#Since iirc they both have the same writer this makes a lot of sense

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

I think the original idea was to have more of a rogue’s gallery. The animated PV features Mr. Pigeon and The Mime more than they do Hawkmoth, who isn’t transformed.

The movie also has Hawkmoth grant powers to a bunch of criminals who already have visual gimmicks.

This would seem to set up a show with small recurring cast of villains that have a central master mind that can empower them for big fights Rita Repulsa style since the butterfly is transmission so it empowering a villain to be able to match a miraculous could make sense.

But in the actual show we end up with both the butterfly and peacock making their users empaths and let them grant any random power they want. Tho iirc word of god the victims decide their powers and outfit not hawkmoth. Not sure how that works with things like ubiquity or catalyst. The end result is something weird and in between where the big bad can create any unique or creative villain of the week but due to time/budget the writers keep going back to the same handful which makes it seem like certain characters are in desperate need of therapy.

(Post that spawned this ask)

In the original post, I only mentioned that nerfing the butterfly would let you do a rouges' gallery. I didn't get into ideas for how to do a rouges' gallery with a butterfly nerf, but you brought up the bones of how I'd do one so I'll talk about it really quickly to add something fun to your already quite complete analysis.

If you nerf the butterfly so that it no longer has the mind control aspect and it's just whatever power the owner wants to grant, then that is actually a good setup for a rogues' gallery because Gabriel would have to find people who are willing to work with him. Really minor change, but one that has a lot of potential. The movie even kind of did this by implying that Gabriel was akumatizing criminals.

This lets you maintain Gabriel's need to be part of every fight while also having other villains, though it does add the complication of, "why would these criminals hand over the miraculous after they get them?" But that's pretty easily solved by having Nathalie's job be to track every fight, which works no matter what the peacock's power is so you could get rid of the oh so convenient BS of the villains having the only truly ranged and passive-once-it's-active miraculous.

[project-sekai-facts]

You touched on this in your last ask about how Mizuki's first events were too detailed with their secret. I always thought that too but now I'm wondering why. Since the writers sped through the set up part then spent the last year trying to delay the payoff. I'm guessing it was either to see how people would respond or they were unsure how well the game would do (imo latter is unlikely since anything that has Miku is basically a license to print money)

Kinda makes you wonder what would have happened if most people ended up hating Mizuki.

I think in part it may have been the latter, the stories are written pretty far in advance (Haruka Ryo spent almost a year on Kashika iirc, and fawo would’ve started writing around the time they commissioned him), so at the time footprints was being written, and definitely at the time secret distance and exciting picnic were being written, the devs may have still been uncertain at how many years the game would stay popular. This is something they’ve even brought up in more recent interviews in regards to the end of the current stories and continuing them onwards. So in that regard, quickly introducing Mizuki’s arc and making it very clear what their secret is makes sense, even if she never states it outright, because the player knows by this point anyway. Like if you dragged it out for years and the game had started to lose popularity then the story isn’t going to reach people.

But also it makes sense narratively. You don’t want Mizuki being trans to be a big twist or reveal for the players, partially because it could cause uproar with unsupportive fans but also because it’s kind of important information that shouldn’t really be withheld from the reader, hence the ? in Mizuki’s official bio and the main story immediately implying that there’s something gender related going on. Also the writers always talk about how they want people to relate and connect with the stories, and you’re not gonna reach that audience if you don’t make it clear from the start.

Quickly introducing the player to Mizuki’s secret and their feelings and setting up Ena as a support makes a lot of sense. However like I said in the last post you don’t wanna speed through the other characters knowing as well, because then Mizuki’s development would go stale. Also having Ena wait contributes to her relationship with Mizuki developing too, showing how Mizuki can trust her and is willing to be patient to make her more comfortable, so again it would just stale their relationship development too if she found out in footprints. The player knowing what Mizuki’s secret is also makes their interactions with Mafuyu make a lot more sense. Mizuki is able to help Mafuyu because they’re both hiding a part of themselves. If we didn’t know about Mizuki being trans then those interactions wouldn’t work the same way.

I mean this hasn’t entirely worked there’s still a fair chunk of fans primarily on JP side who believe Mizuki is a crossdressing boy still but that’s on them for having bad media literacy.

[kohakhearts]

tonight's anipoke rabbit hole (actually something i've been largely contemplating since i started rewatching the os, but i've been contemplating it Even More tonight LMAO) is the does gary oak is ash's childhood best friend (established) discussion, which...maybe it's because i already knew the direction of their arc when i went back to episode one, but i think i actually disagree with the notion that episode one presents a continuity error, i.e. that it suggests gary doesn't know ash. to save you all from my ramblings i put them under a cut but tl;dr this is a hashed out conversation i'm putting my two cents into for no reason other than that i can and i want to.

i will say that like...takeshi shudo's novelization does kind of contest my reading here, but it doesn't explicitly say ash and gary don't know each other, either. (iirc, what it actually says is that ash knows gary sort of peripherally and has the impression of him being A Bit Of A Jerk, because he comes from a family of local celebrities and it's inflated his ego - which also debunks the childhood friends thing, just in a different way. all things considered, this does make it pretty clear to me that ash and gary were not originally intended to be childhood friends however the head writers of the silver league arc were part of the team from the beginning or at least fairly early on in the os, so. take that as you will.)

i say this in reference to both the original and the dub, but there are some interesting language nuances that get cut out of the dub because they...obviously don't make a lot of sense. but i was doing my rewatch with the dub, so let me talk about that first. 'cause i actually watched the scene a couple times trying to decide if it really did feel like it challenged the childhood friends thing. and...i don't think it does?

the first line gary says that makes everyone say he doesn't seem to know ash is "well, you must be ash," which. yeah. okay, that'd be a pretty weird thing to say to a guy you already know, but i have one (1) strong thesis here and it's this: that's just how ten year olds are, lmao. the second thing he says (regarding how late ash is) is "at least you get to meet me." that one...okay, fair enough. now i'm starting to sound like the crazy one for saying This Proves Nothing. but you can't tell me ash's response to this isn't straight-up weird, ok, because he just kinda c: and goes "gary?"

this is...a poor translation, for the most part, but i'll get to that in a second. even watching this with no knowledge of the original, that call and response kinda feels like someone playing along with a bit. there's no way that he knows this guy's name just from the cheerleaders he literally bowled over to get to the lab. it's clear he already knows it from somewhere else (and following with the novelization, it's definitely the family of local celebrities thing, although that same novelization stipulates that gary doesn't even attend school in pallet town, so this is all around just a really Absurd series of events - that's why i love it so much, but still).

anyway, then gary says "that's mr gary to you" and ash's c: turns into a o: he's like. flabbergasted lmao. and he only reacts again to be like whaaat you got your first pokemon???

the rest of their interaction is just "can i see your pokemon" and "sucks to suck, sucker," so not incredibly noteworthy other than that ash goes from, like, weirdly polite with his little "um, excuse me" to when gary fucks off and he's suddenly pissed.

so in my efforts to like, dig into this more, i found that fan subs don't...completely translate the intention here, either. mostly i only got to thinking about this tonight because i was making a Joke and i pulled up a scene from this episode and it happened to be this one. for whatever bizarre reason, my choice to download Every Episode Of The Pokemon Anime led me to downloading japanese raws, not the dub. but that's beside the point. i actually sat down and listened to this scene with no english subtitles, and i was like. wait. i think this fits my thesis. let me explain.

(it all started when i noticed that when gary goes from addressing ash to addressing the crowd around them, he switches from using the pronoun "boku" to using "watashi," which probably is meant to show that he's trying to come across as Serious and Mature. i have not watched all of gary's episodes in japanese, but i've watched enough to know this is pretty irregular. i thought it was really silly, especially when...put in context.)

SO, in the japanese version, that whole "at least you get to meet me" bit isn't there - that was the translators' attempt at working around something untranslatable, because the actual progression after ash bumps into him here is something like:

>you're satoshi, aren't you? >yeah, it's satoshi-san >or should i say satoshi-kun?

which is...where the nickname comes from, obviously. and it's why he gets that Look on his face...you know the one

(this whole scene is very expressive and i love it, lmao)

even in subs, this is a weird thing to translate, so most people seem to emphasize the reference to ash's tardiness, like in the dub. but it misses some of the character beats laid out here, unfortunately. the satoshi-kun to ashy-boy pipeline is very complex. the shortcomings of the english language and all that.

anyway, gary's next line being "that's mr gary to you" does imply something about honorifics, but when ash just calls him "shigeru," he actually says "hey that's shigeru-kun to you," which doesn't suggest that he's telling ash off for being too chummy with him, as a stranger, so much as he's trying to say hey, we aren't friends, make some distance. because the next thing he says is something to the point of "you're supposed to be my rival, but you're already falling behind."

then the polite little "excuse me" of the english dub is actually ash saying "shigeru-kun?" which does seem awfully polite of him, but then he immediately drops it in his next line and just refers to him as "shigeru" again, so i maintain that it literally feels like he's just humouring gary here a bit lmao.

also worth noting, when gary drives off, ash in the dub says "i'll show you," but in the original just repeats the word "rival," looking very Worked Up.

also, just in general, i do think some of gary's lines here are like...pure exposition. he tells ash he's professor oak's grandson because the audience needs to know it. that doesn't really mean that we as the audience need to - or even should - assume it means he thinks ash doesn't know it, because he clearly does. i mean, he knew his name. that probably speaks for something, lol.

anyway, back to my thesis: this literally just reads like classic "first day of middle school" fuckery. gary oak is literally displaying symptoms of 12-year-old girl syndrome and ash is playing along because that's what pals do, right. like all i'm saying is that these two entered sixth grade and gary suddenly was like hey you can't sit beside me anymore and ash just kinda shrugged and was like haha ok, you're so quirky, and then only later when he heard gary shit-talking him realized hey wait a second, you're a bitch, we aren't friends anymore (and if this feels like an exaggeration, i work with children in this age bracket and believe me when i say i wish it were shdfhjdk).

in conclusion? yeah, the childhood best friends thing makes perfect sense. did they have a fight before this scene? has it been Years? no. gary just woke up and decided to start shit one day. most compelling relationship of the century, if i'm being honest.

ADDENDUM: when professor oak sees ash, he says something about "thats right, there were four people scheduled to see me today," but gary already seemed to know ash was going to be there, which leads me to believe they have at least enough of an established relationship for gary to know becoming a pokemon trainer was a goal of ash's and he had in fact gotten his license. because clearly professor oak didn't give him that info!

[m1ckeyb3rry]

LMAOOOO I LOWK FORGOT MEGUMI HAS AN OLDER SISTER wait you really actually just set yourself for karasuism like jjk you KNEW you were cooking was just paving the way for Karasu…wait this is actually crazy down to the details of the accent too and MEDIOCRE this was actually just a sign from the universe there’s no other explanation

OH YEAH those people who are consistently on the chigiri reo bff girlies agenda yeah i agree chigiris definitely closer to nagi imo it’s especially apparent in episode nagi and he DEFINITELY thinks reo is a freak based on BOTH of those additional times i never understood why people decided to put chigiri on the reo defender side exclusively

I constantly forget his name so you’re probably right LOLL also YESS if Shidou can help me get Karasu ill gladly go along with his shenanigans also wait Bachira helping otoya would be so funny because imagine Bachira tells him to do some crazy shit except it’s like a the complete opposite of typical otoya in the sense that it’s all just Bachira’s imagine of what he thinks is sweet and nice and since he was friendless growing up (oops) he’s very inexperienced so it’s on the complete opposite side of the spectrum from otoyas usual rizz shenanigans

Yeahhhh I wonder if a hiatus would’ve served gege better long run but it is what it is…and fr there was no sense of like achievement or the battle finally ending like what happened

LMAOA nagi in freaky Friday would be so funny because nothing would happen and I bet he’d think dealing with it is such a hassle so y/n is busting her ass trying to look for him to solve the issue (actually this would be kinda entertaining just to see everyone being like wtf why’s nagi actually speaking) anyways YEAH it was one of my gateway works into the bllk scene lowk still one of the better ones imo (also like one of the only ones er)

Yeahhhh the title just gives off that whole vibe and I’m immediately like yeah I don’t think I’d watch this but FR the birth of tullirin (??) so goated and OHHHHHHHHHH OK LMAOAAO ok yeah nvm wait actually do you remember the idea we talked about of rin getting second leaded by nagi or Karasu…I feel like those tropes kinda fit back in here and make both nagi and Karasu make sense in a way…I’m a Karasu glazer but I lowk feel like he could work too especially since it’s you writing LOL based off the whole kinda older more mature vs younger immature tropes plus their bickering vs acknowledgement (well this part is more on Karasu acknowledging Rin’s skills but anyways) but YEAH iirc someone just copy pasted the same prompt verbatim and mass blasted it to a bunch of writers I saw so many of those floating around and it had me like damn ok but also yeah im not typically an avid enjoyer of the love triangle with siblings trope either because of the same reason like at least if you’re not related it’s a lot easier to move on and never cross paths but imagine being forced to attend family reunions with that eek I like your take on it though since the source of the triangle is more so inline with their characters and motivations like sae with soccer and Rin’s rivalry as opposed to them really just fighting over a girl yk….anyways NAGI AND KARASU SUPREMACY REAL also that’s so funny Tullia being this aus pursuit yayoi kinda LMAOA

cries I think I really just need a new computer but it’s not at the point where it’s non functional so I don’t want to swap it out quite yet…I usually have to do like an annual storage clean out so I can catch up on any software updates that I haven’t done which hasn’t happened yet this year but hopefully soon

FR omg I had to haul a bunch of brainpower to remember but KUROO yeah the one people keep comparing Karasu to LOL but yeah anyways

LMAO THE POTATO CHIP ANALOGY IS SENDING ME BUT REAL I love finding little hints and Easter eggs so I’m all for the complex stories

Pause idk what you’re on about because this is really good??? Side profiles especially are hard to get right I genuinely think you should be in charge of episode Karasu he looks so good also THE LITTLE CHICK AHAJSJSHSKSJSJS

Cries yeahhhh this entire ship scene is just exhausting like if you can make claims about your popular ship and like “bring evidence” to back it up why do you hate on people doing that with other ships that are considered rare too?? Fr convinced it’s also that people just go with the easiest narrative that also fits their aesthetic values without actually deep reading but WHATEVER I’ll just keep my distance

I REMEMBER PEOPLE HATING ON GOJOHIME SM but I HATE how hypocritical those people are?? Like they were defending their stance with their life saying Utahime hates gojo as if they don’t ship a bunch of other people who were clearly rivals or not on friendly terms just because they thought they looked good (coughcoughkaiserisagivibescough) like hello just let people live gosh and I’m not even a shipper myself HELLO??? Wait did you actually get hate for reblogging that wtf that’s actually insane it’s not even a pair to be considered that rare because Isagi and Nagi interacted so much and have an established dynamic too??? BRO I LAUGH WHEN PEOPLE LEAVE THOSE COMMENTS like what compels you to emphasize the fact that you don’t ship it just say it looks nice and get out of here I was literally about to say Isagi lowk glazes Nagi LMFAO but yeah ANYWAYS

LAMAOAO BAROU HATER MOOD my fav I can so see him saying that about Aiku OTOYA CALLING DARAI STUPID HAD ME FOLDING the bit of hype and like frustration in his voice really came through nicely

SODHAKS DONT WORRY ILL ALWAYS BE HERE FOR SANE NORMAL CONVERSATIONS (if you consider Karasu glazing sane) LMAOAOA but seriously like on every platform too it’s just swarming with insane fans like damn this is why I closet this fact irl too like do NOT associate me with those people!!! Ok wait I think…..I know….but I’m ngl I rarely check notes I think I’ve seen one on your page once??? I can definitely imagine them though I’ll keep my eyes peeled in the future I think I only really ever read the notes for your posts and jeirins oops I also (as you know) have been basically just lurking so wasn’t fully aware of the whole group divide LMAOA I DO know there’s probably a raging faction of middle schoolers somewhere lowk sounds like a drama fest though….maybe I’ll do some research to stay aware but LMAOAOA REAL WAIT feel free to delete this one too after you’ve read and responded or wtv I’ll keep a copy of it in my notes so I know wtf I said

SHSHEHSHS ATAY SAFEEE getting sick is actually the worst experience in the entire world im like constantly washing my nose with saline spray to try to prevent anything

LMAAOOA i remember vividly the octopus but not the full context oops but that convo was SOOOO funny i love bullying miraverse Karasu and Yukimiya becoming his one sided opp is actually one of the best ideas to ever be conceived

LMAOAOA ok considering i know about your horse girl era/actual horse riding activities i feel like it’s not as out of pocket but for people surfing the tags maybe LMAO I actually love your takes on the fantasy genre because I find the cliches boring and usually a little too naive…? I don’t think that fully encapsulates it but it’s usually all the typical happy rainbow stories ykwim

LDMOAOS TY FOR THE OFFER I lowk don’t have any concrete ideas of how id want to pair fantasy but i will let you know if I change my mind!!! But omg I forgot people can deactivate and just disappear wait lowk isn’t that kinda scary like they just fall off the grid never to be seen again um anyways wait im crying that’s such an interesting combo?? LMAO talk about kinda niche but I bet you’ll put some magic into that

Also wait scrolling through your blog again and 1) WTF YOU CONVERTED TO ITOSHISM????? Ngl the moment you started wavering I had a feeling it was inevitable….does that mean it’s my turn too…… also 2) I CANT BELEIVE I FORGOT TO MENTION THE AIKU MEME IS SO FUCKING FUNNY LMFOWOAOSODJSOSKDJSKAIAOAO “wait that’s me” LMFAOSOSOAH sorry that was truly peak comedy also this should not have taken me like 1.5 hours to type wtf

- Karasu anon

HAHA to be fair gege did NOT do her justice like she was mentioned a lot in season one and also was like half of the reason the students got involved in the culling games?? but she was never really an active character or anything until the whole yorozu thing but that wasn’t even actually her so yeah very minor character (i mean at least she has a name which is more than yayoi can actually canonically say but yayoi is like miraverse canon so it’s different SDJFH) but yeah i was looking back and i was like ??? because okay sassy dark haired asshole is one thing that’s common enough there’s multiple characters even within blue lock who could fit that trope (like rin for example) but the single older sister?? the ACCENT?? calling someone MEDIOCRE (it only happens once that i remember but even that is crazy)?? i fr wrote this in 2022 so i was actually looking into the future or smth…maybe karasu and i are actually just meant to be like i love him so much that i influenced my past self somehow

I HAVE SEEN SO MANY POSTS SAYING THAT CHIGIRI AND REO ARE GIVING BFF VIBES IN THE ADDITIONAL TIME i feel like i’m being gaslit or smth like do we not all see chigiri’s face bro simultaneously dgaf and is mildly concerned for reo but they are not giving besties i think it’s time we reevaluate some of our friendships 😭 not making an actual post about this because 100% i’ll get jumped but putting it here for you and possibly jeirin (she sometimes reads our convos i think HAHA) to see

chigiri with reo:

chigiri with nagi:

LIKE I’M CRYING THE DIFFERENCE IN HIS EXPRESSION ALONE SPEAKS VOLUMESSS actually i think part of the reo x chigiri bff agenda is because (perhaps subconsciously) people associate them as being the “feminine” counterparts of their duos?? whereas nagi and kunigami are the “masculine” counterparts so like by that logic chigiri and reo should be bffs in a #girlboss way but that’s inherently flawed because all four of them are guys in the same age group LMAOO like that doesn’t mean you should or shouldn’t ship them but it just means that they’re all on the same level socially?? i think i’m explaining this weirdly but like…chigiri and nagi don’t have a disconnect in any way (how you might expect a 16/17 year old girl and 17 year old guy to have) because they’re both dudes in bllk so there’s no actual default grouping that would connect chigiri and reo over chigiri and nagi the way “oh we’re both girls” might 🧐 i actually think the chigiri and reo bff agenda also plays into what we know about FANON chigiri more than CANON chigiri — we see both in canon and in headcanons that with reo, chigiri is very ‘sassy’ and giving advice and doing his hair and whatnot like it’s all very stereotypical 2000s romcom bff vibes?? whereas in epinagi and the main manga alike chigiri is very obviously a chaotic gremlin of a boy LMAOO like yeah he’s high maintenance but considering he’s on a team with BAROU it doesn’t feel out of place and he’s just very energetic and excited and hype?? for lack of a better word…like the teenage boy energy really comes through there and i think that’s another reason why to me chigiri and nagi just feel like sm better friends — chigiri is actually himself with nagi whereas he’s not really with reo (oops also this ended up being really long i actually went on a similar rant w jeirin earlier so my thoughts are collected and ready this time but anyways you know me always ready to defend nagi even if it’s only tangentially)

OKAY I WAS RIGHT IT IS IN FACT KEVIN LMAOAOA lowkey niko kinda gives kevin vibes actually like his americasona (?) would be kevin no idea why though LKSDHJFS but SO REAL if shidou’s methods work they work!! i lowkey would trust him to get me with karasu with my LIFE like i think bro would work some magic or smth to make it happen so i think you’re in good hands…okay wait that’s actually what i was thinking with bachira too like he actually makes otoya become rizzless but like personally i LOVE men w 0 rizz so i think it would actually 100% work on me even more than usual flirting 😭 also bachira is kinda childish right so i feel like his advice would be like “bake cookies for her 😄” or smth and otoya would be like hmm okay…ig…and then he’d do it and i would actually be in love with him because i think that’s so cute and sweet and so it all works out in the end (bachira actually has to do overtime keeping me away from the manshine city wing because as soon as i see nagi i am dumping otoya LMAOO…abt to show blue lock a REAL break up)

the saddest thing is like one of my mutuals is playing phantom parade rn and they’re just talking about how there’s so much content and so many scenes expanding on the characters that they wish would’ve been in the main manga and i agree!! i think jjk overall would’ve benefitted soo much from having time to breathe and allow the characters to actually interact/like each other 😩 but oh well it is what it is atp

lowkey nagi freaky friday would be really really funny now that i’m thinking about it especially if reader is like fwtkac reader?? how she’s super smart and sassy and popular and outgoing and whatnot (freaky friday reader is a bit more nagi coded so it wouldn’t be as funny)…i imagine nagi would just make up some “i’m sick” bs to skip school and ofc reader NEVER misses school unless absolutely necessary so no one questions it (they’re just worried about her for the most part meanwhile nagi is at “home” [aka reader’s room] appalled by how low leveled she is in every video game [she never plays]) but then she pulls up as nagi and everyone is like WTF because she’s like dapping people up, absolutely crushing it in PE class, talking and befriending literally everyone, accidentally rizzing people up (since nagi is canonically cute but just kinda weird?? so i imagine if he shows up acting like reader people would be attracted to him) but then literally the next day nagi is back to being a loner except now he kinda follows reader around and nobody understands how that happened because she missed the day that he was actually #chilllikethat but somehow they’re like. in love now. and everyone has to accept that. bonus points if the body switch happens AFTER nagi and reo start playing soccer together so for one precious day reo is like WHAT THE FUCK because nagi is going OFF on the field and then the next day when nagi’s back to normal reo’s like “lmao were you possessed or smth” and nagi’s just like “yeah :x by y/n :x” and reo has no idea what he’s talking about so he just decides to never question it again or smth

okay see i think that would work if they’re both going for the same girl?? because then that dichotomy makes sense but if they have separate love interests i feel like it almost makes it feel a little awkward like oh one of us has a super mature cool love interest and the other…doesn’t…LMAOAO also i think people would think i’m just throwing rin in there because i like him when NO i just want him to be with tullia because it would be funny 😭 so i think nagi might be the only way to go (i think it’s so funny how we’ve had like multiple conversations about completely different stories and i’m like hmm who should i make reader’s love interest be and every time the answer is nagi like atp why am i even questioning it) actually wait lowkey if reader is with karasu i think that could be a good chance to do tullia x yukimiya i was thinking of her and otoya (because bff in fwtkac is meant to be a tullia variant and everyone loves fwtkac bff x otoya) but yukimiya would also work…wait copy and pasting is lowkey crazy work i feel like that would stress me as a writer out ngl because i wouldn’t want someone to think i’m plagiarizing them?? never gotten plagiarism accusations thankfully (i don’t think i ever will hopefully) but yeah that just feels like a sticky situation/drama waiting to happen 😰 and agreed can you imagine your new sister-in-law was almost your gf i would NEVER recover but yeah all of the love interests in that au are very purposefully done!! in the sense that it’s meant to reveal their characters more so than it is just simple wish fulfillment ☝🏻 like sae only understanding soccer, rin’s rivalry and desire to catch up to sae, otoya’s love of picking up bitches (/hj he’s not really a love interest…he tries rizzing up reader when they first meet but otherwise he respects karasu and is his wingman [karasu does not want a wingman but otoya is on it regardless]), how karasu takes the time to understand people (hence why he’s one of the actual love interests — he’s one of the only people who actually listens to and respects reader as a player instead of just being like “ooh girl”), and how nagi is really just kinda searching for someone who cares about him and for how his method of existing in the world (which is why he really just is like “wow nice pretty girl 🙂” for the most part like bro does NOT know what a crush is or anything he just thinks reader is cool but that’s what warms reader to him?? she’s like “damn a man with 0 romantic intentions…#needthat” and then she manifests it and ends up successful) LMAOOO PLEASE tullia is like reverse pursuit yayoi went from isagi to barou instead of vice versa honestly that’s the superior way to go though lbr 🤩 except i think isagi would still be her endgame (barou is kind of like her karasu ig you could say) but the barou arc is real true and valid

LDSKFJD I FEEL THAT like you don’t want to get around replacing it because it TECHNICALLY is working but it’ll be sm better once you finally do…i’m kinda in a similar spot with my headphones they don’t work half of the time but then half of the time they do so i’m like okay it’s fineeee but tbh they do in fact piss me off 99% of the time

LMAOO YES THAT’S THE ONE karasu is better though i think i’ve mentioned this to you before but like the hq characters just have such round heads you could literally use pi * r^2 to find the area and shit so i do not find them appealing in the slightest…one of my mutuals just got into hq so she’s been posting a lot and i’m like nah you could not pay me to find any of these men attractive also i can barely do the sports animanga life with bllk idt i’m built for watching any more and hq is like the most sports animanga to ever sports animanga so yeah you won’t catch me watching i fear!!

HEHEHE THANK YOUUU i feel like side profiles (specifically right side profile because that’s what i tend to sketch fsr) are the easiest for me to draw maybe because i don’t have to worry about the eyes being even and the proportions just make more sense to me or smth idk LMAOAO but i’m glad you liked it!! and YESS THE CHICK i like including silly little notes on my character doodles and at first i had written “he’s literally a baby chick” and drew the chick emoji but then i was like actually wait it’s cuter without the arrow and writing so i erased it and just gave the chick his hair and called it a day KLSDFJ

no because i think the obsession with ships needing to be canon MUST be stopped like yeah i recognize that your ship has xyz canon moments but why would i care?? i want this character to be in love with this other character who they have never interacted with and you’ll just have to deal with it…people use the “well MY ship is implied in canon so it’s OBVIOUSLY the ONLY ship possible” as this like moral superiority thing with shipping which i think is so stupid like this is all fandom stuff nothing is that serious ship what you want you’re not doing a disservice to anything or anyone by doing so

people do the MOST to hate on gojohime like yeah i don’t ship it either but i can see why people would?? like it’s a fairly common dynamic even in anime too and people are always like “no it’s problematic because she actually hates him and so we’re normalizing that girls should be with men they hate and that teasing someone is a valid form of liking them” and i’m just like okay so this is not in fact real life…you don’t see people saying liking toji means that you’re condoning murder right?? same premise (kind of) like at the end of the day it’s not that serious!! and no HAHA i did not get hate for reblogging but i wouldn’t have been surprised if i did yk DHKJDSF YEAHHH ISAGI IS LOWKEY NAGI’S BIGGEST GLAZER i would say behind reo but honestly isagi’s out here calling nagi the “god of soccer” and shit so i do think isagi kinda has reo beat JSFLSJKD

BAROU IN HIS HATER ERA WILL ALWAYS BE FAMOUS unrelated (well kind of related) but i love how the studio has been drawing barou this season i think he’s been promoted to fav status as well as otoya which i am ABSOLUTELY hype about because barou is soooooo 🤤

LMAOOO REAL THIS IS WHY NO ONE I KNOW IRL IS AWARE OF MY FANDOM ACTIVITIES okay but actually once you start noticing it it is SO funny like each group has their own dialect atp too like i can read a comment and tell which group someone is a part of (if any) it’s lowkey hilarious to me none of it is real it’s literally all just people 16/17 and under for the most part (and that does in fact come with drama and silliness as expected…at least from what i see as on onlooker and based on things i see on my dash) LMAOAOA that’s why jeirin is the only mutual i talk to consistently nowadays #adultsunite anyways if any of them happen to be reading this uhhh sorry don’t let me yuck your yums or anything like that 🙏🏻 please continue to have fun amongst yourselves and stay in school and whatnot

BEING SICK IS THE WORST FOR SURE but sometimes i like it because then i can boss my brother around extra and i have an excuse to be super lazy…pros and cons to everything ig but yeah fingers crossed i’ve not been hit with anything too horrible yet so hopefully it stays that way

okay so erm…development…i can now proudly say that i have written a 2k word carnivorous pegasus birth scene LMAOAOOA this is the most insane answer to a request probably ever like i’m still crying over the fact that those words can be strung together and mean something 😭 people who just are browsing the sae tag are abt to be in for a WILD ride if they happen to click on this one LMAOAO horse girl mira truly shining through rn (or imagine someone reads seabird and goes to read this thinking that because i wrote him all cutesy and normal in seabird that’s what the vibes will be again but then they’re hit with. uh. well. 2k word carnivorous pegasus birth scene) but yeah ikwym like people can have a very narrow imagine in their mind for what fantasy is and so it ends up being very cliche feeling and just not really deep in storytelling or characterization or anything?? the worldbuilding also suffers for it because people will rely on genre conventions and general knowledge to write a generic medieval/renaissance europe fusion thing and call it fantasy but the genre is sooo broad honestly that there’s sm more to explore which ends up being so much more fun and rich and enjoyable (if not to read then at least to write) i wish more people would do alternative takes on fantasy but i also get why they don’t…i’m lucky in that both of my fantasy reqs have been from mutuals who trust me and my vision completely and also have read previous insane fics of mine so i don’t have to worry as much about disappointing them but i do think i’d be more hesitant to let loose if it was a req from someone anonymous or who i didn’t know well or anything

LMAOO KEEP ME POSTED there’s a lot of tropes that also just weren’t used at all so if any of those strike your fancy def go ahead and #senditover…yeah mutuals of mine will deactivate every now and again and i always hope they’re doing well wherever they are 🥹 sometimes i contemplate deleting tumblr when i’m stressed out by people being silly but a) i probably/definitely won’t and b) if i do i’ll definitely give you some other place to talk to me like discord or smth so that i don’t entirely lose the people i actually enjoy talking to?? since the few mutuals i talk to consistently all have me on instagram or discord or something along those lines so if i do ever deactivate i’ll still be able to talk to them

HELP I WAS LOWKEY SURPRISED basically they sent in an ask asking for charizard (fire/flying) with hiori and i was like ok…gave it a bit to see if anyone else would say anything and then i was like okay charizard hiori anon if you can tell me who you want as a second lead before someone else sends a req in i’ll add it to the last!! now i was fully expecting like isagi or karasu or maybe rin or something and then they whipped out YUKIMIYA and i was like ??? because me personally i would never choose hiori over yuki…sorry hiori fans but yuki is simply that guy!! but according to them they just like the bm boys’ dorm dynamics and they didn’t want kurona so they were between yukimiya and isagi and just went with yukimiya i was like huh cool ig 😭 i’m sure i’ll figure smth out though even if some suspension of disbelief may be required (because again…why would i go for hiori is KENYU MF YUKIMIYA IS INTO ME)

STOP YES I DID I THINK HE KICKED REO OUT OF MY TOP FIVE it’s nagi karasu barou yukimiya sae in that order now LSKDJFS but i’m still reluctant to admit that i’m a true fan of him…the process of writing the request for him and getting comments on seabird made me realize that he’s actually really fun to write/do requests for (which good thing i think that because i have quite a few requests for him i fear) and then i saw an edit on tik tok and he just looks so SINISTER in it somehow?? and i was like ok i have to admit it i like him…i think i predicted way back in my “finally finished season one” post in the spring that this would happen LMOAO i literally said in the tags iirc that we were in an enemies to lovers arc so ig we’re finally nearing the finish line 😓 dw though i mean i’ll gladly drag you down with me but i will forever be a nagi glazer first a karasu glazer second a barou glazer third and everything else last so like don’t expect me to make a sae theme or anything like that HAHAHAH and PLEASEEEE OMG I WAS CRACKING UP MAKING THOSE MEMES the oaeu one with barou responding to aiku’s comment and niko saying he looks like tyler the creator as well as the nagi + zantetsu ones are my favs i think also i’m annoyed because the otoya and yukimiya one cut the funniest part out but you can’t tell it did LMAO the bottom part says “edit: nvm you can just talk to them” which is so otoya to me somehow LMAOOO like the meme without that part is also funny but that’s the best part #fucktumblrformatting anyways i think a lot of the bllk memes tend to be either very brain rot based or like heavy on the fanon characterization plus they always do the same couples of duos (chigiri + reo, nagi + reo, shidou + sae, isagi + whoever they ship him with) so i tried to switch it up, include some diff pairs as well (like karasu + hiori, oaeu trio, and nagi + zantetsu), and picked less common memes HAHAH OKAY WAIT ALSO THE KAISER ONE IS MY FAV I WAS SOOOO SCARED TO INCLUDE THAT ONE I THOUGHT I’D BE CANCELLED FOR NOT TAKING ABUSE SERIOUSLY BUT IT WAS SO ISAGI AND KAISER like the “my mom’s hitting me i’ll text you when we’re done” “kk no worries” is PEAK kaisagi dynamic sorry not sorry anyways i’ll probably make more at some point because i was literally dying making them but it’ll probably be a bit before my meme stores a replenished enough for another post so that’ll be something that i don’t do again for a bit i think ☝🏻

OOH wait speaking of edits it’s been a while here are a couple more (that AREN’T of sae like the one from the prev paragraph)

NAGI AND RIN WE ALL CHEERED

christmas nagi (sound is fr me)

nanami edit which i’m only including because i need the sound as reference (i’m a nanami hater i think he’s goofy looking tbh) anyways i NEED someone to edit karasu to this sound it just would fit him SO WELL KSDHDH

glorious boyfriend nagi doing his thing i actually have SO many edits of literally the same scene saved it’s just so peak

okay wait actually speaking of audios i need characters to be edited to…idk who this guy is i literally just looked up the audio and picked the first video that came up LMAOO but imagine the audio from this american football player edit used in a ness edit if/when he gets hype panels FJDHHDS LIKE DO YOU SEE VISION…ABRACADABRA…BECAUSE HE’S THE MAGICIAN…anyways

ignore rin anyways KARASU AND SHIDOU MENTIONED

CHIGIRI CLUTCH AS USUAL

canon oaeu moment

this is the shidou and karasu dynamic TO ME LMAAOAO

sigh i’m still not over him in this episode he’s so dreamyyyy

[sineala]

What do you think was the better* “later addition to canon”?

Steve being frozen post WW2

Or

Tony being an alcoholic

Because those aspects weren’t part of the original sell of the character but it’s such a big part of each

Or a third option!

*better can be “I think this adds the most interesting things to the canon from a writer’s perspective” or even “I like this most 🙂”

Interesting question! Thank you for asking! Honestly, I feel like both of those things are very different from each other, in terms of narrative function, and if you're actually looking for moments in canon that added something new and major to Steve and Tony's characters that wasn't there before, I wouldn't pick either of those moments for either of them.

I have some thoughts about this!

Steve getting iced was basically just a retcon to put Steve in the comics at the age that they wanted and not having to deal with him having reached the ancient and decrepit age of 40, an age that is clearly forbidden for superheroes. It's not really much different from how they keep adjusting things as the timescale keeps sliding -- Sharon is Peggy's niece and not her sister, Tony's origin story moves to wars that are later than Vietnam. It's just one of a number of changes Marvel makes regularly to keep character ages consistent; sure, it might even be the first of them. But I don't think the icing itself is a fundamental change in who Steve is as a character.

Now, you could argue that the Man Out of Time aspect -- which came in as a direct result of the icing -- is a fundamentally different part of Steve's character that wasn't present in earlier comics and changed who he was. But in response to that, I would argue that, in a lot of ways, Golden Age Captain America isn't really the same character at all as later Steve Rogers. I would say that the Steve we know and love is one who has pretty much only existed since Avengers #4 and in a sense has always had the ice in his backstory. Sure, a character with the same name, powers, and origin as Captain America existed in the Golden Age -- but that guy, he doesn't really seem like Steve, and modern canon sure doesn't treat him like Steve. The fact that there was also a discontinuity in publishing -- unlike how DC, IIRC, never really stopped, Timely kind of isn't actually Marvel, and everything from before Fantastic Four #1 kind of doesn't count. I think.

I don't know how much Golden Age Captain America you've read. I haven't read all of it. I've only read about a dozen issues, but I feel like that's enough for me to get a sense of the character. So the thing about Golden Age comics is that they all just feel… really weird, compared to anything from the 60s and later. You get a sense that everyone at the time was still working out what a superhero comic, and maybe just a comic at all, was going to be like. The plots are weird, the villains are… okay, the villains being usually Super Racist is sadly not unique to the Golden Age, but it's really prominent. The characters don't really behave in ways you would expect. Bucky is treated as an actual child would have been in the forties -- like, there are panels of Steve threatening to spank him as discipline -- and the characters just don't feel the same.

Other than the fact that the super-soldier serum turned Steve Rogers into Captain America, and the fact that Bucky is his sidekick, and what Steve's powers basically are, nothing in these comics really feels a lot like the same character. Canonically, most of it isn't the same character! Everything after Captain America Comics #48 has been retconned to be people who aren't Steve, which shows you how much he isn't like Steve. Even the stuff that supposedly happened to Steve and Bucky doesn't really get referred to all that much. When later comics talk about Steve's time in the war, it's almost never the events of the Golden Age comics themselves -- instead, Marvel created a whole lot of stuff via flashbacks and then they refer to that. You never see Steve and Bucky talking about, say, the time they had to be in a drag show as punishment, although I swear this was a real comic. Nick Fury and his Howling Commandos? Not in the Golden Age. The Invaders? Not in the Golden Age as a team! The All-Winners Squad was, but again, that features Captains America who were later retconned as not Steve (William Nasland, Jeff Mace). Most of Steve's villains other than Red Skull are not really there. It's just… not really the same character and there's not much of a meaningful sense of continuity between any of the events in the Golden Age and later comics. Later comics are working mostly from their own retellings and flashbacks. So I feel like Steve basically starts anew in Avengers #4 and thus has always been a Man Out Of Time.

Okay, so what about Tony's alcoholism? Tony before and after Demon in a Bottle is still Tony Stark, but the thing is, I feel like Tony's alcoholism isn't a drastic alteration to the character, and it fits very well with established canon, and it has been easily accepted as part of Tony's character, unlike something that just comes out of nowhere and is true now and everyone is all WTF at it (looking at you, adoption arc).

Tony's worst villain has always been himself. Specifically, it's been his own body. At the beginning, it was his heart damage and the chestplate, and the terrible curse inherent in Being Tony Stark was that someday soon his heart was going to give out. There are so many panels of him dramatically plugging himself into the wall and thinking about how close he is to death. Tony's origin story was essentially Here, Have A Disability. His body betrays him. His body doesn't do what he wants. He can't control it. There's something wrong with him and it's hurting him. Every so often they take away whatever's wrong with him, but they always revert to it -- his heart's been bad, and then fine, and then bad, and then fine, and here's the alcoholism, and oh no now he's paralyzed, and now it's his brain and he has amnesia, and so on.

In that sense, the alcoholism really feels like a natural escalation from the heart problems and that it fits well with all of this all of this. Here's something else about his body/mind that isn't right, that's causing him harm, that he initially tries to hide from almost everyone, and that he often has difficulty controlling. It's just that it's not his heart anymore.

So what would I pick for canonical moments in comics history that weren't part of Steve and Tony's original character conceptions and that really represented a new addition to his character?

For Steve I'd pick either the original Secret Empire arc (Nomad) or The Captain, because those basically both show the same thing. Sure, Captain America has always been a symbol of all the ideals of America as a country, and sometimes America lets him down, and sometimes he has to lecture people about how they should be better people -- but, as far as I know, Secret Empire was the first time Steve basically said, "Yeah, no, fuck the government." He loves his country. He doesn't always love his government. He doesn't think what happened in Secret Empire (which, yes, we all know, is secretly Watergate) is right, so he's going to… simply stop being Captain America. He's going to be Nomad. The government itself has now massively let him down, and they don't get to tell him what to do anymore. And now we're all like, "Oh, yeah, of course Steve is mad at the government and has decided to stop being Captain America right now! He's gonna go on a road trip to find himself! Here he is in Civil War telling the pro-Registration side they're wrong and becoming a fugitive from justice." But… he didn't start out like that.

This is a character who was created to be a soldier and to do what his country asked of him. Sure, there are early arcs where he gives up the shield for a little bit, but they're because he's going through one of his usual "who am I when I'm not Captain America?" crises and then he comes back pretty quick. It wasn't that he didn't believe in his government; it wasn't that kind of crisis of faith. But then Secret Empire happens and he's like, "yeah, no, I can't represent a country when the president was conspiring with aliens to take over the world" and he's just out of there. Same deal for The Captain. The government wants to tell him what to do because he's Captain America? Nope! Someone else can be Captain America now. Of course, then John Walker does a terrible job and Steve has to come back anyway. John Walker is like your awful roommate who half-asses the dishes so no one will ask him to do the dishes again even though he clearly knows how to wash dishes and chooses not to, except with murder instead.

But, anyway, the moral stance depicted in Secret Empire and The Captain is pretty much the same -- when the government does something he thinks is wrong, he just simply stops being Captain America. He's not afraid to go against the government in Civil War or (for a more modern example) Devil's Reign. And it's not really a stance he had before Secret Empire, as far as I know. If you told comics readers in, say, 1970, that you really liked the fact that Steve wasn't afraid to quit being Captain America to protest unjust laws, they would probably be very confused. Steve is Captain America! He works for SHIELD! He does what the government tells him! Why wouldn't he? Except, well… these days, he doesn't.

And I think you can tell that this is important to the modern conception of Steve's character because it made it into the MCU. Okay, true, any adaptation of Civil War was probably going to have to involve Steve going against some kind of law about superheroes because he thinks it's the right thing to do -- that personality trait is basically baked into the plot. But they put it in the MCU way before Civil War, presumably because they thought this was important enough to Steve's character that it needed to be included. CATWS is an adaptation of Brubaker's Winter Soldier arc that I would say is a lot more faithful to the comics than many of the MCU entries that share names with the comics. But you know what the 616 Winter Soldier arc doesn't have? A plot where Steve decides that he's unable to trust anyone at SHIELD because they're secretly Hydra and therefore we are right to be suspicious of the US government which may not be acting in our best interests anyway because apparently even the good guys in SHIELD were still interested in building helicarriers to shoot people down -- they just had a different target list than Hydra did. The 616 Winter Soldier arc does, in fact, have the Red Skull infiltrating SHIELD. He then proceeds to successfully murder Steve. There's not really a Trust No One plot going on because Steve doesn't get that far, and he dies before any of this is discovered and also misses out on Secret Invasion. Plus, hey, the scene that introduces us to Steve way back in CATFA shows him sitting there staring at a sign saying it's illegal to lie on his enlistment papers and then we find out he's been lying a lot. Because he thinks doing the right thing is more important than obeying the law. Yeah, they went there pretty early.

For Tony, my pick for a similarly significant character development that absolutely wasn't part of his original character is his decision to stop making weapons in Iron Man #78. He was created to be a defense contractor. He spent about ten RL years making weapons and, as far as we can tell from canon, not really experiencing any kind of crisis of conscience about, say, being a superhero and also making weapons at the same time. And then (because readers complained) he meets a pacifist, changes his mind about everything, stops taking SHIELD weapons contracts, and then stops making weapons entirely. This is a pretty significant career change for a character who started out happily making weapons. He just stopped. He doesn't do it anymore. He hasn't in years. And now it's absolutely part of who he is as a character, such that it ends up being a defining trait of his in multiple universes -- even in 1872, Tony stops making weapons. In Superior Iron Man, one of the first things he did when he went evil was make weapons again. If he is making weapons, we know that something has gone very wrong with him.

This also made it to the MCU -- "Tony becomes Iron Man and stops making weapons" is basically the plot of the first Iron Man movie, right? They decided that "Tony stops making weapons" was important enough that it is absolutely had to be right there in the first movie. Sure, alcoholism is one of Tony's defining traits in modern 616 comics and I'm not saying it's not, though I am saying it's not coming out of nowhere -- but that didn't even make it to the MCU. (I'm sure a lot of that was Disney's fault, yes.)

You also might not know this from looking at modern comics, but The Government Wants Tony To Keep Making Weapons is actually a pretty salient arc after Tony stops making them. Half of the reason Demon in a Bottle happens is because Tony is forced to kill the Carnelian ambassador because Justin Hammer sabotages his suit, but the other half is because Tony is incredibly stressed because Nick Fury keeps trying to find a way to make him make weapons for the government and Tony doesn't want to. (Maybe Tony would have fewer control issues if people stopped trying to control him.)

If I had to pick a second new character trait for Tony, it would also be his willingness to defy the government (and, really, anybody else) and do what he thinks is right. (He and Steve are more similar than I think a lot of fandom gives them credit for. But that would be a different meta post.) I mean, they do what they do with opposite reasoning but they both kind of have the same problems to solve a lot, because comics plots are very often Here's The Trolley Problem. Utlilitarianism versus… what's the other one? Deontology.

Anyway, yeah, I'm talking about Armor Wars. The arc when Tony decided that the ends justified the means and he was simply going to steal his technology back from everyone who had it, including the government, and that he was willing to hurt anyone who got in his way (hi, Steve) and alienate both Avengers teams in the process, because he decided that he knew what he had to do, what he had to do was right, and nothing was more important, no matter what the consequences were to himself. This is the thought process that gets you Armor Wars, Operation Galactic Storm, and eventually Civil War. And before Armor Wars, Tony just… didn't do things like this. After Armor Wars, he does, and everyone expects him to, and none of that was there before as part of his character. So I'd say that's a pretty big change.

Interestingly, of the four things I've named, two of them each basically happen at the same time -- Tony stops making weapons in the early 70s, around the time the Secret Empire and Nomad thing is happening for Steve, and of course in the mid-80s Steve is The Captain when he confronts Tony during Armor Wars. I guess those were two very transformative time periods for Steve and Tony.

But yeah, those are my picks for the biggest changes to Steve and Tony that weren't part of their original conceptions -- Steve's willingness to say Fuck the Government and go do what he thinks is right even if it means not being Captain America; and Tony's decision to stop making weapons, as well as Tony's willingness to say Fuck the Government (And/Or Possibly Also All His Friends) in order to do with he thinks is right. There's a sense in which they're really not all that different.

[weareallstardustfallen]

hello empiresblr i have watched pix's video and i am, once again, back with analysis, because this is just my life now. today's thesis:

pixl and fwhip are narrative foils.

there's a lot of similarities between them, both as characters in the narrative and their role with that and just in general. pixl even pointed out some of them today: they've got similar philosophies when it comes to making use of the corruption, and they're both the kind of extra that it takes to put elder guardians under sausage's base. they play off of each other really well, and it's very fun to see, but i'm getting off topic bc a good dynamic does not a narrative foil make.

their role in the narrative is really mirrored, especially in their character development. towards the beginning of the story, fwhip was one of the main antagonists, alongside sausage; that's obvious from all of their interactions during basically everything preceding the peace ravine. pixl, on the other hand, was quite firmly on the protagonist's (jimmy's) side, and that was also abundantly clear. it was fairly unambiguous that fwhip was an antagonist who was doing bad things, and pixl was a character who was unconditionally on the protagonist's side.

and then the story got complicated, and their dynamic got interesting; specifically, when it came to the dragon fight.

fwhip was, for what's basically the first time (iirc) acting as a heroic figure. he messed up by sending jimmy into the end, sure, but as soon as he realized that he started thinking about what he could do to make sure that the dragon didn't die, and immediately gave back the cod head and apologized, sincerely, to jimmy. it may have been somewhat caused by his own fear of xornoth, but regardless of his motives, he did everything right. if we look at who the protagonists seem to be for this arc; it's less clear than before, but i would say scott and shubble, and of course the anti-xornoth side of things more generally; he was aligned with the protagonists.

pixl, on the other hand, was working against the protagonists. he was trying to kill the dragon, and though he wasn't villainous in the way that Sausage and Joey were in that interaction, he was definitely acting in the interests of the main big bad. unintentionally, perhaps, but he was told that he was doing something that was wrong and he chose to ignore that. it's sort of similar to how fwhip was acting as an antagonist, except for their intent; pixl didn't know the consequences of what he was doing, and he was just trying to get home, but regardless the similarities are there.

like fwhip, pix had a moment of realization that killing the dragon was wrong, but his came after the dragon was already dead. he didn't have the chance to immediately backtrack and mitigate the mistakes he'd made, because it was a bit of a pandora's box situation; you can't shut that once it's open.

(also, unrelated to the thesis- i think it's very interesting how fwhip, of all people, is the one he called out for during his vision. mr riffs explain)

his reaction is different to fwhip's, though, in what i find to be a very interesting way! both of them share the fact that they are so protective of their citizens, and care a lot about keeping them safe- it's obvious with just about everything pixl's done since the dragon fight and how every action seems to somehow lead back to the good of pixandria, and fwhip is often worrying over and checking in on his villagers, like after he returns from the dragon fight, and after the test subject dream (thank you birch for the reminder on that one!) and both of their reactions lead back to that same protectiveness. but where fwhip's reaction is action- building up the empire to keep them safe- pixl's is overwhelming guilt. he acts, with the ghast farm and solidifying his alliances and working towards taking down sausage, but the core emotion that is driving him right now is guilt.

another point- their major mistakes in the dragon fight come down to what they know really well, and how in that moment, their knowledge fails them.

pixl is really, really good at knowing how the world works. in every interaction, he always seems to be the one who knows the specifics of the mechanics they need, and the one who is teaching the person he's talking to- he's very confident in his knowledge of what makes the world tick, and exactly how to utilize that. of course, this could come down to pixl as a player having a lot of knowledge of the game's mechanics, but i'd also point towards things like the vigil- pix is a very experienced character, as well as minecraft player.

and in the dragon fight? he knows he needs to get home, and get his allies home. he knows that to avoid dying in the void, the dragon needs to be killed. he knows how to kill the dragon. his logic leads him to a very clear conclusion, and one he's absolutely certain of- but he doesn't quite account for all the factors. he doesn't realize that xornoth is another concern, and he pays for it.

fwhip, on the other hand, seems to really get people. this is actually most clear in his first act interactions with jimmy- he's fantastic at knowing exactly what buttons to push, how to needle at him until he gets the reaction he wants. it carries over to his interactions with others, too, which is what makes him such a good manipulator. he knows what makes people tick, and how, if he so chooses, to exploit that.

and his fatal flaw in the dragon battle, just like pix's, is the fact that this knowledge isn't quite enough, or he's too certain of himself without knowing the consequences. he knew exactly what to do to send jimmy into the end- he was dead certain, and right, that jimmy would walk into a trap if he thought he could get the cod head back as a result. the problem was, well... he didn't think that jimmy would be dedicated enough to kill the dragon once he was there. he knew jimmy would take the bait; he didn't know he'd follow it that far.

a final note, which i think is probably less intentional (although you never know, they're very clever writers) but is a pretty bit of poetry- the vigil and the deepslate redstone sort of mimic each other. they're both something with a power that hasn't been or can't be quite explained, but is incredibly central to their empire and their character, and they both consider themselves sort of protectors or shepherds of it, in a sense. there is also a nice visual mirror there- a dark stone and a light stone, each full of lights.

conclusion: this story is so much fun to analyze and also gunpowder boys my beloved

[zephycluster]

Precolonial HWS SEA Rant Post, feel free to ignore

If you're still reading, then you're probably looking for evidence or some juicy tidbits to throw back at me or to try and find dirt to cancel me, like typical Tumblr/Twitter. Go ahead, I don't really care.

First off, let me just say that If you like Precolonial South-East Asia AUs, feel free to keep enjoying them. I will respectfully support your passions from afar. This post is just to explain why I don't like it, especially the way they keep insisting/portraying PH in it.

Still here? Then let me begin.

Since the recent confirmation that the ASEAN Six Majors (Can't really say ASEAN 10 atm since it's still missing some people) Were completed and the Ma-Phil-Indo Trio was included, there has been a large surge in 'Precolonial' fanarts and portrayals of South East Asians, those three especially.

Even long, long before, circa 2010's ish, a rather well-known fan universe known as 'Maaf' dealt with their story and how their Author thought their intertwined histories went. Written by (my best guesstimate) an Indonesian writer who wants to explore the old, SEA bond.

When I first stumbled across Maaf (I was in Highschool at the time, around age 16-ish), I took a casual interest in it and tried to read it through. But, I will wholeheartedly admit that at the time, Pre-Colonial cultures of South-East Asia in general, let alone Philippine, did not really interest me that much. The focus (I think) was mostly on Indonesia, a country I didn't really know back then, and the liberal use of 'ancient' names and artwork just made it feel like an entirely Original Work (that needed a degree in History to really appreciate) and not something from Hetalia. I also completely disagreed with what I could gather was the story's portrayal of PH but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Do I hate 'Maaf'? No, I don't hate it. Do I wish I never came across it or that it didn't exist? Of course not. Just because I didn't enjoy it or appreciate it that well doesn't mean I wish any ill toward it, its fans, or its creator.

Fast forward to April 2021, the long awaited inclusion of South East Asia to the canon Hetalia verse. I was happy, the other fans were happy, all was good.

Then started the questionable fanarts, fan theories and fan pairings.

Especially the expansion of Precolonial! PH.

Let's go back to Maaf for one moment. From what I understood of Maaf, PH there was a character who once was like all the other South East Asian cultures, trading with them, all around being a nice family.

But all that changed when the Spaniards attacked, so cry the precolonial buffs. They destroyed everything, ransacked and marginalized the tribes, erased everything that PH was!

Did that happen? ABSOLUTELY. The Spaniards had this vision in mind that they must spread Christianity to all of the 'savage, unchristian heathens' of their realm. :V /s

But back up a second, back to PH's portrayal in Maaf. The way she (yeah, she) was portrayed there was that she was slowly losing her memories of being a 'true' South East Asian and grew more and more westernized in the process, like some sort of Culture-specific Alzheimer's or something.

Firstly, that is seriously depressing, and secondly, I just really don't see that happening.

Here's why.

Point 1: Even before Colonial Masters, Filipinos as a people cannot agree on anything.

I'll just begin this segment with a Philippine proverb that outlines what Filipinos call 'Crab Mentality' or 'Crab Bucket Mentality'.

"You don't need a lid for a container when you're keeping multiple crabs. If you keep at least two crabs together, they will just pull each other down instead of helping each other up."

I don't know how it goes with Indonesian or Malaysian history class, but what I know of my homeland, both pre- and post-colonial history, we were never really 'united' or 'together' in the sense that Indonesia and Malaysia were (from what I assume).

Let me pull up a somewhat related question on r/AskHistorians.

The reason I brought this up as it shows the reasons why, in my opinion, a single entity that is 'Precolonial Philippines-tan' is an impossibility.

The answers are long and would extend this already long post to stupid proportions, so I'll just quote relevant sentences. The link is here for those that wanna deep-dive into the answer.

"All this to say that there wasn't a name used for the entire Philippine islands before the Philippines that people now would agree to. An interesting comparison would be the Holy Roman Empire, which might also be characterized as disparate politico-geographic groups of relatively small size that had a history of relations between each other, but one thing they had that the Philippines did not was a common language, or at least a family of mostly mutually intelligible languages, so that the name Deutschland or Germany isn't terribly offensive to anyone. If you called the Philippines the 'Lupang-Tagalog' or even 'Lupang-Tao' the other ethnic groups would protest."

For those in need of translation, 'Lupang Tagalog' means 'Land of the Tagalogs' and 'Lupang Tao' means 'Land of People', specifically. The first one is already exclusive and offensive, as the Tagalog peoples are but one of many ethnicities here.

And for the 'Lupang Tagalog' suggestion specifically, it's even more offensive as they are the majority ethnicity (not by much, just around 28%) From this chart from Geography Now! It would basically be alienating everyone else in the 72% remainder that isn't 'Tagalog'.

And even 'Lupang Tao', the most generic name in a local language you can think of, would be met with contempt because the name itself is in the Tagalog language.

Just travelling between two individual island groups today would sometimes require a translator because the words can change very rapidly and very drastically. Here's a sample of some differences coming from a friend living in Visayas (in Red) vs. the words I know living in Luzon (In blue).

Ate vs. Manang = Older Sister

Ibon vs. Pispis = Bird

Tumawa vs. Kadlaw = To laugh

Takot vs. Hadlok = Fear

Kain vs. Kaon = To eat

Ngayon vs. Subong = Now, at this point in time

Iyak vs. Hibi/Gibi = to cry

Talampakan vs. Tiil = Foot (in Tagalog, the word retains its 'body part AND unit of measurement' meaning)

Tulog vs. Tuyo = to sleep (Tuyo in Tagalog is either a dried salted fish or 'to dry')

The kicker is that just like Tagalog is just one of many languages here, so too is the language my friend speaks. Ask an entirely new person, like someone from Mindanao, they'll probably have an entirely new set of words.

It's not just Luzon vs. Visayas vs. Mindanao, either. Here's a map listing some of the ethnic groups here.

Even the way they're written differs from location to location.

While we're on the subject of Island divisions, a casual skim across Twitter and Tumblr has shown that their Precolonial PH has been one of the following ancient civilizations: Tondo, Butuan, Sugbu, Namayan. There may have been others but that was what I have found.

Notice how even today, the posters of Precolonial PH can't seem to agree on what he's supposed to be? With Indonesia it's either Majapahit or Srivijaya and Malaysia it's usually Malacca iirc.

What is the big deal? Well, let's go back to the Ask Historians post. "Why didn't the Philippines ever change its name to remove the colonial mark that being named after a Spanish King has?" The answer: "If you suggested something dating to precolonial times, the other ethnic groups would protest."

Since we're on a roll with maps, let me bring this up.

As you can see, the precolonial PH posts have a reason to not be able to agree on one thing, as there is a LOT of options. Do you also see how THAT list is also split up?

It's split up into those aligned with China (Sinified), aligned with India (Indianized), aligned with the Middle East (Islamicized), and no alignment (Animist). Now, let's go back to the main suggestions for which Kingdom/Polity/Civilization/whatever Modern Philippines used to be.

If the Filipino peoples' couldn't agree on something as simple as WHAT TO CALL THE LAND THEY'RE LIVING ON, what more a living, breathing, walking, talking entity that is supposed to be a beacon of all of their 'unified' culture? ESPECIALLY if that entity used to be a currently existing Kingdom/Polity/Rajahnate/Sultanate/whatever.

Tondo? "Of course, always the damn Tagalogs. Tagalog this, Tagalog that. First the capital city, then the language,* THE REST OF US EXIST, YOU KNOW! What about us in Visayas? Mindanao?"

*The national language known as 'Filipino' is just standardized Tagalog*

Butuan? "Wait, you want Butuan to represent us? They're they only Indian-aligned city in the Islam-majority Mindanao! They're not even that many of them! I'm not gonna change my religion!"

Sugbu, the other name for the Rajahnate of Cebu on the map? Lemme bring back my Visayan friend again. According to her, she hails from the Hiligaynon part of Visayas.

"Sure :v and the other islands are what?

Chopped liver?

Not to mention the language and writing barrier helloooo"

And Namayan? Well. I'll let this pic speak for itself.

To summarize, no matter who you pick as Modern PH's previous identity, it will not end well nor be accepted by the other Kingdoms at the time.

"So where does that leave Modern PH, he had to have been ONE of them, right?"

Well, not really. He doesn't HAVE to be one of the Ancient Kingdoms that lasted till the modern day. I mean, predecessor representatives exist in Hetalia canon, after all. Like Modern Greece is a different character from Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt and Modern Egypt, heck even England and his brothers have a canon mother that was the rep before them.

Or you could even use the same logic that Germany does, in that each specific region has/had its own representative and that Modern!PH is just the 'mediator' between them (cause gawd does PH need one). There could be a Tondo, a Namayan, a Butuan, and a Sugbu, all arguing and this Proto-PH is just trying to make headway in making them all satisfied.

But, even after all this, there is another reason why I personally don't subscribe to the 'Precolonial PH' idea, and by tangential extension, the Indo x Phil pairing.

Point 2: Even without intending to, Precolonial Indo x Phil just comes off as patronizing

This second point is just ENTIRELY personal preference and barely has any facts to back it up.

Again, if you like the pairing and disagree with me, You do you. I will respectfully support you and your passions from a distance.

But for me, Indo being Phil's seme/bae/boyfriend and consistently bringing up precolonial times just comes off as patronizing.

Just one more time, I'd like to point out that I am NOT bashing Indonesia, its people or the subscribers of Indo x Phil. This is just how the pairing feels to ME specifically.

The way I see it, Indo x Phil as a pairing, especially if it extends back into precolonial times, reads the same way as a long-since married couple where the husband/wife CONSTANTLY brings up that ONE outing you had together, or that ONE prom night where you kissed while dancing, even it happened like 30 some-odd years ago and so much more happened since then.

Even in a platonic sense, It reads like two besties where one ALWAYS mentions stuff like 'Yeah but you looked so much cooler back in High School' or 'Back in Grade School you would've known that', or 'Remember back in Pre-school we did X? How could you forget that?'

How does one respond to the notion that no matter what you do now, it will never compare to a past you've already forgotten or barely remember? That the best version of 'you' is already long gone?

"That's because the westerners made you forget your culture! You gotta take it back!"

While it is true, yes, as a collective we barely remember the Kingdom that commissioned the Laguna Copperplate, or created the Banaue Rice Terraces, or created the millennia old bonds that we still share with Indonesia and Malaysia.

But to keep pushing the precolonial identity would be to neglect and cast aside the one REAL binding belief and culture that spans the entirety of these islands we call the Philippines.

We take on all the bad stuff that happens to us, conquer it, and make it our own. Be it natural disasters, foreign powers, or negative stereotypical mentalities.

Yes, we've forgotten the ancient kingdoms of old and are just now digging through the closet for those remnants of the past. Yes, the colonizers imposed that on us, and made us forget. But in the process we've also taken everything that they left behind, everything that they threw at us, and created something that can only come from us.

The lanterns that the Spaniards used to light the way to the morning masses they made us attend became our globally known symbol of Christmas. The junked vehicles that the Americans left behind in World War 2 are now rolling works of art that announce themselves loud and proud on the streets (for better or for worse). The iced dessert recipe that the Japanese forced us to learn while they were occupying the country is now so distinct and famous it is synonymous with us, and is so delicious even Italy has taken notice.

Even after all this? Even after all the 425-ish years total we have been under a foreign power, with all the progress we've made as a country, a people, and a nation, you would still imply our fragmented, jigsaw puzzle state of being in the past was better just because it was pure 'South East Asian' like everyone else?

We might not be as well put-together as Indonesia or Malaysia, but we made this melting pot of angry, leg-pulling, dogpiling, Native, Mestizo, Chinoy, and Fil-Am crabs OURS, damnit!

It's now 4:30 AM and I have work in 5 or so hours. I'll be going to sleep now.

[atlasira]

So, I’ve been speaking to some ex Fusebox workers and a lot of them let me in on some scoop. None of the FB team worked on the seduction games, art for mm wasnt theres, and the writers were never allowed to write MLM or clear gay relationships. Hmm.

okay i actually have a lot to say on the mlm content in the season(s) so im gonna make a separate post about it bc >_> but as for now:

hearing the staff wasn’t given freedom to do all they wanted with the writing, artwork, and even representation is one of those “i didnt know that, but knowing it now, how did i not know” kinda things. because the more you think about it, the more sense it makes. the mlm content both in season 2 and in season 3 was clunky at best and uncomfortably seen as just smthg of a joke at worst.

and as for the artwork, it being used without permission also matches up. people joke about the LITG characters’ designs in matchmaker looking weird, but that was probably done on purpose. with tweaks the company can still claim it as theirs while not giving the original artists their due. “the characters arent the exact same as the ones those artists did so they don’t have any claim over them” is an excuse they can mostly likely use in court (iirc i’m not a lawyer).

ever since the end of season 2 FB has been slowly but surely changing into smthg ugly. even before hearing from the employees’ themselves, we just as players could tell smthg was up because of the writing in the game. and now with recent situations (s4 being removed and ignored, employees being laid off, etc.) it feels like things are coming to a head. i said it earlier as a kinda joking kinda not post, but i do genuinely think the way FB is moving now, not only will things not get better any time soon, i have a feeling LITG will be another interactive story app that goes under.

(edit: here’s my post about the mlm content)

[agarthium]

not to gush but speaking as someone who recently came to terms w physical disability that's been present since childhood (although i don't have BBD and welcome input from those who do), i'm rly happy that the ppl response for joker's writing did such an excellent job of portraying a physically disabled person?? like maybe it's just me but in thinking about it he's like, really well written in that respect. he's the best physically disabled (or maybe specifically mobility-impaired) character ik of in media that i've indulged in.

like, the first time shepard talk to him he expects you to be all weird towards him about the fact that he's disabled, and expects it to be obvious even though it's not really while he's sitting down doing his job (since it doesn't impair him in that respect). that's pretty realistic imo and says that he's probably dealt with a lot of ableism in his career, which makes even more sense in the context of him talking abt working his ass off in flight school because i bet being disabled he had to work at least twice as hard as his peers to be taken seriously anyway (both due to ableism and also due to the fact that meeting academic standards can be fucking hard as a physically disabled person, if you're even able to attend academia in the first place, that is).

and then in the 2nd and 3rd games, he gets an "improvement" from cerberus (i forget what he exactly explains) but his disability isn't "fixed." he's still visibly disabled/mobility-impaired and has a pretty significant limp despite being able to walk around now without nearly the same amount of risk as he did prior. i'm really happy the writers didn't choose to just have him "fixed" and be able to walk around normally (which would have been bad writing anyway since his condition is obvs a significant part of his character).

and then later in me3 they even have you catching him in a conversation with mordin about him trying to find a way to have sex with edi with respect to the fact he's physically impaired, which i rly like the inclusion of since a lot of people tend to desexualize physically disabled folks, either assuming we don't like sex or that we can't have it even if the reality isn't the case (which, being disabled and not liking or being able to have sex isn't a bad thing).

the only thing i could think to improve it are being able to romance joker yourself (listen...i love him) and seeing joker actually use mobility aids in casual moments of the games (he mentions using crutches in the first game iirc which would have been cool to see, or a wheelchair/powerchair, or a cane, etc.) ofc in my dream world my shepard is symptomatically hypermobile (like myself) and they swap stories about stupid times joints have dislocated or subluxed and then for joker stupid times that bones have fractured.

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

this came up in a chat; is it possible the P5 team intentionally avoided keeping P5's lore in line with the rest of the series to avoid confusing new fans and also the new writers on the team? Especially after how much had happened in the spin offs and wanting P5 to really be its own thing like how P3 and 4 were their own things before the spin offs?

Hmmmm I....don’t....think so......tbh......... I mean it MIGHT but....I don’t think so....It’s interesting but....yeah...... (under the cut cause ya know I ramble~! ;w;)

I mean the fact that P5′s lore by itself, without the context of past games, is a flaming mess....again...by itself.....(quick/rushed ex: If your cognition changes then the world changes! And Futaba acknowledges that thing isn’t her mom so it should go-oh it’s not going? We’re....we’re fighting it? But cognition..... this doesn’t make any sense! ;w;) Really makes me feel that there was just not a lot of communication with the writers and editors. P5 iirc had a lot of veteran writers, it had 3 main scenario writers actually: the person who wrote P3 and one of the writers for P4 (P4 had two, P3 only had two because of FeMC’s route and that came later), some other guy (might’ve worked on previous games but first being a head writer), and Hashino (the first and only Persona game he had a part in writing instead of just directing). 

But on top of that, they had other writes that I believe were also veterans, so I don’t think it’s new writers all around, I think it was them.......doing what they did with Ultimax.....having too many cooks making the soup (which was Ultimax’s undoing, but at least it made some sense lore wise........it was just the quality of the writing that was horrendous~! :D ;w; P5 it’s both, lore and quality)

There’s also the fact they have a lot of similarities and knowledge of previous games: Parallels of ripping off of P1/2/4, heavy references to P(1?)/2/3/4, ideas that even came up in spinoff games (like Haru’s half awakening, Labby experienced the same thing). I think they are very much aware of their old material and even has lore that is in line with the rest of the series: Shadow selves having Yellow eyes established in P4 (which those SS’s are different than P2′s shadows b4 any1 says anything 8U) and the half awakening as mentioned, hell in retrospect a lot of things that could be explained as cognition in P1-4 finally have a term they can use (ironically they keep those ideas simple compared to P5 trying to be cool and complex with them, but even if P5 botched it-it’s nice to have a darn term for P1-4 DX), Mental Shutdowns basically being Apathy Syndrome (and should be called AS to the public/in the game, the different term is only for the benefit of the player since we know the primary difference between the two is the cause but the effects are the exact same), Palaces basically being TV World dungeons....and so on. There’s more but I’ll keep the list short.

I don’t think they have to worry about feeling like their “own game” tbh, I do think it’s always hard with a new idea, but I don’t think they struggled with trying to make P5 it’s “own thing.” They were able to do it with P1/2/3/4 till now, I don’t see why they couldn’t with this one (which obvie they did). It’s not like they are making a continuation (original trilogy is a bit special but yeah) that’s only for spinoffs (and even then....barring Ultimax and maybe P5S, they try to act as if you might not have played the other games), so all they have to do is introduce or reintroduce terminology (like the half awakenings or shadow selves or just shadows/personas) as if it’s the person’s first time playing it and they’re good. 8U So the lore should be about as sturdy as the previous games but......yeah >.>

The only thing I can see the writer’s team avoid is the year date (still stupid but blame P5 taking so long to get out).....which they’ll have to confront at some point tbh unless they plan to skip a P3/4/5 Arena type game. Only thing I can see them doing is maybe making P5 an alt timeline like P2EP/P3/P4 and P2EP/P3P.....but considering Rise still being an idol.....it def seems like P5 is on P4′s timeline (even if we were to split hairs on the Adachi reference being a fictional drama and not a dramatization of Adachi’s crimes, Rise def wouldn’t still be an idol if not for P4.....because........remember she quit? yeah...) I mean they could still do it, it just means explaining a looooooooooooooooot of stuff. 8U And while it’d be cool multiverse wise, I feel it’d rob us of a Shadow Ops/IT vs PT showdown that should totally happen and if it doesn’t I’m suing Atlus for wasted potential. >8U

-ahem- but yeah......I think it’s more of too many cooks, esp since there’s still some seasoned cooks from previous games on the writing team......I have a list I’ve been working on, I’ll try to finish and publish it sometime so we can see just how many there are and how many worked on the other games

[lizzybeth1986]

Very Slow Thoughts on TRH Book 1 Chapter 8

• This chapter is meh. It's basically a full chapter of the writers taking the Walker ranch portion of the story, and stretching it like chewing gum at this point. I was pretty much sleepwalking through this one tbh.

• The only interesting bit in this was the Drake childhood scene, but because the initial scenes will always be slight buildup to the actual meat of the backstory - rather than the story itself - its placement in a chapter as dull as this one doesn't exactly do it any favours.

• To avoid seeing these posts on your dash, you can block the following tags: #trh quick thoughts, #trh qts, #trh qt reblogs, #long post

• Screenshot Credits:

Drake: @thefirstcourtesan and the HIMEME YouTube channel

Hana: The Abhirio YouTube channel

I'm sorry I don't have any Maxwell screenshots this time around, since I couldn't find it on YouTube, and I wasn't able to ask permission for screenshots on time. As soon as a video of his route is up on YouTube, I'll try adding the collages with his screenshots up. But I do have a tiny gist of what happens in certain portions of his playthrough, thanks to Tumblr, so I'll put those up as quotes.

• Title: Ride Like The Wind

Alternate Title: There Are Other Things My MC Could Be Riding...But Okay

• We begin with the sisters (yeah Leona and Bianca are back to being sisters now), worrying over how they'll get their cattle to the upcoming auction on time since every ranch hand they'd reached out for help pretty much declined.

• Not only is stubbornness a family trait, but so is the tendency to judge people at face value (I'm looking at you, Leona).

• There are a bunch of parallels between the Walker Ranch situation and the Beaumont house one in Book 1: both for the Regatta and the Beaumont Bash. Only difference is, the writers won't bother to expand much on Beaumont History but throw around every minute detail they can imagine for Drake's family (IIRC, even the mystery in Beaumont House in Book 1 was mostly Savannah related).

• Even in moments of dire need, Leona HAS to slip in snide remarks about people she barely knows.

Slight variation on the third option, if you're married to Drake. The other two highlight either the fact that the MC spent most of her life as a commoner and could think on her feet, and the second establishes that she has at least some riding experience. Leona pokes fun at you for both, but has the sense to not deliver much of her unwanted opinion for the third (besides stating they don't have much of a choice).

• The MC also highlights the benefit of bringing the others along: Hana and Liam have a lot of riding experience, Drake is 'capable' and 'outdoorsy' and for some reason Maxwell is known only for his enthusiasm (even though Beaumont House HAS horses and a stable and the Brothers Beaumont would have had SOME experience at the very least 🤷🏽‍♀ [Didn't the Beaumont Bash involve letting in a couple horses into the house? I doubt those horses would even be there if those two didn't know how to ride and manage them]).

Hands down my favourite line in this chapter (Liam's king voice one comes a close second). I really love this because in stories like TRR/D&D, there's always that divide between nobility vs commoner, aesthetics vs utility...and in dialogues like these you can really see that difference. It reminds me a little of one of my favourite scenes from D&D Book 1, where Briar looks at the MC's embroidery and wonders aloud how a pretty piece like this would be of any use to anyone.

• The suede is fine but there's too much going on with the rest of the outfit for me to really admire it. Our LIs obviously don't agree with me:

Drake and Liam have the same dialogue, Hana and Maxwell have different ones. (in Maxwell's he tells her he is ready to "serenade my amazingly dressed, darlin' wife").

• Everyone gets their horses (Bianca gives King Liam a gentler horse so she doesn't end up indirectly harming a king, and Leona gives Bertrand a rough horse on purpose. Because Bertrand has to be on his best behaviour he agrees despite his initial fears).

• Hmm. Chuck finds out about the lack of help via a rumour. Hmmmm. Bertrand gets as skittish as his horse until the MC and Bianca remind him that they might as well take all the help they need.

• So the task is to ensure that the group reaches the big fair on time (or before) so that the sisters have enough time to prepare for their auction. Since they're short of staff and have a lot of cattle, every minute counts.

• There are roughly 3 tests that can ensure we get there on time if we pass:

- help move a group of stubborn cows from the six dozen we're taking to the auction (you can either say giddyup or scream out silly idioms that they won't understand). If you don't say giddyup, Drake will say it for you.

- Move the herd of cows away from a mud patch on the way. Drake suggests a move he and Savannah used to do as kids called The Cyclone, where 1-2 people get in the way of the herd and the riders come from another side to steer them away. This ensures that they get the cows away from the mud patch. This one is the most time-sensitive of the three, because if we fail this one a lot of time gets spent in getting the cows that fell into the mud patch out of the muck and onto the path again.

- Get a cow wandering through the stream out of it safely using a lasso. The problem arises when the cow starts fidgeting while you're taking them back. Here is where your suede outfit has an advantage, because if you choose "grip the pommel with your hands" and almost fall off the horse, the sturdy outfit will ensure you're safe.

-

All of this results either in you getting the cattle to the auction way before time with an hour to spare, or so late that they reach after the auction itself has begun. In the second option, Leona is nervous about their chances but Bianca insists that they did better than they could have done alone.

• Some stuff that you learn/that happens on the way:

- Chuck calls Leona Miss Walker, so is Walker really Bianca's surname rather than Jackson's? Jackson is also referred to as Jackson Walker. So whose nickname was it initially?

- Wild West Nicknames:

* Maxwell can either be Mad Maxwell or Maxwell 'Calamity' Beaumont. Both nicknames from the MC speak of his tendency to veer towards chaos, or his boundless energy.

* Liam is simply called King Liam because PB is fucking lazy.

* Drake is called The Lone Ranger by Hana, and Hana is called Lucky Lee by Drake.

* The MC can choose her nickname - Cow Boss, Jewel of the Prairie and Wild [Surname]. The second is a nice callback to both one of Valtoria's House mottos (Jewel of the Earth) and a name that Maxwell gives to a caviar dish for the Beaumont Bash (Jewels of the Sea). Personally I think the second one is a better parallel since the Beaumont House situation was already a precursor to what is going on with the Walker Ranch.

-

Well yes Liam, on people.

That aside...Jesus Christ is this man adorable.

- Alright, so much as I can't stand Leona? At least she has a legitimate ax to grind with Cordonian monarchy. Why the hell is CHUCK being like her and acting all condescending?? The closest thing to a 'noble' he's been around was Savannah and they barely even had anything together if we go by what Savannah says. What is he, the shit stirrer of Walker Ranch?

-

I have two points to make about this:

1. Constantine...is a fucking asshole. Most of us knew that. I think TRH just seems to be expanding more on that.

2. Sooo...exactly what was Constantine like before the Nevrakis ppl did what they did coz at this point he sounds like an utter failure in every way imaginable. His wife seems to have serious issues with him at this point, he's too busy fighting to spend any time with his kids (well. at least the one the writers remember), has neglected his friend Hakim, doesn't have good political relations with anyone, screws over the King Guard who he gave a Guardian of the Realm honour to earlier, for saving his life...after the man has died.

3. Leona pretty much doesn't seem to care about anything else besides the money Bianca could have been bringing in. It's the main thing she mentions when we first meet her, and it's the front and center of what she's telling us now. What Bianca was going through, the fact that her kids were left behind in an environment that was seemingly not a good one for them - she hasn't mentioned this so far in any of her more obvious complaints towards the nobility. I mean, is that the first thing you think about when your sister returns to her maternal home after such a devastating tragedy? Really??

4. The other funny thing is...she complains about not getting compensation from the royalty yet forgets that for a whole year or more when Bianca and Leona were not there for her (not their fault obviously, since she likely never told them)...it was a noble family's money that supported Savannah and Bartie. The money of the same Bertrand Leona is now enjoying lording over. I guess she would only know this if she were actually giving her sister's children the time of day, and I have hardly seen her do so, so far.

• Once we reach the fair and the sisters have moved forward to where the auction is happening, we are allowed to check out the rest of the fair. Cue diamond scene!

• I kinda think of this as a Group-LI kind of diamond scene - one where you spend time with the characters, but not separately. In a usual group scene they interact and do stuff together before you get time alone with them, but here, the group interactions are minimal and you get time with each LI in different situations. If you are married to said LI, the dialogues are obviously more romantic.

Drake: Opts for bull riding. He's shocked at the number of waivers he has to sign before participating, has a tough time atop the bull BUT manages to stay on longer than the rest. The rest of the group cheers him on as he comes out victorious, and the MC can either be baffled at his daring, or try it out herself.

The MC who is Drake's wife can opt to kiss him just before he participates and tell him to be safe.

Maxwell: Asks us to join in a tandem pie eating competition with him. The MC and Maxwell can either easily win, or be disqualified for starting a pie fight. Either way, the experience is a blast.

As Maxwell's wife, you get to kiss him after you've won/gotten disqualified, and tell him how his ability to make you laugh and have fun is exactly why your marriage is so amazing. (as Maxwell puts it: "never a dull day and more pie eating contests than you'd expect").

Hana: Has found a dressage-trained horse, and is happily getting the horse to do a perfect figure-eight. What follows is a heartfelt conversation about what home means to her, all the possibilities she can now freely explore, and the changes she has experienced. You can either tell her about her tendency to be competitive (something she apparently did not know herself...uh, yeah, sure), or her love and loyalty towards her friends.

As Hana's wife, you can kiss her, tell her you're falling more and more in love with her each day, and Hana gets to tell you that for her, home is where you are.

Liam: Has learned how to make a lasso from a local at the fair. He speaks of how places like these make him feel like he perhaps may understand his own people better, even if these activities are not what the court would expect or approve of from a king. He can show a few rope tricks to the MC, like catching a chair with a lasso, or be 'captured' by the MC.

As Liam's wife, there's the opportunity to flirt either by using the lasso on Liam, or asking him to tie you up.

• Savannah gives an update from Bertrand on how the cattle drive has gone, and Drake brings along some Texas barbeque. The group love it, but the MC finds it a little too much on the spicier side (bold of you, team TRH, to think I can't handle the seasoning in Texas when I have numbed my tongue on bird's-eye chilis!).

• Gah. The paps again. But this time, we're prepared and able to put a positive spin on our trip to Texas (this is either a romantic getaway to ensure we conceive a child, supporting a local business, attending the wedding of a noble) and the paparazzo runs with it. Chuck comes to our 'rescue' a minute later and Savannah is very appreciative.

• Tensions continue brewing beneath the surface between Bertrand and Chuck. Chuck tries to bond with Bartie, who is naturally a friendly child, and Bertrand isn't able to hide how he feels about this. You get to either deflect the situation by telling Bertrand to show Bartie how a "Beaumont high-five" works, or by telling Chuck not to cut into Bartie's animal petting time.

• Savannah complains. Only improvement is that at least this time she mentions that she's spoken to Bertrand and even then he feels he has something to prove (gee, Savannah, I wonder why. It's not like your AUNT has anything to do with that, for sure!)

• "Whatever's going on with Bertrand, I hope he figures it out before our wedding". 'Because I sure as hell don't care', Savannah forgot to add. Like...the root of his current insecurities is right in front of her. Right in her family. Leona has been rubbing it in that he is a 'useless noble' ever since he's been here (even giving him a skittish horse on purpose) and not once has Savannah ever said a thing - either in front of Bertrand, or secretly to us in all the times she's been complaining about him. That's a...surprisingly cavalier attitude for someone getting married to this guy in a couple days.

• Seeing Bertrand, Savannah and Bartie as a family leads the MC and LI to talk about their own search for a family. Nowadays I generally tap over a scene like this because I personally find the MC having the option to be upset and sorry for herself about not being pregnant, a little annoying. I wouldn't under normal circumstances, considering what this book is about (in fact I would be quite happy) - but I think I'm allowed to feel sore over the fact that the MC unfairly gets the space to feel about this the way others can't. So yeah, for me scenes like these are not worth talking about.

• We're back at the ranch, where the group laughs and reminisces over the last trip some of them (Liam, Drake, Savannah) took to the ranch, and the strongest memory we here about is of Jackson, Drake's father who was once Constantine and Eleanor's security detail.

• In our second childhood diamond scene, we are taken back to their last visit to the ranch, where a rather unwell Eleanor is protected by Jackson, and where the children witness a fight between the king and queen. Drake and Jackson have a conversation in the stables later, where the father evades questions about Constantine and Eleanor from a very worried son, and instead chooses to ask him questions about his future. Here are the things I could glean from the scenes:

- Bianca doesn't get a younger sprite here even though she is present in the scene, and there's a chance that they're maybe saving that for a flashback scene for her (?)

- Eleanor's meant to appear unwell, tired and very unlike herself in this sequence - and even if we've just met her it's quite clear that something is off with her. She is shown looking weary a couple of times, and Jackson says "easy does it" at one point. She shows a lot more frustration towards Constantine than in the last scene, calling him out for his paranoia and asking him if his questions (about her wanting an alliance with Auvernal) are an order from the king rather than a request from her husband. Even Constantine points out that she is not herself.

- Other than Auvernal being her maternal home, what else do we know about her connections there? (besides that telling quote by Bradshaw about Eleanor always graciously welcoming them - which interestingly seems to leave out Constantine). I feel like the upcoming trip there next chapter is going to give us an insight into that.

- There is a heavy emphasis on Liam and Drake's friendship, and Drake's feeling of 'responsibility' towards Liam...which I think is kind of a pointer to the whole question of him returning to court after the assassination and staying with Liam when they're older. Even his conversation with Jackson has the latter mentioning that he would be of the most help if he keeps Liam and his parents happy during their time in the ranch.

- The ending itself shows a significant shift from Drake's attitude towards Liam in the first half (playful, friendly, wants Liam to be safe around his mother's home) to the last (protective, determined to cheer Liam up and more reflective). This scene is clearly a Drake scene through and through and the approach is very different from the first set of childhood scenes. This might be how childhood solo scenes will be dealt with from now on.

- Jackson also mentions not being able to speak openly about the problems between Constantine and Eleanor, and Liam tells us later on that he was kind of a confidant to both of them. Jackson also mentions in the stable scenes that he is responsible for keeping them alive but not for their personal problems. The perfect King Guard. Constantine is an ass for denying his family compensation (but also I wonder if there is more to that story the way they frame it. I hope they don't try to force another of those "it was for the good of Cordoniaaaaa" excuses the writers always keep ready for Constantine.

- If Olivia was so suspicious, why were they leaving her behind?

- There are significant differences between the Drake playthrough and other playthroughs in terms of certain scenes. One lies in the options little Drake can make with regards to his future. The third options in both playthroughs show indicators of his future. If present-day Drake is single in your playthrough, it will focus on his desire for a simpler life. If he is married now, then the flashback will include this:

The other two options are Drake speaking about wanting to be a King Guard like his dad, and wanting to stay Liam's best friend. The King Guard thing obviously doesn't happen, the second one happens because Liam almost died. The third one is more clearly a pointer to Drake's future.

- Another significant variation if you are married to Drake is that you have a conversation with him after the scene is over, about his thoughts on his child becoming an heir to the throne:

Reminds me of the conversation we had at the American bar. On the one hand, I like this because as an outsider in the court and someone close to the security detail at the time, he would think of Liam's life very differently. Kids are impressionable, and ostentatious shows of wealth in front of a kid who cannot afford that much can definitely sting.

- Hmm. Hmm. So Liam's sacrifices only become important to Drake when his own kid might face the same challenges? Until then he will yap about how much luckier Liam is and how everything revolves around Liam? How girls were after Liam and not him (yet the one girl who did like him, he eventually treated like trash)? How he thought of Liam as "leading the MC on" by spending time with her when they first met/during the social season? (that's an actual dialogue he says, in Book 3 Chapter 16). Added to this is the fact that Drake stayed in the palace for free, as Liam's friend, and hardly had to do much (he freely roams around the cities Liam has to visit for diplomatic reasons, he can opt out of court events when he wants, he doesn't even have to dress the way others do - even the MC that doesn't buy outfits has to wear a gown that represents her sponsors/duchy for official events). Now when it's convenient for Drake he chooses to think about the flip side? When that flip side should have been the most obvious to him, the Prince/King's best friend??

• The setup for the next chapter comes in the form of a letter from Auvernal, asking the MC to meet them. Well. It's not Texas, so I'll take it.

General Thoughts:

- I don't have a lot to say about this chapter. There's not much really. It's boring and bland and even the nice Drake childhood scene at the end can't save it.

- Bianca's little line about not wanting to harm a King on her ranch...I feel like part of it may be concern because Liam was after all her son's best friend, and part of it may be wariness because of Constantine? But a lot of this is definitely me reading too much into this one little line 😅

- It does have some decent callbacks though:

* Team TRH FINALLY remembers that Hana has done dressage, which was shown to us as far back as TRR Book 1 Chapter 13. Brava!

* The whole premise of a family struggling with money problems and us offering help and getting the job done, is very reminiscent of the pre-Beaumont Bash sequences where we were scrambling together appetizers, helping with cleaning and setting up the ballroom for the big event. It's kind of ironic because the Beaumonts were in this position once, and now at least 3 books later they are involved in helping the sisters get the cattle drive going.

* The pie fight in Maxwell's section of the diamond scene has some similarities to the food fight in the fondue party scene in Book 2.

* Hana's response to eating barbeque strongly resembles how she approaches eating sloppy joes in Book 1, at the beach party. Back there, she is nervous about sampling the food because it is messy, and here she initially asks about utensils to eat it with, to which Maxwell says "you have ten of them!" referring to her fingers.

* The Jewel nickname for the MC, which we've seen versions of before in Book 1 and Book 3.

* A lighter version of the MC-Drake conversation in the Drake x MC playthrough can be found in the American bar scene in Book 1, where he speaks about how his parents always tried to get him things for his birthday but Liam's parents always went many steps ahead simply because they could afford it.

* Drake being called the Lone Wolf by Hana, which was something the MC could opt to dub herself in her interview at the Derby in Book 1? (a bit of a stretch I know but I'm having fun with this okay 😂)

- Could a kind anon (or not-anon) tell me if there is a reference behind 'Lucky Lee'? In fact behind all the names except maybe the Lone Wolf one for Drake. I couldn't find any hehehe.

- Now that we're going to Auvernal, I think we'll find (paywalled) clues there that might tell us more about Eleanor. Those clues about her changed behaviour and physical condition must have been placed exactly here for a reason.

- Usually Chapters 9 or 10 have been chapters that dealt with some aspect of Constantine and his family (his abdication + news of his impending death in Book 1, discovery of his involvement in the conspiracy in Book 2, and his death in Book 3). So now would be the perfect time to discover the truth about Eleanor and her relationship with Constantine, and what was troubling her.

- One theory I have is that Eleanor's being slow-poisoned, and these may be symptoms of what she is having. @thefirstcourtesan mentioned that pregnancy could be a reason too, and it would be another connecting factor with the MC. One thing that I do feel a little certain about is that this trip to Texas may have been a little while before she died.

- How is it that the narrative has absolutely no memory of the fact that Leo was once heir to the throne? I can imagine him not being very close to Liam-Drake-Maxwell or being a teenager who didn't want to be around his father (esp if that father is acting the way Constantine does in these scenes)...but not even a reference? A mention? You have the time to draw an entire sprite of little Savannah who pretty much has very little to do with this part of the story (or any part of the overall story) but Leo isn't even mentioned? Sounds a little fishy to me.

- I possibly wouldn't have minded Savannah's complaining and lack of proactiveness with the Bertrand situation, if their entire storyline didn't revolve around her being this "perfect angel" Bertrand has to be worthy of, and Bertrand's mistakes repeatedly being pulled up while Savannah doesn't have to answer much for the occasions where she is irrational or hasn't made good decisions. What we're seeing now is just an extension of this particular storyline.

- You can tell that the original epilogue series was meant to revolve around the Walker Ranch coz whatever we're seeing here is probably way way more than we have seen of Cordonia so far. There are frantic attempts to tie this to the overall plotline, but within the larger picture it makes very little sense.

Like I hate the paparazzi in the series and even then I found myself agreeing when he pointed out that it was weird that half the Royal Council was roaming around Texas.

- Speaking of the Council I wonder what the other court ladies were doing while we were at the fair. Sleeping off those hangovers?

- There could be other childhood/flashback scenes coming up. We will need an adult perspective, so Bianca might get one. Olivia needs to be seen as important and relevant to the plot (plus Constantine was shitty to her too), so she will get one.

- I wonder why Bastien had such a loyalty and attachment to Queen Eleanor (as stated in Book 2 by Regina) if he actually wasn't that close to the royal couple then (Jackson seems to fulfill that role here). I'm pretty sure they're probably going to ignore/forget that little detail.

- Will Hana and Maxwell get flashback scenes? They should, and there are ways you could incorporate that even if they weren't involved as much. Maxwell's could (FINALLY) focus on what happened to his family fortunes and you could slip in a little something about the palace there. Hana's could focus on her family and also have Lorelai catch up on Cordonian news/talk to her Cordonian relatives. Liam needs a solo scene of his own too, because after this I'm pretty sure his life takes a turn for the worse. If Hana and Maxwell (but esp Hana) don't get one...that's going to be extremely disheartening because they deserve way more attention than what they're getting now. I'm sincerely hoping we see more of their childhood memories too.

- You know what I'm REALLY looking forward to? Writing TRR 1's Chapter 8 QT. I'm very fond of that chapter and have a whole bunch of points to make about it 😀

- Until the next chapter, everyone!

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

Les Huguenots obv, Don Carlo, Trovatore, Eugene Onegin, Simon Boccanegra, Cav/Pag?

Alright, here we go: 

Les Huguenots: 

Setting-wise, I’m thinking either full-on period drama or modern present-day. (I mean, have you seen social media? People nowadays are often straight-up vicious.) 

Also, little to no cuts, and I would play it straight (as in “no overarching external concept” straight, not “heterosexual” straight because there are definitely some characters who are not straight in the slightest) but I think there’s more than enough in the libretto to keep any director busy. 

Lots of action, lots of spectacle, but at the same time going for an intimate focus on the principals, their relationships with each other, and where they stand in terms of society. No wonder this one’s so hard to pull off.

 Another thing that’s hard is pulling off the “this massacre is pretty much inevitable” thing in the early acts, because there are little signs everywhere hidden within the ostensibly happy stuff that serious trouble is brewing. It’s necessary, though. 

Finally, for Pete’s sake, Nevers will die onstage. 

(Addendum that’s not super-related: apparently there was a production somewhere in Germany a few years back where Nevers was an artist and everyone else were either characters in his paintings or people commissioning his work. IIRC [I only read reviews, I couldn’t find any video] instead of dying, Nevers was just kinda there the whole last act and towards the end he started dumping red paint everywhere and the result was a painting of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.) 

Okay, after I wrote all that, I found out that apparently people are doing their modern-day cast picks, so mine are: John Osborn or Yosep Kang as Raoul, Rachel Willis-Sørensen as Valentine, Lisette Oropesa or Erin Morley as Marguerite, Nicolas Testé or Michele Pertusi as Marcel, Artur Rucinski as Nevers, Ying Fang or Karine Deshayes as Urbain, and Christian van Horn as Saint-Bris. 

Don Carlo: 

First things first: I couldn’t care less about whether it’s in French or Italian (both work fine IMO), but including the whole Fontainebleau act and the Lacrimosa is a must. (I’d also include the Eboli/Elisabetta mask switchoff scene.) 

I would absolutely go period drama with it, but for sets and costumes, I’d take a little simpler and less elaborate/more abstract approach. Also definitely dark and moody (except for the first part of the courtyard at San Yuste scene). 

EXTREMELY GAY IN ALL THE WAYS. That is all. 

The more people in the chorus, the better, not just because grand opéra, but also because then it feels more overwhelming. The production should be overwhelming in just about every way, like getting-hit-by-a-wind-tunnel overwhelming. 

The ending: just leave the ending alone. As much as I understand wanting it to be a more closed-off ending, I actually really like how cliffhanger-y the ending is. (I’d be willing to play the Fontainebleau act as a flashback Carlo’s having before Act II.) 

Cast: Fabiano or Kaufmann, Harteros or Yoncheva, Furlanetto or Abdrazakov, Tezier or Keenlyside, Garanca or A-Rach, and Halfvarson because he’s the classic Grand Inquisitor. 

Il trovatore: 

Ooh, I really liked the McVicar idea of setting it during the Peninsular War, although I’d also love to hightail the plot to Italy and set it during the Risorgimento. 

Manrico is the least interesting lead in the entire thing IMO, but I would find a way to make him interesting, not just the “oh he’s the tenor and the title role so we have to focus on him” deal. 

I’d put a lot more focus onto both di Luna and Azucena, especially Azucena (there’s a reason why Verdi wanted her to be the title character). Maybe the production should progressively get more bizarre as it’s clear she’s more and more traumatized/insane by everything that’s happened. 

I’d have Manrico die onstage, too. 

Cast: not completely sure, maybe Lee, Radvanovsky, A-Rach, and Tezier or Rucinski (considering my first choice is no longer here...) 

Simon Boccanegra: 

Setting: Either keep it in very over-the-top period or (for a slightly more original idea) start the opera at the end of the Risorgimento movement and end it 25 years later. 

Go big or go home on the sets and costumes with this one. 

I’d like to stage the Prologue as Simon’s flashback, but otherwise play it completely straight. Also, cranking up the energy on the Simon/Amelia dynamic is a must. 

(A very interesting not-playing-it-straight concept I’ve toyed with that could potentially go with the end-of-the-Risorgimento setting: make Simon Boccanegra a parallel to Verdi. That would also be incredibly sad, given that Verdi’s two kids died very young.) 

Cast: Tezier (really my go-to current Verdi baritone), Rebeka or Yoncheva, Fabiano, Belosselskiy 

Eugene Onegin: 

Setting can be summed up as “Pushkin or Chekhov, take your pick.”  

I’m envisioning a set that’s half “looks like a charcoal drawing or muted oil painting” and half minimalist, and really beautiful period costumes. Also, snow everywhere in Acts II and III (the current Met production setting the final scene in a snowstorm? Genius. However, I’d probably have the snow raging outside and the two leads raging inside. Related: huge windows for the final scene to see said snowstorm.) 

Eugene Onegin is definitely bi and horribly regrets the duel. 

I would make this production have a huge emphasis on writing: Onegin is the brooding author/hero, Tatyana is a writer of course, Lensky’s a poet... maybe they’re all writing their own part of the story? 

Also, it’s cruel but I think it would make sense for Onegin to commit suicide at the end. 

Cast: Kweicken, Mattei, or Rucinski; Corinne Winters; Michael Fabiano; Alexander Vinogradov 

Cav/Pag: 

I know one’s technically set in Sicily and one in Calabria, but because I tend to like multiple-bills more if there’s a dramatic throughline, I’d set both in the same place and try to connect the two operas’ characters somehow. 

To me, both operas are about the personas people project versus who they really are- and God forbid that women don’t fit the perfect public persona and are instead genuine. As a result, I’d try to add a little theater to Cav and for the reverse effect (since Pag does take place on the Feast of the  Assumption), a little bit of Catholic ritual (and guilt) to Pag. 

I don’t think the aesthetic for the two operas should be so different: we’re talking the course of one day for both operas, except Pag both starts and ends later in the day (IIRC Cav starts at sunrise). 

Cast: not really sure tbh, although I heard the Dutch National Opera apparently had a really nice cast for it recently (A-Rach and Ailyn Perez!) 

To end: this is probably a good time to share my hot take that I like Cav more than Pag.

[mad-madam-m]

So this is an odd question I'm sure, but what do you think the chances are of Sheith being canon? I've been thinking in it since S6 and seeing that clip of "I love you" in various languages (Ich lieb dich and aishiteru apparently commonly used for lovers than family though they can be so). And tbh that entire final scene ("you found me" and the holding) threw some vibes. I know the Klible exists but Lance seems headed for Allura right now. I'm curious on your thoughts!

Generally, I try not to get too invested in if my ships become canon. Thus far, it’s never impacted my enjoyment of a ship or how much fun I have being a part of the fandom. And I feel like that’s a pretty good way to go about shipping overall, because you never know how canon’s going to shake out. If the only reason you ship a ship is because you want it to be canon, you will likely be disappointed more often than not.

That being said, representation in media is important, and we’re reaching a tipping point with queer fans–rightly–being upset when queer ships are constantly ignored and they’re told “oh, well, it shouldn’t matter if your ship is canon” because they literally never get to see people like themselves have a decent romance.

IIRC (I’m at work; I’m not digging for receipts), both LM and JDS have said that queer representation is important to them and it’s something that they’re keeping in mind for the show. I’m not sure how much they’ll be able to do, but at this point? If they’re planning on a same-sex romantic relationship between major characters, Shiro/Keith is really the only one that makes sense. (And seriously, a lot of the scenes with Shiro and Keith are framed…really romantically. Like. Y’all. It’s not subtle.)

That also being said, I can’t say “oh woo it’ll definitely be canon” because come on, I’m a fan writer out in the middle of nowhere, USA. I have no clue where they’re going with the show and I have no clue what DW/the other VLD rights holders will allow them to do on this particular property with regards to queer representation. I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high because I don’t want to be disappointed if they don’t go that way (hey, they might not have any canon romances, and that’s also a valid path), and honestly, what we’ve gotten so far is way more than I ever thought we would.

(Plus, the showrunners and the cast have all been pretty supportive of shipping in general. Which, given that the first fandom I was involved in was one where the show’s lead actor called my OTP “bizarre, weird, and twisted,” is a really nice change of pace.)

And really my friend, Lance has been heading for Allura since the first episode of the series, something that was only emphasized in season 6 with him realizing how much he really, truly likes her. Honestly, I wasn’t a fan of the way he treated her during s1 and s2 (and it really soured me on his character), but he’s grown so much since season 3 that I’m actually on board with seeing him and Allura potentially explore a romance. So. Good job, VLD, in getting me to ship something I literally never thought I would. XD

…I realize that doesn’t really answer your question, so here’s the short version:

I have absolutely no idea what the chances are of Sheith being canon, because there are a lot of people who have a say in that. So although hope springs eternal, my personal goal is to enjoy what we get.

Lance is definitely heading for Allura and has been for the entire show.

And finally...what in the world is a Klible?

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Okay so the Lizard stuff in ASM v5 #2 really bugged me as I stated when the issue came out, and it has continued to bug me a lot since then, but I did take a step back to consider some things and went so far as to refresh my memory of Shed, No Turning Back and every Lizard appearance story since then (all of which bar one, were written by Slott) to give myself perspective. I also re-read ‘The Child Within’ by DeMatteis and Buscema and skimmed ‘the Death of Vermin’ also by DeMatteis and Buscema because I felt they were relevant to the topic at hand.

 So I have SOMEWHAT changed my mind on my initial reactions to the Lizard stuff from ASM v5 #2, partially because I got some perspective and partially because I went through the painful process of returning to those previously mentioned Lizard stories (of which I will begrudgingly admit ‘No Turning Back’ by Slott...isn’t that bad, I know no one was more shocked than me).

So my beef was how nonchalant Peter and everyone else was over the Lizard teaching at ESU and also how chill Connors himself was. I wasn’t going to just go by the logic of ‘well they were written that way before under Slott so it’s consistent’ because Slott of course was notoriously bad at characterization. Case in point Spider-Man 100% made a joke/casual comment about the Lizard eating people in Clone Conspiracy #3 as he did in ASM v5 #2.

 This was to me, and I 100% stand by this, totally out of character in both instances because...he’s joking about cannibalism and subtextually joking about the cannibalism of an innocent child, an innocent child whom he knew personally .*

 Which is a great big egregious NO in your chyaracterization of Peter Parker. I despise ‘Shed’ passionately but whatever else you want to say about it, Spidey’s abject horror of Billy’s death in that story was totally true to his character and an important part of that story, that story itself (however anyone wants to feel about it) being an important story in the history of the Lizard. I feel about ‘Shed’ the same kind of way I feel about the Clone Saga (except I like parts of the Clone Saga). Maybe you don’t like it, maybe it was bad for the characters, but it’s so important to their histories you can’t just ignore it.

 Having Peter joke about the Lizard an cannibalism is very much ignoring the single most infamous part of the most well known Lizard story ever (besides his debut issue and Torment by McFarlane). It would be akin to Spider-Man ignoring the fact that he believed himself to be a clone or in fact being insensitive to someone because they were a clone (which he was to Kaine actually in Spider-Island).

 In ‘the Child Within’ Spider-Man also showed horror and disgust over the fact that Edward Whelan/Vermin, had also literally eaten people.

 If Spider-Man is going to show horror and disgust over someone he doesn’t know literally eating other people he doesn’t know, why would he ever joke about someone he does know personally (Curt Connors) eating someone else he knows personally (Billy, a child he’s tried to protect multiple times)?

 Answer: this was a moment where Spencer did I am afraid drop the ball badly. But you know...happens to the best writers. Let’s not sit here and pretend Stan Lee himself didn’t make major screw ups. Hell J.M. DeMatteis and Roger Stern, two of the greatest Spider-Man writers ever, made missteps. Heck we’re talking about ‘the Child Within’, that’s a story where I think DeMatteis made a big mistake in his characterization of Spider-Man himself, one that cuts to the heart of the character in a way bigger way than this moment from Spencer. He’s still one of the elite Spider-Man writers though and still (with DeFalco) my fav ever.

  I have however changed my mind on the matter of Connors himself being so chill with his life situation and with the wider ESU staff and student body and the idea  of Spider-Man himself accepting Connors.

 So I said I wasn’t going to just blithely run by the logic of ‘well this is what it was like under Slott so it’s consistent’, but it is important to remember Connors accepted his own guilt in Slott’s run and didn’t try to shy away from imprisonment despite having the option to. He was however, even before Clone Conspiracy, not the kind of broken man you’d imagine anybody who’s child was so horrifically murdered (by their own hands...let alone own mouth) would be like.

 After Clone Conspiracy this could ARGUABLY make sense though. Connors as man who lost everything important to him, his arm, his faith in humankind (see Spider-Man Unlimited #19), his home, his career, his humanity and his family (mostly all due to the same thing, being the Lizard) could very well cling to any given opportunity to in some shape or form reclaim his family and then by extension everything else.

 This is why I think, like so many people in Clone Conspiracy, he embraced what was clearly just a new cloning process as a form of resurrection. He was so desperate for Billy and Martha to be alive again and for them to be a family that he either didn’t question it or pushed aside the rationale conclusion that these were merely clones not the genuine articles.

 So in having them back it in a sense allowed him to cope with, heal from, move on from, or do whatever psychologically to NOT be a broken man over eating his own son. To him, even though it’s not actually the case, his greatest sin has been undone and he’s even had a hand in ‘making it right’ because he was the one who figured out how to stabilize their conditions and prevent them from dying at the end of Clone Conspiracy.

 In making them Lizard people like him (although that already happened to Billy anyway, but nevermind) it equally mighty have alleviated the fact that he was himself trapped in the body of an inhuman monster. He had his family back and bonus, now they were like him, now he no longer needed to worry about hurting them when he transformed both because he the human was in control but also they were fellow reptiles now. He wasn’t the man with the monster inside him who might destroy his family, they were all monsters together now.

 Had he compromised his wife and son’s humanity to get there? Sure but they were alive and together and that desire within Connors was possibly so strong that he essentially wilfully denied that he’d turned them into monsters. I am loathe to give Slott credit for this and I might be overextrapolating but this could very well be why in Clone Conspiracy Omega when Lizard Zombie Billy is eating his plate and Lizard Zombie Martha is struggling to talk beyond a grunt whilst pouring water all over the table Connors is just nonchalant and content. He’s in denial because he is so desperate for his family to be back in any form. Potentially he might also be thinking he could get out a more permanent cure for all of them later.

 From there the fact that he has his arm back, has the chance at a career and public opinion is more favourable towards him ever since he helped Mayor Jameson back in Superior (likely a contributor to the job he got at ESU) from his warped desperate perspective he’s gotten back a lot of the stuff that he lost. He might even enjoy the power of being the Lizard whilst still being in control (in ASM #43 he DID suggest that the Lizard could defeat the Rhino). Even if that wasn’t the case with the inhibitor chip enables him to switch back and forth anyway.

 This I think is the most logical explanation for why Connors in more recent stories hasn’t been the broken man he should have been in the wake of ‘Shed’.** You could also argue that he is forgiving himself somewhat because ‘the Lizard did it not me’, although I find this less believable.

 Regarding the ESU staff and students, they seem chilled out with him but equally I must now admit we don’t hear THAT much from them in the issue anyway so for all we know they’re just getting on with the situation and not saying or doing anything to express their potential horror and discomfort over being in the same room as a cannibal. Plus he did state he hadn’t been in Lizard form the whole time, just for the sake of that experiment on that day.

If Mayor Jameson was forgiving of him, if the authorites gave him a second chance, if they gave Vermin/Edward Whelan a second chance and he seems like a nice guy I guess it stands to reason that college students, who tend to be on the more Liberal and accepting side of life (not dissing that just and observation) would probably give him a shot, especially if cannibalism isn’t brought up much or if they didn’t know about that. Also realistically you’d imagine in the Marvel Universe greater emphasis and efforts would be made from the student body of a NYC based university to be respectful towards mutants and that likely would extend to mutates like Curt Connors. That’d just be a reflection I think of how a lot of modern colleges act, although there was an anti-mutant sentiment in some old ESU Spidey stories IIRC.

 Finally we come to Spider-Man himself being so forgiving towards Curt Connors. I stand by how OOC it was for Peter to make a joke about Connors history with cannibalism but having refreshed my memory of all the above mentioned stories I am big enough to admit that I was somewhat mistaken and wasn’t thinking things through.

 I think I was letting the elephant that was Shed blind me to the character’s individual and shared histories together and equally my disdain of Slott’s run led to me not revisiting his stories much, thus certain details of them slip my mind moreso than with yarns I like (e.g. the JMS run).

 Again, I didn’t want to approach this topic with the mentality of ‘Well it was like this under Slott so it’s consistent so it’s okay’, because again Slott’s characterization was notorious. HOWEVER even a broken clock is right twice a day and in his run Spider-Man clearly (mostly) demonstrated an attitude that Connors was not himself to be blamed for the actions of the Lizard and he demonstrated a certain forgiving attitude towards him too. In ASM #699 the Peter inside Doc Ock’s dying body even wants to free the Lizard, though he wonders if this is due dying affecting his thinking.

 This is consistent with Spidey’s attitude towards Connors/the Lizard going right back to the Silver Age. But I thought you know...infanticide and cannibalism are different ball games, would Spidey extend the ‘Connors is not to blame for the Lizard’s actions’ mentality to something like that?

 That’s why I read ‘the Child Within’ and ‘The Death of Vermin’. A human being who was turned into a half human/half animal monster as a manifestation of internal psychological issues who also engaged in violence and cannibalism? Obvious grounds for comparison and as a bonus Vermin’s character was created and defined by DeMatteis, who is one of Spencer’s biggest influences on Spider-Man.

 So in reading those stories, Spidey does At FIRST take a merciless attitude towards Vermin, precisely due to his cannibalism, but it’s also implied it’s due to the association of Vermin and his trauma over being buried alive as well as one of Vermin’s abilities just bringing out darker, unpleasant impulses in those around him; psychic poison as it’s called.

 However as both stories clearly demonstrate, at the end of the day Peter does pity Vermin, doesn’t regard him as a monster but as a victim of both Baron Zemo and his own mental illnesses. In ASM #403 (again by DeMatteis) when Edward Whelan is transformed back into Vermin Spider-Man expresses dismay because he’d come so far.

 So actually yeah Spider-Man would totally forgive Connors, totally embrace working with him and be sympathetic towards him. He just wouldn’t have joked about Billy and I hope desperately that we WILL bring up the fate of the Connors family later since last Peter checked they would’ve died in Clone Conspiracy.

  However my reading actually uncovered a few other problems and inconsistencies. The biggest ones being that Peter is shocked and scared in ASM v5 #2 that the Lizard is anything other than Connors in control considering that last he checked that was the Lizard’s status quo. Even if you argue that Peter doesn’t have the memories of the Peter who died in Otto’s body back in ASM #700 (who first learned Connors was in control of the Lizard’s body) he clearly knew that Connors was in control back in Clone Conspiracy, Connors outright told him that. So...why is he reacting like he doesn’t know that?

 Again, it seems like Spencer dropped the ball here. The scene would’ve worked fine in like the default setting for the Lizard/Connors from the old pre-Shed days but it doesn’t line up with very recent stories, Clone Conspiracy was after all as recent as 2017 and a major event.

 In the same vain it doesn’t really make sense for the inhibitor chip to be a plot device in this story because again, the Lizard’s persona was ‘killed’ back in No Turning Back. Connors had been in control of the Lizard’s body for YEARS (in-universe and in the real world) by the time we got to ASm v5 #2 so why is the story and Connors acting like he’s got this new gadget to enforce control of the Lizard body and prevent him from changing?

 Not to mention how did the authorities get a hold of him in the first place, wasn’t he on the run last we saw him.***

 Again, it’s something that’d make total sense at almost any point in the Lizard’s history before 2009, but it doesn’t jive with what we’ve seen most recently.

 Which if you wanna go in this direction I support that, I infinitely think that’s better for the character than the band aid Slott had tried to put over Shed (valiant effort though it was, I begrudgingly give him that) but like...you gotta explain this stuff. This is the entire status quo for a supporting character who’s been around since the Silver Age arbitrarily changing in very noticeable ways with little-no on the page implications as to how.

 I hope Spencer addresses this stuff in the future even though my initial problems barring one no longer bug me. 

*ASM #365 Peter and MJ attended Billy Connors’ birthday party. This isn’t a small obscure thing to overlook because ASM #365 was one of (arguably the main) story celebrating Spider-Man’s 30th anniversary, complete with a Master Planner homage. The Parker/Connors family friendship appeared in other stories both before and after that issue too so every writer should be aware Spidey knows Billy somewhat personally. 

**As for why he didn’t seem like....WAY more upset prior to Clone Conspiracy I think you could even explain that one away as him knowing intellectually that the Lizard killed his son but it was at the moment that the Lizard struck the killing blow that Connors ‘died’ as it were. His thought captions actually back this up in Shed as they literally rip in half. So although Connors KNOWS he/the Lizard killed Billy he might not have remembered or ever actually seen or experienced it himself.

Like he blacked out just as it was happening, meaning he wouldn’t retain anything in his memories of the experience to actually traumatise him. He might not even know that the Lizard literally ate his son, just that he killed him in general.

If you go with this idea then him being upset and feeling he deserves to be punished as we saw in  No Turning Back, ASM #699, No Escape (from Superior) and a few other appearances prior to Clone Conspiracy makes more sense. He is obviously upset, he is obviously devastated but he just isn’t broken. Not that Slott or anyone communicated that very well, but they also didn’t make him seem like he definitely WASN’T that either, he just didn’t talk much except to admit he was punishing himself or to save Jameson’s life. 

***Also Peter in No Turning Back claims that really it was Curt Connors who was the evil behind the Lizard all along. Let’s ignore ‘A Lizard’s Tale’, that horrible Paul Jenkins Lizard story which claimed Connors had always been in control. This line of dialogue from Slott doesn’t really make sense however you want to interpret it. If you interpret it as Spidey saying the Lizard was a manifestation of Connors’ inner negativity it doesn’t make sense because...he already knew that from Spider-Man Unlimited #19. But if you interpret it as Connors was actually himself at fault for the Lizard’s actions the whole time (including Billy’s murder) it also makes no sense because Spider-Man totally knows there is a Jekyll/Hyde situation going on there.

[qqueenofhades]

fjhsdh Wyatt is starting to grate on my nerves. His whole thing with enforcing that Jessica is the woman who he loves most in the world but then being petty about Flynn and Lucy being friends + Flynn comforting Lucy when she's having the Worst Time ever is shitty on Wyatt's part? he also has an ugly habit of asserting that he's right or that he's morally above people esp. in s1+ it's just, gross? like i think a huge part of the show is that ppl are morally gray? anyway Jess + Lucy deserve better

I still like Wyatt as a character and I am hoping he turns it around soon. I understand that obviously he’s in an awkward situation that literally nobody has been before, and thus has no frame of reference for what to do, but honestly, he’s been leaning into the worst version of himself with how he’s handled it. The showrunners DID say that he was jealous/possessive/a shitty husband with Jess at times, and iirc, she died in the original timeline because they had an argument about her running into an old boyfriend which ended up with her getting out of the car/Wyatt feeling guilt over it being in some part his fault. So in a sense, yes, we are seeing some character reversion with Wyatt (which isn’t the same as character destruction – it’s an established part of his personality to act this way, even if it’s not flattering or a positive trait, the same as it’s an established part of Flynn’s personality to be totally Garbage at times). Having obsessed so long about getting Jess back, he’s now got her, and lost Lucy instead, so he’s obsessing about getting Lucy back, even though there is obviously no situation in which it’s gonna work out that he can have both of them. And if he lost Jess again at this point as a result (which frankly he deserves with both of them), he’d probably return to trying to get her back. It’s a damaging circle and one he’s pretty stuck in at the moment.

Furthermore, you can’t make the simplistic “Wyatt only acts this way around Jess!/Lucy makes him a better man!!!” argument, because we have explicitly and repeatedly seen him doing this TO LUCY. We have seen him acting in poor ways WITH LUCY that he has also done with Jess. He’s still stuck in the unhealthy ways of having a relationship that he has had in the past, and that’s on him (and once again: A WOMAN IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE WAY A MAN ACTS AROUND HER). He has to make better choices, he has to take responsibility for himself, and he hasn’t done that yet. (I’m still hoping the finale involves him making a big sacrifice for the team’s behalf/giving Lucy the same chance to walk away and be happy with someone else that she’s REPEATEDLY offered him/making up for his selfishness, even though obviously they’ll find a way to rescue him and he’ll rejoin them eventually.) The Garcy/Flynn fandom has never made excuses for Flynn being a Garbage King (as has been pointed out, we literally call him that and variants all the time), but there’s a strong current of fandom defensiveness around Wyatt that’s justifying everything he does/refuses to allow him to be critiqued/is viewing this as romantic behavior on his part/trying to shift the blame to Lucy or Flynn or the writers or other parts of the fandom or etc. So that… also doesn’t help matters.

As ever, I support characters being messy and making mistakes, and then being allowed to fix them, but in this case, since Wyatt is half of the show’s (usually) main ship and we’ve gotten the sense we’re supposed to be rooting for a reconciliation, it is a little baffling that he’s being SO unpleasant right now. (Unless, again, this is building to his big hero sacrifice moment in the finale, which I need to allow me to continue liking him in canon.) Loud sex with his wife, but being jealous and possessive over his ex-girlfriend exploring new opportunities too (and ffs, we all expect nothing happened and that Flynn was just taking care of Lucy like a gentleman, so it’s even more baseless), then treating said wife, that he has sworn he loves the most of anyone, like crap, then letting that jealousy get in the way of the mission, etc? As I said in an ask recently, it’s not a flattering look for him, and it’s making it unclear if the writers see this as something he needs to be corrected from. (For various reasons, I’ll cautiously venture that they do realize he’s being a tool and are going to develop him from that, but yeah, this is not quite how I saw this arc going down, even though it’s – again – still in character for it to be happening this way.) 

Anyway yes, I’m with you that Jess and Lucy deserve a lot better, and hopefully both get a chance to confront Wyatt about this. I really hope they don’t rush through a reconciliation, because Wyatt has showed that he’s still A MESS (as we’ve learned that he is and hasn’t been able to deal with it – which again, I do have a lot of sympathy for because I tend to go for the messed up angsty tragedy boys). But I also need this behavior dealt with, ESPECIALLY in regard to Lucy, before I can really want to see them back together on screen, and if that spills over into a (hopefully proper) season 3, that is definitely for the best.

[minaminokyoko]

Pacific Rim: Uprising (A Spoilertastic Review)

This movie should be the ultimate lesson for Hollywood on why you shouldn’t just replace a director who has vision with someone who just wants to make a quick buck in a lazy sequel. My God, I can’t remember the last time I’ve been this utterly annoyed by a sequel. I mean, late sequels have a serious tendency to suck for many reasons: hiring different writers/directors from the previous film, changing the tone, removing important characters and awkwardly jamming new ones in there, relying on boring sequel clichés, or misunderstanding the entire reason why the first movie was a hit. Pacific Rim wasn’t a mega-hit stateside—it did $101 million domestically and did much better in the foreign market with an additional $309 million—but it was easily a fan favorite. Even if I had the full story on what went down between Legendary Pictures and the delightfully talented Guillermo del Toro, there is no excuse why Pacific Rim Uprising is such a pathetic pile of nothing. With del Toro, we had some excellent world building, a basic understanding of the premise, a loose but still adequate story, and characters that were easy to remember and enjoy. We also had a fun cameo from the incomparable Ron Perlman, a fantastic score, and some truly imaginative fight sequences of the Jaegers vs. the kaiju. I’ve said before that I think PacRim is a good movie, not a great movie, only because I felt you could have simply removed Raleigh entirely and focused on Mako and Stacker instead since they were both ten times more interesting and easier to connect with on an emotional level. However, after seeing this nonsense, I have a whole new appreciation for the first film, because at least it told a goddamn story and its characters had personality traits and arcs. Uprising is honestly an affront to what the first film established, not only for retconning things with Stacker’s forgettable son, but just botching every single enjoyable element from the first film.

I’ll get right to the point—yes, the Jaeger/kaiju fights are the main draw for this franchise. Even though I’m going to list why this sequel is godawful, a lot of people really just want to see it for the big fight scenes and that’s all they might want to take away from any reviews. Well, I’m here to tell you, I still don’t think Uprising is worth your hard-earned cash, because it’s frankly a bait-and-switch. The trailer shows you a monstrous kaiju made of three other kaiju, and that sounds amazing, right? Well, it’s intentionally misleading. If you want the full story, check below the spoiler line.

Overall Grade: D

Pro:

-Seriously, the only positive thing to note about this entire film is that the fight scenes were at least adequate. Not good, not great, adequate. When the fights finally do happen, there’s plenty of smashing, and the idea of the kaiju melding into one huge kaiju was at least a nifty idea. It was easily the only thing about the trailer that got anyone’s blood moving and could have built any hype.  However, judging by the movie’s poor opening weekend, enough people could tell something was off about it.

Cons:

-The trailer is misleading. How? Well, there are no kaiju in this movie until the last fifteen minutes. Seriously. They pulled a Huntsman sequel on you guys—promising something that only appears at the end of the fucking movie. All other times, you are stuck with the bland protagonists training or trying to figure out how the rogue Jaeger attacked Sydney. IIRC, there’s only the fight of Gypsy Avenger vs. the rogue Jaeger and then the end with all of them fighting. There’s a brief chase sequence in the beginning with Bland White Child and Stacker-lite, but it’s barely five minutes long and it’s just them rolling away from the full sized Jaeger like Sonic the Hedgehog. Look, if that still excites you, hey, go see it. But to everyone else who doesn’t want to feel ripped off, I’m begging you to sit this one out for this and many other reasons I’m going to outline below. There are only kaiju at the end of the damn movie. It’s Godzilla 2014 all over again—a magnificent creature that is advertised heavily as being in the film, but isn’t actually in the damn thing.

-The dialogue is so painfully cliché that you will roll your eyes so many times they might eject from your skull. Jesus Christ. I swear, it’s like they had a checklist of every action movie cliché they could think of and they made sure to check off every single one. Every line of dialogue in this movie is a sickening cliché. There is not one original thought. Not. One. Every character is flat and some form of a lazy archetype. No one gets any development. It’s Michael Bay-levels of incompetent writing. The movie couldn’t have been any worse written than if there was a room of chimpanzees hammering away at the screenplay. It’s just plain embarrassing. Every moment there isn’t a kaiju smashing something or a Jaeger beating wholesale ass, you will be in massive amounts of pain.

-The fights are mediocre. Remember how carefully staged the fight scenes were in the first movie? Hell, most of the time we can list them off the top of our heads because those fights were so damn memorable. We had the opening montage, the Knifehead fight, the two kaiju vs. the Jaegers, Gypsy Danger vs. Otachi, and then the final brawl underwater at the Breach. Each fight was staged well and paced well throughout the film. You didn’t have to wait too long between fights during the film, and it also entertained you with smaller bits like Mako and Raleigh training or the flashback to Mako’s childhood with that scary crab kaiju. Uprising is a bottom-heavy film, much like the equally terrible Jurassic World (God, talk about another late sequel that entirely misses the fucking point of the original property.) The only difference is at least Jurassic World had enough sense to deliver a powerhouse ending to an utterly stupid film, and Uprising doesn’t. The fights don’t have clever staging, great music, or very much creativity to them. After suffering through two hours with these annoying paper cutout characters, you should deliver the best damn fights we’ve ever seen, but no, they’re just standard hacking and slashing. Punctuated by the intensely annoying, shrieking helium balloon shaped like Charlie Day shouting inane dialogue in his squeaky voice. The fights have zero weight, too, because no one has a character, so you don’t give a shit if they live or not during the fight either.

-Like many terrible sequels, they kill off a main lead from the previous film in order to give the new protagonist some pathetic kind of Mangst. If there is one thing I am sure of, it’s that most fans of the original movie are going to be LIVID they dragged the actress playing Mako all the way back on set just to kill her fifteen minutes in. It’s just insulting. Mako was the fan favorite from the first film. Seriously, she has most of the fandom in her back pocket, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the immediate backlash is because the movie’s disgusting use of Fridging the main female lead from the first movie to make way for Bland White Child and Stacker-lite. It’s possibly the most insulting thing about the entire sequel. Mako deserved better. I’d rather she was out of the movie entirely, like Raleigh mysteriously is, than for them to kill her in such a cheap, stupid way. What a waste of a good actress and a great character.

-Making Charlie Day the villain. Yes, because nothing is more intimidating than a tiny man with the voice of Bobcat Goldthwait spouting dialogue so corny you’d expect it from an Austin Powers movie. Are you kidding me? Look, I get it, Charlie Day is a fan favorite so of course they were going to bring him back, but what the actual fuck made you think he should be the bad guy? It’s weaksauce. It sounds like they were just bored and out of ideas for the villain, as if the fucking kaiju or the Precursors weren’t good enough somehow, and just slapped this idiotic role in his lap. It’s such a bad idea. I hated his character in the first film and wanted him removed entirely, but at least he served a purpose. Here, it’s just lip service. Anyone who liked him in the first one is going to be pissed off at this random turn of the character with no indication of changing him back.

-Thin, boring leads. Let me be clear: John Boyega is not to be blamed for any of why this movie is failing critically and financially. The kid is talented and sweet and I want to pinch his cheeks and feed him apple pie in my kitchen. But he couldn’t save this film because of that rancid excuse of a script. Boyega is a darling on screen in almost everything else, but here, he has nothing to work with. Stacker-lite is just a cobbled together mess of leftover script notes from Chris Pine’s portrayal of Captain Kirk in the Star Trek reboot. He has nothing going for him at all. No motivation, no skillset, no charm. This character is completely empty inside. Bland White Child is the exact same as well; basically just every Little Miss Badass/Underdog stereotype only done amazingly poorly. She has nothing to offer the audience and while she has slightly more motivation than Boyega’s character did, it doesn’t mean anything. Then we have Generic Good Looking White Guy Lead, because for fuck’s sake, it’s not like it’s 2018 and we aren’t tired of seeing him, Generic Latina “We couldn’t get Michelle Rodriguez to do this bullshit so here’s someone else instead” Tits and Ass (who made me even angrier because normally when they have the Hot Latina Military Lady, she gets at least ONE badass moment, but this chick seriously serves no fucking purpose and is relegated to the laziest Hot Girl/Potential Love Interest role of all fucking time), Generic Cadets Who are Carefully Ethnically Diverse (you are fooling NO ONE, sequel; if you’re gonna bother to make them diverse, GIVE THEM ACTUAL CHARACTERS FIRST), Kick Butt Asian Lady (seriously, why the fuck did you cast this lady and kill off Mako? It would make more sense if Mako was in this role, like maybe Raleigh died in the Jaeger and she wanted to make automated Jaegers so no one would ever lose their partner again, there, ah fixed it, you morons), and finally Returning Cast Member Who Looks Tired AF But Needed the Money. It is a headache spending two hours with these characters. You don’t care about any of them and they have nothing to offer you. They’re just constantly stumbling around bumping into things and spouting dialogue from 30 years ago.

If you can overlook all of those flaws for the promise of Jaeger vs. kaiju fighting, have at it. Everyone else, don’t bother. If you’re that curious, wait until this hits a premium channel. I’m extremely glad I saw it for free, because I’d have been pissed paying $10 for this lump of expired crab meat. Save your money and go buy another copy of the first movie.