#and not much he can do to display his whole character like the main cast can

[chewysgummies]

Please understand how attached I am to him guys please-

[authenticyuri]

Listen I know I know, referring to Laios’s party as found family isn’t breaking new grounds but like. Can I talk about how literally everyone in the main cast has been ostracized or othered throughout their life and how they can form connections with each other despite their differences and how they don’t belong anywhere else but they actively want to stick together?

The Touden twins have never belonged in their family or with their peers. Laios’s fascination with monsters and low people skills are obviously the main traits that lead people to find him and his interests weird and creepy and cause them to have inaccurate and exaggerated views of how he acts in their head. Whenever people don’t outright tell him how weird he is they always pretend to be his friends while secretly hating him and acting passive aggressively towards him. Even when his knowledge and skills are put on full display and are actively useful, people are still on the fence about him as a whole and don’t take any time to understand him, constantly insisting he’s a freak and an idiot.

Falin was never understood by her parents because of her magical abilities and didn’t fit in at all at her academy. Others always saw her as the weird, muddy, quiet, irresponsible girl in their class, and while she never payed much attention to how others perceived her, it still left her completely isolated from others, until she met Marcille.

Chilchuck faces discrimination from other races constantly looking down on him (in more ways than one) and seeing him as literally disposable. He developed trust issues around others and tried to overcompensate by acting dryly and being as profesional as possible, but it does nothing to deter people from seeing him as a child and underestimating him.

Marcille’s huge age gap and irregular aging from others has made her feel completely isolated from everyone around her since her childhood. She is looked down upon by high and mighty elves who don’t see her as an equal due to being a mixed race. Her interests in ancient magic actively creep out her party members and everyone else who can only see it as the illegal and dangerous “dark arts.” She’s never been able to meet anyone else like her and feels isolated due to no one else having to bear and therefore never being able to understand her situation and frustrations.

Senshi was seen as an inconvenience in the original party he was a part of. Out of the main cast, he probably suffered the most traumatic circumstances and hasn’t been able to overcome that lingering dread in the back of his mind for years. He explored the dungeon in complete solitude for many years while never going out of his way to meet new people until he met Laios’s party. He is someone who uses his interests to try and connect with the people around him but people are unable to see that due to just finding him a weird man who lives in the dungeon and is obsessed with cooking.

Izutsumi never being properly raised and given love by anybody and seen as a freak because of her curse to be a beastkin, to the point she convinced herself that getting rid of her curse is the one thing that would finally make her happy. She’s never formed a close genuine connection with anyone and understood the concept of relationships as give and take.

Many or all of the preconceived biases each individual character faced are still present when it comes to how they view each other, and yet, despite it all, they are still sticking around, regardless of how many opportunities they had to leave. It’s how Chilchuck put himself in harms way despite not being strong and how he finally opened himself up to these people. How Senshi always stuck around to provide food for the others and help them along their journey, and come to accept different ways of doing things or understanding the world because of them. How Marcille ate every single meal she was served despite constantly showing hesitation, and she kept going despite how many times it seemed like they would never make it out or accomplish their goal. How Izutsumi learned that sometimes it’s necessary to do things you don’t like for the sake of other people, and she stuck around cause she knew they needed her, despite her not needing them. How Laios did gain a positive outlook on humanity and betrayed his instincts to save and protect the people he cares about. And about how Falin, after years of eating all by herself, was finally able to share a delicious meal with other people.

[yourloveaton]

Hi! I saw all your AU art just recently and noticed you were saying we can ask you about it! (ITS SUCH AWESOME ART BTW I ADORE IT THE WAY YOU DRAW THEM IS AKAKAKKDMSMAMD!!!!)

I don’t have a specific question, but I do want to know more about it.

So can you just tell me anything about it?

Ahhh THANK YOU SO MUCH !!! I’m so happy that you liked my au art and wanna know more about it !! You have no idea how much joy that makes me feel 🥹💖

Well I can tell you some info and facts about the au, how I’m planning to develop it and all that !! It’s still fairly new and I did it out of nowhere at 3 am in the morning because I thought of my old ideas that I had years ago when undertale was on it’s prime but I was too young to bring ideas to life properly HAHAHA I hope my writing doesn’t bore you!

The au is pretty much founded on the idea of what if Sans also used to be a royal guard when he was younger? Boom. That’s where it spiralled and now I don’t know how revert back to who I was before because I ended up doodling a lot of undertale stuff along with the au, it didn’t help with the fact that my very good beloved friend kept encouraging me and feeding my inner demons of my undertale brainrot HAHAHA

I’m planning to develop the au into 2 parts: Before Undertale and after Undertale.

Before undertale is basically the events that happened before the plot of Undertale took place while after undertale is when they’re finally on the surface and the events that will happen on there! Sounds very generic and common I know, that’s why I’m going to try and develop it to be a bit different and hope that the au is not boring or developed horribly :’D It will take some time though since I know developing an au with a unique plot is gonna be very challenging, there are so many ways to mess it up and aghhh I really don’t wanna mess it up TT

Here are the main cast of the before undertale, this is a very OLD sketch that I made to figure out who’s there and how old they would be before I proceed to develop on the characters. So their heights might not be as accurate as it is in the sketch.

Also DISCLAIMER, Alphys and Undyne never met in before Undertale, so just know there’s no weird agenda going on here! They first met during Undertale plot when they’re both adults (Alphys 29, Undyne 23) so it’s all good!! I thought I needed to point that out because the age gap might seem alarming at first glance knowing they’re officially a couple 🙏 The before undertale plot begins at the age displayed on the sketch, and it ends after uhh.. 10 years? Yeah it’s ten years of events before the main undertale story starts!

I do want to portray the skele family with wholesome moments and you know, how great they are! Well that is before the downfall but we ain’t talking about that for now !! They’re just so beloved to me and I know they were such a sweet family AND WOULD HAVE VERY FUNNY MOMENTS IN WHICH I WANNA DRAW IT OUT!! So yeah, stay tuned for silly mini comics of them eheh

At first, I wanted Trickster (yes I’m calling his royal guard nickname, it’s like a whole different persona of his (alter ego???) where he’s energetic and acts very silly, whimsical, presenting puzzles and quizzes to his opponents sometimes but also can be very intimidating and prove that yeah, there’s a reason why he can be like that cuz it’s HIM) to be nothing more than a mischievous silly royal guard that wanted to keep causing trouble for Gaster but then it grew to be a bigger thing where he unintentionally became the symbol of hope and an entertainer for the whole underground before Trickster disappeared without a trace(?)

I’m still working on this whole concept so not everything is settled yet!! Well what I can also say about Trickster is that Alphys might be involved with the whole Trickster business too eheh

I’ve been practicing on drawing the characters so that I can draw better for this little au project of mine, I hope I can share my progress with you guys as things go on !!!

That’s the general stuff I’ve thought of so far, I hope you enjoy reading ! Thank you for reading and do feel free to ask whenever you have questions about the au or anything else :D✨✨✨✨

[writingraccoon]

tagging @origami-butterfly bc i think you'll be interested at least

So some posts about women in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and it's adaptations have been going around, so I thought I'd give my two cents that no one asked for.

In the original novella there is one important female character I can think of- The girl Hyde tramples. I have not seen any J&H movies or adaptations, unless you count the four episodes of Once Upon a Time that had a (bad) J&H plotline, but i have a decent impression of how most adaptations treat the women they add in.

First of all, I don't think adding women to Jekyll & Hyde is necessary. It speaks to the attitudes of the time that more women are not in the original book, but the book as a whole is inextricably linked with the attitudes of the time, and separating the culture from the novel serves to strip away much of its meaning. Perhaps casting the butler Poole as a woman, or even making Lanyon a woman could be reasonable ways of putting a little more diversity into screen/stage adaptations, but the novel does not even pass the 'two men talk to each other about something that isn't a man' test.

A piece of media does not need to pass the Bechdel test to be good, or interesting. Frankenstein, J&H, Les Mis, Dracula (iirc), and the Christian Bible are all, to my knowledge, things that do not pass the Bechdel test. They are not less valuable for that.

Many J&H adaptations add a love interest to be killed or spurned by Hyde, or a sex worker to be raped or killed to display how evil he is. I hope I need not say that adding a woman to your story just for her to be fridged to say something about a male character is FAR more sexist and hard to watch than a piece of media that just happens to have a lack of women.

At it's heart, Jekyll and Hyde is a story that needs few characters to be told. There is, of course, Dr Jekyll himself, his alter ego Hyde, Utterson, the lawyer turned detective, Lanyon, and Poole. Any other people that show up in the story are unimportant except for what they say about the main characters (pretty common in fiction. the family that dies at the beginning of the hero's journey is not important in and of themselves). The girl that is trampled by Hyde is there to set up how Enfield met him, and tell the audience how evil he is. The old man who is trampled is there to shock the audience and Utterson, and reveal a new depth to Hyde's cruelty. Now, there's something to be said for the fact that the old man is named while the little girl is not.

While pieces that are less adaptations and more inspired by J&H have far more freedom in what they add and what they omit- The Glass Scientists comic, for instance- adaptations that aim to bring the book to stage or screen should actually read the book before deciding what should take place. I would say that adding a love interest not only is unnecessary, but in fact actively harms the effectiveness of any J&H adaptations. Jekyll and Hyde is simply not about that. It is not a love story, (except, you could argue, the love for Jekyll that drives Utterson to become more invested in his hunt for Hyde) and trying to make it a romance interferes with the point and themes of the story, just like switching the perspective from Utterson to Jekyll messes up the story.

The reason why so many adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde fail to capture the essence of the original novel, is that none of the people in charge of them seem to understand the novel at all. They don't understand why Gabriel Utterson is not only not boring, but why he is the lens through with Stevenson chose to tell the story. They don't understand that Hyde is not a separate person, or an evil second personality, or anything else, but that he IS Jekyll, and Jekyll is him (which is an interesting point about humanity's unwillingness to accept the presence of evil inside of ourselves but i don't think most screenwriters are doing that on purpose). And they don't understand why, to put it simply, the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde does not need the addition of a love interest, and in fact is better for the lack of one.

[carlyraejepsans]

i feel like uty improves on things undertale did but it doesnt have the same strong foundation as the original. like all the qol tweaks and secret shit and meta flowey are all super impressive but as a whole i agree i didnt find it cohesive or consistent

eh, sorry but i don't really think UTY "improves" much of... anything from Undertale? you can make an argument for the visuals, which are more detailed and certainly better animated, but i would argue right back that undertale's rougher, retro, "kinda ugly" graphics are a deliberate design choice on Toby's part that he stuck to for a reason. not to mention, even in their ugliness, the original main cast managed to display more variety in shape language and size than the entire UTY one, which seemed unable to break past the "tall, skinny, anime proportioned humanoid" figure for anyone beyond the occasional side NPC (which, credit where it is due, DID have some really creative designs).

the secret shit is part of my critiques, actually! while conceptually cool, i don't think they appropriately distributed their story and lore at all. i feel like if we got to the end of the pacifist run and were wholly confused as to why dalv was even a character in the story, the whole "human attack" backstory was... not delivered properly. now, there's no problem with having secret lore, gaster is right there. but if you DO have it then it shouldn't be... yknow... tied to the main backstory conflict that literally set the story in motion? lol? it felt like a game with dataminers in mind, rather than players. which was unavoidably detrimental to its storytelling.

the bullet patterns and attack designs were very visually creative but what they improved from the original in their cleverness they tanked with their execution. WAYYY too unfair, counting too much on memorization and giving you no time to accustom yourself to the mechanics (shout-out to the gun tutorial that... didn't teach us how to shoot. at all. we figured it out on our own in the axis fight LMFAO)

the meta flowey stuff was a fun idea that only really delivered in the neutral run and didn't amount to enough anywhere else to justify his presence in the game imo. like, i lost my shit during his fight too, don't get me wrong, i like when fan stories let him be a little FREAK. but everything else was just so... wasted? i almost didn't see the neutral ending at all because the way pacifist handled flowey disappointed me so much.

uhhhhh running was a good addition and the music fucked hard. can't say anything against those two, nossir. not sure it'd go so far as to call them improvements tho, just nice touches

[scruffyssketchbook]

how was old eevolves like?

It was written by an 11 year old. And it shows.

Shun had both Naruto and Avatar powers (he could bend all 4 elements and do Ninja Jutsu/control his chakra). And was a Mary Sue. I focused so much on Shun x May that it seemed like they were the main characters and everyone else was a side character. Eve’s dolls in ssec were in old Eevolves but Ruby owned them. Ofc, no June. Shun made them and they could talk because ofc they can. Sylveon wasn’t a thing when I wrote old Eevolves so Ruby liked Randy and there was no love triangle there. Max was never in the series cause him and his best friend Jax went away to learn ninjutsu from a Naruto ninja master. He wanted to get stronger so April will notice him. Which he did. Ex (or X) was an evil shiny Umbreon named UMBREON X and he was obsessed with Flora and he led a group of shiny Pokémon that terrorized everywhere, and ofc, Mary Shun had to stop him with his cool bad ass Naruto powers. Umbreon X also eventually got April Pregnant. Why April? She had nothing going for her so I thought it’ll bring her back into the story. It didn’t. :V She ended up hiding the baby from everyone. I forgot her son’s name. It’s probably Keith. Keith won’t be in New Eevolves and April is not getting pregnant either. Randy was a runt (like Vay is) and apparently it was Shun’s fault???? Idk. They had a big fight about it (with curse words and all) and Mary Shun with all his edge on display was like “ya…… come with me…….” “Leafeon……. It’s my fault….”. Randy is still oblivious as Ever with how Ruby feels about him, and only realizes when she heard her tell someone else. When he confronts her about this, she lists off the whole cast, saying the Eevolves main characters by their Eeveelution name but every other Eeveelution character by their actual name.

Mary Shun (who was Literally Black from ES but more Emo and Edgy) got super emo around May, so he leaves and May is heart broken for years until a kind Glaceon boy made her happy again and when Shun comes back against his will she still chooses SHUN AND NOT THE CUTE NICE GLACEON BOY WHO HELPED HER THROUGH ALL HER SAD TIMES. (The cute Glaceon character is in new Eevolves too, trying to find a name for him because I don’t remember his old name.) Speaking about Mary Shun, he at the ripe age of 12, had a mate and a child on the way, but both were killed by a Pokémon attack right in front of him (Ofc he killed the Pokémon who did it afterwards) and that is how he became edgy mc Edgelord. Also he borderline hated May and always told her to leave him alone and insulted things she liked. But OFC he had a soft spot for her cause she reminded him of his dead wife *eye roll* literal Tsundere. There is a picture I drew of him and said dead wife, they look like adults. Randy is playing a game with Ruby next to them and they look like literal babies. These characters are NOT THAT FAR IN AGE FROM EACHOTHER. Also ofc there are Eevolves kids too, they have their OWN drama. And one of them ofc is a Ninjutsu master at the ripe age of 4 years old. (Eevolves uses human aging, not SSEC aging btw). Everyone had dead or missing parents. Flora and Max’s parents died in a fire, April and May’s mom died and their dad was missing, Jet never knew his parents, Ruby’s parent abandoned her, Shun and Randy’s parents- are actually alive but Shun disowned them along with his older brother. So they were mostly living on their own. From a young age. No family or cousins or anything. Max evolved into a Jolteon btw.

BRO I JUST FOUND AN IMAGE OF MAY SAYING “WANNA BE THE SANTA IN MY SLEIGH” TO SHUN WUT LOLLLLLLLLLLL HELP I WROTE THIS WHEN I WAS 11

All of this ofc. Is changing.

I feel like the only thing not changing completely is Jet’s backstory, because HONESTLY. It’s the most grounded. I completely overhauled Shun’s personality, gave April more personality, changed everything with Max, gave them actual parental figures (well not Shun, his Parents stays borderline disowned, but the rest do have parental figures) and in general made the story like- not seem like it was written by a 11 year old.

[kats-kradle]

Hey! Journeying over from rereading your fics to ask you some Poirot questions! : ) Had you already liked Poirot prior to 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express? And did you immediately fall in love with Bouc in the first film or did it take until Death on the Nile?

Hi!! I love talking about Poirot!! Buckle up😂😂

First off I would like to say that it made my day to see that not only did you read my fics but you reread them!! And then you actually came here to talk to me!! You’re the first person who’s actually done that so it really made my day. 

Also: I apologize in advance. When I start talking about Poirot I tend to launch into rants and I… may have done that here so I will say now in case you don’t make it to the end that I would love to hear your thoughts about the movies or anything else Poirot related! Did you know about Poirot before the movie? What are your thoughts about Bouc?

To answer your questions, I guess I could say that technically I liked Poirot before watching the movie. I actually had never heard about Poirot until the movie came out, and one of my sister’s friends took her to see it and then leant her the book. I stole it and read it in almost one night and ever since then have been absolutely enthralled by Agatha Christie! I own almost all of the Poirot books and have been trying to branch out and sample her other writings, but I keep coming back to Poirot. 

By the time Death on the Nile came out I forgot the Bouc was a character who existed because I hadn’t seen MotOE since it came out in 2017. When I saw him, I did remember that he’d been in the last movie, and was absolutely delighted that they were going to turn him into the Hastings of the movies (especially because he was so happy and full of life😭) which of course we all know what happened with that and now that I’ve recovered from my shock and denial I can take a step back and acknowledge it was a FANTASTIC choice to kill him, and to do it in such a shocking way—but also, I’m also not a a fan of how much Kenneth Branagh deviated from the source material by doing that. 

Adding Bouc to the movie was a choice that made sense, if Kenneth Branagh is going for a Poirot Cinematic Universe. People expect a sidekick, and in stories where the cast has to change every movie, it’s nice for the audience to have a familiar face other than the main detective. However, I also think Kenneth Branagh shot himself in the foot by shooting Bouc in the neck, because he went out of his way to add and establish Bouc as a reoccurring character, just to kill him off in the second movie. I think the audience will now have more difficulty connecting with the side characters in the future since they’ve had two movies with the same character, as a opposed to already being used to the characters changing every movie. But then again, I’m still in denial. Along with this, it’s setting up the next movie to have a distinctly dark tone.

Well, now I’ve gotten started on the topic of Poirot and I can’t stop😂😂😂 Enjoy my decent into madness.

Another way that dear Kenny boy shot himself in the foot is with the iconic mustache. His mustaches in MotOE were luscious and beautiful, despite the critic they received. Branagh understood that Poirot has impressive mustaches that are quite a spectacle to behold, even if the rest of the world can only picture the measly little mustache that David Suchet displays in his version of Poirot (don’t get me wrong I love those adaptations but just… the mustache is all wrong. And David Suchet Poirot is a subject for a different time or we’ll be here forever😂😂). In DotN, for some reason he felt the need to give the mustaches a tragic backstory????? Narratively, I guess it’s a nice bookend and theme to the movie as a whole. BUT HE FELT THE NEED TO GIVE THE MUSTACHES A TRAGIC BACKSTORY????????????? Despite the fact that in DotN the mustaches aren’t actually long enough anymore to cover up the scaring shown at the beginning, HAIR DOESNT GROW ON SCAR TISSUE!!!! It just doesn’t make sense😭 Along with that, now he’s destroyed the main characteristic of Poirot, his trademark. Poirot is quite vain about his mustaches and even when he wears a fake one in Curtain (for reasons that I won’t spoil but if you know you know) Hastings only finds out at the end of the book, and Poirot’s manservant treats the subject with delicacy since the mustaches were such a sensitive subject to Poirot. 

While I’m STILL talking about Poirot (forgive my rant I can’t stop) I’m going to take the opportunity to mention the stark difference in quality between MotOE and DotN. I’ve now seen both of these movies multiple times and back to back. Overall, I think MotOE is much better. DotN uses a lot of green screen, and it’s pretty obvious and creates for some flat feeling backgrounds. For MotOE, they took shots of the mountains and overlayed the train on, instead of all CGI. Now, I don’t know for sure how much of each movie and which parts use CGI; it could be that MotOE uses more CGI and I just have a bad eye for spotting it. It was just my impression that the backgrounds in DotN were severely lacking. 

And let’s talk about the music. MotOE delivers and excellent score that makes you feel a wide variety of emotions, and they use the theme of repetition well in The Armstrong Case. For me, it had just reached the point in the movie where the theme could have started to be annoying; but the. they used it magnificently when Poirot was explaining the murder, and the simple and relentless, already melancholy melody turned into something truly heartbreaking, turning a scene of twelve people stabbing a man to death into something poetic. 10/10 one of the best uses of music and one of the best scenes ever, in my opinion. DotN, besides the songs sung by the talented Sophie Okonedo as Salome Otterbourne, has no notable music to take away from the movie, besides the absolutely grating (I don’t know what it’s called but it goes like. DUN DUN. DUUUN! DUN DUN. DUUUN! I think if you search Death on the Nile on YouTube you’ll find the song titled the same by Patrick Doyle). I got tired of hearing that by the third time it played, and my annoyance with it was one of the main things that I took away from the movie. 

AND ANOTHER THING both movies took creative liberties with the stories, but one of the creative liberties I did not like about DotN was how explicit they made it. Between that dance floor scene and the scene at the tomb… when I go to see a movie that’s rated PG-13 I like to feel comfortable seeing it with my father and not feel the need to slam my hands over my little sister’s ears. Especially when I want to slam them over my ears instead😭

All this being said I’m 100% going to go see a Haunting in Venice, but not because I’m expecting it to be good. I’d just like more fuel for my rants. I didn’t even get touch upon what an amazing actor Tom Bateman is and how I’m mad that he only plays serial killer roles outside of Bouc. 

Anyways I hope that answers your questions😅 thank you for your ask, and congratulations if you made it this far. It did truly make my day to see the phrase “rereading” in association with my fics, and I feel as if you were some curious passerby on the street who I started passionately and somewhat aggressively ranting at. I apologize. Also I took a break from ranting to check out your blog and you’ve got a great curation of posts. Good luck getting rid of me now. Prepare to see me in your notifications. Sorry for the essay.

[kabutoraiger]

watched 2 different recent shows starring one of my favorite cute jdrama ossans (mashima hidekazu) since they were both subbed by the same person and the links were right there and it was like well why not. so i might as well do a joint review of them too.

coincidentally they both also feature a FL who's potentially down to fuck that middle aged man which is often an added draw for me but in advance i'll just say that i would not recommend either of these shows on that front.

"halation love" is a pretty limp lowkey mystery/"psychological thriller" where it being a fairly low budget show is kinda what damns it the most bc it's like. the cast is so small that once we eliminate both of the FL's sort of love interests as suspects who else could it be other than Guy C? there's not really any other recurring characters?

the FL here is also this aggravatingly bland doe-eyed waif who blinks confusedly through the whole ordeal & does things like apologize (in a genuine manner) to the guy who just tazed her & tied her up. just a spark of personality in this girl would've gone such a long way.

and this is just petty but they consistently put her in some of the ugliest clothes i have ever seen in a drama.

overall: not really recommended. mashima-san gets all bloody at one point though and it's very nice <3

"shoumonai bokura no renaimon" is a bizarre slice of life about a ~40 y/o guy who's contacted by his one true love from college only to find that she's actually dead & the one who contacted him is her teen daughter who looks exactly like her.

slice of life doesn't always need a coherent thesis statement i guess but i was still really perplexed about the messaging of this one. the ML and his childhood friend who's carried a torch for him for 25 yrs get into a relationship then later break up bc even after agreeing to date he never seemed to think of her romantically, only saying yes to make her happy/bc it would be an "easy" logical relationship. her putting her foot down against this is painted as a good move.

and yet in the end both the main women get into relationships with other men that neither of them ever display romantic attraction towards, who have seemingly just "worn them down" through persistence (not in the creepy way, but still). and THIS is painted as sweet. like ?? ??? it's the same thing though....

it's just a very frustrating straight people show in general. the best moments in it are probably the bits of cross generational bonding, and i kept waiting for the shoe to drop and for the daughter character to finally realize that her feelings for this 40 y/o man are actually "wanting a dad". dad & daughter are what most of their interactions read as. like, extremely so. at one point she calls him to pick her up at the park bc she fell off the jungle gym. (this 17 y/o girl kinda being written like she's 10 is a whole other can of worms, but.)

you could really do something with that, like a contemplation on the way society trains us to prioritize the idea of romance so much that we sometimes can't register other types of affection.

but the revelation never comes. she continues insisting she's romantically into this guy until getting rejected years later as a college student.

overall: also not recommended. but mashima-san wears many knit sweaters in it and looks very adorable :3

[aesthetic-uni]

While everyone else is watching season 4 of Lego Monkie Kid, which just released in dub version, I am watching THE VERY BEGINNING

Yeah I just started Lego Monkie Kid, and I very much regret not starting it sooner, and I wish I had heard about it sooner. Oh well, better late than never I suppose

I don’t know if I’ll review all the episodes, but I’ll at least review A Hero Is Born

First off let me rave about the animation: This is amazing. I haven’t watched anything else lego-wise, so I don’t know if it’s usual for them to have stellar animation, but this is literally some of the most amazing animation I have ever seen-and I have seen a lot of animation. It’s just, every single scene is so fluid and fun, and the scenes where they are not are stylized to be fun gags that perfectly display the emotions of the characters. And even if the animation wasn’t amazing, the way they have built (hehe) this Lego world is so beautiful. Everything looks so gorgeous and has this absolutely beautiful stylized look that I would say is on par with Spiderverse and Puss In Boots. In case I’m not clear, I’m just saying that how they design everything fits so perfectly when thinking about the media they actually come from. Like yeah this is how I would think a Lego world would look like! And oh my god the colors! They so bright and fun and work perfectly when you consider almost everyone in this world is yellow! It’s just such a beautiful show to look at! I haven’t seen the whole thing but I have to say right now, one of my favorite scenes is just MK delivering noodles and driving around this city, ugh I love it.

Okay so let’s start with the characters: I really enjoyed them all! I loved Mei so much,and I’ve only heard good things about her so I can’t wait to see more of her! Red Son was a fantastic funny villain, while I did enjoy his parents as more serious villains. I think I prefer Princess Iron Fan as a villain, she just seems a bit more grounded and serious compared to DBK who’s kinda over the top (like father like son!), but who knows maybe that will change. PIGSY AND TANG!!! I fucking adored them. Already I ship them, but every scene I see them I can’t help but think of their counterparts and laugh at how not them they are acting. And yeah, I absolutely love Dadsy, he cares so much for MK in this one episode and you can tell. And for Sandy, he’s adorable obviously but I just want to see him snap. I don’t know why but I really just want to see him fucking destroy something. I’m really disappointed I didn’t get to see much of Sun Wukong. Like I know it’s MK story but I’ve seen so much stuff of Sun Wukong I want to him to be here already dammit! Also yeah he’s definitely hiding more than he’s letting on. Now to MK! I love him. This is MY son and EVERYONE is required to be nice to him! He’s just a fun character, he reacts to things in such a normal way I absolutely love it. I can’t wait to see more of him.

Also, this episode was just hilarious. I loved all the jokes and visual gags. My favorite joke has to be during the race scene when Red Son pulls out the motorcycle and is like “You think I would build just one car!” AND HOLDS UP LEGO INSTRUCTIONS LMAO

Plot was, basic. The only thing I found really compelling was Princess Iron Fan, I’m not going to lie. I didn’t dislike it, it’s just a standard pilot plot so I didn’t care for it. I think I liked the first half more than the second half, because after Bull Demon King gets his armor, everything just goes so fast that I stopped really caring.

Now, my main problem with the episode is just, it was so incredibly rushed. Which listen I get it I do! It’s only one hour and they have to introduce the main conflict, introduce the whole cast, actually get the main conflict, actually get the resolution, and solve the main conflict. That’s hard to do with full length films, of course it’s going to be rushed. But, it did make it less enjoyable for me. I don’t know maybe it’s just a me thing, but I hope as I watch the seasons they’re able to slow down the story a lot more. Also, yes I know it’s a Lego show, but my god did they put so many obvious “we made this in order to make a toy” scenes! I get they have to sell toys but there was just way too many for one episodes. I hope they’re at least spread out in the next season.

And that’s my review! Sorry it’s not very put together, I was mostly just writing down whatever came to my mind about the episode. I might do season by season reviews, or a few episodes at a time. Either way I think this show might be a new favorite of mine and I’m excited where to go!

Also a few things: I don’t care for spoilers, and I have actively spoiled myself with this show. I also joined the fandom way before I even watched the show. You guys just make way too cool fanarts and edits Dammit! Anyway I don’t care if you spoil me in the comments lol, I probably won’t even realize what you are talking about until I get to that scene so, it’s all good

[theeeveetamer]

I still haven't seen absolutely every support yet but I think I've seen enough that my general opinions won't drastically change. So, I thought it would be fun to do a tier list with my general sentiments on the cast. Explanations (and spoilers) under the cut.

Tiers are arbitrarily ordered (mostly) by recruitment/encounter order. Also I couldn't find a tierlist with Lindon and Saphir but Lindon would be Neutral but ended up liking, and Saphir is I thought I would like you and I did.

I thought I would like you and I did:

Not much to say here. I immediately gravitated toward Alfred and Alcryst when they were revealed because they have the looks and personality of characters I usually like, and I ended up liking them. Diamant was a character that didn't really catch my attention pre-release but as soon as I met him I figured I'd like him. Lumera is a hot dragon mommy and I have a type. Saphir was immediately interesting to me because we don't get a lot of visually older looking female characters in FE, and her supports are actually pretty interesting.

I thought I would dislike you but I ended up liking you:

Alear, nothing personal, I just usually don't care for the self-insert/Avatar characters in games. They're at best something I just view as utilitarian and at worst they can be both bland and warp the entire plot around themselves. Alear is definitely some degree of bland, but in a generically shounen anime good guy way not in a "there's just nothing there" way.

Pandreo I just wasn't into the whole frat boy vibe, but he wound up being surprisingly fun.

Hortensia is someone I found kind of annoying in the main story. Her voice is also a little grating. But having gotten all of her supports she's got a lot of interesting stuff going on and it really endeared me to her.

Goldmary I initially pegged as annoying, but honestly she's just so desperate it wraps all the way back around to being endearing. The fact that at least some characters actually react to her obnoxiousness in an expected way (e.g. Vander being just baffled that she can be so Like This) does a lot to make her schtick endearing.

I was neutral and I ended up liking you

Again not much to say. These are all characters I didn't have much opinion on one way or another, but they won me over either through their supports or plot involvement.

I'll just call out Etie for her voice (I was fully expecting her to have a very typical high squeaky young anime girl voice based on her design, so when she opened her mouth and sounded like she does I was very pleasantly surprised) and Celine for the sheer ruthlessness she can display. Love me a girl that looks sweet and soft but will happily cut your head off without a second thought if you try to hurt the people she loves.

I was neutral and I remained neutral

I don't love them, I don't hate them either. Mauvier is here mainly because he kind of confuses me with some of the decisions they made with him. It's not enough that I'd say I dislike him, but it's also not counterbalanced by enough to make me say that I like him.

I was neutral and I ended up disliking you

Louis's entire thing is that he's a massive creep, specifically toward women. Yeah, I know the localization tried to censor it, but it's still kind of obvious that he's creepy just based on how most of the characters react to him in his supports.

Maybe a bit hypocritical because I tend to like the shameless flirt types, but something just hits different about a guy being a bit of a flirt vs. a guy showing up to a pool to vouyeristically watch half naked girls without their knowledge. Like, at least the shameless flirt characters usually get shot down all the time or characters acknowledge that they're being creepy. I haven't seen a Louis support yet where someone just goes "you're being fucking creepy, women don't exist for your viewing pleasure, knock it off."

I thought I would like you and I ended up disliking you

CW here for disordered eating

Lemme just say I love Seadall's design. The second I saw him I knew he was gonna be a character I wanted to get all of the supports for and possibly ship. I just hate a lot of his supports. I wish they hadn't leaned so hard on his food thing, because after a while it just started getting really uncomfortably reminiscent of disordered eating. And like canonically I'm sure he wasn't meant to be representative of disordered eating. I think it's more about the crazy physical standards professional athletes (dancers and figure skaters especially) maintain to be at the top of their craft... but, well, there's a reason why so many of them develop disordered eating habits. I don't think this would bother me that much if he just complained about not getting to eat food that he likes sometimes, but it's the extreme reactions to the food that bugs me. Like, he will literally hunt down Timerra whenever she's cooking just to yell at her for cooking food she knows he can't eat or he'll sit there and agonize over whether or not he should eat something to the point where he's consulting fuckin' fate to decide if he's allowed to eat a thing, or he's beating himself up over the mere thought of eating something.

He definitely has some good supports don't get me wrong, but the whole food thing really dragged down the character for me.

I thought I would dislike you and I did

TBF to this tier, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. A character that you love to hate can be just as much fun as a character you just love, and boy do I love to hate these guys.

So yeah, generally I find most of the cast very likable. There's not really a lot of characters I dislike, and honestly the ones that I do dislike are for pretty specific reasons

[scenegraph]

scenegraph reviews: smp kit makes pose rockman.exe (part one: assemblé)

i thought i wasn’t going to type up one of these for rockman.  he’s basically the same as roll, right?  he’s going to have similar pain points on assembly, right?

lolno.  well, lolsorta.

so!  as you might recall from the roll review, ‘skin’ tone for these kits is a bright shade of simpsons yellow, which i painted over at the same time as painting the roll parts to arrive at a more attractive pale peach:

these look like they’re going to be faceplates, and on the side of the box they’re displayed like they’re option parts like roll’s hand attachments are, but they slide (with a lot of resistance) into place the same way roll’s face did.  so they’re really more like choose your adventure options.  just select the one that suits the way you tend to display your figures; because i like to make my figures do doofy shit all the time rather than just fight, i went with the maskless one.

now, the good news is, there are way less load-bearing decals on rockman!  things that should arrive painted in, like his bodysuit stripes, are painted in!  noice!

at first i thought this was Main Character Privilege.  then i realized that rockman has no open hands.  just these fists.

that’s all he gets!  he cannot do the ‘guess ill die’ shrug like roll can because lol no open hands, though he can flex his wrists to do the jealousy pose which no rockmans or megamans i’ve owned before could do so... equality at last?? 

roll’s open hands are so expressive and she can do so much between them and the fists, it’s a shame rockman doesn’t have the same.  presumably you can fix this by buying the style change set, since that comes with a kusamura seed and presumably they’d give you an extra set of open hands so that base rockman can hold it too, but that’s another one hundred and fifty dollars when i don’t want no style changes, give me more navis instead and don’t make me buy whole other kits just so i can get the option parts rockman deserves.  u actin’ like these are nine-dollar barbies i can just yoink a head or an outfit from instead of full-blown model kits with collector price points, i don’t appreciate it, bandai.

(also on the subject of rockman’s hands, there is an absolutely massive sprue to cut in the meat of rockman’s thumb that looks like booty even after sanding.  grr.)

however, i can say that this is still way cooler than 66 action rockman’s lack of a second hand at all.  either you displayed him with a sword made of bendy plastic or a buster.  here, rockman has a nice non-bendy sword, a buster, and a regular arm.  putting the sword together is quite painful, because it doesn’t slide together smoothly, but it’s a tiny model, it happens.

in addition, while that one finicky bit in roll’s upper arm that required boiling water and pliers is gone, instead they have introduced a new pain point:

this popped out and went sailing across the room the first time i tried assembling it.  on roll, this upper arm and shoulder joint is a single piece.  once the arm is assembled, it even plugs into rockman’s torso the exact same way it did on roll. why is it different at all

the same “at this small size, invisible variances in the casting will make bits of this hard to jam together or not fit on at all” disclaimer from roll applies to rockman as well, so his wrist is very tetchy and he can’t wear his backpack until i sit there and epoxy it to his back, buuut that can wait for another day.  for now, both rock and roll are assembled, and nothing has outright broken so i don’t think i need to buy another set of these.  mission accomplished!

...aaaand i’ll do more pictures, comparisons, etcetc in a part two tomorrow or sunday.

[everyothermouse]

The grand theater presents an inside scoop on Boiling Over: we asked each of the core actors what their favorite part of making the show has been :] under the cut cus certain people had a lott to say

Vannessa

"I love the whole haunted house vibe of it all, running around and screaming is definitely my favorite part! The cast try their best to get a genuine rise out of me, including Emory, who isn't even a villain. It's very fun, if you think watching horror movies is fun you should try being in one- you'd think being friends with the main villains actor would ruin it, but you just have to put in some suspension of disbelief and it's easy to have fun being scared!"

Luke

"My favorite of my additions to the story is the concept of Vanilla's occasional lucid moments. While I understand the horror of a character who commits atrocities without any remorse, I personally find the concept of realizing you have committed something horribly wrong and against your moral code against something incredibly important to you to be much more gut wrenching and horrifying. Writing Vanilla's breakdowns of guilt that are laced with the horrifying knowledge that the moment will pass and that he will go back to being an awful person is my favorite thing.

I enjoy contrasting it to my character, who does not have strong feelings of guilt over his actions. It's an interesting comparison to see a character so wrecked with guilt but who has so little control of himself that he will undoubtedly do terrible things again compared to a character who has no guilt for his actions but who is fairly in control of himself and most often takes a course of action beneficial to the safety of himself and others, outside of moments where he is put under intense outside pressure and acts poorly due to fear. 

I purposefully make sure Luke is always the character Vanilla goes to when he has moments of regret, because I really enjoy seeing the dynamic of a deeply emotional character who is attempting to destroy himself from the inside out, and a character who is so shrouded in defense mechanisms to try to not destroy himself that his humanity and emotion is almost completely turned off.

That's what I love about Luke. His character is in direct contrast to the out of control, emotional messes that are the villains, but also in direct contrast to the caring, strong willed, and equally emotionally driven heroes. He is in his own separate category, and it makes him a very good character to accentuate other characters' traits. He himself is also benefited by this, as his strange emotionless but survivalist behavior is much more evident when you put him against pretty much any other character in the cast, especially Cayenne, Vanessa, and Vanilla. Vanessa's choice to help Luke after he betrayed her just helps to highlight her character a lot, in a way that wouldn't have been possible without him. Cayenne's fighting against Kath and Vanilla is much more poignant when displayed against Luke's blatant compliance. I just enjoy writing Luke a lot. Vanilla is still my favorite part though, his acting definitely adds to it, he genuinely looks like he's trying to rip off his own skin out of disgust and fear, he looks and sounds like he's going through his own personal hell that the rest of us can't see during those scenes."

Cayenne

"Honestly? My friends. I enjoy projecting my trauma on to Cayenne and basically barfing out my feelings through him, and then getting to turn around and go hug my boyfriend and pretend to be a baseball star. It's fun man, and Vanilla and Kath really make an effort to make things fun and pleasant, Kath is a total dick but xe always brings cupcakes and grins at me whenever they're saying something rude out of character, and you can tell we're just having a lot of fun. Meeting Marshall was the best part of everything, he's the fucking best."

Vanilla

"I like the torture scenes."

Marshall

"I enjoy the setting! We've been working on set design for a long time, it's slow and changes a lot. When we first started, Kath lived in a tent, the baseball stadium was actually high budget, me and vanillas house was tiny, and Kai didn't even have a house, he just had an office! Man, things have changed, and for the better! I've loved roughing out the aesthetic of the story- dirty baseball fields and equipment for marshall and kai's mildly rebellious and punk romance, the clean and soulless house of two perfectionist parents who put too much pressure on the kids they never see, the cozy little apartment of Kai and Marshall, the absolute mess of depression and misery and trash that is kath's house- we've still got so much to do, but oh my god am I enjoying it all so much. Vanilla came to us with his ideas about wildflowers and the messy, exciting, and free energy he saw in Kath and we took that and ran with it hard for the scenery, and it has done us so many favors. I can not wait until the whole set feels as intentional and well worked as those few small places that we've perfected- if anything, I hope we improve some more on those areas too!

(Ps, i also love working with cayenne, but thats just my favorite part of life in general so it'd be unfair to list it haha. Hes my inspiration for this whole story, most of my favorite sets were made for like, 5 minute romance scenes between me and him because I put way too much effort into our little subplots."

Kath

"I love the characters, I honestly can't even pick a favorite because they're all so fun to me. I'm biased toward Emory cus we're good friends outside of the show and he injects a lot of his own humor into how he plays and writes Emory, so every time Character Emory is on screen I have a great time. Marshall is a really interesting character to me, I think he has more under the surface than he likes to show and I'm really excited to keep working on him and seeing what he has in store, I really want us to do his concept justice so we're not rushing into anything at the moment, just taking our time workshopping pretty much everything. Kath is a really fun chaotic character, xer motives are totally bullshit and I love it, xe's just an angry fucking bitch who destroys shit and it's so fucking fun to play, I especially love trying to get into depth on the acting in scenes with Vanilla- in scenes they're doing crime it's usually just pure joy combined with anger, but Vanilla really fucks with Kath's head so there's this crazy mix of emotions going on there. He's an abuser, victim, partner, best friend, etc, Kath is constantly trying to rationalize all these different pieces of Vanilla in xer head but it's difficult because while from an outside perspective he's not that complicated, from Kath's perspective, these are like 2 completely different people with totally different personalities and relationships with Kath, and every time Kath is with him xer brain is fighting itself trying to fit the 2 together when it just can't. He's a sweet, kind, best friend, he's a total freak who's been stalking xem for years, he's doing whatever he's doing with Cayenne, he's taking everything Kath can dish out with a smile on his face, practically taking away all of Kaths power by saying to their one strength against everyone, this doesn't hurt me, I enjoy this. It drives Kath insane, which is fucking fantastic for an otherwise very self assured character, he absolutely destroys xem. 

All that isn't even half the characters, I just love them all a lot."

Jake

"I'm not super involved in the writing honestly, I'm just here for my girlfriend. I like the part where we get done with the show and we hang out on the couch"

[magentaink18]

Although there are a lot of unnecessary sub plots in the redux version of Apocalypse Now, the anti-war message is much stronger (kinda because there’s more instances of needless destruction and displays of America being shitty) but I guess it is also diluted with the goofy sub-plots so it balances out anyways.

Also Chef has unspoken rizz. Man managed to pull a playboy bunny despite completely ignoring her interesting infodump about birds. Well I guess he didn’t “pull” her per se, but they seemed to get along well, like she was being genuine or at least came across that way because if she was putting on any kinda act, we wouldn’t have had the bird monologue but idk man I guess you need to talk about your interests when you can when you’re working for an enterprise that is in place to oppress and dehumanise you. I love bird lady more than anything but Hugh Hefner can eat shit.

This film’s fatal flaw is its overindulgence but the self awareness does take the edge off ,, like the narrative, characterization and general composition is amazingly produced and entertaining while still clearly communicating a serious message. I think the main critique of glorification is often misinterpreted irony. Like many aspects are so hyperbolic (nonetheless accurate to the actual Vietnam War) that they’re meant to appear ridiculous and uncomfortable in order to convey the corruption of the US military

Also funny surfer man go brrrr

Song - Let’s Go Trippin’ (Dick Dale)

I literally never make edits of characters and then the one that my brain decided to make one that ignores the importance of the central message of the film it’s from .

I suppose there’s always the argument that the main cast of characters were drafted against their will and are just trying to get through it. Of course that doesn’t justify everything they do. I’d say the character who makes the least effort to participate is Chef bc he never fires a gun at anyone (apart from the tiger because the poor fella’s terrified). But what I’m saying is that the main characters aren’t into war or particularly patriotic and it doesn’t fully align with their beliefs much at all - they’re just tryna get through it - unlike , say , Kilgore. They are characterised in unique ways in which any pRiDe fOr tHeiR cOunTrY (used to justify corruption) they may have isn’t explicitly there or at the centre of the way they’re characterised.

Me when idiot surfer man who does nothing but fuck up at the expense of other people

Sorry guys my neuros are divergent I need to have a balance of fun and silliness with analysis and critical evaluation when watching this film for the 100th time

They also made Willard way sillier and goofier. I love to see the poor jaded and traumatised lad actually have a little bit of fun. A few giggles for a treat. Just a little bit of clownery to balance out the edginess.

Respectfully, there’s also a significant increase in boobs in the redux version, immediately making it better than the Final Cut /hj

Also also they gave Clean a proper burial and sendoff,,,

Sure, the Final Cut is better in terms of what constitutes a good film but the redux version fucks if you liked the Final Cut for its narrative and characters aside from its more filmic aspects. Not to say there aren’t some elements of cinematography that were left out the Final Cut that go hard as fuck. Like the transition from Roxanne behind the curtain to Willard back on the boat in the mist ,,,, mmmmmmmmmmm

It also ties up a few small minor loose ends and clarifies on a few details

Willard’s from Ohio? *insert Ohio joke here idk man I’m British*

Maybe I’m psychoanalysing Chief too much rn but out of all the characters, the way in which they’re presented, he’s the most likely to have started off as the most patriotic. However, his whole thing is following orders and ensuring order and professionalism is retained so maybe he could just be a fan of those things and not inherently having his motives be that he’s abiding to the rules because he loves his country, but abiding to the rules because he loves rules. Whatever patriotism he may or may not have had is destroyed over the course of the film and meets its definitive end with the death and burial (as seen in the redux version) of Clean. The scene where he folds up the tattered US flag that was previously on the boat and hands it to Willard. Or at least that’s my interpretation since he still made that whole announcement when handing it to him but it just felt as if he was reciting empty lines if anything but idk but he’s an interesting character either way. But damn that scene goes hard and it was good to see Clean get the sendoff he was entitled to instead of his body just disappearing without an explanation :’]

[rurahdenisesblog]

Sex Education: Raising The Standard for Representing LGBTQ+ in The Entertainment Industry

Sex Education has indeed established itself as one of the most enlightening programs on adolescence and sexuality, but with the release of its second season, it raises the standard for complex representations of LGBTQ+ youth. By the time Sex Education season two's closing titles appear, the well-liked Netflix series is one of the queerest adolescent comedies ever; about half of the key characters have displayed queerness in some form.

Ncuti Gatwa's portrayal in Sex Education's first season exposed us to the unashamed, unrepentant Eric Effiong. Although he is close friends with the main character Otis Milburn, the program never treats him as the cliché homosexual best buddy or comedic relief. Sure, he's extremely entertaining and isn't scared to show off when it comes to his costumes, but Sex Education has always presented Eric as a complex individual. He has his own moral principles, which include his religion and the church family to which he belongs to. Also important is the fact that he is of Ghanaian and Nigerian heritage in a largely white LGBTQ+ television environment. One of the most progressive LGBT characters on television is Eric, especially with all of his qualities. Although, to be honest, it does so by employing one of the oldest tactics in the book—a love triangle—season two advances Eric's plot. However, heterosexual characters have traditionally been the only ones who had access to this narrative device. Rarely do queer characters ever have the chance to date one possible partner, much less two. The classic tension of who will he choose is used in the love triangle, but ultimately, it doesn't matter which boy Eric likes more; rather, it matters which one makes Eric feel more like himself. Even his mother can see the differences between the two as they compete for her son's affection.In the end, Eric picks Adam, one of the few bisexual young men on television. Adam's path of self-discovery and acceptance serves as a reminder that there are indeed plenty adolescents who battle with their identity, even though characters like Eric and Rahim are proud of their identity from the start. It also serves as a reminder that there is hope and that loving yourself will enable you to truly embrace everyone else. Ola, who discovers she is pansexual after her separation with Otis and the emergence of love for her friend Lily, joins Adam under the bisexual umbrella. She stands in stark contrast to Adam since Ola is willing to embrace rainbows and give tailored menswear her own unique twist after taking a little online exam to accept who she is. Ola and Adam are coworkers at the convenience store, and their relationship turns out to be one of Sex Education's most delightful and unexpected outcomes. Although their shared interest adds a new dimension to their relationship, their sexual orientation is not always what forges their bond.

While Sex Education receives acclaim for exposing the diversity of queerness, fans of the show would love to see a trans character be included in its plot. In the end though, it's so thrilling that about half the cast of a popular TV show may identify as gay in some way. It's not only that these LGBTQ+ characters in Sex Education fit a certain standard, though. The way they are incorporated into the program is how. Their sexuality is an element of their identity that impacts several other aspects of who they are, but it's not the entirety of who they are, as you can see in the care with which their narratives are portrayed. It's a vital part of their identity, and it motivates some of their decisions and behaviors, but not all of them. They are present, they identify as queer, but they are also let to be whole, multifaceted people.

References:

[draoidhean]

lmao lets kick this blog off with a meta as usual. 

today we will talk about kayneth, the artist, how his artistry manifested in his magecraft, and why he should’ve stayed out of the war. 

so, in the character materials, it’s said that kayneth’s talents ( outside of his mastery of five areas of magecraft ) include drawing and sculpting. i’d also like to note that kayneth and kiritsugu are the same age when they participate in the war, ( they’re 28 ) kayneth just looks older because all of the stress of his life has absolutely aged him. anyway, the one thing kayneth was doing that kept him feeling like he wasn’t already 80 years old was art. 

this man has talent like da vinci as a painter and sculpts like michelangelo. kayneth’s art and sculpture sells for absurdly large sums of money, and he’d be able to sustain his lavish lifestyle on his art alone. being an artist is his main talent. “but percival, he mastered 5 areas of magecraft!” you may say, to which i answer: yes, but there are other aspects of magecraft, namely the workings of mage mentality that kayneth actually DIDN’T master. he didn’t grasp what counted when it came to surviving as a mage. 

kayneth comes from a noble bloodline and thus was raised to be chivalrous. and he actually is. he wants his opponents to fight him with honor, and that’s why he was guaranteed to fail in the fourth war. because that was just going to be a bunch of underhanded tricks. kayneth, unlike the other masters, set up an incredibly complex bounded field that displayed everything he was capable of. he wasn’t hiding his talent as a mage ( and yes, he’s a prodigy at performing as one ). he would’ve done well if he battled tokiomi, because tokiomi is also much like kayneth in traditional manner. mind you, kayneth also would’ve won that, because while tokiomi is from a long ass bloodline, kayneth is a literal prodigy who can and will use every skill he has. because he sees no reason NOT to. 

and speaking of that, his main mystic code, volumen hydragyrum, is really. 1 artistic 2 incredibly OP when used properly. kayneth’s affinity to air and water make him the perfect person to use the mystic code, which is made of mercury. it’s a very artistic code in itself, because kayneth is an artist. it comes out in basically anything he does. against any other mage but kiritsugu, kayenth’s artistry would’ve … given him a win in some way or another. he’s got skill above the majority of the cast ( 3000 mp to waver’s 5 mp for example / kiritsugu says the only person more dangerous than kayneth is kirei ). he has a knowledge basis that goes beyond most of the cast when it comes to magecraft, too. and he’s creative. really, the only way to take him down would be to use underhanded tricks. 

unfortunately for kayneth, using underhanded tricks is also a surefire way to win against him. looping back to the whole chivalry and honor thing, kayneth won’t tarnish his own honor like that, no matter who he’s faced with. this is how he gets absolutely screwed over by kiritsugu ( and i have a few choice words for the whole kayneth using the gun to kill risei, because that’s just. not his style ever lmao ). there’s no amount of skill that will keep you from getting fucked over by someone who cheats; the worst part perhaps of this is kayneth KNOWS that. he KNOWS kiritsugu will cheat and YET he also still fights because he knows running away will ALSO be a slight on his honor. 

really, all of this could be avoided if he just did art and didn’t care about mage society lmao thanks for coming to my tedtalk

[everkait]

okay so i decided to revisit this post and add some new thoughts i have after being away from the subject for two years.

first of all, i do agree on everything, the guilt thing does make a ton of sense and at some point he himself probably couldn't really distinguish anymore if he was helping troy because of the guilt or because he liked him. the thing with helping troy when he refused to give up his weapons was most definitely because of his guilt, which he kinda almost even admits to, when he finally tells troy that he killed jeremiah. he doesn't say he feels guilty but it does come across as him feeling guilty. not necessarily for the act of actually killing jeremiah but for the fact what this meant that he took troy's father from him.

but jake's death changes things. i think that afterwars he most likely has entered the territory of being firmly on the side of liking troy because now his own actions (intervening when jake attacked troy) actually caused another person's death, however accidental it may have been. someone who was objectively a good person and someone who, more importantly, his sister liked and had a relationship with. so his choice to hide troy's involvement in the whole incident was, at least from my point of view, not about his guilt anymore and more along the lines of, i really don't want anything to happen to him right now and if i say the wrong thing, something definitely will happen. and this time, there really is no excuse. what troy did resulted in the death of a lot of people, not just jake, we just don't care as much about the other characters because they're not as fleshed out as our main cast is, so it is kinda easy to forget about them.

something else i wanted to talk about is the reason for troy liking nick. i think for troy to go and actually like or respect a person is strongly tied to them displaying some kind of physical power/control over him. troy seems to instantly like madison and one of the first interactions the two have with each other is when she stabs him with a spoon and takes him hostage. one could argue that alicia was present for these interactions as well so he should like her in the same way that he likes madison but madison was the one to instigate everything. she was the one that took troy hostage and she was the one that stabbed him with the spoon, so obviously he would fixate on her and not alicia. and once nick shows troy that he can also have power over him, that is when troy's attitude starts to change. because when nick attacks troy and holds him at gunpoint, that is when troy realises that nick might be worth his attention and that madison is not the only interesting person in this family. i don't wanna say that troy is attracted to power but it kinda doth seem that way.

another thing worth talking about is that troy may respond well to physical power but he does not respond well to someone trying to exert power over him emotionally. which is shown when he nearly kills madison after she goes and talks badly about his mother. what is also interesting about this is that this was the one situation (if i remember everything correctly), where he was the closest to killing anyone from the clark family the entire season and it is madison of all people, whom he had seemingly liked from the beginning.

going back to troy liking nick, this all started when nick held him at gunpoint and showed him that he actually had the guts to do something. which is the turning point for troy. this makes nick intriguing. there is now a foundation upon which a relationship can be build. at least on troy's side. nick isn't so sure yet. he does however join the militia and we get some bonding between them so we can see he is getting there.

to me what really cements the friendship between the two at least on troys side is when nick tells him he killed jeremiah. which is, well, not something you'd expect considering jeremiah was troys father but i do think that for troy this kinda seals the deal. it shows him that nick is willing to step up and do things and it makes him appreciate nick more? [which, seriously my dude, he killed your father, he may have been an asshole and all that but goodness, you ought to hate him.] he even later accuses madison of having nick kill his father and not doing it herself which makes me think that he feels kinda, betrayed by her for that? [troy, buddy, you seriously have some major problems.] nick acknowledging to himself he cares about troy and it's not just because of his guilt probably happens somewhere between his talk with alicia ("you don't owe troy. you like him", and i just really really love that dialogue) and jake's death.

that would be everything i have to add at the moment and wow, i did not expect it to be that much. needless to say that i still very much love nick and troy even though i haven't spent much time on them over the last two years but it was surprisingly easy to get back into it. [and with that i mean it was easy to get back into season three, exclusively season three because that is the only good season. in my opinion. feel free to disagree.]

about nick clark and troy otto

just to get this clear, i love troy and i love nick. i love them both individually but i also love them together and i love this really weird thing that they have going on between them. be it a friendship or whatever, i love it. they had so much potential together and i still can't believe they killed troy just like that.

in the beginning they disliked each other. nick may have even hated troy because of what he did to luciana and that's okay, he had every right to. i think troy disliked nick because he wasn't with his family and for troy the ranch and his family were everything for him. so the thought that nick had left his family on his own volition was very alien to troy. it's not something he would've ever done so he judged and disliked nick because of it and didn't want him on the ranch.

but even though nick heavily disliked troy, he didn't kill him. he had two chances to do so and in the second situation he could've actually gotten away with it but he still didn't kill troy. and troy wasn't even mad at nick for threatening him. he just took it in stride like it was a normal tuesday, he even encouraged nick to do it and later on said that they now could be friends after nick destroyed his notebook. i think that was some kind of turning point for both of them but more so for troy. he didn't necessarily start to like nick after that but his opinion about him wasn't as negative as it was before. nick on the other hand started to tolerate troy a little more after that. he still probably disliked him and thought he was rather dangerous but he wasn't as averse to him as before.

then luciana left and nick stayed. shortly afterwards nick and troy have this little talk down in the pantry and troy tells nick "it's just good you didn't take off after her", and i really loved it when he said that. i think he was being genuine and it shows that he has come to accept nick as part of the community. he doesn't necessarily like him but he accepts him. nick on the other hand is still a little defensive and wary of troy. it shows at the end of the episode when madison tells everyone that walker killed the trimbols and nick confronts her afterwards and tells her not to forget what troy is.

in the next episode while alicia is with walker, nick joins the militia. troy asks nick if he's got permission from madison which shows that he still doesn't really like nick. he accepts him but doesn't seem to want to be around him more than he has to. nick later tells madison that part of the reason he joined the militia is to keep troy, an enemy, close, although madison doesn't completely believe him. later in the episode comes one of my favourite scenes when troy asks nick "you feeling blue, nicky?", he then tells nick to "go kamikaze another day", which to me shows that he genuinely doesn't want nick dead. i don't particularly know why he didn't want nick to die at that moment but i don't think it was for madison's sake as he couldn't have cared less for nick at the beginning even though he is madison's son, whom he seemed to like almost instantly.

nick and troy are now in the militia together and do some bonding, like the poet talk or when they share their experiences and feelings about their father's deaths. around that time somewhere was a turning point for nick when he realized that he didn't actually want troy to die or maybe started caring for him in some capacity. he actually contemplated telling troy that he was the one that killed jeremiah even though madison thinks that troy would kill him for that but nick's not so sure. then comes the highlight of the episode when troy refuses to give up his weapons and nick actually stays back with him. he could've gone out with the others but he stays inside with troy because he wants to. he chooses to do so. because he knows troy, he knows that this will end bloody but he doesn't want that, he doesn't want troy to die. he himself even almost dies because of it when crazy dog gets the drop on him but troy is there and saves him although he gets hurt in the process. he doesn't want nick to die either which we already saw as he didn't want to shoot nick when he was standing between him and the rest and asked him to get out of the way. although troy doesn't want nick dead he still doesn't seem to have realized that nick cares about him as he asks nick why he would care what happens to him. furthermore it comes as a surprise to troy that nick stays with him and he tells him as much but also thanks him for keeping him company. nick then tries everything to get troy to back off, he even tells troy that he doesn't want him to die but troy doesn't listen. only when he confesses that jeremiah didn't commit suicide but that he actually killed him troy finally backs off. and he doesn't seem to be angry at nick.

i think that for troy the thought that his dad would commit suicide and leave them all behind was unbearable. he just couldn't accept it and that's why hearing nick's confession was such a relief for him and made him stop. doesn't matter that nick killed him because he at least didn't kill himself as that's not something that jeremiah would ever do and it's also not something that troy can live with.

now that troy knows that nick killed jeremiah i think he starts to see him in a new light. he later accuses madison for not being the one to kill his father but to let her son do the job and feels like she wronged him somehow by not killing his father. he thought she was like him but now he's not so sure about her anymore and seems to divert his attention even more towards nick. also something worth mentioning is that other than at the beginning troy never tried to kill nick again while he did contemplate killing madison after her cruel words about his mother.

up next comes something that i really can't wrap my head around, which is nick's hallucination of troy. how did his subconscious come up with troy of all people? why did he hallucinate that troy saved him? why? i don't understand. i love the hallucination and i love the fact that he hallucinated troy but i still don't really get why. maybe it's supposed to show us that nick feels safe around troy or that he trusts that troy would save him if he had the chance?

troy's now gone from the ranch but nick still seems to worry about him and alicia calls him out on it. she tells him that he doesn't owe troy anything but likes him and nick never refutes that. alicia also says that they "share the same self-destruction", to which nick replies "maybe i'm as sick as he is", and i love that. he admits that he thinks they might be similar and for me this whole talk just again proves that nick really does care about troy. what makes the whole talk even better is that not even five minutes later troy shows up at nick's to warn him from the horde. he was exiled but he sneaks back in just to warn nick of something that he himself is responsible for. he still doesn't seem to believe that nick cares about him though because when nick says, "it's good you're alive", he answers with "i don't think you believe that". and that's just sad. that after everything nick's done for him troy still can't believe that nick cares about him. what i also love is when troy says, "but you saved me in your own way", and that he'd like to return the favour. i'm not entirely sure what troy means here though. does he mean that nick stopped him from going kamikaze and saved his life or does he mean something different? if he'd simply told nick that nick saved him then i'd have an easier time believing it but he also says "in your own way", and i can't wrap my head around that. it just feels like he means something else with that than just nick saving his life.

another thing about their nightly talk that i love is that nick doesn't even think to rat troy out, not for a second. he says he can hide him or he has to sneak out, these are the only options.

the next day nick and jake then go out together to search for troy and find out what he meant with his warning. on the road jake's intentions regarding his brother are made clear when he takes out his gun and tells nick the story about the rabbit. when they finally reach troy nick again tries to talk him down but to no avail. troy doesn't plan on surviving this one and nothing nick could say can change that. jake then finally attacks troy and nearly kills him but is stopped by nick which results in jake's death. again, nick stands by troy and doesn't want him to die. even though troy just led the horde towards the ranch and literally destroyed everything that they had built there and nick knows it. but he still can't give up on troy and jake has to pay for it.

almost everything troy does from now on in my opinion he does for nick. nick wants him to help save the ranch so troy helps him. not because he wants to or cares about anyone there but because nick wants him to help. so he does. and those couple scenes really are everything. troy has fun doing what he does and nick has fun too. they're both being crazy together and they are loving it. when they are saved by madison, strand and walker nick covers for troy and lies about the horde. he knows that if he'd tell what had really happened someone would snap and troy would most likely end up dead and nick can't have that so he lies. even though a couple episodes back he wasn't happy with madison when she did the exact same thing when lying about the trimbols.

i also couldn't miss the fact that when alicia says everyone deserves to carve something out for themselves in this life troy and nick exchange a very quick glance. it could mean nothing but you can't deny that they looked at each other when she said that. and then when they have their talk in the car comes troy's most famous line: "all right, you stayed at the ranch because you love me." i think it's meant as a joke but again, nick doesn't refute troy's statement and they both just chuckle. like nick admitted to alicia that he and troy may be similar, troy says the same to nick now. and like before, nick doesn't say anything against it. it's not just troy who thinks like that, nick himself already came to the same conclusion.

at the bazaar we then come to some of the most bizarre scenes ever when nick and troy get high together. this is another thing that troy does just for nick. he doesn't really want to get high and seems to be rather uncomfortable at the beginning but he still does it because of nick. nick does have to remind him though that he saved troy's life but in the end troy does it for nick. again. surrounded by the infected nick then confesses to troy that he doesn't want to go back with madison and troy comforts him and hugs him. he hugs him! this scene as well as the couple ones before when they were staggering around together, arms slung around each other's shoulder, are everything. they are definitely friends by now, rather close ones actually, genuinely care for each other, and i really love the place that their relationship is at in that moment.

the next day nick then informs madison that he and troy plan to stay at the bazaar. we don't know troy's opinion on this but i think he only stayed there because of nick but i'll talk about this later on.

when troy hears that the proctors plan to attack the dam he is the one to yank nick out of his stupor. i'm not entirely sure if he wants to help madison for nick's sake or because he still kinda likes her. but it is worth mentioning that back when nick joined the militia troy asked nick: "is madison okay with this?", while now he tells nick "your mother's in trouble". back then he says 'madison' while he now says 'your mother' which kinda strikes me as odd. to say 'your mother' is more personal and it feels like troy acknowledges the fact that madison is nick's mother and that's why they should go and save her. so he might be doing this for nick's sake because even though nick doesn't want to stay with madison she's still his mother and he still loves her so troy might wanna save her for nick. still, i'm not entirely sure.

while nick is questioned by daniel troy tries to reconnect with madison, at least it seems to me like that's what he's doing. like i said before i think that troy only stayed at the bazaar because of nick. and here's the reason why: he tells madison that the bazaar wasn't a good place for him and nick. he probably already realized that after the first night because how could he not but he still decided to stay there, all because of nick. so again, he did that for nick. he then confirms to madison that he and nick are indeed friends and to troy they are actually closer than friends, like brothers, and that he genuinely likes nick. when troy asks madison if they're good she says they are but i didn't believe her, not for a second. she needed too long for her answer and was too quick in changing the topic. at the same time daniel questions nick and again, nick lies for troy and covers him. but this is a different situation, this is daniel. nick knows what daniel can do but he still lies to protect troy.

in the end it's all for nothing though because madison is the one that finally kills him after finding out that he was the one who led the horde to the ranch. nick did everything he could to protect troy and then madison, nick's mother, is the one to actually take troy's life. nick does look horrified when she does it but i feel like he could've been a little more shocked. he just looks horrified, turns around and walks out of the room, and after that i was a little disappointed in him for not showing more emotions. later when nick and madison are hiding he then starts arguing with her about it but the argument was more about the fact that madison can just callously kill someone and not necessarily about her having killed troy. although when madison says she killed him for her kids, she made that call for them, nick tells her "not for me!", and i really liked hearing him say that because he seemed angry but also sad and hurt so he's obviously not okay with what she did. later when john asks him about troy and he says that troy's dead and his mom killed him he also sounds a bit accusing which i also loved to hear. the way john asked, "is your friend here, nick?", i loved that as well. it again solidifies that nick and troy were friends because nick answers the question without refuting the statement and saying that they weren't friends or something like that. so at least troy and nick both acknowledged that they were friends.

but of course we also cannot forget nick's suicide note. i really love the fact that he called it his 'suicide note' because that was a reference all the way back to his talk with troy and the rest of the militia when troy didn't want him to go all kamikaze on them. i see it as nick kinda honouring his friendship with troy when he calls it his 'suicide note' because nobody knows the story behind it but it's obvious what it means. i've heard people say that now that troy's gone nick's all suicidal and troy's not there to stop him like he did before. but i'm not sure. you can certainly interpret it as that because nick does seem to be rather disillusioned and he's definitely still grieving troy. there is however no other option at the moment if he wants his mom and sister as well as strand to survive so i don't think he's just suicidal because troy's gone. to me it seems like he's accepted his fate and made his peace with the fact that he would die and i think it would've been a great end for nick if they'd actually let him die there.

i will definitely miss them though because their dynamic was great and i really do think that nick could've helped troy become a better person. he'd never be a good person but he could've gotten better, if they had just given him a chance. as i said before, i really think that most of the things troy did after the horde he did for nick so i genuinely believe nick could've helped him be a better person.