#anyway I thought the show was surprisingly very good. like way more solid plot than expected

[thespoonisvictory]

watched partner track. justin coleman is an unbothered king in a sea of dick-measuring-contest-worshipping men and for that he was my favorite

[ac-liveblogs]

The tl;dr on Trigun Stampede is that it’s a good show, but*

This is the show that I watched on a whim bc I thought Vash was cute and it consumed my brain for the next three months. I do not regret that decision. 

Heading into Trigun, I knew jackshit about it. I think the only character I could’ve recognised prior to this was 90s Vash (whose design I didn’t and still kind of don’t like!). I was too young for Adult Swim in the… very brief period of time that it was actually airing on Cartoon Network in Australia and I’m not sure if Trigun was even on it anyway, so I had absolutely no expectations walking in. 

Obviously, the most notable thing about this show to a newcomer is the animation. It’s been interesting watching RWBY vol 9 and Stampede back to back, let’s say that much. It’s stellar. I think this is one of the prettiest shows I’ve watched in a very long time, and the combat animation is fluid, energetic and full of so much personality. I was still deciding how I felt about the show right up until episode 3 - Millions Knives’ debut - and as soon as I saw the attack on Jeneora I was hitting up my WatchPal to recommend it. I think you can definitely see where Studio Orange cut corners - some locations can feel very empty - but for what they actually want you to focus on, the show looks great.

Episode 4’s reveal of Wolfwood’s Punisher (and what it can do) lives in my head rent-free to this day, and quite frankly episode 12 is one of my favourite fight scenes in pretty much anything. A lot of love and attention to detail goes into these fights, and the choreography is fresh and exciting. Vash shooting at Nai resembling a 3rd-person shooter was so much fun. WatchPal was very patient with me constantly asking to pause, rewind, watch that scene again, pick out this or that detail. Sorry dude. Worth it to see how terribad a fighter Nai actually is, though, shit’s hilarious. I think that even if you don’t care for the plot, this show is worth watching just for the fight scenes and set pieces. 

I think no one’s going to argue the plot is rushed, but what’s there is solid and interesting. This world is absolutely fascinating, and I had a lot of fun speculating on what was happening or what Nai’s goals were. The most fun I had was picking out the biblical themes (which I surprisingly know more of than I thought I did) and working out who was what was where and why, and I’ll be very curious to see where that all goes. I’m also an obnoxious Final Fantasy 7 purist, so I was obviously enjoying the heavy-handed pro-environmentalism themes and psychological horror elements. Nai was right until he was wrong. I’ll be… interested to see how this all resolves next season, because I’m not sure I’m meant to think Vash is right, exactly. 

Vash is an enjoyable MC, though he’s kind of a woobie, huh? I watched Badlands Rumble in the middle of all this and was shocked at the difference in characterisation (incidentally, not a good movie!) He was definitely a lot goofier in eps 1 and 2, but things took a real turn in episode 3 that he never quite cheered up from so I’m hoping to see him in his natural habitat once things chill out. “He’s both the hero and the heroine” is a phrase that’s stuck with me since I learnt the screenwriter apparently said it, and it’s certainly made the way he’s written incredibly interesting to dissect symbolically.

Picking apart symbolism in this show is one of my favourite things to do with it.

Surprisingly, I think William Conrad is one of the more interesting characters in the show. I’m so fascinated by the logic behind everything he’s done. I want more of this dude, I thought Meryl was gonna murk him and was pleasantly surprised when she didn’t.

I like Wolfwood. I like narrative foils and homoerotic subtext. I think Wolfwood is potentially really interesting and didn’t get to shine in Stampede, but he’s got at least one whole season ahead of him and I am already predicting that Trimax is going to make me exceptionally mentally unwell about him. I can pick ‘em. I can sense it. I can smell blood in the water. I am also saying, right now and for posterity, that Wolfwood is going to die. He’s gonna die in Stampede, he’s gonna die in Maximum, he probably died in the 90s. Sorry. It’s gonna happen.

If this weren’t a 12 episode series and it would’ve been unsatisfying for it to happen here, I would’ve expected him to die redeeming himself after betraying Vash in July. Now we’re past his Judas phase, I’m wondering what the New Biblical Imagery he’s going to pick up to replace it will be bc as is, uh... dude by all means should probably just power walk really fast in the other direction and never be seen or heard from again.

Nai is a really fun and sympathetic villain right up until he's fun and an absolute monster, and I respect his deranged manner and willingness to wrangle that twincest subtext as close to actual text as he could possibly get it. I am SO curious how much of that was in the original because jesus christ. I felt bad for the guy and agree with him to a certain extent, but my feelings about Nai’s handling are going to have to wait until I see how Vash’s arc continues and what happens to Plants going forward. Vash doesn’t seem particularly motivated to change the status quo at this stage which is... interesting. We’ll see what happens.

I was very lukewarm on Meryl until eps 10-12. Now it’s the Zazie-Meryl Power Hour. As soon as I realised they were parallels my brain woke up. While I’m really ??? unsure about Wolfwood’s trajectory going forward, I am very excited for Meryl’s. It also helps she turned into a chain-smoking disaster senpai in the timeskip. She’s Mary Magdalene also. That’s really cool. I felt really smart when I figured out that really obvious connection, finally, in episode 11. (I know some bible but not that much bible.)

I… I don’t get points for figuring out which two biblical figures Vash is representative of. No one does. I do get points for noticing he yanked Wolfwood’s entire colour scheme when he started trying to kill Nai, though. That was cool. That fight was so fucking cool. 

Trigun Stampede is a really fun show.

*But. 

It is a show absolutely hamstrung by its episode count. When you’re dealing with either 12 or 24 episode seasons you’re inevitably going to run into problems when you’re not working with original material, and Stampede was having serious problems fitting in all the plot points that it needed to before the finale. This show’s pace is absolutely breakneck with absolutely no room to breathe, and in the end that means the main cast’s relationships suffer for it. I was very disappointed to find that I really liked Roberto in the episode that he died, and that was episode 10. 

Episodes 10-12 leaves the implication of shenanigans and much stronger relationships than we got. That’s a real shame because the show roughly broke into Vash-Wolfwood, Vash-Nai and Meryl-Roberto with very little crossover - I know Vash/Meryl is a classic, but she ended up having more chemistry with Wolfwood, and any semblance of party dynamic evaporated once we got to Home. And speaking of Home, that lack of space between episodes and the necessity to explain Vash and Nai’s backstory ended up with us teleporting in and out, and the rest of the trip to July getting crammed off-screen. Integral scenes are missing - I had to consult a more knowledgeable coworker about the missing pieces of Wolfwood’s backstory so I could get his rough timeline (and age) actually explained to me, and I did find myself wanting to explore this world a lot more than we had time to do. 

Like. Seriously. What the hell is up with Legato. Who are you. How are you doing that. Why are you here. Why is your hair blue.

The photo of the group in episode 12 in particular really makes me feel like there’s a lot we missed out on without a couple of breather episodes here and there. I think with the exception of Vash and Nai, whose relationship is quite interesting and intense, I enjoyed the concepts of the characters more than the actual execution. However, I’m also 100% sure that Nai and Vash was the Absolute Main Focus of this season, so, I can let this go if season 2 delivers. 

Sorry Vashwood, you’re very fun in theory and I like you a lot, but we’re kind of pulling at threads here. Trimax is apparently gonna be an Experience though. 

I try to take the circumstances of a work’s creation into account when I talk about it, and between a 12 or 24 episode series I understand why Studio Orange chose 12, but Stampede really needed 15 or 16 to shine with the narrative it wanted to tell. I also understand why Stampede chose to seed future plot points that went absolutely nowhere this season - Wolfwood’s beef with Livio, Legato and Elendira being prime examples (christ this guy is gonna be busy in season 2), and the trip Home specifically after the Sand Steamer feels a bit pointless at this stage - but I can’t help but wonder if that time would have been better spent elsewhere. 

Although, a lot of fans couldn’t even deal with Milly’s absence even though it took about 5 seconds for me, someone who confused Trigun with Cowboy Bebop until quite recently, to work out what Meryl’s rough character arc was and why Milly was absent (but pretty clearly coming back later in very predictable way), so maybe Studio Orange was being wise by assuring, uh, certain fans they hadn’t forgotten or maliciously chosen to delete these characters. 

I’ve heard Trigun wasn’t as popular in Japan as it was in the West, so maybe that 12 episode pick was playing it safe, but since S2 has been greenlit and Stampede seems to have been a pretty big success, hopefully Orange can spring for 24 episodes this time and make this show really shine.

Anyway, I’m gonna read the manga now.

[crehador]

brother crab’s 2023 seasonals in review: summer

surprisingly easy to rank season for me, so i'll get right to it

anime of the season + runner-up for summer goes to...

undead girl murder farce and zom 100: zombie ni naru made ni shitai 100 no koto! nothing else even came close

i'm giving ugmf anime of the season because i personally vibed with it a lot (murder mysteries with a rakugo flair + arsene lupin trying to fuck the phantom of the opera in the background you really cannot go wrong) and also because zom100 has yet to release its last few episodes

zom100 is such a consistently solid show, though, that even without seeing the full cour i'm prepared to give it runner-up of the season. and it's honestly a strong contender for anime of the year. the first episode especially... i would rank it even higher than the first ep of oshi no ko tbh

lots of sequels this season as well!

horimiya, bleach, jjk, and bsd. some new snv came out this season as well but since i binged all that at once it doesn't really feel like a sequel to me

anyway easily sequel of the season goes to bleach, largely because of nostalgia won't deny that but also because it's just that fucking good

horimiya however was also an immense delight! gonna miss these wacky kids :')

quickfire thoughts on everything else:

watashi no shiawase na kekkon is the shoujo of the year, there's been a lot of cute stuff lately but nothing comes close to watakon

vending machine isekai was fine and occasionally funny, but kinda shocked it got a sequel announced already. worldbuilding was definitely the most interesting part and i hope we see more of it in s2

dekiru n eko way kyou mo yuuutsu was absolutely perfect, very fun and cute and soothing

okashi na tensei had a promising premise which it failed to lean into, there was little to no BAKING in this BAKING anime jfc

lv1 maou to one room yuusha seemed like your run of the mill shitty ecchi but actually it's NONBINARY OLD MAN YAOI?! and was kinda good. dumb, but fun

ai no idenshi was... well it was episodic which i like, generally, but it really. was not consistent. some good pieces, some not so good. some interesting, some not so interesting. main failing is it really did not imo balance its 'main' plot with its mini-stories well at all

ayaka was fun! it doesn't really hold a candle to k project like at all but at least it was not as bad as praeter lmao

synduality noir (first cour) was alright. nothing to write home about but a decent enough mecha. as far as anime that are game ads go... i'd say it's okay. a little more interesting than takt op to me, though not as visually stunning. and not as compelling as god eater

hyakushou kizoku was a tv short adapting arakawa hiromu's autobiographical farming manga and it was such a delight lol, especially fun if you're a fan of fma or silver spoon. explains so much about ed tbh

hi no tori: eden no sora was a 4-ep ona that i quite liked overall... ending was just so-so to me i guess

dark gathering isn't quite over still but it's fine as a horror that's heavy on the gore (gorror? is that a thing) actually. probably better than fine, it's just not my genre. some of the stories are definitely more gripping than others, but yeah solid horror overall and really good cast (yandere hanakana what could be better)

helck is also still going but has been really solid, way more enjoyable than i'd imagined. it has an 80s feel to it that i love

and last but certainly not least shuumatsu no valkyrie ii part 2 gives us GYARU FUCKBOI BUDDHA once again. what could be better lmao

MOVING ON

op of the season goes to zom100's song of the dead by kana-boon! the song itself is a banger and the way the op changes from episode to episode makes it even better

HOWEVER this was not an easy choice lol bleach and even jjk both came in with strong contenders as well

ed of the season goes to heclk's statice by saji! it just. ough. right in the feels

this was not a very blorbo or ship heavy season for me but i have to just repeat ARSENE LUPIN. AND THE PHANTOM. OF THE OPERA. one day i will circle back to this lol

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 316: We've Had One, Yes, But What About Second Explosion

Previously on BnHA: Deku was all “[powers up like whoa because it’s time to end the fight]”, and he saved Overhaul from getting not-shot, and then smashed up Nagant’s arm with the power of his new rechargeable super knees. Nagant was all “yoooo this kid is crazy strong whaaaat, it’s like he’s some kind of protagonist or something.” Deku was all “I AM A PROTAGONIST, ACTUALLY, DO YOU WANT TO JOIN FORCES AND FIGHT BAD GUYS WITH ME?” Nagant was all “ah shit why the hell no -- ” and then AFO was all “SURPRISE” and everyone was all “?!?!?!” and AFO was all “TIME TO EXPLODE NOW” and made Nagant explode because he’s an absolute fucking dick. And then Hawks showed up, because Horikoshi just wanted to stuff as many plot points as humanly possible into a single chapter I guess.

Today on BnHA: Hawks is all “good job giving motivational shounen redemption speeches Deku but I’ll take it from here” and screams very earnestly right in Nagant’s face until she finally wakes up. Nagant is all “oh hey it’s my successor, you seem surprisingly unfucked-up from your own HPSC tenure, how did you manage that?” Hawks is all “fandom is going to love hearing this one, but basically it’s because I’m very upbeat and also I had the world’s best role model Endeavor to look up to,” and I swear this man stirs the pot on purpose, but damn it I still love him so damn much. Overhaul is all “HELLO AGAIN, JUST A REMINDER THAT, THE BOSS!!” and Deku is all “MAYBE TAKE TWO SECONDS TO REFLECT ON HOW YOU TORTURED A LITTLE GIRL,” which, thank you, lol. Nagant is all “btw AFO’s hiding in a house in the woods”, and so Deku and the gang go to the house in the woods. Video recording!AFO is all “hi I’m AFO welcome to Jackass” and blows up the house. Sometimes I wonder if this manga is just a weird dream.

I am once again reading the Bean version because I think it was actually the best out of all three translations last week. and that is surprisingly including Viz’s. “faux” is not nearly as entertaining as “knockoff”, and also I have literally no idea why Caleb thought Deku was saying the Third’s lines lol

oh hey, Endeavor’s here too! not that you’d ever be able to tell from this first panel lmao

glad you received All Might’s call, mysterious unidentified glowing smudge

oh snap he says he’s weaker in the rain. is that why AFO told Nagant to attack then?? except that as we discussed the other day, I believe that AFO fully intended for Nagant to lose the fight, so him giving her info that would give her an advantage doesn’t really fit in with that. maybe he wanted Deku to be separated from Endeavor and the rest for maximum angst, though

btw Deku’s eyes are unsurprisingly back to the new normal here

alas, the angst continues. I say, pretending like I’m not totally eating it up each and every week and writing essay after essay about it lol

anyway so apparently Hawks can’t actually fly lmao. he was just yeeting himself with style

for some reason this is the funniest fucking thing I’ve ever seen omfg. wave to Hawks, kids! say “bye, Hawks!”

j/k of course Deku is catching them. -- except???

wow so he was just running on fumes there at the end. well, good to know there is actually a limit to his shenanigans, particularly regarding this new “knockoff” 100% OFA. it will definitely not alleviate any of the discourse, but it’s good for my own peace of mind because it’s solid confirmation that he still needs his pals in order to win this thing

anyway, but on to the rest of this conversation, which is basically Deku deducing what we all deduced last week -- AFO implanted some sort of trap into Nagant when he gave her Air Walk. though I’d still like to get the actual details from AFO and/or Horikoshi, because this was particularly wild even by quirk standards lol

omgggggg

she still has a face after all!! so it’s confirmed, Horikoshi has no idea what “blowing up” actually means. we might have guessed, based on what happened to Toga in the MVA arc, and also based on everything Katsuki does ever, but shhh

so now Hawks is all “NAGANT PLEASE WAKE UP, IF I SHOUT MY NAME AT YOU WILL THAT DO THE TRICK”

this is actually kind of touching though because even though we all know (or most of us acknowledge at any rate) that Hawks is a pretty caring person, it’s rare to see him actually panic over someone’s welfare like this

oh shit Horikoshi is really doubling down on it

I wonder how much Hawks knew about what really happened between Nagant and the HPSC. regardless, he probably sees her as a kindred spirit of sorts, and I’m more than happy for Deku to pass the redemption torch onto him now that he’s on the scene. like no offense Deku but they actually know each other and stuff lol

DAMMIT NAGANT CAN’T YOU SEE HOW LOUD HE IS YELLING

apparently being freed from his HPSC shackles has finally given Hawks the space to embrace his own inner shounen protagonist. is there anything more shounen than trying to motivationally scream someone awake when they’re lying in your arms inches from death?? 100% guaranteed to work

!!! IS THIS NAGANT’S POV OMG

SO SHE IS ALIVE. THANK GOD. Horikoshi doesn’t want to meet with my emotional distress lawyer today after all

love how she’s all “just gonna stir up the weekly Hawks Discourse pot here by implying that he probably committed a lot of Atrocities just like I did, so now people can get all hopped up about that, even though there’s no evidence he’s ever killed anyone aside from that one horrible ‘damned-if-you-do...’ situation with Twice.” no one asked for your provocative speculation young lady!! trust me Nagant, our rabbles don’t need the rousing lol

but nice save there with the “so how are your eyes so untainted” well you see it’s because even when he was following the HPSC’s orders he always went to great lengths never to go against his own moral compass. which just to be clear was incredibly difficult, and led to a ton of pain and suffering on his part, because the life of a spy is basically just one impossible situation after another. but in spite of that he never stopped trying to do his best to help people. I don’t really know where this tangent came from or is leading to, lol, but anyway p.s.a. I love Hawks a lot and he’s a good kid dammit

oh shit??!?

how is the League always able to swing all these fancy forest mansions. where do they find them. how many do they have

so Deku’s dropping them -- very roughly, not sure if he was reacting to finally getting AFO’s location, or if his energy really is giving out -- and now Nagant’s saying that AFO hired other villains as well. well of course he did. gotta keep chipping away at OFA’s ninth successor little by little

now Nagant is asking Hawks how he’s able to keep making “that” face. I assume she’s again talking about the fact that he somehow didn’t let the HPSC wear down his spirit

oh my god???

thanks for stuffing this chapter to the brim with good nutritional Hawks Feels, Horikoshi. what a good. he just keeps on trudging forward undeterred no matter what bullshit comes his way. what a steadfast little guy. I WILL PROTECT YOU FROM DISCOURSE MY SWEET SUNSHINE

lmaoooo

“SPOTTED THIS DUDE JUST CHILLING OUT THERE ON THE ROOF WITH NO ARMS, SEEMED PRETTY SUS” good job Endeavor

anyway so you don’t really need me to tell you that Overhaul is immediately starting in with the “BUT THE BOSS WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO TAKE ME TO THE BOSS YOU PROMISED YOU WOULD TAKE ME TO THE BOSS” stuff again. but I will go ahead and tell you anyway. so yeah. he’s doing that

OMG YOU GUYS LOOK AT DEKU’S “of all the fucking assholes to just randomly drop in on my life once again why did it have to be you” FACE THOUGH, OMG

fun fact, if you go back to chapters 124 through 160, there was an entire story arc where Overhaul imprisoned and tortured a little girl. yeah, I know!! suuuuuuuuper evil. anyways just an interesting little anecdote for you all that’s somewhat relevant to the current situation

OMG, YES. FUCK YES, DEKU

THEN WHAT ABOUT SPARING ONE FOR HER!!! YES!!! EXACTLY!!! JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, SOMEONE GETS IT

HERE’S THE PANEL OF DEKU SAYING THE EXACT SAME THING I’M SAYING LOL

(ETA: so apparently there’s some discourse about this because some people are interpreting this as Deku saying “you should apologize to Eri”, which would obviously be a terrible idea even if Overhaul actually wanted to do that, because Eri shouldn’t ever have to see him again. however I just want to point out that there is a HUGE difference between saying “it would be nice if you could direct that feeling of regret/being sorry towards Eri as well”, vs saying “you should also apologize to her.” all Deku is doing is rightfully pointing out that Overhaul has hurt way more people than just his boss, and if he really is remorseful, then he should extend those feelings of remorse to Eri and the rest as well. it’s not a directive to take any specific action, and I’m 1000% sure no one at U.A. would let Overhaul within 100 miles of Eri ever again.

tl;dr “try feeling remorse sometime” =/= “do you want me to fly you over to U.A. right now to surprise the little girl you traumatized”, lol.)

[slings an arm around Deku’s shoulders] you’re a good kid. I like you. I don’t know if I tell you that enough, but it’s true

meanwhile here is Overhaul’s “spare... a thought... for Eri...???????” face sigh

the struggle is real y’all

(ETA: and that’s... the last we ever saw of Overhaul, I guess? well all right then. I assume Deku will make good on his promise, so we know he’ll get that little bit of closure before going back to jail or whatever, and I confess I’m more than fine with leaving the rest of it open-ended, especially given his character’s history. I think this was pretty generous all things considered.)

lmao holy shit

All Might what did you do to those tiki torch guys?? did you thrash them. did you give ‘em those hands. did you deliver their own asses to them complete with a sticker reminding them Amazon Prime Day is on June 21. we missed out goddammit

so Endeavor, who wasn’t the one he was asking, is telling him that they captured (well let’s be real, Deku captured, give the credit where it’s due) Nagant and Overhaul. and so I guess they’re going to take Nagant to the ER now

fire is no one’s weakness

-- oh my GOD I scrolled down and audibly gasped

[is politely but firmly approached and asked to remove my arm from Deku’s shoulder by the physical manifestation of all this Dekuangst] “we’re sorry, he’s not allowed to have visitors right now” oh shit, my bad. [goes to stand behind a police barricade]

lmao what. did you run out of room on the previous page

what an exaggerated fade to black lmao

-- AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I actually can’t see what he’s reacting to so maybe I’m just seriously jumping the gun here lol, but THE HELL WITH IT. the next panel appears to be a cut to Haibori Forest, so I’m just gonna go ahead and declare that Deku ran off on his own all wounded to go have more Dekuangst, just like I manifested. now go call Katsuki goddammit

[scrolls three more inches down] oh

yeah so like I said, Deku is walking very slowly a few feet in front of Endeavor, who’s telling him to wait up. yep. we’ve all gotta be so careful to not just jump to conclusions. I know we’re excited but still

anyway, so! welcome back to Mt. Lady and Kamui Woods (ARE YOU GUYS DATING) and Edgeshot! have fun walking into this obvious trap lol

dammit Deku why are you so determined to tempt fate

[monkey puppet meme faces]

OH MY GOD THIS IS PURE GRADE-A CHEESY COMIC BOOK VILLAIN 101 SHIT AND I’M HERE FOR IT

that’s such a weird way of clapping who claps like that

unlike certain other people who shan’t be named, AFO doesn’t feel the need to inexplicably take his shirt off when recording sinister villain monologues. I think we’re all pretty grateful for that

high fives to everyone who called it!! yep yep

anyway so this whole scene has major booby-trap vibes, which I’m enjoying immensely even though I don’t think anything is really going to come of it lol. probably just another long-winded AFO Speech. but wouldn’t it be funny if like the ceiling started lowering down to try and squish Deku afterwards lol

(ETA: well the explosion was still pretty funny too ngl.)

ffff

[“Dekuangst is the trap” intensifies]

anyway so yeah. he’s just hitting up all of his usual villain talking points. we get it, you’re so smart and you see right through the thin veneers of society and people who don’t conform are left to fend for themselves and labeled as villains and history is written by the victors, and blah blah blah dude are you just jumping randomly from one soundbyte to another lol. literally what are you talking about. what does this have to do with you blowing up Nagant

-- holy shit??

[”Dekuangst is the trap” intensifies MORE?????]

LOL WHAT

BRO. WHAT IS WITH YOU. DON’T YOU KNOW HOW TO LAY ANY OTHER KIND OF FUCKING TRAP GOOD LORD

��YOU’RE NEXT” THE CALLBACK?? THE PARALLELS?? THOUGH WHEN ALL MIGHT POINTED HE MADE IT LOOK WAY COOLER. AFO’S POINTING JUST LOOKS LIKE SMOKEY THE BEAR

HAS ANYONE CHECKED IN ON KAMUI WOODS I HEAR HE IS WEAK TO FIRE?? THE ONLY ONE WHO IS, APPARENTLY

r.i.p. to this particular forest mansion. don’t worry they have a ton of backups

remember last week when I said maybe AFO thinks explosions are gauche. well never mind. he fucking loves explosions

anyway so that’s the end of BnHA, everyone. hope you enjoyed. it was a good ride while it lasted. see you all, good luck in your travels

[absolutebl]

This Week in BL

April 2021 Part 3

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs. 

Ongoing Series - Thai

Second Chance Ep 3 - this is proper YA, they are dealing with actual high school issues, picking uni, first crushes, online dating, etc... We even got a senior prom trope which almost never happens in Thai stuff (just the freshman uni competition variant). Standard plot pacing means PaperFah’s kiss was too early, might indicate we’re moving to uni in the second half of the series? Tropes included: let me feed you, hand hold, black & white striped shirt, floppy drunk & first kiss. 

Y-Destiny Ep 3 - the first MaxNat ep. Such fun to see them playing different characters. This one is enemies to lovers, tutor/student, but it’s using the “poor little rich kid loose cannon” archetype. Nat is doing his best, but it’s leaving me cold. Lots of tropes tho: boyfriend’s closet, floppy drunk, pillow clutch, the loom & water bottle. 

Lovely Writer Ep 8 - solid installment, good use of many tropes. I really like the leads and I’m glad there isn’t much side dish action, SibGene gave us: punish, touch your face, boyfriend claiming, kissing, sleep cuddling, symmetry, rooftop, cheek kiss, hand hold, and pillow clutch. 

Call It What You Want Ep 3-4 - couldn’t find the subs, don’t really care, will watch if it crosses my radar, otherwise I’m just not into it.  

Brothers Ep 11 - the “everyone wants Chol” show continues (but WHY?), he and Tri are cute together, and now I kinda just want Prab to end up with the twins. I’m confused by the teachers, but Boston showed up (from UWMA), and my boys KhunKaow got together (YES!), so I’m ultimately delighted with the episode. 

Fish Upon The Sky Ep 2 - the makeover happened, and we go from cute with glasses and braces to cute without them. (I’m reminded of those 90′s Pygmalion teen movies where the girl has glasses + ponytail and then *GASP* does not and *GASP* she’s HOT. This was the BL version.) Meanwhile, writers better be careful with Pi, he’s getting too tsundere to like. Did you see they gave AJ a 2gether music intro & pick up line? Well, it’s actually his brother JJ who plays Ohm in 2g. I cackled. GMMTV - you so cheeky. 

Ongoing Series - Not Thai 

HIStory 4: Close To You (Taiwan) Ep 5 - half way point. My poor confused babies. It was a really sweet episode... if what happened before hadn’t happened in the way that it had. Also, these boys have a GREAT friendship but are probably the worst advice givers ever. 

Most Peaceful Place (Vietnam) Ep 3 fin - so cute! Our boys confessed and got together. There was an adorable mutual kiss (I love me a mutual, like Ingredients). Afterwards, they actually seemed to communicate with each other about both sex and their relationship. OMG. How original for BL! This was the last episode, so the series is short, but I still enjoyed it very much. RECOMMENDED. 

My Lascivious Boss (Vietnam) Ep 1-2 - oh boy this one is rough, we started out with homophobia child abuse and moved on to family drama + drunken dub-con one night stand. But production values and subs are better than normal for Vietnam (You Are My Boy levels) + our queer babies are out & proud + it’s higher heat + I’m weak. So I’m watching. 

Word of Honor (China) Ep 25-27 - honestly not much happened, lots of back story. Things are looking dire for the ghosts unless they can turn the Scorpion (I LOVE HIM, he’s my precious deadly baby). Don’t know how they managed to make loosing a battle with an immortal sword god ex-friend cute... but they did. Did some calculations and at 36 eps, mathematically speaking, ep 30 will be the equivalent of a standard BL ep 11. Should I be scared for next week? 

Nobleman Ryu’s Wedding (Korea) Ep 1-2 - it’s so effing adorbs, soft bois do old fashioned tropes like arranged marriage + evil stepsisters meets the more modern fake relationship + secret identity in a surprisingly comfortable mix. It launched with baby is a floppy drunk, forced proximity, performative I saw you feed him, and some fun gay panic. It’s a lot lighter and faster paced than I was expecting, but this is Korea so I don’t know why I’m surprised. 

Stand Alones 

K-pop band OnlyOneOf dropped a new MV that is basically BL bait, using many of the tropes we know and love. I promise I’m not trying to lure anyone into K-pop I just thought it was interesting how consciously they’re yaoi dipping. 

Spin-off We Best Love Fighting Mr. 2nd, Shou Zhen | the Only Love Letter Once Written (SERIOUSLY WITH THE TITLES TAIWAN?) anyway there’s a something or other 25 minutes featuring Pei Shou Yi and his boy that aired Friday. It’s about 10 minutes of reboot footage with 15 min of new content, mostly set in the past. It entirely rests on Chih Tian Shih’s acting, fortunately for us he’s great. However, it doesn’t substantially change or add to these characters’ arcs from the finale of WBL season 2. I don’t know if there will be more or if this was just an extra footage fan service. 

COLOR RUSH GOT ITS MOVIE!!! Okay this is almost the tipping point for me to get Viki Standard. It’s listed at 1:56 minutes long but the original series had only c.120 running time - that is a lot of new content. Although i was disappointed by To My Star’s movie I loved Wish You’s, so I am hoping Color Rush got Wish You level treatment. That said, I feel Color Rush the series is damn near perfect already, hard to improve on perfection. 

Breaking News

Close Friend the series got an updated trailer featuring MaxNat (no subs) so if you like them in Y-Destiny or in Why R U get ready for them to play different characters again, this time for a sports romance segment. Like Y-Destiny, Close Friend looks to be another series of vignettes (Original trailer) coming April 22. 

2gether the movie (Thai trailer) was intended release April 22 but is now postponed due to a surge in C19 cases in Thailand.

Tell the World I Love You, a Thai BL movie that was supposed to release last week, is similarly delayed.  

My Ride has been postponed indefinitely with no airing date. 

The Miracle of Teddy Bear got a teaser vid, no eng subs. 

Gossip

Thai BL actors Nanon (Bad Buddy), Yoon (YYY), and Mark Siwat (LBC, Bite Me) have tested positive for C19. Press releases stated they’re fine, tho filming has paused fore their various projects, obvs. (No word on whether Nanon’s current project was Bad Buddy or not, although it seems likely given his recent Arm Share episode.) 

Next Week Looks Like This:

Some shows may be listed later than actual air date for International accessibility reasons.

Upcoming 2021 BL master post here.

Links to watch are provided when possible, ask in a comment if I missed something.

[him-e]

what did you think of shadow and bone? have you read the books? i only read the duology

Thoughts on Shadow and Bone, now that you've probably seen it?

I think the show is alright? It lacks a real wow factor as far as I’m concerned, but it’s enjoyable. It’s especially enjoyable in those parts I didn’t anticipate to like / didn’t even know would be there. 

Whereas the main selling points leave a lot to be desired.

The good stuff: the visuals. The aesthetic. The overall concept. Production, casting and costumes are excellent, the setting is fascinating. The worldbuilding isn’t perfect and is sometimes confusing, which is probably due to the show jumping ahead of the books and introducing elements that happen much later in the book saga, but I’m loving the vague steampunk-y vibe of it mixed with more typical fantasy stuff and slavic-inspired lore, the fact that it’s set in dystopian Russia rather than your usual ye olde England.

I find it interesting that in this ‘verse the Grisha are simultaneously superstars, privileged elite, legendary creatures and despised outcasts, according to the context and the type of magic they wield. It’s A Lot, and so far it’s all a bit underdeveloped and messy, like a patchwork of different narratives and tropes sewn together without an organic worldbuilding structure. (there are hints to a past when they were hunted, but how did they go from that to being, essentially, an institutionalized asset to the government isn’t clear yet. There’s huge narrative potential in this, and I hope future seasons will delve into those aspects)

Many of the supporting characters are surprisingly solid. I appreciated that Genya and Zoya eventually sort of traded places, subverting the audience’s assumptions about them and their own character stereotypes, despite the little screentime they were given.

Breakout characters/ships for me were Nina/Matthias, and even more so the Crows, i.e. the stuff I didn’t see coming and knew nothing about (having only read the first book). (I thought the entire Crows subplot was handled in a somewhat convoluted way, at least in the first episodes; it was hard to keep track of who wanted Alina and why, but the Crows’ chemistry is so strong it carried the whole Plot B on its shoulders).

HELNIK. As an enemies to lovers dynamic, Helnik was SUPER on the nose, I’d say bordering on clichéd with the unapologetic, straight outta fanfiction use of classic tropes like “we need to team up to survive” and “there’s only one bed and we’ll freeze to death if we don’t take our conveniently damp clothes off and keep each other warm with the heat of our naked bodies” (not that I’m complaining, but i like to pine for my ships a bit before getting to the juicy tropetown part, tyvm). And then they’re suddenly on opposite sides again because of a tragic misunderstanding - does Bardugo hate high-conflict dynamics? It certainly seems so, because between Helnik and Darklina I’m starting to see a pattern where the slow burn and blossoming mutual trust is rushed and painted in broad, stereotypical strokes to get as fast as possible to the part where they *hate each other again* and that’s... huh. Something.

^That’s probably why I’m almost more interested in Kaz x Inej, because their relationship feels a bit more nuanced, a bit more mysterious, and a bit more unpredictable. (I didn’t bother spoiling myself about them, so I really don’t know where they’re going, but it’s refreshing to see a dynamic that the narrative isn’t scrambling to define in one direction or the other as quickly as possible)

-

Now, as for Darklina VS Malina... I found exactly what I expected. 

Both are ship dynamics I’m, on principle, very much into (light heroine/dark villain, pining friends to lovers) but both are also much less interesting than they claim to be, or could have been with different narrative choices. I’ll concede that the show characters are all more fleshed out and likable than their book counterparts, and the cringe parts I vaguely remembered from the books played out differently. And, well, Ben Barnes dominates the scene, he’s hot as HELL, literally every single second he’s on screen is a fuck you to Bardugo’s attempts to make his character lame and uninteresting and I’m LOVING it, lol.

But yeah, B Barnes aside, Darklina is intrinsically, deliberately made to be unshippable. 

It makes me mad, because it’s - archetypally speaking - made of shipping dynamite: yin/yang-sun and moon, opposites attract, COMPLEMENTARY POWERS AND SO ON. And what does Bardugo do with these ingredients? A FUCKING DELIBERATE DISASTER:

^ Placing the kiss so early on (season 1, episode five) effectively kills the romantic tension that was (correctly) building up until that point, and leaves the audience very little to still hope for, in terms of emotional evolution of the dynamic. 

Bardugo lays all the good stuff down as early and quickly as possible (the bonding, the conflicted attraction, the recognizing the other as one’s equal, etc) only to turn the tables and pull the rug so y’all sick creepyshippers won’t have anything to look forward to, because THEY’VE ALREADY HOOKED UP AND THAT BELONGS TO THE PAST, IT’S OVER, THEY’RE ENEMIES. This, combined to the fact that she falls for him *without* knowing who he really is, is the opposite of what I want from a heroine/villain ship (it’s basically lovers to enemies, and while that can be valid too, I wanted to see more pining and more prolonged, tormented symbolic attraction to the Shadow/Animus on Alina’s part). 

But here’s the trick: it’s not marketed as lovers to enemies - it has all the aesthetics and trappings of an enemies to lovers (the Darkling is, from the get go, villain-presenting, starting from his name), so it genuinely feels like a trollfic, or at the very least a cautionary tale *against* shipping the heroine with the tall dark brooding young villain, and I don’t think it’s cool at all. It makes the story WAY less interesting, because it humanizes the villain early on (when it’s not yet useful or poignant to the story, because it’s unearned) but it’s a red herring. The real plot twist is that the villain shouldn’t be sympathized with, just defeated: there’s a promise of nuanced storytelling, that is quickly denied and tossed aside. So is the idea of incorporating your Shadow (a notion that Bardugo must be familiar with, otherwise she wouldn’t have structured Alina and the Darkling as polar opposites who complement each other, but that she categorically refutes)

Then we have Malina. The good ship.

Look, I’m not that biased against it. I don’t want to be biased on principle against a friends to lovers dynamic that antagonizes a heroine/villain one, because every narrative is different, and for personal reasons I can deeply relate to the idea of being (unspeakably) in love with your best friend. So there are aspects of Malina that I can definitely be into, but it troubles me that in this specific context it’s framed as a regression. It’s Alina’s comfort zone, a fading dream of happiness from an idealized childhood, to sustain which the heroine systematically stunts her growth and literally repressed her own powers, something that in the books made her sickly and weak. But the narrative weirdly romanticizes this codependency, often making her tunnel vision re: going back to Mal her primary goal and centering on him her entire backstory/motivation, to the point that when she starts acting more serious re: her powers and alleged mission to destroy the Fold, it feels inorganic and unearned. 

Mal is intrinsically extraneous to Alina’s powers, he doesn’t share them, he doesn’t understand them, he has little to offer to help her with them, and so the feeling is that he’s also extraneous to her heroine’s journey, aside from being a sort of sidekick or safe harbor to eventually come back to. People have compared him to Raoul from Phantom of the Opera, and yeah, he has the same ~magic neutralizer~ vibe, tbh.

The narrative also polarizes Mal’s normalcy and relative “safety” against Aleksander’s sexy evil, framing Alina’s quasi-platonic fixation on the former as a better and purer form of love than her (much more visible and palpable) attraction to the latter. This is exacerbated by the show almost entirely relying on scenes of them as kids to convey their bond. I’m sure there are ways to depict innocent pining for your best friend that don’t involve obsessively focusing on flashbacks of two CHILDREN running in a meadow and looking exactly like brother and sister. LIKE. I get it, they’re like soulmates in every possible way, BUT DO THEY WANT TO KISS EACH OTHER?

Which brings me to a general complain: for a young adult saga centering on a young heroine and full of so many hot people, this story is weirdly unsexy? There are a lot of shippable dynamics, but they’re done in such a careless, ineffective way that makes ZERO EFFORT to work on stuff like slow burn, pining and romantic tension, and when it does it’s so heavy handed that the viewer doesn’t feel encouraged at all to fill the blanks with their imagination and start anticipating things (which is, imo, the ESSENCE of shipping). The one dynamic that got vaguely close to this is, again, Kaz and Inej, and coincidentally it’s also the one we didn’t get confirmed as romantic YET. Other than that, where’s the slow burn? What ship am I supposed to agonize over during the hiatus to season two? Has shipping become something to feel ashamed of, like an embarrassing relative you no longer want to invite in your home?

Anyway, back to Alina/Darkling/Mal, this is how the story reads to me:

girl suspects to be special, carefully pretends to be normal so she can stay with Good Boy

the girl’s powers eventually manifest; she’s forcibly separated from Good Boy

the girl’s powers attract Bad Boy who is her equal and opposite but is also a major asshole

girl initially falls for Bad Boy; has to learn a hard lesson that nobody that sexy will ever want her for who she is, he’s just trying to exploit her

also, no, there is no such thing as a Power Couple

girl is literally given a slave collar by Bad Boy through which he harnesses her power (a parody of the Twin Scars trope)

you know how the story initially suggested that the joint powers of Darkness and Light would defeat evil? LOL NO, Darkness is actually evil itself and the way you destroy evil is using Light to destroy Darkness, forget that whole Jungian bullshit of integrating your shadow, silly!

conclusion: girl realizes being special sucks. She was right all along! Hiding and suppressing her powers was the best choice! She goes back to the start, to the same Good Boy she was meekly pining for prior to the start of the story.

... there’s an uncomfortable overall subtext that reads a lot like a cautionary tale against - look, not just against darkships and villain/heroine pairings, but also *overpowered* heroines and, well... change? Growth?

Like, it’s certainly a Choice that Alina starts the story *already* in love with Mal. That she always knew it was him. The realization could have happened later (making the dynamic much more shippable, too), but no. 

[tuiyla]

The internal conflict of 4x20 being a really problematic episode as a whole but also it having some of my favorite Santana and Kitty content in the entire show

The NY plotline was surprisingly solid and fleshed out Santana a lot, which was needed, and while there was no follow up, it’s still great to see. The small details about her doing ballet, and how genuinely passionate she looks is so amazing.

The Lima plotline is notoriously problematic, but what it adds to Kitty is so important. Obviously there are no excuses for Kitty’s past actions, but knowing that there is depth to her is crucial to why she manages to be likable.

While I hate rewatching 4x20, the character content we received was so important to me.

Ah a fellow Santana and Kitty lover, an Anon of taste 😌

I weep for the wasted potential of Santana’s 4x20 Lights Out storyline, at least in how it’s not picked up afterward. But this is a general issue I have with how what Santana builds in seasons 4 and 5 doesn’t get a proper conclusion. I agree Anon, it’s a solid ep for her, good Kurtcheltana content, good character moments. I think I feel less happy about it in retrospect because of the aforementioned lack of follow-up but on its own it’s still strong. At the Ballet is incredibly underrated imo. @amazonworrier and I were having some feels about it a while back.

I'm not sure I know exactly what you're referring to by "problematic" so if you wanna, I'd be interested in hearing that elaboration. I really do appreciate this thought so don't get me wrong, I've just grown a bit allergic to the general use of the word "problematic" and am a bit skeptical when it's not detailed what it means. This against you Anon, just a thing I noticed in the fandom that when we dismiss things with "well that's problematic" and use that word as a be all end all it kinda kills meaningful discussion.

I'm sorry, nitpicking because I have a knee-jerk reaction to the word aside haha I can only assume you mostly mean the Ryder plot? It’s a discussion I’ve seen often, how wrong both Artie and Sam were. I don’t want to hijack this post with that so suffice to say, yes they were, and yes the framing does say they’re wrong but it’s also super weird. I suppose that’s the Problematic nature of it; not that Bad Thing happened and people reacted Badly, but that they were barely directly called out, not disputed, and Ryder never got closure with them. I honestly would have loved a scene of Kitty giving the two boys a piece of her mind but from the way Becca acted that scene, I don’t think she was in the space of mind to do so. Very messy Glee, very messy.

But, when it comes to Kitty! I love the Kitty content so so much. I think even the subtle things in the episode add just so much to her character. And I don’t want it to come across as “oh evil person has a tragic backstory now” because I think Glee actually manages to avoid that and it’s not just through this that they humanize Kitty and give her a character beyond She Was Horrible Terrible The Worst to Marley For a While. In fact, my problem with the Kitty plot is the same I have with the Santana one. It feels very much as if it exists in a vacuum, even more so than Santana’s career plot that at least spans a few seasons here and there. Kitty’s trauma (or Ryder’s) is never brought up again. So while I appreciate her softening wasn’t entirely built on that because that would have been, just, bad, it does bother me that it turns Lights Out very much into an Issue Episode that need not be mentioned again. Because who needs continuity when you can say you’ve covered every topic under the sun.

That aside, if I ever finish the cursed Kitty mega essay I’ve been working for a literal year now, her 4x20 plot will be a big part of it. Like you say, her backstory of course doesn’t excuse anything but it does give her more depth and makes this ep a good one for her character. I’ve kinda touched on it and her convo with Ryder here.

Anyway if you have more thoughts on the episode or these storylines I’d love to hear them! Santana and Kitty, truly couldn’t ask for a discussion I’d be more interested in haha.

[maydaymemer]

Hitman 3 - First Impressions w/ Spoilers

I’m posting this just after I’ve beaten Hitman 3, and I wanted to do something productive with my experiences playing it both for when I look back on my first time playing this game and also to do something more than just play video games like a degenerate

If you want my basic yay or nay opinion I think Hitman 3’s great, maybe the best of the trilogy but I might just be burnt out on replaying 2’s levels and am not thinking right, but keep in mind this is after playing thru each level once. Not to say these levels don’t make good or bad first impressions for a reason but I know not to trust myself when I say I enjoy or dislike something especially a Hitman level after only a little time with it. Keep in mind I didn’t like Sapienza and liked Colorado at first, but at the same time my opinion of Whittleton Creek and Marrakesh either haven’t changed much or only gotten more positive with time. So it’s a roll of a dice

Anyway I’ve written down my notes on every level I’ve played right after finishing it, which I’ve put below. There are going to be spoilers of elements like mission stories (which I dabbled a little bit in) and objectives and I’d recommend going in as blind as possible with Hitman. I don’t mind spoilers myself but I think you feel smarter when you stumbled on half the shit you do in these games

Dubai: very strong opener. I think that some of the shortcut design, one of the few new features of 3, kind of limits up front exploration but I still really liked the verticality and how climbing up pipes could take you up like two floors. Targets seem to have the appropriate amount of blind spots, tho I’m not sure how I’d tackle Marcus in that big open area. To me this level reminds me of House of Cards but better, out of the other first levels of the trilogy (Paris, Hawke’s Bay and Dubai) I choose this as my favourite so far. I killed Marcus by snapping his neck after knocking him out in that white room near the elevator, I got caught and killed some witnesses only for Omar to find the bodies. I killed Carl by throwing him off the building, sacrificing his waiter to do so

Dartmoor: Actually managed to SA this one, I didn’t go forward with the murder mystery just yet as I wanted to see 1) if it could be cheesed since it’s a one target mission and b) to see how well it holds up without doing that. To see if it’s just a gimmick or not. Turns out? Pretty darn well. I did encounter some of the stuff I didn’t like about the Hitman 2 AI with Alexa, namely if you have a weapon out and she gets a slight glance at you she goes into lockdown and while trying to cheese her under a chandelier when she goes to meet with you/the detective. However, it was at least consistent this time until in WoA2, she never fell for me trying to cheese it whereas if this was Hitman 2 it’d work 50% of the time and drive you mad. I did manage to get her under a chandelier, because in this game’s case personal bodyguards are easier to get rid of and there’s usually only one if they have one so I was proud of that. I love doing non-laid out kills in Hitman, one of my favourite things. I love the level design here, the mansion is big and brooding and so is Alexa’s route it seems. I loved finding out the secrets like using the cane to open doorways and using the camera to find pieces of the code for the Edwards safe. I got the 9, 7 and 5 ones and was going to brute force the code but turns it the solution was 1975. The level takes atmospheric cues from Beldingford Manor but I got real Paris vibes from the verticality which I loved

Berlin: I thought this mission wouldn’t impress me with its gimmick but it’s my favourite so far. The atmosphere and rave soundtrack gave me chills, and THIS is how you do target AI. There are a total of eleven or twelve potential targets I think, and all of them use guard AI. You have to track down and kill at least five of them, giving a unique and dynamic gimmick for this mission which I’ll love to replay. Target routes seem good too and your first playthrough where you’re winging it is even more fun here when you don’t know where your targets are really coming from. The mission is also really surprisingly massive, it might be the biggest one so far despite only having ten disguises (I don’t think we’re going to top Miami’s 29). I also loved that you could poison some fast food and have a biker take it inside

Chongqing: this is a great example of the knee jerk nature of these first impressions, not that this level will be bad but I feel like I’m speaking a little too soon when I say this might be one of my favourite levels of the trilogy. I was a little disappointed when the level wasn’t Mumbai 2.0, being more vertical than horizontal in scale but I ate my words when I experienced it. This is probably the weirdest level of the trilogy but so cool at the same time. At first I tried getting Hush with his satellite dish, and sniping him from his little area. I died. Then I became a test subject and started messing with his brain, making him take a break and killing him when he’s at his desk. I got caught however and had to make a break for it. Then I infiltrated the ICA data banks by becoming the board member, but then I had to sneak into his apartment since I didn’t know the code, but then I heard the code when I answered his answering machine. I really like the introduction of keypads and hope they stay, they reward map knowledge and let you skip having every door be locked via lockpick. Then I distracted and KO-ed Imogen’s guard and pushed her off the data core railing. What proceeds is a great bit of fan service where it shows almost every target from the trilogy as 47 deletes the info ICA has on him and then one of my favourite moments of the series (in terms of scripted stuff, I’ll always prefer stuff like sniping Rico from the jungle) where you have to escape the burning facility while avoiding the now entirely hostile guards. I’m super glad this and other story beats are confirmed optional on replays, but I’d happily replay this regularly because it was so fun to Splinter Cell the level for the last minute

Mendoza: Another great level. I wasn’t expecting it to be so big but even that big field you can see over the balcony is explorable. Feels more like A Vintage Year throwback than Santa Fortuna was. I quite like the kill opportunities that I saw, sniping Yates from the top of his house and finding wine to serve Vidal was what I went for. Also love that Diana is in the level physically, she even hides behind a box if you caught an alert. Yates’ house is very intimate but very well designed. Wasn’t expecting the tactical wetsuit to be here as a disguise but it was a cool thing I found

The Train: this level is simultaneously an awesome and disappointing end to the trilogy. The idea itself is great and the hallucinations that begin the level are really imaginative, but that nightmare intro gameplay wise is just you walking forward. It’s the exact opposite of the reason why I like Hitman, I like Hitman because it isn’t like those triple A “walk forward while dialogue plays” kind of games. It’d maybe work better if they had you shoot every target you’ve ever killed in this dream and then top it off with the one proper gameplay moment that’s in the real thing where you press the button that kills Diana’s parents. Then the level itself after that intro is way too linear, I know it’s a train but there could’ve been way more options with how to go about it. There is a great final moment with Edwards and I love that it encourages combat for the first time in the trilogy, but it could’ve been a lot better. Ideally this would be the seventh level after a proper sixth but I think it’d be more palatable if it was more replayable than it is. Because at the moment it doesn’t have Contracts mode, probably won’t get escalations and definitely won’t get an ET. Which puts it behind Hawke’s Bay, which is a regular punching bag for its lack of content

The Story: surprisingly, I loved it. I’ve always thought this trilogy had excellent worldbuilding but used some plot contrivances to get from level to level. This time while the worldbuilding isn’t quite as solid the story is actually pretty great and goes in a lot of interesting directions which I think would make great sequel material. 47 essentially kills the ICA and the game ends with him and Diana becoming independent agents. So they’ll be doing the same thing without the immunity a giant organisation like the ICA has, which could lead to interesting conflict in the ninth Hitman game. I also like this game’s portrayal of the ICA, they’re a lot more professional than in Absolution but it goes for a similar take of showing how brutal they are

In Conclusion: For the most part Hitman 3 is excellent and I loved it, probably about as much as the previous Hitman 2 and the Paris level of Hitman 1 in terms of first time experiences with these games. There were some downs with the Carpathian Mountains and elements of the game design but it’s still another solid new Hitman game. I can understand why the reviewers loved this one over Hitman 2, while I loved that game’s levels this game’s levels feel a lot weirder and that’d leave a much stronger first impression. Ofc being the second sequel to 2016 nothing’s really changed much. While there are improvements to the way guns feel and the fluidity of 47’s movement it’s nothing groundbreaking. The new map features, while cool, aren’t selling points IMO. If you love Hitman buy this, if you love stealth buy this, if you love mucking about in a sandbox buy this, but if you’ve never been interested in Hitman or this gameplay style of Hitman it’s best to avoid this. It’s a very good third season of Hitman, whether you like it or not. In terms of my thoughts on the levels my personal ranking rn would probably be Chongqing > Mendoza Berlin> Dubai > Dartmoor > Carpathian Mountains (AKA the Train level)

[chittsu]

haechan as your wedding date

because of my personal struggles with finding a boy naive enough to go to my sister's wedding with me, I came to the conclusion that Hyuck would be an amazing partner for that (not that he's naive) and I'm gonna prove my point below while adding a cute plot to it because I can

haechan x reader; fluff? FLUFF; comedy?? top-level trust me; CHEESY; 4.2 k??????? I don’t know how it happened

enjoy! :)

he's been your friend for years now, even though both of you are pretty sassy and can't go an hour without fighting at least once

but that's also what makes you two such a good duo - your friendship is based on jokes, pranks and overall positive and fun vibes and it's entertaining for everyone around

when you find yourself in a position of not having anyone to go with you to a wedding (and your family basically begs you to finally show aunt Matilda that you are dateable), you offer him this amazing position of your date

he accepts, of course, by saying that it's because of free food but in reality, he just likes spending time with you in any way

so the day comes and SURPRISE you're late with everything

you have makeup to finish and your bag to pack when you hear someone knocking on the door, followed by mocking 'your date arrived!!!'

you yell at him to come in because when you're in a hurry -you're not happy and it shows

you hear him saying something about how you should be nicer to a guy who saves you from disappointing your whole family and if you weren't applying your lipstick, you would probably attack him by now

haechan feels at home in your apartment so he's casually rummaging through your stuff in the bedroom while you're finishing your look

you get to see his silhouette through the crack in your door

he's showing his side profile to you while one of his knees is resting on your bed and he's holding the family photo you keep on your nightstand, probably studying faces of the people he's about to meet

and let me tell you, he looks GOOD

it wasn't surprising or new that you found Hyuck attractive because even you can't lie to yourself that much

but in this grey checked suit paired with a white shirt (he even unbuttoned a few buttons at the top) complimented by his tanned skin and his light hair parted in the middle..................

you were thankful you peeked through that crack so you had some more time to prepare yourself to look him in the face

and you were just so proud of your decision to ask him out because aunt Matilda is going to take back everything she said and BEG for forgiveness as soon as she sees him

ANYWAYS

you finally leave the bathroom while Hyuck is commenting on the photo chuckling 'I don't know who this man is but you definitely got your calves from him'

'that's our neighbour and now I'm concerned'

he looks at you, finally noticing you're out of the bathroom and he stops functioning for a moment

or two moments, while he scans the way you look

you kinda expect him to compliment you because that pink gown was expensive so it would be nice to hear something good from him

but it's haechan so what he says is

'luckily no one can see your calves in this dress'

:)

'that's exactly why I bought it' you say through gritted teeth

but when you look at him again, he has this grin on his face that he's trying to fight back and suddenly he looks at the ground and turns around to put the photo back while clearing his throat a little too loudly

FINALLY you decided to get going because - reminder - you're very late and your mom won't be content about this

driving was full of you telling embarrassing stories about your family members so that Hyuck feels more relaxed and to provide him with some tea

so fast forward to the wedding

you two managed to get to the church, find a place to sit in the back and laugh at the bride who started crying while saying the vows

after the ceremony, everyone started gathering in front of the church and that was the most stressful moment - your parents approaching

but after a few seconds you laugh at your own self for being stressed about Hyuck meeting your parents - he's such a charming person that knows exactly what to say to win hearts of others and it never fails - even with your parents

you're pretty sure your mom fell in love with him as soon as he smiled at her

so after a short conversation and a few jokes here and there, your parents leave the two of you with your dad patting Hyuck's arm and your mom looking absolutely delighted

'now it's time for you to praise my wooing skills' he says confidently with his eyebrow raised

'they would love anyone naive enough to come here with me but yeah good work'

Hyuck doesn't find it as funny as you think; every joke you make about being unloveable just stirs something inside of him

but before he has the time to react, you know who shows up

you know it

say it with me

AUNT MATILDA :))))))))

you don't have the time to warn Hyuck so you just grab his hand instinctively and give it a squeeze

you don't know that you just made his brain malfunction for the second time today

then..... aunt Matilda activates

'oh sweetie, after so many years i finally see a boy next to you, such a strange view, you always said you didn't need anyone and now??? aren't you working all the time? i thought you never leave the house....'''

you told Hyuck not to talk to her too much, that it's enough if he just shows up but how could he stand still in this situation

so he brings your hand to his lips and kisses it softly which surprisingly makes your aunt shut up and your heart speed up

'miss, thanks for your concern. y/n is doing great at her job and university, she works very hard, is beautiful and independent WHILE still managing to have lots of friends and a boyfriend, right cupcake?' and he looks at you sweetly

and you're already smiling at him because it's just so entertaining

'couldn't agree more baby boo'

so aunt Matilda is taken aback but she manages to force a smile before running away like the coward she is

and as you watch her leave, you say to Hyuck whose hand is still intertwined with yours 'I guess your job is done here'

and he says 'great because there's this comedy on TV i really wanted to watch today'

'but you wouldn't leave your cupcake alone, right?'

you smirk at him while taking your hand away from him and he can only cringe at those words

PARTY TIME

first of all, you both had to eat a lot so for the first hour you just kept on eating and the only conversation you have is 'have you tried this?' or 'you have to taste it' (in Ten's voice)

you introduced Hyuck to all of the cooler cousins you had

not like you really wanted to - they shouldn't get too used to him after all - but Matilda spread her word and now people just wanted to meet your boyfriend

thankfully, everyone hated Matilda so you could tell them you're not really together without being afraid of getting caught

every time someone asks if you're together you tell them 'um I don't need that kind of stress in my life'

they still don’t believe you OR they tell you that you may not be a couple yet but you definitely will

and then a bunch of your family members basically drags you two to dance with them in a circle

and the alcohol you drank makes you more adventurous than usually + the fact that all of your childhood friends are here with you has you dancing your heart out

and Hyuck is hyping you up on the side and he's watching you and laughing at you

but his laugh fades when a random guy asks you to dance with him

so he gives him like 10 solid seconds of holding you in his arms before he snatches you away

Haechan is a great dancer

he's so light with his moves and he can control every move perfectly, as well as yours

so even if you can't dance, with him dancing is fun and it works and it looks like you took dancing classes for the past 2 years

he would definitely be the type to sing along while dancing so just imagine his singing voice right next to your ear while you're dancing to a slower song

and then with more upbeat songs you two would have some kind of a lipsyncing battle and would just go crazy with facial expressions and air guitars

he would try new moves all the time and most of them would fail terribly at first but as long as you don't break your arms and you laugh it's completely fine

he would soon be stolen from you by every confident female guest who spent their time watching you two with envy

and you wait for him at your table, smiling like an idiot while watching him dance or in the arms of one of your cousins on the dance floor

and he looks at you every 5 seconds and smiles or sings or shouts something like he can't go on a moment without you

and your dancing partners are just like 'alright alright, go to him/her if you want to so much'

and you're like 'what we're just friends'

and they laugh in your faces

understandable because the chemistry you have?? when the two of you talk together, it's like nothing else matters

whenever Hyuck says something to you he has this grin on his face that he can't wipe off and he's embarrassed by it but he accepts it because he knows you have to try hard not to smile as well

he's either hyping up everything you say or make fun of you, there's no in-between

and every guest that met him says that they can instantly see why you chose him because you're just so perfect together

and they remember your past partners and everyone says that with Hyuck you can finally be truly yourself

everyone loves his jokes and remarks and he became so popular among your family members that you're starting to get scared about all this

they just love him

you joke you're almost jealous of all the attention but you're not surprised at all

like, he's the type to ask your mom to dance with him and he immediately became friends with your dad while talking about your embarrassing childhood stories and talk with your cousin about martial arts in the next second and he suddenly has nicknames for your siblings and they all call him Donghyuckie??

it's all a little crazy and as much as you love it, you start getting a little uncomfortable because - he's not your boyfriend and everyone's getting so used to him that it will be hard to explain to them why you're not together

hell, just imagine all those questions at every family meeting

and you can't really think right now with all that music and multiple conversations happening around you

so you decide to take advantage of Hyuck currently talking with your uncle and you go outside to get some fresh air

you find a perfect spot that surprisingly is empty, so you sit on a bench and enjoy the chilly breeze

you look up to the moon and wonder what's Taeil doing

and you look down on your hand that still remembers the touch of Hyuck's lips

you frown a little, knowing that it's too dangerous to think about this day as if something has changed between the both of you; he is just helping you today as a friend

but part of you knows that when you asked him to come here with you, you were hoping for something to change

you were single for a long time and you claimed that it made you happy

but it was bearable only because of Hyuck and the fact that he was always beside you

and when Taeyong once asked you who is your ideal type, you had to think hard about it because you didn't like the first answer that came to your mind

Donghyuck

you didn't want it to seem like your friendship isn't genuine just because you're developing feelings and you're hoping for something to happen between the both of you so you never said anything to anyone

you laughed suddenly

this alcohol you drank really messed you up just now wow

you were just thinking about what Taeil is doing, how did you end up here

you felt something on your shoulders and you recognized it was Hyuck's blazer

'how could you leave me in the same room as aunt Matilda ALONE'

you turn around to see Hyuck looking down at you with his arms crossed

'she's already scared of you so don't worry, you're safe'

'she sure wasn't scared when she asked me to dance with her 4 minutes ago'

that made you burst out laughing and you regretted not seeing that so so so much

Hyuck sat down next to you and tried to be serious to convince you that it wasn't funny at all but he had to laugh when you laughed

he stopped laughing a second before you so when you finally opened your eyes, you were taken aback seeing how serious he was suddenly

'what'

'I just feel sorry for you. every guy you bring home from now on will be compared to me and, spoiler alert, none of them will win that battle'

'johnny'

'good point but still you shouldn't hurt my feelings like that, I'm a sensitive guy underneath that very cool and attractive attitude'

'I love you and all but Johnny's tall and handsome, and well mannered and his smile is just..'

'OKAY OKAY Johnny is a God but I'm the one here with you right now, not him and that proves something so stop talking now'

'make me'

and you regret saying that immediately because it sounded way too flirty and provocative

and Hyuck just looks at you and you want him to laugh it off but his face is getting closer to yours suddenly

'as you wish'

and you can't believe that he is even more beautiful up close

you take a quick look at his slightly parted lips before gaining composure again

but nothing happens, he stops and smirks proudly

'my beauty makes you speechless and you want to convince me you would rather be here with Johnny?'

you can't find a good response to that so you just let your lips form a smile of acknowledgement

'also you were totally waiting for me to kiss you just now'

that catches you off the guard and when you see how proud he is with himself, you just can't let him triumph

'you know what, actually every boy will win with you in comparison as long as he's my real boyfriend'

'that's a weak argument, I could easily be your boyfriend if I haven't failed to ask you out so many times'

.........

you just look at each other with serious, almost shocked expressions

he's panicking inside because that was not meant to be said oh no

the awkwardness is real

and he's the one to speak before you can ask any questions

'okaaaaaaaaay actually I came here to tell you that the cake is going to be served so let's get going'

and he basically runs away

and you go after him, even though you're very confused right now

but the cake is tasty

the problem is, suddenly Hyuck is very awkward around you and when you look at him, he turns his head the other way or starts talking to someone else

and your mom immediately asks you 'what have you done'

and you even lose him for like, 30 minutes

but eventually, he finds you next to the bar because where else would you be

he puts his hand on your waist

he probably doesn't notice that but you sure do

'I thought you left with that dancing king from before'

and you turn to look at him and your faces are really close right now, your noses could brush against each other any second now

and his mind malfunctions for the 753rd time today

and you smirk

'oh, did my beauty just make you speechless?'

and he turns away from you, hiding his smile with his fist acknowledging this joke

but again, he can't let you have it

so he looks at you, his eyes squinting

'do you know why I haven't been drinking today? because I'm already drunk on the way you look tonight WOOOO'

'wow is there a paper bag somewhere near here?' you say pretending to be strongly disgusted as Renjun taught you

and you just roll your eyes while he's so proud with himself that he puts his hands on his hips and starts pacing to get over that line with this STUPID smile on his face

and you feel like you're both 8 years old

and you're glad that he's back to his usual self even though there's this slight disappointment? jokes like that are completely normal between you two but what he said in the garden seemed too genuine to just dismiss like that

'want a drink? I'll pay'

'everything's free here Hyuck'

'EXACTLY'

'you're way too nice to me today, I'm gonna be so disappointed when it all ends tomorrow'

'what do you mean, I'm ALWAYS nice to you'

'especially when you laugh at my calves when there's nothing even wrong with them, have you seen Doyoung's???'

and with that everything is how it used to be and you spend the rest of the night dancing, eating and laughing

but when you both realize you're extremely tired, it's time to say your last goodbyes to everyone and yes, it's awkward as hell because suddenly every member of your family is inviting Hyuck for dinner

and the worst thing is that they don't even care if you come with him??

so when you're finally next to his car you have to complain

'you stole my family, this friendship is cancelled'

'finally!!!!'

you gasp dramatically and you're expecting him to laugh at you or play along but hmmmmmm

he's kinda serious, there's just this little smile playing on his lips and he takes a step forward

and he reaches out for your hand

and just stares at your hands intertwined together as if they were made for each other

you stop breathing for a moment and your heart wants to jump out of your chest; this situation confuses you but you're trying to stay calm

and then he says

'since I already kinda exposed myself earlier... and you're a little drunk... this seems like the perfect occasion to tell you the truth'

'first of all I'm not drunk but even if I was, are you hoping that I forget about it tomorrow because-"

he looks straight into your eyes with an annoyed expression before pressing his lips on yours

have you ever seen fireworks? because they exploded everywhere at that moment

and your chest feels so heavy with this new feeling you can’t explain but you let your body relax and get used to it

Hyuck's hand finds its way to your neck and he takes a step forward to be closer before pulling away from you a few moments later

and for a second no one says anything

he rests his forehead on yours, his hand is still on your neck

this moment feels so good that none of you wants to ruin it by saying anything or moving

but eventually, it has to end

Hyuck looks at you and you can't even imagine everything that's going through his mind right now; he's scared that he made the biggest mistake of his life right now but why does it feel like it was also his best decision?

he's so unsure of what to say or do now, his spontaneity suddenly left him

'you could have just told me to shut up' you say with a smile playing on your lips

he just lets out a laugh and all of his worries disappear; his smiling from ear to ear and for a moment, he's looking everywhere but on you while shaking his head

'hey, focus, you were supposed to tell me the truth, i have no idea what that could be about' you continue teasing him but you have the same stupid smile as him on your face

he lets out a heavy sigh and finally looks at you while cupping your face in his hands

'the truth is I know that you're totally whipped for me so I just made your confession easier for you, you can start now'

'wow that took an unexpected turn'

'you didn't expect me to say a monologue about how wonderful you are, right?'

'I know I won't hear it from you unless aunt Matilda stands in front of us but a girl can dream, right?'

'I thought that the way I look at you would be enough for you to know how I feel'

'it wasn't so explain now'

'you just love making me suffer huh'

so yeah, if you expected a proper confession from Haechan then I'm really sorry but it's not happening

speaking about his feelings isn't easy for him unless he turns it into jokes

but it's not disappointing, it just so 'you'

'wait but does it all mean that if I annoyed you yesterday and you kissed me to shut me up... i wouldn't have to lie to aunt Matilda today?'

'see? it's all your fault, you turned yourself into a liar just because you were a coward before'

'me??? a coward?? I think I heard you saying you failed to ask me out many times before'

'it's the 21st century, you can't wait for men to do everything for you, you could have asked first'

'OKAY okay I'll be your girlfriend if you're insisting so much'

he bursts out laughing and you do too and then he pretends to call his mom to brag that he FINALLY got himself a girlfriend

and you kiss him again and again and again and he smiles in between kisses and then you both start giggling and it's all just so amazing and fresh

then he hugs you tight and he rests his chin on the top of your head and it's just a truly happy moment for you two

and when you finally drive back to your apartment, Hyuck takes you hand in his and is basically a giggly mess the whole time

he occasionally kisses your hand just as he did before and you can already tell that will be the death of you but that's your favourite thing now

and you start asking each other embarrassing questions like what did you like about each other first or when did you start having a crush on me but you quickly stop because you realize how stupid you were all this time

and just like that, aunt Matilda created this power couple

and your friends aren't even surprised

only Ten doesn't like that idea because, let me quote: 'oh no I lost a bet, I said that you wouldn't get together till you're both thirty'

and you say 'by thirty we will already be divorced'

and Hyuck gets so offended by this, he goes to Taeil and lets out those fake sobs saying that he should have just stayed single forever like his big hyung

and Taeil doesn't find it funny

but basically, nothing changes between you two and you love it; well, nothing except now you kiss and hug and hold hands 

and you still look at each other with the same spark in your eyes and you still have the same stupid grins on your faces when you're talking together

and you still fight a lot but that's a tradition okay, that’s what makes you you

so yeah, Haechan is the perfect wedding date, I think that proved my point

just a disclaimer: I'm sorry to all Matildas :< disclaimer 2: if you liked it and you want more, you can read this tinder au with Doyoung or Lucas or this college!au with Taeil :) disclaimer 3: pls leave a like or reblog if you managed to read this whole thing to make me smile 

[nellied-reviews]

Succulent Rat-Killing Tar Re-listen

Hey! So, I’m new here, but I’ve recently been re-listening to the podcast Wolf 359, and I'm obsessed again, so I kinda wanted, in true Self-Indulgent fashion, to record my thoughts about it, see what stands out now I know how the series plays out. I don’t know if anyone will actually want to read this, but I enjoyed writing it, at least!

If any of you don’t know Wolf 359, but are still, for whatever reason, reading this, a) you should go listen! It’s a sci-fi podcast with some awesome characters, and a really great balance of creepiness, wackiness and actual plot. But also, b) I will be posting spoilers here, sorry. It’s been a while, so I think they’re pretty much fair game now? But just so you’re not caught out: here be spoilers.

With that cleared up, then:

Succulent Rat-Killing Tar

In which we meet the disaster that is Douglas Eiffel, Hilbert blows things up, and the Hephaestus receive a strange transmission from deep space.

In some ways, re-listening to this episode was an odd experience, because the characters don’t quite feel solid yet. It’s the same in a few early episodes - tonally, they’re just really different to a lot of what comes later - and I don't think that’s bad, per se, especially since there are things, on a re-listen, that connect this to later episodes. But this episode is particularly weird, I think, even for the early episodes. 

Gabriel Urbina actually talked about this in the writing notes he posted to his Tumblr, how he conceived of Wolf 359 as a one-man show, and  what we get here is basically the Doug Eiffel! Show, with what are essentially cameo appearances from the others. As a consequence of this, Minkowski, Hera and Hilbert don’t get much characterisation, and even things like their voices seem ... odd? Hera, especially, feels more like Space Siri than the snarky AI we know and love, while Minkowski... eh, I don’t know why I don't like her here, but I remember not liking her when I first listened to it either. I think she sounds kind of flat, like she's not quite a real person?

 It’s probably good, then, that Eiffel comes onto the scene fully formed and really freakin' funny. Zach Valenti is a funny man, and he kills it here, from the very first lines. I particularly love how much information he gets into his opening monologue. He takes what looks, superficially, like a lazily-written infodump - because seriously, who would start their log like that on day 448? Does Eiffel open every single log like this?! - and just runs with it. It's such a ludicrous thing to do, and the whole reason I buy that yes, Eiffel totally does just sit there every single night talking to himself, is Zach Valenti’s performance. It's so good, guys, seriously!

On a side-note, I am also endlessly amused at the way in which Eiffel’s utterly bonkers decision to narrate his boring chores like an exposition-heavy radio show gives the Dear Listeners ammo later on. Like, if Eiffel were not such a fundamentally ridiculous character, they would not have his voice to contact the crew. So much of the plot just hinges on Eiffel being a dumbass, and I can respect that.

Besides the fact that he’s this weird, lovable dumbass, we do also get some nice character moments for Eiffel. For one, it’s buried under a lot of funny stuff, but we get our first hints at him having an addictive personality - his love of cigarettes certainly hits differently when you know about his past with alcohol.

There are also, sticking to things I picked up the first time round, hints that Eiffel is perhaps more competent than he lets on? Certainly, he kicks into a different gear when the transmissions come through - the goofing around stops straight away, and he genuinely seems keen to make contact. I like that, I think.

That said, he blows his moment of competence by ignoring the signal and getting coffee. For such a pop culture-savvy guy, he sure falls hard into the "I’m sure it was nothing" trap here. Ugh, Eiffel. Come on. You’re better than this.

I’m not complaining, though, because it does give us time to listen to Alan Rodi's beautiful music. Words cannot convey how much I love it. I don’t know if it's just nostalgia from last time I listened to Wolf 359, but hearing the music again here nearly made me cry, genuinely. I especially love the acoustic piano. I think it'd be easy to go with a technological, electronic sound for a podcast set in space, so the choice to use a more traditional, old-fashioned instrument like a piano is a pleasant surprise, grounding the show in something older and more Earth-bound, and providing the same kind of connection to Earth history and culture that the old music does at the end. You've got electronic bleeping going on, sure, which adds a layer of space-y weirdness to it all. But it's still, underneath the noises, something lovely and comforting and nice. So congrats, Alan Rodi. You made a 30 second coffee break into something really beautiful.

Then we're back and Minkowski has Eiffel reading Pryce and Carter - another mainstay of the show being introduced right there - and then Hilbert's lab is on fire. This whole section is solidly funny, and I especially love the tone of the Pryce and Carter entries. From the muzak in the background, to the disturbing, sort-of-aphoristic style of the entries, which kind of feel like something from Welcome to Night Vale, to the fact that this book seems to have no structure and is just one giant, non-user-friendly list, everything about this is hilarious to me. I also noticed the reference to the idea that somebody might be in space for disciplinary reasons. Which totally won’t be relevant later. Nope. Definitely not.

Hilbert, although his voice is much less growly than I’m used to, feels closer to his later self, character-wise, than the others. He’s maybe a bit too dotty, but then again, literally everything he does during this season is a front anyway, so I'm willing to give that one a pass. Stuff blowing up is always fun, either way, and it also introduces another idea that will stick around: the idea that everything on the Hephaestus is either broken or is about to break. Mentions of a power outage last week, in particular, suggest that this ship is already... less than shipshape.

And the we get the episode's climax, the arrival of the alien message which turns out to be... an old transmission of The Entertainer, by Scott Joplin?

And look, I think this was what sold me on Wolf 359. Sure, it took a while to find it's feet. But this moment was what convinced me that hey, I'll hang around a bit longer. Because it’s such a smart choice. 

Already, by having an audio drama series whose main character is a communications officer, and whose plot centres round him using radios and making audio logs, you have the ingredients for an intensely self-reflective, metatextually interesting show. It makes us think about radio and broadcasting and how sounds are transmitted through space. 

But by using a real recording of The Entertainer, something from the very earliest age of radio, with its gramophone-y crackle, you’re widening the scope, linking us all the way back to the birth of recorded sound. And Eiffel's joy at it all, his glee at finding a connection back to Earth, is a reminder of the power recorded sound can have. Eiffel, listening to Scott Joplin, is transported somewhere new and intriguing. Meanwhile we, listening to some podcast about stars and toothpaste and spacefaring dumbasses, are also transported away from our lives and our world. It’s a lovely idea.

Of course, I could be reading too much into this. It could just be that the piece is out of copyright, and hits the right balance of strange vs. familiar.

Either way, it makes for an ending that’s beautiful, wholesome and surprisingly sweet. I’m charmed, particularly, by how earnest Eiffel seems when he’s talking about how the music makes him feel. After spending a whole episode goofing around, it’s a refreshing change of pace, and it made me smile the first time I listened to it. This time round, it feels a bit more bittersweet, I think. We know that Eiffel won't be going home for a good, long time, after all.

In any case, it's a solid end to an episode that, while it has its issues, still mostly holds up. A surprising amount of plot-relevant stuff is established. Eiffel, at least, is properly introduced. And I get weirdly emotional about radio shows. Nice job, Wolf 359.

 Miscellaneous thoughts:

Eiffel not understanding Hilbert when Zach Valenti voices them both is peak comedy and you can fight me on this

 Eiffel joking about everyone on the ship have “series trust issues”. You ain’t seen nothing yet, hun.

The noises they made for Eiffel slurping coffee are so gross and childish I love them

Ooh, when he’s mocking Minkowski, Eiffel pronounces her name right!

Eiffel calling Hera “sweetheart” ^-^

Hilbert passing the explosion off as a hairdryer omg

[natsspammityspamspamham]

Dino Watches Anime (Dec. 21)

I postponed posting this for a while because I wanted to wait until the Fall 2020 season was over. Now, it’s almost Christmas. Some parts of the world are snowing, and as I feel the HUGE 2021 WINTER ANIME SEASON APPROACHING, I will reminisce about the anime that I will miss (or not).

Half of these aren’t even seasonal.

Anyway, I’m going to make some sort of “TOP ? ANIME OF 2020″ even though I haven’t watched half the seasonal anime I set out on watching HAHAHA!

Not Seasonal

As usual, I am periodically watching Gintama (which I’ve watched 106 episodes) and Hunter x Hunter (2011) (which I’ve watched 13 episodes), but I won’t finish those anytime soon. 

Gangsta (ON-HOLD - 3/12)

I feel like I have to be in the right mood to watch this, and I just haven’t been. However, I can’t say it’s a bad show at all. In fact, it’s quite good, especially considering that it was done by a studio that went bankrupt. Seriously, they closed up the season after this anime aired. Surprisingly, they’ve done a lot of good anime in the past. Samurai Champloo, Ergo Proxy, and some other ones.

Space☆Dandy (COMPLETED)

I was on and off in terms of dropping this. I didn’t enjoy a good chunk of the episodes because... a lot of them rely on fanservice. To be quite frank, this anime’s motives can be boiled down to being h*rny. However, some random episodes/segments are good. And the animation... the animation of the non-fanservice scenes are masterful. I’m actually going to dive into this a little bit to justify why I’m actually watching this.

Studio Bones is amazing when they commit themselves to an anime, and looking at the staff, you can certainly see that this anime will be fun to look at. It’s a spectacle. 

Sayo Yamamoto has done some incredible stuff in her career. Despite her role in Space Dandy season 1 being small (episode director of episode 2), I wanted to still cover her works. Her portfolio is massive, and she’s only 43. She did the storyboard for some really stylistic and unique openings like Arakawa Under the Bridge (both seasons), Kakegurui (which despite being heavily sexualized, is incredibly fluid and eyecatching even for me), and Psycho-Pass. She also did some storyboarding for the Attack on Titan ending and Samurai Champloo. Not to mention the obvious: She’s the director of Yuri!!! on Ice.

Shingo Natsume is a director for this series, and he has a lot of works too. For one, he was the director of One Punch Man season one which was really well-animated. He has also worked on some Masaaki Yuasa works, Gurren Lagann, and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.

Last but certainly not least, Shinichirou Watanabe is also a director here, and even to someone who isn’t that versed in animation staff, he is incredibly well-known and skilled. He’s the director of many incredible works including Kids on the Slope, Zankyou no Terror (also the original creator), Samurai Champloo, Cowboy Bebop, and Carole & Tuesday (also the original creator).

There are even more amazing directors and contributors to this series, so rest assured, this anime looks good.  

But once you get past all the wonderful visuals, the characters are meh and the story is... not that good. The voice acting is great. Junichi Suwabe is amazing as Dandy, Hiroyuki Yoshino plays a good wimp as Meow, and Uki Satake actually surprised me because I haven’t heard of her really but she plays the perfect QT. This anime is like having great icing on the cake, but the cake is actually a cowcake.  

Zettai Karen Children: The Unlimited - Hyoubu Kyousuke (COMPLETE)

This anime is meh. Everything is meh. This was also done by Manglobe which went bankrupted shortly after Gangsta aired. The animation was alright. I thought this anime was older than it was because I wasn’t that impressed by the visuals. Cowboy Bebop looks better than it despite being almost a decade-and-a-half older. The voice acting was alright. I’m not the greatest fan of Kouji Yusa, but it’s mostly because I don’t like his voice. I’ve heard Junichi Suwabe portray other characters better because there was more substance in those other characters. The rest of the cast was forgettable. I didn’t even bother watching the parent series of this spinoff because it’s not needed, and after watching one episode of it, I wouldn’t be able to sit through the rest of it. There were some redeeming points to the story, but when your biggest plot twist is sticking out going, “LOOK AT ME, I’M A PLOT TWIST!”, you start to go, “I would be more surprised if they didn’t pull that plot twist.” And I guess it goes without saying, but the main guys do not end up together despite some of the hints they dropped. 

Another funny thing is that they put a disclaimer that “this is not based on real events”, but they put in a ton of references to WWII which can be... troublesome? I don’t know how to put it, but after watching Hetalia, I’m very apprehensive about any anime trying to portray real-life events like that.

Seasonal

Munou na Nana

Honestly, I found the manga better. The anime captures just a portion of the suspense and stuff that goes on in the manga, and the manga holds a lot more suspense. It’s kind of like how Junji Ito anime usually have a hard time. Horror is just like that in general though. It relies a lot on the psychological effect, and the anime just didn’t have it for me anyway.

[I also don’t like this show’s comedy and find it lacklustre]

Kamisama ni Natta Hi

You know how in my previous post I sensed this really going downhill? I was right! This anime got really shitty halfway through after Izanami’s dad had his touching episode. Next week is the final episode, but we all know half of Jun Maeda’s anime end off a cliff.

Tonikaku Kawaii

This anime got boring after a while. You know they did it off-screen. Puppy love is okay in small doses for me, but a whole anime about that and only that? It was... alright. I’m not the target audience, honestly. BUT, if you’re tired of stupid love triangles and misunderstandings, this anime is a breath of fresh air. Not to mention, it’s canon from Day 1. 

Ani ni Tsukeru Kusuri wa Nai! 4

This anime took no commitment, and some of the episodes were enjoyable, so I can’t say I wasted my time, but they truly only peaked in season one.

Jujutsu Kaisen

While I’m still not incredibly sold on the series, it’s really starting to take shape. The OP and ED are reasons to watch alone... and Gojo seems to be a popular choice for ladies who are into white-haired anime guys. Either way, it’s still a solid watch, but they need those character arcs to come in fast because the only thing I feel is really holding this show back is character depth (and I know they have it in the manga). The art, the voice acting, the music, everything else is there, and the story is, as I said, starting to take shape.

Maoujou de Oyasumi

I saved this one for last because this anime was so pure and wholesome, and it was definitely the biggest surprise of the season! I know some of the people I know are into those dating sims with the demon kings and whatever, but consider this demon king from this show. He’s an utter wreck, can’t be evil half the time, is a himbo, and you really wonder how they managed to keep their own castle together. The princess isn’t trapped in the castle with the demons, the demons are trapped in the castle with her. She commits burglary, assault, genocide, and mutilation is the name of a good sleep. Her name is also a pun on sleeping.

[agentnico]

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020) Review

If you haven’t yet came about this gem, look up the Russian submission for the cancelled Eurovision 2020. The group is called Little Big. You can thank me later. 

Plot: When aspiring musicians Lars and Sigrit are given the opportunity to represent their country Iceland at the world's biggest song competition, they finally have a chance to prove that any dream worth having is a dream worth fighting for.

I do enjoy Will Ferrell’s comedy. He has one funny bone, I tell ya that much! Obviously he’s great in all the Adam McKay films such as Anchorman, Talladega Nights and Step Brothers, all of which are endlessly quotable, and I also enjoy his lesser known outings such as Casa de mi Padre and The Campaign (the latter being a scarily realistic portrayal of the bonkers nature of American politics for a stupid irreverent comedy), however recently he’s definitely exhibited a dip in quality, especially with Holmes & Watson. That movie...........that movie.................that......movie.....can I even call it a movie? I still have no idea how in the hell that thing got green-lit? Honestly, who at Sony Pictures picked up the script and thought “hey, look at this, what a funny and original take on the classic Conan Doyle stories, this is a farcical revolution, a slapstick masterpiece, a fantastical example of burlesque interpretation.....let’s make it!!” Whoever this spherical dumbass of a producer was, he’s an idiot who should question his choices more as Holmes & Watson is diabolically bad! It’s excruciatingly unfunny! There’s a gag involving Holmes wearing a Trump-supporting ‘Make America Great Again’ hat....speaks for itself really. The movie is poop! But enough about negatives, let’s set our eyes upon Netflix’s new comedy Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga about, you guessed it, the Eurovision Song Contest! Ironically, the movie is brought to us by the US, even though America has never partook in the real Eurovision contest, nor do many American citizens even know what Eurovision is, which is probably why film critics have been so negative towards this movie, as they don’t really know what Eurovision is all about. Yes, it’s about the music and the competition, but it’s also about the over-the-top set pieces, flamboyant costumes and general acts of weirdness that make Eurovision so enjoyable to watch. But does the new Netflix spoof recapture the magic?

The movie’s biggest negative is that for a comedy it’s not that funny. There are some solid jokes for sure, but there a lot more ones that fall flat than ones that hit. It seems that due to the movie being made in conjunction with Eurovision partners, the writing team avoided to take any true risks, so as to not offend anyone. The Eurovision contest has a lot within it to make fun at to be honest, and this movie avoids that in favour of typical stupid debauchery Ferrell is known for. Even the inclusion of Graham Norton, who actually commentates on Eurovision in real life is severely toned down, and his insults are nowhere as offensive and sarcastic as in real life. And yes, at first that may seem to come off as me saying that this film is a total pile of garbage that should be buried deep at the bottom of the dumpster hidden beneath various human excrement right next to a bunch of DVD copies of Holmes & Watson (grrrrrr!), but let me hit you back with a but! Yes, there’s always a but! No, I’m not referring to one’s backside, for starters that’s a different spelling so learn your English you uneducated son of a bee, please and thank you! Anyway, I digress, the but is that even though it lacks the promised comedic punch, the movie more than makes up with it’s element of romance and, more importantly its heartwarming feel-good nature. Especially in these very strange and confusing times that we find ourselves living in, one does not need a masterpiece in film-making......though I am very much still looking forward to Christopher Nolan’s Tenet...whenever that release date finally comes to fruition. But sometimes a fairly simple film with an abundance of cliches (there’s an obligatory ABBA reference) and terrible Icelandic accents but filled with good cheerfully innocent nature is enough to please one’s mind. And you can call me sentimental at my old age (I’m turning 23 in under a week so happy birthday to me!), but I’m not going to lie, I really dug this movie. I had a good time! As I said, it’s no masterpiece, far from it actually, but it is just so pleasing, joyful and upbeat to watch!

Interestingly enough, a few films came to my mind whilst I watched The Story of Fire Saga. There’s the obvious reference to Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, another satirical film that parodies the music industry, only there the comedy worked better for me. Then also the movie has a surprisingly catchy soundtrack, with a lot of the song choices feeling like they came out straight from The Greatest Showman. There’s that element of oomph to each tune that really makes it pop! Not going to lie, I’ve been listening to the soundtrack on repeat ever since I’ve watched the movie! Also there’s a certain scene that’s a straight up knock off of the Riff-Off scene from Pitch Perfect. Then the more surprising connection is actually last year’s film Yesterday, where a man wakes up one day and he’s the only one who remembers The Beatles and their songs. The connecting thread-line is that in that movie too there is a woman who is unabashedly in love for the main guy, but he doesn’t notice it as he’s so focused on his music dream. I’ll be the first to say I did not like Yesterday. It was very disappointing in light of the calibre of talent that was involved, with Danny Boyle directing and Richard Curtis penning the script. The romantic side of that movie came as a bit of a distraction that got in the way of the potential of the main story-line involving a world without The Beatles. However in Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga that romantic thread is actually what holds the whole thing together so well. This is easily the most romantic movie of this year, and I know, I’m surprised to say so myself, seeing as this is a Will Ferrell motion picture! 

Speaking of Will Ferrell, he’s decent in the movie, if you like Will Ferrell, as he does his usual shtick, though looking unrecognisable due to the ridiculous wig. However it seems Ferrell himself realises his co-stars bring more to the table in terms of acting compared to him, as he devotes a lot of scenes to Rachel McAdams and Dan Stevens. Rachel McAdams is adorable in this movie, with such a pure and baby-like personality, and it was constantly a pleasure seeing her light up the screen. Though it is Dan Stevens who steals the show as an antagonist that is surprisingly not as villainous as first anticipated, and turns out to be a cute puppy-dog eyed Russian lion! Also, that hair style suits him well.......maybe too well. Appearances from Demi Lovato and Pierce Brosnan are welcome too, though heavily under-used. Speaking of the latter, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga and the Mamma Mia! films are now part of the Pierce-Brosnan-has-a-dead-wife-and-ABBA-is-heavily-involved-somehow cinematic universe.

As a whole Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga is nothing groundbreaking, but a truly good time, with a soundtrack filled with low-key bangers, a visual feast to the eyes due to showcasing the gorgeous visages of the Icelandic landscapes, and is easily Will Ferrell’s best film in years! Especially with that surprisingly emotional finale. Yes, this movie is ridiculously stupid, though it’s more ridiculous how emotionally hard-hitting the ending is. The song “Husavik” does for this movie what “Shallow” did for A Star Is Born. So I say go watch this film and embrace its warm comforting feels. Perfect for a date night, me and my girlfriend can attest to that!

Overall score: 6/10

[bbq-hawks-wings]

Chapter 263 Discussion

Hello, it is I back from my cave to finally get back into fandom discussion.

Sadly, I don't have too much to offer this time around except speculation, and most of it is dependent on assumptions and observations of the Heroes Rising movie, so if you haven't seen it this is unfortunately your stop, but when you do eventually see it go on ahead and send me an ask geeking out about it because almost everyone I've heard agrees if nothing else that it was hype and worth the price of admission!

All right, warning and disclaimer out of the way, let me lay the groundwork for how this post will go.

1. If you didn't know, the plot for Heroes Rising is a scrapped concept for the end of the series. Because it was scrapped it can't really be used to accurately predict how Horikoshi actually intends to end the story, but finding common plot lines and elements from what we're seeing now in the manga to the events in the movie might give us a clue to which lines he dropped and which he decided to keep. In the end it's a hunch, but it's a more informed guess than not having the clues.

2. I believe we're in the end stages of the story - or at least what is the beginning of the story in the same way Naruto was a precursor to Naruto Shippuden. Because of that, I don't feel like trying to predict things very far ahead and prefer to try to stick to interpretations of what's immediately going on since I feel we’ll get our answers fairly quickly anyway. I've made some lofty ideas of where the series is going before, but those are really better as overarching themes and end points for certain characters than necessarily an accurate prediction of events.

With that, let's jump into it.

The MLA/PLF is a front for the LOV

So to start, something I really wanted to address in the last chapter was the last page:

A lot of people are amazed Hawks seemed to go so deep into their ranks without ever raising suspicion, but I think this clarified, if not confirmed, a couple of points I've been hanging onto for a while.

The LOV never cared about these folks - that much has kind of been obvious from the get-go. They just threw themselves at Shiguraki as the second coming of Christ and offered him a free army. "...I mean, twist my arm, why don'tcha?" There were enough commonalities between the groups to seem like an obvious fit, but the League has always had different plans. Now, not only do they have a disposable army to fight the heroes and die for them but were a perfect opportunity to throw off the heroes to their main objective and draw out all the heroes at once in a fight to the death - all without practically lifting a finger. Shiguraki is a strategist, and a resource not utilized to the best of its potential is wasted even if using it well uses it up completely. These aren't their people, and they signed up for this fight to begin with. It would have made less sense to not effectively double-cross them like this.

I haven't been looking much for discussion regarding the movie, but a notable thing that immediately stood out to me when I saw it was the fact that Shiguraki was individually watching Hawks, and Hawks specifically - all alone and seemingly completely unprompted. A particularly overpowered aspect of Twice's quirk is the fact his doubles are SO close to the same thing they're in every way, down to the way they think and their core motivations, that they’re indistinguishable from the real thing, even to the original and doubles themselves. They really are perfect stand-ins for the actual people they copy. It's 100% possible that real Shiguraki could be powering up under the doctor's care, and - because he's not an idiot to leave himself completely vulnerable and out of control when he doesn't need to be - literally be running the show through a double, behind the scenes, in secret the entire time without the Heroes' or the MLA/PLF's knowledge. This also means that him personally spying on Hawks while he thinks Shiguraki has been out of commission is completely plausible as well.

These two frames have been circulating for good reason. While the army and organization honest-to-god have no idea what's going on, the OG League members seem to be taking it more like a stage cue - particularly with Dabi's obvious movement against the flow of the crowd rushing to battle. This very much feels like something they've planned for; but only them and their squad. They’re known to hold grudges against those that use them and abuse/hurt their core members, but none of that protective attitude has been directed towards this larger organization/movement.

"So what's got you so convinced about parallels to the movie? That's the only one you've brought up."

This was the first thing that stood out to me this chapter as I was reading through it fresh. In the climax of the movie each member of class 1-A had to strategically use their abilities to survive against Nine and his band. One of the abilities they had to counter was calling lightning down from the sky to which they used Kaminari as a lightning rod. Though it was played up for laughs a bit in the movie, it was still very much a life-saving tactic in the moment, and the concept clearly carried over into the final product.

A point of speculation we’ll be able to verify soon is a hunch I have that Tokoyami and Toga will clash one-on-one seeing as he’s also in the front-runner group. Slice very much felt like an easy stand-in for Toga, given the knowledge that those events are modified from the original ending concept, and it was thanks to Tokoyami losing control of Dark Shadow that he was able to beat her in the end. We’ll find out in a couple of weeks, and if it proves right I’ll be pulling more common threads to see if we can’t anticipate what’s going to happen next.

So, yup!

That's it!

Nothing left to see or talk about until next week!

*sigh........*

Ok.

Let's go over what we know for sure:

That’s clearly intent to kill in Hawks’ eyes: a lot of fans are aware of the practice of falconry, which is basically the same thing as a hunting dog but with a trained bird of prey instead; and it’s the image hammered into our heads about the way the Commission has treated Hawks and the way he personally deals with threats. Hawks considers Twice the single, greatest tool the League has in their belt - able to exponentially create duplicates and reinforcements which would turn a strategy-based battle into one of attrition, and the heroes would lose the latter easily. He clearly hasn’t killed Twice yet, and we don’t know why, but if he has to he’s prepared to do so without hesitation or remorse. This is a fight the Heroes CANNOT lose.

Hawks is done: This is more inference, but bear in mind he’s been on this case long before the Commission told him to infiltrate the League. He’s been at this in some capacity for almost a year and neck deep in recon as an undercover agent for months. He’s been walking on eggshells, keeping his eyes and ears open, relaying information, keeping up appearances on both sides, and watching the threat grow from a surprisingly capable group of guerrilla terrorists into an army capable of bringing all of Japan to its knees in a matter of days, tops. The stakes are too high, personally and otherwise, to not take this threat seriously.

This is Twice’s POV: Literally everything he thought he knew about this guy he considered his friend has been turned upside down. That whiteboard that was a catalyst for their friendship is thrown aside (symbolically along with all the memories and time they spent together), and here Jin is: knocked on his back, no longer looking into the friendly gaze of a great guy out to help a friend, but the murderous glare of a wild animal - a monster, even - having no idea how he got to this point and how fast it’s unraveling before his eyes. What we’re watching now could have happened in literally under two seconds. Hawks is that fast, and he’s been waiting for this to happen.

Considering the sudden tonal whiplash their relationship has just gone through - and the fact that it’s framed through Twice’s perspective, not Hawks’ - I don’t think we can make too many solid predictions about what’s going to happen right now. Hawks has been shown to be unpredictable to anyone but himself. When we’re not hearing his own internal monologue or seeing things directly from his point of view, everything we “learn” about him from a scene has to be taken with a grain of salt. He’s guarded, private, and keeps others at arms length so he can anticipate and respond to get the results he wants. It’s not just his fighting style, it’s his survival mechanism.

Twice himself is a grab bag of surprises, and being the heart of the League may yet find a way to appeal to his humanity, question his motives/actions, or any number of ways to bring him down to earth again; but there’s an equal opportunity that Hawks is beyond that at this point. His mission is almost done, and if he wavers now he could literally end up dead in a heartbeat. There are a lot of feathers trained on Twice, but not enough to bring his wings all the way down to stubs like we saw with High End. He’s set to fight not just Twice, but everyone in that compound.

In other words, this might be the point we finally see Hawks truly go apeshit, and I don’t think it’ll be a pretty sight to see. We’ll just have to wait and see where this leads from here.

[botslayer]

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) review (Long)

Star Wars has a place in all of our hearts, I think. This series has had literally galactic-scale highs and lows. Be it the video games, the movies, the comics, the novels, what have you, Star Wars is one of, if not THE biggest sci-fi universe in the world and one of the most important in all of nerd culture. After the controversial madness that was EVERYTHING about The Last Jedi, I felt the need to see this one. How does this new Trilogy end? Is it any good? Well, let's dig in. 1. Technical aspects The movie looks good for the most part. It's a lot of good CGI and descent puppetry, a lot of explosions, and a lot of color. All the places that the movie goes do feel genuinely unique to one another, so points there, I guess. But it has some serious issues with the editing. The editing is god awful for most of the movie, the camera flips around too much, I think. I don't want constant tracking shots but they keep jump-cutting all over rooms and very suddenly for scene transitions. There are a fair amount of wipes but only one scene transition actually stood out to me at the very start of the movie, everything else was kinda dull. This has to be addressed, Carrie Fisher is still in this movie. What they did was cut snippets of her head out of unused footage from Force Awakens and Last Jedi, then put it relatively well over the face of a body double. This allows her to exist in the movie but it isn't good. From an ethical standpoint and from how it affects the flow of her scenes. Her tone of voice doesn't feel right for any of the scenes she's in and her answers to what people say are usually just kinda weird, as well as what people say whilst responding to her. 2. Acting and characters (very lite Spoilers) The acting in the movie is okay generally. It's nothing to write home about though. It's solid and generally does the job but the characters themselves are a different story. One problem is that the movie introduces a shit ton of them, including but not limited too, (Spoiler warnings for this paragraph), Zorii Bliss, An old Spice running friend of Poe's who is trying to ape a Mandalorian (Like the society) vibe in the look of her outfit but doesn't do it well. Babu Frik, her tiny alien boss and a surprisingly tech-savvy little so-and-so. D-O, a small droid consisting of a cone head and a single wheel, voiced by JJ Abrahms. And Jannah, who like Finn, is a rogue Stormtrooper from the first order. Everyone and everything else introduced are just more generals for the "Final order" (A rebranding of the First Order) and a bunch of background aliens and stuff for the resistance. The main problem with these characters is none of them have time to develop because of how many are introduced. They try with Zorii, bless them, but her scenes are too short so her character doesn't "Develop" it just starts at one point and changes at the drop of a hat. And the returning Characters honestly aren't handled great either. Rey is okay for the most part, but Finn contributed just about nothing, Poe wasn't worth much more than a ride between planets, Kylo Ren goes back to wearing his old helmet for some reason and again, seems to change without much provocation. Leia's death is weird and kinda pointless, although I'm happy they won't do what they did again. The only consistently good, solid characters in the movie were the droids (Especially C3PO) and Chewbacca. Characters with very few lines or who literally cannot speak. That's such a weird thing to say, honestly. 3. Plot and thoughts as we go (Heavy Spoilers) A transmission has gone all across the galaxy, Emperor Palpatine lives. Kylo Ren is hunting for a "Sith Wayfinder" and Rey is training under Leia to become a better Jedi. Kylo finds the Wayfinder and goes to a sort of hidden Sith planet whereon he meets Palpatine, here it is revealed that Snoke was a clone made by Palpatine's servants, "The Nights of Ren" and that Palpatine was "Every voice Kylo heard in his head." (Not too subtle change into Darth Vader's voice as he speaks.) Kylo and Palpatine have a short exchange where the younger pledges both his and the First Order's services to him, in exchange, Palpatine will add a whole new fleet of Star Destroyers to them. Star Destroyers he literally just summons up from the ground. Hangar bay doors don't open, these things just slam up from the ground like titans of myth rising from ancient slumbers. And while that might sound cool, it comes with a lot of issues. For starters: Who made these things? The Knights of Ren? How old is that organization, then? How old are these ships? Why don't they have hangar doors overhead? Hell, we learn later that these things will bolster first Order forces by "Ten thousandfold." How many of these things are there? How many ships does the First Order (Now "The Final Order") have at this point? Anyway, back with the resistance. After a cameo by the best fictional game in the series, Holochess, we find that they're getting information from an ally I never caught the name of, flanked by some sort of weird alien on the ship who's apparently on a first name basis with Finn and Poe. We also learn the Final Order has a spy and a decent chase scene ensues. All well and good, but all this and the conspicuous lack of porgs makes me wonder how much time has actually passed between this movie and Last Jedi. Especially when we cut back to Rey who is trying to hear the voices of past Jedi but just realizes she can't and immediately drops the meditation in favor of running a training course. She ends up getting distracted while running it and accidentally drops a tree on BB8. She says to Leia that she will one day earn the right to use Luke's lightsaber... But it broke in the last movie. Again, can we please get a time stamp? Poe, Finn, Chewbacca, and their crew return, whereupon there's a kind of funny back and forth about what Rey did to BB8 and what Poe did to the Falcon during the chase. The highlight of which is "At least BB8 isn't on fire!" "What's left of him isn't!" During this breif stop, we learn that The Final Order is broadcasting their plans, in sixteen hours they will lay waste to entire worlds because as it turns out, the new ships that Palpatine gave them all have planet-destroying laser weapons on the bottom. A Fleet of Star Destroyers, each with Death Star-grade power. That's definitely upping the anti, I suppose. During this, we also learn that the "Wayfinder" Kylo went after is important because its the only way to find the planet Palpatine is holed up on, a world called "Exegol," you won't find it on any other maps. So the crew goes on a quest to find a man in service to the Sith, a bloke named "Ochi" who was last spotted on a planet called "Pasaana" because for some reason, Luke and Lando Calrissian were tracking him. The movie doesn't explain why they were after him, nor why they seemed to abandon the search. (Or when any of that happened, for that matter.) Our heroes journey to Pasaana where, as it turns out, there's a festival happening. One that celebrates family and ancestry. Cue the best comic relief in the movie, C3PO, as when Poe expresses that he isn't psyched about working with a crowd of people all around him, C3PO expresses elation, "We are very lucky, it only comes once every Forty-Two years--" Etc. Honestly, C3PO is the best part of the movie. As the resistance crew goes about the Festival, Rye gets a necklace from a local who asks for her family name, not just her given, but Rey just says she doens't have a family name. Kylo contacts Rey with their weird psychic bond they had in Last Jedi, and they have an interesting exchange about the last movie and her wanting to take his hand at the end but deciding against it, and how when he offers it this time, she will take it. He steals the necklace Rey got from off her throat because as established in TLJ, he can do stuff like that. He has Final Order members analyze the necklace and learns of the planet Rey and her cohorts are on while they gad about the festival looking for any sort of clues or leads. They end up getting found by Final Order Troopers, but saved by Lando, apparently, Leia told him where they were. They mention the resistance could use his help, but he just says that his flying days are behind him before he sends them off. The gang is followed by Final Order troopers, resulting in a chase scene, one I quite like. The Final Order has jet troopers now, and the crew basically just have their sidearms as weapons, having stolen vehicles from the locals. It's a very intense action scene, even when the crew crashes into "Not-quite-quicksand." Everyone starts sinking in and Finn says he's always wanted to tell Rey something. What it is goes unanswered as he sinks down. The lot of them have fallen into a cavern of some sort. They explore the cave until they find two things, Ochi's land cruiser, and Ochi, who as it turns out is long dead, nothing more than bones and whatever he had on him at the time. Rey digs through his body and finds a scary-looking dagger that has most definitely been used for some less than savory deeds, Rey sensing the negative force energy off it. 3PO tells them that the inscriptions all over the dagger are in Sith Runic. He CAN translate it, but he can't say it aloud. It has to do with Old Republic regulations on translation modules. They keep the dagger, at least. There's also a giant serpent, one the cast calm into letting Rey get close, whereupon we learn she has the ability to force-heal injuries. The snake lets them out and she explains that it's basically channeling some of her own life force into whatever she's healing, and when she sees Ochi's ship, she's unnerved. She knows it from the day her parents left her. Some true madness begins to unfold as Kylo shows up in his ship and Rey cuts one of the wings off, forcing it to crash. Chewbacca is captured and ostensibly killed accidentally by Rey because she summons force lightning and blows his transport's engines. There's another brief exchange with Kylo about him seeing the lightning for real, thus her capacity for darkness, before Finn and Poe tell her they NEED to leave. They do and Kylo radios for pick up as the Final Order literally toes the Millenium Falcon into a Star Destroyer. It is here we learn that Kylo knows about the spy in their ranks and that Chewbacca survived. While they waddle about in Ochi's ship, thinking of a plan, C-3PO reveals that there IS a way to get a translation out of him. Essentially they need to do a factory reset. This means 3PO will lose all memories of his friends and life. But what is that compared to a galaxy dominated by fear? Poe knows the man for the job, trouble is they need to go to a world called "Kijimi" where Poe made a booboo before joining the resistance. But again, literal planets worth of lives are at stake, so he swallows his lack of pride and they go. A not bad tracking shot of Poe creeping around the streets and finding it crawling with Final Order troopers later, his mistake comes up to him. Both her pistols drawn, and one to his head. We learn that "Zorii" and Poe's old outfit were spice runners, and their old friend "Babu Frik" is the guy they'll need to crack 3PO's head open. Babu only sees people who are part of the crew, which Poe no longer is. They eventually convince her and the other spice runners to let them in. There's a genuinely heart-wrenching moment where 3PO goes completely silent before the process gets going and he says he's just taking one last look at his friends. Meanwhile, we see Poe and Zorii on top of a building, Poe mentions how no one came after the last movie, their distress call was for nothing. Way to invalidate the most controversial movie in the series, you dolts. Also, Zorii seems to have changed for no reason. She went from not wanting to look in Poe's general direction to inviting him out to her new life as a farmer on some rock at the fringes of the galaxy. Poe turns her down because he has a war to fight, whether or not he wins. She gives him a First Order Captain's badge, which would allow docking in any Final Order ship or planet because the rebranding is only so recent, I guess. C-3PO gets rebooted and the crew learns what the inscription on the dagger means, but again, the cost is 3PO's memory. He reboots and introduces himself as "C-3PO, human-cyborg relations, who are you?" Babu introduces himself and Rey fixes the wheel on a robot found on Ochi's ship, a little cone head thing we don't learn the name of until about an hour later, "D-O." At about this point, Rey realizes what's in orbit just overhead, Kylo's flagship... And Chewbacca inside. The crew boards the ship to free Chewy and get the Falcon back, along the way, Rey mind tricks a couple of troopers, the crew shoots a few dead, and then she goes off on her own, trying to find something. Her scenes on the flagship are pretty awesome, as she enters Kylo Ren's quarters and starts not only talking to him again but also fights him. This leads to some very interesting cinematography, a fight where when they accidentally break things in their respective locations, they appear in front of the other, so for example, Kylo is in the streets of the city the crew was in, specifically a market in it. He cuts open a pot full of berries/nuts and they all appear on the ground in his chamber while Rey is fighting him. It's pretty impressive. During the fight, we also learn A. the real reason Rey's parents sold her: Protecting her from her grandfather. B. Who this grandfather is. The Emperor. Rey is seriously Palpatine's granddaughter. C. Rey's parents died protecting her. Kylo learns she's in his quarters when she accidentally destroys a podium, on which was resting Darth Vader's semi-melted helmet. From there, it all spirals out, Ren has them lock down the ship, Rey snags the dagger and Chewy's gear, Chewy, Finn, and Poe are caught, only to find out that general Hux is the spy who saves them When his motives are questioned, Hux says he doesn't care if the resistance wins. He wants Kylo to lose. Rey and Kylo have one more confrontation before the falcon shows up and Rey literally leaps into space to get on the entrance to the falcon. Where Finn is. Audibly screaming at her. Y'all can say what you want about a downward bombing in space probably not working very well in Last Jedi, but this is a whole new level of bullshit. Rey leams OUT OF A RAY SHIELD into the vacuum of space. I don't care that Leia survived being out way longer in TLJ, at least she wasn't audibly saying things as she went, at least it felt like she was in space instead of just a big random fall. Also worth noting, to ver their escape, they blast the bad guys with the Falcon's engine trails, this burns or knocks back all the Troopers but Kylo, who is standing roughly the same distance as at least two of them, and Rey, who is closer than ANY of them are unaffected. This one moment is more agitating to me than most of The Last Jedi, honestly. There's Wardian grade plot armor, and then there's this. The crew gets away and Hux is killed by another general because he figured out that Hux was the spy, they end up at another planet because of the inscription and the Falcon crashes, drawing the attention of "Jannah" and her random tribe of people. They resolve to fix the Falcon while waiting for the water to calm, something they at once have zero choice or time for. Turns out the Sith Wayfinder is on a hunk of the second Deathstar. Rant to come. While waiting for the water to calm and repairing the Falcon, we learn Janna is a rogue Storm Trooper, just like Finn. Her entire company was meant to open fire on civilians, but ALL OF THEM refused. Finn mentions he didn't think there were others but I have to question where Jannah's entire unit gets off doing that. How did all of them fight their programming? Moving on, BB8 raises a concern, he hasn't seen Rey in a while. Turns out she stole the rogue trooper's sea skimmer and rides the waves JUST right, so she can make it to the chunk of Deathstar. I was never big into the idea that Rey was a Mary Sue until this happened. I was willing to write everything else off up to this point but NO. She has NEVER used something like this. She spent most of her damn life on a planet with NO water and no point actually drove anything like this save for the land boat she stole from the natives during the festival but even then, it didn't have the quirks this thing had (It's a repurposed ship of some sort, she needs to constantly raise and lower an arm of the ship to reduce drag, I suppose.) I know this seems like the most random thing to officially stand in that camp, but what's that old saying about straws and camel's backs? Rey goes to the shard of the Deathstar and starts exploring, it's full of old classic Storm Trooper outfits, mostly helmets. She goes to the Emperor's old throne room and through an old door, she ends up in a kind of trippy, maze-like space until she finds the Wayfinder and faces a seemingly Sithified version of herself with a dark robe and a collapsable double-sided lightsaber. This version of her fights her for all of four seconds and is never seen again because normal Rey flees out of the room and into Kylo Ren's waiting gaze. Now, my question is WHY would Palpatine keep one of these things on the Deathstar 2? In case he wanted to go to Exegol? Why not keep it in a more remote location than about thirty feet to your left? It's an ancient Sith artifact, you'd figure he'd be more protective of it. But nooo. So Kylo breaks the Wayfinder Rey found, wasting all of our time, before engaging in a lightsaber fight on the outside of the ruins. Finn and Jannah catch up to see this but can't do anything, partly because if they don't hug the ground, the turbulent water below will likely send a wave up just high enough to knock them into the ocean, Rey and Kylo, however, are clear I guess because they have higher ground away from the tides, they still get sprayed a lot. The fight ends with Leia dying from using what's left of her energy to reach her son, Rey stabbing and then healing Kylo before she leaves in his ship. The crew, save for Rey, and Jannah's rogues join up with the rest of the resistance where they find out what happened, and Chewbacca loses it. The Wookie collapses to his knees and starts screaming and wailing, beating into the ground, etc. He's lost all his human friends, 3PO's mind is wiped, the only things left from the good old days are R2 and the Falcon. This is a genuinely harrowing moment for longtime fans, I think. Meanwhile, Rose Tico shows up for the second time this entire movie, the first time being her explaining why she can't go with, she has lines that could have been given to almost any rando in the resistance which is honestly a shame. Then we cut to Ahch-To, The planet Luke exiled himself to in Force Awakens and TLJ, to find Rey burning Kylo's ship and very nearly, Luke's lightsaber. Luke's ghost shows up, catching the saber, and giving her a pep talk, telling her he knows now that exiling himself was stupid and that she needs to face the darkness in herself and the galaxy head-on. That delusion she saw getting her Wayfinder wasn't the first, she's seen herself ruling at Kylo's side as the empress, but given Luke's Pep talk, him showing her a spare lightsaber that used to belong to Leia, and the fact that Kylo had HIS Wayfinder in his spare ship, Rey agrees to continue fighting the good fight. But how will she leave the planet? Luke's force ghost raises Red five from the ocean. I'm not kidding, he literally just force lifts it with some show-offy joy. That thing has been waterlogged for how long? Even assuming Rey could fix it, where the hell is she getting fuel for it? Back with Kylo, we see him gawking out over the sea, a familiar old voice starts talking to him. Han Solo's ghost shows up and they start having a heart to heart oddly reminiscent of the one they had in Force Awakens. Han says he knew his son was in there somewhere, and when Ren says "Your son is dead" Han says "No, Kylo Ren is." In that spirit, I will now refer to Kylo as "Ben" for the rest of the review. Ben throws his lightsaber into the ocean and is left to his own devices by his dad's ghost. The resistance somehow knows that there are radio towers on Exegol that help the ships navigate through the constant storms and rain, Poe and Finn organize a plan, to distract the ships while a ground force attacks the tower and Chewbacca will go off and send another distress signal, allowing others to join the battle if they can. They come up with this because D-O has the plans for the ships and the like stored in his head if memory serves, and also 3PO gets his memory back, R2 had a back up, wouldn't you know it? The Resistance charges into battle against the Final Order over Exegol, And thus begins a fun clusterfuck of lasers and explosions. As one expects from this trilogy. Now, the first order has this actually brilliant moment when they realize they can shut down the tower, and start broadcasting the same helpful signals from one of the ships themselves. Which they do, this allows them to down some Resistance ships before Finn sees what's happening and has them do a ground invasion style attack ON that ship. As in they deploy troops over the top of it ON HORSEBACK. Honestly one of those things that's so loveably stupid. They end up in conflict with a bunch of troopers on top of the ship as they look for weak spots to plant bombs or the like. Rey, meanwhile, has snuck into the Emperor's hiding place, just as Ben lands on the planet. There's a lot of running around on all sides, dogfights under and around the larger ships, Ben fighting knights of Ren with just his bare hands and the Force, Rey being lured into Palpatine's grasp, Finn and Jannah's group shooting at troopers and passing ships as they look for weak spots. It would have all been fairly tense if the editing wasn't done by a coked-up squirrel. Almost nothing feels impactful in the fights, there are too many cuts in scenes largely about singular or just two characters. There are good elements to all this but I didn't care enough about most of these people. for it to mean much. Also worth noting: not much can be done. They've already lost so many pilots, soldiers, and fighters, Finn and Jannah's group haven't fulfilled their goal yet, Palpatine is giving Rey a very "Let the hate flow through you" speech about how it's all pointless and her friends are doomed, but if she kills him, and becomes the empress, the Final Order will be hers to control, she agrees for a moment, letting a bunch of the Knights of Ren and Palpatine begin ritual chanting as a horde of them look on, Poe is out of hope. Rey is about to give in and Ben is surrounded with no weapon. All hope is lost... Until Rey enters another sort of shat with Ben and gives him the lightsaber she was moments ago going to kill the Emperor with. Ben strikes down his aggressors and makes his way to Rey and the Emperor, they slaughter the knights in the immediate vicinity. While that's happening, an entire fleet of random people shows up to help the resistance. Zorri and Babu are right next to the Falcon, which contains not only Chewbacca but Lando. The fight begins anew as Finn and Jannah blow the antennae in the ship they're on and cripple the Final Order Fleet. Now all the Resistance has to do is blast the planet-killing lasers and the entire ship they're rigged up to will also be destroyed... Which makes some sense but is still a pretty massive design flaw. Down with Rey, Ben, and Palpatine, the youngsters try to strike the Emperor down, only to basically have their life forces partly fed upon. Ben goes flying down a naturally formed cave shaft, presumably to his doom. Palpatine has regenerated from the life steal thing and sits on this massive stone Sith throne just under the battle in the sky, and in a moment so absurd I was dumbstruck when it happened, sends lightning up into the sky. A massive MASSIVE pillar of it, so massive that not only does it reach the sky, but when it does, it fans out and strikes dozens, if not hundreds, of resistance ships, taking them right out of the sky. This guy is over a hundred years old, several of which he was DEAD for and for some reason now, he has power I would only be able to describe as "Godlike" for no damn reason. I forgot to mention earlier that he didn't live through being exploded in ep 6. He brought himself back to life somehow, just wrote it off as his access to the dark side. He still looked terrible though, like he was actually a corpse with rotten hands and pure white eyes and all that. But somehow, two random idiot children's life forces, nowhere near in their totality, are enough to rejuvenate him and give him power unseen by most of the deadliest Sith in all of Star Wars. Vader's apprentice from The Force Unleashed wasn't this fucking OP. The worst he did could be chalked up to gameplay, this one-man lightning storm bullshit is actually canon, though. So this creates a problem: How does Rey defeat someone with the power of a god on her own? She ignites Leia's old lightsaber from when Luke was training her and then redirects the Emperor's lightning back into his face, destroying his head. From there, the Final Order's fleet is destroyed and Finn and Jannah are rescued from a fiery death as the ship they're on starts crashing to the ground, I guess being the only surviving members of their attack squad.   Ben climbs out of the shaft and gives his life force to bring Rey back from the dead, they share a kiss and Ben dies, allowing Rey to flee in the Red Five, much to everyone's relief. There are celebrations and hints of things to come, including Lando taking Jannah with him on adventures through the stars, Rose hugging some dude who ISN'T Finn, much to Finn's annoyance, and Zorii and Poe exchanging wordless gestures. The final scene is Rey going to the old Skywalker Moisture farm to burry Luke and Leia's lightsabers just outside the house. How she knew where the farm was or why she buries them is anyone's guess. She pulls out a new lightsaber, a Yellow one. Which... Okay, I guess but where did she get it? Did she make it? How? Where? Did she just find it somewhere? How? Where? But anyway, an old woman comes walking by and mentions that the hasn't been anyone at the farm in so long and asks Rey who she is. Rey says "My name is Rey." "Rey Who?" Luke and Leia's force ghosts appear and smile at Rey. She proudly announces that she is "Rey Skywalker." And her and BB8 watch the suns over Tatooine set. The end. 4. A Nitpick? Some of these are just little things I couldn't find a good place to put elsewhere: In flashbacks, we see Luke training Leia a bit, in those scenes, her lightsaber is green. In the modern-day, for whatever reason, it's blue. I'm not sure if that's an oversight or not. Also worth asking: Where is Luke's personal saber? I did some research and he apparently reclaimed it at some point in the EU (Which is no longer canon) but even in Last Jedi, the last we see of it is him almost using it on a young Ben Solo. Where the hell did it go? 5. Conclusion I see this movie has it’s good bits but it isn't enough to make up for how shoddy the overall product is. There are too many new characters to let even the pre-established ones breathe, let alone each other, the editing was total garbage to the point where I genuinely got a headache, the plot invalidates both episodes eight AND six, while itself being kind of terrible... Nothing can kill Star Wars for me. This movie certainly tried. TL;DR: Do not watch this trash, I don't care if it's your first Star Wars film of if you're a long-time viewer, it isn't worth your time or money. Merry Christmas, everyone, and have a happy new year.  (FTR: This is something I stole from my own deviantART, I’m not plagiarizing shit, I’m just copypasting myself and adding edits if I see hiccups in the future.) 

[amberenigma]

stream of consciousness thoughts on ( ovan’s ) will. and about graphics. this is your spoiler warning for volume 4: reconnection.

i spent too long last night playing gu for a hot second and now i have some Thoughts:tm: about plots, ovan, and the notion of will. enjoy some 2015 levels of rambling about objectively minuscule details. 

anyway literal toilet thought but the archives have a very interesting way of creating meaningful iconography using particular design elements of characters ( mainly the infinity eight ) and minimizing it to something both unique and recognizable. namely, the epitaph pattern icons used for each player in the archives---they’ve always been really neat, unique, and it’s been something that the cc2 team has always used in their archives since _02.

ovan’s has changed between trilogy/original gu and volume 4, which i always thought was pretty neat, especially in terms of what’s actually presented.

( but anyone with the book be like: okay but haseo has a different one too in volume 4!! and i say shshshshshshshh this came about purely because of unison skeith’s icon which uses haseo’s epitaph version since he’s.......you know.......skeith’s host. epitaph talk will come up later )

anyway excuse my 5 minute “slap a banner of images” but the difference here is obvious and i just have an appreciation for what it means with aida---mostly that aida was acknowledged and treated as a completely different entity, an anomaly that didn’t belong on ovan at all and depicted as such during the trilogy. but after kusabira fuses back with him as true neighbor ( which i always thought was a very interesting name to give tri-edge ), we get a spiffy new icon for big blue and wah-lah, aida is now cyan! YAAAA!!! whether or not ovan actually accepts her as part of him ( in which he at least seems reluctant in-game, not so much my main verse after 6 years of writing him lmao ) is rather up for debate, but here we can at least verify that she’s not there to be malicious per se ( but that doesn’t quite exclude her as a menace, see haseo’s “it’s kusabira, isn’t it. it’s that aida whispering in your ear.” ), and not to the extent of trying to completely fuck up his day. i found that slight change pretty interesting. this is where i get into the meat of what i wanted to talk about.

the notion of will in .hack---gu in particular.

but first i do wanna say that there’s this blaring fucking pothole when it comes to corbenik and the rebirth that i don’t know will ever be explained. like. if it’s a failsafe that was a one and done thing, then corbenik should have been......destroyed or severely damaged or something.....right...or at least that’s what kind of makes sense to me unless the product of the RA plan really makes epitaphs less prone to the crumbly wumblies like they were in imoq after being salvaged. although that doesn’t seem to be the case given unison skeith is a solid half corbenik/half skeith. it’s bothered me for years and canon doesn’t really lean one way or the other, it just is ( again, i’ve written something out for my corbi blog years ago and tl;dr ovan and azure kite go fish him out of the sea of data, put him together, but he lacks the ability to rebirth again--i need to tag that thread actually ). but maybe he’s never meant to truly disappear as his moniker implies. always coming back ( additionally fitting for ovan, but i digress ). 

will is an interesting concept in gu. and at least with ovan specifically, it’s a strangely powerful trait in him, which may be why part of why he has this sort of enigmatic sort of vibe to him to anyone---this notion of, “i don’t know what this guy wants, but whatever it is, he’ll get it one way or another.” and i think it may really be stronger than at first glance, pivotal almost. we see it twice in dire moments, even though he’s so, so tired.

the first ( and not chronologically, there’s obvious some other off-screen moments we can speculate, these are just two instances that come to mind clearly ) is with the fight with cubia in redemption, where 7 of the 8 are trying to break through ballsack cubia’s final AT field ( forgive me it looks like an AT field what can we expect from sadamoto okay ). yata says they can’t do it without “the epitaph of rebirth”, which always struck me as odd for quite awhile. what did he mean by epitaph of rebirth? didn’t haseo have all of the epitaph data in his pc? he data drained corbenik twice now, they should be okay, no?

but, yata wasn’t referring to corbenik specifically in this case. he was referring to ovan, and in that extension, corbenik as his epitaph. the remnant data skeith absorbed was essentially not enough in this case despite corbenik containing a metric fuckton of data between himself and aida. what skeith can’t devour is human will. ovan’s will.

in the archives, ovan’s specifically noted to have an extremely high mental resilience---it’s the primary trait that attracted corbenik in the first place when searching for a host. this could mean quite a few things, honestly, and taking into account what little of his past we actually know, it makes sense that his sense of direction is incredibly poignant, his will to be essentially unmatched ( although parallel to haseo’s in my opinion, just simply a different flavor ). the man’s just an absolute unit. it’s also noted that ovan didn’t really take into account the repercussions of activating the rebirth and purging the net, thus spawning our good friend cubia, so he truly was just ready to go sleep forever. paraphrasing aura here, the rest of the infinity eight’s praying for ovan to hear their collective voices ( admittedly it just boils down to ovan hearing haseo’s voice, gestures at lost files in the trilogy archives which is a hilarious conversation by the way; “leave me be, i’m tired. i just want to sleep.” ) is what gets him to muster up any remaining strength he has left to come help. 

it’s an interesting sequence of scenes with haseo’s cracked data just magically healing up once ovan enters the picture---his presence alone drives haseo. it’s his image and his voice that’s alongside haseo’s ( which is an interesting choice because it could have been all eight of them in this case ). his will is what catalyzes everything to it’s end, including himself. 

the second is the avatar fight with moralta, where haseo realizes that he can’t do it alone again---and ovan is still surprisingly able to put himself through that kind of strain despite being in the deep freeze for a year ( avatar and all! again! goddamn! ), combining into unison skeith and yeeting the shit out of giant slug baby once and for all. this particular encounter takes a different note compared to cubia considering we hear both of them synced up ( literally all of their dialogue is the same )---and beyond the fact this whole epilogue is about haseo and ovan, it really ends up being the sheer fact that it’s both of them together that overcome and stop moralta from fucking up [the world]. sheer will’s a strong motive for pretty much all of vol 4 though, so this is kinda expected. it’s haseo’s lament at the end that poses an interesting discussion---he couldn’t do it by himself again ( in this case he is referring to everyone as a whole as well before finding ovan, too ). for all of the power that he holds via skeith, kusabira, etc, he still needed ovan there to push to victory. i’ve always felt that was an interesting distinction the staff has made throughout the gu timeline ( in any retelling of it, actually ). even ovan has to let him know that it’s the fact he had a warband of support that got him that far in the first place despite the trauma ovan had pushed him through.

the series has been consistent about ovan’s ability to push things the extra mile, even for things that he may not personally want, even if there’s few people he’d undoubtedly be alongside. his involvement makes all of the difference, and that’s powerful in it’s own way ( he is the antihero after all ). we see the power ovan has by guiding the events of gu throughout all three volumes, but we really see just how strong he is when he’s actually on-screen the few times he’s there for more than 10 seconds. it’s kind of fucking insane such a laidback personality has that much influence on the outcome of incredibly dangerous/dire/important situations.

when he knows exactly what he wants, he knows exactly what makes people tick, and what makes the world around him change. ovan’s will is a terrifying weapon and it’s one of my favorite details about him. 

and last thing that just came to mind from playing around last night..

in one of the demo trailers, haseo’s monologue expresses the emotions he’s experienced throughout playing to that point---specific people embody specific emotions, and in ovan’s case, he’s associated with despair. despair drives ovan--haseo’s correct about that honestly even if the context of what he knows boils down to the fact ovan’s burdened with aida and saving his sister ( things we see in the archives explicitly point out that the indou parents are straight up dead ). this man has lost so much, is losing too much, and is on the brink of losing even more during the events of gu and it shows. despair is a powerful force, a reaction to the things one has experienced and an outlet for all of the things it can cause. a man with nothing left to lose is the most dangerous and the most powerful of them all even in silence---and somehow, somehow ovan has managed to keep his edge despite being on the brink of death himself in the real world. that’s fucking scary.

[nadziejastar]

It's sad that they're trying to make Lea and Isa's duo into a trio by adding Skuld because Skuld is so underdeveloped that she barely counts as a character. All she does is hang out with Ephemer and neglect her friendship with Player. Maybe if she actually did things I'd be able to muster up some excitement over the idea of her becoming friends with my two favorite characters, but with the current situation she could be replaced with a cardboard cutout and no one would notice any difference.

Yes, thank you! This is a huge reason KH3 was such a letdown for me. I’ve heard people say that fans just got themselves too hyped up and their expectations were unrealistic. Nope, that’s not the case with me nor do I think that was the reason for most of the disappointment within the fandom. I wasn’t even overly hyped. KH3 just didn’t accomplish what it was supposed to. But more than anything, the characters were NOT treated with respect. That was my biggest disappointment.

Before KH3 came out, I was actually excited about KH4 and beyond because of the fact that we now have a pretty large group of main characters and they have so much potential. We wouldn’t have to focus on just Sora, Donald, and Goofy anymore. There are so many characters to develop and they all have solid personalities. We have the Destiny Island trio, the Wayfinder trio, the Disney Castle crew, and Lea and Isa. 

I have an attachment to all of them based on all the previous games and all the years they’ve been developed. I wanted to see them interact with each other once Xehanort was defeated and everyone was rescued. Not get dumped in favor of new characters. Of all the characters Lea and Isa could form a relationship with, Skuld is the WORST choice. There are sooo many more interesting characters to focus on. Lea and Isa could grow close to Sora, Riku, Kairi, Terra, Aqua, Ventus, Donald, Goofy, or Mickey! Yet, they’re getting shoved aside for Union X characters that you need to play a mobile game to be familiar with. Skuld wasn’t even included in the Back Cover movie. Even if you played all the KH remasters, you still won’t know who she is!

I’ve actually seen all the cutscenes for Union X and I agree with you wholeheartedly. The characters were inoffensive, but they all had the personality of a wet paper bag. Nomura said Kingdom Hearts X, as it was originally called, was not supposed to have a heavy focus on story. Nothing I saw gave me the impression that characters like Skuld or Ephemer were meant to be anything more than mobile game characters. They were there for the player’s avatar to interact with, to give him/her a voice, since he/she is silent. But they are ancient history and should have perished during the Keyblade War. 

Ehpemer comes from the world ephemeral, meaning “lasting a very short time”. The three Norns are the Goddesses of fate in Norse mythology and are described as deciding the fates of people. Their names are Urd “What Once Was” (Old Norse “Urðr”), Verdandi “What Is Coming into Being” (Old Norse “Verðandi”) and Skuld “What Shall Be” (Old Norse “Skuld”).

My point is that these characters seem more suited as background characters. They are part of the mythology and history of the Keyblade War. They are not on par with the established characters and are not suitable to be the new protagonists. Now they are being teased as the main focus for the upcoming plot arc. I think this was a big mistake on Nomura’s part. Hardly anyone is going to be excited for them. I’m certainly not. I feel like there is very little to look forward to anymore.

You’re right. Skuld has no personality. And to add insult to injury, since she’s Subject X now, Lea and Isa had everything stripped from them in order to prop her up. Skuld isn’t interesting enough to be introduced on her own, so she has to ride on the coattails of Lea and Isa and the human experimentation subplot. This is such bullshit. New characters should NOT come at the expense of old ones. Lea needed a sad backstory as a test subject, and he needed his friendship with Isa to be properly developed so his fight at the Keyblade Graveyard felt emotionally engaging (which it didn’t).

Isa needed to be Subject X to redeem him. Saïx didn’t have much of a “personality”. This was the whole point. He was never likable the way Axel was. He was rude, condescending, cold, and vicious. According to Axel, he showed no human emotion besides sneers and snide remarks. But he was Norted, for crying out loud! Saïx was not meant to be one of the protagonists. Isa was!! They threw away two amazing characters for this flat underdeveloped Union X one. Very foolish and shortsighted. it’s definitely gonna bite them in the ass.

Lea and Isa were always meant to be a duo. For some fans, it seems like only trios are valid, but that’s not true. SRK are Sky, Land, Sea. TAV are Earth, Water, Wind. Well, Lea and Isa are Sun and Moon—complementary opposites. I’ve heard people say that Skuld would be “Stars”. Well, I think Terra, Aqua, and Ven were meant to be the stars. Skuld is redundant and not needed to “complete” Lea and Isa. 

Even in canon, she is a stranger to them. They spoke to her a few times in the shadows and couldn’t even see her face. She had amnesia. They literally knew nothing about her and weren’t sure if she even existed after a while, yet now their whole backstory revolves around her. She doesn’t complement them at all or make them more interesting. She detracts from them.

On the other hand, Isa definitely complemented Lea and made him a more interesting character. That’s why I liked him. He provided Lea with someone to humanize him and to give him a poignant backstory. He gave Lea a goal while becoming a Keyblade wielder. And Isa’s chemistry with Lea was adorable. Isa was sarcastic and brought out a different side of Lea than Roxas and Xion did. They also had an actual history together. They went to school together, ate ice cream, and also played with a dog. Probably played fetch with the frisbee (aww).

Lea was closer to Isa than anyone else—period. I was much, MUCH more excited to see Lea and Isa’s past and their friendship get developed than the potential relationship they have with Skuld get teased. No, I’m not excited for them to be a trio and I’m not excited for Skuld to get in the way of Lea and Isa’s friendship and make it all about her. She seemed like she fit in better with Ephemer anyways. Also, I think Lea and Isa have waaaaay more personality than Skuld. They are both colorful characters with a lot of charm. She can’t hold a candle to them.

Leo Traits

Leo is the fifth sign of the zodiac and has the Sun as its ruling celestial body. Bold, intelligent, warm, and courageous, Leo star sign is a natural leader of the Zodiac. Leo is an adventurer, seeking to balance an intense life of social obligations and travel with plenty of downtime to relax and luxuriate. 

A Leo is a typical outgoing and jovial kind of person. He has a big friend circle and likes to boss around. Appreciation and admiration are the two important things for getting close to a lion’s heart. He likes to be flattered and pampered.

Skuld just doesn’t fit in with Lea and Isa’s theme. They are Sun/Moon opposites. She’s a third wheel. In KH2, Axel didn’t have a lot of development. He was clever and cocky, but we didn’t know a lot about him, especially as a human. When they decided to flesh him out, they definitely decided to make him a typical Sun personality. I thought Lea was surprisingly cheery and positive.

Caring

At their best, the courageous Leo is strong, and has an amazing, protective attitude towards their friends. They care very deeply for those close to them.

He cares very much for his friends.

Optimistic

Leo is an optimist who is able to see the silver lining to life. They are optimists who are always able to find the positive side of any situation, and they prefer to revel in the good than dwell over the bad.

Even though Axel could be quite pessimistic, Lea was a natural optimist.

Kind

They are always willing to help out a loved one in need, and they will go to great lengths to make sure that those they care about most are happy. Leos have a compassionate heart, and they tend to be extremely kind and generous creatures.

He was always willing to help stray puppies.

Loyal

If there’s one thing that you can say about Leo with certainty, it’s that they are some of the most loyal people that you will ever meet. Leo is the bravest sign in the Zodiac, often doing whatever they are required to do despite being scared or in danger.

He is amazingly loyal. He always wanted to bring his friends back, no matter what. Even when he thought Isa tried to kill him.

Straightforwardness

Mincing words is not in the nature of a Leo. They speak their mind and like to express their thoughts clearly. Frankness is therefore, one of the biggest strengths of Leos. It is because of their straightforwardness that they are able to confront opinions and thoughts, they do not approve of, directly. This is also one of the reasons why they get things done fast.

He is very straightforward. He lied a lot to Roxas and kept secrets, but that wasn’t who he really was.

Faithful Partners and Good Friends

Leos are romantic and passionate lovers. They are faithful partners and exhibit extreme sensitivity  while in a relationship. This is also the reason why they are vulnerable to getting hurt. Thus, Leos need to find someone whom they can trust before they shower their love and kindness on that person. 

One of the special traits found in Leos is helping friends in need. Lending emotional support to friends in difficult times is a rare quality found in these people. It enables them to make lifelong friends. Behind all the aggression, ego and other domineering personality traits of a Leo lies a sensitive heart which cares for the dear ones. Leos take pride in protecting their close ones and would do so with all the energy and wit they possess. It is observed that the bossy exterior of Leos often eclipses their sensitive nature.

He is a wonderful friend, but has a deeper side, more sensitive side. All very accurate. 

Arrogance

At times, their dominance and confidence can be seen more like arrogance and conceit. Leo individuals ooze with confidence. They think that if they are the first to arrive at some conclusion, then they are right.

Lea was arrogant in a playful way. Like when he challenged Ventus to a fight. Axel was like that, too.

Inflexibility

They’re inflexible for other people, but they’re also inflexible for themselves. When they’ve made a commitment to something, they’re going to stick with it, regardless of how much they hate it.

Basically, Lea did whatever he wanted. Even Saïx said this about him.

Laziness

Though full of ambition and enthusiasm, Leo has to admit to a lazy streak and, given the opportunity, will take the easy way out, especially when a situation offers little fun or glory.

He likes to have fun.

Pride

This sign is represented by a lion, and as such, Leos are born with all of the pride and glory of the maned creature.

Oh yes, he is very proud.

Domineering

Leos have a hard time learning when to stop ruling and start listening. For this reason, Leos are extremely domineering and tend to overpower those around them.

Lea was the accelerator and Isa was the brake. Lea never listened to Isa, though.

Impatience

Impatience is one of the negative traits exhibited by a Leo. This trait of Leos get reflected in their habit to get things done fast. Impatience may lead to development of anxiety and restlessness in these individuals.

Axel never liked waiting around.

Jealousy

Leos may exhibit a possessive nature. This trait is closely related to the jealousy they exhibit. In fact, they are jealous because of their possessive nature.

Saïx was very jealous. But Lea probably had a side like that as well. He would not like it if Isa alienated him.

Cancer Traits

Cancer, the fourth sun sign of the Zodiac, has water as its element, is feminine, and is ruled by the Moon. This sign is represented by crabs, and similar to their nature, these people can be the sweetest and most sympathetic people at one moment, and turn into the most cranky and irritable ones the next.

Even though Isa was an NPC, he was not just “Lea’s friend”. He was certainly far more deserving of character development than ANY Union X character, that’s for sure. Isa seemed like he was more of a feminine archetype. Therefore, he is unlike any other male character in the series. I thought he was very refreshing and unique. He brought something new to the table. Also, based on the way Saïx acted, Isa was not just a cardboard cutout, either. He had interesting flaws to provide him with depth. Evidence suggests he was a typical Moon personality.

Moody

Cancer individuals are also known to have a moody attitude, especially whenever they are jealous. Normally protective and courageous, Cancer signed people could become very brooding and moody if they feel that their emotional needs are not being met. Cancer is all about needing emotional security and trust in a relationship, like all of us of course. But they take it to another level.

If a Cancer feels as though he can’t trust you or if he’s just an insecure guy in general, then his possessive and jealous side is going to come out in a major way. He’ll make snide comments about what you’re wearing and ask you questions about what you’re doing and who you’re with that can rival the time of being a teenager under your parents’ roof.

Man, dos this sound like Saïx or what? He was insanely jealous. While I think Saïx was a totally different personality from Isa, I still think he reflected much of Isa’s personality in him, due to having his memories and captured heart. In the novel, when Roxas was upset he pushed the wrong button, Axel said he knew what it felt like to have something be wrong and not know the reason. Based on the way Saïx acted, Isa sounded very emotionally needy towards Lea. I definitely think he’d be jealous if Lea didn’t spend enough time with him. He might be passive aggressive about it, too.

Unpredictable

Cancer, being a water sign, is very emotional and sensitive. They are very touchy, and can get hurt at the slightest provocation. It is this sensitivity, which makes them hide in their own shell, away from the world, to protect themselves from getting hurt. When they retreat into this shell, and refuse to talk to anybody, people may find them to be moody and unpredictable.

It doesn’t take much for them to go from friendly and outgoing, to totally introverted as a way of protecting themselves. And it can prove quite confusing and unpredictable to the people in their lives. Cancer needs a strong partner who can deal with his various sides and complexity. You never know what will trigger his moods and his evasiveness and his habit of being indirect makes you question if you ever really knew him.

Saïx could also be surprisingly moody and oversensitive once he began to awaken a heart. Axel had no idea why he suddenly started berating Xion and calling her a failure all the time. He wouls walk on eggshells to avoid upsetting him. It was probably easy to push the wrong buttons with Isa and he might not tell Lea what was bothering him right away. In the novel, Axel tried to get Saïx to open up to him by putting his hand on his shoulder, but Saïx brushed it away. This upset Axel and made him think how different things were between them. This said a lot about their relationship as humans. Lea had to put effort to get Isa to open up, but Isa was receptive to it.

Negative

Cancer people are ruled by the Moon, which is ever-changing, and thus they can have moods that can grow dark and darker. It’s common for people with this zodiac sign to struggle with low self-esteem and hold a lifelong grudge against someone. They are someone who sees the glass as half empty rather than half full.

Another trait being their lack of trust in people, they tend to have a negative outlook of life. They become prone to depression, and are unable to enjoy life. They can get hurt at the drop of a hat, and rarely express their resentment and anger.

I think this was why Isa felt like a burden on Lea and was down on himself a lot. Isa needed Lea to be the upbeat optimist for him. Isa was probably snarky and nitpicky with Lea, but in a more playful way. He was the brake, while Lea was the accelerator. This is also a dynamic unique to Lea and Isa. Axel had to be the mature and responsible mentor figure with Roxas and Xion. But with Isa, he was more playful and mischievous. Isa would scold Lea, but Lea never would listen.

Clingy

Cancer is a sign of fertile imagination and deep emotional needs. Cancer individuals are sometimes over-imaginative, which can get them in trouble. They will obsess over the situation until they have all of their answers.

Cancerians are very possessive about their relationships. They can be very clingy, and try to hold on to relationships, even after they have ended it. In relationships, they give much more and expect very little in return. Being emotional and sensitive, they are very easily influenced by their loved ones.

Yep. This is exactly how I think Isa was with Lea. Isa was very attached and gave his whole heart to Lea.

Suspicious

The empathetic crab is inclined to protect themselves. They only trust when they feel safe within relationships, often resorting to their inner world when they do not feel trustful or safe. He needs his moods and anxieties to be understood and if they’re not then he will retreat to his shell and come back out when he feels safe.

Definitely sounds like Isa. He was shy and couldn’t open up to just anybody.

Cancer Traits

Cancer star sign, the fourth sign of the zodiac is all about home. They are a nurturing and maternal sign. These people love their home and family more than anything else in this world. Cancerians are blessed with strong intuitive and psychic powers that help them judge people well. These people tend to be hard on the outside and soft inside. But they also have a tougher side to their personality.

So, Saïx exhibited all of the typical Cancer flaws. So, it stands to reason that Isa would also exhibit Cancer’s positive attributes, too.

Intuitive

Cancerians are known to be psychic, and can almost guess things before they actually happen. This comes from their highly developed observational powers. They can truly understand human behavior, and rarely forget things. All these make them highly intuitive and psychic.

This is a side of Isa we definitely never saw in Saïx. His scar is on his third eye chakra, which is the center of psychic awareness. It’s why he couldn’t see Xion or understand why Axel acted the way he did. It’s sad actually. A big part of his personality was shut down.

Kind

Emotional strength and intuition will always define Cancer’s top strengths and traits. This is emotional, but kind-hearted and compassionate personality type that makes for an outstanding friend.

I’m sure Isa was very kind and a wonderful friend, which is why Axel was so desperate to have a “best friend” to fill the void.

Emotive

Cancers are known for their traits like loyalty, their emotional depth, and their parenting instincts. Cancer individuals are emotional and intense; they are also extremely intuitive and compassionate. People belonging to this zodiac sign are highly emotional. Just like the crab that represents them, they are hard from outside, but very soft and mushy from within.

Isa scolded Lea a lot, but only because he cared. He was compassionate and selfless, like the Moon Rabbit. If there’s anything KH3 got right about Isa, it’s that he’d try to comfort an imprisoned girl and want to help her.

Faithful

Cancer is the most concerned with a secure and faithful relationship. Cancer individual loves home and family and is not happy unless they have deep emotional ties. Cancer is usually very nurturing and tends to take good care of everyone they care about.

Isa was serious when he said he’d never forget Lea. I definitely think Isa was the one who first gave Lea the WINNER stick, too.

Loving

Cancer individuals are very loving and caring. As the most sensitive sign of the zodiac, a Cancer does everything with love in mind and in the heart. Because of this, they are the most tender lovers.

Yes, I do think Lea and Isa were envisioned as a couple. Isa loved Lea. His Bunnymoon weapon has a rocket being launched by a heart. Lea also loved Isa, and this is why Axel was so depressed whenever he thought about how different Saïx was compared to Isa. Axel desperately missed feeling loved by someone. They had an extraordinarily interesting relationship. I don’t think Skuld adds anything except getting in the way and watering down their bond.