#and i fix a minor plot hole that literally no one else cares about or has noticed

[jawsthatbiteandclawsthatcatch]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga, Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Jean Havoc & Roy Mustang, Dr. Knox & Roy Mustang (Fullmetal Alchemist) Characters: Roy Mustang, Jean Havoc, Dr. Knox (Fullmetal Alchemist) Additional Tags: Genocide, Canon Compliant, Whump, Angst, Blood and Injury, Gore, Missing Scene, Self-Harm, War Crimes, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Ishval Civil War, Military, author doesn't know anything about the military in any universe btw Summary:

“Solaris” left Roy and Havoc to bleed out somewhere under Central.

Roy knows he needs to get out of there, help the Lieutenant and Alphonse – but keeping himself and Havoc alive will take reliving some deeply-buried memories.

[randomthefox]

Flynn literally swooped in and did to Stanley what he did for Penders at the beginning of his own career: play the fix-it guy

If I were Stanley, I'd almost be offended. The whole issue was nothing more than the characters trying to patch up plot holes (Sonic insisting that he had no other choice) and giving affected apologies (Jewel and Lanolin - also, as predicted, the focus was more on the latter being tricked, and not on her being abusive. Silver certainly was all 👍 about it). He also broke up the DCs because it's clearly what he thinks development is.

It really smacks me of the same energy of Flynn having Eggman scream that he hates being called Baldy McNosehair because it was never funny. Way to mock someone else's writing. When will he recognize his own mistakes?

(there are other issues like Sonic being a cunt or Tangle policing Whisper's desire to kill Mimic, but that's minor)

It really does come off like he thinks he has the right to piss all over everyone else from atop his ivory tower, doesn't it?

I call it out for being insecure and pathetic because, from the perspective of a writer: man who even fucking CARES? So some whiners online said it was stupid that Sonic dressed up in a disguise, and Jewel didn't think to crash the plane into the Hudson River instead of a shopping mall. Whooptie fucking doo, who gives a shit. The POINT was we got to draw Sonic dressed up as Kamen Rider and it was cool, and Jewel had to endure an intense emotional conflict where she had to choose the needs of the many over the needs of the few. We told the story we wanted to tell in as complete a form as we were capable of telling it. So what if some nerds picked some nits. Dust off our hands and move onto the next one.

I don't know how Stanley feels about it, but that's how I would feel if I wrote this dogshit comic. I'd move onto the next story. Oh shit, somebody stole the chaos emerald that Tails apparently had the whole time! Better get to the bottom of it woohay!

But no, Flynn apparently thinks its worth dedicating TWO ENTIRE ISSUES to fucking clean up? Whereupon half of it is just him shoving his own words into the characters mouths to have them address and respond to fan criticism??? About a story HE DIDN'T EVEN FUCKING WRITE?

Why is he SUCH a fucking LOSER, man? Ian Flynn is SUCH a LOSER, it fucking pisses me off. The man literally cannot deal with ANY CRITICISM AT ALL it's so pathetic. I still remember the hissy fit he threw because people were memeing on "big oof" up to the point that when Kyle lightly referenced it as a rib Flynn responded with this overwrought annoyed sigh. And eventually he just said that it was Adam Bryce Thomas's fault for drawing the panel wrong. Like, dude. You wrote a silly little line of dialog and people thought it was funny. Get a sense of humor about yourself for fucks sake.

And not only is it pathetic in this case but it's also patronizing because HE DIDN'T WRITE THE STORY. STANLEY DID. And yet he STILL feels the need to slam on the fucking breaks and turn around and start yelling at the kids in the backseat to shut the hell up or we're turning around and going home EVEN THOUGH HE ISN'T EVEN THE ONE DRIVING. His ego is so fucking fragile that he cannot tolerate people criticizing the comic just because he's associated with it, even when he had nothing to do with what people are criticizing.

He could have used this issue to do fucking ANYTHING. He could have had a little aside showing what Knuckles was up to all this time. Or a little interlude of Rouge going on a heist or something. Or a silly little story where Cream is exploring away from home to find some flowers to make a coronation for Vanilla. Or fucking ANYTHING that might have been actually fun or interesting. But no instead he has the issue be devoted to Sonic patching up plot holes with chewing gum, and Lanolin playing the ukulele.

At least they finally drew Silver properly.

[hannahwatcheshorror]

SUBSERVIENCE (2024)

Did I pick this film because I wanted to watch Megan Fox be hot and pretend to be a robot? You bet your a** I did. The fact that it was a spooky film was only a bonus. Is this film literally just Adult M3GAN? Yes. Is that entirely underwhelming? Yes. Is it a bad film? No. Worth watching? I’ll answer that with a question, how much did you like M3GAN? (also see (COMPANION)

⭐⭐⭐.5

A father gets a maid robot to try and help him around the house. His little girl, Isla, names the robot Alice after Alice in Wonderland and likes her a lot. There is a minor incident with broken glass but Isla isn’t hurt, only Alice. Alice heals almost instantly which is creepy but also not that creepy because it is the future and she is a highly sophisticated robot. Turns out the wife, Maggie, who you think is dead is just in the hospital waiting on a new heart. She is less than impressed with how stunning Alice is and doesn’t quite believe that the daughter chose her (which is true). Alice catches Nick watching Casablanca which she knows about but has never actually seen so Nick orders her to erase her memory of the movie plot and watch it with him. After a sensual restart she is happy to watch the movie in, what I can only describe as, the scene from Wall-E when he watches the musical on TV. It is literally just that scene, only instead of a cute little rusty robot we have Hot Megan Fox and instead of Hello Dolly the movie that is changing the robots wiring is Casablanca. Do you guys get what the fuck I’m saying here! Y’all thought you were getting M3GAN 2.0 and we got Wall-E 2.0. 

Just kidding, this was M3GAN the sequel with some Bicentennial Man sprinkled in there for good measure. I said in my M3GAN review humans would only make a doll that advanced for war or for fucking and in this movie I’m right. Maggie gets the chance at a new heart but before she goes in for surgery she has a heart to heart (ha) with Alice about taking care of Nick in case things don’t go so well. Which is good because a massive storm happens and they can’t get the heart in time so it is given to someone else. Alice tries to cheer Nick up with a handjob but it only makes him more sad (can’t imagine why). Then Alice adopts Maggie's voice to help seduce Nick and fucks him. It was a sexy scene but it was a cheating scene and those make me really sad, even if Megan Fox is involved. Nick is feeling really guilty suddenly (good) and Maggie actually gets a new heart. After recovering for some time she comes home to Islas' delight and Alice's chagrin.

The primary user, Nick, needs to be protected so Alice goes and kills a guy threatening his job (that is one way to solve the problem). Nick is so surprised the guy is dead he doesn’t even suspect that his SIM could have done it (because the bots don’t kill people, right?). But then when Alice tries to politely ask Maggie if she can fuck her husband, Maggie finds out they fucked before and flips out, while she and Nick fight the baby boy is crying. Alice takes it upon herself to attempt drowning the poor thing as she suddenly thinks this is the best thing for her primary user. They fight her, she gets some scary visual damage, and she goes down. She is taken back to the lab in a scene nearly shot-for-shot like when M3GAN was taken back and then she used her AI to hack the computers only this time Alice killed the nerds. 

Now Alice has two bodies, her old busted one that she takes to talk to Nick, “Little Alice fell down a hole, bumped her head and bruised her soul.” The second Alice is blonde and is going for the children at the hospital. She is stronger than all the other robots and can shut them down, she finds Maggie and the kids and is about to kill Maggie before Nick arrives just in time and guns her down in his car (the one he is always fixing up), Maggie pulls him out of the flaming vehicle but he is unresponsive. Too bad because Alice is still moving around and she is creepy crawling right towards Maggie then is trying to choke her out, next thing you know, WHAM, Nick hits her off of Maggie and Maggie stabs her through the brain core. They win the day and love each other again. But back at the lab they plugged in the computers again and someone is waking back up… Roll credits.

----------------------HANNAH WATCHES HORROR---------------------

[libraryofneith]

Out of Mind - Chapter 7 (Joel Miller x Female Reader)

@hiroikegawa @evyiione​

If anyone else wants to be the first to know when this fic is updated let me know and I’ll add you to the taglist!

Sorry for the wait but if it makes you feel any better, our plot is finally starting to pick up the pace. I probably won’t be updating again until next month tho :’(  I'm also introducing a Tess POV in this chapter, trying to experiment a little with different narrative types for each character POV. Hope that's not too confusing, let me know what you think.

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6

Summary: An attempt to prove yourself blows up in your face.

Warnings/tags: [whole fic is 18+ minors DNI], brief descriptions of violence, characters having to kill people, but it’s FEDRA so who cares, Joel being a dick, again. 

Don't put her on jobs with me, don't make her train with me, as far as I'm concerned she doesn't exist. But don't come crying to me the next time she gets hurt. 

You

"We shouldn't be doing this."

"Heard you the first 300 times Joel" Tess growled back. You ignored them both, determined not to let anything throw you off your game. You were finally getting in on the action and between the nerves and adrenaline, you already felt like you were about to jump out of your skin.

The three of you reached the fence and squirmed under it. You didn't even have to cut your way through, it'd been damaged for years. It should've been fixed ages ago but a lethal combination of bureaucracy, incompetent leadership and an ever-present apocalypse requiring constant attention meant holes in the system - both literal like this one and metaphorical - went unaddressed. That was the key to outsmarting FEDRA you figured: the longer they stayed upright, the more power they wielded, the lazier they got. An army of fireflies may not be able to take them down but one girl with an ability to squeeze into tight spaces and a refusal to be bested could rob them blind.

Joel rattled the door you'd led them too. It was locked.

"Now what?" He hissed at you. You weren't worried. The door was always locked, it wasn't the door you were trying to get into. You smiled and looked upwards. Tess gaped at you while Joel glared even harder.

"You made us think we were coming in through the door."

"Yup."

"Why?"

"To fuck with you." Now Tess was glaring too.

"Don't get cocky kid or we might not take you with us next time. How're you gonna get up there anyway?" That earned an eyeroll from you.

"Next flight leaves in ten minutes" you retorted, taking out two short narrow blades, sticking them into the well-worn divets you'd created over multiple trips and beginning your ascent. You heard Tess curse but you were already several feet up, slotting your feet into the tiny spaces that your muscles had memorised, making your way up to the window which opened into the warehouse. You sucked your tummy in as you slotted yourself through the window - you were definitely going to have to lay off Bill's cookies - and froze as you made eye contact with two guards.

"Shit!" You scrambled your way out, hands and feet clawing for purchase as panic made your mind go blank. Then you could feel your centre of gravity shift and you were falling, landing with an ungraceful smack on the concrete. The pain made your head thrum as Tess hauled you to your feet.

"What happened?" You were trying to splutter out "go" when the door flew open and those two Fedra guards came storming out. Then they were raising their guns, Joel was yelling and your brain snapped to attention.

Bullets popped all around you as you sprinted for the fence. You dared a glance back as you ducked down under the wire. One of the guards lay still as Joel struggled with the other. You scraped yourself under the fence, pulling Tess after you. You screamed for Joel who had the guard in a headlock. Then Joel had one hand reaching for the guard's jaw and the other hand on the top of his head, and with a grunt and one swift motion there was a crack and the guard crumpled. Then he was diving under the fence that you were still holding up.

There was a shot and a bullet pinged off the ground where Joel's head had been a second before. But his head had jerked and it scraped his ear instead. Tess whipped out her gun and fired at the guard on the roof as you grabbed Joel's arm and tugged him to your side. You didn't see who or what Tess had hit but you heard a thump 10 seconds later then Tess was pulling you both to the alley screaming one word on repeat. You couldn't hear her over your own ears ringing but you could read her lips and you knew what word she was sounding out, it was a word you'd seen on countless people's lips.

"Run."

---

Joel

His back was glued to the wall as he surveyed the apartment building and everything, everyone surrounding it. They'd lost the guards several streets back, or at least he hoped they had. It didn't look like there were any FEDRA soldiers hanging about and he didn't think that any of the guards they hadn't killed had seen their faces anyway so it was safe as it could be under the circumstances. He signalled silently to Tess and Ciara behind him and they cut across the street, trying to move quickly and quietly without looking like they were sneaking about.

They climbed the stairs to the apartment in stony silence, Joel's ear still throbbing where a bullet had grazed it and Tess staring straight ahead with pursed lips while the girl kept eye contact with her shoes. She looked miserable, but she deserved to. It was her plan that had blown up so spectacularly in their faces, and they'd only agreed to it because she kept insisting that she knew what she was doing. But she'd been arrogant and careless, everything Joel warned Tess she was and everything he'd begun to hope she wasn't.

She dared a glance at him once they were inside. He stared back. He could feel the familiar tension in his eyebrows and clench of his jaw as he glared at her. She shrank back from his gaze and started looking at the floorboards.

"What happened?" Tess snapped.

"I... I don't know, there's not normally guards in that room." She still couldn't look at either of them.

"Maybe they stepped up their security when they realised they had a thief." She sank further into her chair."

"Yeah. Maybe."

"This is exactly what we warned you would happen" Joel growled.

"I know."

"Do you? Cos you seem to think our orders are some kinda joke. You strut around acting like you know it all just cos you know how to steal from idiots on the street. You think you can actually handle what we do? You can't. I tried to tell Tess, tried to tell you. You're just a dumb kid, don't even know how you managed to last this long."

"That's enough." Tess's voice cut through his rage and he realised that there were tears glistening in Ciara's eyes. He suddenly felt sick to his stomach. "Kid, we need time to talk alone." She brushed her eyes fiercely and slunk past him back to her room.

"Joel." Tess gestured sharply to their room. Shit, he was in for it now.

"I don't wanna hear it Tess."

"You wanna say I told you so? Fine. You warned me, I put too much trust in her too soon but I'm not getting rid of her." Joel stopped. That thought hadn't even occured to him. Jesus I'm getting soft.

"I ain't saying I want rid of her."

"Really? Cos you seem to be doing everything in your power to drive her away."

"I told you from the start this was a bad idea. She's too green, can't be out there with someone we don't trust, always having to keep an eye on em."

"That's not the problem."

"It's not?"

"Look, I was hoping you'd figure this out for yourself eventually and do something about it but someone's gonna have to spell it out before you say or do anymore stupid shit."

"What the hell you talking bout?"

"You like her." You like her. The words rattled through Joel's ears and spun around in his head. You like her you like her you like her you like her.

"That is... that's the stupidest shit I ever heard."

"It's stupid alright but it's still true."

"Tess-"

"Jesus Joel how stupid do you think I am? Your eyes follow her about the room, you have a nervous breakdown every time you say more than two words to her and everytime we go out on a job you keep checking to make sure she's still there."

"Cos she can't be trusted!"

"Cos the thought of losing her terrifies you!"

"She's too young for me."

"No arguments here but the fact is you still like her."

"Look, I told you from the start that taking her on was a bad idea. But you weren't hearing it so I went along with your stupid fucking plan. I tried to make sure she knew what she was doing, I looked out for her on jobs, that does not mean I have some stupid fucking crush. Don't go accusing me of shit just for following your orders," he snarled jabbing an accusing finger at her.

"I'm not accusing you of jack. I know you haven't done anything and you're so fucking repressed that you'll probably never do anything but in case it's not already painfully obvious, that girl has her own stupid crush on you, so you need to stop saying shit to hurt her or you might get your wish. She might leave and not come back and god knows what'll happen to her without us. She might be arrogant, naive to the point of being downright stupid but she's still my friend, and since I took her on, my fucking responsibility, and I won't have you getting her hurt just cos you can't handle your feelings like a fucking adult."

"You think I'd hurt her? You think I'd get her hurt? Maybe I should just stay away from her altogether."

"Fine. Whatever it takes to get you to stop acting like such a goddamn baby."

"Fine. Don't put her on jobs with me, don't make her train with me, as far as I'm concerned she doesn't exist. But don't come crying to me the next time she gets hurt" he yelled, slamming the bedroom door behind him, then slamming the apartment front door as he stalked out.

Then he was stood in that damp, musty hallway alone, and suddenly all the anger sagged out of him. He imagined Tess watching him as he watched her. Tess who never missed a trick with anyone, who'd always been able to see right through him and call him on his bullshit, following his eyes, his movements, the way he acted around you and realising what it meant, probably before he even really knew. Tess who'd been his family, his first real friend after the world went to shit, the first person he'd trusted enough to sleep in the same bed with, who'd never asked for anything even when she clearly wanted more than he was giving her, only to see him on the verge of giving it to someone else. He ran his face through his hands as if he could wipe the images from his brain. He fucking hated himself.

---

Tess

The whiskey bottle stood empty on the kitchen table, its contents burning their way through Tess's system. Her head was swimming so much that she barely heard the creak of a door opening, then she saw you standing sheepishly in the doorway, shuffling from foot to foot.

"I'm sorry." Tess shrugged.

"Not your fault."

"Yes it is. I nearly got us killed. You were right about me, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing."

"Oh, you're talking about what happened at the barracks?" She saw you blink at that.

"Yeah. What else would I be talking about?" She doesn't know, of course she doesn't know, Tess realised with a lurch. Probably just as well she'd run out of whisky.

"So you couldn't hear what me and Joel were saying."

"I could hear you yelling but I couldn't make out anything specific. You were arguing about me right?"

"Yeah."

"He thinks you should cut me loose?" Tess ran a hand over her face, trying to figure out what to say next.

"No, not exactly."

"Maybe you should." She gave you a long look.

"Maybe I should, but I'm not." You sagged into the nearest seat.

"He hates me, doesn't he?" Tess almost wished she could tell you how wrong you were when she saw the dejected look on your face.

"He doesn't hate you, he's just pissed with you. He'll get over it."

"Oh please, he barely tolerated me anyway. Now he can't stand the sight of me."

"That's not true." She wondered if you'd honestly never seen the way his eyes tracked you at every moment.

"But he won't work with me anymore." Tess sighed.

"No he won't." You nodded. You were trying to look understanding, passing it off like it wasn't a big deal but she could see your disappointment.

"Guess you're my only friend now," you looked up sharply, "I mean, if you ever were my friend." She chuckled and put an arm round you.

"Sure kid. I'm your friend." God knows you needed one now.

[stranger-who-writes-fiction]

Gonna make full use of my ‘comic rant’ tag and roast Future State: Superwoman.

Spoilers! And yelling! Of the disgruntled kind!

So a few things at the start here: 1.) I wanted to love this book. I wanted it to be great. I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt, in spite of some iffy stuff in the solicit text. So this rant is not coming from a place of having decided this was going to be awful ahead of time. 2.) My tolerance for bad Supergirl comics is pretty high! Takes a lot for me to actually come out and say that a particular issue is trash. Reader: This story is trash.

It’s not ‘middle-aged white guys writing/drawing a story about sending a minor to a potentially hostile planet fully nude’ trash, mind you. It’s the compost bin, rather than the landfill. Slightly nicer trash, but it still stinks to high heaven. Allow me to expand!

PROLOGUE - SUMMARY: ...I actually can’t summarize this comic b/c it would devolve into a lot of senseless yelling. We’ll just have to tease out this terrible plot as we go along. 

PART I - DEAD DOGS TELL BAD TALES: The comic opens with Kara standing at Krypto’s grave. That’s not why this comic is trash, but it bears mentioning. Because why. Why would you do this. 

PART II - IN WHICH IT ONLY GETS WORSE: So, Kara has a running inner monologue, and the main thing we gather from Kara’s thoughts is that it was Krypto who taught her to be a hero. On paper, that sounds very sweet! In practice, it reads as Kara having no moral center whatsoever—whatever good qualities she might possess, she did not learn from her parents, or her foster parents, or friends, or fellow heroes. Nor do they come from within Kara herself. Nope, t’was Krypto who taught Kara not to be a jealous rage monster. That is not hyperbole--Kara’s walking around angry about her cousin all the time and she’s like, ‘It was you, Krypto, who taught me not to judge, and to let go of anger.’ Listen, I love Krypto, but this? This is, as the youth would say, a bad look.

PART III - THOSE CERTAINLY ARE...SOME THEMES: The set-up here is that Kara is on the moon, and has established a sanctuary for alien refugees. That’s a dynamite idea! I love that! Buuuuut Kara didn’t look at the plight of alien refugees and say, ‘I want to help!’ Really, she didn’t even look at herself and say, ‘I don’t want others to feel like I’ve felt.’ No, she said, ‘Earth won’t accept me as a hero, and Clark didn’t name me protector of Earth, so. I’m out!’ (Honestly, if your moral compass is so whack that you need a dog to walk you back from Hulk-Smashing...can’t say I blame Clark for not picking you, Kara!) But apparently, the people on the moon don’t really like her either. And it is literally never explained why. There’s a whole montage of Kara fixing stuff and saving lives and all the moon folk just glare at her. This makes both the moon people AND Kara look like a**holes, because they come across as ungrateful, and she comes across as a glory hound. Thanks! I hate it! So the ‘peace’ Kara’s found on the moon isn’t really peaceful at all, cause she still resents her cousin, and people still don’t like her, in spite of the fact that she’s constantly performing acts of service for them. 

Also, side note, I’m just now realizing this is an entire population of alien refugees...and Kara is somehow still the odd one out. Like, Earth I get, because everyone else is a human and maybe freaked out by the super powers. But a bunch of aliens? WHY. Why did you do this. Why did this need to be set on the moon with alien refugees if you’re not going to interrogate Kara’s identity as an alien refugee herself AND all of the aliens are inexplicably humanoid in appearance and utterly ordinary in terms of power levels.  

Like. This is not the CW show, where they have a budget, and a huge ensemble cast to serve. YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE. AAARRRRRGHHHH.

PART III CONT’D: There’s also this weird ‘birthright’ element introduced...like, Clark and Jon stole Kara’s ‘right’ to be earth’s defender which is...a terrible reading of Kara’s modern origin. It brings in the idea that Kara is a ‘chosen one’ and because she didn’t get to be that chosen one, all of her hero work is for nothing. Never mind the whole central conceit of what makes Clark and Kara heroic...that they have this incredible power, and choose to do good with it. Nah...it’s all about her ‘right’ to protect the people of Earth! And mean ol’ Clark took that away! THANKS. I HATE IT. 

PART IV - A POOR USE OF SPACE: So, all of the Future State books kind of struggle with the issue of too much exposition, which is understandable. They have to introduce an entirely new status quo in a very limited amount of literal page space, so you *really* have to have a handle on how you allocate your time and focus.  

Introducing a brand new, lore-heavy heroic character who gets all of the development and dynamic art and pulls focus away from the character you’re meant to be writing is a bad use of a two issue limited series.

Like, this is a crappy Supergirl comic but it’s a great backdoor pilot for a Lynari ongoing, I guess. 

Imagine if in the Jon Superman book, they introduced a random, brand new best friend for Jon, and he got the big character arc instead of Jon. That’s something you save for an arc in an ongoing title, NOT A TWO ISSUE EVENT COMIC.  

Back to said new character, there’s a lot of forced attempts to parallel Kara and Lynari, but Lynari’s backstory is so confusing, rushed, and poorly explained that it’s like: okay, they’re both...angry? And the moon jerks hate them? ...uh. Okay.

(I’m gonna bring back my ‘why is this set on the moon, even’ question so that my ‘poor use of space’ header becomes a better joke.) 

PART V - I'M HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO...B/C THERE SURE AIN’T ONE HERE: I’ve already mentioned that Krypto was apparently Kara’s conscience so when Lynari’s aunt arrives to...kill them? (again, everything about Lynari’s backstory is rushed and poorly explained) Kara gets real mad and basically pulls a Gothel: ‘You want me to be the bad guy? Fine! Now I’m the bad guy.’ But thank goodness Lynari is there to tell Kara no! Don’t murder the giant aunt eel! Lynari then steals Kara’s powers and gives up the swamp jewel that’s been hidden inside their body and now their aunt is less murder-y!

WOW. Couldn’t even give the big damn hero moment to Kara in her own book, huh?

So the day is saved. It takes Kara a while to regain her powers, and it’s only then, when she’s no longer ‘above’ the moon jerks, that they’re like, ‘oh, we like her!’ There is a bit of narration about how that attitude is awful. But that narration is provided by Lynari. See, the inner monologue is no longer Kara’s thoughts, but rather it has switched to Lynari’s point of view. They’re telling us this story. And do you know why?

PART VI - WHY THIS COMIC *SUCKS*: KARA DIES. SHE’S THE FRIGGIN’ ‘SECOND GRAVE’ OF THE TITULAR ‘TWO GRAVES’

Fudge this comic to heck.

See, Kara dies on the moon, presumably of old age. She’s buried next to Krypto. And this random character who we’re suddenly supposed to care about tells us her story. Not Clark. Not the Danvers. Not Brainy. Not even one of the supporting cast members from her solo title. No one from Kara’s life is mentioned at all, save for Jon and Clark, and they’re pretty much relegated to flashbacks of Kara punching them. 

PART VII - TIME TO COMPARE DEATHS, I GUESS: First and foremost can I just say that I hate that’s a sentence that I’m typing about Kara in the year of our lord, 2021. But okay: Kara’s big famous death in Crisis stopped the entire DC universe cold. Everyone paused in the middle of the destruction of the multiverse to mourn her loss and honor her (GENUINELY HEROIC) sacrifice. Clark and Barbara--two established characters with a strong connection/relationship to Kara--offered lovely eulogies. 

This one: Kara gets to die of old age in obscurity after a lifetime of striving to be recognized and only achieving it by de-powering and serving a population of jerks. 

Not the warm and fuzzy ending you think it is!

(Meanwhile, Clark lives for millennia and spawns an entire dynasty of Els, all of ‘em out there, protecting the cosmos. I was looking forward to House of El in the hopes of maybe seeing some Kara stuff but NOPE. Thanks to Superwoman, we’re probably not gonna see any future Kara stuff beyond this! G R E A T)

And like, the argument could be made that this ending makes Kara happy. This is the life she chooses! She wants to be alone and garden on the moon! Except, we get zero insight from Kara regarding the remainder of her life. We only have Lynari’s narration and some montage shots...nearly all of which focus on other characters. But honestly, even if we did get Kara’s side of things, I doubt it would shed much light on her feelings, bEEECAUSE...

PART VIII - SUPER BLAND: This Kara really has no personality outside of ‘detached and vaguely bitter.’ I like Sauvage, I think she’s an incredibly talented artist, but here, Kara is stiff and her expression often reads as aloof. She’s very pretty, but it comes at the expense of being expressive. (And I know Sauvage can do expressive stuff...because Lyanari gets to be expressive.) Like...I love that shojo manga vibe but this is a Kara devoid of spark and warmth. 

...Like...Melissa Benoist’s portrayal of Kara is right there... 

I’ve already sort of touched on this but her inner monologue doesn’t have much personality either. She’s just parroting the same, ‘I need to do as Krypto taught me!’ nonsense for both issues. Until, of course, we shift to Lynari’s narration, and lose Kara’s thread entirely. 

PART IX - LET’S WRAP THIS UP: This book frustrates me to no end because it had a lot of stuff going for it. It’s got a female writer and artist--still a rarity for the Supergirl book--it’s a limited series mostly free of continuity and character baggage, and it’s not tied down to the grimdark cyberpunk stuff happening in the Gotham books. YOU COULD’VE DONE ANYTHING. And, once again, DC goes with a pitch that’s: Kara is angry, Kara resents Clark...and Kara dies.

It’s also happening...right as Kara has no dedicated ongoing title, the movie’s been shelved, the TV show is entering its sixth and final season, and all promotion has shifted to new CW and HBO shows. 

*screams into the void* 

MAAAAAAN I hate this book. I hate that it retroactively makes me hate the Andreyko run a little bit--a run that I took to be about a traumatized young woman forced to confront her grief, and who leans on a beloved animal companion for comfort. Here, Krypto is L I T E R A L L Y the reason Kara’s not constantly frying folks with her heat vision. 

I hate that this book has made me use the word ‘literally’ so much in this rant.

I hate that this could possibly be more in continuity than Millennium.

Remember Millennium? Where Kara was in like...five pages? And she was warm, and kind, and promised to help Rose because it was the right thing to do, and oh yes, WAS PRESIDENT OF EARTH?!??! AND A CLASSY OLD LADY!?!?!?!?! WHO WAS STILL ALIVE AND KICKIN’ IN THE FAR FLUNG FUTURE!?!?!?!?!

I hate that I’m using my lunch hour to rant about how much I hate this comic.  

I hate that DC editorial seems hell-bent on erasing the interesting aspects of Kara’s character to sand her down to ‘the angry one’ or ‘Batman 2.0′

PART X - LET’S END ON SOME (?) POSITIVES: Don’t read this book! Don’t do it! Don’t waste your time and money!

Instead, check out ANYTHING ELSE. If you want mom!Kara, read Tom Taylor’s ‘Last Daughters of Krypton’ in the DC Nuclear Winter special. If you want heroic oldlady!Kara, read Millennium. Honestly? Pick up anything by Bendis that has Supergirl in it. It is miles away better than this. You want angry Kara working through her grief? Andreyko, Red Lantern, even Infected. ANYTHING BUT THIS. HECK, grab Superman of Metropolis instead! That has bad Kara characterization but at least she doesn’t end up dead. 

Anyways. This comic is bad. I wish it wasn’t! And this is now the SECOND TIME IN A ROW that Kara’s book ends on a terrible note before the character disappears from monthly comics for an unknown period of time.  

*screams into the void again*

[isthatbloodonhisshirt]

As I mentioned b4, I'm rewatching TW (s1 & s2) and I've been wondering since I joined the fandom how old is Derek. I knew it was never clear but now that I'm rewatching it I'm realising just how much plot holes there are in the show and this is the perfect example. In the first ep Stiles says that Derek is "a few years ahead of them in school" and that the fire happened 10 yrs ago which we know isn't true bc Derek said to Scott that the fire happened 6 yrs ago which then brings me to how (1/?)

old is Derek and how old he was when the whole freaking Kate thing happened. Being a few yrs older than Stiles and Scott would mean imo not more than 4 yrs max bc Stiles wouldn't really remember him otherwise which indicates that Derek is cca 20 yrs old during s1 and that the whole Kate thing happened when he was 14 which once again isn't possible bc of the Paige thing and this is so frustrating bc this is literally the base of the ENTIRE SHOW bc if the fire didn't happen Peter wouldn't (2/?)  go crazy and kill Laura and all of those people and (most importantly for the show) wouldn't bite Scott!!!!!!! (3/3) Thank you for listening/reading my rant and hopefully I copy pasted it correctly and got the point across :D 

(I didn’t know how to tag this as a trigger warning so if anyone knows the correct tag, please tell me because I don’t want anyone to get triggered. This ask talks a lot about Kate and Derek’s gross and abusive history so if that hits you hard, please don’t read it and take care of yourself <3) 

Derek’s age is a continuity thing I see discussed a lot across the fandom and honestly, I think the answer is nobody knows, not even Jeff |D 

I know @always-the-little-spoon told me once that the original script said Derek in episode one of season one was supposed to be 18 (or maybe 19? This convo happened so long ago and as I keep saying, MY MEMORY IS SHITE!) but basically only legit 2-3 years older than Stiles and Scott. 

But then the fire timeline doesn’t add up to his age, because as far as I recall (or it’s been said? Or implied? Or theorized?) Derek was def still a minor when the whole Kate thing happened, but like 16-17 (I feel like someone at one point says Derek was 16 when the fire happened so that would mean his relationship with Kate was when he was either 15 or 16) Typing this is squicking me so bad bleh

But yeah, as time passes, it’s implied Derek is A Full Adult™ of like, a mature 25-26, so suddenly the age gap between Scott/Stiles and Derek jumped. 

I think overall, if I’m looking at it from a devil’s advocate POV, is that they wanted Derek in the “teen” spectrum to fit the “TEEN Wolf” theme, but then as they developed his back story and realized “Oh... wait... if the fire happened ten years ago, and he’s eighteen/nineteen in the pilot, then he’d... oh noooooo~” SERIOUSLY THIS IS MAKING ME UNCOMFORTABLE TO TYPE So they had to make him older, but even then they were probably like “Mmm, even if we make him 25, then he’d only be 15 ten years ago and that isn’t great, either. What if we make him 24, and the fire was six years ago? Then we can say he was just shy of 18 so he’s still a minor, but the ‘older’ side of being a minor.” STILL A MINOR KATE YOU GROSS GROSS LADY! 

Is it more likely they forgot how old they made Derek and how long ago the fire was? Yes. Yes it is. But is it also possible they realized their horrid mistake and fixed it? I mean, maybe? >.> 

Bottom line, no one knows how old Derek is, least of all Derek. So you get to make it up like everything else we do while writing 8D 

[phynali]

If given the chance, how would you rewrite the MCU?

Anon. Anon. Anon.

How wouldn’t I?

I mean - okay, there’s a lot you have to keep the same just for the sake of like, continuity, clarity, and keeping the bones there.

I’d probably keep all the original movies in Phase 1 as they are with only minor tweaks. I’d fix the mess that was Iron Man 2. I’d give Black Widow and Hawkeye a movie of their own to establish their characters. Hmm, I can see that coming after the first Avengers, possibly.

The first Avengers film though, that’s where I would make the first major changes. 

Loki’s characterization is a mess and not properly explained in canon. I’d put him more obviously under Thanos’s thumb. I’d fix Cap’s messed up characterization. I wouldn’t have Thor show up when he does because, hey - bifrost issues. We’d see him and Heimdall from Asgard trying to work on that problem and let them find a cogent way to get Thor to earth. So, he’d show up for the final battle and to take Loki home. He’d be the ace in the hole that helps allow the Avengers to assemble and overtake Loki.

Okay, so fix Iron Man 2. I can barely remember it but I know it needs fixing.

Cap 2 I’d leave intact. I might give Hulk a follow-up movie tbh, or rather, probably tie him in to the Black Widow and Hawkeye movie that would follow the first Avengers.

Also put more female heroes front and centre earlier on. And especially WoC. 

Big issues arise by the time we get to Age of Ultron. Fix that hot mess of a movie.

Hawkeye doesn’t have a family and a farm. That was weird. Erase that shit. Don’t set up a romance between Nat and Bruce. Don’t - 

Look, I mean no disrespect to Tony stans - 

Don’t make every problem in the MCU something that was inadvertently caused by Tony. Because like every Iron Man movie involves a villain who felt scorned by him, and then AoU was caused by him messing with the Mind Stone (Bruce too, okay, but Bruce isn’t the one with the narrative trend here) and all the villains in the Spider-Man movies, and then there’s how shit played out in Civil War and - 

Okay so fix AoU. Have the Mind Stone literally take on a life of it’s own and don’t fucking make it the fault of Tony’s hubris, okay. Make it more accidental and incidental than it was. Don’t make it something that happened overnight from tinkering. 

And for the love of god, make it so that Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver did not sign up to be experimented on, but rather keep their comic origins. They’re Jewish Romani PoC. Give them a narrative that’s authentic to those identities.

I also would not fucking kill off Quicksilver, what the honest fuck?

Actually also don’t just make up a random country and code it a given way and then destroy it. I know it’s an MCU movie and therefore actually needs a giant CGI battle at the end, but okay - Age of Ultron. Stretch that shit out. Make it more clever. Show some more subtle and almost… guerilla tactics from the Avengers, taking down Ultron’s armies? Instead of a single battle in a country we don’t know about and haven’t been told to care about from a narrative standpoint, have Ultron go after their friends and families, have them fight smart and mean but no less visually pleasing to watch. The Avengers don’t have the numbers on Ultron’s army, but they can (and do) recruit Wanda and Maximo and they fight their fight using all their resources - not just their fists.

Okay so let’s move on.

iron Man 3 was great, but the whole bit with Pepper being kidnapped? Not that into it, personally. Also not into her getting powers and then getting them taken away. There was a lot to love about that movie, but so many Iron Man movies tease at this idea of Tony wanting to retire, or getting out, and they need to just back off that and let him own his heroism. That movie navigates so much so well so let it be.

Okay - 

Thor 2? Don’t fucking kill Thor’s mom. Friga deserves better. Stop motivating male characters by killing women. Let Loki and Thor come together by Friga being injured, by their dad dying, by a desire to bring their mother joy - whatever. Just - don’t kill her. I’m still pissed about how much they take from Thor over time.

I’d keep Cap 2 the same, and the only changes I’d make to GotG would be - 

Okay wait actually. There are huge glaring issues with that movie. Gamora is poised to be the hero of these movies and finds herself as the damsel in distress or incapable whenever the narrative needs her to be. I fucking hate it. Let her shine more. Show instead of tell. Let each character develop in their own right rather than dropping some random backstory notes in expository dialogue. Build up to the notion that it’s super weird Quill can hold the Stone and actually like… acknowledge it in the movie. You can keep the story basically the same but fix things with Gamora’s narrative, please please please.

Okay Ant-Man is great. There’s a huge narrative issue within the entire MCU with how they exclude Janet Van-Dyne though, and how she isn’t introduced until now even though she should be a fundamental member of the Avengers. I would almost like, at some point in Phase 1-3, a movie with Janet at the helm, possibly (to keep their timeline intact), her working with Peggy, working with SHIELD, with a young Fury or something, and laying the groundwork for the Avengers. A lot of what Captain Marvel eventually did, but situated fully on earth, and coming much sooner in the MCU itself.

Civil War was a hot mess. They needed to actually explain and detail both sides and the problems with them. It functioned amazing as an introduction to Black Panther and I love it for that, but it wasn’t a Cap movie, not really, and I’m bitter about it. This movie should have focused around the Black Panther, Cap, Bucky narrative, and dropped the whole Civil War with the other Avengers stuff entirely. 

Actually - Civil War needs to be either an entirely separate movie on its own or else… drop it. Deal with it differently. That airport fight was an embarrassment. Let the Avengers break down during Cap 3 if you need do, but make it more interpersonal and tense, and less throwing punches and locking each other up. Make it more human, more relatable, because those were the best parts of that whole divide. Make it real for the viewer, for fuck’s sake. Don’t have Tony (seriously what’s with them making him do villainous things and painting them as heroic) blackmail a literal child into a battlezone???? 

Okay - and Cap issues, they need to either set up Agent 13 aka Sharon Carter as a proper love interest sooner, or else drop that. They drop breadcrumbs of her in a few movies but that’s it. It feels hollow between them by the time they actually kiss. They should either keep their dynamic as “could have been but whoops, nope” or have done more to set them up together in Cap 2. 

(Totally honest, total bias here - take out love interests altogether or let Cap be the bi icon that he should be and let him and Falcon hook up in Cap 2. Let the fact that he was in love with Bucky be canon but you don’t need to set them up as a couple. Let it be recognized that they love each other but god there’s too much there, too much mess, they don’t need to be together in the present to acknowledge that history. Either way keep the Bucky and Sam dynamic because it’s amazing).

Doctor Strange - fix the casting. The racism, appropriation - just - wow. Use this as an opportunity to introduce more Asian and East Asian characters and actors into the MCU rather than it being the appropriative mess that it is. Keep the cool visuals though, and the cape. The narrative itself isn’t bad, but spend less time establishing this asshole character and more time establishing the side characters and the dynamics between them because those are far more interesting.

GotG 2 - uhhhh… okay what was this? Peter Quill is Ego’s son, but how does that really advance anything in the MCU or about the character or … ? Just fix the whole goddamn plot, I don’t even know. Tie this shit into Thanos way better. Introduce that better. Make this movie more interesting, make Nebula the Big Bad of it, honestly. Dive into the other members of the Guardians and give them their backstories and plots that they deserve. Is this the Guardians or the Peter Quill show? I don’t know I just - just fix this, okay?

Thor Ragnarok and Black Panther need no fixing. Remember that in this version of the MCU, Thor’s mom is alive, so that’s there. She’s still on Asgard and with Heimdall and being awesome, and we get some awesome interactions between her and Hel because we fucking deserve that, okay? Also Valkyrie’s bi scenes aren’t deleted (fuck you, Marvel execs). I would love love love for Killmonger not to die at the end of Black Panther, personally, but I wouldn’t change much more than that.

Oh wait I forgot - with the whole Bucky in Wakanda thing? Fucking take that out or do something narratively with it. It’s the weirdest brushed-aside thing that serves no genuine narrative purpose. I’d err on the side of taking it out entirely, personally. 

Infinity War is fine, leave it as-is more or less, except for - 

Okay, so we need textual discussion and canonical pushback against Thanos’s ideals. Because so many people came out of that movie all “oh but he’s got a point - population is expanding blah blah blah” and it was such fucking bullshit. We needed Gamora to point out why Thanos was fucking wrong - why her people were not actually better off after he killed half of them, thank you very much. We needed Tony to point out “population doesn’t work that way, it’ll bounce back in 50 years - do you plan to keep doing this each time? why not double resources?”. We needed people to tell the audience not just that Thanos was bad, but why he was bad, and that there is no ‘random’ and he needed to be a monster and selfish and it needed to be way more clear that his was not a sublime ideal of a detached idol, but rather the ravings of an entitled man whose gone unhinged and hateful.

Okay. So that. And don’t make the final battle just decimate Wakandan soil and its army? Why do they have to fight Earth’s battles for it? Let that be a joint effort and not just a Wakandan one, jfc. I get that you had the set ready and all, but no, don’t treat Wakanda like that, it deserves better. If ever there was a time to blow the budget on a final fight, this would be it, so freaking do it and have that battle be in space and over earth and at many different locations but then zeroing in on where Vision is (which itself can be in Wakanda because it’s safest but yeah).

And honestly I wouldn’t make it so Gamora died, like wtf. I hated that. I hated the whole bit with the Soul Stone. I could swallow it if what they did was have Gamora turn into the Soul Stone - so that she could, as the stone, set up a sabotage to Thanos.

Okay - more on that. Let’s talk about Endgame. Endgame needs so much goddamn fixing. Holy fuck does it need fixing.

Okay - okay where do I even start. I make myself mad whenever I think about it. 

Five years? Five fucking years? What the fuck is wrong with you, Russo brothers? Time travel? What - just - 

I hated that movie with a passion.

Okay - so the Snap happened. Pick up right after. Give us the fucking shock and horror. Give us the attempt to regroup, just quick, the intense emotions - people punching walls. Show us snippets of the world quickly, news casts etc. This is a horror, let it be one. Own the shit that you did.

Give us a time skip-montage. A month out, the pressure is on to the Avengers to fix this. The Avengers are all traumatized. Clint doesn’t have a family in this version, and doesn’t go all terminator. Thor - he wouldn’t have as much time to spiral but let him get there, let him be unwell, unkempt, let him own his suffering because goddamn he’s lost so much. (oh I forgot, I actually wouldn’t kill Loki and Heimdall because wtf wtf I hate you Infinity War, but let’s move on - )

Five months - people are losing hope. There are therapy sessions. Cap is a mess. Everyone blames themselves. Tony “if I’d only made the call to Cap sooner, we could have worked together” (also he and Nebula make it to earth fast, none of that lost in space and starving stuff), Cap “if only I hadn’t been so arrogant as to not trade lives”, Thor “if only I’d gone for the head”, etc etc. let it be clear that it’s not just Thor’s fault and not just Peter Quill’s fault - that all of those in charge of decision making fucked up.

Ant-Man isn’t freaking saved by a rat, thank you. He comes out of the quantum realm on his own merits, some safeguard, only to realize shit’s messed up. He and Janet work together with the remaining Avengers. maybe Janet saved him from the quantum realm this time? what a nice parallel to him saving her. anyway, they use the quantum realm to find thanos. Or - fuck that, they use Nebula to find Thanos. She knows shit. What they use the quantum realm for is to realize that all the souls that were lost in the snap aren’t ‘dead’ dead, they’re in stasis. They’re in a liminal space - they’re in the Soul Stone. Because Gamora is the stone and she sucked up all those lives and is holding them, holding for dear life but she can’t hold on forever (make sure the stakes are high, they feel real, the clock is ticking). Captain Marvel teams up with them of course. they track down thanos.

“but Phyn” you say, “thanos still has all the stones? how can they defeat him?” great question! difficult to answer! i’m not sure! with the power of love! 

okay but really - they have an awesome team. they need to work smarter than the enemy, not harder. they can take out thanos’s generals. they can use nebula to slip past defenses. if loki were alive, which he should be, they can use his magic. if friga were alive, which she should be, they can use hers. if heimdall were alive, which he should be, they can use his eyes. they can use the magic of all the magicians in the doctor strange films. they have captain marvel.

but they will never win on might alone, or magic alone - not against a full complement of infinity stones. not unless - 

have you seen Avatar: The Last Airbender? if so - you know how Azula gets a little unhinged toward the end? she’s just a kid, i feel for her, but the point for here is that she does enough shit and gets what she (thinks she) wants and it takes a devastating toll on her. using the stones, clearing half the life in the universe - that took a toll on thanos. it was a terrible choice. he’s in denial, in self-deception about that. he’s coming apart at the seams. he’s not all chill about it, he’s spiralling hard. he lost half his army too, after all. and life doesn’t seem improved. he can hear the cries of the souls locked in the soul stone (not that he realizes what he’s hearing nor acknowledges it) and it’s like the beating heart under the floorboards. his crimes have left scars. he’s not well. physically, from the toll of the Snap, nor mentally, from everything else it took out of him.

let gamora save the fucking day. let her and Vision and their stones - hell, let Loki (maybe he’s fused with the tesseract and maybe thanos did kill him to acheive that, or maybe something else) - let the stones respond to people. to quill. to freaking Jane Goddamn Foster. let the stones’ connections to life undermine and corrupt thanos and his connection to death.

is it cheesy? maybe. is it better than time travel bullshit? definitely. because it uplifts. because it draws from heroes in all the movies, even unlikely ones. people who’ve touched the stones, held them, melded with them. it assumes that the stones aren’t static entities, that they are just as alive as us, in a way we can’t comprehend, and so much more. they resonate with the universe, and thanos has done something that scarred the universe. let this be rectified, not through the actions of a man’s sacrifice, but through the actions, big and small, of a ton of people, of unlikely heroes, of those who suffered personally at his hand, at the hands of the stones - let it be the will of half the goddamn universe to see thanos fall.

let the snap-back happen when thanos loses control over the stones (he’s been holding on tight this whole time, can’t let it slip, the stones have a ‘mind’ of their onw). let it happen again right before the final battle against his armies. let him not have the power to immediately re-snap, hand burnt by the force of the snap-back, and let thor take off his fucking arm this time. let nebula take off his fucking head. let there be a huge final battle with everyone alive and ready to go down swinging once again.

and okay, i’m okay with tony dying. i’d be game for him to die by destroying the stones, tbh - taking them out of existence henceforth so they can never be used like this again, even though it kills him. i think that would honestly be a really fulfilling conclusion to the narrative set up in the first Iron Man film - the reformed arms dealer destroying the ultimate weapons in the universe.

by this way - there’s been 5-8 months or something like that, not 5 years, but why not have Pepper be pregnant, why not have a little child who’ll get to live on after he’s gone, even if that kid won’t remember him? she’ll get to live in a universe that exists and is safe because of him.

i’d be okay with cap dying in this movie too (much better than him going back and stealing peggy’s life from her by changing her history, wtf wtf wtf). i refuse to accept nat dying in clint’s place, that was bullshit and totally not necessary in this version. gamora is also back, not from the past but from the present, and with her sister again. this time nebula got to save gamora, isn’t there some poetic justice in that?

okay okay that’s all that. whew.

I forgot about Captain Marvel. It was decent, I liked it. It wasn’t my favorite in the sense that it was laid out odd when it came to falling in love with this character. Like I wouldn’t change much of the plot but I’d change the… storytelling? The emotions used to connect us to Carol. Give us more of her past from the start, before you introduce her. Give us her childhood. And let Maria be her girlfriend, fucking please.

Okay - now we’re at Far From Home. I didn’t mention Homecoming before but the problem with both of these movies is one I mentioned earlier - that the villains are byproducts of choices made by Tony Stark. That’s a problem. There’s just so many goddamn movies in which that’s the ultimate villain and it fucks with Tony’s characterization so much. How am I supposed to love Tony (which I want to?) when he’s got satellites with drones that can attack anyone he names, tech not that unlike the tech Hydra was aiming to make. Sure, he won’t use it the same, but why the fuck does he have it? Giving it to Peter is all well and good, but - they have interacted maybe a grand total of 5 times? 

The relationship between Peter and Tony is cute but if you stop for a second, it’s annoying as hell that it’s built up to what it is. Peter gets recruited by Tony, mostly works with Happy and not Tony in Civil War, and then gets ignored by Tony for months and months on end, then Tony shows up and scolds him and takes his suit, and then invites him to be an Avenger when he doesn’t fuck up, and then they go off to space and Peter dies, and then everyone comes back to life and Tony dies. Why the fuck would Tony entrust Peter with this Edith system that allows him to kill anyone on Earth? Actually, fuck that, entrust is the wrong word - why the fuck would Tony put that weight on the shoulders of a child?

Far From Home is great but Tony’s post-mortem role in it makes almost no sense. Let Peter’s movies be about Peter and not about the shadow and then the ghost of Tony Stark. Please. I love Tony, I do, but if you stop and think for one second, you have to jump mental hoops to absolve the shit Tony does in Peter’s movies, and for many of us, it leaves a really awful taste in our mouths.

anyway - i probably missed stuff. that’s just what’s currently top of mind. #whoops

[lovesquareshippingtrash]

Chameleon Reaction

An episode that had the fandom up in arms before it aired based on its preview. But did any of it matter?

(Warning: LONG POST. Spoilers below the cut)

I mean you know it didn’t.

So we start straight off with the scene from the preview clip. Marinette is excited to find that many people have swapped seats. From the explanation we’re given, this was a plan made before that school day. So why didn’t anybody tell Marinette about it, especially when the changes affected her more than anyone else, moving her to the back of the class to sit by herself? None of the people actually involved in the plan felt like volunteering then, huh?

Let’s talk about Marinette’s reaction to Lila and everything else going on here. She is a little aggressive towards Lila, pointing out the holes in her story, but she never makes a comment suggesting that she shouldn’t be able to sit at the front. All Marinette asks is why she should have to sit at the back. She’s pretty loose on the details, so it’s hard to read much into what the actual complaint would be there beyond literally not wanting to sit at the back of the class. She says nothing about sitting by herself, and while we could read into her not wanting to be separated from her friends (which is most likely how her classmates take it), I think if someone genuinely needed to be at the front, Marinette would gladly volunteer to move.

This is Marinette. We’ve all seen Copycat and Volpina. We know what this is about. This is about Lila lying. The show has gone to painstaking lengths to show Marinette hates lying. Which would be all well and good, a strongly developed piece of characterisation... except we’ve just had the season 2 finale. We’ve just had Catalyst & Mayura, where the major plot thread in Marinette’s civilian life was her LIE about having a grand picnic prepared for the whole school. And she decided to try to work hard to make it not a lie, and the class forgave her, but we have just had a TWO PARTER that had a plot thread about Marinette lying for no reason other than saving face in front of Chloé. She could have just accepted that people thought her good deed was a little weak - although of course, her classmates would no doubt have remember all of her many good deeds that she does for them constantly, as Adrien pointed out at the end. Marinette just told a giant lie for the most meagre of reasons, and in the multipart story you’d think they’d build on this, have it be an identity crisis for Marinette - but this is Miraculous. We don’t get that level of depth. We aren’t even shown Marinette’s apology - just everyone accepting it and moving on.

This is supposed to be about Chameleon, not Heroes’ Day. The point is, after just giving us a story in which Marinette tells a pointless lie without her suffering any repercussions, ever being expected to make amends, and in which her hatred for lying is directly highlighted by her interactions with Lila, how are we ever expected to care about this part of Marinette’s character again?

Moving on. The already infamous moment of everyone turning to Marinette, featuring Adrien’s absurd look of disgust that is, apparently, an animation error. I’m not concerned about that though. What I am concerned about is the gasps of horror from the rest of the class in that moment. Lila offers to give Marinette her seat - but Marinette never asked her to do that. She never said Lila should have to move, only complained that she should. She didn’t accept Lila’s offer, either. I can understand the class looking at Marinette for her reaction, but they acted like Marinette personally gave Lila tinnitus right there. The reaction was totally uncalled for, and is SUCH an easy audio fix to drastically improve the entire episode. People’s problem with this story going in was the idea that Marinette’s friends would turn against her so easily, and it’s such an easy fix that changes the story in no way to turn that around.

Brief aside (boy I really didn’t think this post would be this long already, sorry...); this episode seems to be setting up Lila to be Marinette’s every day antagonist now that Chloé is getting her redemption. How great would it be if Chloé, trying to be nice and deciding that after what Marinette has done for her lately she dislikes Lila more than she dislikes Marinette, Chloé stood up for her? She could be the one to point out that Jagged has a crocodile, not a kitten. But, of course, again, that would require character and relationship development, and we wouldn’t want that now, would we... Still, with the set up for Lila to be Marinette’s every day villain, maybe this will happen later. It’s notable that Chloé doesn’t have a line in this episode; she’s never fawning over Lila here, even when Sabrina is, and we get no indication that Chloé wants to be her friend, unlike in Volpina. But I digress...

Marinette proves how much better than all of this she is, however, by calming down enough by herself to resist the akuma before it could reach her.

Lunchtime. Nino glosses over Marinette’s story about Lila being a liar to point out the flaw in Marinette’s behaviour. And sure, it wasn’t a great choice, but seriously? And then Alya decides she’s a journalist first and a friend second. Of course, Marinette’s counter here should be that she was in the park and heard Ladybug calling Lila out, but it’s fair that she wouldn’t think like that in the moment - of course, she didn’t overhear that, she said it. Alternatively, Adrien could have popped up here to support Marinette, but we gotta have DRAMA.

Not sure why we should expect any of Marinette’s classmates to think about anything at all, however, because first they think nothing of Lila failing to react in pain until after Marinette speaks, and then they fall for her utter nonsense about the terrible dangers of particularly soft paper. Yeah, Myléne and Kim then yell at Marinette like she’s an enemy instead of just expressing disappointment in her out of character action like a friend, but what does that matter any more. The class aren’t being allowed to have any independent thought in regards to Lila.

Now we get to talk about something that the episode does really well! Hooray! Adrien’s interaction with Lila in the locker room is great. He knows Lila is lying, but when not transformed he has a cool head. He doesn’t know the depths of Lila’s vindictiveness. As far as he can tell, she’s a compulsive liar who could be brought around, not someone who will say whatever it takes to get what she wants. He won’t just blindly trust her after what has happened, but he has such a good heart, he wants to help. Even after Lila throws it back in his face, he’s still willing to help her.

Then Marinette (with Tikki’s encouragement) resists the akuma again, because she is also wonderful. Between this and Zombizou, Hawkmoth should really be getting suspicious about her.

Lila’s response to the akuma is fantastic. Not only being unafraid, but straight up grabbing it out of the air, and then HER giving the introductory spiel back to Hawkmoth. That’s just great. A bit weird that she acts like he wouldn’t remember her after specifically calling on her a second time, and weird that he acts like it’s a big deal that he remembers her. But that’s so minor. It’s also just so thematically strong that, once again, Lila’s powers are based on being fake, this time lying about herself rather than what’s around them.

Plagg decided that Adrien needs an enchanted kiss is such a WONDERFUL moment, it’s so out of the blue, such a diversion, and it’s hilarious. Whoever wrote that scene, assuming they didn’t write the rest of the episode, give them a raise. We need more moments like that.

Cat Noir once again taking the hit for Ladybug and being taken out of the fight. This episode definitely need to have Ladybug be the one in the fight, but one day I just wish they’d let Cat Noir take the spotlight.

A good villain is one who doesn’t just lose or fail for the sake of it. Lila had the opportunity to get a Miraculous, but chose not to due to her own personal feelings about Ladybug. That’s great. What’s not great is that Hawkmoth doesn’t try a similar akuma with a more obedient host.

Frankly, the whole actual fight is great. One thing at which this show always excels is its choreography. The defeat of Chameleon is just sublime, one of the better take-downs of a villain in the entire show. But HOW does Cat Noir not react to Ladybug’s pun here?? Miraculous is always so rushed, especially towards the end of episodes, not letting us have little character moments like that.

Nino completely falling apart without his hat is ridiculous. Alya being more concerned about him falling apart than anything to do with Marinette here is so much more so.

And now we get to the resolution. If Miraculous is bad at its openings, it is appalling at its resolutions.

Hawkmoth gives a speech about how Lila will still help him like this isn’t the third time he’s akumatised her. The specifics of this plot and the dialogue here strongly hint at the setup for Lila to ultimately see Ladybug actually akumatised, but we’ll see if that pays off. One of my predictions for this season going in was that Lila would essentially gain the ability to call on her akuma at will to become Volpina and fight as a recurring enemy in the field. But that would, of course, be far too much of a shake up to the status quo.

Adrien talks to Marinette about Lila! They’re able to talk about how they both know Lila lies. Adrien helps Marinette to understand why what she’s doing won’t help, and able to help Marinette grow as a person! This is great! Already more than I expected to get here! Good start! From how everyone else is acting with Lila, it seems like they might not be apologising any time soon, unfortunately, but Adrien letting Marinette know he’s on her side is good.

And you know, I wouldn’t have been surprised if that had been it. I wouldn’t have even minded that ending. But then THEY RAMP IT UP. First, Adrien gives Marinette such a LOOK. A seeing-her-in-a-whole-new-light kind of look. Of course, he’s given her some similar looks before, I’m definitely not expecting it to mark a change in their interaction. But it makes for great gif/photoset material, you’ll certainly see it on this blog soon.

Then he goes the next step and MOVES TO SIT WITH HER! YES! Adrien ensures that Marinette won’t be left on her own, making a physical statement that he is literally on her side. He makes clear to Marinette both that he is proud of her, and that he is happy to be at the back, giving us a spectacular new status quo set up.

Things seem great! So, of course, we can’t expect it to last. Marinette misses her name on the register, but it hardly seems like her fault, no doubt she’s just confused because Miss Bustier is reading names off in a completely random order. It’s a shame, in Stoneheart the register was read out in proper order; Agreste, Bourgeois, Bruel. But for some reason here it’s going Rossi, Agreste, Kanté, Dupain-Cheng.

Now I’m not sure if Miss Bustier genuinely thinks Marinette couldn’t hear, or she’s using that as an excuse because she knows Marinette is distracted by Adrien - but she was utterly clueless about the social dynamics earlier in the episode. A teacher wouldn’t move a student for mishearing something literally once after they’ve said there’s no issue. If it repeated, yes, but not once.

Still, as disappointing as this is, Marinette being forced to sit beside her enemy could be inte-

OH SORRY COULDN’T FINISH THE SENTENCE BEFORE THAT POTENTIAL SHAKE UP WAS RUINED. Lila claims her tinnitus is cured. And everyone just accepts it. Seriously? That’s the moment everyone should be looking at her with scrutiny, realising that they’d been duped and they should have trusted their “every day Ladybug” after all. Some actual APOLOGIES offered to Marinette. But they all just ignore it. This show’s refusal to use the word SORRY is just awful.

Now Alya... Alya takes it upon herself to act, finally...

“You didn’t think I’d let my BFF sit all by herself, did you?”

EXCUSE ME!? Yes, we most certainly did think you’d do that, because YOU LITERALLY DID EXACTLY THAT. ADRIEN is the one who made sure things changed, he was the one who decided not to leave her on her own. You made the choice on Marinette’s behalf that she would sit at the back so you could sit with Nino. Miss Bustier vaguely mentions people with vision problems needing to sit closer - except that’s exactly what their glasses are for. I’m a teacher, if we have a kid who can’t see the board we’ll move them closer, but that never happens with kids wearing glasses - typically that’s with kids who need glasses but have lost or broken them. First there was her deciding Marinette was clearly just jealous of Lila being close to Adrien in Catalyst, despite the fact that Marinette was much closer to him and showed in Frozer that she wasn’t ruled by jealousy, now this. Do the writers want us to turn against Alya? I’ve seen a theory going around that this episode was going to set up Marinette and Alya having a major fallout. But Alya acts like there’s no problem, and ONCE AGAIN FAILS TO APOLOGISE.

Adrien is great and moves back to Nino, to again say clearly to Marinette and Lila that he is on Marinette’s side. Frankly, I don’t know why Lila even wanted to sit with him again, she knows he’s wise to her crap. But this is followed by literally everyone going back to normal - and they’re all given closeups like they’re in on some great conspiratorial show of support for Marinette, while NOT. SAYING. SORRY. Cannot stress this enough. So now everything is just the same as it was, except Lila sits next to Nathaniel. We had a potential to mix up character and relationship dynamics, but we can’t have any progression now, can we.

This episode had some excellent moments. Adrien was wonderful, and the akuma fight was great. But it was bookended by utter crap and Marinette’s friends were unbearable. Yes, they’re teenagers, they’re not perfect, but this is a kids’ show. If you want to show something like this, impart a life lesson! Have Tikki point out people change as they grow up, or have everyone apologise and realise their mistake, or SOMETHING. But like I said, this show refuses to offer good resolution or progress of any kind besides new teammates and power ups. Its refusal to bend from its rigid episodic structure with monsters of the week keeps it utterly stagnant, and means that many major plot points get ignored for extended periods - I found it rather jarring that Hawkmoth didn’t have his own actual plot in the episode. No development with Gabriel and Nathalie, no suspicion raised about Marinette.

Of course, the dumbest part about the whole episode is that those benches can EASILY fit at least three people, nobody actually needed to move at all.

As ever, my feelings about all this are just that this show has such great potential, wonderful ideas, and strong characters. But it squanders it all, time after time, and I doubt it will ever change... but that’s why I love this fandom so much; because we take all of that, and turn it into so much wonderful art, so many wonderful stories...

[maggotmouth]

      rises from the dead like mushu hullo it’s nora ( gmt, she/her) n i’m sorry didnt do my intro yesterday, i woke up in a bath, happy new year. anyway bridget is a mess, the angsty socialist leftie liberal who gets fucked at the pub and goes off on one about immigration or the welfare state or the pay gap. very talkative n bubbly, carefree but also.... cares too much. always in docs but only the vegan ones. usually in a beret with an anarchist symbol painted on it. wears a long green trench coat covered in badges for alt punk rock bands or a red denim jacket that she hacked into a crop jacket with a pair of kitchen scissors. film nerd. got in on a partially subsidised scholarship and works in a bar and a fast food place to pay for her accomodation. 

heres a pinboard. everythin else is below this cut, like this post n i’ll smash that im button for plots x

it might be HER SOPHOMORE year but I still think BRIDGET MATUSIAK looks exactly like MARGARET QUALLEY and sometimes I think the FEMALE is actually them. Of course I’m wrong, as they’re TWENTY and studying FILM while living in FIDELIS here at Lockwood. The ARIES can be rather CANDID and GARRULOUS, but also kind of FICKLE and ERRATIC. Their most played song on Spotify was NOBODY REALLY CARES IF YOU DON’T GO TO THE PARTY by COURTNEY BARNETT, so I think that says a lot.

bridget n her mum alice were more like sisters growing up, probably because of the closeness in age. alice should’ve known that you couldn’t have a thirteen-year-old-daughter at 27 without everyone knowing you’d been one of those girls who gave it away fast as a hot potato, and maybe bridget should have known that she’d inherit more than her mother’s wide eyes, that things had a way of circling back, that at fourteen she too would lose it on the floor of a swimming pool changing room, soggy back, poka-dot nylon pulled down to her ankles.

her parents met in high school. her mother alice was a roman catholic – uneducated in matters of safe sex, mother mary around her neck, bras hanging over wooden crucifixes – and willing to give it to the first boy who seemed interested enough, gift-wrapped or not.

i say they met in high school, bridget’s dad wasn’t actually in school, they met at the high school. he was the father to a girl down the road. alice knew nothing of the girl besides her name and the few encounters in the corridors facing a stoney stare that screamed homewrecker. it only happened once, but once was enough. soon the pitter patter of tiny feet sounded along the hall of the home for wayward women, alice’s parents having thrown her out as soon as they knew a child was growing in her womb.

gilly (referred to as junior) was born two years later, the son of a mechanic and handyman named gilbert “gilly” senior, who - while a slow-witted man – was likable enough. alice, gilly bridget & junior lived in a colorado trailer park and whenever she wasn’t at school bridget would be in gilly’s workshop doin her homework surrounded by parts of exhausts.  was raised in a workshop basically.

like her mother, bridget fell pregnant barely out of her gingham print dresses, hair in two plaits down her back, teddies still lining her bed. unlike her mum, she was not box-shipped out to a home for fallen women but rather booked into a clinic, given a pill, just like taking your vitamins.

her mother flaked out when bridget was around fifteen and junior was twelve, leaving gil to adopt the two as legal guardian and raise them in the forge. she’s lived with gilly ever since. they’re not sure where their mother went. some say she rededicated herself as a virgin and joined the convent in penance for her sins. some say she works in a las vegas strip club and sells pills to minors.

used to do sponsored silences and hunger strikes for kids in third world countries. was that kid in school who was always raising money something. i mean its kinda cute but also she just wanted the acclaim and attention so.... and most of the time it didn’t even make it to the disadvantaged kids she was raising it for cos her mom needed rent money or to buy the kids new shoes n they could barely afford much themselves

she’s a strident feminist, an activist for human rights and animal rights, a vocal vegetarian and an all-round soapbox sadie. catch her in the quad shouting about human rights through a megaphone.

aesthetic: cuffed jeans, thrifted or stolen. white converse, more grey tbh through years of wear. crop tops and plaid shirts tied round her waist. a long green trench coat with loads of badge pins for alt-rock bands and independent films. red denim jacket, also covered in badges n pins. smudged mascara. glitter smeared over cheekbones from the previous night. cigarette smoke shrouding you like a veil, the red string of a thong peaking out purposely from jeans, roller blades, cut knees, not eating your greens, smiling with a mouthful of blood, and piercing your own ears with a safety pin when your dad wouldn’t take you, kate moss posters lining the walls of a teenage bedroom, thumb holes poked through the cuffs of your sleeves, feet pounding the earth until your soles bleed crimson, sleeping in a cherry lip balm and scrunchies to keep the wild locks from your eyes.

an aspiring screenwriter. she has a very image-based view of memory and experience. always doing a screenplay or shooting film. her style has a lot of catholic iconography (think virgin suicides styler or baz luhrmann’s romeo + juliet if it was done on a super 8 camera) bcos catholicism is one of the few things she remembers about her mother. she’s never actually tried to find her mum / find out about her, jst…. occasionally channels that energy into her work.

hypersexual and kinda manic-depressive (though not diagnosed) probs bcos her upbringing was a bit unstable, she started life in a house that was literally designed to rehabilitate “fallen women” and she was a looked after child for a while when the adoption papers were still going through… struggles a lot with feeling unwanted, especially since her grandparesnts refuse to acknowledge her existence cos she was born outside of marriage….. so she craves feeling wanted,, like despite being a real women’s rights activist ad hating objectification, at the same time to bridge there’s nothing better than someone sizing you up with hunger in their eyes

she’s queer, but i guess she favours women, and is incredibly vocal in her support of the lgbt+ movement. often at ralleys. has done a face-sitting protest. really is that bitch

there’s a degree of anger for anger’s sake in bridget. she likes passionate, angry music – particularly garage rock, punk and riot grrrl. she loves the slits and skinny girl diet. viv albertine inspired her to take up bass guitar.

working two jobs to pay for uni currently !! works at the bowling alley polishing the shpes and fixing the bowling lanes, and also is a burger flipper at mcdonalds. a lot of her time is spent in the record store, plugged into a set of headphones, head-banging in the corner to a scratched record. music, for birdie, is a form of escapism. that and dropping acid in parking lots lmao.

massive film buff. is majoring in film at uni also spends a lot of time at the movie theatre n probably has like a season ticket. is one of those pretentious film nerds who’s like “what do u think of goddard’s work?” but also just really into shitty horror movies

she spends her evenings in downtown bars willing away her boredom, trying to find something that’ll jerk her out of apathetic lethargy. she toys with the idea of becoming a stripper — it certainly pays better than fixing bowling lanes — but she lacks the energy to dance for several hours a night.

she loves b movies and slasher flicks. at parties, she’ll occasionally try to make a horror of her own, on a super 8 camera in someone’s basement, very paranormal activity, but she’ll inevitably get bored, or too drunk and give up, like she does with most things in her life. she lacks drive and motivation. she’s bright but there’s no hunger in her.

writes shitty poems on the back of napkins and quotes dead philosophers she’s never read. romanticises herself a lot. like will be standing there in a ripped t-shirt and her undies smoking a cig like “hmmm… i bet someone is falling in love with me right now”

is vegetarian for environmental reasons but snorts coke at parties ?? sis, it don’t add up

loves dirt. ate a worm once because someone dared her too. shamelessly disgusting.

she’s slightly obsessed with true crime, up late watching documentaries on the manson family murders.

she’s fickle and enigmatic. one moment she could be your best friend, the next, she’ll behave like a total stranger. bridget’s unpredictable because she’s still unsure of her own identity, frequently flitting between different characters, like snake skins, before she grows bored of being bubbly and eager and becomes spiteful again. her core personality traits are probably forthright, impulsive, restless, thrill-seeking, selfish, melancholic.

an awful person, really

feel free to im me if u wanna plot, here are some plot ideas i stole, or, like this post and i’ll hit u with a message!

[hahanoiwont]

superhero au!

Superhero au.

Virgil is a supervillain a la that post about grad school villains. He started out doing it for extra credit but he also needed the cash for student loans...that shit aint cheap yo

so he’s a small-scale “”””supervillain””” mostly making a nuisance of himself by stopping traffic, doing minor vandalism in costume, and sometimes kidnapping notables for like an hour before realizing he can’t keep a plant alive and should not be in charge of a person (’you’ve captured me!! what are you going to do???’ ‘eh i mean you’ll probably get rescued soon, my powers aren’t really meant for long-term kidnapping and I don’t wanna have to take care of you. you think i want another mouth to feed? nah. hey wanna see a meme?’).

(if Sleep exists in this au he’s a common kidnapping victim. son of the mayor or smth. Virgil has learned to hold up a starbucks before kidnapping him tho. not worth it if he can’t bribe him with sweet sweet caffeine. they p much chill for a couple hours until the hostage negotiators come)

basically, Virgil’s not a big enough deal to get shut down permanently. regular cops usually take care of him well enough without superhero involvement. he gets his extra credit for villainry and sometimes some cash from a shadowy organization via crow or some shit. he’s not sure how they know where he lives or what exactly they’re paying him for but hey, more ramen money. whatever gets food on the table.

On the other hand, Patton is a hard-working police officer who really should be in any other job. He’s just too nice for it. But he gets a lot of the suicide calls or emotional trauma stuff because he’s just so damn good at making people feel safe, and no one else wants to do those calls, so he stays on the force. He used to be an EMT, too, which is really helpful. He rooms with Virgil and Logan and Virgil’s weird cousin.

He pretends to be unaware of Virgil’s extracurriculars because he can see that Virgil needs the money and is too proud to ask for help. He does help him patch himself up when necessary and sometimes thinks about going back to his own ‘night job.’

(he used to be a superhero but quit that and EMTing after he realized how much it was draining him physically and emotionally and how deeply unhealthy the whole thing was. credit to Logan for that) He thinks he’d feel better knowing Virgil’s already spoken for as an archnemesis by a hero who won’t seriously try to hurt him. He seriously worries that Virgil will catch the attention of an edgy ‘shoot first and angst about it but make no attempts to fix the mess you’ve made later’ heroes, and he’ll end up in the hospital or worse.

but also, Patton needs that work/life balance and he just can’t maintain it while hero-ing. and Virgil knows what he’s doing, right? he’s a cautious guy. So Patton just tries to be on call when he notices Virgil’s got the first aid kit out or when he talks about ‘evening plans’ (fuck’s sake dude we all know you don’t go out for fun).

For his part, Logan wanted to be a biochemical engineer, but right now he’s taking some time off school. His powers are probably some sort of sensory (?) and he doesn’t fully understand them himself, mostly bc he likes to pretend they don’t exist. but he was getting splitting headaches at school and he just couldn’t go on. He does online courses when he can but he feels really ashamed that he couldn’t do grad school/college, which he was supposed to be good at. He was planning on staying with Patton and Virgil until the end of the lease and he doesn’t know what he’ll do after that.

But then one day Virgil came home freaking the fuck out about something and asked to talk to him, and guess what, he’s got this crazy ‘supervillain for extra credit’ idea. Someone’s got to make sure this fool doesn’t get himself killed. And Patton’s got into police work, and Logan doesn’t want him to go through compassion exhaustion again, and really none of his dumb housemates can take care of themselves (he loves them tho). So he does mad science in the broom closet to try to give Virgil something of an edge over any hero whose attention he might catch and helps him hide his villain-ing from Patton and tries to figure out what he’s gonna do with his life on the side.

He comes up with this crazy graph that shows the optimal balance of super heroes to villains in a healthy society (not enough villains=not enough active heroes when something really bad goes down, as it does every few years, somehow; not enough heroes=obviously bad). He keeps an eye on superpowered activity in the city.

Sometimes he thinks about getting active himself, both to preserve order and balance (if you’re the villain [ie Virgil] you can control the collateral damage to your plots, but if you’re the hero and your roommate is the villain you can both work together to provide for both of your needs [extra credit, enough good hero/villain balance, and safety of roommate] without actually harming anyone...but for either he would need to be able to use his powers effectively and he’s still kind of in denial), and to keep Virgil from getting his fool ass killed, and to keep an eye on Patton while Patton insists on running right into every single superpowered crime scene. In the meantime, he frets over numbers and helps Virgil write coded emails to his grad board about his ‘’’extensive’’’ villainry.

It’s basically like a resume except you have to convince the people involved that you’re super evil.

Logan is good at resumes.

All three of them are plugging right along and Virgil’s actually getting his student loans paid on time with enough money for food and rent besides (one day he even takes them out to eat and they Do Not Talk about how he got the money to do that), and they all think maybe he can do the villain thing for a few more years and then get out of the game forever, when Virgil’s weird cousin gets caught doing some shady-ass stuff.

Turns out he’s in way over his head with some sketchy folks, owes a lot of people money, and used Virgil’s name for half of it. Virgil is in sudden desperate need of more money than he can get through legal means and, of course, Refuses to tell anyone about/ask for help with his predicament. It is strongly recommended to him by his academic adviser that he step up his supervillain game or show up at the bottom of a river south of Manhattan.

Virgil freaks the fuck out and proceeds to dig himself into an even deeper hole, suddenly going for much larger schemes, robbing banks, being less obsessively careful about collateral damage with each plot because he just doesn’t have time to and he’s too desperate.

Cue Roman.

Roman was literally just going to the bank, innocent of all wrongdoing and Not Picking a Fight because he swears this new move is gonna work out, he’s not gonna get arrested to aggravated assault or unauthorized use of an unregistered superhuman ability (it was self-defense! and defense of others! he was rescuing people!).

He happens to be at the bank when Virgil is robbing it. And, well, Virgil isn’t gonna hurt anyone, but Roman doesn’t know that. He ties his shirt over his face to hide his identity and superheros it up, saves the day; Virgil runs away pretty significantly battered but not permanently injured or caught. And now there’s a new superhero in town and Virgil suddenly has an archnemesis. Just what he was avoiding. Great.

Meanwhile, Roman is shocked to learn that he’s being applauded for saving people for once (as opposed to like. arrested) and graciously accepts his new title. Hey, being a superhero could work! He said he was gonna try something new in this town and he will! He’s gonna save the day!

The two of them happily counter each other day after day: Virgil’s getting enough publicity as a villain that his grad board is happy even without him doing any genuine harm, he’s staying one step ahead of the shady figures that come looking for him by name, Patton has made contact once or twice with the new hero and used his office reputation to become Roman’s primary police contact, Logan thinks Virgil is bonkers for all the new levels of villainy he’s doing but he has to admit this is the most alive he’s ever seen him; Roman is enjoying the fame and adoration of being a hero and he’s been cast in a musical and life is looking up for everyone.

But Roman also works in a coffee shop to pay the bills (three jobs. so tired.) and there’s this stressed-looking student who keeps coming in with bruises and sprains and one time he broke his arm in what Roman is absolutely certain wasn’t an accident, and he talks on the phone with people sometimes that really seem to distress him, and he seems like a genuinely nice guy, right? A little guarded, sure, but he’s polite and he tips well and what kind of hero would Roman be if he didn’t at least try to make friends with this troubled but charming young man?

So Roman introduces himself to Virgil in their civilian identities and the two of them are friendly! free coffee here, book recommendation there, on slow days Roman will sit with Virgil and they’ll just chill for a while. Each of them quietly considers the other his friend, but Roman is Concerned about how Virgil is so fucking jumpy, keeps getting these calls that he claims are from his academic adviser but honestly what kind of adviser would be so terrible to talk to, he has all these bruises that show up continuously and his excuses are all plausible, realistic, and backed by evidence provided by Virgil himself, but something just doesn’t seem right.

So when Virgil mentions that his cousin suddenly moved out in the middle of the lease and he needs to find a new roommate and can he post a flyer in the coffee shop? Roman jumps at the opportunity. He’s been renting one room by the month in a shitty part of town and this is a hell of an upgrade, and also, maybe that nagging in the back of his head when Virgil shows up battered will go away. (maybe if he’s there no one will hurt Virgil. what monster would bring deliberate harm onto such a genuinely nice, snarky guy, wonders the superhero who brawls him on the regular)

He’ll have to keep his superhero-ing on the DL from his new roommates (though he’s thinking about telling Virgil, because Virgil seems like he can keep a secret and Roman really wants to have someone to talk to about this), but unlike Virgil, Roman knows how to use strategic stage makeup to hide bruises and minor imperfections. Also, his villain must be kind of weak, because he never seems to do too much damage? Sometimes Roman thinks he doesn’t really want to be a villain, he’s just kind of sad and lonely, like Megamind. Thoughts for another time.

So now, in one apartment, we have:

Patton, former EMT; former superhero of respectable fame; currently a cop assigned to Roman’s superhero persona and also any calls involving emotional competence; knows Virgil is a supervillain but pretends not to; responds immediately to all calls involving superpowers in case it’s his deeply misguided roommate and he needs help;

Logan, one accident away from becoming a super-something if only he could figure out what; provider of Virgil’s biochemical defenses for when superpowers alone are not enough; helping to cover both logistics and material needs for supervillainy (also created Virgil’s outfit because you can’t do crime in a hoodie you heathen, no one will take you seriously, Virgil had to talk him down from including a necktie); searching for his place in life; not entirely certain why Virgil is stepping up his illegal activities but not happy about it; currently househusband to all of his roommates;

Virgil, extremely stressed grad student; villain for fun and profit and mostly because he needs the money to not get murdered; a bit of an adrenaline junkie; really staring to get into this villain thing but he sometimes wishes he didn’t have to be the bad guy; definitely feeling hunted by shadowy entities and organizations and trying desperately not to bring anyone down with him;

and Roman, the hero. who is beginning to think he and his villain might have been friends, in another life.

It is both a sitcom and a shitshow of epic proportions while everyone tries to hide each other’s secrets without letting ppl know what they know, Roman comes clean to Virgil and Virgil freaks the fuck out about it, Patton frets about everyone and everything until he’s stressing himself sick, Logan makes chemical explosions in the broom closet and the whole block is evacuated every other Tuesday and they all have to pretend not to know about it, Roman wants to get a dog and also for Virgil to get out of whatever abusive relationship he’s Clearly In, Virgil wants a nap, Patton wants a nap, they all want a nap.

What I’m saying is: Superhero au.

@stella-scriptor another one for you, buddy

[crayfish-critical]

I'm honestly super glad your blog isn't purely SU critical tbh, because at least blogs like this don't have an obvious bias towards one show and they act completely stricter on one show compared to the other. While I personally casually enjoy Voltron and BNHA (I do agree there's issues with how both treat some of their characters), and love SU, your points are extremely valid and you give good reasoning behind them besides reaching for subtext that can be interpreted in many different ways.

Aw gosh thank you anon, this honestly means a lot to me!  My goal is to be fair to most of the media I criticize.  To be honest, I probably criticize Voltron about as much as SU (and then BNHA more since I have such strong opinions on pedophilia) and I really think both of them are good shows.  I just like to scream, but I also like being fair about it!

Criticism whose goal isn’t to positively influence the original media’s creator or positively influence others is ultimately worthless imho; like hey, free country, you can say what you want about it.  As an aspiring cartoon/kids show creator, I learn from criticizing the shows of others and put their mistakes as something I can learn from.  I’ve honestly learned a lot about pacing, story structure, and character building from my problems with both SU and Voltron, and they’ve helped me sort out what does and doesn’t make a good story since some parts of them are so good and other parts aren’t.  Honestly it’s kinda embarrassing to look back on my original story now, having learned everything from SU and Voltron - but hey, that’s alright!  I’m far, far from above the writers of either of those shows, yknow?  I don’t think they’re bad people or bad writers; at worse they have a skill level similar to me.

I’ve also first-handedly put the pieces together of a show that became a mess for seemingly no reason, realizing that there was a reason and it was basically unavoidable.  There was a sitcom I watched that’s overarching love triangle bullshit became an absolute goddamn nightmare of a mess (sprinkled in between with various weak episodes that didn’t even reference the drama).  But, when you put together that a major reoccurring character would have likely been part of that plot since the beginning (as opposed to just being in the very end), whose actor got into a serious accident around the time when the episodes would’ve been filmed, the original intention of the arc makes a lot more sense.  Like seriously, once you watch the episodes with that knowledge, the pieces fit in perfectly.  The show was a horrible victim of circumstance and I just hope all the actors and writers have a good rest of their lives.

Point being, you never know what’s going on behind the scenes of a show, so I think it’s unfair to act like minor plot holes and weird pacing are some moral failing of the writers.  Yes, it’s their job to write a good story, and yes, you have a right to dislike their writing.  But it shouldn’t be seen as such a crime??

The crewniverse has made mistakes, like the Concrete incident, but they’ve tried to fix issues that they’ve caused.  Quite frankly, racism is the only argument in SU that I can’t defend them against; not only is it not my place, but it’s hardly revolutionary like their LGBT representation.  As a dumbass white person, I can tell you that Rebecca and her clue is probably more clueless than the SU critical community realizes (if you don’t live in SoCal, you don’t know how sheltered us middle-class white folks are) but that doesn’t make it okay.

However, everything else I find to be rather shit.  As a fat person, Steven becoming “thinner” isn’t fatphobia; the art style changed.  Rebecca is a BISEXUAL NONBINARY WOMAN, and I will literally never forgive the SU critical community for their insistence that her nonbinary rep is enbyphobic (bc they “present as women” and “go by she/her pronouns” and “sure stevonnie goes by they/them but they act like nonbinary is just male + female and its not” and “either way they don’t call themselves nonbinary in the canon” even though nonbinary people can present and go by whatever pronouns they want, bigender people exist, and the only valid point is the last one but its still fucking stupidly insignificant.  Like Korra and Asami didn’t call themselves bisexual [ok scratch that korra called herself “buy-curious”] but they’re still bisexual.).  And yeah, “lgbt people can fetishize other parts of the lgbt community” but do you know how hard it is for a bisexual woman to fetishize lesbians?  It’s.  Pretty fucking hard, considering she’s a wlw.  She can be lesbophobic but when you have one (1) “predatory lesbian stereotype” out of a cast of different types of lesbians, maybe you should uhhh stop policing how lgbt people are allowed to act?  There’s a big difference between a predatory lesbian stereotype and a lesbian who happens to be predatory (and pearl isn’t a predator anyways, she’s an abuse victim - that doesn’t excuse her behavior but I digress)

god I dunno, there’s just so much stupid shit that goes on in SU critical, which is a shame because it’s an idea with a lot of promise.  Really, the SU critical community developed because fans didn’t like having negativity towards something they cared about on their dash.  But since it became an isolated pocket of everything negative towards SU, it just festered and festered and what started as simple criticisms has turned into outright hatred and malice.

Personally, I hope that SU’s portrayal of LGBT people becomes outdated some day - it’s really not that bad and I think even if we make great strives in the next decades, it’ll still be able to hold its own, but as an lgbt person I think Rebecca would agree with me that only good things can come from kids shows being better than SU.  But for now, it’s far far ahead of anything else in its time, showing LGBT people as real people (or….aliens), as flawed individuals.  It doesn’t make them particularly evil nor does it make them particularly good.  They’re characters who happen to be their sexuality, and that’s alright, and that’s normal.  And that should be celebrated.  People should be allowed to celebrate what SU has done so far, and I hate how SU critical likes to shit on fans minding their own goddamn business.

I feel bad for SU critical too, because keeping yourself in that kind of environment becomes very toxic.  I’ve been trying to keep my own opinions under control (actually, that’s part of the reason I made this blog) because I can become very angry and opinionated while typing and I know that that can hurt other people.  But it’s just exhausting and toxic for me at this point to keep doing it too much, so I just write what I can but also try to embrace the positive so I don’t die of a heart attack lmao.  I can’t imagine what running an SU critical blog 24/7 must be like, it sounds absolutely exhausting and immensely unhealthy.

You have the freedom to choose to do that, but as someone who shares some of your opinions and mindsets I advise you to take a break and have things you DO like in the things you critique.  Point out things you like alongside things you dislike.  It’ll make the world so much better for you.

Overall though sorry for rambling anon haha, but thank you for the kind words! <3 I’m always open to other people’s arguments too, which I think helps me be more reasonable to the shows I like.  I dunno, at the end of the day this is one thing I feel like people are allowed to have opinions on!

[the-knights-who-say-book]

The School for Good and Evil

Rating: ★★½☆☆

Blurb: Every four years, one good child and one bad child are kidnapped from Gavaldon. This year, best friends Sophie and Agatha are about to discover where the lost children go: the School for Good & Evil, where ordinary children are trained to be fairy tale heroes and villains. Sophie can’t wait to join the school for Good, while Agatha seems a natural fit for the School for Evil. But when the girls arrive, they find their schools reversed. As miserable as they are, what if the mistake is actually the first clue to discovering who Sophie and Agatha are meant to be?

You know those books where they're all twisty and exciting and the plot is great and intense and you want to love it but it's all ruined by the fact that the male love interest is an uninteresting jerk?

This... is not that book. Tedros the Uninteresting Jerk is only half the reason this book fails!

So let's recap: Agatha, though she is ugly, is fundamentally a good person, so she's put into the Good School. Sophie, though she is pretty, is fundamentally a selfish person, so she's put into the Evil School. This is where the conflict of the book comes from: the girls trying to either switch schools or go home because they don't believe they're in the right place.

Here's my first issue, though: none of the other people in the Good School are good people. Okay, Kiko is fine, but I'm pretty sure it's just her and Agatha. All the other "good students" are rude, condescending, sexist, etc, whatever. They just happen to be beautiful, so they're assumed to be good. This problem isn't as obvious with the Evil School — most of the students there genuinely do enjoy doing evil things, so most of them fit the school. The gap between the students and the labels is only at the Good School, which is a problem because there's a huge plot point that involves whether or not students act in accordance to Good or Evil independent from their school! So if the Good Students acted pretty evil from the beginning, what's your plot standing on? It's a plot hole, if you ask me. Sure, the author needed the Good Students to be mean to Agatha for other plot reasons... but then he just never addressed how people who treat her like this could ever be chosen as Good Students.

That's actually more of a minor "fix your worldbuilding" inconvenience though. Also, I enjoyed those plot points I mentioned above a lot, even if they are balanced precariously over that plot hole. The biggest problem in the book is that we're expected to believe Sophie and Agatha are straight and totally not in love with each other, but instead are in love with Tedros the Uninteresting Jerk.

Here's the thing: you can absolutely do books that riff on fairytale tropes by making them about platonic love rather than romantic love. That's an awesome take on fairytales and I enjoy it a lot. But the way the author approached Agatha and Sophie's relationship, it would be ridiculously stronger as a story if they were gay. Why else would you literally mistake Agatha for Sophie's prince in the climax? For God's sake, guys. They kiss. On the mouth. (check out this post for more reasons straight!Agatha and Sophie are ridiculous)

Soman Chainani writing this book, probably: isn't this great? Just gals being pals!

Yeah, okay. Let's smash expectations! the authors say. But not by completely leaving out male love interests or giving girls female love interests, because that's going way too far! they also say, completely missing the fact that they're not nearly as subversive as they think.

Another instance of the book living up to age-old fairytale tropes instead of challenging them: the association of beauty with goodness. You think it would at least challenge this a bit, what with the two main characters having their outward appearances switched with regards to their actual goodness, right? Haha, wrong.

There are major plot points throughout the story which prove the author doesn't believe the message he started out with. Agatha having to learn to smile in order to be beautiful and start wearing makeup and pretty dresses by the end of the book, for one, because God forbid Tedros have to overcome his own sexism or that we have a book where a female character literally does not care what she looks like. Not to mention the many instances of fat shaming, other times when physical appearances are linked to morality... there's no strong message here, just muddled remains of what the author tried and failed to do, because he just couldn't go that far off the beaten path.

And because it's so reluctant to take any major risks, though it's a fun read in other ways, The School for Good and Evil just falls flat.

[cartoonfandomhell]

So, we may be all a bit in denial about it; But somehow MML's quality dropped 400% with the new episodes?

And this is one of the most baffled and disappointed I have ever been in entire my life? I still can’t believe it?

And let me explain just some of the things I’m so puzzled about and let down by:

- The pacing was incredibly off most of the time. With way too much filler, awkward, unfunny joke attemps, and dragged out scenes that shouldn't have made it past the storyboarding.

- The animation quality is plain shameful. I mean, some 90's CGI looked better than what they did. And what's with all the off putting facial expressions? It could almost make Rapsitte Street Kids' CGI blush. And the lipsyncing was so poor at times that characters could say lines without opening their mouth. Or say nothing and they were just opening and closing their mouth for a moment.

I understand that animators need to get used to the characters they bring to life first. But the CGI just doesn't have any excuse beyond someone being a massive cheapskate there.

- The voice acting was really off at times. Most notably Melissa's. As were the sound effects. Sometimes they didn't make sense, or were terribly out of tune with what's going on on the screen. They were recycling way too much as well.

And the minor, and even some of the major songs, were plain awful.

And I get that song writing can be difficult. But not only has it been amazingly done before in Phineas and Ferb, but also in the show itself.

And if a song just doens't work for the final product; Don't put a song in it.

Sure, we all love a good song. But I can assure everyone that all viewers would choose good story telling over a cringey, lazily inserted song anytime.

- The writing was simply horrid.

The morals were there, and they were good ones too. But they were executed so poorly you could hardly take them seriously. There where many continuity/general errors too. Why would Zack's father not believe in Murphy's Law when Dr. Underwood clearly knows about it? Why the heck would they watch one of their teachers getting an MRI? Why did Martin's skin tone go back to pale in Time Out? And so on... And some plot point where just unneccessarily stupid. I mean, it'd be a much better explaination for the school to be out of money because of constant repairs. Buying a yacht just doesn't make sense on any level. And Melissa could be scared of rollercoaster simply because it's a normal fear some people have. Or because she knows how Murphy's law affects things and find the thought of being in such a needlessly dangerous situation unappealing and frightening. Also, adressing your own plot's flaws doesn't make the problem go away. If it doesn't work as an actually funny joke, it will just make the team behind the show ignorant, and at times even disrespectful, for not fixing the problem despite letting us know us that they were perfectly aware of it.

- The story telling was lazy as all heck. To the point that, while you're watching it you can come of with dozens of better ideas that would make each scene and the plot as a whole a million times more appealing than what they put together.

Melissa lost her Math book in school? Sound simple; But Wait! What if she, Milo and Zack get locked in over night at the school and have fun, make themselves a little camp there and explore despite initially trying to get out?

Milo's backpack isn't his own? Shocker! I think that caught us all off guard. But while we were preparing for an awesome backstory that would justify such an otherwise uneccessary show detail, we got basically "well his babysitter had a backpack with caution stripes, for unexplained reasons, and it just somehow magically just had all the perfect things for every situation it it" making Milo's thoughts that go into packing it completely pointless.

Where did that get us? Nowhere is where. It just weakened Milo's character in attempt to strengthen another character that is too underdeveloped for us to really care about.

Cavendish and Dakota are unappreciated in their job? What a surprising turn of events. But where do we go from there now? It's still the first half of the first season. And especially casual viewers were hardly indulged in the characters unknown stories. It wouldn't have harmed the show in the slightest to build up tension and keep the mysterious attitude towards the pistachio guardians. In fact, it would have helped feeling incredibly sorry for them once we do find out who they are, and once they find out themselves that their story has a tragic twist. Which we should have found out much later. Given that we still don't know anything about them personally, or about their mysterious world that is the future. They should have stayed blind to how unappreciated they were much longer, to the point where the viewers would have questioned their importance either before them, or with them. Now they are just stupid characters for the sake of being stupid characters, and there is nowhere up to go for them. Their boss in an unprofessional, mocking jerk. If he didn't care about them from the beginning, he surely won't care about them in the future. So now what?

Going to the Zoo? Wow, great a class trip! Literally anything about that would be interesting with Milo around. Just let things unravel. Show how animals react to Murphy's Law. Let Bradley comment on the animals safety to make the gang think. There's no need for a clichéd momento retrieval plot. And even if you're going for that. Give it more reason. Let characters show emotions. There are such things as guilt or fear of making your mother sad. What did we even learn from that hollow cookie cut-out plot?

The show is different because of it's daring premise. You can't tell the same old stories without giving them a unique spin. And it shouldn't be that hard either, considering you have Murphy's Law and a family constantly affected and adapted to it. It's interesting people. Make something of it.

- The characters were dummed down, out of character, and generally behaving contrived as all heck.

Zack is new to Murphy's Law. And he's scared of it too. But he tries to get used to it to stay friends with Milo and to bring a bit more life into his otherwise dull, ordinary life. Now he's just as calm as Melissa? Or should I say just as scared as Melissa? Whatever happened to her being used to Murphy's Law and being kind of dry humored and apathetic because of it? Or at least, what happened to that being -her- trait? Now Zack and her are basically on the same level and just blend together as "Milo's friends". And they aren't good at that either. Both were supportive sometimes, and other times Melissa was unexplicitly selfish, and Zack was all over the place, being completely mean spirited and ignorant at times for no reason.

Amanda's change of heart was complete bullsh*t given that she didn't even fully forgive or accept Milo around her after he did everything in his power to keep her precious opera going and saving her scheduled enjoyment hours.

Diogee caused problems just because. To points where you really can't blame it on him being just a dog anymore.

Whatever happened to Mort's esoteric interests? They only made one reference to it or so. Which is a bummer considering that it’s a unique character trait and makes for excellent humor.

What about Bradly? I thought he was some sort of low-key antagonist? He hardly did anything at all in any episode. And he never once complained about anything involving Milo.

Here’s a tip: Bradly is perfect for giving Milo something to think about. Use that.

What was up with Principal Milder? I don't know if you can even call that a character what she displayed in "The Math Book". There was no need to make her this weird, cryptic a**hole. It's perfectly sufficient to have her worried about losing her last key. Making her not wanting to give it to Milo and the gang. And it could have played out wonderfully if Murphy's law wasn't the actual culprit for losing it in the end but instead Melissa's forgetfulness.

Why did they abandon Elliot? He's a useful character. He can make useful plot points happen. Degrading him to mutant fodder is not doing him justice.

And please don't make Sara randomly sexist for no reason whatsoever. She hardly knows Zack, and why would she ever be mean to Milo and accuse him of not talking about feelings? It's pretty much impossible not to have any kind of conversation about feelings with a condition that constantly messes with you and all those close by. And he's a fanboy for goodness sake! Are you telling me that he never has any feels about an episode that he shares? Especially when they are both huge fans, and that its a show based on the tearjerker that is Doctor Who?

And the new characters like Milo's babysitter were looked into so little, and so poorly that it's hard to care for them at all.

I mean, it would have been so easy. An episode or at least a flashback to when Milo was a baby/toddler would have made that episode amazing without having to do much more. They could have completely sticked to the routine of things going wrong and Milo and Veronica dealing with it. Bonding and/or overcomming obstacles that made her, or even him, realize something important.

Instead we had to make time for two bizarre robot Melissa daymares, "Badgering", and a beyond forgettable Ye Olde Pizza advertisement song.

- Murphy's Law was handled really out of character as well. Milo wouldn't even go to simple football games to spare other people from his condition. And it took encouragement, the wish to support his new friend at his first game as part of the team, and the reasurance of a sure-to-fail-anyway game to get him to go to one. Now he goes to an amusement park just like that? And neither he nor anyone else has anything to say about it? And he even goes on a rollercoaster? With his friend that is terrified of rollercoaster accidents? Before, Milo and Melissa wouldn't even go Bowling anymore because of the dangerously heavy Bowling balls. Milo used to not even have his Birthday celebrated. Heck, he isn't even allowed to tap his feet.

You can't show Melissa and Zack being afraid of Milo cooking, but not afraid at all when going to an amusement park. Or say no word when going to the a school dance.

It's open whether it ends up being positive or negative talk. They could say that maybe he should think about something twice, or do it anyway to live a little now and then. But you have to adress the topic.

There is a difference between optimism and ignarance towards problems. Milo is an optimist. In the end that's what the show is all about. And that's a good thing. It makes us look up to him. Admiring his strength, and learning valuable lessons. Don't throw away such a gift. You’re viewers deserve nice things.

- The only thing that stayed the same, was that Milo still had all sorts of funny, interesting and unexpected utensils in his backpack. And they where pretty much the best thing about the new episodes. But by far not enought to save them.

I may be bitter over here. But only because I take the subject to heart. Milo Murphy's Law is a show that inevitably makes you think. And that is beautiful. We don't have that many other shows where you can't help but do that. It tackled the topic disability realistically. Characters defied stereotypes. (Milo isn't miserable, nor is he generally disliked by most. Mort isn't a bully despite his physic. Sara still grew up to be a nerdy teeneager who is typing away on her phone all day.) And despite tough issues the characters have to face, it was still funny.

And MML's premise is utmost genius.

Even the smallest and most mundane everyday things could become an adventure. So many things could have unexpected turns and sides to them that no one would usually consider. They could make the most abstract of situations happen. Leading to countless, unique, memorable moments, unimaginable amounts of joke and reference material, tons of character development, and resolutions that wouldn't have stopped tugging at our every heartstring.

But instead we got 10 episodes with typical early first season flaws but great potential to build upon, and 10 episodes (so far) of bizarre, atrocious sh*t.

(Though I guess it's worth noting that, except for the animation, Family vacation wasn't really bad until the end of the song in the first few minutes.)

It's almost exactly as it was with Dude, That's My Ghost!, where the premise was intriguing and had tons of potential in all directions. But it was written, animated and executed so poorly that it was unbearable to watch the vast majority of the time.

We're talking Spongebob season 4+ and Powerpuff Girls 2016 kind of bad. And I'm still completely and utterly perplext as to how they managed to mess up so badly.

Phineas and Ferb was amazing. The crew brilliant. The show had something for everyone. And only it's formulaic structure made it age so unfortunately in the later seasons. But even despite that, the show was never truly bad at any point, and can easily be forgiven.

Milo Murphy's Law doesn't have any excusable reason whatsoever to be that bad at such an early stage.

The team threw away their dignity, and their respect for themselves and their viewers, and I just can't figure out why.

They didn't the first episodes.

What happened?