayson is a person who craves validation but will never ask for it ever. 

And he’s one of those people who everyone is just so USED to liking without even thinking about it that it never occurs to them when talking amongst themselves about how great he is, that they forget to say this to his actual face? And so he never hears it? And never asks for it, because gasp, then people might think he’s needy, and that would be bad, so he mostly just goes and sulks in his apartment about how nobody likes him and he’s terribad. Except for Slade. Slade always compliments him on what a good fighter and what a good planner and what a good leader he is, so hmm wonder what he’s doing. He hasn’t committed any crimes in six months and I can’t find any reason to track him down and bring him in? Ugh, that asshole. Okay, ummm, I guess I could tell him I’m thinking of turning evil again, I haven’t done that in a couple years, he’d probably buy it.

And then later Bruce is pacing around the Batcave wrathfully shaking his fist, like “Damn that man and his sick hold over my son, if only I knew how he keeps getting his hooks into you!”

And Dick basically shrugs and plays games on his phone. “He mostly just tells me I’m special, and that’s nice to hear.”

Bruce, still pacing and ranting and fist shaking: “What kind of evil genius is he, how master a manipulator he must be to be able to get inside your head and upend your normal views of right and wrong, to make you entertain these ideas of working with him, learning from him…”

Dick: No its seriously just the saying nice things about me bit. I like that.

Bruce: If only I had a code word or phrase I could use to snap you out of whatever brainwashing he seems to be able to affect you with any time you come near him, perhaps some kind of alien tech….

Dick: You could try “I’m proud of you, son.” I mean if you’re taking suggestions.

Bruce: There’s also the possibility of a magical component to consider, blast, I hate working with magic so of course he WOULD do something like that, ugh I suppose I could ask Zatanna or Jason Blood for help there…

Dick: Cool cool, well this has been a fun and productive chat as always, so you keep doing…all that…and meanwhile I’m gonna go ponder my fixation on father figures who are 100% more committed to obsessing over their failures as a parent than like…actual parenting of their actual kids.

Bruce, ten minutes later: Dick? Where are you? DID SLADE GET TO YOU AGAIN? RIGHT UNDER MY NOSE? CURSE THAT MAN AND HIS UNNATURAL SKILLS, HOW DOES HE DO IT??!?

Anyway, that’s Slade and Dick. There’s also the whole Renegade thing, when Dick asked for Slade’s help in infiltrating the Society of Super Villains in his fake villain identity as Renegade, with you know, lots of Slade trying to corrupt him and also trying to murder any supervillains who looked as his not!son the wrong way. 

And then there was the time Slade brought his daughter Rose to Dick to train and said he couldn’t teach her himself because his track record with training his kids and them not ending up dead is like, not good, and he’s superstitious or something? Idk, I forget his logic, it was probably bad though.

And Slade was like, I only trust you to be a competent teacher for my daughter, I want you to teach her everything you know! Except for like, being a hero. None of that nonsense. I FORBID you from trying to make my daughter into a hero or the deal is off. (The deal being that if Dick did this, Slade would not do crime in Dick’s city for a year).

And Dick was like, you got a deal. I will train Rose but there will be NO trying to make her a hero, I swear. /he said while crossing his fingers behind his back because duh.

And Slade was like okay, fine, you got a deal, I will absolutely still do crime and be villainous but only in every place except for Bludhaven specifically. /he said while crossing his fingers behind his back because duh.

And then Dick tried to make Rose a hero and then Slade blew up Bludhaven and that was definitely a thing, so…yeah.

In summation, Slade and Dick are weird but also very interesting but also if we get another rehash of the Renegade/apprentice arc aka the Teen Titans cartoon adaptation of that story aka the single most popular Dick Grayson fic trope of all time, like….I swear I will probably get a brain bleed.

[lia-nikiforov]

Summer 2018 Final Review

As I explained in my Spring review, my anime watching time plummeted dramatically due to my mom’s unemployment, so I had to massively scale down to barely a dozen shows, vs 20ish I was watching in spring. I dropped Senjuushi (found myself bored to death in the first 10 minutes), Yume100 and Tsukumogami Kashimasu, and gave up on checking out Sirius and Baki. You win this round, stupid Netflix.

Worst to best. I’m also including the shows that were continuing from Spring. Not including Banana Fish, the only summer show that I’m watching and continues into the current season.

Kyoto Teramachi Sanjou Holmes: Did I have any particular expectations for this show? Not really, I just wanted to see Kyoto sceneries. Somehow this show managed to stay beneath my expectations through its whole run. From its absolutely potato production values, to half-baked, poorly solved mysteries, an overarching plot that went nowhere, and a romance story that just never landed, the show kind of failed on everything it set itself to do and that’s kind of incredible in its own right. It didn’t even provide Kyoto sceneries, with most of the story confined to closed houses and shops. The show doesn’t even make me angry, it’s just a monument to mediocrity in every possible way. 

(appreciate the melting faces)

Angolmois: I’ve mentioned a million times that I’m a rekijo through and through, and anime with historical settings get me excited like nothing else. I was really looking forward to how they would reimagine the mongol invasions. Turns out they just wanted a macho power fantasy in which the one dude gets the tsundere princess and is the only one with a chance to survive against the invaders. The whole thing is just a parade of misery and pointless deaths to make the main character look super strong and heroic. I do appreciate the completely random appearance of emperor Antoku, as someone who is extremely passionate about ridiculous and fantastic representations of historical characters, when Antoku showed up, alive and old smack in the middle of the 1300s (emperor Antoku died as a child at the end of the 12th century), I found myself screeching.

Phantom in the Twilight: I was kinda talked into binging this one two weeks before the season ended. Gotta say I wasn’t super impressed, the show also suffered massive potato production values, the design of the bishonen was pretty generic and the story was overall cheesy and dumb. But I do appreciate the novelty in Ton as a proactive reverse harem protagonist who takes the reins of her fate and is capable of saving herself and those she loves.

(enjoy more melting faces)

Hanebado!: My story with Hanebado is quite rocky. I wasn’t interested in it at first, then it had that phenomenal first episode with a very strong second ep following. Then it kinda lost focus and finally completely lost it bonkers after the midpoint, with Hanesaki going murder mode after her loss to Connie. I should’ve realized sooner that the title Hanebado was for Hanesaki’s Badminton, but I only realized it too late, when I was already tired of all the Ayano nonsense and wanted to get more of Nagisa, a far more interesting character. I’ve heard the manga had several changes of tone early on and the anime seems to have tried to mellow them out a bit, which made the story very inconsistent -Ayano and Connie the main victims-. Another issue is the show’s failure to condemn Uchika and just leaving us hanging on to what even is her deal. I think it’s a step in the right direction in terms of the kind of sports anime with female characters that I want to see more of, but the lack of consistency hurt the overall production quite a bit. Oh, but the direction and animation was fantastic!

Steins;Gate 0: What a started as an interesting and engaging spinoff that had one of the most beautiful episodes of the whole franchise, petered out into boredom and pointlessness in the second half and it’s quite disheartening. There were still some highlight moments, but overall, the end feeling I had for this whole side story is that it served very little purpose, explaining things that didn’t really need explaining and adding random plotlines that kind of went nowhere, like the whole Kagari business, Moeka suddenly not being one of the bad guys, a random new character with Reading Steiner that never was relevant, the whole AI approach that could’ve been so much more cutting and interesting but wasn’t, and the cartoonish villain. I was specially frustrated by the fact we didn’t even get to see the real Kurisu in the end. Oh well, we will always have that one episode that was absolutely brilliant.

(faces aren’t as melty, but clearly this staff didn’t have any color on hand besides brown and gray, this show looks sad and ugly)

Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight: What if someone wanted to make an idol anime but they were a huge, huge Ikuhara fan? That is the question Revue Starlight sets out to answer and the result is as fascinating as Ikuhara’s best and as cryptic as his worst. Although I didn’t connect with the main story between the main girls whose names I can’t remember for the life of me, the episodes focused  on Banana-senpai and the girls who played the main couple in the 99th show were pretty strong, and the stylishness of the battles, the songs and the intense teen emotions made it all very compelling even when I wasn’t understanding most of it. Worth checking out for sure. Also: Lesbians.

Free! Dive to the Future: Oh, Utsumi, why did you leave us. Even though every Free! fan had been clamoring for a new season, they somehow managed to make Season 3 the season no one ever asked for, fans of the novels and the Starting Days movie and fans of the anime’s two seasons, neither got the focus on the characters they love, with the story scattered across four or five cities and two dozen characters that only interact in small groups of three that never cross. Also, every notorious swimmer in the world actually came from Iwatobi. It felt like we wasted 8 episodes on Ikuya’s (overblown) melodrama only for the character to completely disappear in the last third of the show. Overall, the season felt more setup for the inevitable World Championship/Olympics/whatever they’re planning to do in 2020. I just hope that most of the issues with this season are a product of its fillerish nature and not just that Free has really become a shell of its former self without Utsumi. I’m putting it this high on the list because on a superficial level i enjoyed seeing these characters again, but the whole package was just sourly lacking. Needs more Rin in general and RinHaru moments.

Attack on Titan 3: The opposite case from above, season 3 keeps the tone and pace of the second one to a tea, with the handicap of adapting a somewhat weaker part of the manga when seen in isolation. I also feel the anime tried a bit too hard to humanize Kenny and that the Ackerman reveal was just kinda thrown there. Let’s hope there’s a season 4, because their chosen stopping point makes a fantastic season finale, but would make a very frustrating ending if this were to be the last season.

Planet With: It seems the new trend is “shows I didn’t even have in my radar and somehow end up among my favorites of the season”. Planet With isn’t terribly deep or complex, the character designs are somewhat generic and old-fashioned, and if you heard of the plot it would sound equal parts generic and overstuffed. Yet, somehow, the show manages to strike the perfect balance of excitement and heart, with a brisk pace that somehow doesn’t feel rushed and masterful writing that quickly endears the audience to its characters. It’s a simplistic story about love, war and families that manages to feel entirely new. It’s a shame it’s a sales disaster, because the industry definitely needs more original stories like this.

Lupin III Part V: This one was a rocky ride too, with a very strong start, then some really bleh episodes in the middle -to the point I was close to dropping it when I fell behind on everything, mid-summer, but the second half, the return of Ami and the final arc were brilliant in every possible way, specially the meta commentary they added to the Lupin mythos. When Lupin is down at his worst and Jigen tries to persuade him to quit, the speech Lupin gives, about wanting to see what’s next in the hero’s story, it was so powerful in a narrative sense, it made all the floppy episodes worth the watch. Definitely something you should check out if you’re a Lupin fan.

Cells at Work! Listen, folks, I went into the humanities because I found science dreadfully unappealing, so how dare this stupid poorly veined edutainment make me so invested in the inner workings of the human body and the anthropomorphized versions of the cells whose hard work i waste day in and day out with my decadent lifestyle?! I’m sorry Neutrophyl, i wish I was a better human being so you wouldn’t have to deal with so many pathogens ;----; Jokes aside, this show isn’t just edutainment, but very clever and funny in ways that edutainment shouldn’t be allowed to be. I didn’t expect anything going in and I’m so pleased it turned out to so much fun. And it managed to teach me some science!

Boku no Hero Academia 3: Hero Academia, like a good wine, only seems to get better with time. An okay first season gave way to a great second season and an absolutely fantastic third. The midseason finale was, easily the strongest emotional climax of the series so far (and I’m not saying that just because I have the biggest crush on All Might). And it doesn’t stop there; what makes this show so special is how well thought out and crafted its worldbuilding is, and how intelligent in its development of the sociocultural repercusions of the hero system, how evildoers and society at large react to certain events in a way that feels real and natural because it mimics how many things work in our real world. Although the season finale was kind of a clunky spot, we know a season 4 is coming, so I’m not worried, and in fact can’t wait to see how this story continues.

And that was it for the Summer, whoosh! Maybe if I keep on this roll I can actually do my Fall season watchlist ;----;

[apathetic-revenant]

petition for a modern Sherlock Holmes take in which:

Holmes is explicitly aroace.

whatever sexuality Watson is, either a.) he and Holmes are in a relationship, which is made very clear and definite, or b.) they’re clearly not and they get rightfully annoyed at people assuming/insisting that they are. 

if there are any gay jokes they had better be up to Captain Holt standards.

if Watson has an SO that’s not Holmes they get to be a significant character in their own right rather than a walking side joke.

re: that post about the way cocaine usage was viewed in Victorian England, if Holmes has a substance abuse problem it’s not a direct transfer of what he used in the original stories but a modern translation of that. which is to say, I want to see Holmes pouring 5-hour-energy into his fifth cup of coffee while Watson beats his head against the wall.

if Holmes has a mental illness it’s recognized and portrayed as an actual realistic mental illness. it is neither there to make him Edgy nor to give him license to be a jackass. 

Holmes can totally be a jackass but it’s portrayed as him, in fact, being a jackass, and he isn’t given free pass for it just because he’s Very Smart.

Holmes alternates, seemingly at random, between being charming and incredibly socially adept, and having no social skills whatsoever. 

Holmes disguises himself all the time, often for no real reason. sometimes these disguises are exquisite and sometimes they’re utterly terrible and unconvincing, but Holmes remains convinced that they’re all great.

Watson definitely threatens to hit someone with a chair at some point.

Irene Adler has a husband that she genuinely loves and does not get killed off or otherwise abandoned in the course of her story arc.

there is 0% sexual tension between Irene Adler and Holmes. Holmes loses the case because he writes her off as being inferior to him and consequently underestimates her. he learns from this mistake. or at the very least, Watson constantly reminds him of it. 

anything that was a factual error or case of science-marches-on in the original stories is brought up as a genuine mistake made by Holmes, as part of his whole I-don’t-need-to-know-things-that-aren’t-relevant-to-me shtick. (”he brought the snake here by whistling for it!” “snakes are deaf Holmes” “what”)

there’s no ominous buildup to Moriarty appearing. he literally just shows up completely out of nowhere just like he does in the original story. Holmes insists he’s been behind everything; everyone else is very confused.

either Holmes, Watson, or both carry brass knuckles. 

poor long-suffering Watson has to constantly point out to Holmes that Baritsu is Not A Thing, Holmes, you just made that up okay. 

despite being otherwise impeccably dressed, Holmes has a different stupid hat in each episode. none of them are a deerstalker though. 

modern versions of other detectives inspired by Holmes (Poirot, Nero Wolfe, etc) occasionally wander into the stories, but their appearances are never called attention to. they’re just there. 

at least one reference to The Great Mouse Detective is made. 

Holmes gets really into video games when he’s bored between cases. one story has a background plot of him trying to figure out an adventure game puzzle. he’s infuriated when he finally finds the (ridiculous) solution. 

Holmes has a fidget cube.

[comicteaparty]

March 7th, 2019 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party chat that occurred on March 7th, 2019, from 5PM - 7PM PST.  The chat focused on 2 for Joy by Abi Watson.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

RebelVampire

COMIC TEA PARTY- THURSDAY BOOK CLUB START!

Good evening, everyone~! This week’s Thursday Book Club is officially beginning! Today we are discussing 2 for Joy by Abi Watson~! (https://tapas.io/series/2-for-joy)

Remember that Thursday discussions are completely freeform! However, every 30 minutes I will drop in OPTIONAL discussion questions in case you’d like a bit of a prompt. If you miss out on one of these prompts, you can find them pinned for the chat’s duration. Additionally, remember that while constructive criticism is allowed, our focus is fun and respectfully appreciating the comic. All that said, let’s begin!

QUESTION 1. What is your favorite scene in the comic so far and why?

i think at the moment that my fave scene is when art goes to the library. cause before the comic possibly toed the line about whether everything was conspiracy or coincidence. and thats the scene that says "nope conspiracy." i just also found it to be this really tense scene cause of the librarians talking about art like he was some super threat. which brave to making an activity like visiting library archives seem test. overall though, the part i like best is that it still leaves the question of what the one librarian guarding the archives wouldve done had art's rouse come to light

Superjustinbros

Ello~!

I have returned

RebelVampire

hey super~!

mathtans

I'm... kinda here for now. I did like the library scene, the librarian conspiracy was interesting.

Superjustinbros

https://tapas.io/episode/1159441

mathtans

I liked the cast moment there too, for the amusement value.

(Which arm was it? Whoa hoa...)

RebelVampire

yeah the cast moment was great, partly cause i was no expecting this random moment of humor to roll up

mathtans

As to my fave scene though, I think interestingly I'll need to go with the nametag thing. Because it was just kind of funny at the time, but had some significance later, with the gender change thing, and the not wanting to get him a new tag. Also explains (kind of) why he wears it upside-down.

Superjustinbros

It also gave me flashbacks to when I broke some fingers on one of my hands and had to go into a cast for about a month

back in middle school

mathtans

Ouch. I've never actually needed a cast for anything.

Also, maybe Tec is just waiting for the cast to heal before the fight, humm.

Superjustinbros

Yeah it was not pleasant. I'd go into detail about it more but this is a CTP

RebelVampire

yeah i really liked that on the side the nametag was made to be more relevant. it wasnt just some quirky character thing. which i mean the latter wouldve been fine, but i just like the element that these are characters who have been living their lives without art and the town didnt suddenly exist again just cause art showed up

https://tapas.io/episode/1121842 less a scene but i also really enjoy this page because of all the character reactions. like you got the whole circus of emotions going on and it conveys so much without needing any sort of dialogue

Superjustinbros

https://tapas.io/episode/1128546 and this one two pages later

mathtans

Also weird how Jack's name has dual significance.

Superjustinbros

"it means that makes a liar"

mathtans

I see what you mean there. (I'm not always good at picking up on artistic choices.)

RebelVampire

yeah. although that has gotta kind of suck. i mean i wouldnt want to find out a person i was named after was actually dead and i was just never told XD

Superjustinbros

https://tapas.io/episode/1296840 The latest bit also sparked my interests

RebelVampire

tbh, mike is probably just dumb/evil and not a liar. cause i severely raised an eyebrow to anyone who thinks they can cull birds from an area and theyll just never ever come back even for a short period of time

i really love art's dumb conspiracy journal

i am jealous and want one

Superjustinbros

yus

RebelVampire

but also someone needs to teach jack journalism does not actually involve journals XD

mathtans

Yeah, I don't think Mike's really got it out for anyone though. Maybe he's related to the librarians.

Art draws pretty well. He makes... art.

RebelVampire

an unfortunate nickname well suited to puns

Superjustinbros

"What did you name your son?" "Art"

"Is that really his name?" "No it's just a nickname he likes."

RebelVampire

but i really like how the journal shows art's thought processes and everything. like its a great way to build character without art smacking you with dialogue to put you in his head

Superjustinbros

lol

I never actually thought of that- to give a character a journal

and just have them jot down in it every once in a while

and show you what they write/doodle

mathtans

That's a good point. A little window into his view of the plot.

RebelVampire

QUESTION 2. One of the central features of the story is the vast conspiracy that seems to haunt Art’s hometown. Are the birds truly leading Art somewhere, or are they really just a coincidence? If the former, where are they leading Art to? Why were all the magpies culled and what does this have to do with murders and supposed cults? What was the one librarian scared of Art finding in the archives? Why is the other librarian willing to help Art? What does all this have to do with the forest and the various people who have gone missing in it? How do you think everything connects in general?

I think the birds are leading Art somewhere but im skeptical theyre actually birds. Cause conveniently nobody but Art sees them UNTIL Alice and Jack get involved. And then suddenly cause theyre part of the plot they can see them. So I kind of wonder if they arent birds but supernatural entities that look like birds

mathtans

I feel like that title "2 for joy" has something to it; I've never heard of the saying (rhyme?) before about the magpies, but there was a reference made. So turning it around, you need to have two people or the birds will get you.

Ohh, that's an interesting theory. I like it.

Maybe the missing people got turned into birds.

Superjustinbros

and then the birds haunt more people

and turn them into birds

it's how they spread

RebelVampire

thats an interesting idea. or more optimistically the birds are trying to lead art to a cure

mathtans

A cure for what though? He's not sick.

RebelVampire

actually if this was true itd explain why jack kind of got dragged in

one of those birds is his uncle

mathtans

Or a cure for the thing that turns the eyes white?

RebelVampire

i meant a cure for them

to be not birds

mathtans

Ohh, now I'm with you.

The librarians also used to be birds. That's why they're in on the conspiracy, they don't want to have to be birds again.

RebelVampire

the family secrets that cant be told are that art was patient 0 and really a ghost bird all along

on a more serious guess, maybe theyre leading art to ground zero though. like assuming there is supernatural stuff at work, when things like whats going on in the town happen, theres usually like an origin point. like a pentagram in the woods though probably not that.

mathtans

That's why they saved his life!

Superjustinbros

Good thinking.

mathtans

Maybe, could be something silver, what with the bird connection.

RebelVampire

arent magpies the ones who like shiny stuff?

mathtans

I think so? I don't know much about birds.

RebelVampire

google tells me yes but that this is a myth

and that scientifically them stealing the shiny things is not backed up by dedicated observation and testing

https://tenor.com/view/themoreyouknow-star-rainbowstreak-nbc-gif-4884642

which now leaves me torn cause i was gonna guess that theyre just leading art to their silver pile of treasure

mathtans

As Jack said, the true treasure was the friends they made along the way.

RebelVampire

ya know, given the title, that is probably all that matters

that through their quest theyre going to find joy

mathtans

And Joy will be the wife of that guy who was blamed for all the murders?

(Seriously though, it's interesting how deep the rabbit hole seems to go.)

Actually, now that I think of it, there was an X-Files reference too. Possibly just in the author's notes though.

RebelVampire

ya know

i would not be surprised if the wife's name did turn out to be joy

although id also find that kind of funny

mathtans

(off to crib)

RebelVampire

aside from birds though, im turning my attention to the archives. cause from the convo i gathered that besides other things, there were things with births and deaths art wasnt supposed to find? and given the one extra side page, i really wonder if it has to do with art's birth since hes adopted

(good luck)

RebelVampire

but maybe i misread the conversation. i mean maybe theyre just trying to cover up exactly how many people have gone missing in the forest. cause its too shameful or a high risk for crashing that small town tourism cash cow

or theyre trying to cover up the fact that the cult is still sort of active and something in the archives proves how deep the cult runs

mathtans

(back-ish) Yeah, I noticed the adoption thing and wondered briefly about it.

You think maybe the "murders" were just lots of missing people?

Superjustinbros

Yeah I wouldn't want that getting out inot the public

mathtans

A birb cult.

RebelVampire

QUESTION 3. In the recent pages, Jack and Art have decided they need to go into the forest and look around. What do you think will happen to the two while in the forest? Will they see more birds? Will the silver compass come into play? Do you think the two will be in danger considering the possessions that seem to have occurred to certain individuals? In regards to the conspiracy, what answers do you think the two might find directly in the forest? Lastly, do you think going into the forest will have other consequences? What if members of the town find out about their little expedition? What about Alice?

and it could be. that there are less murders than we think and everyone is just missing.

i do think the adoption thing is significant

Superjustinbros

more birds definitely

RebelVampire

i think what will happen in the forest is theyll get jumpscared a lot but then learn nothing. outside of the forest is spooky af. although i also think theyre gonna find something they dont think is significant until later and theyre like "le gasp signs of the missing ppl"

Superjustinbros

"forests are spooky"

the moral of the story

mathtans

(back-ish again) I wonder if going into the woods will cause a replay of the Hec stuff. Like Jack will have his eyes go white and try to beat up Art and then won't remember about it. Could put their relationship on the rocks a bit.

Or jumpscares with birds.

RebelVampire

tbh i actually assume if that were to happen alice would be the more likely possession target

like shell show up

scold

suddenly rolled back eyes

beat art up

mathtans

Ooooh. That'd definitely shake up the character dynamics. I wonder if the birds tried to talk to her first, but she didn't listen? Since she also left town for a while.

RebelVampire

maybe. although now im wondering how she and art both happen to coincientally be back in town. like we know kind of why art is there. but alice too seems a huge coincidence in a story where coincidences are actually conspiracies

mathtans

Hmmmm. Maybe she's not really there? Has anyone other than Art and Jack mentioned actually seeing Alice?

Maybe she's Jack's guardian angel or something in disguise.

RebelVampire

im trying

to recall a moment

i mean shes gone half the time and not able to interact with outside ppl

there was the one scene where theyre all eating together

but i dont remember if any outside person approached them

mathtans

Did Mike comment on her though? Because she only turned up when Art admitted to Jack that he was waiting for her.

(Is she a bird? Man, I can't tell if my conspiracy theories are totally crazy or not.)

RebelVampire

the only reference mike makes is later on when hes scolding jack and ask if its going to become another summer where he ignores customers to gossip with his "little friends"

so specifically plural

BUT

the context does not imply that there has to be multiple

more like the implication that more friends could show up even tho just the one is there

so it could go either or

mathtans

Indeeeed.

Oh, wait! The guy in the compass shop. He saw her, in the hat.

Mustache man... maybe he's in on it?

RebelVampire

darn it compass guy

mathtans

(Nice subtle detail in that scene by the way, him not recognizing Jack after the transition.)

RebelVampire

ruining our good alice isnt there theory

mathtans

Heh.

Alice and Art do prove that you can leave the town without just vanishing then.

RebelVampire

yes. until the town pulls you back

by crashing your car

i think jack and art going into the forest is going to attract unwanted town attention

i can hear that one librarian now going "i told you he was up to something!"

mathtans

They went swimming without incident though. As long as they play it off as camping or whatever, who would care.

RebelVampire

suspicious librarians

thats who would care

"They just went swimming who goes swimming that much they must be suspicious!"

mathtans

I wonder what the librarians do in their off hours.

Superjustinbros

sme tbh

RebelVampire

QUESTION 4. Among the conspiracies are a lot of emotional conflicts and changing relationships. Do you think Art and Jack’s flirting will go anywhere? Whether it does or not, how might their investigations and the revealing of certain secrets affect how they view each other? How might it change Art’s relationship with Alice given Alice is reluctant to buy into the conspiracies as much as Art or Jack? Also, how will learning more help or hurt Art’s ability to deal with Hec? Do you think Hec is in on the conspiracy or is Jack right and Hec just wants to fight? Lastly, why do you think Art was the one targeted by the birds, and how does Jack play into the ultimate roles that the supernatural events seem to have intended for them? How might Jack’s missing uncle come into play and change how Jack deals with the situation?

the nice librarian goes home and reads books. the mean one is obviously part of HOA and the neighborhood watch

mathtans

Related to the relationship stuff, it's nice how the gay angle was put in as a sidebar, just a statement of fact. I wonder a little bit if younger Art had a thing for Hec, which is partly why he sees the best in the guy.

Related to the bird stuff, the second appearance of the birds related to a baby. Not sure how that fits in.

Superjustinbros

i was surprised to see the gay comment, I'll admit

did Art drop that fact earlier on in the story?

mathtans

Yeah, when it was the four birds for Jack I think.

RebelVampire

yeah its pretty super early on

like not first page

but very early

Superjustinbros

aye

mathtans

Like maybe birth as the opposite of death? :/

RebelVampire

i worried it meant the baby was gonna die tbh XD

mathtans

Oooh, super serious.

RebelVampire

mostly cause so far the birds have an omen sort of tone and omens arent good

and they caused art to crash his car

soooo

Superjustinbros

and put him in a cast?

mathtans

But he was going to crash anyway, right?

RebelVampire

maybe? i mean art says the birds saved his life or something but that doesnt mean thats the objective fact of what happened

mathtans

Art and Jack seem destined to get together though, after the bit with Hec in the alley.

True. Wishful thinking?

RebelVampire

i do think in this case maybe

at the very least i dont think alice and jack are wrong in thinking some of this bird thing is about art kind of not coping with what happened

cause i def dont think art is dealing with it and that even though something is going on, hes also using it as a distraction

cause both can be true

maybe this comic is just the labyrinth and the birds are gonna spirit the baby away to turn it into a troll

mathtans

The baby is really Art. It's all time travel. He takes the baby back and gets himself adopted.

RebelVampire

so does that make the librarians the time police?

Superjustinbros

...That would be a pretty epic twist(edited)

mathtans

One of them is a grown up Jughead.

As to why Art was targeted, maybe Art has unfinished business in town.

RebelVampire

well id say hec is unfinished business. although maybe thats why. that art encountered the supernatural and lived to tell the tale and didnt disappear in the forest

so that proves he has magical supernatural immunity

mathtans

Oh, immunity, that's an interesting idea. Maybe it's because he was adopted and didn't grow up in town or something?

Maybe everyone has silver poisoning.

Superjustinbros

Oooooooooo

mathtans

Can that make your eyes go white?

RebelVampire

art is just the chosen one

idk

lets see

mathtans

I hope the Art and Jack thing works out. Art needs some grins in his life, and I gather the transition wasn't easy for Jack either.

RebelVampire

“Silver poisoning, medically termed argyria, causes ashen gray discoloration of the skin (and other tissues of the body).”

thats what the first result tells me

i think itll work out just cause its called 2 for joy and theyre the ones in all the banners

and they do seem to be mutually attracted to each other. although i do wonder if they solve the conspiracy if that will remain

mathtans

That's true... maybe the two of them will adopt a baby, whence the "2 for joy" relates to the birds too?

I suppose the specific species of bird is related too, but I don't know from specifics.

The real conspiracy, of course, is how that diner manages to have the best pancakes in town.

Superjustinbros

That'd be cute, just sayin

(or a young child)

RebelVampire

i liked the bit where jack was criticizing alice for making up ppl

but then art joins in

with an even more ridiculous chain

mathtans

Yeah, that helps to show the sibling angle too.

Superjustinbros

I guess since there's only a few minutes left, I'd like to take the time to say good luck to abi on getting this story worked on, it's looking great so far.

mathtans

Yeah, the characters are interesting along with the plot, like I don't think I've ever seen this sort of mix before.

Superjustinbros

Well said.

mathtans

Hope they bring pancakes into the woods to appease the birds.

RebelVampire

COMIC TEA PARTY- THURSDAY BOOK CLUB END!

Sadly, this wraps up this week’s Thursday Book Club chat for now. Thank you so much to everyone for reading and joining us! We want to give a special thank you to Abi Watson, as well, for making 2 for Joy. If you liked the comic, make sure to support Abi Watson’s efforts however you’re able to~!

Read and Comment: https://tapas.io/series/2-for-joy

Abi Watson’s Redbubble Shop: https://www.redbubble.com/people/abiwatson

Abi Watson’s Society 6 Shop: https://society6.com/abiwatsonillustration/s?q=new

Abi Watson’s Gumroad Shop: https://gumroad.com/abiwatson

Abi Watson’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/abiwatsonart?lang=en

[thelovers-thedreamers-and-me]

so, i finished playing corrosion: cold winter waiting (i keep wanting to call it “the winter soldier” but that is not right.) 

thoughts under the cut

not the worst horror game i’ve ever played, or even the worst one that @egg-tats has sent to me. (that honour goes to the one that, for some reason, would not let me move my cursor to the bottom half of the screen, which was also where all the menu options were. how do you fuck up that bad)

however, this game was far, far longer than it needed to be. part of it was gameplay factors- it is a point and click, and you have to turn around manually, so it takes three screens to get to the end of a hall, and longer if you look left and right to see if anything is there. but part of it was just unnecessary bulk. you found the code, now you have to walk all the way across the map to enter it into the door, and then you find the time and date of an audio file so you can listen to it, so now you have to walk all the way back in order to punch that into a computer in the room you just left! 

all this walking would be fine if it served a purpose in story, atmosphere, or gameplay, but it doesn’t really. the facility you’re wandering around isn’t really frightening enough to really build tension as you wander around in there. a lot of it looks the same, and for some reason, they opted to put the map on a computer file instead of something you could bring with you, so navigation is a bit of an issue. there’s no threats except in one short section of the game, so it’s just sort of walking around trying to figure out where you’re headed. point-and-click walking simulator with middling graphics isn’t the best effect.

i did end up having to use a walkthrough in a few spots- there is a bit of insane troll logic in the solutions to puzzles. (in one part, you’re presented with a keycard that’s on a table through a vent that you can’t reach. you do have a long pole and an adhesive pad. however, you can’t use those together for some reason. i assumed it was because i was supposed to get it later- nope. i was supposed to thread the pole through a section of rubber tubing, then stick the pad on there. why.) there’s also a lot of things happening around the facility for no reason with no hints- like, you finish reading someone’s diary, and for some reason, this causes something to happen in a room that’s across the map, with no indication of what’s happened, so you just have to go room to room and inspect every element and see if something changed. 

the clicking lock “puzzle”! clicking for every single number to get that damn combination lock to go from 0 to 72, then right to 96, then left to 26 was ridiculous. there should be some sort of more functional interface, especially given that if you click once more by accident you have to start all over. 

similarly, the google mechanic was.... like, i can see it being a really cool thing, but you have to put work into it. there were a few key phrases you could type in there to get information about what was happening, but a lot of the things that i wanted more information about weren’t on there. (and a lot of the things you could google were relatively nonsensical- you look up the hotel, and in the hotel’s basic directory information, there’s information about the manager’s blog, where he blogs about the people who stay in the hotel, using their real names. that’s... that’s not a thing that most hotels would do.) it could be fantastic for worldbuilding and character development- like, you type in a character’s name and find an article about how they were arrested a bunch as a teen or their various life tragedies. there was one character that was supposedly once a big football player- how is there nothing about him on google?

the football player character really wasn’t relevant to the plot. we didn’t find out anything about him, and he wasn’t even mentioned in any of the diaries with anything more than “well he was certainly there i guess.”

the writing was really not there, like, at all. you get to read a bunch of characters’ diaries, and they’re generally written similarly to how i wrote when i was 13, despite the characters supposedly being fully grown adults. and even given that (spoilers) the hunters are being lied to, they don’t even follow their own logic. they believe that 50% of the earth’s population is infected by these demons, but they also believe that if one of their 8 or so captives that’s infected escapes, the whole world might end? like, there is a point at which you have lost, and i think that point might be somewhere before the five of you have to individually kidnap and torture 3 and a half billion people to suicide. i also feel like we could have used a bit more background on how the leader of the hunters convinced them that demons are real before they got in and he could drug them. like, if some guy contacts me saying “hey there are demons would you like to come kill them in my basement” i’m not gonna be too convinced.

i don’t expect too much from the voice acting, because let’s be real, it’s an indie game. however, there were a lot of moments where lines just didn’t really make sense, and the VAs just read them straight. they’re also kind of not good at conveying emotion.

there were also some odd things with sound effects. at one point, there’s just a crying baby sound for no reason. at another, there’s a phone ringing. why? when a demon kills you in the one part of the game where you can die, it makes a loud noise that sounds like the bleat of a sheep run through autotune, and it’s definitely more funny than scary. at the end credits, the game plays a brahm’s lullaby music box, despite lullabies or music boxes not being part of the game whatsoever, and children only being mentioned in passing, and not in a menacing manner. there’s a lot of things that seem like they’re just being done because they’re designated spooky things, without any regard for what makes those things spooky. it’s the video game equivalent of horror movies that say “just throw a creepy doll at it.” yawn.

at the end, if you google the right thing in-game (you have to google one of the characters’ names to find out what the drug does. googling the drug name doesn’t bring up any results. that’s not how google works.) you find out that whoo spooky you’ve been drugged with a hallucinogen and you can’t know if what you saw in there was real! which is great except, like, you know objectively that what you saw in there was real, because it interacted with the environment, and possibly actually killed you on another playthrough. 

there are some pluses- the plot does have potential. it needs some serious editing, of course- something to ensure that we feel sympathy for any characters we learn about would help, but it is a neat concept. and i do have a certain weakness for media that has a spooky asylum and doesn’t go for the “whoa they’re CRAZY isn’t that SCARY” angle. i can see what this game was going for, but imo, it’s not really there yet.

but hey, no jump scares. i was expecting some because of, you know, all that walking, but aside from a few little blink-and-you’ll-miss-it things, nothing to jump scare-y, nothing too gory. 

as a side note, i looked up the steam reviews after playing, and the dev responded to all the questions about the plot (that you could only find out about by googling the exact right phrase) with basically “all the information is in the game! :-) it’s supposed to be about you figuring out what happened on your own!” and, like, no, dude, if you’re going to make it so difficult to basically randomly guess what you need to google, don’t pull that  “just guess more random phrases!” stuff. 

i give this game a 4/10. some ideas have potential, but pretty poorly executed

[bookmovietvworm]

Girl Meets Screen Time - the Secret of Life

Welcome back to Girl Meets Screen Time! Despite the cancellation, I will be continuing this series until it has been completed, whether season 3 is the end or not. This post will be discussing the screen times of the core four, as well as newcomer Zay. It will also contain season and series totals.

Here are the links to the petitions if you wish to sign them in an effort to have another network pick up the show as well as Disney releasing the rights to the characters: https://www.change.org/p/netflix-continue-girl-meets-world-on-another-network?recruiter=659663996&utm_source=petitions_show_components_acti

https://www.change.org/p/the-walt-disney-company-petition-for-disney-channel-to-release-girl-meets-world-to-another-network

If you missed the last post about Girl Meets the New World, and wish to check it out, here is a link: http://bookmovietvworm.tumblr.com/post/154016873538/girl-meets-screen-time-the-new-world

*Please Note: I am human so the numbers might be off by a few seconds, but I tried my best to be as accurate as possible. I have decide to focus only on the hive five for the time being. I will add Smackle to the total by popular demand, so if you would like me to add them, please let me know.*                                                    

Here are my parameters for the experiment:

Time is based on when a character is in frame, regardless of whether or not they have dialogue.

They have to be recognizable enough that the audience knows who they are.

The only exception to the first parameter is if a character has dialogue over the shot and they are not in it.

Obviously the theme song appearances DO NOT count towards the total.

The statistics and random observations about the 24th episode, Girl Meets the Secret of Life, as well as series totals, below the cut.

The Secret of Life was the first major Lucas episode of the series, even introducing a new character to enhance the story. It is the least meta of the beginning episode of season 2. This episode only has an A-plot giving all of the screen time to the important storyline. The episode is 21:02 in total, so let’s get to the times.

Riley Matthews: 8 minutes, 26 seconds

Despite this being a Lucas episode, Riley still has more screen time than him as her reactions the his secret are a major plot point. She even gets two extra scenes over Lucas, one of which had almost no plot relevance.

Lucas Friar: 8 minutes, 8 seconds

Clocking in his highest time ever, it should be no surprise that Lucas is next in terms of screen time as this is his first real episode. This is about Lucas as a person, not as a romantic prop like he often was in season one. All of his screen time was well earned.

Maya Hart: 6 minutes, 22 seconds

Maya still has a substaincal amount of screen time in this episode, serving as the foil to Riley in terms of reaction. She is again playing the supporting best friend role, but this time, she seems to take both sides, not just Riley’s.

Farkle Minkus: 5 minutes, 5 seconds

Farkle is there mostly for comedic relief again, however, that role served as a much more important to the plot comedy role than usual. Without him, the car wash scene doesn’t happen.

Zay Babineaux: 4 minutes, 42 seconds

Zay clocks in at over four minutes in his first appearance, having to not only establish himself as a character, but provide a lot of background for Lucas. This episode does focus more on the Lucas aspect rather than letting Zay build character. 

Totals for Season:

Riley Matthews: 30 minutes, 1 seconds

Maya Hart: 19 minutes, 34 seconds

Lucas Friar: 15 minute, 56 seconds

Farkle Minkus: 10 minutes, 55 seconds

Zay Babineaux: 4 minutes, 42 seconds

Three episodes into season 2 and Riley has already hit the 30 minute mark with the gap between her at 11 minutes. The gap between the boys and girls is 4 minutes, and Lucas has a 5 minute lead over Farkle for the season.

Totals for Series:

Riley Matthews: 3 hours, 43 minutes, 44 seconds

Maya Hart: 3 hour, 0 minutes, 7 seconds

Farkle Minkus: 1 hour, 29 minutes, 58 seconds

Lucas Friar: 1 hour, 17 minutes, 35 seconds

Zay Babineaux: 4 minutes, 42 seconds

Maya finally hits the three hour mark with Riley holding a 43 minute lead. Farkle still hold a 22 minute lead in the overall series despite receive less screen time in season two so far. The gap between the boys and the girls is almost 2 and a half hours.

Random Observations:

As much as I love Riley, I started to have a major problem with her during my re-watch of this episode. Her concern over Lucas comes off not as concern for a friend, but  as an intitlement issue. She constantly brings herself up, saying things like “As long as your not different from what I believe” and “Do you think it’s right to let me like you without knowing who you are?” and “You’re the first boy I ever liked. That’s a big deal for me.” She is more focused on protecting her fairy tale image of Lucas than how he is actually feeling throughout the episode, which is in my opinion why he blows up at her near the end, because what he did was something she should have understood, but she refused. She even tells him straight to his face to deny that part of who he is simply because she can’t except the fact that the image was changing. She claims that what he did is not why she is acting cold to him, and at the same time, tries to force him to tell her in the car wash scene. Even at the end, she chooses to ignore the Lucas that talks down the bully, instead focusing on reestablishing his “perfect” image.

Maya definitely realizes how Lucas is feeling throughout the episode, and is constantly trying to break the ice between him and Riley, even calling him by his first name.

Why was Farkle hiding behind the wall during the Lucas/Bully scene? He shows up later than the girls, and is not fully visible like they are. Any ideas?

Lucas wore red for the first time since Flaws I do believe.

Thanks for putting up with the length of the post! If you have any suggestions of how it can improve, please let me know. Feedback is appreciated. I hope you are still enjoying the series! Look for Girl Meets Screen Time - Pluto coming soon!!