#dude just got his entire concept of reality destroyed at 13

[thebladeblaster]

I was rewatching moments from Hades chapter and just thinking “Imagine being Shun in this moment”

This must have been the biggest mind fuck of his life

Warning: Spoilers obviously

Hades smirking because his vessel just came straight to him

Shun being shook that their enemy has the same face as him (Yuya: First time?). I will seriously never escape thinking about Arc V fr. And this isn’t just any enemy. It’s a literal god who has your face. Imagine learning the entire reason you exist to be the vessel for a god that wants to kill everyone. Poor kid.

[kaiayame]

post s8 thoughts

the good, the bad, the mixed. 

the good

the marketplace at the garrison in ep 1! i’m a sucker for a marketplace. and allura got to go shopping!!

romelle was back! her hair was cute. 

i think the tone of the first episode was actually a really smart one to start the season on. i’m glad they jumped a few months (or was it a year?) since the end of last season. 

pidge and allura got some good bonding time in general this season. pidge giving up her game for allura was cute. and then when they were together on that planet where the olkari had lived, that was strong. 

pidge being upset about the loss of the olkari, lamenting over “how much more they had to offer us” was solid. i think they spent too much time on it, but the sentiment of mourning all the good that a people could’ve given the universe if they hadn’t been lost was solid. 

omg listen. keith and lance. literally sat together. just the two of them. watching a FREAKING sunset. and keith, in my opinion, basically said the nicest things anyone has ever said about lance to his face, and it felt like a confession of feelings from keith’s end tbh. the writers did that. they know that they did that. and it happened. it was real and so, so soft. i had to stand up in front of the tv while i was watching, clutching a pillow and screaming a bit. 

i think the amount shiro and coran were utilized throughout the story felt balanced. shiro especially has dominated so much of the story over the seasons, and even tho i love him, it felt nice to kind of have him become somewhat less of a focus. 

i think the episode where they got trapped in the ship with the monster was fun! did you see how crazy lance went when keith got stuck in that room with it?? 

the carnival episode!!! I love a good carnival setting :) i like that they all wanted to get something for allura.

the day 47 episode was also cute, imo. I thought it was clever. I loved kinkade! the overall concept could’ve gone really badly but it felt creative enough to me. I wish it had focused more on just the paladins, but still.

all of the MFE pilots actually didn’t annoy me this season, yay. 

veronica and axca had super gay vibes.

keith and axca didn’t happen! *throws confetti*

lance got called a genius by his fellow paladins! and they meant it! 

we got to see them all in their under suits and out of their paladin armor!

that short bit where Hunk made the recovered alteans food from their home world? I think that was actually more powerful and potent than the writers even intended. I thought that was really well handled and not heavy handed and had a lot of weight to it. 

the bit before the final battle with keith and lance alone at the war room table...................... prime, prime content. THEY HELD. HANDS. there was a CLOSE UP. i’m still living off of it. another “lost my shit” moment. favorite scene of the entire season. 

there was some genuinely good moments of humor. keith had some especially funny moments, i laughed out loud a few times, tho i can’t name anything super specific atm.....

it was nice that they tried to really work in the idea that unity is what’s important, and the best unity is built through love, and differences shouldn’t tear us apart and we are always stronger together, etc etc.... i think that was obviously the writers referencing our society’s current climate to some extent, so i appreciated them at least trying to touch on that, however generic and vague it was. 

they had some good new outfits this season?? it was nice to see the paladins in so many different clothes. and a lot of the garments were really cute!!

i like how often keith urged them to not give up. I think that’s another strong theme that’s existed throughout the series. it just strikes a personal note with me. i like how far keith has come as a character in general.

pidge’s mom making that flower for allura?? very sweet. 

i liked all of lance’s reactions to anyone mentioning someone having an interest in keith, haha. Obviously, i’m projecting, but still. 

i think the concept of ALL realities being threatened was actually great, because otherwise idk why they would’ve brought up there being other realities in the first place. the significant level of what was at stake with that being what the paladins were dealing with was a good choice. 

keith turning down becoming the new head of the galra. phew, thank you @god.

as always, studio mir is the lord’s animation studio and so much of the visuals were so excellent. can’t wait to see their future projects.

and honestly, it’s been fun. it’s been a fun show. it’s had a ton of problems but i cannot deny that i have seriously enjoyed watching a lot of it as a whole. 

i guess technically they did end the show on a gay kiss. 

the bad 

i’m not even that personally upset but it just goes to show how important an ending is. how a story leaves you makes such a significant impression. it’s probably the most important part of a narrative and OMG THESE WRITERS DO NOT KNOW HOW TO WRAP THINGS UP AT ALL, IT’S SO FUNNYYYYY.

so anyway, yeah........ episode 13.......................... what. 

like wtf was ep 13. 

what.

what even WAS THAT. PEOPLE got PAID to write THAT. 

lance became... altean? can that.... happen? also........... why???

and a farmer?? a simple life?? where did that even come from??? like sure, lance was homesick and missed rain one time. that doesn’t.... it just..... that doesn’t mean he should just be a random farmer?????? whose gf died, i guess??

speaking of that, OMG they fucking KILLED ALLURA. I COULD NOT BELIEVE IT. I CAN’T BELIEVE IT. WHAT A DUMB CHOICE. I’M STILL LAUGHING. I HAD NO EXPECTATION THAT THAT WOULD HAPPEN. WOULD NEVER HAVE EXPECTED THAT. AND YET IT DID. WTF. HOW CAN YOU MAKE SUCH A DUMB WRITING CHOICE. HOW???

and the fact that they didn’t even EXPLAIN why honerva & allura had to do whatever it is they did????? criminal. ridiculous. 

and all that aside, allura and coran’s relationship was so important and so special and the fact the she and him didn’t get a goodbye? garbage. unbelievable. 

and to add to that, all of her goodbyes were underwhelming. shiro being like “you don’t have to thank me for anything” umm, what. yes she does. you did a lot. wtf, what was with that?

like i love allura, but also, why was the ending SO FOCUSED on just her?? And by that, i mean including the choice to kill her off. VLD has always been about the group. It just was a weird vibe to end on for many, many reasons. The ending should’ve been about her and the rest of them recognizing how they were more than just friends or paladins. They were family... like ALL THE WRITERS HAD TO DO was have them all together at the end?? I’m not even joking. That needed to be the ending, point blank...... AND THEY COULDN’T EVEN DO THAT. WHYYYY

ok moving on but still related, I HATE slideshow endings like that, in pretty much anything that isn’t a documentary or historical drama. I feel like it’s such a cop out. Writers should find confidence and end their story on a specific note. Not a series of slides.

as i was watching ep 13, tbh, the title got me excited. “the end is the beginning” made me feel like they were somehow going to get thrust back in time for a brief second to the moment they all met at the garrison, or met allura and coran, and somehow that was going to get pulled into the finale as a way they could re-establish all the destroyed realities.... so i guess this is my own fault for just hoping for something that wasn’t there, but whatever.

i think lotor and zarkon also got some really undeserved positive recognition. like, they both killed a LOT of people... some things are just too little too late. 

lotor coming “back” was also like, half assed. it was weird. it would’ve made more sense for honerva to start jumping through different realities earlier in the season “looking” for a version of her son and husband that she could be with. 

too many big robots. like..... so many different kinds of big robots. i couldn’t care less. 

as always, a lot of the fight scenes were repetitive as hell. I wish they’d been more creative and written them taking on different approaches rather than just charging at the bad guys.  

WHERE IS MY FORMAL WEAR EPISODE

sorry to hate on allurance, but like, neither lance or allura felt like their actual selves whenever they were together or trying to be a couple... it was weird and sad. Lance barely ever acted like himself this season. 

I thought they threw krolia around a bit too casually. Like she barely pops up and when she did it almost felt like the writers were like “oh yeah, i guess we should include her every now and then”

i thought allura being like “i don’t have a family” to lance was bullshit. like, hello, coran and romelle are right freaking there. more alteans are showing up every day. girl, what tf do you mean???

allura was also kind of excessively mean on multiple occasions?? she was cutting people off, being unreasonable, reckless, and kind of dark..... i didn’t really understand the sudden downfall of her character when she’d started out as this sort of insecure victim, but season after season became stronger and stronger and an awesome member of voltron. idk, it just felt out of place to make her a part of the problem for the final act. 

i wish i had......... cried. i wish they’d written at least one moment well enough that i actually got to experience at least a little bit of a tear.

adam didn’t magically come back from the dead. 

OMG and the kiss between shiro and random dude???? IT WAS SO SLOPPY, I WAS SO EMBARRASSED. it was obviously thrown in at the very last possible moment because they were trying to cover their own asses about the adam thing. like, what was with that bad animation....

epilogues in general are just........ so bad. no one should do them. stop.

omg they never explained the altean colonies... 

honestly, as we kept getting closer and closer to the last episode, i was like....... they do know this is the LAST season, right??? they’re kind of running out of time??

that black entity thing should’ve been fleshed out more and had more of an actual purpose, especially because they touched on it before with the paladins of old. 

i feel like the writers just threw so many things out there over 8 seasons and didn’t actually.... resolve most of them. like, they needed to edit down sooooo much of what they were trying to do. it would’ve been such a stronger series overall if they’d just FOCUSED on the actual compelling parts of this story and its characters.

i feel zero closure tbh, lol. whatever.

the mixed

overall, i was pretty engaged for the most part from episode to episode, but i did get pretty damn bored a few times.

oh god, the leaks were real. it’s good and bad. 

lance and allura still felt SOOOO forced and awkward but at least they tried to give them some actual substance.

like I said before, yay romelle was back! but boo, she wasn’t as quirky or funny anymore :(

Slav bothering everyone was still quite enjoyable to me. i wish shiro had gotten roped into that more, tho. Missed opportunity.

Atlas didn’t feel quite as dumb... but it was still kind of dumb.

i thought honerva honestly held up as a villain. Maybe not a FINAL season villain, but meh. her motivation seemed legit enough and the lengths she was willing to go after 10k years of pain seemed real. I just..... ugh, i wish they’d stuck to her just being evil. Or revengeful. Lok tried to do the same thing with kuvira right at the end. there just... wasn’t enough time to actually do that right, in either case. Or if they were going to do it, Honerva should’ve sacrificed just herself and allura should’ve left with all the other paladins, and that could’ve redeemed her character if that’s what they were going for.

the 2nd episode that focused just on honerva was... fine i guess, but i thought they didn’t define the mixing of timelines very well. it would jump from one clip to another and i didn’t realize fully that we’d gone back in time, or returned to the present, or were seeing this important thing before moving on to another. idk, the order just didn’t work for me. 

i’m glad allura got so much more focus but i feel like keith had so many important story points throughout every season and it felt weird that he was kind of just in the background for the most part of every episode.... like if vld had a “main” character, i always kind of felt that it was slightly keith.... so i’m sad that he didn’t really get much of an ending.

and that being said, i guess this is just a negative, but i feel like keith and shiro’s relationship just didn’t matter anymore??? that was so weird to me?? it was such a focus for SO LONG, it didn’t feel good to just never address them ever. 

there was this really awesome momentum going in the first half of season 8 for this theme of “not holding on to the past / letting the old give way to the new” and they just….. totally lost it. Like, it just never came up again by the end, lol. But i liked it a lot while it was initially there. Just.... wish these writers knew how to stick a landing, jesus. 

like, that older olkari woman that pidge was trying to call out to? she probably had one of the best speeches of the season when she was telling that little olkari girl to go on and be a part of the future. that’s what i’m saying. it had good momentum. they just didn’t fully realize it :/

i think where they started to lose the narrative was in the two part episode, the knights of light ones. going into honerva’s mind seemed cool and i appreciated them trying to do a few interesting things with it, but bringing back the old paladins didn’t feel right. For some reason, I didn’t enjoy allura reconnecting with like, the spirit of her father. I felt like it was a loss that should’ve remained a loss. and yeah, just in general, having them bring up the idea of the benefits and power behind “the old making way for the new” just wasn’t supported by bringing the old paladins BACK... it felt counterproductive. i didn’t like it.

Anyway. I feel like i’m still forgetting stuff and I’ll probably go back and edit this post but yeah. Enjoyed a decent chunk of the final season. Cannot..... even believe how dumb some of the writing choices were. Will forever be slightly confused. Canon is whatever. I’ve still enjoyed this show and its characters and a lot of the amazing content fans have created for it, and it is what it is and at least it’s over and done with :]

[serabiet]

I hear you're accepting asks about Strange County, so would you mind sharing some facts about your version of Nervous Subject? Maybe do a five-facts meme for him if it's easier for you that way, or just write whatever you feel worth sharing - I'm not picky, as long as I get to learn more about the intriguing man in the long black coat. :) (also, this probably goes without saying, but I'm utterly in love with your blog and pics. Please never stop doing what you do!

Heyooo! Thank you so much and thanks for this ask!

This interpretation of Nervous as the Man in the Long Black Coat came to be after I watched the Dust Devil, a 1992 movie that’s not super well-known, but pretty memorable desert gothic horror with beautiful cinematography. It was the first movie in ages I had to rewatch the next day, look up what was going on locally at the time of making the film for context, and I just got a crazy buzz from it in general! Then I put on Bob Dylan (only I ended up preferring Mark Lanegan’s cover of the song as Nervous’s theme), and Nervous started to turn into the Nameless Man who flickers into existence only to fade out after he’s done what he came to do. Murder Ballads, gothic romance and horror, Sergio Leone’s westerns, all these things I love were factoring in. I also definitely pulled some juice from Stephen King’s Black Tower series, the Stand, and other works that involve his malevolent many-names-yet-no-true-name trickster being in black.

I have to give a shout-out to @emperorofthedark for how she’s spun him in her sim stories as well. Her dark and beautiful interpretations of the premades that taste like ash and metal are a major ingredient in what I’m cooking up.

With these as inspiration, his canonical heritage and (lack of) personality points, he’s a neat fit for one of my favorite concepts: the cruel not-quite-human who hears someone exhausted and lost calling to him, seduces, and then destroys them. It’s a ridiculous reach when you first think of Nervous Subject and add the word seduction there, but I can’t help but dig it a lot :D

[there’s a read-more under this that doesn’t seem to be working on mobile?]

In Strange County’s setting, he’s not a person living in town and greeting neighbors at the grocery store. No one knows (or remembers, if they’ve met him) he exists. People just disappear into the desert sometimes, leaving behind grieving and confused family members who don’t know he was involved. There is no closure or catharsis for the living, just melancholic sunsets and eventually, faded memories. His victims in the past have included Lyla Grunt, Annie Howell, and town’s previous sheriff. Olive’s the only one who knows who or what her ‘son’ is, but she’s not much of a gossip or a team player. She has other things on her mind anyway, what with not being entirely sure if she herself is dead or alive. Not that anyone would remember what she says, or having talked to her at all either.

Strangetown is Nervous’s playground. With the military abandoning its desert base, it’s slowly dying out, and turning into a liminal space where everyone feels out of place and surreal. Exactly as he likes it.

I’m not sure yet what bone he has to pick with the Beakers – other than the issue’s root will be inspired by the canon set-up – but he’s to blame for the couple’s disappearance, which is the catalyst that kicks up my story. He’s tied to the land, so maybe Loki dug too deep into the soil trying to compete with the Curious brothers’ research, and unwittingly summoned him. We’ll see.

As for his connection with Lilith, the sad sack of a gothic horror heroine? They go back almost a decade, even if Lilith doesn’t remember it. She ran away from home as a teen and ended up missing for years, only to come back changed. Her then-boyfriend Dirk knew where she was hiding at the beginning, but soon lost contact as well. After that, no one knew. Lilith came back a melancholic insomniac claiming a convenient amnesia, with an endless sense of homelessness, and abnormally good intuition when it comes to other people even if she can’t seem to relate or connect to all that many of them. Allegra’s one of the few exceptions.

The missing years did something to Lilith: she can walk the line, the foggy places. In Strangetown for some reason – besides Ophelia – she seems to be one of the very few people who can consistently remember the existence of 13 Dead End Lane and its lady. The house, like Nervous and Olive, both exists and at the same time, doesn’t. Back when Ophelia still lived in it, the house stood more firmly in this reality.

Well, that’s something about Nervous (and other characters) in my game! He’s definitely the antagonist of the story, and while not really a big bad, he does have a mean streak. Put plainly, he is death because his father is, and that makes him just part of the cycle instead of an opponent to beat. I’m fond of what he’s turning out to be in my game, and I hope I’ll be able to bring out enough nuance writing him in this light. Again, thanks for asking, I enjoyed talking about the demon dude! 8-))))

[tessatechaitea]

Justice League of America Rebirth #1

Batman's mom made him a coat of many characters.

Of course they always swing first! It's how comic books used to work! The bad guys were always bad. But then modern thought had to intrude and writers had to start asking questions like "But are they really?" and "What caused them to go bad?" and "If the bad guys aren't always bad, are the good guys always good?" and "What if we tear everything down and look at the whole superhero concept in ways that completely break the entire reason for the medium?!"

After watching the women fight for awhile, Batman makes his presence known. You'd think he would have tried to avoid unnecessary violence. You'd think that but his bat-boner would betray him. Black Canary is already referring to Seattle as "her city." Don't you fucking hate recent transplants who go whole hog embracing their new homes? They're as bad as the local news who do ads that are basically handjobs for the egos of local residents. Here in Portland, one station has a promo that's all "Portlanders. We're thinkers and players. We're beer drinkers and wine tasters. We're super awesome at sex and we don't use umbrellas. We are so fucking righteously awesome guys! Watch our news!" Batman explains that his team is a team of mortals and not a team of gods (except for Lobo, of course! Total god, that one). He also points out that Black Canary will be the team's conscience. I don't know how he figures that. I think he just wants to separate Black Canary from Green Arrow because he can. Batman probably hates Oliver Queen for stealing his rich white guy fighting street crime shtick. Next up is Lobo who is hanging out in New Jersey for some reason. Maybe because his secret identity is Jon Bon Jovi!

That's a pretty good description of Lobo.

One of these days, I'm going to write a Shakespearean play about Lobo. It'll totally be easy because he's got that whole "stick to my word" honor thing which can easily turn his life upside-down. Too bad he doesn't have a daughter named after a sexually transmitted disease though. So Killer Frost recruits Black Canary. Black Canary recruits Lobo. That means Lobo gets to recruit The Atom! I bet it involves human gauging!

Darn it. I wanted to see Ryan Choi inside Lobo's penis.

Now Ryan gets to recruit The Ray! I bet those two have a lot of fun together. Ray can turn into a beam of light and Ryan can ride him around! Probably. That sounds theoretically possible based on my high school knowledge of physics (which is mostly the knowledge of how many Gs the Tidal Wave roller coaster at Great America exerts on its passengers). Next on the list is Vixen. You probably already know the list since you've seen the cover and possibly read all of the JLA Rebirth one shots. Vixen is currently hanging out in downtown Manhattan channeling koi. I guess she wants to suffocate? Oh, maybe it's some kind of catfish that produces electricity. I've never had one of those at Popeyes. Batman tells Vixen that there is no team without her. That's a lie or else he'd have recruited her first! If she said no, was he going to fly back to Happy Harbor and call the whole thing off? Now that the recruiting is done, it's time to call the first meeting of the Justice League of America to order!

I love you, Lobo!

Remember when Lobo first appeared in The Omega Men? Batman should have forced Lobo back into his purple and orange costume. I love Lobo in a way that other people don't love Lobo. It's a special kind of love that most people don't understand. I don't care that he was meant to be an indictment of the grim and gritty mass killer characters popular among the moronic and stupid. Lobo, like Rorschach, transcended the authorial criticism inherent in his creation! Also he looks super cool and sexy, wears radical knee pads that don't make any fucking sense, rides a motorbike, looks like he's wearing clown make-up, has a butt-rocker sense of style, and is way into space dolphins. He's the fucking best ever. Batman has a big speech that's basically "Representation matters!" If that's true of this team then Lobo represents me! He's bad-ass and great at math! I know I said I was not able to do math in a Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps commentary but that was a lie. In reality, when I walked into my calculus class as a senior and one of the nerdy kids looked at my cool-ass Lobo look (minus the clown make-up and knee pads), he was all, "What are you doing in this class?" I just lit my cigar and said, "Sit down, ya bastich." After I came back from the principal's office for smoking in class, I totally rocked that math! There's an epilogue page that's not really an epilogue but one of those pages that was basically the entire story in Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #13 where it's just random images of future events to get fangenders and their crotches all worked up. This one shows Lobo and Ray about to kiss, Destiny talking to Killer Frost, Batman holding Liberty Belle's shield, and Ryan discovering Ray Palmer. Sounds super exciting! The Ranking! Best comic book ever! I mean, not really, but it features Lobo! Twenty stars! All the thumbs up! Fifteen tub girls! Super fantastic!