#but i'm hoping that's not for the FINAL ep

[spicyycarrot]

back in S1 I really gave the writers the benefit of the doubt, choosing to believe they weren't libs or centrists. that they didn't really think Vander collaborating with cops was good for Zaun, that they knew characters like Jinx aren't fundamentally broken and irredeemable but a result of trauma caused by systemic oppression.

I believed they knew about and understood real life systems of oppression but very cleverly and subtly told their story, trying not to spoon-feed the audience & shove political messages down anyone's throats.

but then season 2 being so rushed and fast-paced really showed me where their priorities lied, what they chose to focus on and it wasn't insightful social commentary or exploration of any character's psyche or whatnot (aside from ep 7 which was peak) - it felt like they were trying to elicit emotional responses out of the audience more than anything. Isha gets introduced and oh I'm sure they'll subvert expectations and keep her alive & give Jinx hope that she can change for the better and isn't a Jinx to the people she lov- oh nvm Isha's dead. oh Vi has a mental breakdown after betraying everything she once stood for, becoming an enforcer and subsequently falling into a depression & self-harming for possibly months, I'm sure they'll explore this inner conflict in more detail after this montage- nvm it's LITERALLY JUST THE ONE MONTAGE? ok this Maddie girl is sleeping with Caitlyn but she doesn't seem to have any logical reason or motivation to betray he- never fucking mind??? I guess there was just no reason?????

whenever I thought they'd subvert expectations, they just kept doing the most. fucking. obvious. thing. it felt like the writers were constantly really insecurely asking me "are you crying yet????🥺🥺🥺 isn't this sad omg🥺🥺😭💔💔 ARE YOU CRYING??? OMG THE ANGST🥺 TRAUMA🥺🥺🥺"

it felt like they were very trying way too hard and trying intentionally to replicate S1's organic feeling of loss, longing for "what could've been", palpable and relatable pain, empathy for fleshed-out and human characters.

and also, whenever something kinda obvious would've made SENSE, they didn't do it. e.g. Vi & Jinx reconciling in the end would've made for such a beautiful finale where the story comes full-circle, but they chose not to do that because framing their relationship as "doomed" is more tragic😔💔 I guess? despite the fact that we see them getting along like they used to and Jinx saying "I'm always with you, sis", they still make her (supposedly) stand between Vi and her happiness so they make Jinx, the suicidal character, fucking FAKE HER DEATH??

hey remember in S1 Act1 that one scene where Vi & Powder look at the skyline and Vi says "one day, this city's gonna respect us" and in that moment it feels hugely impactful and like it's setting up something important for later down the line and then NOTHING EVER COMES OF IT? by the end of S2, the former GOAT Vi is washed and a lapdog to her oppressors and Jinx is branded an irredeemable terrorist and as far as anyone knows, she died as such.

the creators/writers have always said they knew from the beginning how they wanted the story to end but I find it hard to believe this is the exact outcome they wanted. Arcane was always the story of two sisters in conflict, framed by a larger conflict between the Sister Cities. neither of those stories felt like they came to a satisfying resolution or natural conclusion. S2 abandoned the heart of the story in favor of the eponymous "Arcane" storyline and you can really tell that it made this season weaker.

what makes this all particularly upsetting to me is that I expected better of Arcane of all shows. I guess it's on me for having such high expectations but I wish season 2 hadn't been as disappointing as it was.

No actually I need to add on more to this. Arcane very unfortunately suffers the same issue that a lot of "progressive" shows suffer in Western media, where they go like "here are some real, systemic issues that exist and look at the consequences of these issues", and then either (1) forget to continue with the theme, and/or (2) don't do anything about it beyond slap on a half-hearted Band-Aid solution that never addresses it.

Caitlyn gassing civilians; lack of accessibility for Viktor which created barriers for him due to his disability; enforcers as oppressors, going hand in hand with Noxian imperialism; Jayce weaponzing hextech, and him already having killed a child because of it; not a single moment is really spent on any of these in S2. If anything, the enforcers are really flattened at the end of this season with little nuance, the complexity that shone in characters like Marcus and Grayson disappearing. Many Piltovan characters do not get even a single second of introspection as to how their actions actively contribute to the oppression of Zaun.

[marshmallowgoop]

no thoughts just Heiji Hattori (HD)

[dimension-20-every-introduction]

Everyone Introduced in Dimension 20's Fantasy High: Junior Year episode 20 (finale)

[skrunksthatwunk]

idk if i've discussed it before (i have certainly THOUGHT about it) but someone on my kuwa suffering ep 89 comp mentioned it and i just had to go off about it like. ok. sensui tells yusuke something along the lines of "you heard itsuki" when itsuki's inside the uraotoko, implying that not only can sensui hear those inside the uraotoko, but that he expects yusuke to be able to as well. which means that yusuke Almost Certainly Heard And Kind Of Ignored kuwabara's prolonged mental breakdown and wailing about how much he needs yusuke to live etc. which. guHHH i hate him yusuke you ass but also listen.

the only acknowledgement yusuke gives to this (if any) is when he says something like "sensui you're sooo fucking cooked this plan's going perfectly (my friends are going to get strong and kill you when i die)." he's trash talking to sensui, ignoring the others because, i think, he doesn't want to acknowledge what he's doing to them.

yusuke is explicitly recreating the experience he had with kuwabara's "death" at the hands of toguro, complete with the announcement of intent (and power) to kill, the inability to impede the threat in any way (barring a power-breakthrough), and the target in some way racing towards/volunteering for their death. yusuke learns through doing, and through tough love-style approaches. it's only effective if it hurts. watching kuwabara die like that was devastating to yusuke, but it sure as hell fucking worked. he beat toguro because of that maneuver. so even if he has to (re-)traumatize his friends in the process, this method will make his friends stronger, and he feels confident in that. but he never had to live with the consequences of kuwabara's death, not really. that's something hiei makes clear before they enter the cave as well, that there are no fake-outs ready to make him or anyone else stronger. the only deaths here will be real. the only power gained will come at a high, permanent cost. hiei's warning is an attempt to keep everyone alive, to keep yusuke from being stupid. and then yusuke decides to take that fatality into his own hands, but it's kind of his friends who would pay the price. he's going to make them live through the days, months, years without him, the actual permanency of loss (assuming they survive for that long), something he never experienced with kuwabara (a new facet of that traumatic scenario), AND he's escaping the emotional fallout of this choice through death. he doesn't have to see them mourn, won't get yelled at, won't watch them fail to move on. he's tapping out and choosing to believe they'll be fine.

but i think he feels guilty. just a little. i mean, yusuke couldn't even believe that people cared about him enough to want him alive in episode one. he's staked everything on his friends, which means he still kind of... doesn't value his own life, at least not compared to theirs. but he believes his friends love him and want him around, and we know that because he has to, or else he wouldn't make a plan that depends entirely on that love. he is actively leveraging the care he doesn't think he deserves, trying to hurt them in a way he is intimately familiar with (only worse), for.... what, exactly?

this is kind of my sticking point tbh. i don't think the answer is... super clear, but let's start with what it's not.

yusuke is not doing this because it is the most practical way to save all of humanity; that would be the mafukan, which he stopped. it could be a gamble to save all of his friends? the mafukan strategy would guarantee koenma's death/eternal imprisonment, whereas this strategy gambles all of humanity on the chance that his friends come out of the Easy Break Oven strong enough to avert the end of the world. if the sacrifice of even one friend is completely intolerable, perhaps he'd accept those slim odds and their steep consequences. yusuke tends to take risks like that, especially when he's got fight-induced tunnel vision. he doesn't think things through too much; his schemes are usually dependent on surprising his enemy enough to oneshot them. truthfully, i think this is the closest we'll get to an answer, and it's a more conventional one for this kind of story. but there is another layer i haven't been able to get from my mind.

i think yusuke is gifting each of his friends an honorable warrior's death.

so, in case it needs saying, yusuke, kuwabara, kurama, and hiei all (at least once, if not several times) exhibit a desire to die in combat in a way they deem noble to give their lives purpose (usually by self-sacrifice, but sometimes by another metric of honor, like hiei's duel with shigure and his desire to die in mutual defeat against an evenly matched opponent; or even kurama's decision to fight shigure in his human form, displaying a sort of passive suicidality via placing being true to himself in this (somewhat symbolic/inconsequential) way over survival). they need to make their lives count for something, because they feel guilty for being alive (kurama and hiei feel guilty for their past actions (hiei's is most evident in his distance from yukina, though that's not its primary reason), hiei, kuwabara, and yusuke have all been ostracized and made to feel like burdens on/unwanted by their caregivers and general society; all four of them have felt profound isolation even from their loved ones (yusuke and hiei are rather obvious; kurama can never tell his mother about the majority of his life nor what she truly means to him in the context of it; and kuwabara is separated from his peers for his spiritual awareness and his "stupidity" (plus his parents aren't around? and he is Desperate to define manhood/manliness through a broader pop cultural one which includes the warrior sacrifice thing bc he has no male role models BUT that's for another post) (i will admit kuwa's the most tenuous one here irt isolation)). they want to die for a cause so badly it's actually physically painful to me. it is passive suicidality, and they define their lives and identities by their relation to, engagement with, and skill at doing violence, etc. they live to die by the sword. anyway. nobody talks about it but i think it's very important to understanding what yusuke's doing here.

because i think he knows that about himself and his friends. they're kindred spirits. at the very least he knows this about kuwabara, who literally made a speech about this before diving into toguro's fingers In The Event That He Is Recreating Explicitly. he is dying nobly like they all want to on the chance that they'll get to break out and fight sensui rather than dying without even getting to take a swing. it's about his pride and theirs. but i don't think yusuke necessarily believes they'll win. he knows better than anyone how strong sensui is, and how wide the gap is between sensui and team urameshi. his stated position that humanity is doomed and that he doesn't care about its fate is, i think, not completely genuine, but if we take it at face value, he's not killing himself so that his friends can survive the end of the world. something's going to come around and kill them eventually. he's doing it so they can survive long enough to fight sensui. he needs them (specifically kuwabara) to be strong enough to free themselves to begin round two. but he's given up on their side winning, on humanity surviving, on his own victory---why should he think his friends are capable of winning? this could be another case of yusuke's fight-blinders. it could be another gamble, more blind faith put in his friends. but honestly it reads more to me that yusuke's giving them a chance to die together on the battlefield. them winning would be great, but it's not his goal. it's a pipe dream.

he knows he's going to be killed. they're probably going to be killed, too. but to make it so they last a little longer against sensui, to make the odds a little more even, so they are killed not like livestock, but like worthy fighters, he'd die a little faster. it's the best kind of death someone like them can have; and he'll deprive himself of it just to make their ends a little sweeter. even if the road to that is far more bitter.

but it's not like yusuke's friends know what he's thinking or agree to it, and he can't exactly make his case for it in the moment. he's making that choice for them. whatever his intentions, whatever odds he thinks they have of beating sensui, he's kind of sealing all of their fates. so how the hell is he supposed to acknowledge kuwabara screaming at him not to die, trying desperately to express what yusuke means to him in what could be their final moments together? this plan is going to hurt his friends terribly. it is already doing so, and he can hear it. his choices to stop koenma from using the mafukan and to die for his friends' strength are both selfish in some way, no matter how you read the scene. if yusuke comforts kuwabara, he might not get strong enough. if he twists the knife, well... how could he forgive himself? and either way by responding he would have to face them all and say yes, i'm doing this regardless of your feelings (with the intention of hurting you). so i think he does what he often does. he avoids it. he lets that emotion glance off him and his bravado and his one-liners so he doesn't have to deal with the fact that he's hurting people, that he's scared and guilty and unsure of himself. that he's about to die again, about to put kuwabara through the grief he saw at his wake again, only worse; about to put his quieter friends through something similar.

yusuke is confronted with the responsibility one has to the people who care for them, and he runs from it in an attempt to give them some small peace. just like when he died before and thought hey, at least my mom and keiko won't be burdened by me anymore. because the only thing he can really do for them is die.

[namtanlovesfilm]

watch gmmtv NOT do a cooking crush final ep screening & fanmeet when it's all I've waited for since I moved to thailand 💀

[loveackermannn]

when i came to the realization that everyone in aot technically DIED at some point after seeing the civilization of paradis change throughout time really made me go :,DDDDDD

[lunaetis]

[ probably no writing today bc i'm catching up on the things on my watchlist. i'm going to be out during 31st & 1st and i'd already have to be back to work on the 2nd so i want to get as many things on my watchlist done as possible ! hope you guys are having a good day / night on your end ! ]

[helpimstuckinafandom]

JUSTICE FOR DAVINA CLAIRE I'M SO FUCKING SERIOUS FUCK OFF OH MY FUCKING GOD

[fridayyy-13th]

hhhhhhgh. what an episode.

[violetsareblue-selfships]

good morning!! <333

[megaclubdiolis]

柄本 佑 || 「光る君へ」 (2024) · 第二十七回 「宿縁の命」 ​​​

[deadringers2023]

promise to get some sets out soon! we had a major family emergency a few days ago and it seems like we're finally over the worst of it. plus, i started my summer class last week so it's just been a lot! but! i swear i'll be returning with some sets soon, a new blog url, and a follower milestone post! i hit 100+ weeks ago and i feel like that deserves to be celebrated lol!

[bedlamsbard]

Now I'm just mad and that makes me sad. :/ I really do try incredibly hard not to hate things in this fandom, which doesn't always work out because, you know, feelings, and I don't want to think about hating things! I want to think about things I like!

[suginoyosuke]

ok I've only watched the first ep of bloodhounds but the choreography is so good?? like on par with my name but boxing

[hypershocked]

good news

i think im over riptide and simply no longer give a shit

[justplaggin]

Your thoughts on the new episode ??