#anyway I think it's important to note that the villainous lair is in fact their childhood treehouse. they are rooming there as adults.

[bevvydraws]

Sweet Justice (cont.)

1, 2, 3

Chapter 4

Chat Noir almost wanted to groan at his current predicament. Tied up by a rope that the knights had managed to scrounge up somewhere, unable to move and a million thoughts racing through his head. 

Ladybug is--was--Marinette. 

Marinette is now akumatized. 

Chat Noir loves Ladybug. 

Adrien loves Marinette.

Adrien didn’t see that Marinette was struggling. He didn’t see that she needed help. He wasn’t there for her as a friend or as a partner. He had failed. She probably got akumatized because she felt she couldn’t trust anyone, even him. Even Chat Noir. 

Chat Noir began panicking slightly, feeling overwhelmed by the new information and not sure where to go from here. This would normally be the part where Ladybug would tell him her plan and he would see it through with her. But Ladybug wasn’t here. And she wouldn’t be showing up any time soon. He looked around at his classmates, all turned into knights ready to follow Princess Justice to the ends of the Earth if she asked. He couldn’t even find it in himself to be upset at them, because he could only imagine the guilt they must have felt before succumbing to her powers. 

He had to figure out how to escape without hurting any of them. Chat Noir sat quietly, gently chewing on his lip as he racked his brain with ideas. His baton was just out of reach, no one taking it since Princess Justice hadn’t told them to. If he could just stretch his leg out far enough to get his baton back, he’d feel a lot more prepared to make another move. Chat Noir tried to subtly stretch his leg out, scooting forward a little bit in order to get the toe of his boot around the baton. He had almost had it back to him when the classroom door opened. 

In walked Ivan and Kim, the two knights who had carried Lila to outside to be publicly humiliated in her stocks. In the back of his mind, Chat Noir was pleased with that knowledge. Behind Ivan and Kim, however, walked a third knight that Chat didn’t recognize. As the knight marched to him, Chat scooted himself backwards as far against the wall as he could, his baton forgotten. Normally, Chat wouldn’t have acted so cowardly in front of a villain. 

But these weren’t villains. These were good people protecting someone dear to him. He wasn’t sure how to feel right now. 

The knight stopped in front of him, extending a hand out to show that they were holding a letter. Chat looked up at them, and trying to sound as normal as possible, said, “Now I can’t very well take that letter with my arms behind my back, now can I?”

While this was meant to be sarcastic, the knights looked at each other pensively. 

“Her Royal Highness told me to deliver this letter to him,” the knight holding the letter said, “and to only let him read it.” 

Nino looked at him, glazed over eyes narrowed in contemplation. Alya spoke up, “If Her Royal Highness wants him to read it, then we have no choice but to untie him long enough to let him do so.” 

“You’re right,” Nino nodded, before forcing Chat Noir to stand up and beginning to untie him, “No funny business, cat.” Chat tried not to think too hard about how the voice coming out of his best friend was Nino’s voice, but at the same time sounded nothing like him. 

“Cat’s honor,” Chat replied smoothly, forcing his usual confident attitude. Once he was untied, he took the letter from the knight and read over the letter as the knights were on guard, expecting him to try and escape. 

“Dear Chat Noir,” the letter started, “You have no obligation to trust me, but I have no intention of giving Hawkmoth what he wants. I have a plan, but I need you to help in order for things to go in our favor. I know where his lair is. I was right before to suspect Gabriel Agreste. I know this will be hard on you… given your identity, but I trust that you will help me on my quest to make things right once and for all.” Chat felt tears well up in his eyes, not sure whether to cry over the fact his father was Hawkmoth afterall, or over the fact that Marinette said she trusted him even now. Wiping his tears away before they could even fall, he continued reading, “I need you to remain a prisoner for now, and trust me.” At the bottom of the letter the name Princess Justice was signed in regal, swooping letters, but it was obvious that she wrote this in a hurry. 

Chat Noir folded the letter up and stuck it in the pocket of his suit before holding his hands out in surrender. “Alright, you can tie me back up now.” 

--------

“It’s odd that Ladybug hasn’t shown up yet,” Princess Justice mused out loud, feigning concern. “Maybe she doesn’t care about her little kitten as much as she previously let on.” She mostly said this out loud for Hawkmoth’s benefit, as she had come to realize that Hawkmoth couldn’t read her thoughts, only hear what she was saying. Even the view he had from her eyes seemed to be limited, as he hadn’t said anything about the note she had written to Chat Noir. 

Now all Princess Justice had to do was act busy as she assembled her army. She could feel her ranks growing, a single thought resonating clearly throughout everyone’s minds: to seek justice. To free Paris of the plague it had been cursed with for so long. It was time to set things right. 

As she moved through the streets, she had a flock of knights surrounding her at all times. She was more than capable of defending herself, and she was confident no one would try and attack her, but she had to save face before Hawkmoth became too suspicious of her. “Set up a throne for me in the school courtyard. I have a few declarations to make. Our army is just about large enough.” 

-------

It didn’t take long for everything to be set up in the gym. A makeshift throne was quickly built by dismantling various furniture around the school. It wasn’t perfect, but Princess Justice found herself fond of it anyways. It was situated on the upper floor of the school overlooking the rest of the courtyard. Princess Justice was already settled into place on her throne, Alya and Nino on either side of her as her most trusted and dearest knights. 

Of course, when she had approached the school she had seen Lila in her stocks, no longer screaming but begging desperately to be released. She whined and complained about her wrists being sore, and her back hurting from her awkward standing position. Princess Justice was barely able to contain her laughter, finding humor in the situation. Because for once, Lila was being honest about her ailments. But despite that, she did not stop to give Lila any attention and simply brushed passed her like she wasn’t there. 

Now that she was away from Lila, however, she allowed her amused smirk to grace her lips as she looked down at the courtyard. Slowly, the area below was being filled by knights. One by one, or sometimes in small groups, they would march in and automatically fall into formation. They stared ahead at nothing, on standby until their Princess addressed them. Princess Justice turned to Alya, “How did our kitten behave?” she asked, keeping things cryptic enough to where Hawkmoth would not understand what she was actually asking. 

“He seemed dejected the entire time, Highness,” Alya responded, “but he did not put up a fight.” 

“Excellent,” Princess Justiced said, with a little too much relief in her tone. She coughed quietly and looked to Nino, “Get someone to bring him out here to me. I want him right at my feet.” In a flash, Nino was gone, and a moment later he and Kim were bringing Chat Noir to her. Chat didn’t struggle even the slightest bit, his gaze fixed to the floor as he was forced to sit on the ground right next to her feet. 

“Oh kitty,” Princess Justice crooned sweetly, her fingers slightly ruffling his hair, “I know how hard it must be for you, not knowing where your spotted heroine is. You must feel so abandoned and alone.” She knew she would have to play up her role as someone on Hawkmoth’s side, but she prayed her kitten would be able to read between the lines. 

“I know my Lady hasn’t abandoned me,” Chat whispered, “She’s never let me down before. I don’t believe she’d start now.” 

Princess Justice was touched, but wouldn’t let it show. Taking advantage of Hawkmoth’s limited sight through her eyes, she gently tilted Chat Noir’s face up to look at her and mouthed a ‘thank you’ to him. Chat’s eyes were watery, and he sniffled the tiniest bit, but he still grinned at her. The same grin he always gave Ladybug. 

But there was something more to it now. The innocence and trust in his eyes, even behind the mask, reminded Princess Justice so much of Adrien. Chat Noir was so naive in most things, despite his obvious intelligence and competence as a hero. He flirted clumsily, as if he were the protagonist in a cheesy rom-com, but it was obviously genuine. He made poorly timed jokes, like someone who hadn’t been taught to read a room, but he never had ill intentions. 

Yes, it was obvious to Princess Justice now, that Adrien and Chat Noir were one and the same, and briefly she wondered why she had never put two and two together before. But she knew the answer. She was afraid of knowing. Afraid that once the secrets were gone she would be forced to open up more of herself to him, something she wasn’t sure she could do. Her fear of showing weakness to one of the most important people in her life, even though he’d never given her reason to fear opening up to him, crippled her to the point where she wasn’t able to see the answer right in front of her. 

Literally, he sat right in front of her. And she never noticed. 

If Hawkmoth knew that the owner of one of the miraculouses he was so desperately hunting was his son, would he stop? Would he feel guilt or remorse? Princess Justice sincerely doubted it, and the thought made her heart break. 

“Ladybug won’t show,” Princess Justice whispered, “Obviously she’s too much of a coward.” 

“You and I must be talking about different Ladybugs,” came Chat’s quick response. 

Princess Justice wanted to argue, but it would do no good. She had a mission to accomplish. Slipping another note to Chat Noir, detailing her plan to take down Hawkmoth, she stood from her throne and made her way to the railing. Instantly all eyes below were on her, their attention focused entirely on the powerful presence before them. 

“My dear knights. Today is a day that will go down in history. Today, you shall protect me on my journey to escort Chat Noir to Hawkmoth personally. Should anyone stand in our way, I trust you will take care of them quickly and with grace. Our aim is not to harm anyone, because violence only breeds more violence,” her voice rang out into the courtyard, her words like a magic spell. Which, technically, was true for the knights. But it was likely that even those untouched by the macarons would have followed her anyways. “There is no time like the present, and since Ladybug is nowhere to be found, we’ll take Chat Noir first and then go bug hunting after!” 

The crowd of knights let out a resounding cheer, ready to serve their Princess. She smiled down at the sea of supporters, and felt a sense of relief. Everything was going to be okay. She would be able to pull this off. No one was going to get in the way of her justice. 

The only warning signs before the attack was the sound of soft footfall on the school roof behind her. Princess Justice barely had time to process as she ungracefully leapt out of the way. A red flash whirred by her before the shape retreated back towards the roof. She would recognize that sound anywhere. 

It was her yoyo. 

Someone had donned her old earrings. 

“Ladybug?”

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taglist:  @fandom-trapped-03 , @justafanwarrior , @ultimatetornshipper , @lunadensmidnightprowl​ , @starpony999​ , @minth0l-illness , @the-bollywood-miraculous-girl​ , @akioshiwarrior​ ,  @queencommonsense ,  @id-dance-with-draco ,  @all-mights-asscheeks , 

Author’s note: so this will probably be the last chapter for a few days (i have exams until the 16th so ~fun~). But! There will hopefully be some artwork and doodles that i can post between now and the next chapter. 

Thank you for the support on this story so far! I’m glad everyone seems to be enjoying it and I’m excited to keep working on it! 

[chalkrevelations]

Episode 31 of Word of Honor, and in many ways OH MY GOD YES, but also, no, show, wtf?

As in, wt actual f is going on? Literally, what is happening?

(Spoilers, so scroll away and come back later, if you need to.)

So, first thing’s first: I feel like this one may end up a bit short, because a lot of it is likely to be just a bunch of keysmash flailing? (EDIT: No, I just came back up here to the top from the bottom, because this is NOT AT ALL any shorter than usual.) I’ll attempt a bit more than exclamation points and worry over whether my poor heart is able to take this, but we’ll see how it goes, because the first thing I’m going to do is say I knew it! and I told you so! I knew you weren’t planning to die, Zhou Zishu. I did call you a liar after Ep 30, and I was right. I mean, what’s the point of having the terrifying master of the Ghost Valley as your boyfriend husband if he’s not going to rescue you after you’ve been kidnapped for attempted ravishment by the evil prince? And get you the best wedding present ever, i.e., a bunch of new disciples? Omg, Zhou Zishu’s face when Wen Kexing finally calls himself a disciple of Four Seasons Manor! (I think he’s so overwhelmed, he doesn’t even realize when WKX calls him “shixiong” a minute before that!) Wen Kexing’s tiny pained smile that he just can’t seem to help when ZZS lays his hand on WKX’s head! That long shuddering breath ZZS lets out, and the way his shoulders just drop, like he’s finally let go of a huge weight! (The worry this brings me, because there are five and a half episodes left, my dude, and your husband is a troublemaker, and I would not be getting complacent, if I was you.) The fact that WKX has knelt to ZZS and called him zongzhu in front of the Ghost Valley contingent – there’s gotta be some political implications to that. Horseback riding! The way WKX keeps holding (up) ZZS! Lol at WKX being all, you all can leave now, we can take our honeymoon alone from here! ZZS knew he would come (I told you so)! Their smiles! Their soft little faces! (Merciless killers! How so fucking adorable?) The hairpin! MARRIED, Y’ALL. Censorship? I don’t know her. ANYWAY, that’s all just a bunch of flailing reaction to the first almost 20 minutes of emoporn. Also, Zhang Zhehan, you should not do suffering so pretty. It makes me feel like a bad person for still enjoying your face so much when your character is in so much physical and emotional distress.

Secondly, show. We need to talk. You should not be this opaque. I’m trying to piece together everything that’s happened in (vaguely) chronological order:

Sometime before dying (before breaking his heart meridians?), Han Ying tells Wen Kexing about the Four Seasons Remnants back with Prince Jin. All of Ep 30 happens, with Zhou Zishu and Xie Wang both making a mess of Awful Prince’s/Yifu’s plans. Xie Wang, the rest of the Scorpions, and the Ghost Valley team retreat back to a lair. Which lair? Who knows, at this point. Cao Weining talks to Fan Shishu. (He explicitly tells this to A-Xiang.) But does he also confront Mo Huaiyang? Because I feel like it must be significant that we get the same turn of phrase to describe Zhao Jing’s relationship with Xie Wang – asking a tiger for its skin – from Mo Huaiyang to Fan Shishu, and then attributed to Cao Weining when A-Xiang quotes it to WKX in the same ep. The show even emphasizes this for us to catch by drawing attention to A-Xiang’s use of it via her struggle to remember the idiom properly. (A. This episode’s convo between Mo Huaiyang and Fan Shishu, which is when we see Mo Huaiyang actually use the idiom, happens AFTER Cao Weining and Gu Xiang leave Gentle Wind Sword Sect. I went back and checked, and it is Mo Huaiyang who uses it, not Fan Shishu. B. In this same convo, Fan Shishu says he still needs to explain all this to the disciples somehow, so C. Was there a prior, unseen convo between just Cao Weining and Mo Huaiyang in which Mo Huaiyang practiced his excuses on poor, hapless Cao Weining first?)

Anyway, Cao Weining then goes to A-Xiang, who’s lit. and fig. in the dark at this point, in her rustic cabin outside the gated community. I notice Cinnamon Roll already has his bag packed. He is done. He lays out the current political web, and A-Xiang seems pretty sure of Liu Qianqiao’s ultimate loyalty to WKX. This is probably important in what happens next. Gu Xiang and Cao Weining decide to run away and elope but then … get captured and taken to the lair. On purpose? A-Xiang did see Liu Qianqiao with Xie Wang in the Secret Cave, standing shoulder to shoulder with Du Pusa as an apparent top-tier henchwoman, and she probably expects to be protected, but this seems like a pretty big gamble. I suppose you don’t survive the Ghost Valley without learning to take some risks. A-Xiang then leads Xie Wang and the Ghost Valley contingent to WKX (at burned-down Four Seasons Manor?) to, she says, let WKX take down Xie Wang. She notes Xie Wang’s use of some potion to control everyone – I assume the Drug Man potion, and I assume the monthly antidote is what’s keeping everyone in the Ghost Valley from going full Drug Man?

WKX and Xie Wang confer in secret. Probably about how much they both hate Awful Yifu. I mean, I assume Xie’er still hates Awful Yifu at this point, but who knows what tomorrow will bring? Probably a key point here: WKX is hiding whatever this was about from his husband. My dude, why are you still like this? I guess that explains the pained cast to that tiny little smile earlier. WKX then takes some of the Ghost Valley contingent and coordinates with the Four Seasons Remnants back in Prince Jin’s territory to rescue ZZS. Husband safely rescued, WKX now heads back to Ghost Valley, to … abdicate? He promises A-Xiang he’s going to come back safely, and my dude, I’m trying to believe you. I really am. I’m trying to have as much faith in you planning to be back all along as I had in ZZS not planning to die in Jin Palace all along, but here’s a key difference: HE LET YOU IN ON HIS PLAN. Which you were a key part of. I find your secrecy, by contrast, concerning.

Other things:

Love the little moment between Gu Xiang and Liu Qianqiao and Luo Fumeng when Beauty Ghost and Tragicomic Ghost turn to Xie Wang in righteous indignation and want to know what the fuck he thinks he’s doing to their little girl. Compare the reaction of these two moms to Happy Ghost being all, “Nope, this is a complete and total in with Wen Kexing right here in a pretty pink dress.” The show continues to draw a fairly bright line between the characterization of the women in the Department of the Unfaithful - who are terrorizing certain people, true, but also watching out for each other after ending up down on their luck – and the general run of men in Ghost Valley, who are basically rotten sociopaths straight out of Batman’s rogues gallery and will sell you out in a minute for their own gain. Yes, this has been made fairly explicit in Wen Kexing’s and A-Xiang’s commentary in past eps and later in this ep about trying to get the Department of the Unfaithful out of the line of fire while not caring if the jianghu burns down the rest of Ghost Valley, but this isn’t just favoritism or a whim, just some fond memories of Luo Fumeng being kind to them a couple of times in the past. I think there’s some commentary here on the kind of men who are so far gone they find themselves outside the bounds of “civilized” society and the kind of women who do – how much easier and quicker it is for a woman, that it could be any woman in the wrong circumstances, and how much further gone a man has to be than a woman to be considered a “devil.” We’ve seen these supportive interpersonal relationships among the women since Gu Xiang “adopted” her two girls in the first handful of episodes and told off Lovelace with the threat of Tragicomic Ghost – and the show is continuing to show it, not just tell it. It’s one of the things I’ve found frustrating about Wen Kexing a couple of times in past eps, when he’s trying to get A-Xiang’s two girls, or other women from the Department, to just leave and go do something else – I feel like even though WKX realizes their circumstances and their personalities are different from the rest of his Top Ten Devils, he’s not fully comprehending that they literally have nowhere else to go, that if they had any other options, they wouldn’t have ended up there in the first place. He called the two girls “puppies” when he talked about A-Xiang having to take care of them, but as Ghost Valley master, who’s enforced the independence of and protections for the Department of the Unfaithful, he’s walking away from his own basketful of puppies. Not to mention, this is one of the vanishingly small places in this particular version of the jianghu that we’ve seen women have any autonomy and power. I … think there may have been a few young female cultivators in Yueyang Sect, but while I’d have to go back and watch to be sure, I remember the Hero’s Conference being a whole bunch of men throwing their … weight around. Anyway, I also love that it looks like A-Xiang tries to kick Happy Ghost in the shin, because of course she does.

Visually, they had a cool thing going on there with the Tian Chuang behind WKX falling in concert with WKX lowering his fan, but they didn’t quite coordinate it enough, and then they cut away too soon. Bah. It was set up to be a very cool visual, if only they had committed to it. Meanwhile Duan Pengju, this asshole, omg. He’s trying to pull off the Collar of Evil and is not succeeding. Srsly, his Collar of Evil is droopy. It doesn’t stop him from monologuing like he’s the actual villain and not some sad-sack lackey. You showed the correct amount of amused disdain during your interaction, but I can’t believe you left him alive at the end of it, Wen Kexing.

I wasn’t really feeling Jing Beiyuan and Wu Xi up until this ep when Jing Beiyuan was teasing A-Xiang about her lack of shame over running away with her lover. OK, fine, you can stay, Qi Ye. Also, wow. Speaking of lack of shame, I can’t believe you just accused your husband of bride kidnapping right in front of everyone’s salads, because that is totally what just happened there.

So the band is (almost all) back together, minus Chengling, who has definitely found out in the worst possible way that one of his dads is the terrifying master of the Ghost Valley that massacred his family and sect. So, this should go well.

Lol at Xie’er lounging in Wen Kexing’s Ghost Valley master seat like some kind of consort. He’s already got a husband, Xie’er. One that would not be happy with a concubine running around, I think. I do wonder what the full scope of their plan/understanding is, bubbling away under this stare-down.

A note – WKX’s hair is styled differently in this ep in the Ghost Valley master scenes than it has been before. Previously, those side bangs were further forward and a little bit chunkier, which, I think, narrowed his face and also helped emphasize the wild-eyed look. They’re wispier and back further, now, which I think softens his face, even when he’s trying to look imposing. Makes him look more, dare I say, human.

And now, I’m going to go have a few Han Ying/Bi Xingming thoughts, actually. God, those months after ZZS left, can you imagine what that was like for them? Han Ying having watched those nails placed in Bi Xingming’s shifu in the first ep, and then having to turn around and go to Bi Xingming and tell him that ZZS was gone, with the seven nails in him? Both of them trying to hold the Four Seasons Remnants together – and then Ying-ge comes back one day and says he’s found ZZS? Mutual aid and comfort, my dudes. Also some projection. I’m just sayin’. Meet me, I guess - this kind of sideline action and extremely rare pair thing is how I tend to roll.

[popculturebuffet]

Donald Duck: Christmas on Bear Mountain Review!

Happy Birthday Uncle Scrooge! Yes it was 73 years ago that everyone’s favorite stingy adventurous billionaire entered this world. And I only NARROWLY missed it as I only found out this was coming up when looking up various character birthdays during the writing of my review of “The Three Cablleros”. I now have a word document with all the various important duck characters birthdays so this doesn’t happen again, but i’m glad I did my homework as I can celebrate one of my faviorite character’s birthdays.  And Scrooge is one of my favorites. While I relate to donald’s everyman slacker spendthrift was a tad more, I still love this old bastard. He’s badass, quick witted, and earned every bit of his fortune square outside of one moment of weakness. But he has his flaws: He’s horribly cheap, quick to anger, and very dismissive and distrustful of people for good reasons and bad. He’s a complicated, interesting character and one that still works today in the reboot.. if with some slight tweaks to make him less of a greedy monster by modern standards. He’s one of my favorite comic book characters, and one of Disney’s finest, so it only felt right to honor him by going back to his roots with his very first appearance and a story that like him is 73 years old today. It’s also one I had never read until today’s review. So does this storied tale still hold up? How diffrent was Scrooge? and are there any actual bears in the story? Well come along with me as we take a trip up to Bear Mountain and find out.  This story, if you didn’t know, is by Disney Legend and Scrooge Creator Carl Barks, easily the most influential and well known duck artist.. felt like it was worth mentioning since without Carl none of this would be possible and as usual his art is gorgeous and unique to him. On with the show. 

We open with Donald and the Boys depressed, as Christmas looks to be pretty drab. While the boys are sad they don’t have a winter Cabin like everyone else...

Donald is even more bummed he can’t afford dinner or presents as he mentions this to the boys, being flat broke. It’s also a nice character beat that Donald, despite his usual hedonism.. would be just fine, with his depression coming from the fact he can’t even give his boys a proper Christmas let alone presents. It’s a stark adult fear and something that really hits as I find the money to buy Christmas presents for all my friends and family during my current unemployment, though commissions, have been helping. 

But yes i’m doing my first Christmas review before thanksgiving’s even come in. But given the serendipity of Scrooge’s birthday and the fact I wanted to read it at some point before covering the last chapter of life and times anyway, since said story takes place DURING this one. I’ll explain how in a moment. Plus frankly with me already having to do my christmas shopping while I have money, I still feel the spirit of the holiday, so I honestly figure why not. 

But all that aside, the Nephews muse things might be better if their rich Uncle Scrooge would remember them, but probably not. We’ll meet scrooge, if you care to continue, after the cut. 

We then cut to Scrooge’s mansion. Two things to note. The first is that he has a mansion here. Now for us Ducktales fans, it’s not unusual, he lives in one in both series. But being even MORE frugal in the comics meant after this he mostly lived in the money bin to save .. well money. So he dosen’t have the mansion after this and Don Rosa explained it, as he did really most aspects of scrooge’s life, in life and times, having him decide to sell the place after also deciding to reopen the bin. Just a neat fun fact. The other fun fact is that his angry pose and expersion here were later homage in “Last Crash of the Sunchaser!”, in one of Ducktales 2017′s easily most heart pulling moments: the ending of the episode showing Scrooge truly alone once again. It’s also a nice refrence to Life and Times as at this point scrooge was just as miserable and alone according to Rosa’s masterwork, with the boys and Donald coming into his life being the thing that revitalized him. So let’s get on that shall we?  Scrooge is wallowing in his misery, having never had any fun according to himself and thinking maybe giving a present could be fun.. and decides on his Nephew as the one to give it to. But in typical Scrooge fashion instead of just giving his Grandson a gift, he’s going to have to earn it. He sends a letter to the Boys and Donald offering up his cabin, fully stocked with goodies and presents. A bit pricey for who Scrooge would become, and a bit odd to see him not complain.. but it still sets up his character as someone who wants people to WORK for what they get, but can genuinely get behind someone who shows good character, in this case he’s hoping, but Doubting, Donald will end up showing himself to be brave. And it’s STILL more plausible he’d buy luxury items to prove a point to himself, than it was in that one Ducktales comic I reviewed where he spent presumably millions to teach a ten year old a lesson about getting everything you want. Which yes really happened. 

Still not over that one, what the actual hell, let’s move on. Basically if Donald passes the test, he’ll get a real true present and if he doesn’t, well Scrooge will have fun anyway. It is easy to see the difference in character here: While parts that would later become bedrock, his code of honor and his wanting people to EARN things instead of just having them handed to them, as well as him sometimes being a huge dick about that are there, he comes off more as a golden age villain cackling in his lair than the awesome but flawed adventurer we’d all come to know and love. I mean while he’d be no less kind to the Boys and Donald about their poverty later, this time he’s especailly bad tempting them with a nice christmas they couldn’t afford and planning to scare the bejeezus out of them. But I do like seeeing where Scrooge came from, STARTING as a decrepit old bastard and transitioning into the adventurous old bastard we all know and love. I have come to realize I do have a soft spot for characters earlier appearances, seeing what changed, what was there all along, and what was tweaked. It can be a mixed bag: with Marvel for instance sometimes you get Spider-Man, who was starkly anti-social and on the verge of understandably lashing out at the world a LOT in the first few issues, and prone to issues you wouldn’t see in a superhero comic back then. Hulk started out much smarter, greyer and meaner, eventually leading to the Joe Fixit persona being created as a result of this decades later. 

On the other hand some examples are less enjoyable like Sue and Reed Richards, who back at the start were a sexist “panicky female” stereotype and a sexist mentally distant jackass, while Hank Pym and Wasp were again, a sexist mentally distant jackass, and another stereotype this time thinking almost entirely about fashion and boys. All four would go on to be MUCH better characters with age, with the occasional slip up. I bring this up because Scrooge... is still a good character even here. While he’d become even BETTER, he’s not bad at all here, just a bit different is all. 

Back at the plot Scrooge reveals his plan by scaring the shit out of his butler: To dress up as a bear, head up the mountain and scare his nephews to see if any of them have any bravery. While Donald whimpers over the thought of bears and we get an okay gag of him thinking a squireel was one, Scrooge is forced to turn around due to the weather and gives a villain monologue about never having given anyone nothing in his entire life. I swear to god he’s basically Mr. Burns in this one. 

Then again I would also FULLY expect Scrooge to do this to Donald in the barks stories, just maybe not have it be lethal. MAYBE. 

While Scrooge harumphs over his bad luck the boys and Donald enjoy a wonderful sleep. Despite Donald’s fear of bears, which the boys insist are hibernating, accurate, the boys force him to go out and get a Christmas tree by the age old tradition of whining until he does so. After going out back to find a tree to chop down Donald finds dead, ugly looking tree that’s weirdly heavy. To no one’s suprise, and to Donald’s natural luck, there’s a baby bear inside and as Donald gets a nice Christmas eve dinner ready for the boys, though after hearing some rustling he assumes a bear is present.. which it is. A baby bear. Awww. The little guy toddles around, and we get af ew pages of antics, with the boys chasing the bear, donald being a coward, and the bear getting into things and ending up on a rollerskate, which is referenced in life and times. However while the boys eventually find the baby.. it’s MOTHER, angry it’s cub is missing finds them and once Donald finds her, the four naturally hightale it out of there. The bears then eat all their food.. though the boys assume “there goes our presents”. Uh guys.. the presents aren’t gone you just don’t have them right this second. They aren’t showed destroying them or anything just leaning on them slightly. I mean the well stocked pantry and any candy in the presents are toast but there’s still a pretty sweet saxaphone there. Take a look. 

See the most their doing is likely wrinkling some clothes, at worst flattening that skateboard.. or whatever that  Mama Bear is sitting on. I mean I get in the larger sense they can’t get them because bears, but still. Once they pass out the boys send in Donald to get ripped apart by a bear.. er to tie up Mama Bear so they can get the house back, rightly pointing out that they’ll freeze to death anyways.. even though they you know have a car and could just leave. Then again knowing Donald’s luck i’td probably jsut lead to this. 

The boys aren’t slacking though and are going after the cub while Donald passes out in fear next to the bear. Scrooge arrives, but is spooked by the cub and is proud to see his young nephews valiantly chase the bebe, and is impressed by Donald’s seeming bravery, decides, after fleeing in terror which is funny. Not in line with what he’d become but STILL really funny. But anyways he decides to throw them a proper christmas as a reward.  So the next day and, thanks to Don Rosa one part of life and times later, we end on Christmas Day as for the first time in decades, Scrooge basks in the warm glow of family, and is happy probably for the first time in years. He gifts Donald a bear skin, he faints, haw haw haw the end. 

FINAL THOUGHTS: This story holds up extrodinarly well. While some aspects like Scrooge being generous or cowardly don’t jibe with his later character, it’s forgivable since, again, first appearance, and it’s an entertaining story. Granted his plan hasn’t aged well, but it’s still a fun Christmas set story with some good gags and an entertaining villian. While not Scrooge or Donald or Barks finest hour, it’s still a good bit of hollday fun that gave us one of the best characters of all time. And for that, ill be forever greatful.  If you liked this review, you can comission one of your own via my ask box, direct message or discord (technicolormuk#6550), if your more comfortable not doing buisness on here. UPCOMING REVIEWS TO KEEP AN EYE ON THIS SPACE FOR Loud House Coverage: Band Together/ The Other One Ducktales: The First Adventure! Ride of the Three Cablleros: The Three Cablleros Ride Again! 

Until then you can check my backlog on my various pages and remember, there’s always another rainbow. 

[parachutingkitten]

So here's the sitch, Pixal has ice powers, she knows it, and the show has been dancing around it for seasons now, and I'm here to tell the writers how to make the reveal happen.

(Fair Warning, this is a long one)

So, for those of you who have somehow never heard this theory before, Zane gave Pixal half his heart, Zane's heart is heavily implied to be the source of his elemental power, hence Pixal should theoretically be able to use it. Let's go over the evidence, shall we?

Season 3 Zane splits his heart and his spinjitzu stops working. He gets it back later in the series, my guess is just over time his body gets used to the amount of power available to him. But this clearly shows the heart has some effect on his powers.

Season 8 they make a point of having Zane mention that "you have half of my heart" implying that though these two have been rebuilt, those two pieces are still a part of their hardware.

Season 11 Pixal is able to use the staff of forbidden spinjitzu. She doesn't get crazy hair, but her eyes do glow. As apposed to Kai (whose powers are stolen at this point) who gets no reaction from the staff. This implies some level of powers, right? Maybe dormant powers that have yet to reach their true potential? Thing is, the ninja must have known whoever sent them had to have powers of some kind (at least subconsciously) and Pixal must have volunteered to stay behind. So she must have known it was possible for her to use the staff.

Her whole arc the past few seasons has been about the ninja... kinda ignoring her. No one guesses or finds out early that she's Samurai X (like happened for Nya). She stays behind on missions all the time. The ninja don't notice when she builds a giant base in the house, and kinda take her for granted time after time, depending on her gadgets to get them out of tight situations, and then running off to have fun with them. Granted, most of this is played for laughs, but it wouldn't be too far fetched for Pixal to reach her true potential connected to this kinda tension. There are two ways this could go over the course of the season, but the end result is the same.

The Big Moment:

The ninja did something stupid and get captured, even though Pixal told them very deliberately to be careful cuz her suit is out of commission rn and she's not sure how soon it will be ready to go into action again. But, she's the ninja's last resort, she gets the distress signal, grumbles for a second, but decides to take her unstable mech out to save them. She finds them. They're in some giant cage in the middle of some evil lair or something. Idk. Anyway, she fights the villain. She has to abandon her suit at some point cuz it's malfunctioning. The team is all like "oh no, she'll never make it! Get out of here while you still can Pixal!" Pixal looks around at the room, and then back at the team, and then directly at Sensei Wu, and sighs. "I was really hoping it wouldn't come to this." Sensei Wu is all like "It's time." They all start freaking out cuz the robots on the team have a tendency for self sacrifice. No one wants that. But Pixal calmly approaches the villain, closes her eyes, she starts floating, epic true potential glowy eyes and BOOM! Ice blast destroys the villains and saves the day. The whole room is coated in ice. The Ninja are flipping out over what just happened. "WHAT?! PIXAL CAN USE ICE?! HOW LONG HAVE YOU KNOWN YOU COULD DO THAT?!" Pixal just knowingly smiles. "Long enough."

There are two routes from here.

Option 1: that wasn't her true potential, she reached it long before then.

The next episode is a flashback to an episode earlier in the season where we only saw her at the beginning of the episode. It's the story of her reaching her true potential. It's an episode about her going back to her roots and clear out the baggage from her past that’s holing her back. Stuff with Borg and coming to terms with the fact that she’s pretty much the only droid from that original season 3 line that survived. True potential on top of Borg tower. That would be an awesome image. Just another true potential episode. Wu is the only one on the team who saw this/knows about it. Maybe they have some talk at the end of the episode about "do I even use this power?" And Sensei Wu is just like "You'll know when."

Cut back to the end of last episode, the ninja have a bunch of questions. Maybe you can have a funny montage of all the times she's used her ice powers to help the team without them noticing. This option is a quicker way to do it, and results in Pixal looking super epic and on top of everything. But, it has a true potential episode with none of the ninja present which is kinda abnormal.

Option 2: that WAS her true potential and there has been build up all through the season

Pixal is feeling especially disregarded one episode. It ends with her being kinda bitter towards the team, and as a closing stinger maybe she slams a door, and we zoom in, and right where her fingers were, there's frost on the edge.

What?!

Next episode, there's a scene of Pixal meditating. She has some Zane style visions of things to come in the season all relating to ice- but she gets interrupted by someone- again we see some trace of ice as she leaves the room.

Maybe you have a few more teases like this if you want.

Later, she approaches Wu. She's known since season 11 that she has potential for ice power. He's known too. They talk it out. She's felt the ice more prominently lately, but she doesn't know what to do about it. She hasn't reached her true potential yet or anything. She doesn't want to step on Zane's toes, she likes just being Samurai X, and she knows that the power isn't really hers. It was given to Zane for a reason. Wu is all like "yeah, but Zane then gave it to you for a reason." She doesn't have a responsibility to use it necessarily, but she shouldn't be afraid to use it if she needs to. Some other wholesome bonding stuff and what not.

There's a couple of glances between the two over the course of the season, finally culminating in the true potential scene with the ninja from earlier. This option is defiantly longer, but results in a more rounded character arc.

Extras:

The important thing here is that in either scenario, Pixal rarely uses her ice powers after this. Especially in combat. It's like a last resort, season finale superpower sorta deal.

If you want a more concrete reason for this other than she’s just humble and doesn’t feel like using it, maybe Pixal's systems aren't equipped for ice powers, and it actually damages her whenever she uses them. She can be very up front about this and the team gets worried, or maybe she tries to hide it, but eventually it becomes too much for her. You could also use this as a way to get another droid self sacrifice scene, cuz we all know this show loves those.

Also notice, her true potential doesn't have to do with Zane in either of these scenarios. Her true potential should separate her from him to be her own independent character.

Of course, there is a third option of having a whole season dedicated to Pixal as a character and she reaches her true potential at the end. Bring back Cryptor, maybe. The main villains are the 15 older models of herself. Lots of wholesome Borg content. But that's very unlikely at this point.

Thanks for reading this far! On a very small side note... I don’t think I’ve ever seen any Pixal-as-an-ice-elemental-art. Just kinda strange considering this theory has been around since season 3.

Anyway, there's some good ideas in here. Pixal is an awesome character with awesome potential. Don't waste it writers.

[2k18leo]

TMNT 2007 talk

Okie dokie since we’ve been on hiatus for a long long time, but I still want to talk turtles, I figured I’d talk about the TMNT 2007 film again. If you’ve been with my account for a while you may know what a huge fan I am of this particular movie (of course I love the other films and may talk about them at a later date, but this one just hits differently for me mainly because it’s what got me into the Ninja Turtles in the first place) 

So, I have already briefly covered my take on the 2007 film as a whole.  Aaaand, @my-sai-and-i _and_i wrote a post that goes in depth about the emotional scarring that the fight had on Leo and Raph. It’s a wonderful post and you should def check it out 👌🏼

I am currently watching the 2007 film (yet again (HA what is my count up to now? Can’t keep track. Lol moving on—)) and once again I am breathless at the climactic fight BATTLE that Leo and Raph have. Every single time I watch it, my love for the franchise grows even more. I think this may be because I’m actually such a fan of the TMNT trope that is the constant butting heads of the two oldest brothers (oof sorry not sorry 🤭). I’m also going to talk mainly about this fight scene because it’s literally the EXACT scene that I started watching when I was first introduced to tmnt. That is already talked about in another post, however 😂

Okaaay, let’s get into this thing. First off, the score for this chase scene is already making you very anxious for some sort of confrontation between the two boys. It gives you chills right off the back. Whenever Nightwatcher accidentally cornered himself I got to thinking what it would have been like if we had seen Leo and his trip out into the city instead of the diner scene with the 12th monster. Like, was he just out looking for Raph and heard police scanners saying there was an issue with the diner? Then he headed over to possibly help, but ran into the vigilante Nightwatcher. I can only assume he was already looking for Raph since Splinter right beforehand advised Leo that he needed to get off his high horse and work things out with Raph. Since April and Casey were in the lair, I’m sure Leo didn’t expect Raph to go back to their apartment. He probably went around to their old hangout places in the city (before Leo was sent to South America) but since he had been gone so long, maybe he figured his brothers didn’t hang out anymore since it wasn’t all four of them. Sure, Casey’s a great friend, but never a replacement for one of the turtles. Leo could have also gone back to the construction site that they had partly demolished with that first monster a couple nights prior. Raph did make a point in saying that they needed to find out who was responsible for the sudden burst of creatures in New York. Don’t get me wrong, learning where the 12th monster was when Raph fought it was important I guess? I mean, it made the stone generals stationed in the area, but still not THAT close to where Raph and Leo ended up (they ran quite a ways. A mile at least.)

Okay, back to the rooftop scene. The setting was beautiful and I just— *chef’s kiss* love it. The rain. The red glow of the Red Eye Club sign. Which, I’m just now thinking about this but if an English teacher was asking you what the red sign symbolized I do believe that that could be some sort of symbol/foreshadow that Raph will be the one who comes out victorious in the upcoming brawl. In case I’m not completely giving that a whole-ass stretch, I looked up the Red Eye Club to see if it was a real place but all I got were a bunch of pictures of marijuana so I’m gonna assume NOPE. It could be a minor detail or it could just be a coincidence 🤷🏽‍♀️ I mean the neon sign did not have to be red specifically. Lol don’t @ me 😂

Anyway, I love the way the rain falls on the metal of Raph’s armor. I can only imagine how much of a BITCH that rain was to animate. 

Leo starting off with the good cop persona is very in touch with his character and I like. He’s still the “talk first, shoot later” wise character we LOVE, while Raph is so much the opposite (which we LOVE JUST AS MUCH (ugh sorry im gushing again)). I like how Raph stayed silent. He didn’t give his identity up. He didn’t try to stop Leo from starting a fight. He WANTED to fight Leo. And this was the perfect opportunity without Leo holding back by being aware of his own brother under the suit. It’s sort of like a Red Hood/Batman type scene. And, it’s hardly audible but, Leo then continues to try and calm down the vigilante by saying “The road you’re on is a dead-end. Believe me, I’ve tried it.” He has no idea who is behind the mask. For all he knows, he’s talking to a complete stranger, yet he is still trying to be the voice of reason. The Nightwatcher could be a deranged murderer for all he knows. He is only aware of what the News has been recently saying. You can tell he doesn’t know everything about this vigilante (which, side note but, this all seems a bit hypocritical if I’m honest. Up until Donnie and Mikey got jobs, all the turtles/Casey/possibly April did was vigilantism. I mean, does Leo think that the Nightwatcher is correlated with the monster sightings? Is that his main reason for being a vigilante to stop a vigilante??) ALSO when Leo said “…believe me, I’ve tried it” is that referencing his time in South America? I know he “got caught up in his own world” and “forgot about everyone else” but does that necessarily correlate with what he’s talking about? Did something really bad happen in South America that we didn’t see? Did he become like Hawkeye (cough* Ronin) in Endgame? 

This also makes me wonder what would have happened if Donnie and Mikey had gone out to help Leo search for Raph. It could have been like a Teen Titans scene where Robin was posing as Red X and the rest of the titans unknowingly fought their ally because he was seemingly just another villain. If things played out that way, I’m not even sure that Raph would have put up much of a fight. He didn’t have any major beef with his younger brothers. The scene would have probably been way less emotional as well. Plus, Leo probs wouldn’t have been captured. 

Whenever Raph first wields his weapons, signifying he’s ready to fight, Leo gives a very small smirk. He wants to fight as much as Raph does. But for different reasons. Raph knows his opponent and is angry with him�� furious even. Leo… I think deep down he loves to fight. He knows he’s good at it. He knows he’s going to win. But it’s probably been a long time since he’s actually felt that great adrenaline rush of a fight (yes, I’m aware he was in the fight with the first monster but that’s not a one-on-one duel) Which is why when he says “Trust me when I tell you. You don’t want to do this” he says it in a way that he’s still trying to be the voice of reason… BUT it’s also very much a threat. He’s been wanting a proper fight for a while. There’s a certain thrill I’m sure he gets when he’s faced with someone who is probably an even match for him. Even with the threat he gives, he’s fully aware that his opponent will strike. 

COCKY LEO. 

I’m not going to even try to get into the subject as to why on earth Leo cannot recognize his own brother under the suit because @my-sai-and-i already explained that WAY better. 

I mean, Leo is chuckling as the Nightwatcher does his second swing. It’s funny to him because he still knows he’s going to win this fight. There is no doubt in his mind that he will defeat this amateur clown in a costume. But this is the way, I’m absolutely positive, Leo acted as a teenager to common criminals on the streets.  He’s always known how good he was at fighting, so I can bet money he was cocky growing up. And yeah, it’s way different than how he was fighting the raiders in the beginning of the film. Back in South America he acted all dark and silent, more than likely trying to keep up the persona of the Ghost of the Jungle. If he acted all cocky and obnoxious to the raiders, I’m sure word would get out, which might frighten the villagers even more. Being his sneaky stealthy self, he was less likely to scare the villagers, and probably able to keep up the thought that he was just a peaceful legend (kind of like Katara as the Painted Lady in Avatar (I’m referencing soooo many other things, but it makes sense to me 😂)) So, now that Leo’s back in the place where he grew up, of course, his old cocky tendencies would come back. It’s almost nostalgic for him. 

Another thing. Leo is completely defensive for the majority of this fight. He hardly ever throws an actual blow. He jumps back out of the way when the Nightwatcher swings his chain at him again. Which is a completely smart move. Another reason to note that he KNOWS WHAT HE’S DOING. He’s fought for about 20 years (we don’t actually know their ages in this movie (or do we ?) but I would guess around 18-20 ??) so he’s fully aware of the fact that one of the best fighting techniques is letting your opponent tire themselves out so you can then finish them off and become victorious. But Raph’s temper has always led him to go guns blazing. Shoot first, questions later. 

Leo continues to mock the Nightwatcher because he knows he’s going to get a rouse out of him. He spent a good enough time sparring with Raph to figure out how to egg on that temper. A temper that would then make Raph angry and thoughtless, thus becoming rash with his fighting technique. Ultimately becoming careless and in total defeat. Again, don’t get me started on how Leo has NOT recognized his brother yet. Even after Leo has eluded yet another strike from the chains and the Nightwatcher turns around, Leo still gives a CHUCKLE to his face. He’s begging for that temper to be released. He’s ready for a real fight. And Raph’s more than ready to finally kick his big brother’s ass. 

Raph absolutely takes on the offense with a full charge to Leo as he does three heavy swings. Leo eludes all three until coming back with a counter-attack on the third. Leo does a fair job of holding his defense until Raph throws a huge right hook to the side of Leo’s head. I mean, it’s enough to knock him back a few paces and shake it off. This is when his face really goes completely serious. He’s just been caught off guard. There’s something in him that’s telling him to quit the wise-guy act. I mean, it was a simple punch, something I’m sure he is mentally beating himself up for misreading. Yet, he doesn’t charge back. He stands his ground while Raph is still the offender. 

Then Leo tries to continue to coach this dude by telling him how anger is destructive. This is probably something Splinter did as they were growing up. Also, Leo never once unsheathes his weapons on the Nightwatcher (yes, he ultimately does with Raph, but that’s later on. Hold tight, my dude). Even when the Nightwatcher drew out his chains, Leo didn’t react by drawing his own blades. I feel like being able to hold your own during hand-to-hand shows power/strength, while fighting with weapons shows skill. Which is another reason why I think Leo teased him at the beginning of the fight; he didn’t really expect this vigilante to have had any actual training with these weapons. He’s probably just some punk who thinks it’s cool. Another Casey Jones or Purple Dragon that could probably be knocked on his ass in 3 hits max. 

Leo’s uppercut is powerful as hell. He shot Raph like 6 feet in the air. And that can’t be easy. I can’t imagine how much these boys weigh. They’ve got the mass of a typical bodybuilder + the weight of their shell + the weight of their weapons PLUS Raph’s entire armor. That’s heavy as hell. 

Okay. The “Goodnight, Dark Prince” line. I don’t like it. It doesn’t seem to fit. When has this character ever been referred to as the Dark Prince? The only other thing Leo has referred to this vigilante is Nightwatchmen. Though, I get that it would be kinda redundant to say “Goodnight, Nightwatcher.” 

That’s another thing. Leo never meant to kill this dude. Just knock him out to drop him off at the police station later. Leo doesn’t kill. I mean, the very beginning of the film where he had his one-on-one with the raider leader almost implied that he killed him. Because the shot changed as soon as Leo made contact with the guy and all you hear is a loud scream making a flock of birds fly away in fright. If he was dark enough to kill these types of men (because IF he killed him, that probably wasn’t the first guy he had killed) in South America, that’s most likely the “dark path” / “dead-end” that he was referring to earlier. But I guess being back in the city does make him revert back to his old tendencies (but it shouldn’t completely disregard whatever messed up shit he had done in South America. That stuff should still be carried with him). Not even Raph is low enough to kill criminals. In his first scene in the film all Raph does is knock out some burglars and chain them up for the cops to find later on. It makes me wonder what would it have been like if Raph had gone to South America instead of Leo, while Leo stayed in the city. Would Leo have taken on his role of his own Nightwatcher? In the 2012 series, we see him become some sort of vigilante but he’s got Karai and Shinigami with him. It doesn’t seem very in character for Leo to go solo like Raph did. Of course, Leo would still miss the fight, but I’m sure he’d wise up and get a job just like his younger brothers. 

Okay, here we go. Here’s that brother angst we’ve been waiting for. When Leo first realizes who’s actually behind the mask, he’s not angry. He’s not mad. Not even disappointed. He’s really just shocked out of his mind. Complete disbelief. He just walks closer to Raph in hopes to talk to him. Perhaps apologize for fighting him just moments before, that he truly had no idea. But Raph doesn’t even turn to face his brother before doing a powerful back kick to Leo’s chest. Which, of course, takes Leo by surprise. Sure they had had a couple arguments since he’s been back but honestly that’s how Leo remembered things being with Raph. He remembered small quarrels. Nothing serious. They had always butted heads. Even though Splinter warned Leo that Raph had taken Leo’s absence pretty hard, he didn’t really know what that meant until now. He didn’t understand why his brother had so much pent up rage toward him. 

And Raph is throwing all these words at Leo. Calling him out by saying that he believes the world revolves around him. That they couldn’t possibly survive without him. I’m sure these words sting a bit to Leo but that’s not what he’s focused on. He’s starting to register everything. THIS is why Raph has always had an issue with him. THIS is the reason for his younger brother’s constant attitude. And when Raph says that they got along just fine without Leo, for a split second, you can totally see the pain that causes Leo. Like, that shit hurted. But he raises his voice and retaliates by calling him out on his bullshit. He’s telling Raph how immature it is that he’s taken up this new persona (*cough* still a tad hypocritical since he did basically the same thing as Ghost of the Jungle) because it’s causing danger to their family. I mean, at least the villagers were never truly afraid of Ghost, but the citizens of New York are terrified at what the Nightwatcher is and his motives. It’s all they’re talking about on the News lately. Raph has been causing a panic without even realizing it because he’s been too blinded by his own good intentions. 

But Raph doesn’t want to hear it. Leo hasn’t been around. He left. He wasn’t there when the turtles were just sitting by without a leader while criminals still ran amok. I mean, Raph has been angry at the thought “why does Leo get to go?” “What are we supposed to do now?” And with Donnie and Mikey being too passive to stop Raph, there really isn’t anyone around to keep Raph from straying from this road. How can Leo honestly expect things to go back to normal?? How can this big shot waltz back into our lives after he’s missed the last year and a half? And how the hell does he think he’s still the boss of me? 

And now Leo is trying to explain to him that the reason for being gone so long was to better himself for Raph and the boys. It wasn’t up to him to go to South America and be gone for so long. He didn’t ask for it. Just like Raph never asked to be second best. He didn’t want someone to lead him. This is just how things turned out. Neither of them can help what they went through in the past. It’s just a recipe for disaster when one party is trying to be the best they can be for the other party and positively beats themselves up if they let the second party down. Aaand when the second party is completely resentful of the first party because they were chosen for the role the second party wanted. Leo can’t get over the fact that no matter what he does to better himself for Raph, Raph will still disregard it. And Raph can’t get over the thought of the living embodiment of perfection that is his older brother, so he’s angry with himself for not being as perfect and takes it out on Leo. 

And Raph has become his own leader. He’s become a lone-wolf that doesn’t need a leader anymore. He has good intentions (even though they are not being followed through quite right) and Leo is just coming back and messing everything up. Things have changed and Leo needs to realize this. But Raph also needs to take into consideration that Leo is trying to realize this. He’s been trying to reconnect with his brother. But Raph has put up such a strong wall around everyone that he thinks talking isn’t going to help.

Leo telling Raph that he isn’t ready to become his own leader is a tiny bit selfish in my opinion? I mean, I agree, but still. Like Leo sees that Raph never went on a hardcore training period off in some jungle halfway across the world. So, he thinks, how CAN Raph be ready if he hasn’t done that? But that’s the thing. Leo and Raph have their own way of doing things. Leo, in multiple iterations, tries so hard to have his brothers be exactly like him. If he achieves something a certain way, he expects his brothers to reach their achievements by doing it the exact same way. But Raph is fully capable of reaching his achievements his own way (same with Donnie and Mikey). That’s something that Leo has had a difficult time wrapping his head around. 

I also don’t feel like Leo outwardly staying that he’s better than Raph is true to his character. There’s no doubt in my mind that Leo believes that and has thought it on SEVERAL occasions. But with his “gotta be the bigger man” personality, it’s hard to believe he would stoop so low as to actually say it to Raph’s face. 

Now Raph laughs at this. And I feel like most of it is a fake laugh, but there’s still a part of it that’s real because he’s finally ready to show Leo that he’s better than him. This is the real fight that RAPH has been waiting for. The perfect match. The leader and the lone wolf. The Ghost of the Jungle and the Nightwatcher. Leo and Raph. 

Leo still tries to have him call off this fight. He’s confident in himself that he will win. Both parties are, in fact. They’ve both developed such different fighting styles since the time they’ve sparred together, that they’re basically strangers to each other now. They both know this isn’t going to end well. That things will be different after the dust (rain?) settles. Leo has a negative outlook on it. He doesn’t think that Raph will ever be happy towards him again. If anything, Raph will probably shun him. This defeat could push Raph over the edge. This could make Raph leave for real. He doesn’t want that. It pains him that he has to fight his little brother. But Raph? Raph has a positive outlook. He believes that after he defeats Leo, Leo will then see Raph’s true potential. He’ll be recognized as the best, no longer second-best. He finally gets to prove to Leo that things are different. 

Leo visibly sighs and shakes his head knowing there’s no getting out of this fight. His stubborn little brother won’t back down. It wouldn’t be honorable for Leo to stand down and admit defeat. It also wouldn’t be honorable to disgrace Raph by completely disregarding that he’s his brother and just going for the kill. He’s at a complete crossroads here. So, ultimately, he draws his swords. 

The shot of the two boys staring at each other from across the roof — I want that as a poster !! It’s so gorgeous. I’m just noticing this now but it’s split JUST down the middle in terms of color. It gives a very yin and yang type picture. Leo is on the side where the red neon sign is glowing bright, thus making him glow a faint red color. Raph, on the opposite end, is on the side where the shine of the moon is hitting down, making his armor almost glow a pale blue. Ugh so much symbolism I may cry.  Right off the bat you can tell the differences in the two boys. Raph has been in his ready-stance for a while. He’s been waiting for this. Leo stands tall with blades in hand but not in an attack stance. There’s still that sliver of hope that Raph will back down. It’s still early enough to put this behind them, but that window is fading fast. As the rain beats down around them, Leo realizes that the window is closed. Nothing will stop this fight. It’s happening. There is no going back. 

Per the theme this rainy evening, Raph is the first one to charge. He runs like the brute he has become, fists clenched around his sai so he’s ready to stab or punch. Leo charges in a very graceful samurai run. Also the music. The thundering drums that beat so deep and so fast. It’s such a powerful scene. 

The shot of the tip of Leo’s blade grazing the water on the roof is STUNNING. Honestly, who thinks of these details because I hope they got a RAISE back in 2007 😂 it’s beautiful 

I also love how they both jumped toward each other as their first move. This shows that they are now both on the offense. Something snapped inside Leo to make him change up his tactics a bit. Almost to throw off Raph, who has never been the best at a defensive position. His strong suit is in the offense. 

Still the differences between their fighting styles after the jump. Leo did a beautiful forward shoulder roll, which is a proper technique of coming out of a forward jump. It keeps your momentum going into your next attack. Raph landed on his feet which, may not be ideal, but gave him a split-second advantage to be on the offense for the next attack. Leo then had to block with his sword. This fight goes FAST. I’m watching it so carefully and I’m sure there are things that I’m missing. I love how Leo does a roll over Raph’s shell, and up until now I figured he had made contact with his shell, but he actually didn’t because just as Leo started his roll, Raph ducked forward out of the way. Then Raph does a couple kicks towards Leo’s head, which cause water to sprinkle EVERYWHERE and it’s gorgeous. Raph is just going ham and not letting up on Leo as he’s still going for those strikes. (Lol I took a stage combat course over the summer so I know a little bit of the lingo (but good god I am no expert so please call me out if you know I’m using improper terms)) Watching this scene makes me want to do a move chart with a list of moves they are doing and in the order they’re doing it haha. Finally, Leo is able to squeeze in two strikes towards Raph, both of which he ducks and then blocks. 

The camera angles are wonderful. Have I talked about that yet? I mean the shot of the two of them squaring off. The little shot of the two of them fighting between the E and the D in the neon sign. And even the upcoming shot from below when they’ve got their weapons locked together. So beautiful. 

This scene also really shows the details of the Nightwatcher suit. 

And when Leo is able to do an X cross block with his swords at the downward blow Raph is throwing with his sai, and the camera angles are just moving with the characters. UGH. Here you can see that Leo really is mad. The fury of the fight is showing through his eyes as he watches his brother with a predator-like stare. *frantically looks up synonyms for furious* and boy oh boy, Raph is just seething as he twirls his blades. This small segment of them circling each other (sort of like a Spaghetti western style) is a fighting trope that I really dig. Sais are actually a lot larger than I gave them credit for. Those sharp boys are HUGE. 

The way they have their teeth bared as they circle each other reminds me so much of two very dominate male animals fighting. Like two lions fighting for the pride. When Leo finally comes to a stop his eyebrows furrow just a tad bit more, almost impatiently waiting for Raph to make another offending move. Or possibly giving thought as if the fight was coming to its end. And Raph’s pupils are crazy dilated as he charges yet again. It’s like a sickness that has infested his mind, this constant need to one-up his older brother. It’s making him crazy. And the heaviness of that armor is making Raph charge like a rhino or something. And the shot of Leo tightening his grip on his blade gives the implication that there may have been a split second where he believed Raph was ready to be done with the fight. 

Their eye contact hardly ever breaks during this scene. Raph is wanting to see that split second of worry in his brother’s eyes. He’s wanting to see that hesitation. 

Now Leo charges and he has taken full offense. He strikes at Raph many times, closing him into the wall under one of the two signs. He throws seven blows before doing a jumping spin kick to Raph’s abdomen. You can tell that blow sent Raph back a ways, maybe even farther if that wall wasn’t there to stop him. He probably has some form of whiplash. And even as he’s starting to lock eyes with his opponent again, Leo’s sword comes RIGHT BY HIS NECK. Leo literally got so close to making a fatal would for Raph. And no, Leo had no intention of killing Raph. He was probably aiming to give Raph a nasty slash on his cheek. Just a warning. Something that would remind Raph to stay in his place. 

Now here it is. The locking of their weapons. The climax of the fight. Raph is enraged and is gritting his teeth so hard that he’s shaking. In the shot from below, you can see the absolute force that they are using to one-up the strength of the other as their muscles are just quivering. And Raph tries to make himself become larger to push Leo back. Leo gives a quick glance down to his weapon in fear that the thin blade will give out. Swords aren’t meant to withstand this kind of pressure. 

And when they do break. b o i. The shock and pain that sweeps through Leo is heartbreaking. He just lost. Even before Raph throws the final blow. Leo’s swords are finished, just as he is. His swords. The weapons he’s most likely had since he became leader all those years ago. A literal extension of his body. Taken away from him in an unforgivable instant. And right as Leo is taking a glance back up to Raph, Raph is already coming up to powerfully kick him straight through the jaw. Through his kick, Raph is still in his jump twirling around to deliver the fatal blow to his brother’s head. The spear of his sai is centimeters away from Leo’s head as he falls back and hits the concrete behind him. As soon as his eyes open after being knocked back, he registers how close that blade was to piercing his skull. He’s been around long enough to recognize a deadly shot. You can tell his mind is racing in that fraction of a second as he sees the blade and looks back up to Raph to question why on earth he would throw such a potentially devastating blow. And just like that, Raph standing above with Leo pinned to the ground, he has won. He has defeated Leo. Even still, you can see their expressions change numerous times as they process what has just happened. Raph still bares his teeth in anger/triumph. He’s finally showing Leo what he thinks of his “place”. Finally showing him that he is a worthy opponent to Leo. 

Again, Leo is in shock. All he’s thinking is “why” and “what” and many other synonyms for said terms. You can see his eyes flit between Raph’s own as he continuously tries to read what his brother is thinking. Then his brows furrow once more as it finally sinks in. Raph hated Leo for so long. Up until the point where he came close enough to kill him. It didn’t matter how much Leo trained to be better for Raph. Raph still hated him. Every fiber of his being. He’s confused and frightened still as to why. Just because they fought doesn’t mean there was any resolution. Leo is still left in the dark as to WHY his brother actually despises him. 

Raph, still seething, is beginning to shake all the way up to his face. Then it hits him. What he’s done. His pupils widen as his eyebrows slowly shift up. That’s Leo. That’s his older brother. That’s his family. That’s who he’s got pinned down. Who he nearly sent a sharp blade through the skull. Who he nearly murdered. Leo is still staring up at him, I’m sure wondering how someone could be filled with so much hate. Maybe for a split second, if the Ghost of the Jungle actually did kill those raiders in South America, Leo saw himself in Raph. Perhaps that scared him. This could have been the path Leo was headed down if it wasn’t for April coming and pleading for Leo to return home. No one was able to help Raph. No one tried to stop him from going too far down this path. Was it because he had been absent? Was this all because he left? This is what Raph really thinks of Leo, huh? 

I love how no words are spoken here, yet again. It’s brilliant what can be said without any actual words. There’s so much emotion between the boys after what just happened. 

And here’s Raph again. Still processing. He tries to shake it away as if it’s just a bad thought or a nightmare. He’s in disbelief of his own actions. He then starts to shy away from Leo as if in apology but honestly what’s to be said after that that will make everything better? He also looks a little to the right of Leo, but we don’t get to see what he’s looking at. Up until this point, I’ve always just figured he was just looking away in thought, not on anything in particular. But now, I feel like he could possibly be looking at the rain falling on the concrete roof as if to help him figure out that this is reality. That he’s actually here in this moment. And so is Leo. OR, he could be looking at Leo’s broken swords, which is also bringing him back to reality. He destroyed a part of his brother. He could have done so much more destruction. He gets up ever so gently as if Leo is a paper doll that will break under his weight or a sudden shift of movement. 

Leo still clutching onto his sword handles is probably subconscious instinct, like when something suddenly scares you and your muscles clench up and you hold tighter onto whatever. And here you can see that he’s actually showing that he’s in pain. His adrenaline is wearing off so the blows from just moments before are actually beginning to enflame his body. I’m sure there’s a part of him that’s scared of Raph now. Like there’s no more teasing or mocking. If he were to try it again, I’m sure he believes things could spiral out of control again. Something neither of them wanted anytime soon. His face is a little hard to read when he stands up, but mostly because he’s in pain and is showing that in his gestures and expression. Knowing Leo, he’s probably mentally asking so many questions. I’m sure he wants to talk. I’m sure he wants Raph to talk. But what on earth are either of them to say? 

They’re exhausted from the fight. Leo is visibly heaving his body. Raph is still stunned as ever as his eyes are fixed on his brother who is SOMEHOW ALIVE ?? He shakes his head slightly as the thought creeps through his mind again. As the more devastating idea enters. He doesn’t even want to consider what the aftermath would have been like. What if it actually happened. What if Leo wasn’t standing right in front of him? What if he was still on the concrete ground, covered in rain pellets, immovable. Just… still. With a single sai protruding from his head. No. He messed up. How could things ever be the same again? How could he move on from this? How could he go home and face his family? His brothers? Splinter? He feels like such a little kid. A scared child who’s worried about the consequences of his actions. He would be disowned. He would be shunned. He would be hated. What was he to do? He glances down at his weapons, still in hand, and gives a tiny gasp. These were almost murder weapons. Of his own brother’s death. So, he runs. Any specific destination, probably not. He just needed to be away from Leo. He has no idea if he’ll ever see him again. Or his family. He just messed up way too horribly. How would anyone be able to forgive him? How could Leo even be facing him?

As he turns away to disappear into the night, Leo inaudibly tries to call him back. Even after all that, Leo’s still trying to reach out to him. He doesn’t want Raph to leave. This is something they NEED to discuss. He’s not mad or angry at his brother. He’s confused. He could see it in Raph’s eyes that Raph was guilty about what he almost did. I’m sure he doesn’t audibly call out to Raph because he’s partially too exhausted to do so. Plus, I’m sure there’s still a bit of fear right on the surface. 

As Raph runs, he is most definitely ugly crying. But we can’t see that because of the pouring rain :’D so. And then Leo gets captured and yadayada. Wow. I think I may be FINALLY done talking about this 😂 I’m exhausted. If you read this much I’m honestly super proud of you and I appreciate you haha you’re amazing. If you have anything you want to talk about concerning the ninja turtles (preferably the 2007 film because it’s fresh on my mind, but I’m also down to talk about the other movies or the tv shows) don’t even hesitate to ask. I love talking about the turtles. We can debate certain topics, gush about OTPs, talk about issues we had with certain things. I love all that. 

[nobodyfamousposts]

The Case of a Guardian

Oh, Fu. What can I say about Fu?

I got in late on the Miraculous parade so when someone finally introduced mw to the series, I was started off with the Origins two-parter where I got to see Master Fu first thing rather than going a good 2/3rds of the first season just seeing him randomly hiding in the background before it’s shown that he’s actually relevant. So I can only imagine how the slow build up to his reveal must have been like for fans of the series who were watching from the very beginning. For most of you, it was probably more of a surprise that there actually WAS a Guardian at all than that it was HIM specifically.

Fu’s official appearance into the conflict should have by all counts been something major. This was hampered somewhat by Princess Fragrance where he tried to appear like an ordinary healer who had no other significance. Depending on your perspective, he was either acting like a fool who didn’t know what he was really healing or he was being obviously oblivious to the fact that this “cat” was clearly abnormal and could FLY for the sake of plausible deniability in true “wink wink, nudge nudge” fashion. Either way, the potential “big reveal” set to take place later on isn’t quite as big since it’s immediately obvious that he is no normal healer and it should have been cause for Marinette to question it more. At least in her defense, she had more pressing issues at the time, but it was really not a surprise after this point that if there WAS a Guardian, it was clearly bound to be the old Chinese guy Tikki specifically told Marinette to take her to who was able to heal Tikki by ringing a gong.

It’s possible that it was intentional foreshadowing, but this is missing the whole “shadow” part of the term in that it’s obvious.

That seemed to set the stage for Fu’s introduction and then future relevance to the overall plot. And unfortunately, it wasn’t quite a good stage and as the play continued, it becomes ever more clear that the director needed more lessons.

When Fu was finally revealed to be the Guardian, they seemed to try to play him up to be a mentor figure and potential source of answers we’d all been waiting for. He was in a perfect position to not only give answers, but DIRECTION for where the story would go from here. Because now that we have the Guardian involved, surely he could at the very least give more insight—whether on finding Hawk Moth, weaknesses of the Miraculous, their history and effect on the world, or ways to boost their strength and abilities.

What we ended up with was something of the bare bones as far as ANY of that goes. He manages to make the transformation potions, so there’s that. His explanation of the history of the Miraculous is more of a brief overview of his own backstory. He DOESN’T explain anything about the Miraculous having weaknesses or really the powers of any of the other Miraculous that they could use—or that they could use TWO at the same time in a sort of mix-and-match fashion, which would have been VERY useful to know. He holds off on explaining WHY anyone would want the Black Cat and Ladybug Miraculous specifically and the issues with the BIG WISH that could warp reality until Robustus comes along and specifically mentions it when he should have already KNOWN what Hawk Moth was really after by this point.

The worst of this, however, is the lack of direction when it comes to the overall goal of the heroes to FIND Hawk Moth—which should by all counts be their central goal. While he does give some hintings as to who Hawk Moth could be, it’s more of a vague pointing in a general direction which doesn’t seem to be taken seriously or followed up on. While part of that is on Marinette for not being upfront with Fu about her suspicions initially, Fu himself knows by the end that Gabriel Agreste is suspicious and that his sudden and convenient akumatization at the time of his being a potential suspect doesn’t mean he’s NOT Hawk Moth. But rather than follow up on this potential lead, he does absolutely NOTHING with this knowledge—even going so far as to go into the lion’s den on his own and put himself at risk of being discovered by his enemy just to reveal himself to the man’s son in the man’s OWN HOME. This…seems like a major disaster waiting to happen. What if there had been cameras? What if Nathalie or the Gorilla had been listening in? While he did choose Adrien as Chat Noir, he KNOWS Gabriel is suspicious as hell and rather than approach Adrien in a more neutral place, he waltzes in to the kid’s own home where his biggest suspect happens to live, lets them see his face, and assumes nothing will come of it.

Remember the whole Hawk Moth issue that I mentioned before? Where he’s hiding in a secret place and the heroes are stuck and can’t make progress on their goal because they can’t reasonably try to search for him and he can’t be found? THAT IS WHAT FU SHOULD BE DOING! This is especially important given what we know of who Fu is and what he has been noted to have experienced.

The guy is almost 200 years old. The only survivor of his Order. Guardian of the Miraculous. The one defense protecting magical items that can SERIOUSLY FUCK SHIT UP if they fall into the wrong hands—which is all the more important because it’s clear that two at least already have.

So what exactly is his logic for any of the decisions he’s made so far?

Think back to Origins when Hawk Moth first transformed with evil intent. As soon as Nooroo was activated in this way and well before the first akuma appeared, Wayzz alerted Fu immediately. So Fu KNOWS that the Butterfly Miraculous has been found, that it has been found by someone who is specifically evil, and that something bad is bound to happen.

So what does he do?

Does this man—who was previously shown to have escaped Paris when the Nazis invaded to avoid a similar problem—escape Paris immediately before this new villain can figure out he was ever there and try to hunt him down, thus making Hawk Moth’s tantrum and attacking Paris to draw out the Miraculous completely pointless? No.

Does he track down his old ally he KNOWS is in Paris, KNOWS is aware of him and the Miraculous, and KNOWS would be fully willing and able to work with him to take this new villain down and retrieve the stolen Miraculous? No.

Does he look through all the people he’s no doubt met and gotten to know over his time in Paris to find a suitable user who is capable of fighting and who he would have some background with to have reason to trust with an item of such great power? …Wait, does he even know people?

Does he use the Miraculous he has—if not to fight himself, then to at least try to track down WHERE the akumas are coming from so he can confront Hawk Moth directly or otherwise sneak into his lair and make off with the stolen Miraculous and Book? Oh my, no!

Does he at least send out two different Miraculous that aren’t BOTH the most powerful ones that when combined can alter reality and possibly be what the villain is after? No.

So…what does this GUARDIAN of the Miraculous—ancient and all powerful artifacts that he is supposed to GUARD decide to do?

He gives both of the most powerful Miraculous at his disposal to two teenagers he’s only just met after they pass his “secret test of courtesy”.

Now reasonably, Fu could not have known at the time he sent them out that Hawk Moth’s goal WAS the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculous in order to make the wish. But if they are the strongest Miraculous he has and when together can be used to make a wish that can really upset that all so important balance of the universe, WHY is he sending them out TOGETHER? 

Even assuming that they WEREN’T what the Big Bad was after, it was still practically begging for them to be targets of the bad guys and get stolen. Even if Hawk Moth didn’t know they could be used together to make a wish, he would have known enough to know they were Miraculous and that taking them out would at least get the heroes out of his hair—then if he did eventually get both, he’d find out about that wish soon enough ANYWAY.

In addition—and I think I hate this part in particular because I adore Plagg and I love Adrien as Chat Noir but—WHY was the Black Cat in particular sent out? Ladybug, at least, had just cause.  Fu knew from the start that it was the Butterfly Miraculous being misused and the Ladybug Miraculous is currently noted as being the only one that could purify the akuma and restore the damage done by the battle. So if one of the two MOST IMPORTANT Miraculous HAD to be sent out, it makes sense it would be the Ladybug.

But…why the Black Cat? Sure, it can destroy anything it touches in whatever way the wielder wishes, but wouldn’t a Miraculous that can shield people or paralyze the main akuma be much more useful? Several times, the Cataclysm has been used to destroy the akuma’s object, but the objects in question are those that could reasonably be destroyed in other ways. We’ve SEEN Ladybug snap roller skates in half without effort—most of the items aren’t that much more difficult to break. The Black Cat could have been held in reserve in case of an emergency. And yes, sure, we could argue about that ever important “balance” and how Ladybug/Black Cat are yin and yang, but if it means lessening the chance of them both being taken and used for evil, why not go for something else?

There is another point of concern—and this is the BIG one. WHY TEENAGERS? Meta-wise, we know it’s because they want the show to appeal to younger audiences and that’s generally done with younger main characters. I get that, really. But in the canon that they created, they need to justify that and they just…don’t. If anything, they make all the argument for why Fu should have given the Miraculous to adults. Teenage drama and hormones and issues aside, it has been a clear point made in canon that the Miraculous just work better for adults. It’s not a matter of experience, it’s a matter of AGE. Ladybug and Chat Noir aren’t trapped by a time limit because they’re still starting out, it’s because they’re both still 14. Hawk Moth isn’t avoiding those very pitfalls because he’s had his Miraculous for a good year with plenty of time to test it and know how it properly works, it’s because he’s old enough for his stint in villainy to count as his mid-life crisis.

Fu is the GUARDIAN. He has had these items for several decades and is clearly a user himself. HE SHOULD KNOW THIS! So why did he think it would be a good idea to pit teenagers under a severe handicap against a grown man with power, position, and apparently all the free time he could need to create monsters on a daily basis without it ruining his regular routine?

The problem is that Fu could have done many things here. He had OPTIONS! There are many things that he as the Guardian should have known he could do. And things that given his character as a person who has an extensive history and a lot of unresolved guilt for the past, he should have chosen to do.

We all know that Fu is capable of mistakes. There is nothing wrong with that. But given that he is directly responsible for the fall of his Order and loss of everyone he’d known, one would think these mistakes would instill a bit more healthy paranoia in the man.

Like not giving out two of the most powerful Miraculous in his care at the same time and risk losing both.

Or realizing the inherent issue of giving the Miraculous to children when he knows they can’t utilize its full power based solely on their age when they are going are up against an adult who CAN.

Or the potential problems of just leaving those children to their own devices for the better part of a year during which they can’t make progress in finding the villain they’re supposed to defeat because they don’t know what to look for.

And especially why he should NOT go and outright show his his face to the person he has every reason to suspect IS the villain just to reveal secrets to the man’s son in his home, especially when said son could very well be put into a bad position and end up rather conflicted about the whole thing because of it.

Fu is a complicated character. One I truly like and furthermore WANT to like. The problem is that the series doesn’t seem to be sure just what it’s trying to set Fu up to be.

On the one hand, they seemed to be going for the basic “wise mentor” trope and have him be a potential source of answers and lore that we’d all be waiting for. Marinette certainly has been shown to go to him for advice on occasion. But the answers have been lackluster for the most part and only given out when it’s convenient for the plot of the day instead of immediately—like waiting until Robustus to tell Marinette the reason why someone would want both Miraculous, which is something she and Chat probably should have been told sooner so they could understand the seriousness of the situation. Or maybe just telling the kids anything from the start so they could plan accordingly. You know, things a wise mentor type would do.

While trying for the wise mentor achetype, at the same time they seem to be setting him up as a character who is in a role he isn’t fit for and honestly doesn’t know what he’s doing with. Part of this seems intentional. When Marinette finally approaches him in a legitimate ���Karate Kid meeting Mr. Miyagi” fashion, Fu comes right out and tells her his backstory and that he ISN’T quite the perfect mentor or source of answers she’s seeking. He explains pretty quickly that he was just a young initiate in the Order and from the sounds of it, had not completed his training before he made the “mistake” that caused the loss of the Order and two of the Miraculous. There is kind of a sense of him knowing little more than anyone else and trying to make do the best he can even as he’s teaching the next generation.

This makes for an intriguing character concept and interesting take on the normal mentor/student dynamics in that they both seem to be learning from each other. This isn’t bad. It’s actually pretty engaging.

But the problem is that Fu clearly knows more than Marinette does and for some strange reason isn’t applying the knowledge he has to the overall situation at hand. He isn’t picking people who can make the most use of the Miraculous he is handing out. He isn’t actually training the two kids he chose to pull into this life. For pretty much the entirety of Season 1, he left Ladybug and Chat Noir to try and get by on their own with no guidance and no real direction or plan in dealing with the madman terrorizing their city.

Normally in these sorts of situations where you have the Wise Mentor VS the Big Bad in an overarching storyline like this, they should be playing a sort of game of Battleship—I know Chess tends to be the go-to motif, but in this case it’s not about pawns and pieces but instead is about finding where the other person is hiding and taking them down. They each should be looking into each other, trying to find the other in order to be the one to get the advantage. What we see here is that whatever bits of advantage either of these two get, it’s completely a matter of convenience rather than what either of them actually DO.

Fu finds out Gabriel might be a suspect because Tikki discovered the book and had Marinette bring it to his attention.

Gabriel doesn’t “find” so much as assumes there’s a Guardian in Paris because Ladybug and Chat Noir suddenly get the “power” to breath and fight underwater. He also discovers there are more Miraculous available thanks to Chloe’s very public transformation into Queen Bee, and that there are more kwamis as well as a hint of their possible general location because of their unfortunately timed attempt to reach out to Nooroo (ignoring that the kwamis should very well have known it was a pretty big risk in the first place and had every chance of happening).

For both of them, any gains they make are precisely because of what others do or inadvertently hand them rather than what either of them actually do or try to find for themselves.

Of the two, Gabriel is acting based on assumptions that only happen to turn out to be right. Assuming the Miraculous would just show up in Paris if he started to terrorize the city and assuming the ones to show up would be the specific ones he wanted. The fact that Fu ended up playing right into those assumptions while putting his own side at a greater risk in the process says less about Gabriel’s planning and more about Fu’s lack of it.

What it boils down to is that Fu is an interesting character. But as a Guardian, he’s doing a poor job. As it stands, I’m hard pressed to believe his claim to Wayzz that he’s only made one mistake.

[warnadudenexttime]

The Lair of the Beast is a Tricky One

A/N: I’ve been working on this fic for over a week now and I’m really excited to share! Hope you all enjoy!

Warnings: Self depreciation, someone being a jerk, and lying.

Word count: 4,638

Beta: @madly-handsome

Summary: Thomas and the sides travel into Deceit’s room.

“What is up… no no I can’t do this today.” Thomas reached over and turned off the camera.

Roman shot up with a distressed look on his face, “Um Thomas!?”

Thomas sighed in response, “Yes Roman?”

“You can’t do this today? And umm why is that??” Roman pushed. “I gave you a perfectly good idea for a video and this-“

“Roman!” Thomas shouted.

Roman instantly shut his mouth. He dropped his head in shame. He had another dramatic outburst. Those seemingly happened more and more recently.

Thomas brushed a hand past his hair, “It’s not about your idea I… just can’t do it right now.” He spoke softly.

“Is this like- a motivation issue again?” Roman questioned cautiously not wanting to cause Thomas any stress.

A roaring groan could be heard as Logan rose up, “I always say emotions are the bane of my existence... But I take it back, MOTIVATION ISSUES TRULY WILL BE THE END OF ME!” He yelled, quickly regaining his composure. Logan went back to his usually calm tone. “Thomas, may I ask what or whom is making you feel this way?”

“Am I really getting anything out of these videos?” Thomas unhappily said.

Logan rolled his eyes. This issue appeared to be so easy to solve. All he needs to do is remind Thomas of why he made videos. “Well, of course you do. You have an income which is providing you with clothes, shelter, food-“

“Yeah yeah that’s great and all, but is this really making a difference to the world?” Thomas barely even got his words out.

“The whole world? Of course not.” Logan laughed not understanding the entire situation thoroughly.

Virgil pops in, “Thanks Teach that sure calmed my nerves.”

“I’d appreciate less sarcasm next time Virge, though I see you may know the birth of this problem?” Logan remarked, assuming since Thomas felt so down and filled with worry, and Virgil experienced that, he could tell him why he was so anxious.

Virgil rubbed his temples, “Is this all really important? Is what we are doing actually making a difference to anyone’s life?” He sank into himself. “Or is it just pointless and no cares?” he said that last thing more as a statement rather than doubting.

“I understand… well I actually don’t... that's a lie. Logan, you're the smart one! Can you tell him he's overreacting?” Roman requested, getting very restless.

“To appease his confusion, telling him his feelings aren't valid isn't gonna help.” Logan waved a nagging finger at Roman. “Virgil, while it may look like making videos for others entertainment is worthless in terms of truly having importance in the world. I assure you that they do effect-”

“I’m perfectly aware of that Logan!” Virgil hollered, his voice got slightly demonic.

The room got silent.

“T-then what's the is-ssue, Mr. Gloom?” Roman stuttered, slightly frightened.

Logan’s eyebrow went up, confused he asked. “Yes… if you know reality, how isn’t that comforting you?” While he did have methods of trying to calm Virgil, one of the things that worked best was reestablishing reality for him. Yet, in this situation he understood he was being irrational and still believing the lie he was telling himself.

“Well Logan, if I knew I’d probably already have it fixed by now!” Virgil snarled, clearly the anxiety Thomas put off turned Virgil's mood for the worse.  

“Just leave him alone for now Logan, I doubt you can help him.” Thomas whispered.

Logan lifted his pointer and opened his mouth however, nothing came out. Defeated he closed it back. Virgil looked down in guilt, he regretted his outburst but didn't say an apology not wanting to speak more.

“Um anyway…” Roman starts, he attempted to lighten the figurative dark haze in the room. “Where’s the puff ball at, we could use some cheering up here right? Patton!” He called.

No one showed up.

“Well that's quite worrisome-” Roman pointed out.

Logan rubbed his chin, “Yes- Usually, he's ecstatic to show up. Thomas, can you call him up?” He politely asked.

Thomas, not in the mood to argue nodded slowly, “I guess… Patton can you come up here?”

Patton slowly rose up with a glum expression on his face and eyes noticeably red, “Yes?”

Roman’s already faltering usual grin fell finally, “Ohhhh that’s not good-”

“Something wrong Thomas?” Patton hesitated, careful to not speak too loud.

“AND he didn’t call tank engine kiddo?!” Roman throwed his hands up in the air dramatically. “What madness!”

“I think you’re exaggerating a bit there princey, like you always do. But this does make sense. If Thomas is currently sad then Patton would feel the same just more concentrated.”

“Thanks for the exposition Logan-“ Roman mumbled.

“P-Patton?” Logan stammered, trying his best to not cause another outburst like he did with Virgil. While Patton was less likely he did seem incredibly in an emotional state. “Is your issue the same as Virge? Or at the very least the same cause?”

“I-I don’t know, what is Virgil’s problem?” Patton wondered.

“While we aren’t for sure exactly, it’s Thomas, and by extension you two don’t think you’re making a huge difference in the lives of other people. However true that may appear, it isn’t correct.”

“I t-think I feel the same as him then.” Patton squeaked out.

“So if you both have the same problem, what is the source?!” Logan perplexed, thinking as logic he must find this out quick before it gets any worse and it spreads to other things besides just not pursuing ones creative endeavors.

“I may have an idea Lo!” Roman announced. “What if it’s that snake.”

“Now, just because you see him as a villain doesn’t mean that this is his-“ Patton goes on falling into his habit of chewing out the sides for being rude to one another.

“Actually, Roman may be right?” Logan tuned in.

“I am?” Roman doubted, not exactly being confident in his first statement. The joy he got from Logan’s confirmation helped jumpstart that self esteem, “Yes! I am!”

Virgil pulled over the hood of his hoodie, grunting “More details Specs-” He said bluntly, absolutely done.

“Think about it, the dilemma is known and reality is upfront yet... Thomas won’t accept it because he’s lying to himself.” Logan explained. “Why he isn’t letting the truth in is because of a fabrication constantly being presented upon him!” He rejoiced, proud of figuring it out. While keeping the fact of slight disappointment to himself about not being the initial one to propose it.

Thomas and Roman both gasp at the same time. Patton and Virgil awkwardly stand there not wanting to add to the conversation due to their lack of energy.

“So the slimy boi is behind this?!” Thomas screamed

“We’ve been over this Thomas I’m like 99% sure his scales are just smooth-“

“Does that mean he’s in the room?!” Roman shouted putting one hand on his hip, proceeding to point at and glare down all the sides with suspicion, ANYONE could be a suspect!

“I highly doubt that as no one here has lied. I’m still factual, you’re still over the top, Virgil is anxious and wouldn’t be able to be deceitful without feeling the anxiety that comes with it, and Patton is openly sad even confirming how he feels.” Logan went on.

“So how would he be influencing Thomas then?? You don’t think-” Roman questioned.

“Don’t think what? You know we would get alot more done if you guys actually weren’t so ‘mysterious’ in your conversations with each other… just saying-” Thomas became curious.

“Where else could he be Roman? He has to be in his room!” Logan stated.

“Wait, Deceit has a room?” Thomas tilted his head in confusion.

“Question after question with all of you I swear…” Virgil whined.

“Of course! Why would you think otherwise. Maybe we need a refresh on your memory skills.” Logan said as he made a mental note to quiz him later.

Thomas rubbed the back of his head, “I mean it’s not like he's a main side or anything. Soooo I didn’t know.”

“He’s ‘main’ enough to have a physical representation. He has a room like the rest of us.” Logan justified his previous statement.  

“Valid argument-” Thomas nodded.

Wanting to be less useless in this situation, Patton added. “If he’s in his room how can we stop him?” he barely even got noticed.

“Can’t we… you know- sink into his corner of my mind?” Thomas pondered.

“Err- bad idea Tommy.” Roman cautioned.

“Why?” Thomas asked, furrowing his brow in even more confusion. The uncertainty didn't sound like it would ever end today.

“As you are aware, Virgil’s room had some pretty bad effects on Roman, Patton, and I. While, we haven’t been into Deceit’s corner before we can assume negative effects can happen to any of us!” Logan theorized.

“It could be our only option nerd-” Roman bit his nails nervously, “I don’t wanna enter it as much as you do. Yet, I can’t see any other way.”

Virgil sighed heavily, “I hate to agree… but I think he's right. Maybe it’s best to go- let’s just make sure to not stay long…” he warned.

“Well if you are all ok with it… I suppose it’s fine. Patton, do you wanna come along even though you’re gloomy?” Logan offered.

“I g-guess?” Patton sniffled out.

“It’s decided then! We shall travel to the room of the Danger Noodle!” Roman published with great pride, ready to put a stop to the fiend. He turned to Thomas in his usual pose, “Thomas? Do the honor?”

Thomas pumped with energy from the excitement but also slight terror of what came, momentarily forgetting his previously cheerless attitude, “Got it Roman!” He expressed as he sunk down.

Roman laughed as he attempted to enter the destination.

“I’m not sure that’s even a thing- ” Logan spoke, disappearing from the room.

“If he talks to me I’ll lose it even more I swear.“ Virgil spat doing the same as the others.

Patton stayed soundless like a sleeping mouse as he left.

-

As they all sunk in, thoughts raced through all of them, not knowing what to expect from the villain that wore yellow and black.

Roman thought it was a blackened swamp with vines everywhere, perhaps it looked like a jungle.

Virgil wondered if it was a nightmare of puzzles, never ending despite saying ‘just one more’.

Logan pondered that maybe it was a place constantly changing, new strings of lies added to the web.

Patton? Well he didn’t know what to question. BUT HE KNEW THAT THIS WAS A BAD PLACE. Patton did try his best to not judge, that didn’t work out well in his favor.

Yet, in reality it looked like the inside of an old house from a time period that none of them were born into. It held a bad color scheme complete with a bunch of old play production posters and a nearly broken radio. It held almost no light within its walls. In the corner was a wooden coat rack that gripped Deceit’s cape on the side with his bowler hat on top. Even a furry creature ran on its wheel in the tank it called home on the table that use to be the kitchen counter. Besides those things the room was pretty empty.

“Well… this is surely an establishment-“ Roman teased loudly. At the same time he was shocked, impressed and humored. “I honestly considered thinking this place was gonna be a full on mess of a place. It’s quite… bare bones if you will?”

Thomas and Patton both in sync screamed, “OH MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS IS THAT A HAMSTER!?”

Patton snapped out of his haze with the newfound distraction. He moved from where he came from and sat in front of the cage with a giant smile.

“Fascinating.” Logan remarked as he continuously gazed around. “Truly I never anticipated such a look.”

“Should we REALLY trust such a slippery scoundrel with a sweet innocent hamster?”

“Roman, again he isn’t actually a snake. I highly doubt he eats anything from the rodent family.” Logan recounted.

Virgil took a deep breath to calm himself, then took off the hoodie that laid from his head for a while now. “Let’s make this as quick as possible before anything terrible happens to us… where is he?”

“He could be in the shadows! Hiding away in the darkness, that offender! I shall be the one to find the wrongdoer… at least I hope!” Roman commanded losing confidence somewhat at the end.

“I don’t- whatever.” Virgil flicked his wrist.

“Deceit come out-” Logan insisted. “From your… rock?”

“I thought you said he wasn’t part-” Thomas started, interrupted by Deceit appearing in Patton’s empty spot.

“Goodbye everyone… why are you here?”  Deceit announced with a puzzled expression overshadowing his face.

“WE ARE AWARE OF THE MISFORTUNE YOU’RE CAUSING THOMAS! Well… I think all of us are sure? I don’t wanna doubt myself or anything-” Roman chuckled with a hint of nervousness. “No but seriously that was confirmed right??”

“I know all of what you’re talking about.” Deceit shrugged.

“What is he saying? This makes no sense.” Logan thought aloud.

Patton walked over from the habitat to where he originally rose, now bored. He joined the conversation, “Of course it makes sense! He speaks in lies! Don’t act dumb Logan.” He giggled putting his hand over his mouth like a schoolgirl laughing. “Also Deceit can you move over-“

“T-this isn’t my room though-” Deceit stuttered, intimidated by the moral trait.

“That was kinda rude, Patton.” Thomas puffed out.

”Don’t act like we weren’t all thinking that.” Patton huffed. “You guys had no problem with Deceit moving from my location LAST TIME!”

“I-” Virgil tuned in but shook his head “Nevermind.” He shouldn’t bother.

“I may have no current knowledge as to how you’ve done it… I just know you have contributed to this! Deceit admit to it!” Logan snapped, his cheeks getting red.

“Ah yes..” Deceit hissed, “I wonder why I’m never blamed for anything at all.”

“Wait but you’re always blamed… stop confusing me!” Logan vigorously trembled his fist.

Patton rolled his eyes not going noticed. “Logan how aren’t you getting this? You’re supposed to be the smart one right?”

Logan tipped his head moderately to the right in uncertainty. Should he take that as an insult or as a sign of worry caused by… Caused by something he couldn’t quite remember. It was on the very tip of his tongue waiting to be let out. In the end, Logan couldn't think of it, and simply rotated in the direction of Roman when he started to speak.

“We have reason to suspect... I... t-think… that you’re causing Thomas to LIE to himself! Making him believe what he does isn’t worth it because no one cares!” Roman prided trying his best not to stutter.

Deceit looked down at his hand, clearly not taking the situation seriously. “And whatever are your AMAZING points that you hold behind me?” He raised his eyes to make contact with the creative side.

“Well-!” Roman announced then instantly started biting his nails in nervousness, “Uh, Teach can you take this one? I don’t wanna ruin our argument…”

“I seem to have forgotten our previous discussion, so I don't possess that compression. I can try and guess if you want-”  

“Ugh that will not do Logan…” Roman thought aloud. “How about you Virgil?!” He gave off a hopeful smile.  

“Don’t worry about it Princey I’m sure this will merely finish in a happy ending like usual.” Virgil waved off the worry, taking his phone out of his pocket and began scrolling mindlessly through social media.

“I-” Roman ran both of his hands through his hair in distress. “Come on guys! We can do it! We can’t let Thomas down now can we?!”

“It’s ok-k Roman… you aren’t failing me at all! Don’t worry-.” Thomas tried to soothe.

“So you all decided that I was the hero, came down to someone else’s room and whispered to me saying I truly am no criminal?” Deceit interrupted.

“Yes-“ Logan agreed, not really knowing what Deceit meant.

Deceit rolled his eyes, “How delightful.”

“Does this mean we were wrong? Or were we not- wait are you lying? Perhaps this is a trap?! No… maybe?”

“Oh my god Roman can you shut up? We get it you’re worried! Blah blah blah.” Patton mocked, waving his hands dramatically like Princey always does.

“No need to fight guys!” Thomas demanded trying to get ahold of the situation. “Virgil, Logan, can you two kick in here?”

Virgil yawned putting his phone in his pocket, “I couldn’t care less dude. They’ll be fine? Probably? No need to panic I’m sure.” He stated, asure of himself.

“In all honesty I’ve lost track of where we are at this point.” Logan blinked with a bewildered expression washed over his face.

“Why are you all acting like this?!” Thomas glared, he got more and more frustrated by the second.

“What a calm situation we have here.” Deceit uttered with panic.

“You think?!” Thomas bawled his fists, ultimately letting the anger take control of him.

“I highly don't suggest you leave immediately before any real damage is caused- I can’t assure you that I’ll promise to tell you once you are back to safety.”

“Should I t-trust him?” Thomas said more to himself than to the others.

“He’s literally deceit.. I don’t know about this Thomas?!” Roman hollered, “But what do I know I guess right?” He started to laugh.

“Can’t we like chill… so what if anything happens?” Virgil sighed.

“I notice there was a guinea pig in the room, oh my god-“ Logan blissfully unaware of what was going on.

“That’s a hams- can you hurry up so I can get away sooner from these idiots dear god!” Patton groaned.

Thomas overwhelmed with all the comments swiftly left the room along with all of the other sides.

-

Thomas rose up first with a calmer expression, “Finally back to peace… hopefully.”

“UM WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!!?” Virgil growled, full of fret. “WE WERE IN DANGER AND I WAS SO- SO CASUAL!”

Next was Patton, tears welled in his eyes, “Oh my goodness guys I am so sorry! I didn’t mean to act that way… I-I don’t know what came over me!” Guilt came up in his stomach.

After Roman arrived, “Well then… that was an adventure.” He awkwardly coughed.

Logan was the last of the usual sides to appear. “Oh knowledge never leave me again, that was awful. Truly a display went on in there-” He adjusted his tie.

“Sooo…” Thomas trailed off, now thinking more clearly. “Anyone have any idea what happened in there?”

Deceit popped up besides Patton which led the Pat to let out a small squeal of fright. He now had on all of his usual attire.

“Ahem.” Deceit hacked clearing his throat. “I don’t apologize everyone, I really don’t.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I meant harm I swear-”

“Ha Ha!” Roman laughed with confidence. “So Logan and I were right, you were the culprit!”

“Roman…” Patton whispered to the creative side, “Now's not the time-”  

“I shouldn’t have warned you all of the effects of my room sooner.” Deceit clarifying what he meant, he was apologizing from his space rather than committing the crime he was accused of.

“May you tell us now how your room works?” Logan got out a notebook and pen from his back pocket, “I’m quite interested.”

Deceit sighed heavily, “My room has slight effects on others. It makes others act exactly like their true nature considering the room makes them tell the truth to themselves and others.”

Roman looked extremely dumbfounded, letting out an uncomfortable chuckle. “I’m sorry but I honestly got none of that-”

“I swear I’m trying at least a little Roman!” Deceit moaned in annoyance, clearly frustrated with not having the ability to tell the complete truth.

Logan coughed trying to get the attention to him, “I think I understand in a way… let me try and translate the situation… for Deceit’s sake.”

The tears on Patton’s skin started to dry up at this point, recovering from what occurred previously. “Wow Logan, you must be a snake charmer!” He gained a snort from Roman.

“Yes-s…” Logan stuttered, “Anyway- if we stay in his space for a prolonged amount of time, which we just did. It causes us to act the opposite of our usual mannerisms. We turn into our counterparts for this period. Lying about ourselves by behaving that way. For example, Virgil...” He pointed towards the anxious trait. “I’m guessing you became apathetic.”

Virgil snickered, “One of the few times I was ever ‘fully chill.’ He did quotation marks with his hands but setting them back in his pockets. “No but seriously never let that happen again-“

“And Roman, usually you come off as brave and very confident.” Logan declared.

“Come off?? I’d have you know I am very-“

“Anyway.” Logan cut Roman off, “You turned towards self doubt.”

Roman nodded along, “Yeah that explains why I felt so much of a need to impress… which I always do anyway so I have NO CLUE why I was worried-”

“You were worried because of Deceit’s room we just went over that Roman, keep up.”

“That's not what I meant-”

Logan continued to go on ignoring Roman’s comment, “Patton was clearly more rude than what's common for him, on average the most lengths he’ll go is being somewhat passive aggressive.”

“I’m really sorry everyone…” Patton whimpered to himself, barely audible.

“I’d classify that as amorality, him lacking a moral sense. Unconcerned with the wrongness or rightness of the situation.” Logan expressed.

Patton stayed silent.

Logan finally finished with translating Deceit’s claim, “To end I sadly began to go on a road of probably ignorance. Something I never wanna experience again…”

“That’s completely wrong.” Deceit side eyed Logan with a small smile, happy that the logical trait took the time to explain what he had meant.

“What he meant-” Logan began.

“Yeah we get it buddy, don't worry.” Virgil advised.

Roman scoffed, “That's wonderful and all. But, that doesn’t make clear his motivation in making Thomas feel bad!”

“I told you! I totally made him do that!” Deceit spat in anger getting ticked that no one was believing him.

“Alright alright alright… calm down python-” Roman instictly backed away from Deceit’s direction.

“Why do you continue to think that?” Deceit shrugged.

“Wow it’s almost like you have a history of lying.” Virgil sarcastically commented.

“You didn’t say it yourself! I apparently only have one intent, self preservation. Is that correct?”

Patton sniffled, “Well yes-“

Deceit sighed trying to calm himself down, “Then there’s your problem. I want to hurt Thomas because it wouldn’t throw him off balance, possibly causing his reputation to go up.”

Thomas and the rest of the sides all glanced at each other, while he didn’t ‘care’ in a way he also did ‘care in a way.

“So you aren’t at fault-“ Roman asked for the millionth time.

“No.” Deceit stated.

Thomas awkwardly shifted, “Ok well… you can leave then Deceit.”

“Oh ok- um well hello everyone…” Deceit uttered as he sank out with a somewhat sad expression on his face.

“So who’s fault is it then?” Roman questioned, his only suspect was proven incorrect.

“Well looking back at the evidence I may have made a small error.” Logan admitted.

Roman gasped dramatically, “Logan? Wrong? How dreadful!”

“Roman-“ Virgil started not wanting another fight to began.

“What?! I’m joking!” Roman yelled, waving his arms up and down.

“I don’t believe you, anyway-“ Logan changed the topic back to what he wanted.

Roman scoffed at the comment, offended. He swore that no one got his sensational humor.

“We affect Thomas to a certain degree yes, we are always there. We can influence him but we don’t act as his train of thought, his conscious decisions if you will.” Logan described.

“So...technically we didn’t have to even go through that.” Virgil questioned with an eyebrow raised.

“I mean… I learned a lot today-“

Virgil laughed quietly to himself, “I know you did Nerd. I’m talking about Thomas’ problem.”

Logan continued, saying “If we never traveled there we probably wouldn’t have figured out the true cause. Or at least we would have taken more time to come to that conclusion.”

“Still, that's great and all but what if someone got really hurt. What would we have done then?” Virgil spoke concerned.

“No one got hurt Virgil, do not fret.”

“What if someone did though Logan.”

“What if we were fine.”

“What if we weren’t.”

“Virgil.”

“Logan.”

“Virg-” Logan started, stopping before having a neverending disagreement. “How about we worry about the present and not the past then you can head off?”

Virgil pondered a moment, “Does that mean I get to work less?”

“Possibly.” Logan grinned with glee, getting the anxious side to take care instead of argue.

“Fineeee, you’re lucky I need a nap anyway.” Virgil yawned, “Bye Thomas, if you need me… I’ll be asleep so don’t wake me-“ He sank out.

“See ya Virge!” Thomas turned to face patton “Pat, how you feeling?”

“You want the truth?” Patton sighed, trying his best to use the exhale to restart his mood.

“Please.” Thomas said firmly.

“Not the best, I was already under the weather after that serge of thoughts from before. That’s mostly passed now though as that whole mess was one big distraction. I just feel awful for treating Logan and Roman so bad.”

Logan pushed up his glasses, “Patton don’t worry you had no control over the situation and I doubt neither I nor Roman took any offense to your comments.”

“Yeah Dandelion It’s in the past now.” Roman agreed with Logan.

Patton sniffed but now had a determined look on his face, “You are right. It’s in the past, I-I can get over this.”

“There you go Pat, I knew you could do it.” Roman said with a pumped attitude trying to make Patton more determined.

“Thanks for the help guys… I-If I have any other issues I’ll come to you kiddos.” Patton sank out.

“Well those two seem to feel somewhat better, how about you Thomas?” Logan asked.

“I think I agree with Patton that whole thing sure was chaotic I kinda forgot about it.” Thomas rubbed the back of his head.

“While that does sound good in the moment you can’t always have a distraction to comfort you Thomas. Next time before something like that really builds up try your best to look around you. See that you really do make an impression on others. Look at your fanbase for example. They’re a group who love you for you and you are important to them.” Logan went on.

“I appreciate the help Lo… I’ll do that next time.” Thomas promised, now seeing the situation more clear. In the future he can improve on handling this sort of predicament.

“Great well if my job here is done then I'll be off then, farewell.” Logan left leaving just Roman and Thomas in the room.

“S-so while this may be unimportant now may I-I suggest since you’re feeling b-better you could try-” Roman stuttered nervously.

“Filming that video you wanted?” Thomas finished the others sentence.

“Yes! I mean… well only if you want to that is…don’t feel like you HAVE to… I just thought-”

Thomas giggled pleased with making him so joyful, “I’ll get on that Princey.”

Roman ultimately filled with glee, sunk out, his current wish of getting his proposed idea used coming true.

Thomas finally turned the camera back on, his usual phrase erupting off the walls. “What is up everybody!”

[noonewasharmedinthisxenarecap]

Trilogy Recap: The Gauntlet

In my opinion, The Gauntlet is the most important episode in Xena’s overall journey. It represents the beginning of her evolution into the Warrior Princess we know and love. It show cases the complexity of the character and i love it...except that its a Hercules episode.

This Xena is obviously further in her journey. I would place this somewhere post Borias after the disaster that was Corinth. Whatever stock she had built up has crumbled away and she is left with the dregs again. She is clearly trying to rebuild herself and her army and is again stuck with soldiers that have very little loyalty and who put greed above all else. Putting aside the capability of her men, its clear that Xena is still a force to be reckoned with given we are told she has ransacked 6 villages in the last month.

We are reintroduced to Xena as she surveys the next village in her path. 

Don't let the baby face fool you. That is the look of a strong, capable and ruthless warrior. In this scene, we learn that Xena has a strong code of conduct that she expects her warriors to live by. Xena gives the village a chance to surrender, she doesn't attack at night and she does not slaughter women and children. This code of hers is important and integral to her character at this point in her journey. We also learn that Darphus her lieutenant is immoral and not to be trusted. The first few times i watched this i wondered why Xena would keep someone like Darphus around. This time around i understood that she had no choice. If Xena had banished Darphus it would show weakness like she couldn't control him and she ran the risk of him running off with half her army. She had no choice.

As we enter the village, for the first time we hear the now famous Xena war cry. The cry with the look on Xena’s face, we see just had exciting battles are for Xena. She lives for them. Its like her true purpose in life is fight. Its her drug of choice. Seeing Xena stand there with her bloody chakram after taking out several villagers the glee in her face is obvious.  

And then we meet, Salmoneus, one of my favourite guest characters in both series. He is often misunderstood and under appreciated. Salmoneus is an important player in Xena’s redemption and it bothers me that people don't recognise the impact that he had on Xena as a person. I’ll get into this further as the episode goes along.

I have two things to say about this scene:

1. My favourite excuse why Salmoneus should not be killed “My mother will cry.”

2. Xena saying that Salmoneus amuses her all the while looking at him stone faced without a hint of a smile on her face.

We move into the den/lair/whatever its called and its interesting to see Xena sitting alone. All her men are eating together and she is sitting alone at the bar. She is already excluded from the army. That can never be a good sign. The imagery here is lovely foreshadowing for what will occur later in the episode. 

Now we come to the first of the two pivotal scenes in this episode. While the cat is away the mice will play. Xena rides off with her scouts and her hold over her army dissolves into nothing. Xena’s army ransacks a village at night killing every living thing in sight. Women and children included. She doesn't return until after Darpheus burns the village to the ground. The look on her face as she walks through the burnt out building is pure horror and disgust. She knows that this is unacceptable and she knows that this has been done in her name despite her not ordering the attack. Its interesting to look back on this episode after we learn a bit more of Xena’s backstroke, especially when we consider where this lies in her timeline. It has a lot more emotion when we look back at it later.

Then it happens:

Xena saves a baby! (side note: i love the faces Xena makes whenever she is faced with a baby. It speaks to my soul). This is the beginning of the end of Evil Xena. There is no going back from this selfless act. It also makes the end of her reign at the head of the army. Xena must know that its all about to go sour because she takes the baby to a cave away from the army where is is able to hide out.  The fact that Salmoneus is also at the cave implies that this is not the first time that Xena has used the cave. Its further evidence of her isolation from her army.

And now we come to the most important scene in the episode and in Xena’s journey. After confronting Darpheus she is off to the Gauntlet. We see a dark and almost defeated woman enter the gauntlet.

She knows that the task she is about to undertake is going to be one of the most difficult in her life. No one has ever survived the gauntlet. 

This is one of the greatest Xena scenes of all time. The acting from Lucy is beyond reproach, she delivers every emotion so perfectly and in such a manner that you can actually attribute those actions, facial expressions and emotional outbursts that you see in the character later down the track. She brings the darkness and pain right into the audiences heart. Add to this the editing, which slows the scene down in all the right places and focuses on all the right parts of the experience, the way the camera focuses on empty ground and you suddenly see xena’s hand reach forward and complete the gauntlet, its brilliant. Then the emotional, softer and dramatic music just adds to the tension and emotion delivered in the scene. I’m in love with this scene.

Her strength and her ability to withstand pain make it possible for her to make it on the other side. This is paramount to her character development. With this one scene she shows an ability to survive and withstand any challenge thrown in her way. The Xena that makes it to the end of the Gauntlet is a far stronger Xena that enters. 

This scene turns the tide and pushes her further onto the path of good. Its very apparent that something has changed within her and she isn’t necessarily ready to face it and that’s why she needs to take on Hercules one more time. She isn’t ready to face the truth within herself, even though it obvious to everyone that she is different and that her destiny has changed.

Then we have the final face off with Hercules. I love the anger she expresses when Hercules accuses her of killing women and children. No matter what terrible things she has done in her life she has never killed women and children and how dare he accuse her of something so heinous. I think this interaction is instrumental in Hercules seeing the change in Xena. The Xena from the last episode would not react in this manner, she would let it roll over her without a thought. This Xena is principled. She values some lives. Hercules sees the spark of goodness which is why he doesn't kill her in the end. Although he probably wouldn't anyway because Hercules doesn't kill people.

FYI XENA WON THAT FIGHT. The only reason Hercules was able to get the upper hand was because his cousin interfered. The differences in their fighting styles is really apparent. Xena is tactical and clever whereas Hercules relies on his strength. 

Xena walks away like sulking teenager no longer understanding her place in the world. She has no army, she didn't kill Hercules and Hercules didn't kill her. She is truly alone. She can't go back and she has no idea how to go forward.

Xena comes forward and helps Hercules to defeat Darpheus and her army. She has decided to follow the path of good afterall. This final exchange between Xena and Hercules is problematic. Its as if only villainous women are entitled to be strong. The minute Xena switches side she takes on a submissive tone and is almost begging Hercules to pay her attention. This is not the Xena we saw survive the gauntlet but it is an indication of the terrible direction they will take Xena in the next episode.

Summary

I cannot praise this episode enough for its depiction of Xena’s  journey. Its one of the few episodes in the Hercules series that pushes his self indulgence to the side so that another character may shine. The writers took a incredible character and let shine through. You could almost forget that this is actually a Hercules episode. His scenes don't appear to have much bearing on the overall story. This is Xena’s episode not his.

Now people often say that Hercules was the reason for her turn, I’m inclined to disagree based on this episode. Every step that Xena takes is a step on to the right path. It is a step that she takes independently. All that Hercules does is not kill her, she does all the work herself. And this is so evident that it makes her character all the more inspirational.

Lucy is outstanding in this episode. She plays the gauntlet scene to perfection. The fear, the anguish, the pain, the anger, the strength and the resolve are all evident in her face. She makes what Xena to survive. She makes you want more of this character. She makes you love Xena.

*All screencaps in this post were taken.borrowed from http://www.angelbacchae.com. Massive thanks

[fandom-blerd-life]

Black Lightning 1.05: How Do You Feel About Latex?

Previously on Black Lightning, we met Tori, the alliterative addition to the Tobias & Tori evil duo, Anissa explored her new powers, and the kids in Freeland got hooked on a brand new drug called Green Light.

Hellooooooo (Mrs. Doubtfire Voice™) and welcome to another recap of Black Lightning! We’re 5 episodes into this season and there are no signs this show is slowing down. In fact, they’re still introducing new and exciting world-building elements that I 100% did not expect! But as usual, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Last week, Black Lightning got to test out some new electric vision and this week, Gambi hooked him up with some flying action! (Well, it’s closer to a hover than a fly, but the guy’s been gone for 9 years, he’s got to ease in.) During a test flight, Black Lightning notices a kid trying to evade police capture. It turns out, he was high on Green Light. I think the more important note about this scene though, is the fact that the officers were prepared to shoot the kid, even though he was unarmed. And Black Lightning--and in turn, the show--calls them on it. Sure, this kid was tweaking worse than me before my morning coffee, but if the officers felt as threatened as they claimed, they could have tased him first. Once again, small moment, HUGE statement being made by this show. Black Lightning subdues the kid with a lightning blast and uh oh, it looks like he’s having some head pain. Surely it’s just a fluke and won’t come up again.

I don’t know what kind of operation Gambi is running here, but while he’s down in the Lightning Lair, his shop is empty AF upstairs. Not an employee in sight! That can’t be good for business. However, that doesn’t deter Tobias and Henchlady (yay! She’s back!) from making their presence known. Tobias and Gambi trade insults and threats about Black Lightning’s identity, but before our villains leave, we find out that Tobias has some kind of anti-aging serum running through his veins. ::record scratch:: Say what, now?? Tobias doesn’t age? How old is he? Where did this serum come from? What kind of side effects does it have? Is it magic? We all know magic ALWAYS comes with a price! I have questions, show! One person who is not giving up any answers though, is Gambi. We’ve seen hints of his shadiness in previous episodes, but it’s clear that Gambi’s hair is filled secrets upon secrets, including some kind of deal between him and Tobias.

Meanwhile, at Pierce Palace, Anissa is deep into research about enhanced abilities. Like many superheroes before her, she turns to Generic Search Engine dot com. She’s basically one step away from an unstoppable WebMD spiral, when Jennifer barges in to borrow one of her sister’s jackets. I love the Pierce Sister banter in this scene soooo much. They give each other shirt like only sisters can. “Are you watching porn?” I mean, come on! The Pierce sisters are very important to me dot tumblr dot com. Anissa gets back to work, and discovers that 30 years ago in Freeland, 9 kids with enhanced abilities just disappeared.

There are a few things in this episode that are just so quintessentially Black and 2 of them happen at the roller rink. I don’t know about you, but the rink was a staple of my childhood. I had and went to countless birthday parties there. Not only that, roller skating has been a staple in the Black community for decades. It has roots in the Civil Rights era when rinks would have nights specifically for Black folks to come and skate to rhythm and soul music. It gave them a place of their own to have a good time and skate to their own music. We got to see a glimpse of that time in this episode, with the addition of smartphones and a good old-fashioned girl fight. While Jennifer is finding her perfect selfie light, two girls come at her after consuming a large amount of Haterade™. They throw several insults Jennifer’s way (including a low blow about Khalil), but Jennifer claps back with the Blackest of insults by calling out Lana’s crusty ash knees. Only on this show will the thing that sets a girl off be someone else saying they’re ashy. Amazing. Just so perfect. Anyway, Lana lunges toward Jennifer who fights BOTH Lana AND her friend without breaking a sweat! Could it be? Could there be three Pierces with abilities??

Back at the drugstore where Anissa threw a grown ash man across 3 aisles, Jefferson overhears a man pleading with the cashier over medicine he purchased for his sick daughter. Jefferson steps in to help and loses his temper when the cashier takes no responsibility for the situation. That pesky headache is back but this time, it comes with glowing eyes. Huh. Maybe this will be a big deal.

Anissa is still in her research rabbit hole, but learns that when those kids disappeared, there were a series of canceled articles that would have revealed a vaccine to be the source of those enhanced abilities. The editor of the Freeland Gazette who nixed the stories was David Poe, and the reporter who broke the stories? None other than Alvin Pierce, Anissa’s grandfather. DUN DUN DUN. Alvin was murdered and his murder was never solved. Anissa is 100% a Murderino and wants to get to the bottom of this.

Jeff hits the streets again as Black Lightning, but this time it’s to check out an address that could lead them to the Green Light supplier. One of my favorite things about this show is how gorgeous the camera work is. There is a shot of Black Lightning in this scene that damn near took my breath away. Clearly, not everyone in Freeland is excited that Black Lightning is back, because he is greeted by a racist white guy wielding a shotgun. This douchenugget threatens to shoot Black Lightning’s “Black ass” because he know he’ll be seen as a hero. Black Lightning doesn’t let that get to him and blasts douchenugget until he finally admits the chemicals at that address are to make Green Light, and the guy in charge of it? Joey Toledo: Tobias’ right-hand man.

Back in the Lightning Lair, Jeff is pissed at Gambi for hiding the fact that Joey Toledo was still around. In the middle of screaming at Gambi, Jefferson just...falls over. Down for the count. I guess maybe he should have paid a liiiiiittle bit closer attention to those headaches! The writers even had him taking headache meds the last two weeks! But Lynn comes to the rescue and after doing a workup on Jeff, determines that there doesn’t seem to be a medical cause for these headaches, but she wonders aloud of it could be Black Lightning. As if on cue, lightning surges through Jefferson’s body, the monitors go crazy, and he wakes up.

It’s been a bit since we’ve checked in with our villains. What are they up to? Well, Tobias is being arrogant AF and Tori is trying to talk some sense into him. Something tells me he shouldn’t be so cavalier about Lady Eve’s power, because later in the episode, we see Tobias open an envelope filled with dust in a wonderful callback to last week. But Tori isn’t all negativity; she’s also got good news. She found Eldridge and it’s flashblack (I meant to type flashback, but this typo is too hilarious to fix so I’m keeping it!) time! We see a young Tori and an exactly the same age Tobias being berated by their father Eldridge. Specifically, Eldridge can barely stand to look at Tobias’ “pale ass.” Now, I’m not saying Tobias’ #DaddyIssues justify his villainous journey, but Eldridge’s behavior toward his children was atrocious. Hey Tobias, might I suggest some therapy? Perhaps in lieu of, I don’t know, straight up murder?? Think about it.

Meanwhile, it’s time for a little Daddy/Daughter, Superhero-to-Superhero quality time! Anissa wants to talk to Jefferson about her grandpa, his father. At first, he’s hesitant to have this conversation and even snaps at her. But he softens, apologizes, and comments that Anissa has a lot of her grandfather in her. That no matter what, Alvin always did the right thing. That must have been exactly what Anissa needed to hear, because she marches right into the Freeland Gazette to meet with Mr. Poe. They have a cordial conversation and Poe speaks fondly of Alvin, until Anissa mentioned those missing kids. Mr. Poe promptly kicks her out of the office and Anissa is left frustrated and confused.

I wasn’t even going to mention this next seen with Black Lightning and Henderson, but Black Lightning referring to the burner phone he gives Henderson as the “Black signal” had me cracking up too hard for me not to call it out.

Back at the Pierces, Lynn is checking on Jeff when DING DONG, they have visitors and OMG IT’S LANA AND OMG DOES LANA HAVE TWO MOMS? These ladies are not pleased about their (?) daughter’s broken wrist, but Lynn and Jeff manage to talk them down and even end up chatting and laughing with them! At least, until Jennifer comes home. Lynn is ready to serve her daughter some punishment and even drops a “You really wanna play with me right now, little girl?” And y’all. When I tell you I got chills. I could HEAR my mom saying that exact same thing to me when I was younger. You can go ahead and add this to yet another thing that makes this show so damn Black. Jeff, on the other hand, can barely contain his pride when he finds out the Jennifer managed to hold off TWO girls without getting hurt herself. That move costs him though, because somehow both he and Jennifer are on the receiving end of a Lynn Verbal Takedown.

Anissa, our Persistent Polly over here, decides to go back to the paper to get some information out of Poe. He knew she would be back because he had pulled a box of files for her. That box came with a warning though. Alvin had tapped into something huge that Poe wanted nothing to do with. Whoever these people are, they’re still watching, and Poe warns that Anissa will get killed if they find out she’s looking into this. 

Tobias and Tori roll up to Eldridge’s place, and Tobias greets him with swift punch to the face. If you were hoping the years had softened Eldridge, well, you would be incorrect. He throws more insults at his children and even expects praise because he stayed when their mother left them. This is such an interesting story choice. There are so many stories where we hear about Black fathers just up and leaving their children, and rarer is the case where the mother leaves. It’s because of that, Eldridge wants credit for sticking around. He’s not like the other fathers. He stayed. What he fails to realize though, is that even though he stayed, the life he gave his children was no life at all. Tobias goes in for a hug, Eldridge takes the bait, and ends up with a broken back. He’s going to die and he’s going to die slowly.

Back at the house, Jefferson joins Jennifer as she watches track. Jenn is frustrated to be on punishment when all she did is defend herself. Jefferson responds with a quote, “The one thing you can’t take away from me, is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me.” He wants his daughter to realize that defending herself is about regulating her emotions and fighting only when necessary. And then, because they’re the cutest things ever, they throw around Star Wars references and they hug and I LOVE THEM OKAY.

While Anissa goes through her research, she comes across a bunch of articles about Tobias, and a key to a storage facility. Obviously this is a chance for her to suit up and test out those new skills of hers but OH NO, she has too much ass for her cosplay suit! LOL listen. I appreciate this so much. Too Much ass is a real thing and should be treated as such. Time for a new suit! Anissa heads to the store armed with a fake name (Monica) and almost as much sass as her stylist. Cut to a fashion show/montage that I watched...an unimportant number of times. (It was a lot. It was many times.)

She goes to the storage facility rocking her new suit, new hair, and a painted on gold mask. I love that the show is taking their time with an “official” reveal of Thunder. We get to see Anissa exploring her powers on her own and she’s even calling herself a superhero! Once she smashes into the storage unit, she finds a mysterious vial in a safe.

Henderson was able to contact one of Joey Toledo’s old girlfriend’s and even though Gambi tries to talk him out of it, Black Lightning goes to find him anyway. It turns out, Joey Toledo is the Tobias’ henchman from last week who used brass knuckles to kill the Medical Examiner! The two fight, but Black Lightning’s headache comes back just in time to give Toledo the upper hand. We end with Black Lightning on the ground struggling to get up. You might even say, that he could use a spark. (Credit to @CloneNic for that one because LOL)

So, what did you think of And Then the Devil Brought the Plague: The Book of Green Light? I know personally, I wish we got to see our girl Grace, BUT we did get our first taste of Jennifer kicking ass! As always, I’d love to hear from you! You can find me @njnic23 on Twitter. And huge thanks to @punkystarshine for all her advice and editing!

[valtharr]

Okay, so let me tell you about a little movie called “The Gamers: Hands of Fate.” And yeah, the title might seem off-putting at first, but be assured, it’s actually pretty good. For one, it’s not actually about video games, and secondly, it’s story is all about deconstructing and calling out the “nice guy” attitude and general way female nerds are treated by male nerds.

So, the movie is technically a sequel to the movie “The Gamers: Dorkness Rising”, but knowledge of the previous movie isn’t necessary to follow this one. So I’ll just jump right into the plot:

The movie starts with a group of typical fantasy adventurers entering a villain’s lair and confronting said villain. They have some banter, until...the cell phone of the party’s sorceress starts ringing. Yes, it’s of course revealed that the whole thing was just part of a D&D (well, actually Pathfinder) campaign. To make it short: The game ends prematurely because everyone has other obligations. This annoys our...”hero” for the movie, Cass. His fellow players try reassuring him that “it won’t be a year until [they] game again.“

Cue irony.

Yes, the next time they find themselves around the table in the back room of the game store owned by their bard (well, the bard’s player obviously), is indeed a year later. And it turns out the game again falls flat because said bard player didn’t count in that they’re having a torunament for a TCG that day. Cass is furious and starts raging about how stupid TCGs are...until Natalie walks in.

Natalie is attractive, feisty...and also the only girl at the tournament. Cass immediately falls for her, but she’s obviously only there to play. Oh yeah, and some asshat playing at the tourney throws sexist bullshit at her while she registers for the tournament. Said asshat is promptly thrown out.

After Natalie is done registering and goes to find her seat at a table, Cass impulsively also registers for the tournament, buys a starter deck (since he never played before), and bribes his buddy so that he and Natalie square of in the first round. He embarrasses himself, tries to get a date with Nat, she rejects him. However, it’s important to note that both Cass’ advances as well as Natalie’s rejection are pretty sincere. Cass obviously doesn’t want to seem like a creep, and Natalie doesn’t want to hurt his feelings. But obviously, the plot doesn’t stop there. And I’m gonna start summarizing huge chunks of the plot now.

Natalie makes it to the finals, but is defeated. Cass tries to comfort her, and at the same time also to get a date with her. She declines again, but says that, if he wins the world championship of that card game, she’ll go out with him. While it was meant as a joke, Cass takes it serious, starts learning the game and actually becomes quite good at it.

The rest of the movie takes place during the championship and shows Cass soaring through the ranks and becoming the last hope of the core fans of the game, since he’s the only one who seems to be able to stand a chance against a team of players who are using an overpowered strategy specifically to drive the core fanbase away from the game. However, Cass initially doesn’t give a shit about that, since he only takes part in the tournament to get with Natalie. Something Natalie directly calls him out for, btw.

Anyway, of course he eventually comes through, wins the tournament, and even rejects going on a date with Natalie when she adresses the point, even admitting that going on a date with someone just because they promised it to you as a prize would be pretty douchey. While the movie ends with the two going on a more platonic date, it’s left open whether or not they end up together.

Okay, now to the actual analysis of the anti-sexist themes in the movie.

It’s pretty clear which side the movie stands on when they introduce a background character that harasses a female gamer just for being woman, just to immediately punish him and essentially display him as a whiny idiot. The face of the store clerk who throws him out is amazing, btw. But of course, the main point is Cass’ relationship to Natalie.

Cass, while definitely being more of an anti-hero, generally treats Natalie with respect. He doesn’t directly act in the typical “wahhh, why won’t she have sex with me”-way, he isn’t demanding, he doesn’t really act repulsive. When he first tries to get a date with Natalie, he drops his usual cocky attitude and asks her out in a genuine way, even asking her to teach him the game (or, in other words, actively asking her to share her interests with him, instead of pushing his interests on her, or acting like they’re made for each other just because they share the very general interest of tabletop gaming). Natalie even points out that “[he’s] cute, sure, [he] speak[s] in complete sentences, and [she’s] reasonably sure that [he] bathed in the last 24”, thereby technically being attractive to her, however, as she says: She’s there to game. She makes it clear that she’s just there to play her card game, not to find a boyfriend (even if she doesn’t say it that way explicitly, it’s pretty obvious she means it that way).

Later on, she calls Cass out even more. Hell, I’m just gonna quote her whole “The Reason You Suck” speech here:

“Right. You’re here for a piece of ass. Oh, I’m sorry? Is that not the entire reason you came to GenCon? Don’t have a stroke. I get it. Hot Gamer Chick. The latest in fantasy fucktoys. Another game to be won, and walked away from. Don’t need to know anything else, do you? Bet you don’t, right? Know anything else about me. At all. ... Yeah. That’s about what I thought. And you wonder why I think you’re a joke.“

There’s even a subplot in the Extended Edition, involving another character, Lodge, who in the previous movie was actually shown to be more sympathetic, which also resulted in him getting together with the new female player in their D&D group. So yes, this character is portrayed as more sympathetic...but his subplot actually mirrors Cass’ main plot to a degree. See, without going into too much detail, his main conflict is that he thinks he doesn’t deserve his girlfriend because he didn’t “earn” her, because he didn’t do anything special to win her over, and since he’s a nerdy guy who was raised on media all about heroes going on epic quests to save princesses, that really makes him question his relationship. And while in more typical narratives, this idea of not feeling good enough for your partner and wanting to “earn” their love would be shown to be noble, especially when contrasted with Cass’ quest of essentially just wanting to get into Nat’s pants, the movie shows how similar these mindsets are. And in case you don’t get it yet, let me tell you about that very first scene of the movie, where the Pathfinder group’s characters are confronting the villain and demand he free the princess, so the heroes can (and I quote!) “depart with [their] prize”, to which the villain - sarcastically! - responds “for women are prizes to be won...am I right?”

Maybe this all seems more like rambling, so let me try to put this together in a more coherent form:

The movie is great at deconstructing the “nice guy” trope by showing Cass as a guy who, for the most part, is still an actually nice guy. He tries to look his best in front of Natalie, and even when he fucks up, he seems genuinely upset at that fact. Yet, throughout the entire movie, his attitude is shown to be wrong. Him rejecting to go on a date is portrayed as positive character development. This, especially when shown with the more “typical” sort of sexism shown in the beginning, is supposed to show that even more “noble” types of sexism...are still sexism. The central theme of the movie, which in my eyes is especially shown when Natalie first rejects Cass despite his good qualities, seems to be: 

It doesn’t matter how nice you are, or how nerdy she is. She’s not there to be your Manic Nerdy Dream Girl, you’re not there to be her Nerd In Shining Armor. Usually, she just wants to game. So let her. 

[itsnotdavid-blog]

MY VILLAINOUS LAIR

TL;DR - I’m indecisive and I don’t know if I want to live in a large house surrounded by friends and family, or if I’d be better off hiding away in isolation inside some tiny, walled off excuse of a home. No to cars, yes to gardens. Fuck yeah, nature!

-

Nothing’s more fun than being tasked with writing a blog post for a class activity. To start things off, I’d like to apologize beforehand for this needlessly long wall of text. I don’t expect you to read along, and I certainly don’t expect you to remember all the itty bitty details, but I do want you to know is that I’m what the cool kids call extra. We were expected to draw one house and my stupid self ended up coming up with three. If that doesn’t give you an idea of what kind of person I am, then I don’t know what will. 

The question still lingers: what exactly do these houses represent? If there’s one thing I’ve learned today, it’s that all these seemingly insignificant little doodles form a bigger picture. Isn’t it exciting - a big picture made of little pictures? Like one big mosaic where each tile delves deeper into the myriad insecurities that stir within me. My inner optimist says it’ll paint something pretty, like a field of vibrant sunflowers, or a horde of zombies getting ravaged by a pack of fire-breathing velociraptors. Then again, there’s also the possibility of this picture taking the semblance of a donkey’s sphincter, or possibly even Mama June after a hot, sweaty yoga session. 

Either way, the picture isn’t what’s important. 

What’s important is that I’ve got three houses, each more pointless than the last, and it’s my job to figure out what these doodles mean. Even as the professor spoke and told us to put our pencils aside, I simply couldn’t keep mine off the paper. It was like there was this odd, supernatural force compelling me to finish what I started. But why? I don’t even put this much effort into waking up in the morning, so what’s gotten me to go full-ham on something entirely fictional and meaningless? The more time I spent on the drawing, the more I began to realize it was wholly unrealistic.

So I started again.

Scratched that one after five minutes. Too small, too unambitious. This one didn’t seem right to me at all.

So I started again.

Eventually I ran out of time, and was ultimately left with three unfinished houses; all distinct with little-to-no similarities save for the essentials. Needless to say, I was devastated. How could I fail something as simple as drawing a house? This was the unassuming sort of task you’d give to a five year old and I’m sure they’d manage to get it finished one way or another. I’ll bet their houses even have dinosaurs. Life isn’t fair.

The first house I drew was far larger than the other two - the perfect home for a less-than perfect family. There’s even a small patch of land in the back that’s dedicated to growing fruit and vegetables, it is fucking awesome. Despite the sheer size of the building, the rooms totaled to four, and that’s only if you don’t count the garden and the backyard. Think of it this way: if a house is big, you can assume it’s got a lot of rooms, and if it’s got a lot of rooms, it’s got a lot of space for inhabitants and/or guests. Generally, some of the more introverted people prefer returning to a lonelier home after a long day of work, faking smiles and chatting up people they’d never interact with outside the office. The last thing they’d want to deal with at home is even more needless social interaction. 

With that in mind, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to conclude that an introvert wouldn’t want to live with other people unless they absolutely had to. The second house drawn seems to represent this on a deeper level. Let’s pretend for one minute that there’s more to me than meets the eye. It’s not totally unreasonable to assume that a self-proclaimed introvert would want some company every now and then - there’s no shame in wanting to be alone, but that doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to enjoy spending time with friends and family. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

Though it might not be clear, given my abysmal skill with architecture, house planning and all things creative, I poured a lot more passion into this house in comparison to the others. Even if I firmly believe that what other people think of me is none of my business, I still feel as if my appearance matters in some way. I’m all for sticking to the status quo but there’s no denying that I’m, as I said before, what the cool kids call extra. For better or for worse. 

It’s strange. I’d never admit it in person, I do actively try to distinguish myself from the crowd for whatever reason… but at the same time, I resent the attention that comes with it. It’s a hard duality to put into words, so you’ll have to pardon my inability to explain it. I don’t quite get it myself, you see. Even if everyone in the world’s special and unique in their own whimsical little ways, people are too busy concerned with themselves to notice this about others. It’s an easy to trap to fall into, perceiving someone as dull simply because they’re not good conversationalists; because their quirks are of the subtler sort and only tend to shine once you truly get to know the person. 

The tragedy is, people won’t ever invest enough time to see that side of them.

This is only highlighted by the sheer difference between this house and the two drawn after it. It could be argued that the first home - the larger home - represents the side of me that wants to be surrounded people, and stand out by towering over all the others. This is in stark contrast to the other two, which arguably fits the size of an apartment room than an actual house given its scale and lack of a second floor - a claustrophobic little hovel that’s more fit for a gremlin than a man. I’d imagine it’d be like living in a trash compactor. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good living. Doesn’t change the fact that you’re living in a trash compactor.

Still, I get the feeling I’m only scratching the surface and that there’s so much you can take from the size of the two houses alone. Maybe it represents my desire to live in isolation in my villainous lair, walled off from the rest of the world. Looking back on it now, there’s no way I’d survive in a house like that. I’d go insane, mainly because there’s nothing to do but also because I’m a bit of a claustrophobe. What was I thinking?

Just by looking at this house alone, you can already tell I’ve started to lose a bit of steam. There’s a reason why I don’t do interior decorating - it’s because I’m absolutely dreadful at it. Look at this. What kind of madman puts the bathroom next to the kitchen and not the bedroom? It’s hilariously inefficient, if you ask me. Takes a certain kind of idiot to come up with a house like this and even bigger one to want to live in it.

Bah! It just gets worse and worse!

If there’s something all three of these houses have in common, it’s a kitchen. Funny. You’d think the bedroom would be something I’d prioritize, but apparently food comes first. In all fairness, the only reason I didn’t include a bedroom in the first doodle was because I lacked the time. It’s strange though. I haven’t exactly cooked a proper meal since I moved here just a little over a year ago. Perhaps this the brain’s strange and subtle way of telling you to start cooking once again, though it’s also possible that my brain’s simply calling me fat. Either way, it capitalizes on my love of food. 

On the other hand there is something that all my houses lack and the only person I can blame for that is myself. There’s no fucking garage. Whether it was a simple overlook or a subconscious desire, it’s given me a lot to think about. I’ve never been fond of cars, and I’ve never exactly wanted to drive either so it’s only natural that there’ll be nothing in my house related to such things. Still, every family ought to have a vehicle. They’ve got to get around town somehow. Walking simply isn’t an option in this day and age, as fun as it sounds. Speaking of oversights, I’ve also failed to make any note of what house would look from the outside. All I’ve got is a top-down view: a simple outline that maps out where the furniture’s supposed to go. 

Not that I’d end up following it anyway. 

[thisisevenharderthannamingablog]

6.18 Where Bluebirds Fly

I’m having a difficult time writing an intro this week, because every time I think about the second scene my brain shorts out for a minute. I know a bunch of stuff happened other than this, but what?

In the past: On her way to the Emerald City, young Zelena befriends a woodcutter named Stanum, an unusual youth who does not fear her magic and who is impressed by her kindness and her use of magic to help others. Many years later, when she rules Oz, Stanum returns to ask his old friend for help. He is under a curse that will turn his body to tin unless someone helps him retrieve a magical heart guarded by a terrible monster.

Slightly terrible anyway.

At first inclined to dismiss his plea, Zelena is goaded into accompanying him in order to prove that she is indeed the most powerful witch around. Although she defeats the monster and retrieves the heart, she scoffs at the idea that having a friend would be worth the price the artifact demands: giving up her magic. She abandons Stanum to his fate.

In the present: The Black Fairy approaches Zelena and suggests that an alliance would be best for her and her daughter’s well-being. Hook and Emma’s morning plans are interrupted by Snow, who is determined to get this wedding in motion, but they are sidetracked by the news about the Black Fairy. Zelena is minded to take her on by herself, and stalks off. Regina is supposed to investigate the wand piece Tiger Lily sent to Emma but does not get around to it.

Rumple tells Belle about Gideon’s heart. The Blue Fairy remains in her coma, unable to be wakened until her magic is restored; Rumple has played into his mother’s hands by removing the one person who ever knew the Black Fairy from the conflict.

Zelena asks Belle to babysit while she goes off to the mines to hunt down the Black Fairy by herself. Charming discovers that Henry has tried to force the Final Battle to a good end using the magic pen, but it’s not working; Emma must fight. Henry, too, is drafted into the planning activities.

Regina finds Zelena and attempts to stop her. The argument escalates into a physical fight, causing a partial rockfall that blocks the way back.  

Snow and Charming argue about the suitability of different venues and eventually of doing this at all with the Final Battle looming; Emma at last intervenes and says they ought to wait. They love each other, they’re comfortable, and there’s no need to get married at high speed just in case they all die.

In the mines, there is more arguing until the sisters stumble across a vein of fairy crystal. The Black Fairy and Gideon arrive. Assigning her minion to delay Regina, the Black Fairy leads Zelena down to her lair and baits her into doing magical battle -- which turns all of the crystal dark, meaning that they can now be used to fuel her evil, um, whatever it is she plans to do that will be the Final Battle. She then poofs the sisters away. Regina tells Zelena that she may as well go back to Oz while the rest of them clean up her mess.

Zelena summons a twister from Oz to bring her the Crimson Heart, and use it to destroy her magic, returning the crystals to their normal state and thwarting whatever the Black Fairy wanted. It was probably bad.

From Zelena, the others learn about Blue’s condition and that she is being kept on ice in Gold’s shop. Emma uses a piece of the crystal to restore her magic, meaning that she can now be wakened.

The Black Fairy appears unperturbed by the crystal setback; the really important thing is that Rumple doesn’t learn (presumably from Blue) why she gave him up as an infant.

Parallels: The very heavy-handed Oz flashback talked about how what Zelena really needs is friends, and if she wasn’t so messed up she would value their lives more than her magic, more than this idea that she needs to be the strongest witch around. In the present-day timeline, she makes that sacrifice even though other people are not necessarily behaving a friendly fashion to her.

The line “who’s ready to put their hearts into some wedding planning” feeds into “the Black Fairy has Gideon’s heart?” in one of their odder transitions to date.

Snow draws the parallel between her wedding to Charming under threat from Regina and her desire to plan Emma and Hook’s; “it gave people hope.”

Wardrobe Department:

In Hindsight: I’m gonna have to assume that Dorothy came along and rescued this guy later, and also that once Glinda got banished, all of the other witch positions went evil, because what the hell else do I make of the “wicked witch of the North”?

I don’t particularly like the way they’re writing Snow, but I do feel that it’s consistent. She’s talking about her daughter’s wedding as if it’s a political stage event, not so much taking the lead on as entirely taking over the planning process in a way that makes Emma’s participation appear an afterthought, and this is, unfortunately, the way Snow seems to work. She talks a good game, but she never seems to be on quite the same wavelength as her daughter.

On to bigger issues. I have a problem with the writing on the show this season, at least as far as the Mills sisters are concerned. Maybe this is inevitable when you try to redeem a major villain, but it’s making me very uncomfortable. I feel like they’re crossing the line between explaining and excusing villainy these days. I posted this bit separately while I was writing this review, but I’m going to include it here and expand on it a little.

The show has not been all that big on showcasing acts of direct restitution. There have been a handful for Hook, there was Rumple’s death in 3a, and Ingrid’s death. But where they have done that, I always felt like the emphasis was where it ought to be, on the damage that was done to the other character. We know a lot about Baelfire, for instance, so Hook handing him over to Pan and Rumple letting him go through the portal are very meaningful events for all of the characters; the impact is clear. Ursula’s story was swiftly but fully sketched in “Poor Unfortunate Souls.”

With “Page 23″ and “Where Bluebirds Fly,” the emphasis is on the perpetrator’s emotional pain. We never learn anything at all about Stanum, about who he is or why he got cursed or why he’s so keen to befriend Zelena. He exists in the flashback purely to provide psychological analysis that is mirrored in the present day by the Black Fairy. In “Page 23” the focus is 100% on Regina -- not the fairy who destroyed her own life trying to save her, not the father she would later murder in cold blood, and not the villagers she terrorized for years.

With these two episodes, it seems like we are supposed to feel sympathy for Regina and Zelena while they are committing some of their most terrible acts of villainy, because the story has now gone to lengths to explain that they were sad the whole time. We ignore both the suffering they cause in others and the fact that they were sad due to situations they largely created themselves. The disposability of characters in this show has always been a problem, but it seems even worse than usual to me in these episodes. Ingrid became more sympathetic to us over the course of the season, but there was never a point where the show seemed to say “well, that’s all right then” about anything that she did.

(I can talk about “Swan Song” if anyone wants, but I feel the emphasis was very different there.)

When you provide a sympathetic focus to how the villain feels *while they are engaged in acts of villainy*, that’s… well, that kinda skeeves me out. It approaches if doesn’t downright become excuse-making; the audience is led to prioritize one character’s emotional state over others’ actual lives. The victims become invisible in this scheme. Given that we’ve already replaced Robin with a new version who was never Zelena’s victim -- a novel form of erasure I must admit -- I really cannot enjoy any of this storylne.

The Mills’ sisters relationship in this episode, in this whole season, has been one dose of high-octane weird after another. They start the season on a high note, but it quickly sours; even at her nicest, with all of the darkness(™) sucked out of her heart, Regina can’t forgive Zelena for her role in Robin’s death. The evil side of Regina, meanwhile, courts Zelena on the strength of their grotesque similarities, only to betray her and eventually try to kill her. Since the two Regina halves made up and split their evil difference, Zelena has barely been in the story at all, but it seems that Regina has extended no olive branches. In this episode, Regina -- who certainly doesn’t seem any nicer to me than she ever has in the past -- is quick to take on a self-righteous tone, quick to take offense and to dismiss her sister’s losses, quick to attack when Zelena fails to cooperate. She can be magnanimous at the end of the episode, of course, secure now in being the more powerful of the Mills sisters, but I am at a loss to figure how we’re supposed to take all of this.

It seems to me that they decided against Regina as the final villain at some point, but also that they forgot to write Regina as even marginally likeable after making that choice.

As much as I enjoy looking at her, the Black Fairy continues to be the worst villain in the history of the show, on a par with Hades. There’s no THERE there, no history, no connection, no motives -- a void where there should be a story element. Literally all she has done at this point is talk (and kill that one guy in the flashback). I could not care less about whatever additional bit of sad backstory they’re going to saddle Rumple with this weekend.

[pollaidh]

Hints Final Problem is all in John’s dying brain...

I know some people are proposing the entire series 4 is a fake, and that there’ll be one final episode which clears it all up. I don’t know. That’s a lot of clearing up. Having one fake episode is ok. Having people watch an entire fake series is like those awful ‘surprise, and then they all woke up’ endings.

T6T and TLD feel real to me, and to many others - casuals and not. My writer’s instinct is that that hug and the very raw, honest communication in TLD was absolutely necessary for the character and romance arcs. It’s in TFP that everything goes a bit weird. We are already in John’s brain in TLD (we see his two sides arguing with him - head-Mary and him) before he’s shot. My hypothesis is that we continue in John’s brain into TFP, as he lies dying, and so follows an analysis. Does TFP make more sense if it’s what’s going on in John’s dying brain? I think so.

John is dying

Despite a history of cliff-hangers that end amusingly lamely, (TGG, TRF), many people felt there was something wrong with Sherlock’s simple explanation that Eurus didn’t shoot John with a real gun, just a tranquilliser. Although she does then go on to use tranquiliser darts in TFP (and which might still be in John’s brain anyway), everything from the start of TFP feels somehow ‘off’. The red ‘blood’ rug at Eurus’/therapist’s may be a red-herring, if John really was only tranquillised. Equally it could be foreshadowing him bleeding out on the carpet.

This whole episode makes a whole lot more sense if this is John’s unconscious brain as he lies with a gunshot wound to his head. His damaged, unconscious brain is mixing reality of life with Sherlock, putting together hints of things he’s heard about, and deducing, such as locking up the third brother, pirates, and Redbird, mixing them with the prison island that recalls Azkaban and the films we know John loves, and possibly things he is hearing in real life as he lies dying.

Signs of a fake

There are plenty of hints of a hoax; obviously within the plot Sherlock and John hoax Mycroft, but the hoax and unreality hints go much deeper than would be necessary merely to refer to the Mycroft hoax. And they’ve done fake and internal sequences and even whole episodes before: We’ve had Sherlock’s mind palace, Sherlock’s brain as he dies after the gunshot, the different interpretations of The Fall, John talking to Mary in his head, and of course, The Abominable Bride, an entire drugged-up episode in Sherlock’s brain as he almost kills himself with a drug overdose. In most cases of fake sequences (Sherlock gunshot, TAB and Mary-in-head) we get an internal and important revelation and relationships and who matters to either John or Sherlock.

Lines and references which suggests that TFP is not real:

The indications what we are seeing is not real are quite strong at the start, as we are introduced to the episode, and then pop up from time to time throughout the episode. - The film noire is a hoax - the Sherlock writers wrote it. It doesn’t exist. - Sherlock and John hoax Mycroft to scare the truth out of him. The wider hoax will scare the truth out of John as he lies dying. - “Pantomime” (Mycroft referring ostensibly to the clown hoax, but possibly more.) - The portraits leaking blood is a double hoax - it would be really quite difficult to make happen, suggesting that not only is the sequence in Mycroft’s house a hoax by John and Sherlock, but the hoaxing is a hoax in itself. It didn’t happen. - “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” - Mycroft has told his family lies to make their lives easier (because he doesn’t understand parental love, as Sherlock didn’t in ASiP but does in John’s brain (?) by TLD and when he says he might want to call Rosie in TFP). - Mycroft telling Sherlock “ghost stories” about his sister. - The gravestones weren’t even real. - Sherlock’s: “This is a lie.” - Mycroft’s: “Heaven is a fantasy.” - The fact that despite a relatively short time having passed between the drone explosion and piracy, none of them have any scratches, despite having been blown out of a first floor window onto concrete. That’s physically impossible. And I think it’s also John’s brain clawing back and trying to tell him he’s in a story (he’s a writer, he knows). Later in the 3 Garridebs section, Sherlock notes ’no cuts, no scarring’ from the kickback of the Buffalo rifle, so that particular Garrideb could not have fired it. - Frequent references to acting and plays. Mycroft as Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Importance of Being Earnest” (more analysis on that later) is mentioned a few times. It does make sense within the story, but may have wider significance. - “Fairytales.” - “You think it’s a trick.” - “This is insane.” “We know.” - John starting to note inconsistencies even in his dying brain, reminds me of what he says within Sherlock’s brain in TAB: I write stories, I know when I’m in one. - The 3 Garridebs case, which they literally keep dangling, has been subtly changed. See later.

Weird film references There are so many weird film references in TFP, all jumbled together, far more than can be casual, or merely Moftiss referencing shows they like. All the references below are explained if we think we’re in John’s dying brain and he’s mixing up reality and the films we know he likes watching. I’m sure to be missing some film/play references (e.g. Clue, as I don’t know it), but these are the ones I picked up:

- The many references to Silence of the Lambs, and one of the real guards even pointing out this similarity (again, John’s brain trying to assert authority). - The prison with the mad clever prisoner - “Dissecting” is used in SotL, and Sherlock later says “not torture. Vivisection.” - In SoTL they are racing at the end to save ‘Catherine’ who is trapped in the bottom of a dry well. - The Buffalo Gun in the 3 Garridebs case (not from the Conan Doyle version). Known usually as a Buffalo Rifle they were made in the late 1800s, not in the 1940s as John says. And if you google ‘buffalo gun’ you will return mainly entries on the ‘Buffalo Bill Gun’. This is a toy (fake again) gun, and the name links into (1) cowboy films (see Moriarty later), and (2) TSoTL where Buffalo Bill is the murder. The wiki entry on Buffalo Bill Gun is a short entire from 2013 with all references to a book called “It’s all in the game”. That may or may not be coincidence, but I haven’t found this book in any internet search. - Flight recalls Bond Air fiasco, which in itself recalls Bond Films, and we know John’s a fan of those. - Mycroft with the sword and gun in his umbrella. You just know that’s the kind of thing John’s been wondering about for years. - The Shining (obviously also work as part of John and Sherlock’s hoax too) - Clowns (obviously also work as part of J&S hoax too) - Jane Eyre: Gothic romance which ends with a burning house. - Uncle Rudi (a painting of a photo, purposefully blurred, see analysis here) - The island prison recalls many films, not least Azkaban in Harry Potter, Bond and others. - The Bond type action and sequences such as the drone bomb. The interior of the prison looks like a Bond villain’s lair, right down to the wooly hats on the guards. - Mrs Hudson dancing Freddie Mercury style with her hoover, and then Moriarty stepping off the helicopter to the gay anthem “I want to break free”. - Moriarty in his recorded taunting actually tells us this is too much like a film when the Governor sets off the alarm: Moriarty mentions Star Wars, Klingons, Cowboys, etc.. This is John’s brain protesting again. - Moriarty - his brother was a stationmaster? That has to mean something, it’s so random. There’s a 2012 film which won lots of awards, called “The Stationmaster”. “A lonely, dysfunctional station master lives in the middle of nowhere.Unexpectedly a woman exists one of the steam trains and during the night they spend together she exposes his eyes to a life he never believed he could have.” Reminds me of John when he was ‘so lost and lonely’ (we come back to that at the end) before he met Sherlock. One night! Incidentally the stationmaster has a moustache, sandy hair, in his 40s, short and stocky.

That’s why there are so many consistencies, plot-holes, OOC etc. That’s why they have no visible injuries from jumping out of a fucking window. It’s not real.

Next: Meta on the episode, assuming (based on hints above) that it is Not Real.

[ihearttumbler91]

Banjo-Kazooie series overview/review/opinion thingy.

Hey, everybody. So as you can tell by the title I'm talking about the Banjo games. Well, the first two anyway. So let's get right into it. Oh, warning spoilers for the games.For those who don't know me that well (And if you don't care to feel free to skip this paragraph.) I adore video games. Since my earliest days, a controller was in my hands. Donkey Kong Country, Final Fantasy VII, Croc, Crono Trigger, Super Mario Bros 1, 2, 3, Mario 64, Popeye, Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask. I can go on and on, but two games that were never apart of my childhood is Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie. This previous Christmas I got an Xbox one because that is the only consol I don't have of this generation. Outside of the Nintendo Switch, but as of this writing, the switch isn't out yet. So nothing I can do with that currently. One of two games I received were Rare Replay and Sunset Overdrive. Throughout the month of January, I've been playing both of the games. Quick side notes sorry n64 people. So as an adult I think I can appreciate Rare as a company more now then when I was a child. Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie are two games that in my opinion what video games should be all about. Great levels, fantastic gameplay and most important of all improving on what came before. For all of you that don't know Banjo Kazooie was a game released on the Nintendo 64 back in 1998. It's a platformer much like Mario 64. The plot is simple. The evil ugly witch named Grunty or (Gruntilda) has kidnapped Banjo the bear's sister Tootie. Her ultimate goal in doing this is to steal her beauty and gain it all for herself. If you lose all your lives in the game you will see this happening where Tootie is put into a machine on one end and Grunty on the other side and she changes from a big blubber filled witch to this tall slender lady which somehow still has green skin. Anyway, so it's up to Banjo and his smartass bird friend Kazooie to save her before that happens. You enter Grunty's lair and learn you must collect jiggy which are golden jigsaw puzzle pieces. Collecting enough of these you can fill out a jigsaw puzzle which will let you enter new worlds. I should start talking about why this game works so well. The game is clear in what it wants from you. Every challenge for a jiggy, every thing the game wants from you explains itself simply. There is an ant hill you can't climb? Go to your friend Mumbo Jumbo (Yes that is seriously his name. This series enjoys it's jokes.) and have him turn you into an ant so you can climb the mountain! There is a revolving totem pole statue in your way? Walk up to it and discover they are just hungry. Have Kazooie shoot her eggs into its mouth. You don't have enough notes to go through the note door? Go back to previous levels and pick some more up! Nothing is really cryptic.The worlds are very interesting and have their own charm to all of them. Rare are silly bastards (Least the ones who were around at the time were.) and tons of characters for you to laugh at are around like Motzhand. The hand that plays Mozart in the haunted level or Bottles the mole who has thick glasses and gives you abilities from level to level. Just when you think you saw the silliest thing you ever saw in your life here comes something ten times more so. Gameplay wise you can have races, you can fly, fight bosses of all kinds, take quizzes. There are so many things to do that it doesn't ever really feel like what you doing gets boring or stale. After going through 9 fully realized and well desgined worlds you get to the top of Grunty's lair. You won the quiz to get Tootie back and now it's time to take care of Grunty herself. As you progress in the game Grunty keeps mocking you in rhyme saying you suck and how you will never beat her. Making you want to take that witch down even more than before. Everything you learned is important here. She tries to spear head Banjo and Kazooie by thrusting her flying broom forward, she flies away at a distance so you have to shoot your eggs at her. You have to fly in the air and tackle her. Finally, the jinjo's you helped throughout the game rise up and help you being freed from stone and attack Grunty for separating them from their families by Grunty's disgusting green hands. It all ends with the jinjonator rising up (I suck with names so please forgive me if that's wrong hardcore Banjo fans.) and attacking Grunty and giving you a happy ending. Hooray! So great gameplay, funny characters, a great villain who mocked you the entire way leading to a pretty cool final boss. How do you top that? Well, how about Grunty rising from her grave thanks to her two sisters bringing her back to life and then murdering Bottles, the character who helped you throughout Banjo Kazooie and the king of the jinjos? Yes. In the first five minutes or so of the game starting up all those things happen. Of course like the last game the plot stops until the games end to let you play in all the different worlds until you reach the top once again to fight Grunty. Banjo Tooie I rarely hear people talking about. It is usually Banjo Kazooie everyone talks about. I can understand to some degree. Banjo-Kazooie being the first game and having a fond place in everyone's hearts as young kids. Spending more time with the game possibly, but the fact of the matter is Banjo Tooie is better than it's predecessor. Oh yes. To start off the game you get all your abilities you had in the original game. Shooting eggs? You got it. Kazooie's ability to walk carrying Banjo to go up steep hills? It's here. So already you feel like you are continuing where you left off before where say as a game like Metroid where you lose all your abilities at the start of the game. P.S. I love Metroid and think it's one of the best franchises ever please don't hate me. Not only do you have all the original abilities, but you get new ones on top of that! You get new eggs! You can separate Banjo and Kazooie from each other so they can do their own unique abilities. References to the last game happen. Everything in this game was raised to the next level and pushed forward into a realm that goes beyond Banjo one. Oniee? Onie? Just one? Anyway not only that, but the final boss fight is seriously awesome! You bring Bottles back to life, you saved all the Jinjos and the jinjo king by hitting reverse on Grunty's death laser. All that was left to do was beat the witch. What waits for you at the top of Grunty's new hideout? A fucking tank! Literally, a tank with a drill at the end called Hag 1 (Remember who made this.) and Grunty shoots lasers out at you, shoots spells at you, try to spear you through her drill even throwing minions at you to try and kill you in the name of revenge. In order to win you need to freaking destroy the tank from the inside by dismantling the batteries and shoot Grunty with eggs causing her to fall to pieces. The game and the series ends with a game of kick ball between all the main characters kicking Grunty's skull warning just wait til Banjo Tweeie. Sadly as we all know that game never got made. Rare was bought by Microsoft and made Nutz and Bolts. I have no opinion on that game since I never played the game, but know the opening pretty much insults people who liked the original game saying the collecting aspect was boring. Which ... ya know video game fans are not known for collecting. Ever. At all. Anyway ya. I just beat Banjo Tooie so I figured I get my thoughts out there to people and furry people as well. It's a shame that after such a big leap in evolution from the first game to second that a third game will never come to be. We won't ever see how Gruntilda raises her sisters from the dead and gets help from satan himself and Banjo with Kazooie must defeat the lord of darkness as Gruntilda merges with him in her quest. Most likely that would not be the plot, but outside getting Satan I don't know how Banjo and Kazooie could have gotten any more hardcore. So thanks for reading everyone. Hope you enjoyed my random rambling.

[ciathyzareposts]

Batman Returns – Final Rating

Written by Joe Pranevich

Christmas in July August!

There comes a time in everyone’s life where they need to put away their toys and provide a numerical rating for a tie-in adventure game written in 1992. More than once, in my case. But before we get into the all-important rating, let’s recap:

Batman Returns is the final game by Bill Kunkel’s Subway Software. Unlike the majority of the games that we play, we have Mr. Kunkel’s on words on the development process in a series of editorials as the “Game Doctor”. We can appreciate his joy at being able to work with the Batman mythos followed by his horror as he realized he was not making the game that he dreamed of. Instead of producing a Batman game that he could be proud of, he had to shoehorn in an adventure game on top of a movie that he did not like, with studio interference telling him what he could and could not include, with a development house that seemed ill-equipped to build the game that he designed. It is perhaps no wonder that this was his final game with Subway, although that may have been as much due to his changing fortunes in the magazine world as frustration with the game design one. Reading his words, I could not help but to root for the game to be better than its reputation. It also saddens me to no end that Mr. Kunkel is no longer with us; he feels approachable and would have been an amazing person to interview. I failed to mention it earlier, but we have also lost Joyce Katz (née Worley), the third member of the Kunkel/Katz/Worley trifecta. Of the three original developers and business partners, only Arnie Katz appears to still be with us, but I have been unable to locate him in time for this post.

Rather than dwell on that, let’s consider what we have: the first ever Batman adventure game and the first game to focus on his abilities as a detective. We successfully pieced the clues together to locate Penguin’s lair and prevent him from becoming mayor of Gotham. We stopped an army of marching penguins with rocket launchers. While we failed to bring Catwoman into the light, I’m going to imagine that there’s a world in the DC multiverse where Burton’s Batman and Catwoman managed to eventually get together and find a good therapist. They both could use one. Batman drove off into a snowy sunset and we can at least be thankful that no one thought to create a game based on Batman Forever.

A clue that wasn’t there yesterday and that has no reason for being there today!

Puzzles and Solvability

Batman Returns tried to do something different. It does not have standard adventure game-style puzzles where you use inventory items on foreground objects until something interesting happens. Instead, we have a game that rewards patient searching; Batman is detective first and a muscle-bound crime fighter second. This works better than you might think and my interest held for a while, but eventually the dearth of different locations led to a feeling of monotony rather than exploration. Objects are always placed in obvious places but usually only for a single day and the game expresses little desire to make the search process interesting or difficult.

With no inventory puzzles, we might surmise that the main “puzzle” of the game is the mystery. That works for a couple of days while we collected evidence to tie Shreck and Penguin together, but it is not enough to sustain the pace of the game. Instead, we might say that the key goal of the game is to find Penguin’s extortion tape, requiring us to discover his headquarters and find a way in. While this seems like a decent puzzle, we don’t have any real control over the resolution. We find clues in the order that the game gives them to us and (if we find the fish on the first day), we eventually get the tape. Within this constraint, there are some good moments– Tony the Fishmonger is my favorite– but we have little control over the pace and direction of the investigation. Combat is a mini-puzzle itself, but once we learn which bat-tools defeat the various villains, it becomes simple. Objects reset when you interrogate someone so a winning strategy is to make good use of the bolo-batarangs to trigger interrogation scenes to refresh our stuff. It is not rocket science and I sorely wish there was more to this game. It shows promise, but the execution is lacking.

My score: 3.

The utility belt is a non-traditional inventory.

Interface and Inventory

This game uses a verbless interface, something we’re going to see a lot more of in the next few years; on that score alone it is quite progressive! Almost everything can be done with a single click and there are often two ways to do things. Want to climb to a roof? You can either click the top of the screen if you have an object that will get you there or click on the object itself in your inventory. Although Batman moves too slowly, I never felt that the interface was a problem. There are some strange quirks here and there like how you can normally go to a system menu by pressing the ESC key, except during combat when you have to press a button on the toolbar labeled “ESC” instead. My guess is a bugfix thrown in at the last minute.

We also do not have traditional “inventory” puzzles. Batman never has to use a ball of yarn that he found in Catwoman’s apartment to fly a kite to attract lightning to fry an electronic lock on Penguin’s lair. Batman is a millionaire. Since he can buy anything he might need, limiting the inventory to evidence and bat-gadgets makes sense. The fact that he has more gadgets than slots in his belt isn’t surprising and works overall. In a stranger choice, we cannot see what evidence we are carrying except when we deposit it in the computer. I like that there is a good rhyme and reason to using gadgets in combat, something I didn’t cover very much in the narrative itself. Some gadgets are good for long-range attacks, while others allow Batman to close the distance and attack with his fists. While the combat is shallow, it is often better than my summaries implied. You can tell that they worked hard on that part of the engine, perhaps to the detriment of the plot-facing parts.

My score: 4

Much of the story is told through the nightly news.

Story and Setting

I am conflicted on this score because there is a lot to like. The designers did remarkably well with a slow build of tension over the first few days as we gradually uncovered the connections between the characters. They transformed a straight-forward action movie that into a mystery that Batman had to solve. The background stories in the computer, and the way some of these details shifted as you played the game, helped to make the setting come alive. Bill Kunkel complained that his team was prevented from deviating from the film and decision alone probably did irreparable damage to the game. We can see glimpses of what he was thinking thanks to some encounters and database items that don’t quite connect, but it doesn’t feel like a finished product.

For all that, the game falls apart at the end as the designers realized that they had to tell the rest of the film’s story all in a rush. This led to too many disconnected cut-scenes, dropped plot-lines, and things happening in the game because they happened in the movie. Alfred shows up! Rocket-launcher penguins show up! There is some foreshadowing to Commissioner Gordon showing up, but the latter third of the game becomes a poor retelling of the movie rather than its own thing. Although I didn’t experience both sides of the fork, the choice as to whether or not we give our evidence to Commissioner Gordon was great. It was a real role-playing moment with an impact on the ending, ensuring that Shreck is arrested rather than killed and Catwoman doesn’t have blood on her paws. That deserves special recognition.

My Score: 4

The rooftop scenes are surprisingly well animated.

Sound and Graphics

The game cuts corners by not giving Batman free movement, but the graphics and sound may be the best part of the game. The snow effects are exceptionally well done for 1992 and I wonder how much of it was animated versus motion capture. The combat engine supports far more somersaults and moves than you expect, making the fights kinetic if not exactly interesting to watch. I love the hand-painted backgrounds, many of which were based on Tim Burton’s set design but some of which are unique to the game. From Kunkel’s blog, we know that the designers visited the movie’s rooftop set during production and I cannot help but feel that they learned a lot about the film’s design aesthetic which they put to good use.

The game also has a secret weapon: Danny Elfman’s iconic Batman score. Those beautiful notes are forever burned into the nostalgia-center of my brain thanks their use in Bruce Timm’s Batman: The Animated Series. Even a couple of hooks from that score were enough to elevate otherwise boring “Batman running to the Batmobile” scenes. You can hardly credit the game designers for using a three-year old score, but I am doing it anyway.

My score: 6.

Batman can only arrive at this screen from the roof.

Environment and Atmosphere

Although I liked the graphics, not everything hung together. The city felt claustrophobic rather than expansive and seeing the same hand-painted Gothic architecture over and over again eventually made it mundane. Tim Burton’s designs bleed through into the art and that is quite nice, but it’s not enough to build a cohesive atmosphere. Although a quibble, I still dislike that Batman cannot travel through the city on foot. Even when he just needs to cross the street, he has to grapple up to the roof and cross. I’m all for subtle, but it gets in the way of the city feeling real.

My score: 4.

The bat-computer gives us many details about Gotham’s citizens.

Dialog and Acting

There are two sets of dialogs in this game: that which was written for the game and that which was written for the film, but they do not hang together well. That said, the bat-computer was exceptionally well done with descriptions of major and minor (or even unseen background) characters that would update as the game progressed. It’s a strange bright spot in a weirdly uneven game.

As far as “acting” is concerned, we get some faux-video in the game which consists of characters talking to each other with one of two frames of lip-flap animation. It’s not terrible and may have been based on filming done for the movie, albeit hyper-compressed to fit on a 8-floppy game. I wonder if there had not been plans to make this into a CD-ROM game at one point, abandoned by the time or limitations in the format.

My score: 4

Final Tally

Let’s add up our scores: (3+4+4+6+4+4)/.6 = 42 points! I am going to take one away for having the fish at the beginning of the game be such a “bite the newbie” moment. That gives us a final score of 41 points. Not terrible!

With that, Reiko is our winner this time out with an on-the-money guess at the score! Alas, Mayhaym just missed it thanks to my subtracting a point because of that pesky fish. By what I assure you is a complete coincidence, this is exactly the same score as Ballyhoo, the other game I just played about criminal clowns. We’re in The Black Cauldron and Codename: Iceman territory now which makes sense. These are deeply flawed but playable games and that’s more or less how I feel about Batman Returns. The average guess was 37 so the majority of you thought I would hate it a bit more than I did.

I am very happy that I played this game, not because it was fantastic on its own but because I was able to spend so much time researching Bill Kunkle and his Subway Software. I love discovering stories like his, told by storytellers like him. I am still reading and enjoying his autobiographical tales and Borrowed Time was a nice treat even if it didn’t score all that well. This is the kind of thing that I was looking for when I volunteered to be a writer on The Adventure Gamer and I am glad to have been able to share the experience with you. Don’t be surprised if I look for some excuse to play Mr. Kunkel’s other two adventure games at some point down the road.

This game is a huge milestone for my contributions to this blog, even if I am a bit embarrassed about it: I have now passed up Trickster as writer with the most games played, even if in my case they have mostly been Missed Classics. When I volunteered to play Operation: Stealth, I had no idea that I would enjoy writing with you as much as I have come to. Thanks for being an appreciative audience.

Next up for me is Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, Volume II, by another one of my favorite developers.

CAP Distribution

200 CAPs to Joe Pranevich

Blogger Award – 100 CAPs – for finally finishing the game after so long, thanks to the fish.

Classic Blogger Award – 50 CAPs – for playing on Borrowed Time

Classic Blogger Award – 50 CAPs – for playing through Ballyhoo

Will Moczarski – 80 CAPs

Classic Blogger Award – 50 CAPs – for blogging through Reality Ends for everyone’s enjoyment

Intermission Award – 20 CAPs – for blogging about all the other programs Med Systems put out in the 80s.

Psychic Prediction Award – 10 CAPs – for being the closest guesser of the final score of The Archers.

25 CAPs to ShaddamVIth

Ultra-Efficient Panel Beating Award – 5 CAPs – for noticing that we’re driving in a car that was recently wrecked in the ending

Psychic Prediction Award – 10 CAPs – for correctly guessing the final rating of Ballyhoo

Sex Ed Award – 5 CAPs – for reminding me that male lions have manes. Duh. 

A Farm Upstate Award – 5 CAPs – for trying to work out what the Archers’ pig-cow-cabbage-dog graphics are

25 CAPs to Lisa H

Pennywise Award – 5 CAPs – for reminding us that not all clowns wear white makeup

Helpful Hinting Award – 5 CAPs – for helpful hinting.

Are You High? Award – 5 CAPs – for catching my “high wire” typos 

Comparing the Incomparable – 5 CAPs – for funny bits from the hint book 

A Farm Upstate Award – 5 CAPs – for trying to work out what the Archers’ pig-cow-cabbage-dog graphics are

25 CAPs to TBD

Clueless Award – 5 CAPs – for knowing that Movie Batgirl wasn’t Barbara Gordon.

A Setting Somewhere Award – 5 CAPs – for giving advice on emulating Amiga games

Psychic Prediction Award – 10 CAPs – for figuring out Will’s Final Rating MO, thus guessing closest to Reality Ends’ rating

A Farm Upstate Award – 5 CAPs – for trying to work out what the Archers’ pig-cow-cabbage-dog graphics are

20 CAPs to Vetinari

What’s Your Story Award – 20 CAPs – for submitting What’s Your Story answers

15 CAPs to Biscuit

Appreciating Your Appreciation Award – 5 CAPs – for making me feel like the research I do is appreciated

Psychic Prediction Award – 10 CAPs – for correctly guessing the final rating of Borrowed Time

10 CAPs to Laukku

Emulation Award – 5 CAPs – for letting us know that Dosbox has just been updated, helping out those of us who play old games.

A Farm Upstate Award �� 5 CAPs – for trying to work out what the Archers’ pig-cow-cabbage-dog graphics are

10 CAPs to Michael

Fettucini Brothers Award – 5 CAPs – for lists of adventure games with circuses

SOUNDS OF SILENCE AWARD – 5 UPPER CASE CAPs – FOR COMPLAINING ABOUT THE LOUDNESS OF THE TEXT IN REALITY ENDS

10 CAPs to Reiko

Psychic Prediction Award – 10 CAPs – for correctly guessing the final rating of Batman Returns

5 CAPs to ATMachine

Arrested Development Award – 5 CAPs – for telling me about the alternate ending if you arrest Shreck

5 CAPs to Rowan Lipivitz

Deep Blue Sea Award – 5 CAPs – for making a “red herring” joke about the fish

5 CAPs to Voltgloss

No Couch Potato Award – 5 CAPs – for consulting a walkthrough and showing that I did tons of optional stuff

5 CAPs to Mayhaym

Willem Dafoe Award – 5 CAPs – for connecting Max Shreck to the movie Nosferatu

5 CAPs to MorpheusKitami

Gone Fishing Award – 5 CAPs – for hinting that I missed the fish when I missed the fish

5 CAPs to Ududy

The Unexpected Virtue of Innocence Award – 5 CAPs – for pointing out that bats aren’t birds

5 CAPs to Alex Romanov

Dehydration Award – 5 CAPs – for pointing out that bat-shark-repellent was used in the 1960s film, not the series

5 CAPs to Laertes

Touch of Death Award – 5 CAPs – for providing some info about the first Batman game for the MSX

5 CAPs to Torch

Golden Ratio Award – 5 CAPs for trying to help figure out Amiga graphics aspect ratios…

5 CAPs to Kirinn

Adventure Game Studio Award – 5 CAPs – for providing another circus adventure game

5 CAPs to Anonymous

Nine Princes Award – 5 CAPs – for pointing out a similarity between Reality Ends and a fantasy novel series.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/batman-returns-final-rating/