#as a result the story is a mess and the plot had potential but now it’s just gonna fall flat

[libidinous-weeb]

oh waaaaah jjk sucks because my fave died!! okay then go back to children’s shows or something where no one ever dies at all.

since the beginning of the series it was established that being a sorcerer was incredibly dangerous and ended with most sorcerers having short lives. it’s one of the first things discussed by the characters.

it’s a dark series and that means people will die. “people dying = bad and predictable writing!!!” it’s a fantasy series and you aren’t the one fucking writing it. it’s not even complete and you don’t actually even know who’s dead or not or who will actually stay dead. they haven’t even fully revealed what yuuji’s team’s plan is yet.

like…if you don’t like that then take your ass back to bnha or grow tf up.

[lass-us-slay]

Alr so I was watching edits and came across Arlecchino and an idea popped into my head!

Danny Phantom as Arlecchino in DC also know as: Phantom the Knave Sovereign

(Still working on the name- Before we start I wanna say, I’m just trouble shooting rn and seeing what new ideas I could add with your guys input too. But so far this is what I have)

———

Ok so plot points:

Somehow Pariah Dark gets free of the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep, either because of Vlad or the Observants

Pariah seeing potential in Danny (and cause he was already dubbed to take Pariahs place after he was old enough) starts trying to become Danny’s parental model (much like Vlad. But Worse.)

It was annoying at first, but slowly over time, Pariah started taking his role as Danny’s “Father” too far and twisted. Wanting to make Danny strong, stronger than he ever will be.

Then one thing leads to another and an identity reveal happens. Except the Fentons now pretend Danny Fenton no longer exists, and it’s just Danny Phantom that is an after image of their boy. Which pains them so they keep their distance, but still help what they think is left of their boy.

Danny is sad about that- but he has his sister Jazz and his two best friends! He can live with his parents pretending he doesn’t exist, atleast not as Danny Fenton no he can’t- he really can’t-

Then shit hits the fan, resulting in Danny’s home dimension into imploding into itself. (Which may or may not be the fault of Pariah Dark)

Luckily Danny is able to get out with Jazz!

But he’s too angry to rationalize himself after the death of his Haunt and almost all his fraid dying. He attacks and attacks Pariah and observers and whoever that threatens his last family at every turn.

More shit hits the fan, resulting in Danny getting cursed, which really hurts Danny. Enough to do weird ghost shenanigans to his biology, (via curse), and Jazz gets caught up.

Pariah sees a golden opportunity to use this to get Danny stronger to become the next king.

But Clockwork has had enough and steps in. Only to be promptly sealed away by the still acting king; Pariah Dark. Which Danny not even knowing as he’s out for the count thanks to the curse. (Jazz is the only witness. But Pariah can’t kill her because of Danny.)

More stuff happens and now Pariah is the acting Father of Danny and Jazz (with amnesia) who are in a ghost normal(?) orphanage with other kids.

Basically Arlecchino’s childhood happens to Danny and Jazz. Just that Pariah has decided to false make Jazz his “bio” kid to mentally fuck with Danny (smol child, and poor Jazz).

Danny still sees Jazz as his sis even if he doesn’t remember

After Jazz sadly doesn’t make it, Danny faces off Pariah once more for the first time. And consumes Pariahs Core into his, eating him alive so no more Pariah for the rest or eternity.

Then remembers- holy shit his names Danny! Not Peruere, which ew- (kidding I love the name-)

Anyways Danny gets mad at Clockwork only to find him sealed and the timelines fucked- and with Clockwork being so weak since the seal-ment, it’s up to Danny to fix the mess (and the one that was caused by the Observants once more with no one on the throne)

And so now Danny travels around timelines, picking up strays and adopting them (much like Batman, but better)

That there is the rough outline of the story!! I probably will make more but I just need to organize my thoughts before going into finer things (and art!)

Also I’d like to mention- while in the orphanage, Danny’s human side takes on more physical characteristics of his ghost form. Sorta merging the two forms into one? Not sure about it.

But Danny’s human form has definitely changed, and the curse is the same as Arlecchinos from Genshin (although would be nice if someone actually explained the curse to me fully- cause I don’t get it at all 😭)

Anyways that’s it- im thinking about interactions with the kids Danny Adopts and such but that’s for another time 💀

Aight peace ✌️

[princess-of-the-corner]

I hope you're still okay with such Anon asks about Chloé, I wasn't quite sure who to ask this because of how divisive of a topic this is now and you seemed to be the right person.

I've been rewatching some 2000s Cartoons I grew up with and it really made me realize how badly Chloé's trope is ruined in Miraculous.

Chloé was the regular local bully bitch character. Ain't nothing groundbreaking here.

She's the likes of Bonnie from Kim Possible, Mizzi and Chimera from Winx Club, Dash and Paulina from Danny Phantom, Pacifica from Gravity Falls, and Brit and Tiff Crust from Teenage Robot

Or, you know, 10 billion other cartoon characters that fit this trope

And yet Chloé very obviously stands out as the one who was incorrectly utilized by her show. Bonnie, Dash & Paulina, and Pacifica for example were never given a pass for being the MC's bullies, but the shows still were confident enough in their writing and main characters that they were allowed to have sympathetic and even heroic scenes. Bc the shows understood that the bully characters were meant as side antagonists and minor inconveniences for the main character in comparison to the actual villains. So developing them positively works very well once their bully actions overstepped their welcome in the big picture.

Bullying is horrible, no shit, but cartoons normally are very much aware that the bully characters have little to no business overshadowing the real villains the way Miraculous insists on doing it.

Even the characters like Mizzi & Chimera or Tiff and Brit Crust, that weren't shown in any more sympathetic light, the shows knew how to properly utilize them. Either by mostly keeping them as minor antagonistic that don't need more focus, or they were only in the story for a limited period of time or specific usages.

Miraculous on the other hand has the main character(s) ignore all the ACTUAL adult villains she should be looking for and taking care of because instead the show made it its job to portray two school bullies as evil incarnated. As if that doesn't reflect increasingly worse on the main characters. Like in Revolution where everybody collectively ignored that Chloé obviously needed POWERS to pull off what she did, but the characters couldn't look past the "she's a bully grrrr 😠" which lead to Paris slowly being imprisoned and physically enslaved in front of the heros' eyes and Hawkmoth almost winning!

The local bully is supposed to be a level 1 antagonist the story and MCs normally grow out of because very clearly there are much bigger fishes to fry. But Miraculous deemed Marinette having been bullied as the biggest injustice and display of suffering in the plot, so naturally our heros end up being nothing but incompetent when it comes to their actual JOBS.

Who cares that Ladybug (with Cat's quiet support) basically victim blamed all of Paris into going on a suicide mission to stop an almost allmighty Monarch for the defeated Ladybug and Cat Noir, because Ladybug just said that they never needed heros in the first place (which, yes Marinette, THEY DID.) Lets ignore that the only reason why Ladybug's words didn't result in a mass slaughter of the vulnerable civilians she was supposed to protect is because GABRIEL made Chloe the weakest Akuma to date and gave her robots nothing but the safest powers. So nothing Marinette had any hand in or even knew of before she as good as attempted to send the civilians into the final battle without any help of Ladynoir...

But I guess its fine bc Marinette was looking at her bully. Of course the innocent civilians had to be hyped up to go on a potential suicide mission to save Ladynoir from Chloe and MONARCH (who should have showed up there literally any second but didn't because Gabriel is stupid for Marinette's sake)

Our main characters were apparently so overwhelmed by Chloé's meanness that needed to be put in place, who could possibly think and acts heroric anymore? 😒

And this entire mess we could have easily avoided if the show just had it done NORMALLY by not forcing Chloe into a role her trope doesn't fucking belong in in the big picture.

Yeah exactly like

In those other examples, even with the bullies staying in an antagonistic role, they're never anywhere near a Main Threat.

Yeah in Season 1 the protagonist is having a hard time with them because hey the protag is /just now/ a Hero and gaining confidence. But my later seasons? The bully is an annoyance ofc but the protag literally does not care they've handled so much worse and the bully only ever becomes a problem when a legit big bad decides to use them against them.

And then yeah letting the bullies be more well-rounded characters even if they don't get a proper 'redemption arc' per say.

Let's take Dash because he's actually the closest example to how Chloé was in Season 1-3: Yes he was a bully and that was bad. The show didn't go too much into his home life, but it did make it clear how much the school enabled him/ignored his actions because he was a football player. Though he was someone Danny was scared of early on, he quickly became something Danny just rolled his eyes at or even fought back. But Dash also very much looked up to the local Hero and saw him as an inspiration(unknowing the Hero was someone he bullied), and had several episodes where he teamed up with Danny(both Phantom /and/ Fenton) to save the day.

And yeah that- that's pretty much how Chloé was! If you didn't want to give her a full Redemption, just keep her in that weird spot!

[tariah23]

Genuinely curious: how bad did jujutsu kaisen get (i dropped off prettyyyy early but i thought it had potential! And i heard great things about it! But now it's like...hmmm not so good 🗿)

I wouldn’t say it’s completely BOOTY (It’s still pretty decent actually even though I do complain a lot about my grievances that I have with it!) After the Shibuya incident (the arc is fucking amazing btw. Idk how far you’d gotten but the Hidden Inventory was also sick as well!!! Two of the best arcs back to back! Gege was absolutely feeling himself when he wrote these 😭) the writing had definitely begun to noticeably take a nosedive.

I remember Gege often getting sick, resulting in him having to take multiple hiatus after finishing up with Shibuya and it had even gotten to the point where he’d put out rushed chapters (he never used to do this so whenever he’d do so, it was pretty noticeable because his writing had always been pretty entertaining and fairly good (imo) up to this point…) and even incomplete chapters…. (When I first read that very specific, incomplete chapter, I legit thought that it had been drawn that way on purpose??? Like maybe it was drawn in a sketchy way for stylistic purposes! It was pretty cool to me at the time until I’d learned that he just couldn’t finish drawing the chapter and had to put it out as is… then this is where the hiatus had began. Because he’d take a break (great! His health is more important than anything after all) and then come back with half assed chapters from time to time? (I believe all of the breaks definitely effected the momentum that he’d built up for himself tbh. But I’m glad that he put himself first regardless.)

Enemy curse users during both the Colony and the Culling Game arcs felt more like “villains of the week,” over than anything else and were just there to be defeated by the MC’s and to extract little pieces of information at a time. Most of them didn’t even stand out all too much outside of a few. Incidents that took place throughout these two arcs felt completely pointless and added nothing to the story whatsoever. Then there’d be long stretches of time in between the story where important characters like for instance: Megumi and Yuuji, would be absent from the story for unnecessarily long periods of time for no reason at all because Gege’s pacing had begun to take a toll on the writing side of things???

There would be instances where important and genuinely EXCITING things would happen only for the story to go back to feeling like a bunch of nonsense again and then this would become a sort of rinse and repeat type of thing. Don’t even get me started on the Gojo VS Sukuna fight…… both my fucking head and heart still hurts over what happened if I’m being honest because HOLY SHIT, Gege fucking sucks 😭!!! How do you do THIS to such an important character in the series bro. It still doesn’t even feel right like. What was even the fucking POINT of this 3 month long ass fight 😭😭😭!???!? Quite a few other slightly major deaths were poorly executed as well… there’s just…. SO MANY INCONSISTENCIES and plot points that felt as if they were going to MATTER in the end; become important later on, only for them to end up not mattering at all…

The plot is still unfolding but UHHH… Also, depending on how far you’d gotten into reading or watching it, things do become extremely depressing after a certain point in the story like, the characters have not had a good time ever since the students played baseball with each other in that one episode/ manga chapter before ALL of the bullshit started 😭. Everyone is a wreck! Everything is a mess! What is the point!!! JJK is definitely misery porn. It excels in it.

[velvet-vox]

Oropo; the ideology of power behind being god: Part 2

One of the things that frustrates me the most about Wakfu (or Tot to be more specific) is his shameless, unconsidered, unprofessional misuse of pantsie writing. Now, don't get me wrong, pantsie writing isn't inherently bad, on the contrary: not only is it less taxing than a planned out story since it allows you to not waste your mental health on every single detail of your plot, but it also allows you to surprise the audience much more easily since you can just make up things on the fly; some of the greatest stories ever told (Avatar: the last airbender; Breaking Bad) are the results of on the fly decision making; but that's not to say that it's perfect, it actually has as many drawbacks as preplanned writing if not even more. (Cue FNAF)

You might have just ended a story arc or a season, and now you are tasked to follow up on your work, but haven't thought of anything ahead of time, so now you have to make stuff up or go back and look at any possible bit of potential and expand on that.

The biggest challenge here is of course, not contradicting your previous work; but let's say you don't wanna do that, let's say you get an idea that you consider so good that you can't just give it up but it requires you to do a little bit of a retcon: cue Oropo.

And although when stuff like this happens I always get so incredibly infuriated, I, for this particular fictional character, get so much more animated due the fact that the idea and the elements itself in how they were distributed are so unbelievably good that had the actual writing been more competent it would have created, in my honest opinion, the most unique and dynamic fictional antagonist of all time.

Let's go through all of the traits of Oropo in order of appearance to see what I am talking about:

Oropo isn't directly introduced from the jump at the start of his arc, instead, we're first introduced to some of the members of his brotherhood, highlighting the main difference between him and the previous foes: Oropo is a mastermind type of villain (cue Slade from Teen Titans) of the secret variety (cue Bradford Buzzard from DuckTales 2017) as we later learn that he already influenced past events in the show (we'll come back to this); already, this is one of my favourite villain archetypes and it's not even the end.

Then, Lady Echo comes to Adamai and tells him that the purpose of the Brotherhood is to protect the world. Interesting motive, but I feel like it's incredibly easy to mess up depending on how much evil you want your villain to be; for example, Emperor Belos from The Owl House works because his solution to keep the world safe is to annihilate all witches and he only kills Caleb and Luz because he views them as corrupt and unreademable due to his Christian indoctrination; Oropo... it doesn't because it was all fake.

And then, we finally get to the third season, where we get introduced to the big man himself, and his huge ass tower that he challenges the heroes to climb. Some red flags are already present in the way the previous two episodes played out, but so far, he gives off the sense that everything has already been planned out beforehand and the heroes are just mere pawns in his master plan, not even a real threat.

And now that we finally meet him, we are quickly introduced to many other interesting traits: he's a philosopher, an idealist, he has a charming voice and personality that transpires into the uncanny valley due to it feeling like a robot, his followers look at him like a saint, even Adamai has his trust while he tells him his plan to overthrow the gods.

Speaking of which, as stated previously, his plan is so unique in the grand scheme of things since he doesn't just seek power for the sake of power and to become god because, rather he wants to instaurate a sort of "republic" of the gods with his cult, he has ordered the levels of his tower in a specific way to showcase his priorities, and, before he becomes mentally unstable at the end of the season, treated his followers kindly.

And then, the final reveal, foreshadowed in the Iop level of the tower, Oropo is actually Yugo's one thousand year old copy that was sent part of a race sent back in time by their creator on accident and had to hide their existence to avoid messing up the timeline and the whole "replace the gods" was a metaphor for replacing Yugo, Oropo's personal god.

.....

SO GOOD

At this point a part 3 is warranted, but in the meantime I'll join the rest of the fandom in their dissatisfaction and keep ranting about Oropo being, in my humble opinion, without a shadow of a doubt, the greatest missed potential villain of all time.

<<<<Previous part

Next part>>>>

[jazzypizzaz]

Fanfic writer interview meme

thanks @obstinatecondolement for tagging me!

How many works do you have on AO3? 79

What's your total AO3 word count? 337,715

Your Top 5 stories by kudos

Sweet Dreams Are Made of This DS9, Quodo cuddling, Odo is a blanket. Of all my fics this is the one I’m most perplexed by its kudo count. Are people that hungry for hurt/comfort pre-slash? Was it on a rec list of a popular blogger I’m unaware of? I don’t know, like it’s very nice it's good fic, but not one I think about often.

What Is This Feeling, So Sudden and New? DS9, Quodo, Odo adjusts to being solid, drinks all sorts of drinks, and has a sexual awakening. Now this is the fic I’m most proud of. That makes sense. Sexual tension! Plot! Emotional beats paced just right! (imo)

like to the lark at break of day arising OFMD, Stede/Ed’s first time, silly but emotional sex. This one I posted just at the right time in the fandom, and I had a lot of fun with it. Dumb banter, Stede gets carried away, Ed nuts and cries, I’m hitting all my favorite tropes lol.

Made Me Feel (Shiny and New) DS9, the sweetest hard Quodo, slow banging D/s double bluff. I never question a smut fic doing well. I assume you’re in it for the same reason I wrote it lmao.

Down On My Knees (I Wanna Take You There) DS9, Quodo, blowjob and tentacle sex. Ditto. :-P

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? 

I always try to!!! The exception being if I’m not paying attention to fandom at all at the time, I go through phases like anything.

As a reader, I love to comment for the author interaction -- especially because sometimes you mention something you liked and it unlocks a whole interesting train of thought from the author about the behind the scenes insights, like a bonus meta. I’m obsessed by this pairing, you are too, please tell me everything hell yeah.

Do you write crossovers? 

I’ve written one Glee/TNG and one Glee/Harry Potter. Not generally though.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind? 

Yes. Oh idk whatever I think is hot that the character also might be into. It has to be goofy, somewhat ridiculous, and definitely too many feelings are involved... 

Have you ever had a fic stolen? 

Not that I know.

Have you ever had a fic translated? 

I think someone asked me for permission once or twice, but I don’t remember if I saw the final result.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? 

No, gosh that’d really have to be the right person because it sounds maddening as a process. The potential to be more fun?? But potentially more frustrating.

What's your all time favorite ship? 

Oh you know. Somehow I started writing for rubber head aliens and never looked back.

What's a WIP that you want to finish but probably never will? 

I’m bad at starting things (there are tons of fic prompts I squirrel away for a rainy day), but compulsive about finishing them. If I have more than a couple hundred words written, by jove I’ll figure out a way to get to something I can call a final product that I share, even if it's several years later. 

Even when I’ve posted WIPs, almost the entire fic was written, I just needed to iron out details in the second part and only published the first part to stop myself from messing with it. Actually, exception that proves the rule (?) Coin-Operated Boy is my first true WIP, where I have a long list of ideas brainstormed, but I’m writing a bit by the seat of my pants rather than having all the plot points mapped out already. We’ll see how that goes, always fun to try something new!!

I’m also still committed to finishing the fic I started where Quark and Odo meet in prison and escape together based on this one comic about Rocket/Groot I read. I have like 7k written but there’s a looooot of rough sketchy bits and both details and broad strokes I have to figure out first.

What are your writing strengths? 

Managing tone? Something I enjoy doing anyway -- zipping along on a wild ride from goofy to angsty to heartfelt to absurd and back again. I’ve also been told I’m good at weird banter lol.

What are your writing weaknesses? 

Awkward run on sentences where I’m trying to pack too much in at once. PLOT ??? WHAT IS PLOT why can’t the characters just have a lot of feelings for no reason idk idk. being heavy handed with metaphors and ~themes~

What's a fandom/ship you haven't written for yet, but want to? 

I want to write for Phlox sometime. I’m sure there’s a Quark rare pair I haven’t touched yet that’ll get obsessed with enough for a oneshot lol.

What's your favorite fic that you've written?

“What Is This Feeling?” has my whole heart. 

"Dinner for One" also has a special place - getting out my Sisko family feels, plus I pulled off making Siskuark happen (briefly) lol.

--

@wowbright @chacusha @quodo-brainrot tagging you if you want to participate I'd love to read your respones!

[panicked-herb]

Critique of Fionna and Cake’s Season Finale

It’s been a good couple months since the Fionna and Cake series finale came out. At first it felt lackluster to me, then it felt extremely disappointing, then gradually I felt more and more meh about it. I could see what they were trying to do, but it kept bothering me how bad the finale was in comparison to the earlier episodes.

Now I finally have time to write out my thoughts about it and make it everyone else's problem.

Important note before I start: All of this is just my opinions on a TV-14 show. If you disagree, that’s great and I’d be interested to hear why. Just please be respectful. 

What I Liked

The animation and visual storytelling was great. I liked that at the bus stop, they initially had Simon place Betty on the step below him, but later had him place her next to him. Too bad the writing doesn’t back this up (more on that later). 

The voice acting was good. This isn’t my forte, so no comments besides that. 

Most of the jokes landed for me. Especially Pawn Swan. He was easily the best part of Cheers for me. 

I loved the Lich speech to Glob

Blue Shift is such a feel good song it almost made me like the ending.

What I Didn't Like

Catharsis

My second biggest issue with these episodes is how little catharsis there was. We got to see Fionna get upset and cry, but that was mostly because the Scarab was kicking everybody's ass. I wished we got to see Cake get upset about how people don’t see her for who she is. Or potentially exploring her fears of going back to being a normal cat. 

I especially wished we got to see Simon ugly cry. This man has been through an apocalypse, lost his sanity, lost the love of his life, been depressed for years, and is now trying to curse himself. Dude literally said he missed being the Ice King because he was so out of it most of the time he didn’t realize how messed up his life was. He felt like almost everybody preferred him when he was cursed. Then he finally sees GolBetty after years of searching for a way to cure her, only to fail. There should have been some waterworks going on. 

Pacing

Generally, the pacing felt too slow for me. It made the episodes feel more like a second or third draft vs a finale result. The biggest offender to me was all the fights against the Scarab. Each individual battle was fine, but there were too many of them. We know the Scarab isn’t going to destroy their world in the end, so all the fights don’t do much besides look cool. Which would be fine, if they weren’t trying to make it emotionally impactful. 

This is relatively minor, but it bothers me that Casper and Nova are mostly in the episode Cheers when in basically all of the other episodes, the titular character(s) are the main focus for that episode. I think this could have been fixed, if they just cut back on the number of times they fight the Scarab. 

Pay Off

There were a lot of Chekov’s guns that either didn’t get fired or turned out to have only blanks (basically you could remove them from the story and it wouldn’t affect the plot much).

No Pay Off

Simon and Marceline’s phone call/ relationship: I know I wasn’t the only one hoping to see these two reunite after Simon tried to curse himself again. 

Dirt beet guys manuscript: This is minor, but I just feel like it would have been easy to fix. 

The time core: This is a classic case of Adventure Time world building, where they introduce a cool concept, but don’t do much with it. I don’t know what I wished they did with it. But I would have liked for them to do something.

Disappointing Pay Off

Cosmic entities that the Scarab imprisoned: Cake lets them go and they fight the Scarab. But that fight lasts for like a minute. We also see Kheirosiphon in the ending credits. But besides that, we don’t see much else. 

Everything in You song: The song is only used as a segway into the final flash back of Simon’s and Betty’s relationship. I’ll give it credit, the song is good and the scene is cute. However, you could remove it and there would be almost no effect. Considering Glob’s weakness is harmony (music), I really thought they were going to do something with it. 

Fionna’s top fantasy: Throughout the series, Fionna makes references to her dream fantasies (EX: castle made out of candy). We learn what her top fantasy is after their universe already becomes canon and they’re in their final (unnecessary) fight against the Scarab. Her top fantasy turns out to be turning into a giant woman. Ignoring the Totally Spies vibes that scene gives me, I think they really missed an opportunity to make this really sweet. In the final scene, instead of Fionna saying “Just a normal world.” She could have said something along the lines of, “This is my top fantasy”

Fionna and Cake turning things normal in other universes: Ignoring the Winter King, this plot point does almost nothing. Sure, Cake accidentally turns BMO into an alarm clock, but BMO was already dead. There’s also the Scarab’s speech, “All the worlds you've visited, all the people you've infected. Your little trip must have shown you the truth. It would be better for everyone if you were just gone.” But they themselves don’t ruin that many worlds. The only reason for them seriously thinking that is the Winter King. But he was a grade A asshole and removing his magic freed Princess Bubblegum from the madness he imposed on her. 

Casper and Nova

Before I start this section, there are two important things for me to mention

I should note that I've had over ten years to theorize about Simon and Betty. Naturally, I’ve probably forgotten some of my head cannons and character interpretations aren’t actually canon. Especially since we never really got much screen time for the two before Fionna and Cake. It also doesn’t help that Simon/ Ice King’s character arc hits close to home for personal reasons I’m not sharing in a tumblr post. But, it does mean that I’ve probably projected some of my feelings onto those characters at some point. 

I’ve never particularly liked how Betty’s been written. I wished she got more screen time in the original show and I STRONGLY dislike that they introduced the fact that she didn’t go on an expectation she was really excited about for a man she’s known for one day in one of the final episodes of the show. To me, it turned her character from an impulsive, headstrong woman who for all intents and purposes is stuck on an alien planet and the only person she knows who is still alive has magical dementia to a fucking manic pixie dream girl. She doesn’t need to have always been completely obsessed with Simon to explain why she’s going to desperate measures to save him. Once again, he’s the only person she knows in Ooo, but as the Ice King he’s basically a stranger. She also convinced him to give up his only chance to die as himself with the hope that she could save him. Finally, she loves him and doesn’t want him to suffer. 

Casper and Nova are pretty explicitly supposed to be narrative parallels to Simon and Betty and help show Simon the issues in their relationship. A lot of defense I’ve seen against criticism about this part of the story comes from a place of assuming the fandom is owo-ing the male character and doesn’t want to admit he has flaws. To be fair, it is a reasonable knee jerk reaction to have. Fandom has a LONG history of doing shit like this and villainizing women. But, at least in my case, this isn’t what's happening. 

Casper and Nova aren’t on equal footing because Nova keeps making unseen sacrifices for Casper and they always do things Caspers way. The moral that Simon is supposed to take from them is that he/ Casper should have realized how much Betty/ Nova was sacrificing for him all the time, stopped, and supported her. However, this isn’t the main issue Simon and Betty have. 

There are a total of two times where Simon does kind of stand to the side while Betty sacrifices herself:

The first trip planned to study petroglyphs in Australia: Simon jokingly offers Betty to go on his expedition with him. She accepts, which surprises him, and mentions offhandedly that she had another trip planned. Maybe he could have told her she could always go on another trip with him sometime else. But he could have just as easily assumed she wasn’t really interested in her original plan and if he asked if she was sure, it could come off as him telling her not to go.

The second trip planned to study petroglyphs in Australia: Simon stops Betty before she leaves for the bus and in the heat of the moment he says he always wants her by his side always. Betty still could have easily just given him his number and still go on her trip or they just agree to meet up later. Also, the show makes a point that Simon should have gone on the trip with her. I would like to note that Betty was planning to leave the day Simon realizes she has feelings for him. I don’t know how archeological expeditions exactly work, but joining so last second seems really rude to me. Also, he would have either needed to pack really quickly or bring nothing with him for a six month long trip. To add on, he won’t know what type of funding that trip was. For all he knew, it only had funds to send Betty over.

More often than not, we actually see Simon recognizing the sacrifices Betty is making and actively trying to stop her:

Betty time traveling into the future and away from basically everything she knows: Simon originally time travel calls her to apologize and tell her that he forgives her for leaving him as a way to allow her to move on. Betty chooses to jump through the portal. 

Dedicating herself to save him: Simon literally begged Betty to let him die rather than turning back into the Ice King. He only changes his mind after she begs him to give her a chance to save him. Everything she does afterwards, he’s either basically passed out or is cursed.

Merging with Glob: Simon begged Betty to forget the crown and escape Golb with him and Finn. Betty pushed him out of there and merged with Golb. Simon spent years trying to find a way to unfuse her with Golb. 

Not getting any acknowledgement for helping to find the Enchiridion: Simon wanted both of them to get credit. Betty told him that she wanted him to get all the credit. He awkwardly, but professionally, told her that she deserves the credit just as much as he does. She still turns down any acknowledgement. (I really don’t like this story beat because it could have been such a good chance to comment on how academia often discredits or ignores women)

We also have moments where they do things Betty’s way (or at the very least Betty does things her way) on their expedition together.

When crossing the river: Simon carefully walks across the rocks. Betty takes her shoes off and just walks through the river. Simon follows suit then slips and falls. I would just like to add that crossing a river without shoes on isn’t safe. It decreases trackson and increases your risk of cutting yourself in an open body of water. They should have just either dealt with the wet socks, brought a spare pair, or use water proof shoes.

When crossing an area full of snakes: Simon advises Betty to stick with the tried and true method for dealing with snakes. Betty decides to do the trick her mom taught her and runs through the area screaming. Simon doesn’t stop her. Instead once he sees that it’s working, he smiles.

As we see, with the exception of two instances (which could easily be changed without impacting the plot too much), Simon doesn’t need to learn the lesson that he should have supported Betty more and stopped her from sacrificing herself so much.

I think the bigger issue in Simon and Betty’s relationship is just how obsessed they are with each other. When the crown drives Simon insane and takes all his memories, the last thing Simon can remember is that he wants to marry his Princess. This leads him to literally kidnapping princesses. Betty time traveled 1000 years into the future after hearing Simon say he never saw her again after wearing the crown. In the process of trying to save him, she went mad herself. They’ve both spent years trying to save the other from and were willing to sacrifice themselves to do so (I’m fully convinced Simon didn’t have a plan for how to leave Golb’s dimension. I think the dude was just going to apologize to Betty then die).

Not Part of the Finale, But Still Bothers Me

Having Prismo be the one to actually write Fionna and Cake removes depth from Simon/ Ice King’s character. I liked how surprisingly good Fionna and Cake was and interpreted that as parts of Simon shining through. But they needed to have Fionna and Cake actually be real for the show, so they had Prismo make them. Instead of Prismo making them out of boredom, I think it would have been cool if he made them as a way to grieve Jake. Maybe after Jake died, Prismo turned to reading Fionna and Cake since his favorite person liked it and Cake’s basically a genderbent Jake. But, after reading everything the Ice King wrote he wanted more. Since he lives in the TIME ROOM, I don’t think it would be a stretch to allow him to interact with the timeline in weird ways (in fact I think we already saw this in the episode Is That You?). So, as a temporary solution Prismo made Fionna and Cake real and stores their universe in the Ice King’s head so he could get more stories out of them. Prismo meant to delete their world before the Ice King turned back into Simon, but he didn’t have the heart to. Also, they could have totally had Simon keep writing Fionna and Cake fanfiction like how he sometimes dresses up as Ice King. Except, this time, he writes them in his own modern day AU as a way to cope with how out of place he feels. 

Not part of this spin off, but it’s always irked me that Simon got to time travel to the past, but Betty didn’t. I get that Betty wanted to intentionally create a time paradox. But it still feels really hypocritical. Honestly, I think they should have just made Simon accidentally freeze her when he first puts on the crown. After Frost and Fire, when the Ice Kingdom got melted, have her thaw out and start researching ways to cure Simon. Then, during the episode she’s supposed to debut in, have her be the cause of Bella Noche. 

Conclusion

The finale had cool concepts, but it doesn't fully match up with everything that came before it.

[tothisemptiness]

Golden Hour: Part 2 Analysis Series Part I: The Diaries

Hello everyone! I am here with the full analysis I had promised here. As I kept analizing and writing, I realized the post was becoming too long and it would be too tedious to read in one post so I decided to split it in various parts in which I would talk about one aspect of my analysis in each. If you want to read the other parts of this analysis you can find them below:

Part II: "Ice On My Teeth" MV

Part III: The Chess Piece Theory

Bonus Part: Character Studies

I want to start off with a personal note. I feel we are being stalled. A good half of the diaries this time only restate what was already told in GH:1 diaries. Honestly, the two albums' diaries could have been a single diary or GH:2 could have started the action off a bit more. If we go with this pace but tell a story as big as the first one I fear this thing is going to take something like 10 years (anticipating we won't get anything for a good 2 years at one point since they will do their military service) since right now they are going at half the pace of first arc.

I won't explain the diaries in detail here, I will just discuss the important parts so I strongly urge you to read them here. You can also find Golden Hour: Part 1 diaries here.

I feel it is important to understand their ages for measuring their level of maturity here. I believe they are around the same age as their real ages now. The only time indication we are given is that it has been 3 years since the end of Will diaries and the last time we could clearly hold track of time was the Fever series when events happened one after the another. I take their age in the first Fever entry, add around 2 years for the time they spent in World Z (the necessary time for establishing a big anarchist group) and add 3 years on top of that.

Not a plot point but I found the "Please. I call all handsome men oppa." line hilarious, she is so real for that.

In San's part there is an emphasis on "cleaning up your own mess". It is a big part of growing up, and our story here is about growing up. This makes me think that the guys have either caused a mess in the first part unkowingly and have to clean it up in this arc, or they will cause a mess in the near future and will have to clean up that.

The "Z backed into a corner, broke the Cromer in his attempt to flee, and, as a result, Woo Young and the members were thrown back into this world before they could see the climax of their movement." line in these diaries suggests they didn't come back on their own accord. In GH:1 diaries it is simply stated that Z was defeated and ATEEZ returned home, entrusting World Z to Black Pirates and Thunder. We just assumed they went back because they wanted to. This is a crucial part of the story that we never got to see, so will we ever see it?

"I know. I fell for him and nearly asked for his number." MINGI CANONICALLY GAY ICON??

The question of more artifacts comes back up, I believe this will be important in the upcoming comebacks. So far we have seen only one artifact that teleports you to the same place around the same time each time you use it for interdimensional transportation. A different artifact, however, may potentially teleport you to another universe or a far away time in the universes that we know. This would be a good way of connecting Halazia-related content to the main story.

I can't believe they actually referenced Britney Spears and said Wooyoung performs like her. These men are never beating the gay allegations.

"I saw so many ads with Min Gi on my way here today. He's everywhere! Do you know what it made me think of? (...) It's so over the top, it almost reminds me of Z." This may just be a fun jab, talking and reminiscing about the old times, but it is still a very interesting parallel between the characters in this arc and Z.

After Z breaks it, Yeosang picked Cromer up. He also picked up a red ruby named Sopro from Left Eye when they were getting out of the Disposal Sites in Fever Part 3 diaries. Now, we already didn't see the second Cromer break due to a huge timeskip, but nowhere in the diaries did they ever mention the red ruby, even though apparently Yeosang asked the group who should take care of it again and again and, surprisingly, nobody cared. It is a very interesting point, considering this object looks important since it looks like a gemstone and is said to be important and powerful by Left Eye. How nobody but Yeosang cared about it is currently beyond me. And even after acknowledging its presence, the group still moves on from it rather quickly and diverts the subject just like they had done before. The first and only appearance of the ruby is at the end of the "Crazy Form" MV, carried by the blue bird we had previously seen and heard of in "Halazia", its prologue and epilogue. In the "Crazy Form" MV reaction video, HJ shushes everyone up and indicates the cookie is important, and when asked who broke the Cromer he responds "the blue bird". The blue bird breaking a Cromer (not "the Cromer" because so far ATEEZ has used 2 Cromers and we don't exactly know which one this is) and carrying a red ruby away parallels Yeosang, who is often associated with the image of a bird, perfectly well. I think at this point it isn't too crazy to assume the blue bird directly represents Yeosang.

"I wonder what happened after we left. (...) Do they still remember ATEEZ? Or, do you think we've already been forgotten?" As part of the story, Yunho of course wonders this. We, as the viewer, know a bit more than what he does. Yes, they remember them, but not in the way they would like.

As the evening proceeds we see more and more reminiscing, becoming gradually more bitter than sweet. Even before that we see members questioning whether their current situation is what they really wanted their lives to be, hanging on the edge of dissatisfaction. It is clear that "Golden Hour" is not a term used to describe the current situation of our characters, it is for describing what they hang onto. They are hurt upon realizing that they have left their golden hours behind. Another theme of this series will be moving on from the past and recognizing golden hours as they happen, which I think will be even more evident in the later entries. The bitterness reaches its peak when Wooyoung suggests trying again and meets Yeosang's criticism, resulting in him leaving the party.

Another meaning of the term "golden hour" is "the first 60 minutes from the time of injury or appearance of symptoms in which an injured or sick person must receive definitive treatment". It is often related to trauma. Story-wise, their "golden hour" was the time from when they returned to World A to the point they ran out of money. If they were to make it big as artists, they must have done it right then but now that they are way past that time period their chances are near zero. Now they have to lead imperfectly put together lives, like a broken leg that heals a bit wrong due to insufficient first aid.

"Sopro is a sort of magical spirit that synchronizes the feelings of those who hold it with those who draw breath around them. According to legend, one of the four priest guardians of Halazia gathered the breaths of all of Halazia to create it." A simple paragraph that reveals so much. Let's pick it apart. Finally we have an idea about what Halazia really is: a sacred place according to a religion that was founded in the past in World Z. Maybe a temple with a considerable population or a sacred city (like Jerusalem for example). Combining this info with the knowledge that "Halazia" takes place after ATEEZ leaves World Z (judging by the prologue), we can say that in the future people turn back to religion, which was not present during the rule of Z. But, as it happens with all religions that have been around for a significant amount of time, the new version of this religion is somewhat changed in respect to its original version and we can say that by looking at the religious imagery that combines with the Halateez symbols.

"Sopro is a sort of magical spirit that synchronizes the feelings of those who hold it with those who draw breath around them." The desire to make everyone feel the same way. Stripping people of their free will. Doesn't it feel a bit too similar to Z's rule? It also doesn't say that those who are around the wielder will feel the same as the wielder, it just says their feelings will be synchronized. So instead Wooyoung may end up feeling the same as the others rather than the others feeling the same as him. There is a small grammar trick there (that I don't know if is the same in Korean) that changes everything.

Left Eye says that using Sopro may be dangerous. In fact, we don't know anything about its functioning and right usage except for the fact that it makes everyone breathing the same air as its wielder and the wielder themself feel the same. And who uses it? A drunk, hurt, and judging by the hour, likely sleep deprived Wooyoung. Amazing idea. Surely nothing will go wrong.

"Reignite our passion like it was back then," Now if I have watched enough films and have prayed enough to whatever god was listening to me, I should know that you must always be very specific in your wishes and prayers or else they come true in the literal meaning, which isn't always exactly what you actually meant. And here Wooyoung doesn't specify what the passion is for. Rookie mistake honestly.

A remark: There is this ongoing discussion on whether Wooyoung is a hidden villain or not in the fandom which was disputed by HJ saying that there are no members with hidden intentions. With his last action, WY arguably started an arc by the end of which the members will be changed irreversibly, very probably by going through horrible things in the process. He didn't have any hidden intentions: he messed everything up all while wearing his heart on his sleeve and had no bad intentions. He just made the error of thinking everyone truly wanted the same thing as him and acted selfishly while thinking he was doing them a favor. Now why does this action affect our old storyline? The indications are mostly given in videos like "Hala Hala". I believe the answer to this question relates to another theory of mine that isn't exactly related to this era, so I will focus more on it later on.

Where Do I We Go?

If you have already read my Golden Hour: Part 1 analysis, you know that I take the diary entries as the main things that further the lore and the MVs as things that expand the themes and mini-stories of the lore set up by them. Because of that I find this to be the right moment to establish where we are in the lore and hypothesize about where we will go next. Let's look at the 4 act story structure we had restarted with GH:1.

This is the latest point we are in.

The hook was the entirety of GH:1 diaries which set up the scene.

The inciting event was WY and YS's fight.

The key event is WY using Sopro.

What will happen next? First of all, a crisis will happen and we will meet our new antagonists in the next diary.

I doubt we will be introduced to an entirely new universe like World Z given that the end of its story arc is still not revealed to us clearly and we still have a very obscure story arc that is so far represented by the Halazia-related content. However, I don't think we are going back to anywhere near the point ATEEZ left World Z because even though it has been 3 years in the lore, we've gotten out of it just last comeback. It is also the thing our protagonists want and you can't give the protagonist what they want right at the beginning of your story. Therefore, I think we will be thrown into a time in World Z's future that is more connected to the Halazia arc so that we can start detangling it and exploring it more in depth.

I believe we will see a somewhat failed attempt at returning to World Z following this story that I completely made up because it is fun: By not being very specific in his prayer, WY ignited the wrong kind of passion. They have been secretly yearning to go back to World Z to their glorious lives more than just performing so they look for ways to go back there. In the desperation and haste, they do manage to go back to World Z but get the time wrong and end up too far into the future.

Furthermore, I think a big part of the struggle in this arc will come from the inside of our protagonists and inner conflicts in the group may cause big problems since now they don't share the same worldviews and dreams anymore and have a life outside of each other.

I think the theme of this new arc will be focused on finding the balance between dreams and real life, passion and responsibility and becoming your own person while keeping in touch with your roots.

If you read until here thank you so much and I hope you enjoyed it! If you have anything about this post that you would like to discuss I always welcome it <3

[tonydaddingham]

LWA: The poster is right that the characters have deviated far from their originals, and not just because so much of their dialogue got swapped around in S1. Gaiman has confused matters because /he/ insists that the characters are fundamentally the same, even though the TV incarnations behave in ways that are implausible for their novel versions. A few years ago, I saw a Tumblr post that said, roughly, that if Novel!Crowley had tried the wall slam he would be made to see the error of his ways very quickly, and...yeah. That being said, S1 is an adaptation in dialogue with the original--a lot of what's interesting occurs in the dynamic engagement /between/ S1 and the novel, as opposed to saying that the novel /explains/ S1 or anything afterwards. I think that the novel's conclusions about "messing about," for example, are on the table for the S3 endgame, but I don't think that they'll be articulated the same way, or perhaps even have the same meaning in their new context.

S3 is a different beast because, among other things, it cannot be whatever Gaiman and Pratchett sketched out. Gaiman does a lot of retconning, to put it politely, and it seems dubious that the moves he makes at the end of S2 could set up the original plan (for starters, Gabriel had to be ported out because he had been injected into S1, and presumably would have been swanning away as Supreme Archangel otherwise ; there was no need to get C & A back on the clock because, technically, they weren't off it at the end of the original novel; TV!Aziraphale's religious trauma/cult abuse allegory is entirely foreign to Novel!Aziraphale's characterization, so whatever his motivations were, they couldn't have been that; etc.). Moreover, Gaiman has so depoliticized the original, beyond very loosey-goosey-hand-wavy type things, that it also isn't clear that we're going to get the kind of "tear down the system!!!" plot that a lot of fans seem to expect. Gaiman himself is very non-tear-down-systemy, and while it's hardly unheard of for authors to experiment in narrative with politics they don't hold, I wouldn't be surprised if the end result was less BURN IT ALL DOWN and more "hey, here's an exit strategy for other angels and demons who want out."

LWA!!!!✨ glad you saw that post, wondered if you might have a word or two to say on it!!!

i completely agree that where aziraphale and crowley's characterisation is concerned, it can't follow - what i presume - would have been their intentioned continuation following the end of the book and going into a sequel. i love how they are presented in the book, but as i tried (very badly) to explain in the tags of that post, i can't fully conflate them and how they are presented on screen. i personally therefore look to distance the two as if, frankly, they are entirely different characters. as you say though, some of the most intriguing choices are in how their traits, motivations, backgrounds, and their interactions/inner thought processes are translated to screen (as well as what has been chosen to be translated to screen; what is missed out/not depicted going from book > show is equally as interesting as what is).

however, i do think there is still potential, with s3, in revisiting the political analogy the book depicted (as did s1 to a certain extent); aziraphale is now in the heart of it, and i don't think it would be too out of field to say we might, respectively, see a lot more of the inner machinations of heaven than we have up to now. if we accept that there continues to be a litany of parallels between GO and the cold war for the characters personally (aziraphale and crowley, as well as multiple entities in the book/s1 (tracy/shadwell, anathema/newt, the them/johnsonites) are posed as adversaries to each other), it stands to reason that there would be a similar track upon which the story itself might very loosely follow, going into s3.

focusing solely on s1/book for a moment, we have the themes of espionage and surveillance made manifest by multiple references; agents meeting in st james' park or the museum (and aziraphale and crowley meeting in public places in general), crowley's comedic-but-insightful penchant for (and attempted embodiment of?) james bond, and aziraphale's list of professions that he's essentially used as covers since eden. the clandestinely-worded phone calls, the backdoor intelligence sharing between michael and ligur, constant means of surveillance that can be accessed at any point given the inclination, and the sitreps fed back to their respective superiors (to varying degrees of interest).

similarly - on a really basic level - we can look to the environment the story finds itself in. humanity - and earth by extension - is being divided up into good and evil, collectively under an overarching threat of punishment regardless. two higher powers with opposing, but equally faulted, ideologies carve up earth as its playground for an ulterior purpose irrespective of the consequences for those around and below them, who get no say in the matter. agents are sent across the borders on friendly liaison missions but with the covert assignment to gather intelligence, spread propaganda, and report back on what the opposition is doing. both are reluctant to make the first move into provoking out-and-out conflict because of the potential retaliation it could bring upon them, and instead employ means of spreading their own influence on those that will sway to one side or the other, and tip the scales that way instead.*

*albeit debatable where heaven's concerned.

but looking to the events of s1/book vs. cold war itself; a big example for me, and im sure im not the only one to have recognised or chuckled sensibly about it, is metatron's line: "we thought a multi-nation, nuclear exchange would be a nice start!". so, frankly, let's accept that armageddon is a direct...ish parallel for the cuban missile crisis. that would, on face value (because, in true GO fashion, everything gets reimagined and adapted for the narrative), make sense: a stand-off between two immensely powerful entities of the same original stock, both possessing equal power and capability, and both threatening to annihilate the other "just to see whose gang is best". obviously, armageddon doesn't resolve in the same exact way, but nonetheless both sides withdraw in the full knowledge that a reckoning is still likely to occur, and both are only kept at bay in a stalemate of what i think both heaven and hell secretly recognise to be, and are afraid will be, mutually assured destruction. a potential trump card lies in the second coming, to be sure, but in any case, as aziraphale and crowley discuss on the bench: this isn't the end of it.

but at which point, how far do we extend the analogy? given that real-world context has shifted between the times of the book and the show, how far can it extend, and how relevant would it be? well, arguably, it still is; recent conflict has proven this, and beyond that, even if the cold war has long ended, there is always conflict, and conflict because of opposing views thinking they are superior to the other. it isn't a complete analogy, but has enough similarity to be relevant. in which case, we could presumably look for an event in which there has been a symbolic sense of liberation and personal freedom, and apply that to be, potentially, the blueprint for the resolution of s3. my first thought would be the berlin wall.

because if we consider that heaven in the most rudimentary sense follows along the same lines as USSR/communist regime, the wall was built by the soviets. it was (and im really stringing this out, and grossly oversimplifying it - forgive me) built to prevent defection from east to west germany, to cut off east germany from the exaggerated allure of capitalism, and as a way to even up the power imbalance. whilst obviously not in any physicality, it's not too inconceivable that heaven would take a similar stance, in terms of policy, when it came to the fall - especially when considering how gabriel's intended punishment for subverting armageddon 2.0 was not to be condemned to fall and go to hell, but instead to be kept within the confines of heaven, hit with memory erasure, and a significant demotion to a role (and by extension choir/rank) that would keep him firmly under heaven's thumb.

furthermore, if we accept that the fall is the first notion of free will, ie. the choice to step away from a regime where your efforts are only in the interest of the state (👀 AWCW and his stars being for the purpose of fulfilling god's plan that will also see their dispassionately executed destruction in 6000 years, or so aziraphale explains 👀), then that's presumably the parallel advantage that hell offers. aziraphale even says, "surely the great thing about being a demon is that you can do whatever you want!"; crawly points out readily that aziraphale sounds jealous, no matter how quickly he tries to disparage that assessment.

however, if we consider that hell by extension of the analogy (getting more and more contrived by the minute) does represent the US/capitalism, how much of free will offered by hell is an illusion? well, arguably, it is an illusion; crowley seems more at liberty to do what he wants "as long as they get the paperwork", but he is readily pulled back to hell at any given moment, and equally under close surveillance throughout both s1 and 2. the grass is very rarely greener, depending on your circumstances, and there's no guarantee of anything that remotely resembles true freedom.

so let's go back to the berlin wall. quick, reductive summary (mainly to help me in trying to explain my thought process); the wall physically represented, and assured, the divide between the two 'sides', and when gorbachev's leadership started to reform how the previously hard-line regime was held in the eastern bloc, east germany started to take great interest in how this may lead to their own liberation too. east german military refused to fire on protestors, and many citizens went into hungary and austria, and back out into west germany once border controls had been relaxed. ultimately, in 1989, the barrier was opened, and piece by piece the berlin wall was brought down. germany later reunified, and the USSR was dissolved.

so, when talking about an "exit strategy for [those] who want out", i think this could have the potential to be extremely relevant - maybe not so literally, and not so much emphasis on the dissolution of heaven being the end goal, but more that removal of the divide between the two, allowing anyone and everyone to make their own choice for themselves - and do with their existence as they will, without fear of retribution - might be the answer. the cessation of being 'messed about'; not only from the viewpoint of how humanity is treated as a playground for these higher beings, but how the angels and demons themselves are messed about with, in turn, for ideologies/beliefs/purposes they possibly don't even truly understand anymore, and were only spoonfed in the first place.

whilst i do think, to some extent, that the focus of GO has shifted somewhat from the idea of liberation on a political level, and is more focused on that of a personal kind, the two for me can still go hand-in-hand. imo, both aziraphale and crowley still currently embody some of the ideals that keep them on opposite ends of the compass; crowley often acts (for a number of very good reasons) very individualist. aziraphale similarly often acts very collectivist. that being said, there are key moments where they cross over - it's not, ahem, as black-and-white as ive just reduced it to - and this only serves to highlight where the balance between the two speaks to true sense of self, morality, and subsequent liberation from having a 'side' at all. it makes sense that in s3 they would continue to exist in the grey, if they prove to be a driving force in how the overall story resolves - not to mention how it would contribute to the resolution of their own romantic subplot.

the crux of the matter is that, in the bigger picture, these two sides are not so fundamentally different; both, at the top of their respective circuses, instil a sense of, "the other side is the worse side, look! they are the opposition, they threaten everything that is right! they deserve to be eradicated!". and when it comes to those underneath them, the performers, it's much the same; that there is no difference whatsoever, and in fact you'll probably find you have more in common with your adversary, your opposite number, than you do with those above you - those that only value power, the security it brings to their own ends, and being the side to hold the most of it.

so having the freedom to choose, as far as i see it, comes from recognising that one isn't better than the other, and that there is no simple good vs evil; both define and give meaning to the other, and are often, depending on how you approach it, the same thing. it's all about perspective - seeing it, understanding it, and keeping it - and to be allowed to choose based on what you think is right... and what could mean a happy and fulfilling existence. however, to give that opportunity any credible foothold, it only works "if you start everyone off equal". maybe that might be the difference that aziraphale makes.

don't know if you observe/celebrate, LWA, but happy holidays to you and yours!!!✨💕

[spinningbuster98]

Castlevania The Adventure Part 2: -AAAAAAAAAAAAA-

So initially I planned to deal with both of the latter stages in this one video but I had a distinct feeling that stage 4 would cause me a ton of trouble so i decided to split this into two (spoilers: I was right)

If the game had not managed to make you toss your gameboy across the room until now then stage 3 absolutely will

Ladies and gentlemen we are looking at a 10 minute or so long autoscroller here

An autoscroller that moves at a speed that somehow managed to compare to that of the Heat Death of the Universe

Not only is this mind-numbingly slow on its own but the game makes it even worse due to its naturak slowdown

Oh yeah: the Adventure suffers from severe slowdown pretty often whenever there’s too much stuff on screen, especially in this level

Then you also add Christopher’s jog and the fact that this stage is pretty much littered with do or die situations where the margin of error for your jumps and wjop attacks is next to zero with inevitable death being your punishment and you get a level that you’re gonna be stuck in for potentially hours on end

Fun times all around!

Anyway given that the actual ending will be reserved for the next video let’s talk about how this small and simple gameboy game AND Castlevania III which released the same year somehow managed to mess up the plot of the series up until then! Oh yeah!

So according to the manual (including the japanese one) this is supposed to be the adventure lived by Simon’s ancestor Christopher Belmont that was mentioned in the first game’s japanese manual

Cool

But there’s an issue

That manual stated that Christopher lived about 100 years before Simon’s time

Wanna know another game that claims to take place “100 years before Simon Belmont” according to its intro?

Castlevania III

Even though that same intro also states that the game takes place in the 15th century, with Castlevania 1 taking place in the 17th century making it MORE than 100 years before Simon

Some may know that Trevor’s (or Ralph’s in Japan) full name is Trevor C. Belmont

That C is not random as it’s supposed to stand for Christopher

...yet here we see ANOTHER guy named Christopher

Also fun fact: the japanese manuals for both games also state that Dracula was a worshipper of Satan and that’s how he got his dark powers, though the manual for the Adventure does not contain any mention of Alucard or how Dracula presumably sold his soul for power

What seemingly happened is that the developers for both games had set out to both tell the story of Simon’s ancestor Christopher but they failed to communicate properly resulting in the games having this weird relationship

To be fair here I think this is more of an issue with Castlevania III than the Adventure, since it’s the former is the one that decided to take place during the 15th century while ALSO claiming to take place 100 years before Simon, which would have been a logical inconsistency regardless of the latter’s existence or not

Just thought I’d bring this up

[captain-astors]

Can you do Kaneki for 003 :)))

Mhm! That beautiful mess, the culmination of all I despise but the vessel through which we all must perceive this world. I’d like to shake him like a maraca. This one definitely contains… opinions. As usual it's messy and ramble-ish but I enjoyed it.

How I feel about this character: Wow you're so interesting I wish I could still care after 320 something chapters. Born to “slay” as the youth say, in all meanings of the word, forced to do math. Sometimes I imagine what sound he would make if smacked against a wall. Constantly, actually. I can effectively emulate it with an almost empty water bottle, a thin piece of fabric, a piece of metal, and a slab of gelatin, but I only have access to two of those and it’s not the ones you think. I cannot stress how much I want post-Haise Kaneki dead for plot reasons, but I do think he’s pretty neat before whatever the result of the Tsukiyama extermination arc is. I do like him, but I try not to ponder him too deeply because if I started getting seriously attached to him as a person, I’d have to be disappointed about his character as well. I’m already not normal about so many of them. So he’s more of a secondhand skrunkle, I watch a decent portion of the rest of the fandom go wild and sit back and tend to my own neglected favorites. Like observing a neighbor’s garden, larger than mine but wilder, containing so many varieties of plants I can no longer distinguish them, and perhaps a bit overgrown. Was he the first piece of Tokyo Ghoul art I ever drew? Yes- well no actually that was probably Nishiki or Shuu but I never posted those because they were just sketches, but he was the first that I posted, and kind of my gateway to deciding to let myself brainrot over TG without shame (mostly). So I owe some amount of gratitude to him. 

But at the same time he fills me with a deep sadness for what might’ve been. Tokyo Ghoul was praised for having some kind of ground-breaking protagonist but he just feels... edgy at the end of it, handed an undeserved win. Sorry.

(So an update from later this very same day, I drew him and now I want to hug him. NO. I MUST PERSEVERE. Alright Kuroneki is kind of cute and his nickname sounds like Kuroneko (As in the trigun cat) and I love Kuroneko.)

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: Protagonists are funny things to ship because they can be shipped with almost anyone. Almost the entire main cast? Been there and done that. Every character he’s been friends with? Certainly. Rivals? No rivalry is complete without a little homoeroticism. The villain? Is that even a question. That random character who appeared for half a  chapter? Someone’s probably done it. It’s difficult to pick a favorite but frankly I’m not particularly partial to any of them. Shuuneki is fun but it just feels out of character as soon as it becomes remotely healthy which is what all that pining causes me to intrinsically want which in turn annoys me so… I enjoyed it before I actually learned the story. Now I just can’t fathom truly enjoying a fic about them without leaving frustrated because at any given point, one or the other of them just wouldn’t work. Also I really want Kaneki to die alone. But though I’ll never be extremely passionate about it, I do think that Hidekane is kind of the best one. Like it’s not my ship but from an outsider's perspective I look at it and just go huh. Neat. This one actually seems non-headache inducing. I’m slowly consuming more of it but at the same time Hide deserves much better. I can’t fix you but I can hold your hand as you crumble or something. I will take this time to rant about Tou//ken. God help us all. I will start off with what I like because I am terrified of being burned at the stake by the shippers who actually read through this for some reason. Aesthetically, cool. As individuals, love them. Conceptually, it had great potential. I don’t think it ever could’ve been my otp but I could’ve enjoyed this. Now. DEAR GOD I HONESTLY ADMIRE THOSE WHO SHIP IT FOR EITHER HAVING THE IGNORANCE OR SHEER WILLPOWER TO ENJOY IT DESPITE THAT WRITING. It would be easier to ship two characters who we’ve never seen interact whatsoever (stares at my terrible rarepairs I would know) than to repair this trainwreck, so I suppose that’s a testament to your tenacity or your willingness to ignore the holes. I swear my copy of TG was missing chapters WHERE was their development. They only did things for each other when instructed to or in life or death situations when opposed by a greater threat, only thought fondly of each other when not together, and then got married and kids despite Kaneki being in a mental state nowhere near “intact enough to live a functional existence” must less raise CHILDREN. Like I refuse to believe Kaneki would be a great father. “Something, something breaking the cycle of a loveless life.” Where. Where did he learn to love healthily? Touka? Where? Where is that shown? They interact so briefly in such high-stress scenarios how the HELL am I supposed to know?

 Dear god I knew these two were going to get together. I steeled myself for it. I tried to enjoy it I swear I did but it feels like the marriage arc skipped the love arc and I don’t know how I’m supposed to appreciate the shell of a relationship left behind. But I respect those who manage. Like, if a character (Ayato) can go on a brief trip and come back UNDER A FEW DAYS LATER to find out, with absolutely no warning that his SIBLING is married to a guy now, maybe you’re moving just a little fast! Someone please explain this to me I feel like I'm losing my mind.

The Vegas wedding of Tokyo Ghoul, getting hitched in a cave while a homophobic gay horror creature exterminates 98% of your kind.

Also I find it funny that she managed to date a guy who both looks and acts so much like her dad. Touka you can do so much better you are leagues above this guy.

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: If Haise is included, Akira and the Quinxes. Family. If Haise is not included, probably… Hinami. 

My unpopular opinion about this character: Oh boy. He doesn’t really listen to anyone, and his cycle of self sacrifice for others because it’s the easiest route out is ANNOYING AS HELL. Points are made about it, but does he ever change? No he just keeps trying to die for “the sake of others” until the very end and keeps escaping the actual consequences, while others who have something to live for ACTUALLY DIE for his stupid martyr complex and I am SICK OF IT. He only fights for those he cares about because he’s afraid of being alone which is a very human desire but we never see him grow in it, he just keeps ignoring whatever he doesn’t want to hear, keeps letting himself almost die but he’s still “virtuous” and not a murderer to the narrative. Because the restaurant ghouls dared to have fun with the terrible cards they were dealt, so they deserved it! Because those humans in the dragon incident didn’t care, so they deserved it! And besides he wasn’t conscious anyways! Because Furuta dared to try to break the system that Kaneki decided wasn’t real, because he wanted to make sure the world never created a child like him again, so he deserved it! I could deal with him if the narrative actually treated him like what he is, “morally grey” is not an excuse to his actions it’s a byproduct, so just saying “it’s alright because he’s morally grey” doesn’t fix any of the issues with his inconsistencies! With his lack of growth beyond just getting worse, and being handed a happy ending anyways! Also why are all of his stans silent as the grave I hear barely a WHISPER out of you creatures yet you appear like phantoms to salivate over him when art is made and to sweep polls. I know perhaps 3 people who both actively post and I know for a fact would declare Kaneki their favorite. Where are the rest of you? WHERE ARE YOU HIDING? But godspeed to you.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: He feels so overwritten at the end, I really wish he either died, or that :re had gone the csm route and had a different protagonist. For our candidates for a new protagonist I would nominate: Hide. An exploration of a character who was born into a world that was hurting him, but chose to love ghouls anyways. Who chose to keep being a good person no matter how hard it was, (WHAT KANEKI DOES, DOES NOT COUNT AS BEING A “GOOD PERSON.”) He’d be a refreshing air of positivity and hope from Kaneki’s internal monologue. It’s so desolate it makes me want to commit amusing vandalism just to remember that bright colors are real and very lovely. I don’t have the energy to write out full explanations for all of them but I’d also nominate any of the Quinx squad members, Juuzou (I just want more Hanbee), Ayato, Amon, or Furuta. Or making Haise a person with a separate body.

Favorite friendship for this character: If Haise counts Juuzou, if not Banjou or Ayato.

My crossover ship: I’m tempted to say knives as a joke because they have the same english voice actor, (Who does a fantastic job as both but MAN his voice goes deep in tristamp.) Anyways Vash I guess. Go be self-sacrificial together you fools. (affectionate connotation for one, indifferent for the other.)

[saviourkingslut]

idk if ur not doing the fe3h asks anymore but if u r #8 pls!

sorry for only getting back to you now anon ive had a couple mad busy days. but ill gladly take any excuse to give my opinion lmfao

8. what storyline threads should have had more development / been further explored?

the whole argarthan plotline is just. such a mess. on the one hand the game tells is that they're a major player in fódlan's history and current politics - they orchestrated the death of lambert, resulting in the duscur massacre and the destabilisation of faerghus, weakening it for future war; they ally themselves with edelgard, though they support her and work against her in turns; they're directly responsible for jeralt's death and for byleth becoming enlightened, etc. they can nuke whole-ass cities. and yet at the same time? they feel completely inconsequential. if they hadn't been there almost every action they undertake could be foisted upon the adrestian emperor in one way or another, or in case of byleth's enlightenment, forced through in some other way (it's a world with gods and magic, it wouldn't have been hard to figure something out).

white clouds makes Such an issue of their powers and involvement, they build up all the mystery around tomas and thales and their involvement with the flame emperor, and then in the war arc they deadass do fuck all and show up as a complete afterthought in the last few chapters on ss and vw (and i believe on am you straight up take out a bunch by circumstance on the final map and it's barely addressed lmao like they genuinely disappear from the narrative after the timeskip). all the attention goes out to the war with adrestia - which isn't bad, bc that is the main story the game is going with and which should be fully developed, but the argarthans just fit into it so awkwardly that i feel like the writers didn't really know how to combine the red emperor plot with the argarthan plot. especially bc their goals do not actually always align with edel/gard's, so you can't treat them as a wholly allied entity either.

i don't have any real ideas as to how their writing could've been improved on, exactly, but their potential is pretty wasted. i mean, the whole 'mole people who live in an underground city and want to kill the last angels remaining on earth' feels like a bit of a reach, but ive seen weirder things executed well enough in other media. im still particularly disappointed with the way nemesis is shown to be a larger than life figure, a literal killer of gods, he looks fucking insaneee in the intro cinematic, and then he shows up in one final map and it almost feels like a joke. zero build-up, doesn't feel like anything is truly on the line. that's the problem with the argarthans in general i feel. edel/gard's war at least makes me feel something, especially on am: the stakes feel real, she has to be stopped. the argarthans are just kind of. there. and the game tells me they're evil so i guess ill kill them but they feel like annoying pale magic clowns to me more than anything else lmfao

[sundslime]

Another Object Comic Blog 2

Back at it again with another name change! This one’s probably the last one for a bit though.

A good amount of progress has been made on the idea of the comic since my last post in March. That is, I hunkered down with some buds and actually made a kind of rigid outline of how I want the plot to be structured. A good amount of ideas were leftovers from Exclusion Delusion but more fleshed out with a cleaner idea for a possible ending in mind, which makes me happy! Every time I’ve taken a stab at a comic like this I usually drop the idea because I don’t know how I’d end it, so having that in mind has been reassuring.

Here’s a mostly redacted look at the outline of the story, mostly for the sake of keeping things a surprise! Who doesn’t like a good surprise? I will leave a synopsis of the beginning of the story though, so here! Objects of many different locations live on a planet with only them and are all aware of/ friends with each other. Ornament is the main character of the story, who on their (TBD)th birthday travel around the world in search of artifacts warning of an impending doom. After a year, the end of the world takes the form of a competition in which each challenge takes place on a different planet.

Unlike the plot, the biggest point of contention has been the actual characters to appear in the comic! Truth is, there’s been dozens of characters that have had the possibility of appearing in the comic. Some as main characters, and others as more comic relief side characters. Sizing down the original fifty plus characters has been no easy task, and I’ve joined a bunch of calls with some buds trying to decide which characters should stay or go has been a struggle. I’ll probably come to this decision on my own since these are my characters and only my most cherished of children will make it in..

The spreadsheet above was originally where I listed out all of my ocs and we went through them all and talked about how which characters could act and little quirks they could have. I’d be a liar if I said it didn’t help give me an idea on the characters I FOR SURE wanted in.

Ornament’s a character I’ve wanted in the comic since day one, they’re GUARUNTEED to be a main character. I used them in this enviornment as a test of how I’d draw backgrounds in the comic.

As another small experiment, I tried to go back to my last comic Sunburn and redraw it with the skills I have now in a style I might’ve liked back then, I’m pretty happy with how it came out!

Below is another character with a similar style. She’s also guaranteed for the comic, her name’s Inkwell!

More onto the look of the comic...

I’ve also been messing around with a potential style for the comic. It’s another one of those things that I’ve been putting a lot of thought into, but at the end of the day I think I have a good idea for what I want to do.

My biggest inspirations for this comic have always been my favorite object shows (ONE, Battle for Dream Island Again) and their saturated colors and simple designs, and Homestuck and the many many MSPFAS out there (Vast Error, A Guy Gets Revenge). Drawing objects in this style consistently has been a bit of a struggle, but I’ve found myself gravitating towards big and round hands, and tiny lil’ feet.

I don’t know if I’ll lean as heavy with the gradients and blurs though, since they’ve given me mixed results. I think I like the look of them when minimally used so I’ll probably stick to that.

Another art related thing I heavily debated on using was sprites. At first, I wanted to completely opt out of using any sprites for the sake of simplicity, but with the help of some really nice people I not only re-sprited old characters, but decided that I might go with this sprite style for the new characters. They’re so silly that it’s been hard for me to say no!

Another thing I want to note before ending this post is that just like all of my other comics, I do not mean for this to be the job of a crew where I’m only a writer.

This is my comic, and something I’ve wanted to make. Chances are that just like Sunburn, I’ll be writing a large part of the comic and drawing a large chunk of the panels. I wanna carry the weight of this because its my story!!! With that being said, anyone’s welcome to help! If you’re interested, feel free to DM me on Discord @sundSlime#2003.

TLDR?

Progress on the comic has been underway, but there’s a lot of stuff left to iron out. Hope you guys like what I have so far! Have a good day :)

[dynared]

Well, I finished Knights of the Zodiac, and there's no getting around it. This movie SUCKS. Apparently, Macenryu wasn't very happy with the end product either, but at least he had Zoro in the same year which did serve as Western audience's big introduction to the guy. Honestly, that's the only reason I can see this film being so popular on Netflix right now, that people wanted more stuff with the guy that played Zoro, and turned this on. Unfortunately, when it comes to films that flop at the box office that do well on Netflix, they can't all be Bullet Train.

So what was wrong with the film? It boils down to the plot being a complete mess with a main villain who only really makes his presence known in the last 20 minutes. And that's the result of trying to squeeze Saint Seiya elements into an 80s direct-to-video action movie that in another lifetime would have been reviewed by an internet critic making jokes about the cliche lead. While your average LA writer will often say that it's a necessity to change elements from the source material for the screen, the fact remains that the original Saint Seiya really shouldn't be THAT hard to adapt. An organization monitoring the future goddess Athena and who knows that people want to kill her makes a public spectacle of her return to the world and recruits potential allies with a huge MMA tournament with a massive cash prize as well as the opportunity to secure a powerful artifact, the Gold Cloth/Armor. You hire Paul Felder and Michael Bisping to call some of the fights and really show the Kido Foundation making it this huge spectacle. The writing that tends to occur in movies with tournaments occurs as the various leads all meet each other, leading to the third act where the nefarious forces of the organization Sancutary and their chosen enforcer make their move.

Instead, we got a struggle between Sean Bean and his ex-wife over their daughter, mixed with an underground fight ring, and a main villain in Phoenix Ikki/Nero that has no real motivation outside of saying humanity doesn't need the gods, and who was otherwise in the background working for Sean Bean's ex-wife. Meanwhile, random elements from the manga are squeezed into a much smaller timeframe (Seiya's training with Marin, Cassios becoming another presumed main villain) but in a way that is far less satisfying than the original work. It's muddled, confusing, and above all, boring in large stretches since it feels the need to try and make the story fit the cliched skeleton rather than trusting the original work. The fight scenes in a vacuum can be OK, even entertaining, but they still seem to lack any sort of major set pieces or impact to really make the story work.

It's funny, that with One Piece being a huge success by being as slavishly subservient to the original manga as possible, Hollywood should get the hint that being closer to the original is better. But I kind of doubt they get the message. In this case, I think they avoided having the other Saints/Knights appear to avoid crowding the movie (and avoid Power Rangers comparisons, always an issue with Western writers), which wouldn't be necessary if it wasn't for the ex-wife who's an original character.

Skip this one unless you really, REALLY need to see Macenryu in something.

[ignisgalaxia]

The results are in! Honestly a lot closer than I was expecting. But now that I’ve heard a shit ton of other people’s opinions (seriously how the fuck did this blow up so much?!), it’s time for my take.

I’ve already said it, but I do not hate any of these shows. I think they all have potential to be amazing. That said, as they stand each show has one thing in common: bad writing. From what I’ve heard, Enterprise has bad writing with boring characters. Discovery has bad writing with good characters that need a fucking break. And Picard has bad writing with decent characters that were shoved aside for the legacy cast.

Like I’ve stated before, I haven’t seen Enterprise, but my dad has and he told me it’s pretty mid. And of all the shows, it’s the one whose characters I forget the most. It was also brought up several times that the show is very clearly a post 9/11 story and… I don’t know how to feel about that. I can’t erase it on account of I don’t know if it’s worth saving or not. It wasn’t saved from cancellation though, so take that as you will.

Discovery is… a mess. Season one was rough. I think it was a mistake setting the show pre-TOS. It really screws with canon and the whole war backdrop just does not work. Also I’m gonna say it, I hated the Klingon plot. I already don’t care about the Klingons, but each time they showed up in Discovery I cared even less. Season two was better, but not by much. Making Michael Spock’s adopted sister was such a baffling decision. Michael is a great character on her own, she doesn’t need to be tied to a legacy character to be given agency. And she should’ve been a captain from the beginning. I think the show finally found it’s footing with seasons 3 and 4, but with it being so far in the future it seems rather removed from the rest of the timeline. But overall, I really like the characters and admire how they’ve made significant progress in portraying diversity. I would save Discovery just for them, but they are in dire need of a better story.

But the point of this poll was to force people to choose, and if I had to, I think I’d have to go with Picard. Here’s the thing though: I don’t hate it. In fact my family loves Picard and I myself have found it quite engaging. What I hate is what it’s done to its characters. All of Picard’s original cast minus Seven’s girlfriend were tossed aside so that season 3 could be a TNG reunion. And even with the legacy characters, the writers have made their lives depressing. I do not enjoy watching characters suffer, especially ones that are so beloved. I do like where season 3 is going, but it’s so disconnected from the first two that I feel it should’ve just been its own miniseries. Seasons 1 and 2 feel so weird now. I honestly think the show should not have been about Picard at all. He had his time to shine, now let him rest.

Picard does have one saving grace though, and that’s Seven. It’s been great seeing how far she’s come since Voyager. Of all the legacy cast, she’s the one who still has a story to tell. So yes, if I had to choose I would erase Picard from canon, but I would replace it with a Seven of Nine show and give the new characters that were tossed aside the attention they deserved.

So there you have it. And now that I’ve aired out my grievances, it’s time to finally put this thing to rest. Thank you to everyone who participated, and especially to those who gave their reasoning for their choice. It was truly astounding seeing this poll get so much traction and hearing so many fans’ opinions. I hope that you’ll show the same amount of enthusiasm for my other projects!

Yes these are the only choices. All the other shows are great these are the only ones I have issues with.

[frauleinandry]

finally finished engage. it was... certainly a game alright. what it did well, it did well, but when it did things badly, it did them badly, and unfortunately, the latter overshadows the former.

tl;dr I’d give it a 6.5/10 overall. the gameplay was solid but had a couple of really irritating aspects that dragged my overall experience down, and the less said about the story, the better.

so, let’s start with the plot, since that’s the worst thing. it’s... bad. very bad. and no, it’s not bad because it’s not a bleak tragedy filled with morally grey characters and interesting ethical conundrums. after three houses (which I love btw), I wanted a stupid, light-hearted game ala awakening. engage’s story also isn’t bad because it was made to be child friendly (although I do find that a dubious decision, given how much the game caters to old-school FE fans, and the typical themes that normally appear in fire emblem games). steven universe is a great example of a show that’s child friendly, yet still tackles some dark content. in fact, while I admit I only watched the first season, she-ra is also a good example of children’s media that handles very similar themes to engage.  

no. engage’s story sucks purely because it’s poorly executed. everything interesting about alear is dropped after like 3 chapters, the pacing is god-awful, none of the lore is utilised to its full potential, the characterisation is all over the place (*cough* zephia *cough*), and the dissonance between the genuinely awful stuff happening (like the near genocide of elusia) and the cartoonish dialogue and characterisation is jarring. for scenes like, say, lumera’s death, the game is trying to make me feel things, but it doesn’t, because there’s absolutely no substance or development behind anything. it’s like IS tried to make a family-friendly story without actually understanding how to do that, and the result is a hot mess.

like. there is a couple of parts that did stand out, such as alear being resurrected as a corrupted, the time travel stuff, sombron’s past, and the way lumera and alear’s adoptive relationship is treated like it’s just as important (if not even more so) than alear’s blood family. most of those elements are completely glossed over though except for the adoptive family stuff (which is one thing I think engage’s story actually gets right). like, sombron’s whole deal with him not caring about elyos because it’s not his homeworld is really interesting! why was it just an off-handed comment in the last chapter instead of a running theme of his character?!

ultimately, I think engage’s story would be significantly better if the game wasn’t trying to be serious. the premise is dumb!! let the game be silly! ditch the war stuff (initially, anyway), and just have it be alear’s goofy misadventures travelling through the kingdoms collecting rings. let ivy and her retainers essentially be team rocket. let the cutscenes be hammy. let lumera be mission control, and actually develop her relationship with amnesiac!alear. then, at around the midpoint of the game, introduce the four hounds, and have them be the knights of cerebus. alear’s almost collected all the rings, but then the hounds take over from ivy (who bore no genuine ill-will towards alear), and lure them into a lethal trap. they take most of the emblems, and lumera sacrifices herself to save the main character. 

*takes a deep breath in* okay, now that that ramble is done with, let’s move on to the characters. they’re... not great, either. most of them are just one trope, and that’s it? sure, fire emblem casts are always going to be a bit tropey, but in engage, 95% of the playable cast has one gimmick which completely defines their every interaction. like, the cast of awakening gets accused of this same thing, but every character also has a bit of something else to them. in engage though, outside of celine, what you see is what you get. like, none of the supports were offensive or anything, and a few were cute/funny, but nearly all of them had no substance. it also really doesn’t help that there’s no paired ending (and ergo no reason to get A-supports), and support grinding in this game is dreadful.

that’s a perfect segway to the next segment - the gameplay. while it’s polished, and there are a lot of things it does really well, it’s got a couple of major flaws which makes engage more of a birthright than it is a conquest. for one, grinding anything, in general, is awful. the game is clearly catered for either iron man runs or for the players to ditch units as they get better ones. while this is subjective, speaking as someone who likes to use all the units they can on a first playthrough to get supports/etc, keeping all my units usable was a pain in the goddamn ass. who on earth thought basing the skirmishes on your highest-level units was a good idea?! the only way to level up weaker units is via the arena, which has very limited uses. the same issues pop up with getting money/supports - since the former requires you to do skirmishes which you can’t complete with your weaker units, it ends up with you getting over levelled (and who wants that?). support points only building from adjacent units was also an awful decision - it was fine in the GBA games when each character could literally only max one support each, but not in a modern title (especially given how bland the cast is - they need all the screentime they can get).

still, outside of that, most of it is pretty good! I was worried the emblems were going to completely destroy the difficulty, but they were balanced perfectly. enough to turn the tides in your favour, but not enough to make everything a cakewalk. emblem ike, lyn, and byleth were probably my MVPS - tanks are a rare luxury in such a player-phase-focused game, and byleth’s utility is just too good. speaking of difficulty, I’ve got to say, this was the first FE game I’ve found genuinely challenging in a while, which is great! i love three houses, but it’s a bit of a cakewalk, especially on a new game plus. engage though consistently kept me on my toes. the map designs were pretty good on the whole too - while they weren’t quite conquest tier, they’re some of the best in the franchise. I admit I still dislike the character art style, but the animations were a huge improvement compared to prior games. the map visuals were neat too - clear, concise, and with none of the murkiness that plagued the 3DS games/three houses.

I do have a couple of other pain points though. I found the somniel infinitely more tedious than the monastery - the rewards are worse, and the way you need to go to it after every map if you want to maximise its potential is a pain in the ass. at least you only really need to visit garreg mach once per month. tbh I think the base camp in three hopes actually did things best - good rewards, a simple layout, and bonus worldbuilding/character stuff that was completely optional. sommie is great though - he’s the best mascot character I’ve seen in a looooooooong time. one of the other dampeners was how player-phase-centric it was. this is purely subjective, but given how many reinforcements appear in this game, I wish there were more than two useful tanks. finally, I think the soundtrack was very generic by fire emblem standards. the music is normally brilliant, but I can’t think of a single song that stuck with me.