#especially how this is clearly from the early half of the episode

[kyanitedragon]

I'm finally watching The Original Series for the first time (after having watched basically every other Star Trek series) and man is this a fun trip!!

I know all the Trek lore from the other series, but amazingly I've managed to avoid the majority of TOS spoilers. And the few spoilers I do know, I have very little context for them.

And so, with that unique perspective, here are my thoughts:

TOS is equally so similar to and so different from the later series.

The lore, the characters, the set up — it's all the same. It's clear that Gene Roddenberry knew from the get-go what he wanted this series to be.

And yet the series is just so 60's. The dramatic music cues, the dramatic zooms, the over-acting in the fight scenes. Even the starship design looks so foreign to me — so angular and square and with so many buttons.

It's entertainingly frustrating to me how ill-equiped Kirk's enterprise is against inside threats. Kirk doesn't have a main head of security, and he rarely uses security on-board at all. The amount of times that people just waltz out of sickbay when McCoy turns his head, how so many antagonists straight up walk onto the bridge, the amount of times characters enter others' rooms without permission??

Kirk is so casual as a captain and I absolutely adore it. Voyager is my favorite Trek specifically because of how they all become a found family throughout their journey. And TOS has that from the get-go! The very first scene we see is Kirk and McCoy joking around on their mission — clearly old friends.

And it's not just his friends McCoy and Spock, but Kirk is rather casual and lax with his entire crew too. I love TNG and I love Picard but I was never a personal fan of how authoritative and professional he liked his ship.

I like seeing all the likely inspiration from these early episodes. There's so many episodes with mischevious god-like aliens, and I just know they had to be inspiration for Q. Especially Trelane, who literally put Kirk on trial like the very first episode of TNG. So many episodes revolve around computers wanting to achieve "perfection", which likely lead to the Borg. Especially Landru which had a speech that sounded a lot like the Borg.

And Kirk and Spock. Man, where to even begin? Obviously I knew people shipped them, but... Wow.

I'm honestly a little shocked that Trek did go more authoritative in later Treks. Kirk and Spock are just so close. Kirk is so handsy. They banter and joke back and forth all the time. It's so far away from the professionalism of any other on-duty starfleet officer in any Trek. And I absolutely love it.

Kirk and Spock start the show already friends. I had no idea this was the case going in, I thought episode 1 was going to be them meeting for the first time as Captain and Second Officer, the first day of their mission — just like all later Treks do. And I got so excited when I realized they were already best friends.

And I love how, despite already being so close, their relationship just evolves from there. For the first half of season 1, I thought they were cute, sure, and they had some moments, but I didn't see the big deal. But by the second half? Oh. Ohh I understand now. I get it.

And I love the consistancy between episodes. The show isn't serialized, it's episodic, and yet if you pay attention, you can catch little references and connections to previous episodes. Kirk mentioning he has a brother at the start of the season, and one of the last episodes is about his brother dying. Kirk learning that "half-breed" bothers Spock early on, and knowing to use it when he needs to get him angry in the last episodes. Just to name two. And I've poked around the fandom and seen you guys mention so many more little callbacks that I had missed.

Later Treks do a good job giving pretty equal screentime to their large casts. But TOS is so heavily focused on the Kirk, Spock, McCoy trio. It's not a bad thing, I love them together, but it just feels weird to me. Similar to the security thing, it also feels so inefficient and dangerous to have the Captain, Second in Command, and Chief Medical Officer on almost every single away-mission.

McCoy is so interesting to me. Later Treks tend to keep their doctors mostly in sickbay. But McCoy is almost constantly on the bridge just hanging out. It feels weird to have the doctor as a main character, but I had always wanted the doctor characters to have more screentime, so I'm definitely not complaining!!

And on a similar note — Spock is blue. He's the only Second in Command of all the Treks that wears blue and not Command colors. I've been so used to seeing barely any blues among the bridge crew, and now TOS has Spock and Bones both in blue and on the bridge near-constantly. I always wanted to see more Science officers in the main cast, so it makes me really happy to see it.

I've only finished Season 1 of 3, but already I have a feeling it's gonna be competing with Voyager for my favorite Trek series.

[lonestardust]

no because if we get some kind of paralleling conversation of their resolving conversation in 2x04 where they grow through what they go through together even more — where TK tells him that he's fully on board.. and as long as carlos needs.. and reassures him that on a positive note, nothing ever stays the same.. that he's so valid for 'i just want us to have a chance to be us' because TK understands that Carlos has felt unsafe for so much of his life, that he has a very different experience from him as a queer man who has struggled so much navigating a heteronormative functioning world and a family that made it even harder to simply be himself. that it hasn't been so long either since he's found TK, whose love is so right and unconditional and keeps on reaching new phases and so he just wants to savour the comfort of it and be in the moment before there is anyone else to care about.

[vamppilled]

‘murder family’ is such an interesting part of nbc hannibal especially within the fandom because theres a weird idea of it ingrained into half the fandom’s brains and i think it skews people’s perception of some parts of the show. i feel like i’ve seen so many people talking about the idea of ‘murder family’ running away together post mizumono if will hadn’t betrayed hannibal, and a lot of hannibal fans genuinely believe their dynamic would have worked and they would all live happily together which makes,,, absolutely no sense. a lot of the fandom has this idea that hannibal and will loved abigail and she loved them which is a nice idea but it’s just so far from the truth. abigail was a traumatized teenage girl who lost her father and was desperately trying to survive in a world where everyone was after her. she and hannibal were both keeping each other’s secrets and she was close with him because that was her only option for survival. i can see the argument for abigail caring about hannibal, she clearly was bonded with him since he offered her the possibility of a new life. her relationship with will is so much more complicated because it’s the one that the fandom gets the most wrong in my opinion. will clearly cared deeply for abigail, but this wasn’t born out of love. he obviously felt immense guilt because he enjoyed killing her father, and he says very early on in s1 that he feels responsible for her. he also says himself in his discussion with alana in episode 1 that he knows his idea of his relationship with abigail is in his head, she says “dogs keep a promise people can’t” (might be getting that quote wrong i’m writing this all from memory) and he says (very loosely paraphrasing here) that he knows his idea of who abigail is to him isn’t who she really is. as he desperately tries to connect with her and assume a weird sort of parental role throughout s1 we see abigail become visibly uncomfortable. she doesn’t love him or even care about him the way she cares about hannibal, he killed her father who she loved despite his crimes and their fucked up relationship and she can’t forgive that. she physically flinches away and looks scared when he holds her hands in s1 (don’t remember the episode but it’s during the discussion about how she enjoyed killing nick boyle i think?? the lighting is greenish and it’s in the psychiatric facility). hannibal found abigail interesting and used her to manipulate will, she was just an instrument in his plan and he couldn’t love her because he didn’t see her as an equal.

[johannesviii]

Parallels, foreshadowing and narrative echoes in Infinity Train Book 3 episode 1 "The Musical Car" [1/2]

I can pinpoint the moment I rewatched that episode as the one when my obsession with this show went completely off the rails pun intended in early March 2024. I haven't been normal about it since then even though we're currently in November. Of course almost every series ever made uses parallels and foreshadowing in some capacity, it's just that Infinity Train episodes are about ten minutes long and there's an amazing amount of foreshadowing, parallels and other narrative echoes packed in those first ten minutes and it drives me nuts

I'm not going to explain most of these things. Some of them are incredibly obvious, some aren't. I'm just listing them so we can scream about them together and hopefully I'll feel less insane afterwards

Also I had to make two posts cause I hit the new image limit. Kill me

Let's go

A familiar place becoming hostile and unfamiliar

The first time we see Grace in this Book, she's basically reenacting something she wanted to do as a kid, except now she's the one in control

I also can't help but notice there's three different versions of Hazel from three different angles when Grace is questioning her own decisions in her tape and her mind is basically using Hazel as a mouthpiece for that. When I look at you I see me

Dance lessons foreshadowing

The first time we see Simon in this Book, he's painting a miniature, and it's part of a series of parallels which makes me ESPECIALLY insane. Something about him seeing himself as a little soldier, then treating Grace as if she was one of his miniatures later on. Bear with me for SIX FUCKING GIFS here cause it's a whole extended metaphor which keeps reappearing through the entirety of Book 3 and I've never seen anyone talk about that specific one. Maybe it deserved its own post. Too late now

He clearly loves to collect stuff. I wonder who he got that from, uh

Cool radar design. I wonder where we saw that kind of round, clockpunk-adjacent type of tech before

So there's two halves of one mask, one half is golden and represents comedy and it's on the right, one is the mask of tragedy and it's on the left. Cool, cool, nothing to see here

Grace learned from the best

Not bad, Simon. YEAH UH, SO, ABOUT THAT-

"I was ten"

"never trust an adult!" being weaponised later on

Only one half of the mask survived - the right side, now a tragedy mask and placed on the left side of the screen. Wow I wonder if this foreshadows anything about how this story will end, uh

All of this happens before the title card even appears on screen and I already hit image limit. I'm fine! I'm fine

Here's part 2

[ilikekidsshows]

Miraculous WAS a good cartoon, right? There were the seeds and setups for something pretty special there, before it went off the rails (and claimed that those were the real rails all along, metaphor falling apart, whatever). Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir was compelling enough that we still put our minds to talking about it long after new episodes cease to hold any appeal for us.

Are there other stories you used to like that turned out super disappointing, but some blorbo or plot line still won’t let go? Would you say there’s a factor that determines whether or not you stay motivated to make fanworks for a disappointing story?

---

Miraculous was never a flawless show, but its flaws used to be a lot more understated, like, a whole lot. The thing about Miraculous is that the Miraculouses give us a really good story engine, there’s a good balance between school drama and superhero action, and we have a large cast of colorful characters. There’s something for everyone’s tastes. Miraculous was designed with a wide range of appeal on purpose and it worked. The early seasons also leaned into these strengths.

A big factor in this are the Akumas. We used to get a different Akuma in almost every single episode, with the entire episode plot revolving around the Akuma victim’s troubles and life. This format is very similar to the original Sailor Moon anime, where Usagi would meet an acquaintance or stranger who’d be targeted by the villains to absorb their energy or turn them into a monster. The Akuma victims getting such high billing also meant that having the classmates get targeted was a really easy way to showcase them.

The focus on resolving personal problems and misunderstandings also meant that the show had something to say about relationships. So many of the show’s problems are caused by miscommunication, especially for Marinette herself, that it functioned as a central theme for the series. With the inclusion of the Marigami arc, where Marinette learns to look past her personal wants to see Kagami as more than an obstacle for her happiness, and episodes like ‘Party Crasher’, where Nino and Marinette both realize they went overboard for Adrien, Marinette was clearly learning to be more considerate and aware of others. This was a very relatable, consistent and solid theme that made the show easy to get into.

But, like, these weaknesses in the writing team didn't come out of nowhere, hence why a lot of the problems were there from the beginning, like inconsistency. The difficulty the writers have seems to be in concluding stories and arcs. It often seems that the team knows how stories usually end, but they don't know why they end like that, so they just try to “subvert” the common conclusions because they might think, like many TV writers these days, that being clever is more important than being consistent.

‘Reflekdoll’ is such a good microcosm of how the writers have a hard time with completing stories, since everything alway comes down to ‘Reflekdoll'. Usually the power swap episode starts with the heroes not appreciating each other or their powers enough and ends with them learning to appreciate each other more, but, in ‘Reflekdoll’, the episode starts with Cat Noir saying he has the easy job and Ladybug calling him a jokester, and then the episode ends with Cat Noir “admitting” that he didn’t realize how much work being Ladybug is and Marinette "learning" that Cat Noir really is nothing but a clown that she never has to worry about, meaning they actually learned nothing, because the episode snaps its internal consistency in half in order to finish off with dialogue that reaffirms their female protagonist. In addition, Adrien actually learns that he isn't fit for important roles. Season five has concluded and they both still believe these things, despite us getting a redo with a more “proper” take on a power swap, so it wasn't that ‘Reflekdoll’ was a one-off parody of “what did we learn today?” episodes like The Owl House’s ‘Once Upon a Swap’ where the lesson is meant to be bad. It's just messy writing.

Part of the problem, I feel, is that all that potential and setup and successful episodes like Heroes Day made Miraculous so popular that the writers got too cocky and started including more stuff that they couldn’t actually write consistently or well. They thought the audience would consider anything they wrote good or they thought they had to reach higher levels of “hype” by including shiny new ideas to keep things from getting “repetitive”, like they phrased it in the London Special. All previous character arcs get dropped. Instead it’s all about creating moments that will trend on social media, either in terms of “twists” or romance scenes. So that was where they put their focus, on romance scenes and creating “surprising” twists and “subverting expectations”.

Another aspect of this cockiness is that seasons 4 and 5 are too ambitious for the writing crew’s skill level or writing style. The Miraculous crew, as I said, is good at writing isolated scenes and sometimes whole isolated episodes, when the episode is so simple that they don’t end up accidentally contradicting themselves by forgetting what they wrote for the beginning. This means that seasons 1-3 being mostly episodic with some recurring plot threads played to their strengths, but part of the hype for the retool was changing Miraculous to be more serialized, where the episodes have a proper viewing order, which is why Astruc was asking people not to watch episodes out of order when they kept being dropped whenever.

Yet, once again, most of the actual development in seasons 4-5 happens in the premiere and finale, just like in the more episodic seasons. The thing about a continuous plot is that you need to actually have a continuous plot that moves along every few episodes at least instead of the characters spending fifteen episodes faffing about before anything important happens again, basically just having a different status quo for one season, or having a single other plot-important episode in the middle of the season to fake having continuous plot progression, but that actually is just two status quos (like S5 being split into “Marinette tries to move on from Adrien” and “Adrinette are dating” status quos). In addition, several details get changed as the episodes progress, making what little continuity there is contradictory. The Miraculous crew can’t write a continuous plot because they can’t keep their details consistent.

The London Special gives us a lot of evidence that this is what’s going on. It’s almost as meta as ‘Simpleman’, with Alix making comments about getting a working formula but then needing to change things up to keep things interesting. She is literally describing how to write an episodic, formulaic cartoon, which Miraculous isn’t supposed to be anymore. Miraculous is being hyped up as a continuous story, but it’s being written like an episodic one, where character development takes forever to stick, if it ever does, and plot threads get dropped as soon as a newer, shinier idea comes along.

This is the thing with Astruc constantly defending people being confused over his writing with: “You’re thinking too complicated” or “Keep it simple”: he’s a simple writing guy. Give him a premise and a status quo and he’ll keep it going for several seasons. But he can’t deliver a more complex story or concept in a way that the audience can just instantly pick up on, which makes his favorite defense so silly, because the one making things needlessly complicated and shitting the bed because he can’t handle what he tried to tackle is Astruc himself. “The love interest is actually a human-shaped remote control robot made with a magical artifact and the remote control is his parents’ wedding bands, meaning Adrien was only not going to be controlled by them after they were dead or they decided to give the rings up, but this human and children’s rights violation isn’t supposed to make Gabriel and Emilie the villains but sympathetic characters instead while Adrien’s suffering isn’t supposed to be a concern” is not simple in my opinion, but maybe I’m the weird one for thinking that. Maybe I’m the weird one for thinking that the main villain of 5 seasons and 131 episodes getting to destroy the world is a villain victory, too. I should just “keep it simple” and consider it Marinette’s victory instead because the characters were smiling in the end (sarcasm).

Usually, when a show ends up flopping for me, there's a clear change in the show that just lets me go: “none of that happened, the show ended here”, like TMNT 2003 with Fast Forward and Back to the Sewers seasons. After the jump to the future, the plots became uninspired and the characterization became flatter. The show had already wrapped up its storylines before the retool, so I can just pretend the retool never happened and easily enjoy the original TMNT as the best Turtles cartoon that it is.

I think the problem with Miraculous in comparison to other shows that ended up flopping for me, is that Miraculous' problems make the good parts of the show retroactively unenjoyable to me. Adrien is a remote control robot that will never be truly freed, so his struggle for self-expression and freedom in the previous seasons becomes a Shaggy Dog story that could never have had a happy ending. Similarly, the love square scenes are hard to enjoy because Marinette’s flaws are vindicated instead of learned from. Nothing the pre-retool show sets up is delivered on, and when it is delivered on, it’s the worst possible way things could go because the writers wanted to “subvert expectations” or “keep things simple”. The post-retool show dooms the pre-retool characters, because the starting signs of that doom are already there, in all the character arcs they end up dropping. Miraculous doesn’t bother with concluding anything it sets up, it just moves on to the next shiny idea. You aren’t given anything satisfying to be content with before the show drops the ball.

I think a similar experience for me that didn’t ruin my love of fanworks was My Hero Academia. It was another new take on superheroes, but it also ends up delivering on basically nothing it sets up. Horikoshi is just throwing ideas around and dropping them just as quickly and neither the characters nor the world end up changing that much, despite the narrative screaming at us that change is needed. But those dropped ideas are really interesting, there’s a bunch of pretty neat story arcs at the start of the series, I am absolutely obsessed with Toshinori, and none of my other favorite characters are treated too poorly by the narrative in any egregious way other than a lack of screen time (singular scenes for the girls are crimes, though) so, like, I can still very much enjoy fanfics and comics and art that gives the spotlight to those ignored characters and fixes my other grievances.

Basically, it’s a question of whether or not the things that made you stop loving the show made it harder to still love the things you used to love about the show. If you can just say: “the story stops before that happens/the character starts acting like that”, then it’s easier to enjoy the fandom. Also, like, if the bad thing that happens is directed at your top favorite character or relationship, the one thing you tune in to see, then it’s going to make you too mad to just ignore or forget about.

Adrien was the number one thing about Miraculous that I loved above all else. So when most of these awful creative decisions made it harder to enjoy him, I had to ask myself: “What am I willing to put up with?” and the answer was: “Not this sentinonsense!”

[omegawolverine]

i love how the first three episodes of soul eater very clearly tell us what the characters are like even in a 24 minute episode limit...soul and maka are very capable as partners, they had 99 kishin souls but the thing that sent them all the way back to square one was overestimating themselves. they thought blair was a witch, they didn't bother checking and just. killed her. sure, she has 9 lives, she's fine, but they not only overestimated their ability to tell she was a witch, but they also jumped right into the fight and kept persuing her without confirming at all if she was a witch all because maka was so determined to make a weapon stronger than her mother had, a weapon stronger than her dad who she hates. and soul is so caught up in the excitement of getting the status of death scythe that he just follows along with it.

the episode show us how well they work together as a pair, maka being quick on her feet and soul coming up with a plan out of nowhere, something not even maka imagined him doing which ultimately helped them sell it in the end, but we also saw their weaknesses.

we get a glimpse into maka's insecurities early on with her truly believing soul was leaving her for blair, equating it to cheating and us getting a montage of spirit cheating on her mother with various women all in front of maka (although he was unaware of that last bit). and although soul had spent the better half of the episode picking at her insecurities in a way that could come across as mean spirited, we see his immediate reponse be "how am i supposed to know? cool men don't cheat on their partners." which makes maka realize he was just setting up blair to fall directly into his trap and get her soul. while maka is usually regarded as the smarter partner, soul shows he is a great asset in a fight, weapon form or not, because he's a quick thinker and can transform from weapon to human fast enough for them to get the drop on blair who has cat like reflexes for...obvious reasons.

in the defense of maka and soul, even lord death and spirit think she's a witch at first, but lord death also stresses to them both that if they fuck this up they have to start all over and they don't even...double check that she's a witch? idk how easy that is in this universe especially given this is before maka can see soul wavelengths (which is probably a huge part of why they just went with whatever intel they had) but i'm sure there has to be some way to tell if it's this huge of a deal to aquire one.

and then we have black star who...immediately shows us he could be a very good assassin if he didn't give himself away every fucking time ����😭 his ego is his biggest downfall but it's also what gained him his incredibly loyal, kind, forgiving partner tsubaki, who saw him be so bold as to stand on top of the building and ask who would work with someone as loud, obnoxious and brash as him and that's honestly probably the best way he could've went about it. how else would he find somebody willing to put up with all of his flaws if they couldn't even handle him as his regular, outgoing, over the top self?

it's also really interesting how tsubaki and black star go over the assassins' rules of silence, stealth, not being seen, etc. followed by black star immediately throwing that out of the window. and tsubaki chastises him. instead of her being the type of girl who just goes along with whatever black star does, she tells him he doesn't understand assassination at all and complains about how they never collect any souls. black star doesn't take any of her words to heart though and tsubaki doesn't take his actions to heart either.

after this we see lord death even say their issue isnt skill, its purely performance, its how they (black star) don't take the mission seriously and tsubaki accepts blame for both of them instead of just pinning it on him. even if she knows he's the problem, she also sees them as a package deal, a team all the way through and she's okay with this. tsubaki also shows that she fully trusts black star as a partner and thinks he will make her a death scythe, it'll just take a little longer than others.

tsubaki and black star both show a lot of strength in battle, with tsubaki being able to transform into multiple weapon forms, black star being very agile, with the ability to do all sorts of moves that most of the other characters are never seen doing. we can see black star go from a poor excuse for an assassins to an impressive one within seconds to mifune and all it took was him actually wanting to do it. we see he can make himself silent and he can use stealth quite well, making it so mifune doesn't even notice him and tsubaki have switched places for a few minutes and he only notices because tsubaki's breathing is different than black star's. we also get to see that even if his ego is a flaw of his, it's also why he can use his wavelength so well when nobody else in his class really can. he has the confidence in his abilities that most of his other peers do not and that is part of what makes him dangerous when he is actually determined to kill somebody.

and he was determined to kill mifune until he found out that he was just protecting a kid. witch or not, angela was a fucking kid and black star couldn't do it. tsubaki could've. she even tells black star they should take they opportunity that was practically handed to them, with plenty of kishin soul's and angela's right there for the taking and he refuses. despite how they have no souls collected, he still choses to walk away and takes the souls back to lord death in a sack rather than having tsubaki consume them because that isn't a real win to him, he didn't kill those kishins.

and then we get to kid's episode and right off the bat we see this dude is talented and a bit cocky but despite his abilities, his ocd gets in the way of retrieving kishin souls. patty's stance is off, he yells at her about it and she responds apologetically, but clearly isnt upset by him yelling, implying it either happens a lot so she can brush it off or she is truly just that bubbly that it doesn't phase her (probably both). liz, on the other hand, tries to reason with him, telling him now is truly not the time as they're in the middle of pursuing a man and when he keeps lecturing them, she just complains, but let's him do it anyways. it's only when he gets a little too out of hand with it does she put him in his place, punching him and telling him he probably shouldnt be talking about how unsymmetrical her and patty are when he has three stripes on one side of his hair and not the other. he calls himself an abomination and cries. they comfort him despite their (liz's) clear annoyance before.

this shows us that despite them all working well as a team in battle, they get caught up in the actual performance of it all, much like black star and tsubaki do, but for completely different reasons. they're plenty skilled, but instead of ego getting in their way like it does with black star, it's arguing (similar to soul and maka) over what seems like little details to liz and patty, but are all consuming to kid.

we also get a line from liz about how "these little rich kids are always so gullible" which implies her and patty are, at the very least, not well off (though we don't know the extent yet). this is when we learn he is lord death's son and that he doesn't actually need to be doing...any of this. he doesn't need to collect souls, doesn't need to train to be a meister or have weapons or work with his team to make them death scythes for his father, he's doing this out of pure want. lord death says because he had two weapons, he needs to collect double the souls. kid, cocky once again, says he wants to collect all 198 + 2 witch souls at once. he's cocky, but they have the skill to back it up.

and obviously they do, kid's a reaper after all and he specifically picked out patty and liz because he knew of their reputation on the streets (plus the symmetry, but lets stick to skill rn)

but again this isn't what slows them down. they go on a mission and as soon as they get there, kid starts worrying about whether or not a painting he has at home is off center and he cant stop obsessing over this thought until the point where he straight up abandons patty and liz when theyre in a pyramid about to fight mummys.

so instead of seeing kid's strengths, we see liz and patty's. the sisters are great at fighting even when the plan goes to shit, likely due to their time before the DWMA. liz shoots with good aim but switches with patty effortlessly when the mummys get too close, not even having to say anything for patty to know to switch with her. and patty shows that she's definitely less scared than her older sister and works better under pressure, hugging the mummys, giggling at them and sticking liz right in one of the mummy's mouths to blow its (metaphorical) brains out while liz complains about it being gross and creepy.

they collect all the souls alone, without their meister and split them evenly just to respect kid's unsaid wishes.

and then finally kid comes back! he's on his gay little skateboard of course, forgot to mention that earlier but it definitely says something about him that it's his primary mode of transportation and its named beelzebub. he gets back just in time as patty and liz have been captured and since they cant use their weapon forms, kid uses his skateboard to free his partners, but that's about as much as he can do before realizing the pharaoh is perfectly symmetrical and he would rather die than destroy it. like he is literally getting torn to shreds by this fucker but he cant do anything about it.

but then the pharaoh steps out of it's tomb and kid sees how asymmetrical it is and that's also what saves them. it almost gets him killed, it ruins missions regularly, his ocd absolutely disrupts his day to day life, but in this instance it also saves them as he gets so mad about the asymmetry that he blows a fucking HOLE through the back of the pyramid and DESTROYS THE ENTIRE THING by unbalancing it.

so yeah, basically i say all this to say the first three episodes do such a good job of introducing us to the main characters and showing us what their strengths and weaknesses are, even if they're played for laughs like kid's ocd, maka's insecurities or black star's ego.

[sailingfireshipz]

Ok, are yall ready to yap about WTF is going on with Carver!?

I first want to start off by saying I get that what Carver saw in 12x13 was extremely triggering for him, but what I don't understand is this. He goes to Texas, links up with an old fling for 6 weeks according to the time jump & brings her back to Chicago.

He completely avoids Violet & when he does talk to her, he is the one that said they should move forward as friends. Even after finding out about Tori deleting the text message, he was so quick to fall right back in with her, but he wouldn't even give Violet a chance to plead her case.

Carver decided to lie to Tori & go to Violets's party, so why is he acting like the people at 51 are all of a sudden his enemies? I'm so confused, and it doesn't make sense. Clearly, Tori is manipulating him by keeping him liquored up & dragging him out every night to keep him busy & tired. She doesn't allow Carver to sit still long enough because if he does, he'll have time to actually think/process.

What I'm trying to figure out is if Carver is hell bent on this Tori chick because he feels like Violet rejected him or is directly tied to the call from 12x13.... is it both?

I've said this a few times, but I'll say it again. The damage they are doing to Carvers' character development is baffling to me because i don't understand what the outcome of this storyline is supposed to be. Carvers' overall attitude & presence on my screen is starting to irk me because I want to feel bad for the guy but in the same breath it's hard to overlook all the shit we've already went through with him. Atp, i don't even ship Mikarver anymore because I dont want this version of Carver anywhere near Violet.

Why make Jake a series regular if the intent was to just ruin his character. He literally just got in half of the fandoms' good graces in the back half of S11/ early 12 because of this same shit.

I get the theme of the S13 is hauntings & ppl from the past but we're 6 episodes into the season & we have unearthed NO new information about Carver but we have been vividly reminded why we didn't like him in S11.

He bumped heads with Gallo, and now he's snapping at Ritter. He was getting drunk, getting into brawls & getting locked up now he's showing up to damn near every shift hungover. He was snappy with Stella in S11 & though he hasn't been out of line with her yet the fact that she had to get out of the rig when they were supposed to be responding to a call to come find him....

So like what's the wake-up call & when is it coming? Because my tolerance is starting to dwindle & if his behavior continues to spill over into the house & dynamic of Truck 81 further widening the target on Stella Kidds back with Pascal.....

Idk, am I being too hard on him? Like I said, I feel for the guy, but how much more before we can turn the page? I want the Sam Carver that was there for Gallo & Gibson. The one that showed up for his LT when Shep was outside the loft. The one that told Violet nothing bad was going to happen to him, especially on the dance floor. 🥹

[those70scomics]

That '70s Show and The Love Boat

I half-watched an episode of The Love Boat yesterday and imagined what the T7S characters (Jackie, Hyde, Eric, Donna, Fez, Kelso, Red, Kitty, and Bob) would do in an episode. What silly, romantic adventures might they have?

This episode takes place when all the teenage characters are legal adults (Kelso would be twenty or twenty-one).

I think Kelso would try to have as much sex as possible with as many "hot" women (including ones in their forties because it's canon that he doesn't discriminate as long as he finds a woman attractive -- e.g., Coach Ferguson's wife, Joy). But he'd suffer from sea sickness, which derails his plans.

Bob and Fez would end up romancing the same woman, who manages to keep that a secret from both of them until two-thirds or the way through the ep.

Red would be grumpier than usual. Kitty thinks, at first, the reason is that Red forgot how to have fun. But later she realizes that being on a boat is giving him PTSD flashbacks to the navy, which begun subtly but get progressively worse. Kitty helps him through them.

Eric and Donna experience romance with each other, but Eric catches Donna having conversation with a sophisticated gentleman (very early twenties) and grows suspicious. He doesn't want to repeat past behavior with her, but he's really bad at hiding his insecurity. Especially because she meets with this fellow again ... and one more time. Instead of asking Donna about it, he confronts her and the stranger.

Turns out, the stranger works for a big newspaper, and Donna's been pitching him an article. The stranger isn't interested in Donna except professionally. This situation turns out awkward and embarrassing for Eric and frustrating and angering for Donna. But Eric recognizes that part of him still believes he's not good enough for Donna, and Donna not only reassures him that he is but also tells him he needs to stop thinking about their relationship that way.

Their reconciliation ends in a bedular way.

Jackie is super-excited to be on The Love Boat. She feels like a celebrity and decides to role-play that she's a famous, glamorous actress. Hyde is not happy being on the cruise to begin with, and now he has to contend with his girlfriend playing pretend.

Hyde tries to sabotage Jackie's fun. This pisses Jackie off, especially when he doesn't stop after she asked him to (his counter is that he asked her to quit being who she isn't so they both can get some fun out of this hell trip).

Jackie play-flirts with other men as part of her fantasy (wanting to feel adored and be fawned over; also, she's being passive-aggressive toward Hyde who could have played along as her rock-star boyfriend). Hyde mopes and spends time with Isaac, the bartender.

Isaac gives Hyde the advice to play along. Jackie's clearly trying to get from strangers what she wants from Hyde. Hyde says he won't let her manipulate him. Isaac says he doesn't think that's what Jackie's doing.

Hyde: You don't know Jackie.

Isaac: Maybe you don't know her as well as you think, either. That is a woman who feels like she's missing something, and I bet what she's missing is you.

Hyde considers Isaac's words. This is, after all, Hyde and Jackie's first real vacation together, and he's been a drag about it since before they boarded the ship.

Hyde sidles up to Jackie while she's talking up a group of people. He says, "How about my girl, huh? Thought I'd pick one out of the crowd at one of my gigs, but she picked me out of hers."

Woman 1: Wait, are you that rock musician ... oh, what's his name? [Turns to her group] You know -- that one!

Hyde: That's me.

The women in the group scream in excitement. They say how they love his music (having no clue what his music actually is).

Hyde says he'd be nothing without Jackie.

Jackie (happy Hyde's decided to play and how he's playing): That's right, lover. You wouldn't ... but I wouldn't be such a great actress without your undying love and encouragement.

Jackie and Hyde fake-laugh together. The group, women and men (and nonbinary folks who don't yet have the terminology to describe their gender), ask Hyde questions about his career. He doesn't half-ass his answers but weaves an intricate tale.

Jackie is so turned on by the effort Hyde puts into playing this part, that he changed his mind for her, that he's pushing through his discomfort to make her happy, that she cuts this "salon-at-sea" discussion short and leads him back to their room.

Jackie verbally expresses her gratitude. Hyde apologizes for not giving her what she needed before the cruise. He says he realizes he's been so busy at Grooves that she's probably felt neglected by him lately. He doesn't want to make her feel like she did growing up.

Jackie, self-reflecting, says, "She has, but she didn't know that until he said it." She apologizes for putting on this celebrity act, even though it was fun, and apologizes especially for being flirtatious with other men. "I wasn't thinking about what we've been through, what you went through as a kid. I just wanted -- "

Hyde: Some attention.

Jackie and Hyde: From you. / From me.

Hyde: You've got all of it now. What do you wanna do with it?

Jackie kisses Hyde deeply.

Hyde: Okay, I was wrong. [Smirking] Now you've got all of it.

He and Jackie make out and end up on the bed.

Fade to black.

[eliotquillon]

you know how there’s a million and a half stories where chase is sick and weak. screw that. give me something with cameron

this was meant to be a bit silly but then it got all goopy and disgusting. chase stop being a simp for cameron challenge. anyway in s5’s the itch cameron mentions that she knows the patient because she ran the community outreach flu drive the year before, and she IS suspiciously absent from the s4 christmas episode moreso than even chase, so imagine that this is set around then.

After six long weeks running the county flu vaccine drive, Cameron finally wakes up one morning with a fever of one-oh-one and a dry, hacking cough that makes Chase wince just at the sound of it. She’d been vaccinated herself, of course, but only for the most prominent strain; whatever version she’s caught clearly isn’t the one she was giving out shots for. “I knew this was going to happen,” she says miserably, while Chase force-feeds her Tylenol and wraps her in the sweatshirts she insisted he buy on Black Friday mostly because, he suspects, she wanted to steal them for herself. “It’s been way too long since I last got sick. I’m due.”

And I’m sure the flu drive had nothing to do with it, Chase does not say, because he’s seen Cameron sick before; during House’s summer of ketamine she came down with a nasty case of strep, and despite so, so clearly being miserable, she’d insisted on coming in as soon as the antibiotics rendered her no longer infectious. He and Foreman had had to trick her into going home early by offering to cover the later half of her shifts, and Foreman had only agreed to do that because all of his favourite nurses kept coming up to complain about how much of a hardass Cameron was being. The point is, it’s better not to argue with Cameron when she’s sick. It’s especially better now that Chase is her boyfriend.

“Can I get you anything else?” he asks tentatively. He doesn’t have work today, and even if he did, well—it’s not protocol, but he’d call off anyway. The part of him that shudders away from the memories of cleaning up his mum’s vomit and checking his baby sister’s cold didn’t turn into pneumonia is outweighed by the part that relishes in getting to see Cameron when she’s kind of gross: hair greasily undone, make-up off, wearing sweatpants and no bra. He’s never dated anyone long enough to get to the comfortable stage before, and the vulnerability is a good look on her. “Don’t you have some tea in the back of your cupboard?”

“You don’t have to stay,” Cameron lies even as her whole face lights up. It’s cute, Chase thinks. And also unexpected; he’d been expecting a fight, like the one they had last summer about her going home with strep. “I don’t want to get you sick.”

“Seriously, I don’t mind,” Chase says, and Cameron smiles gratefully at him; she’s too-warm and feverish in the bed beside him, and she can barely lift her head, but he finds that he really, truly means it. Cameron is on good terms with her parents, but they live all the way over in Chicago; between the price of plane tickets and her schedule, she only sees them a few times a year. He wonders when was the last time somebody took care of her when she was sick. Probably not since undergrad, he thinks. And then he remembers her first husband, and how she had stayed with him to the end, and mentally revises: probably not since high school. Maybe even as long as Chase himself. “I’ll make you your tea, yeah?”

“Thank you,” Cameron croaks out, and she’s so contagious right now, practically a petri dish of influenza, but when she raises her face towards him he kisses her damp forehead obligingly. She isn’t a cute sick person, but Chase is hopelessly endeared anyway. “You’re the best.”

Love you, Chase almost says, but, well, he really does know better than to start a fight with an unwell Cameron. “You can return the favour when I catch whatever you have,” he teases, and the softness of her responding smile makes biting his tongue all worth it.

[elizabethrobertajones]

so after taking like half a year to watch the second doctor, I burned through Pertwee Doctor in what felt like a week. I was fully ready to formally induct him to the hall of favourites somewhere around the top, pending the wikipedia search to check he such wasn't a terrible guy IRL it made it into the personal life section as per the last 2, and -

[refuses to be in a film when a producer won't hire a gay friend]

good start, good start (already liked everything else I read but this is an incredible character merit mark for a guy in the 50s)

[the doctor is literally just him being himself on camera]

Oh, so I just want him to be my friend, I see

[he said the catalyst for leaving was the death of Roger Delgado among other changes in the last year]

Wait WHAT - is that why there was no more Master later on -

[Delgado died on location filming in Turkey, his own wiki page repeats that this was why Pertwee wanted out]

NO NO NO NO NNOOOO

HOW IS THIS HUGE BIT OF DOCTOR WHO HISTORY SOMETHING I NEVER HEARD ABOUT? I GREW UP IN SCI FI CONVENTION SPACES BUT EVERYONE JUST TALKS ABOUT TOM BAKER LIKE NOTHING HAPPENED BEFORE?

WHAT THE FUCK.

I am DISTRAUGHT, the Doctor/Master stuff from the first few seasons of the 3rd Doctor was absolutely INCREDIBLE television. I'd been assuming Delgado maybe had somewhere else to be. Heartily recommend watching that entire run of the show if you don't want to start any earlier.

Well, anyway. :(

I know people don't like the weird James Bond swing it all took with him but the show had been getting more action-y anyway under the 2nd doctor and then a guy who had literally been in the inner circle with all the WWII creatives like Ian Fleming and probably helped INSPIRE James Bond gets the role, I'm feeling like we're blessed and privileged from this perspective of getting to watch it as a historical artefact. I'm assuming based on the vague things I know about the 4th Doctor, the first I'm meeting with any preconceptions, that he's obviously not capable of bringing THAT to the table because that was no ordinary skillset, Pertwee was clearly a top 0.00001% of actors and Guys Who Had Lived A Life, who happened to be doing a silly BBC sci fi show. I'm expecting it to tone back on all these things.

And then in hindsight from the Doctor Who revival era, all the nonsense he brought, aside from the Venusian Karate and flying car and a few other extreme eccentricities, end up being stuff that feels much more modern and like the kind of antics the Doctor gets involved in. Like, he took the sonic screwdriver from being a couple of times joke into a multi-tool with the first joke about it not working on wood after he uses it through many episodes to escape or explode things, all of which is so common nature to the Doctor nowadays.

He also had far more of the casual behaviours we think of as The Doctor now, especially way less circumspect name dropping of historical people and a sense of having lived all around time and space, sometimes for extensive periods of time (he clearly like. LIVED on Venus to pick up all the various throwaway jokes about Venusian culture to explain things he does lmao). Weirdly, despite knowing he was a timetraveller from the jump, the previous two doctors were quite close-lipped about who they knew and had met, and rarely namedropped.

In any case, carrying on into 4th doctor era cautiously because I am 1: sad and 2: deeply let down by my perception of Whovian culture as I've been exposed to it, which sets a ridiculously high bar for Baker as the high watermark of Who and meanwhile I have just bid farewell to watching one of the most electric actors I've ever seen in anything ever while feeling wildly upset on his behalf that there isn't a bonkers appreciative fan culture for everything he did and he's written off as one of the quirky weird early doctors you don't need to bother with.

(AND THERE WAS WRITTEN QUEER DOCTOR MOMENTS. AT LEAST 2-3 OF THEM, GENDER AND SEXUALITY-WISE. HE GOT TALKED TO IN POLARI. ON TV IN 1972. THAT DOES NOT HAPPEN BY ACCIDENT.)

[jamiesfootball]

☔️

Now that I've actually read The Beautiful and Damned (essay still incoming), I've been thinking of an AU fic that explores what if Jamie did read the book in season 1. It....intrigues me for a number of reasons.

The fact that Jamie was the only one of the group to receive what is essentially a cautionary tale (no we didn't see most of the picks, but it feels safe to say that Jamie was the one Ted thought needed 'correcting')

The protagonist ends up a bitter, angry, abusive alcoholic. Granted Ted could not have known about Jamie’s dad at the time, but ough. Ted.

Giving this book to anyone and going 'here, this reminds me of who you are' is frankly insulting. I think if Jamie were to confront Ted about that, Ted would consider that half the job done. He clearly just wants Jamie to think about his actions and how he treats people. Unfortunately I could see this backfiring on Ted. He may not mean it personally, but I think Jamie would take it personally, especially because--

Aside from the fact that the protag is rich and full of himself and found to be charming, that guy is nothing like Jamie. In fairness to Ted, those are basically 3 of the 4 things he knows about Jamie. In unfairness to Ted, the other 1 thing he knows is that Jamie is a professional athlete who by definition had to work hard to get to where he is. Meanwhile the protag for TB&D has never worked for anything in his life -- the opposite of Jamie, our battler. In fact one of the defining traits and the reason the protag falls into being a penniless drunk is because throughout his life he was given many chances, and he ignored them all.

I think Jamie would likely get bogged down in the details. On the idea that the book was meant as a critique of him, rather than a lesson he could learn by. Another example of how Ted bringing up topics in a roundabout way tends to get misconstrued by Jamie as mind games.

Bonus round: the protag is very classist. The book occasionally alludes to the unfairness of this, but it is very much an ongoing topic for the protag on why he deserves all his money.

Bonus round: the protag is exceedingly misogynistic. The book almost never disagrees with this. Even season one Jamie 'women can do anything' Tartt would never.

So I think that a fic that explored Jamie's journey while reading this book would be fascinating. From the beginning where it's clear from the start that this protagonist is a spoiled, snobby twit to the end where the protag ends up a functioning alcoholic who yells at his wife and reminisces that by preventing himself from treating her in a physically violent manner, it makes him hate her even more. By the end of the book I can see Jamie being actively triggered by what's on the page--

--which would serve in a number of ways to kickstart Jamie's troubled history a good three episodes before the curse fire.

So yeah, this fic idea is less than a week old and I am still working on it but. Intrigued, I am.

Also I keep envisioning a running gag like that episode of The Office where Michael is watching The Devil Wears Prada and Pam is keeping track of where he is in the movie by what he's quoting at her. Except in this fic, Ted (Pam) would not know what the hell Jamie was talking about for a good long while, because he hasn't actually read the book since early in high school.

Why do I think Ted hasn't read it since early high school? Because if he'd read it later, he'd probably remember that there's a guy in the book who kills himself by shooting himself. It's literally one of the last parts of the book, and it's meant to serve as a punctuation on the consequences of the protag's actions.

Just a thought, but I think if Ted had read it after his dad dying, he might not suggest it to someone. Even if the meaning of the book fit.

For fic related reasons though, this means that Ted's trauma could ALSO be introduced way sooner. In season one even! This fic could have so much bonding through book-relevant trauma it's crazy to think about.

So. Yeah. New wip thoughts in progress. Whoops.

[chaosmagetwin]

I decided to watch RWBY Ice queendom

I ranted about it in discord for a little while, and decided to move the rant here.

Overall

I think, ultimately, the entire anime was pretty decent. A good 7/10, to RWBY's 9/10 for me.

I think it's considered "Canon adjacent", which seems like a decent way to put that. I honestly wouldn't recommend watching it until you've watched at least Volume 5, I think? Which is a weird thing to say, when it's set in the early episodes of volume 2. It uses a lot of characters that show up later, though, and I think it's better to get an idea of how things shake out first, before visiting the anime.

I think you can consider it "Canon enough", because it doesn't hurt anything, tbh. The story is entirely contained, Shion is not expected to return, and it doesn't change any of the characters (Except through mischaracterizations / Ruby's attempted character assassination), but it does help explain a few things and gives Weiss and Blake some much needed time to shine in a critical part of their stories that was a little too glossed over.

Spoilers for RWBY Ice Queendom, and RWBY (original) below the cut!

Okay, I'm going to break this into a couple sections, so, bear with me here. First up, I'm going to talk about the plot.

Plot

Plot-wise, the first three episodes are just "Volume 1 on fast forward, just the bare essentials to catch people up to speed", with episodes 4-12 being in volume 2, between episode 1 and 2. Like, literally, everything in the anime happens within a couple days. if not outright hours. It's unclear, but w/e. A lot of focus is put on Weiss, and more specifically, a lot of Weiss's WORST character traits. Most especially, her racism, her haughty heiress attitude, and her entitlement. In the original series, these character traits are lessened, and eventually glossed over. By the time we reach volume 3, they're sort of gone. This series takes the time to address that, and actually makes Weiss work for the character development we see in the original series.

Episodes 4-12 are all about this new type of grimm; the Nightmare. It possesses people, and they go to sleep, and whoever is most familiar with them has to go into the dream to go fight the grimm in there. It stays hidden, and most of it has to do with the victim's internal dream world, and how they subconsciously define everyone and everything around them.

For Weiss, who is the person who gets possessed, it means carefully segmented life, high walls, a mandate from on high to be responsible and care for the family name. It means locking away her feelings, the "Sillies" in a jail where they can be protected, and kept pure and innocent. It means categorizing her teammates as people she both loves and fears, who are locked in a tower and never allowed out. Her brother becomes an annoying bat who flies around and watches everything and snickers at her, and whispers about all the things he's seen and about how he'll snitch on her if she betrays the family name. Her father is a statue who stares at her from every angle and tells her "This is your responsibility!" Her sister, who NEVER TALKS, is a bible she refers to, in order to pass judgement. Her mother is a shadow on the wall who drinks wine and laughs at her.

And it also means categorizing Blake as an outsider. The racism really plays in full here, and you can see the conflict in Weiss's mind, because she clearly has Blake defined, not just as a shadow or a monster, but as a person with half a bow and one cat ear. She keeps the idea of blake locked away, outside the city, in a section where things are kept that she doesn't know how to cope with; things that she avoids thinking about entirely.

Weiss's dream isn't just about how she categorizes others, it's about how she categorizes herself, and the responsibilities she has to bear, and the way she feels completely and utterly isolated. She longs for contact, but in her dream she can't contact anyone, because she has to keep them away from herself to protect them FROM HER.

As an important note, Weiss also has Absolute power within the dream, to the point of controlling weather when she wants to, outright changing environments, and is "Stronger Than You" in every scene. Which is great, that's the way she should be.

This is as far as I'll go into the plot, because it's all that really matters and caught my attention. It's really just setting Weiss up for the future, and giving her a chance to go through a character arc that was too glossed over in the original.

Characters and Character Design

There are certain things that it did really really well. Anything to do with Weiss, they got perfect. They really understood the assignment; for an anime that is 75% about how Weiss sees the world, how she defines it and herself, it's no wonder they did as well as they did. She's flawed, and horrible, but understandable and empathetic. It really does not forgive Weiss for her flaws, but makes her actually confront them. Her character designs within the dream were.... GORGEOUS. ABSOLUTELY STUNNING. I am not immune to the fascistic dommy mommy aesthetic, and they really made her look good. A 10/10 design all around, with the overcoat, the sunglasses, the hat, the floating hands to take the coat and hat off for her, the way she speaks UGH. Fantastic stuff. I could rave about it all day.

Ruby felt pretty good, too, and they actually set some of the stuff up for later volumes pretty well, especially the pressure on Ruby, and her depression. However, I think they mischaracterized her in a few sections, especially the parts where she is meaner? For unknown reasons? And also imply she has a hero complex who think's she's all alone? Which wasn't really addressed at any point, and was sort of weird. IDK, it felt like there were points where they were really trying to assassinate her character in some regard. Most of it can be explained away by the nightmare, but, frankly, it does push some weird choices onto Ruby that I was not fond of. Weiss calling Ruby out for being childish was handled well, however, and Ruby does do some growing up. An overall net neutral, in my opinion. Ruby's design within the dream is Good! Very cute! I like the snowboarder aesthetic. They did not do a good job of explaining why Ruby's scythe's gun was pointed backwards (I understand it was to shoot Shadows, but also.... she turned around... to shoot it...) but I appreciate the look. She feels like a very warm character, and gives a sort of soft, warm vibe that contrasts Weiss's design very well, perhaps even intentionally. As a Tower Silly (as opposed to outer silly or outside the castle silly), it really does show how Weiss see's ruby; as a warm, soft character who is a little bit punk.

Blake was fantastic. No mischaracterizations, and some better explanations for who she is, as well as a good set up for the Blake x Yang romance in later volumes. It also really showcases her fear of who she was, and who she was becoming before leaving the white fang, and it gives some excellent depth to her character. Her dream design is... okay! It's not particularly great, but not bad. The half bow and single ear was kind of cute, but, they could've showcased that better. Meanwhile, her nightmare design was FANFUCKINGTASTIC. 10/10 again. The way she took Adam's clothes, his power, and even the lines he speaks are really good. It really showcases how much of a hold she fears he had on her, to the point that she felt possessed by him. The way she was using his weapons, his semblance, not even using her own powers was filthy good.

Yang was... flat. I can't really say they mischaracterized her, but I do think they did not utilize her very well. She was a power house, but she really lacked the humor and charm that makes her who she is, her brand of silliness. She had the care for others that is important to her character, but, without the comedic balance, she feels a little empty. She had no major redesigns. She's just kind of flat.

Jaune was.... I mean, I never liked Jaune in the early volumes. Anything they did with him was better than the original. I honestly do not understand why they included him? But he was there, and he did some plot relevant stuff, and the rest of team JNPR was really sidelined for... unclear reasons. Pyrhha almost quite literally became an actual cheerleader for him, which feels like a deep mischaracterization. I can't even give her her own section, she was that little of a character. She gets, like, maybe 4 lines in the entire anime, and one singing scene.

Shion, as an OC for the anime, was.... out of place. Like, on an aesthetic level, at the minimum. Ultimately, they were more of a macguffin than a character, which makes them kind of just.... there. They're real cool, though. In japanese, they refer to them with masculine pronouns, and in the english dub, nonbinary pronouns. IDK. To say they were a character of importance kind of overstates them, though. You could replace the character with an object that does their power, and it wouldn't change the story a whit. They explained little, did little, and had no real character moments. Although their design does not really fit into the world of RWBY very well, it is very interesting, and pretty. I like the soft tones and witchy aesthetic, and the androgyny.

Sound

I watched in English dub, by the way. I prefer the original voice actors, who reprised their roles here. They do an excellent job, for the most part. I also prefer the word choices they used, compared to the sub, most especially when it comes to Shion. In the original Japanese, Shion has masculine pronouns, while in the English, they are referred to with They / Them, which is very nice.

There's some weird dub moments, but that mostly has to do with Lip Syncs, I think. It does still have a tinge of "This was translated to English", but only a tinge, which makes it bearable. Some of the mischaracterizations could potentially be attributed to this, but I don't think that is the case for at least my problems with Ruby. I'm not displeased with any of the voice actors, but the standouts for me are Weiss and Ruby, who did phenomenal.

Sound design was …. weird? IDK, they had a lot more magicky / lasery sounds to the weapons. I'm fond of the way that original RWBY uses the sound effects from Halo weapons. In the original, the sounds feel impactful and weighty, and really picks up a lot of the slack that the animation gives up in terms of weight. In this version, guns across the board sound worse, and the melee aspects are also diminished. There's just less crunch and dirt in them.

Ruby's scythe, especially, suffers in this version. The halo crunchy sniper sound effect gets replaced by this more…. idk, wet star wars blaster sound effect when it's shooting, and the scythe slashes are greatly diminished.

Weiss's everything sounds better, in comparison, with the exception of the Glyphs, which lost their signature sound, and got a different one that sounds less like magical ice, and more mystical? IDK how to explain that.

Music was also not as good. Casey Lee Williams, you are a genius, and the way your music backdrops original RWBY gives it a lot of the vibe and characterization that makes it what it is. That's not to say Ice Queendom did badly, it just seemed kind of generic to me. There was some flavor lost that they tried to capture, but just couldn't, with the exception of Weiss and Pyrrha singing.

Animation

The animation team really liked Weiss, and gave her a lot of character, and a lot of love. She's the only real standout, here. Design wise, everything looks good, but once it gets into motion, it just feels really stiff. There's a lot more weight to the motion in a bad way, a lot more movement, a lot less over-the-top action. In the original, the animation is zippy, and full of character. Things aren't just done, they're overdone. A character won't just spin once, they'll spin twice. They won't just jump somewhere, they'll use bullshit physics to get there. The scene that sticks out the most to me is a 1:1 scene in the first 3 episodes where RWBY is facing the Nevermore, and JNPR is facing the Death Stalker. Instead of the teams being mixed up at the start, and using their movement skills to get to their proper teams, they just start there. Those movement skills never really come into play. It's a lot more grounded, which feels out of place in RWBY.

A lot of RWBY's vibe really does depend the animation going "Physics? That shit is a myth," and then going wild with making the characters defy it. Ruby should be constantly using her scythe as a way to boost herself, but she does it maybe 4 times in the entire anime. In the original, that would be the minimum for a single FIGHT. In some ways, it suddenly feels like a weight on the characters, like their weapons suddenly have way less power than they do. Their enemies seem.... more impossible to beat.

I'd honestly say the animation, although it has more details in it, is just not as good as it is in the original. Especially these early scenes, when Monty Oum had his hand in it.

[mdhwrites]

Have you watched Rise of the tmnt? If so, whats your opinion on it? Is one of my favourite shows 👉👈

I have only watched probably about a dozen episodes while babysitting. Probably less than that. However, just from that... RotTMNT might be one of the best Shounen THINGS I have ever seen. And by shounen, I just mean general action adventure, in the same way it's categorized in Shounen Jump, not just that it's trying to be like Dragonball or the like. This actually isn't because of the animation or choreography like most will point out. Don't get me wrong, the show looks amazing and I would love a glimpse into the process for the show to know how they could do what they did, so often and so consistently, on a television show's budget.

No, this more comes from a failing that most action centric shows have and one that has arguably been getting worse as of late: Growth. Not character growth, though again it was clearly doing some stuff and doing it well, but growth as a fighter. Their skills actively improving episode by episode.

It's something that if you're not entrenched in this sort of stuff, or just don't care about it, you aren't going to notice. They don't bring a lot of attention to it and on screen, you are told they're training but only every now and then do we see the training which is pretty classic. However, they start at ROCK. BOTTOM. but by the time they have their villains returning for the first times, you can actually contrast their first fight with their second fight most of the time and there's a noticeable improvement and you can actually kind of track it through the episodes just by them becoming more familiar with their weapons, ambitious in their techniques, etc. like that. Not always in a way that succeeds but in ways that show they're genuinely trying to get better.

The best example I can think of is when their battle tank is introduced and Splinter takes it for a joyride. One of their villains joins Splinter on this for nefarious purposes and the boys have to fight him between two moving vehicles. The first time he showed up (the mutant hog that threatens to cook them in his first appearance if I remember right), they won through gadgets Donny made that they utilized to their advantage after they hindered them but it was as much a fluke as anything. Here though, we have Leo starting to finally understand how he can try using his portals to not just parry projectiles but also send them back. He's not good at it but even the idea of Leo parrying an attack, let alone a projectile, while balanced on a chain was just infeasible within the first half a dozen episodes because, let's be honest, he seemed about as likely to stab himself as an opponent early on.

This is contrast to the fact that the general basics of combat have started becoming kind of a given? Like let's take Deku from My Hero Academia. He does a LOT of strength training early on but... When the fuck did he learn to fight? Knowing strategy and having seen moves be put into implementation are VERY different from actually implementing any of that so he can, I dunno, judo throw someone who is WAY better a fighter than him. So he can use rescue tape in a similar way to a hero who has perfected it. All from a kid who, as far as we, know didn't train ever before getting All for One. He was a fanboy. This reflects how his power grows early on. How does he learn to master his first version of the power? Kind of just through pain tolerance. He's not trying new things, not learning to do it faster or planning ahead or even seeming to actually try and constrain the power at all. It takes someone else going "Maybe try NOT using literally all your power at once," for him to even consider the concept. It's a very boring way to do growth and it's pretty common in action where growth is much more "Look at my new weapon," or, "Let me bust out my new technique or super mode!" Few of them, especially anime inspired works, are about iteration.

That is ALL I saw in RotTMNT. Hell, even looking at later fight scenes, these moves are bigger but the core is the same. It's just further mastery of the skill set which is honestly WAY more satisfying as a form of growth. It's not just a new finishing technique, the person has genuinely become a better fighter. They can handle ANY situation better because their basics and their specials are improving and you can tell without it being shoved in your face. That requires such a deft hand and such an understanding of this sort of things works, especially to make it still feel right in a medium where it can feel like only two days have actually passed in ten episodes, that it's commendable and I think it deserves credit for it, even without having seen all of it. I can say you would learn, genuinely, from it just by watching early on for how they try to take these small but noticeable steps.

It's fantastic and definitely a show I should finish at some point... Just like Craig of the Creek and so many others. sigh See you next tale.

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[bonnieisaway]

Good morning ladies and gentlemen (it's 6:30 pm) guess who's here to overnalayze episode 1 of season 4 of scissor seven that's right ME

Okay okay I think this might actually be my new favorite episode in the series and I love it so much and I was thinking about it last night and talking about it to my friend this morning and I have THINGS!! TO SAY!!! about it

First off: this isn't as important but did anyone else realize that Blackbird was wrong about Seven's ambushes?

Like when Seven initially jumps for Blackbird he grabs Seven's sword and says this but

he's instantly taken off guard five fucking seconds later? And like yeah, this was something Seven could do cause of the Thousand Demon Daggers, but by all means the fact Seven kept DIRECT eye contact with him and took him off guard to make him drop Thirteen makes it seem Seven does think and act faster than Blackbird does. In fact Blackbird fights Seven the exact same way he did Thirteen, he drags both of them out of the clearing and into the forest - though he throttled Seven around A LOT harder - but Seven didn't lose track of Blackbird the way Thirteen did.

Side by side look at how much longer it took Thirteen to get out of his grip and recover - I know Blackbird is arguably more in his element when he's fighting Thirteen but just their reaction times alone, Seven's able to keep up with Blackbird running around him and Thirteen is struggling to keep sight of him. Their main difference is Seven's got much better reaction time and is able to keep up, but he's horrible at actually avoiding getting hit most times. He's so much more aggressive in this fight but also takes twice the beating, Thirteen spends the first half of this fight getting her sides clipped by Blackbird's whip and Seven literally almost gets his whole shoulder ripped out. Seven seems to know what to do a lot quicker and thinks fast compared to Thirteen. Especially since Seven had the opportunity to and realized he could use the light against Blackbird.

And as he does, I mean initially Blackbird can't even react quick enough, given the distance between them it's surprising Seven got this far,

And he changes direction faster than Blackbird can even react to his initial movement!

Blackbird genuinely loses sight of Seven here! And it's not like he couldn't seen Seven, he was perfectly visible and neither of them were facing the sunlight here, but Seven is just faster than Blackbird can react here

And Seven had time to wait here! Of course Blackbird doesn't realize what Seven is doing and turns around, but if Seven had been going to hit Blackbird from behind he would've! Seven spends a solid second or so longer here before Blackbird actually turns around, and Seven is able to move fast enough to blind Blackbird!

SECONDLY and I've actually seen nobody talk about this but Blackbird has his own art style. Not just like, for his flashbacks. Blackbird has his own fucking art style for when he's in control of the fight. And it makes me so mentally ill

I think I've mentioned before early on Scissor Seven is a little inconsistent art style wise, but definitely by the end of season 3 you can really tell they've gotten comfortable with and have settled on a style they like and work well with. And it's absolutely beautiful, which is why I was really confused when this scene was in the trailer:

because this is so clearly not their normal art style. To be specific- the line art is really intentionally sketchy and messy, you can evne tell they used a different brush than they normally do for coloring and line art, and the coloring and shading really has a 'colored sketch' look about it. And it's not bad, I love it! But it's so obviously different from the normal style and in the trailers I was wondering if the style was going to change again, but this is the only time it happens. And I realized why: this is an art style specifically for when Blackbird is in control. Let's go through this fight from this frame:

the moment Thirteen is dropped. So I'm going to go through this by the most important moves or actions they take:

So obviously Blackbird has a real solid grip on Seven here, but also noticeably I feel like Seven doesn't try to do anything with his sword as he's dragged,

But notice despite how far or close they are, every frame is noticeably clear and really just true to the art style this show takes:

but also this sketchy texture and style is a consistent motif in Blackbrid, even if the rest of the style is still how it normally looks,

Now look at the coloring on Blackbird-

and THEN we switch to this sketchy style, which is NOTICEABLY the same as Blackbird's flashbacks but just colored with clearer line art.

This background is still clear but notice even their smear frames are drawn like this, and if you've seen some of my other post this isn't how they normally draw smears, let alone switching brushes and adjusting the entire color palette for it, and this is where the worst part of the fight for Seven starts! This is where he gets hurt!

Which , these genuinely look like the deepest cuts Seven has gotten in a while- and now watch these frames:

NOTICEABLE. FUCKING. DIFFERENCE. The second, the second Seven realizes that he has an opprotunity here and that he can use the light against Blackbird, the art style turns back to normal!

I mean as this fight ends and Blackbird DIES we don't see this again outside of his flashback! The usual sketchy parts of his body change to another texture!

And I just, it makes me so happy that not only have they found an art style they like, and are comfortable with, but are so good with it to a point that they can play with the art style now for story telling elements! And I mean even as Blackbird screams and tries to kill Seven the art style stays, because even if Blackbird can't feel it and we don't know yet, he has definitively lost this battle and this will drain the rest of his energy and kill him before it will kill Seven!

This bird flying away- and Blackbird's last flashback- is the last we see of this art style.

and I just. RAAAAAAH I love this episode. I feel like I could go on more and I might later - I still really wanna know if there's a reason why they put so much emphasis into Seven switching hands when he's using the sword, given he's ambidextrous and it's never been focused on before, I think it might be because he's not using his scissors even though they're near but I'm not really sure. I can't tell if using his scissors over his sword would be more draining given his last attempt at them in season 3 knocked him out cold. GOD this show makes me so fuckin mentally ill

[waitmyturtles]

Turtles Finds a Coping Mechanism: The Until We Meet Again Rewatches

I've been so committed to crushing through the Old GMMTV Challenge that I kind of didn't allow myself to think that life's blips and bloops would shake me from my pace.

Well, real life has SLAYED ME as of late, SLAYED ME, and as @lurkingshan has noted to me -- yes, there's a CERTAIN amount of dissonance for my watching UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN, OF ALL SHOWS, as a coping mechanism, but here we are. I wanted to copy @bengiyo and rewatch UWMA anyway as a means of preparing for New Siwaj's Absolute Zero, which will be premiering at the end of September -- a time when my life will be calm-ish (???) again -- so I decided to take the plunge to see if UWMA would be a salve to my frayed nerves. It is, it totally is.

So here's some stream of consciousness notes, quite unlike my usual comparative/analytical style, just to honor what a ridiculously fabulous show UWMA is. (In my OGMMTVC analyses, I don't always get to gush over the cute stuff anyway because my posts get so long, so I'm doing a little of that here, too, ha.)

I knew that as soon as I watched it the first time for the OGMMTVC that I desperately wanted to rewatch it, so I just gave myself the go-ahead to eat the leum kleun candy. I've already completed one rewatch and am well into a second rewatch -- this show is so damn good, and now that I know the beats much better, I'm just having a lot of fun seeing in-depth the little nuances I missed the first time.

1) On my first watch, I did not appreciate how clearly Pharm was into Dean from the very start. The way Pharm flips through the photos of Dean that Team sends him from the first beach trip; the photo of Dean eating Del's breakfast; the way Pharm looks at the Facebook photo of Dean holding up the leum kleun. And how Pharm reacts when he saves Dean's phone number in his phone -- that ENORMOUS grin. I knew a lot going in the first time about Pharm's blushing maiden approach and how he was gunshy with intimacy for so much of the show. But I forgot in those early episodes -- homeboy was really into his crush! Taking that secret photo in the library, etc. He acknowledged it pretty immediately -- especially in that whispered conversation Pharm has with Team and Manaow in their English class. I had also forgotten that the show began with Pharm possibly questioning his sexuality, but being solidly knowledgable that it was Dean that was causing him to catch feelings.

2) Speaking of that fleeting moment in the library: after having watched the entire series the first time around, and remembering that Dean had saved that very first Post-It that Pharm had used to write a quick note on the papers that Pharm gave back to Dean in the library in... episode 2? Pharm had originally erased his name on that Post-It. It didn't click with me until this rewatch that Dean was able to make out Pharm's erased name from that Post-It -- which caused Dean to save the note, and use it as reference in the very last scene of the series. So cute.

3) I finally took the time to read about Phra Aphai Mani, the prince of the legend that Dean and Pharm talk about in the aquarium. Remember how Pharm says to Dean that Pharm doesn't like players?

DUDES. HAVE YOU READ ABOUT PHRA APHAI MANI? I guess, like, yes, if you're gonna have a super-long epic poem, a lot of shit needs to happen, but Aphai just kept marrying WIFE AFTER WIFE! FOUR WIVES TOTAL! One ogress, one mermaid, and two maybe humans? A half-ogress son here, a half-mer/son THERE, prince of THIS, king of THAT. Homeboy's life was COMPLICATED! I'm all EXTREMELY SYMPATHETIC to chaos, but this takes the damn cake. (And maybe gives me a touch more context into what's happening with that second marriage in I Feel You Linger In the Air, without the actual monsters/mermaids.) (Oh man -- imagine the Only Friends version of Phra Aphai Mani.) (NO.)

4) The first time around, I kind of though that the bits about Alex hitting on Pharm were a little extraneous and maybe a touch unnecessary, à la New Siwaj's style. But after my first rewatch, I stopped thinking so, and I actually began to enjoy them -- not only for how ridiculous they are, but I also recognized that that was the first time in the show that we see Pharm establishing boundaries. Of course, we see Pharm in his blushing maiden era forming boundaries with his P'Deeeean. But the way he's very clear with Alex, putting up as many walls as necessarily, and being exact in his communication that he likes someone else and is VERY not into dating Alex -- Pharm showed clarity and strength there. While Dean clearly liked to care for Pharm and treat Pharm as his younger companion -- Pharm also had agency, and knew he owned his agency, and I liked how that agency was first demonstrated vis à vis Alex.

5) I totally forgot about this, but -- I think it was the second time they had breakfast together in Pharm's condo? the third? that scene where Pharm's wearing the yellow shirt and he drops the bowl -- remember when Pharm asks Dean if he's mixed-race? I don't think I still understand the meaning of that. I'm guessing Pharm is asking if Dean is Thai-Chinese? I want to think on this more, because -- in episode 16, when Pharm goes to his uncle's/grandpa's house, it is clear that the house is a Thai-Chinese household. There are banners with Chinese script on the walls. I wonder if that was meant to indicate that Pharm was under the impression that he himself (Pharm) was fully ethnic Thai -- but with his relationship to his dad's side of the family being more revealed, it would turn out that Pharm himself was also "mixed." I did think it was cute that Pharm said, "I like it" to Dean after Dean's answer -- another instance where Pharm was being clearly flirty, despite the whole blushing maiden thing.

6) I did not appreciate the first time around, how good Ohm Thitiwat's acting was in the car scene when he's processing Korn's suicide. At the end of the series, I was so taken by the condo scene that I failed to give props to other intense moments, and that car scene was one of them. When Dean arrives at the building where Pharm and Sin lived next to each other -- a part of me wondered if he had originally intended to visit Sin, before hesitating to knock on Pharm's door. I'm not sure, and I wasn't sure after this rewatch. But that was a hell of a recognition moment on the part of Ohm's acting, and it was really damn good. (In fact -- it was my thinking about that car scene, and my wanting to watch it again, that prompted these rewatches in the first place.)

7) It may have been a little confusing, but: I really liked that the Korn x Intouch flashbacks were never presented in chronological order. I liked that the show had Dean and Pharm piece together their dreams and nightmares to come to a collective understanding about the trajectory of Korn and Intouch's relationship, even before Dean receives the background information from Sin. I know I was always a little confused during my first watch as to what moment in time I was watching with Korn and Intouch, but I recognize now that that was a reflection simply of when Pharm and Dean were receiving the same information themselves -- and I liked that the viewer was going through the same process that Dean and Pharm were going through.

8) At the way beginning of the series -- episode 2, maybe? episode 3? -- I like that Dean slyly figures out where to park himself on campus to see Pharm coming out of class. This is before the electric transformer explosion. Dean already was so swayed by Pharm. So cute.

9) I think it first struck me as a touch weird that Manaow and Del (Dean's sister!) were the admins of the DeanPharm chat group. But now that I can think more about it -- I wonder if they were doing that maybe as a way to help Pharm through his hesitancy and protect him from the fans. That being said: one of my absolute favorite moments was when Del first leans about Dean's first sleepover at Pharm's condo -- the way she jumps up and down and tries to calm her smile down. I was CRAAACKING up.

10) Maybe it's because I'm Indian, and used to very large and complicated families, that the relationship between Dean being a part of Intouch's family and having Korn's spirit, and vice versa with Pharm, wasn't confusing to me. But what really got me during my first rewatch was: Fluke Natouch's just INCREDIBLE acting when Pharm first meets Intouch's sister/Dean's grandmother, and Intouch's niece/Dean's mother. When I first watched the scene of Pharm meeting Dean's grandmother, a number of friends commented on loving that scene as well. GOD. It struck me as hard the second time around as the first time. And I think I was even MORE moved the second time around to see Pharm meeting Dean's mother.

Dean's mother had to process a LOT in the moment that she met Pharm. She had to process that her son had a boyfriend, that that boyfriend was there in her house in the first place, and that she'd have to tell her husband (Dean's dad) that their son's boyfriend was sleeping over. AND, that was all BEFORE Pharm had his reaction to Dean's mom once he was finally awake and processing things again. And THEN, she knew that Dean HIMSELF would have to tell his dad the next day and ask for his blessing. Moms have to go through a lot (do I ever know that life), but that was a LOT for Dean's mom, and god, I just gained a new appreciation for those scenes and how Dean and Pharm managed the whole damn thing together. (Also, now that I've seen The Love of Siam, as well as, of course, KinnPorsche -- and, OH, Be My Favorite, too! Kob Songsit. LEGENDARY BL DAD!)

11) My initial flip-out on the condo scene still stands. During my rewatch, I rewound it, like... three times? Fuck, man. One of the BEST BL scenes, ever, ever.

12) I loved taking my time to watch the very final scene, when Dean and Pharm have had the same dream of Korn and Intouch thanking them, and they get back together. I really loved paying attention to how all the Post-Its came back, the meaning of Never Forget, all the little notes and memories of when they had first met. Intouch's ring, the very first note Pharm wrote to Dean, all of it. Dean was such a sentimental simp from the start.

(Because I'm on such a DeanPharm kick -- and I know this is against better advice, but -- I'm considering a fast watch of Between Us just to see DeanPharm's conclusion. I know! The side couples are supposed to be chaotic, but, but. Once I get more time.)

13) Last note. Again, when I have time again, I'm wanting to write a Big Meta on separation. I've noted in some of the most important GMMTV BLs, that separation is often a key theme. But I think Pharm asking for a break was also incredibly key, and keyed into his continued commitment to setting boundaries. I think I probably fell most for Pharm as a character with him doing this -- strange, I know, since I love DeanPharm incessantly, but his standing up for clarity for his feelings meant so much for the internal strength he had gained by surviving the ordeal they had gone through. He was going to stick to his guns to make sure the relationship was authentic FOR HIM, and he did just that.

GOD, THIS WAS CATHARTIC! If you read this, thanks for going through this with me! I'm addicted to writing and this was a fun break in the midst of life chaos. I promise the OGMMTVC will hopefully continue without interruption, but that being said -- I'm watching Not Me, slowly, and having a great time with it. But UWMA is my woobie at the moment, and I just love having fallen in love with this show.

[the-awful-falafel]

Everywhere I look in online discussions, a lot of people are genuinely happy that the recent R&M S7 episodes seem to be going back to basics / fundamentals with wacky fun adventures combined with the main family cast sincerely getting along and liking each other, and tbh I get it. The sheer cruel cynicism and "everyone is an unlikeable asshole" atmosphere of season 3 - season 5 threw a lot of fans off the show for a reason, especially with various instances of clumsy and deeply problematic writing/humor. So I think this return to early season vibes, but with a developed and less dysfunctional yet still hilariously immoral family, is a necessary palate cleanser for many people. The writers clearly course corrected here from going too "dark" by going back to a more "season 2 but healthy" feel, especially Rick and Morty's bond being stronger than ever, but... *sigh*.

I just wish they didn't pivot so awkwardly and jarringly away from the heavy themes and disturbing lows of Rick's behavior that they were exploring before transitioning to this return to status quo. I wish it felt like the show wasn't obsessed with romanticizing Rick and his love for his family and his capacity for change to the point that the ease of which the themes of familial abuse and codependency are resolved/handwaved feels hollow, unearned, and transparently like a writers' course correction rather than a natural evolution that grapples with the messy consequences instead of paying them only lip service. I wish I didn't find those darker concepts to be sincerely interesting and embedded deep enough in the character writing (particularly Morty's) to the point them being so awkwardly and hamfistedly resolved feels disproportionately upsetting to me and undermines my ability to enjoy the new "clean slate" status quo with everyone else.

(I can respect the argument that several of the dark themes in Rick and Morty season 3 onward weren't written particularly well, or it derailed from the humor or heart or sitcom dynamic, but I feel like the subtler themes of Rick's targeted abuse of Morty + more overt themes of Rick worsening the family through their enablement of him had real potential and nuance, so I got invested regardless. I think the answer to these themes being written a little sloppy wasn't to rush to resolve them in an even sloppier way, but to just write them *better* and more consistently. Unfortunately, only the broader theme of "Rick is a dick to his family" got resolved via Beth growing to not take his shit anymore (while still not changing the status quo much to be fair), and the other many examples of Rick being a uniquely awful person throughout seasons 3 and 4 got little to no follow-up or consequences to the same degree-- like I said before, lip service at most. It really just reads to me like the writers don't really know how to get rid of the pit they dug, so they threw some dirt in, proclaimed that it's now filled and that's a beautiful message about life, and are moving on while ignoring the hole that remains. And some fans will like that because they're eager to get away from having to care about the hole, while I thought the hole could have turned into something genuinely fascinating if they kept working on it, or at bare minimum just bothered to fill it back up completely instead of half-assing it. ... And this metaphor analogy is breaking down lol)