#even if their story ended in tragedy (also gonna leave this here unexplained)

[something-in-your-walls]

Okay here’s an ask for ya!

How exactly does HRI affect the main plot? You know the characters and such :3

oohhh this is hard to explain without spoilers but basically, think the sweatnami episode of tetocu where little krupp has that ONE EVENT that determines his life. for that episode, its the talent show. for HRI, its his eventual separation from moxie that impacts him.

[jimtheviking]

So now that it's been a while since the ST ended, I'm gonna talk about why, of all three movies, the only one that worked for me was TLJ, and why The Mandalorian, Rogue One, Rebels, and Clone Wars are the best bit of New EU out there.

Okay so, first off, the basic thesis of this is that, when Star Wars works, has always been a story about one thing, and one thing only: Hope. And when it hasn't worked, it's been about how Cool and Badass and Edgy and Dark things can be in the Galaxy Far, Far Away.

So, let's start with the beginning, shall we?

The Force Awakens is a bad remake of A New Hope. And I don't say that just because JJ Abrams can't write or direct for shit (he can't, btw, but I'll get into that later.) I say that because, well, it's true. It's almost a shot-for-shot remake of ANH, except that unlike ANH, there is no sense of hope in the entire movie. Rey, Finn, and Poe are thrown into a Terrible Situation and they never once have any display of fear or doubt. They're confident and plucky and ready to win the day. At every point, even their lowest, they're plucky and scrappy and fighty and are never allowed to feel anything. And that means they can't hope for better things, they can't fight for a better world, because to their characters the better world is already there. It's the world they're in, because they can get what they want through Pluck and Scrappiness and Fighting Spirit, and never have to worry that it won't be enough.

Don't get me wrong, TFA is, of the two JJ films, better by a mile. Mostly because it has a coherent plotline. But it's still not good. Even when Han is killed, there is no chance to mourn him. There is no "I just can't believe he's gone" moment. There's a duel and a celebration. Leia feels his death and that could have been interesting to explore, but nothing gets done with Rey or Finn. Rey attaches to Han as a father figure, but it was Finn whose character was hamstrung most by Han's death. Finn should have been mentored in the ways of Roguish War Heroing by Han, just as Luke would mentor Rey in Jedi-ing, and Leia mentored Poe in Leader-ing. That is how the new Trio was shaping up to relate to the Original Trio, and should have gone that way. But no, JJ had to kill Han off for absolutely no purpose.

And there was no purpose to Han's death. I will get to that in a minute.

When Obi-Wan died, he died knowing he was buying the Trio time and that his sacrifice would help the Rebellion destroy the Death Star and ultimately prevent future Alderaans from ever happening again (and it did!) Obi-Wan dies in A New Hope because he knows that, like Leia said, he was her only hope. The only hope for the Rebellion. For the Galaxy. And, right after Scarif, he was the only hope she had. But now? On the Death Star? Surrounded by Storm Troopers, facing down his old padawan, his brother, his best friend? Now there is A New Hope (see what they did there?) and it's in Luke and Han and Leia and he doesn't die in vain. He sacrifices himself and that lets hope live on.

When Han died, it was, thematically, the exact opposite of Obi-Wan's death. Because Han wasn't expecting to die. Han's whole walking to meet Ben thing was him expressing hope - hope that his son would return to him, that there was good left in him - and then he was killed. Hope gets you killed in this movie, and it doesn't help anyone do anything. It doesn't save uncounted billions. It doesn't stop an evil Empire from terrorising the Galaxy. It doesn't inspire other people. It just gets you a lightsaber to the belly and kicked into an abyss. Han's death served no purpose except to show that Ben was evil. As if massacring untold hundreds of civilians to find the location of Luke wasn't indication enough. We knew Ben was evil. It was the entire point of the character. Killing Han was just to reinforce that hope is foolish.

Luke, as well, was terribly served in TFA. Luke Skywalker, who triumphed over evil despite hovering so close to the edge of it time and again, who does the right thing all the time, who every chance he gets tries to help and save people? That Luke Skywalker? He just fucked off to who knows where. Gone. Entirely. No explanation. Luke, who constantly failed in his Jedi training, but never gave up hope that he could become a Jedi, like his father before him. Luke, who knew he wasn't ready to confront Vader on Bespin but hoped he could get there soon enough to save his friends. Luke, who knew that there was no way he would be leaving Jabba's palace without a fight but still had hope that the Hutt could be negotiated with. He just...gives up. No explanation or reason given. Just...goes.

And that is the most wildly, painfully out of character moment in the entire ST for me. Because Luke was always Hope in the OT, and in the Filoni shows, and having him become Hopeless and leave? An absolute affront to the character.

But I digress.

I won't get into what TLJ did right (almost everything re: Luke, Rey, Leia, and Poe, and that throne room fight especially) and wrong (the handling of Finn, Space Monaco) but suffice it to say that TLJ at least understood that Hope was what made Star Wars good. Because Luke's sacrifice at the end of it was done just like Obi-Wan's. Luke did what he did, knowing he would die, but also knowing that it would buy time for Leia to escape. So long as Rey could get to her in time. He had Hope in Rey, and he had Hope in his own actions, and that Hope was rewarded. Luke dies, and dies a hero, dies giving Hope to the Resistance, dies a meaningful death for a hero to die.

And then we get to TRoS.

Oh god TRoS.

So, you know how I said JJ can't write or direct for shit? Here's a great example. Because we had Rey, a Jedi now like Luke had been, and ready to discover what being a Jedi means to her, and how she fits in the wider, larger Galaxy as a nobody, as a regular person who somehow became Greater than she started. As someone who isn't from a line of Force Users or other Super Special People becoming a hero and finding her place. Rey, who began her story on a desert planet, hoping desperately to be a part of some bigger dynasty, not having any confidence in herself being Rey from Nowhere, finds out she IS Rey from Nowhere, Daughter of Nobody, but becomes a Jedi, a Protector of the Galaxy, an important person in her own right, the Saviour of the Resistance. And then we find out she's the granddaughter of one of the most powerful Force users ever. And she makes herself a part of the Super Special Force User Dynasty. Completely destroying any character growth from the previous movie, because it's no longer Rey succeeding on her own, it's Rey being a Dynastic Heir.

Rey begins on a desert planet, digging things out of the sand, and ends on a desert planet, burying things in the sand. Rey begins not knowing who she really is and desperately wanting to, and ends up finding out, rejecting it, and claiming some other random legacy. Rey is no longer Rey from Jakku, she's Rey Palpatine and she wants to be Rey Skywalker so she just...claims it. There was a chance for Rey to be a beacon of Hope for other people who aren't from Force user lineages. But no, she's the child of a clone of the Emperor and decides she's a Skywalker because of an unexplained phenomenon that linked her to Ben. So without the Super Special Lineage, what hope does anyone have of changing the world for the better? None.

And, back to character deaths, Leia and Ben dying were two of the most hopeless scenes in all Star Wars. Entirely without hope. Utterly.

Why?

Well, let's start with Leia. Apparently, in the novelizations, she'd been forcing herself to stay alive to run the Resistance because no-one else could (despite like, a massive increase in operations staff, and, you know, Poe having been Leia's protogée in her Leadership Crash Course) and had been hearing Luke tell her it's okay to just let go and become one with the Force (what??) And so when she does decide to do that, it's when she transfers her life-force to Ben, to redeem him (maybe? At that point Ben hadn't had his weird Harrison Ford dressed up in Han Solo's costume hallucination, and it's not really clear why she's doing this in the film) and thus have him the Galaxy. Okay, that could work, but then Ben dies. And then dies again. Twice. (Though, really, only once, because apparently he got caught on a rock and broke his ribs and twisted his ankle when he fell in the pit, but you only learn that in the novelization. But I digress.)

So Leia's sacrifice to redeem her son is ultimately futile, because Rey managed to kill Palps on her own anyway, with the help of all the Jedi in the Force, and Ben was mostly dead. Then Rey dies from the exertion of it all, and that would be a shitty enough ending, bleak and hopeless - the only way good triumphs is by destroying itself - but then Ben comes back! And saves Rey using the healing powers Obi-Wan Kenobi used on Luke in A New Hope and Rey used earlier in the movie! Leia's sacrifice was meaningful! It redeemed Ben, who saved someone's life!

And then he dies.

Which makes Leia's death pointless again. Because she used the last of her life force to make her son Good, and then he just...dies.

And Ben's death is Hopeless in and of itself too. I'm not a Reylo fan - that dynamic just does not do it for me, generally, though there are some few well-written execptions - but how do you begin to say "The Power of Love can triumph over everything, even death!" and then kill off the person who did that? Like...that just says that Love and Sacrifice for others is pointless. That Hope is pointless. Because with Ben dying, Leia's sacrifice means nothing, and his own death means nothing because Dying Saving Someone You Love is just Suicide with Extra Steps if there's no Hope of Survival to it. The tragedy happens when a character dies hoping they can still make it back to the person they love. Ben, on the other hand, just...dies. The movie tells us that he's not worth surviving this, but Rey is. And so what, exactly, was the point of either Leia's sacrifice or Hope for her son?

Now let's get to the Filoni shows.

Clone Wars was a tragedy. Clone Wars, from the very beginning, was going to end badly for everyone involved. And it did. But even up to the end, they held out Hope that it wouldn't. And even after it happened, the survivors still Hoped that they could bring a return to Good. Obi-Wan sees literally everyone he loves die in front of him. Whether it's Satine or his fellow Jedi or Anakin, they all die. And yet he continues to Hope that the Light Side will prevail. Ahsoka loses everything and leaves the Order, but she still has Hope that she can make the Galaxy a better place. Rex loses his entire family, but Hopes that there are others out there who, like him, were able to avoid Order 66.

Rebels shows us that Ahsoka and Rex's Hope wasn't misplaced. That there was still a chance for them to do Good and for the Galaxy to resist the Empire. For Rex to find other Clones. For Ahsoka to find a purpose again. The crew of the Ghost hoped that what they would do would bring about a positive change. Kanan sacrificed himself knowing that Ezra, Hera, and Sabine would be able to help the Rebellion. Like Obi-Wan, he knew that he was not the only Hope - that Ezra and Ahsoka and Obi-Wan would continue on the path of the Jedi, even if the latter wouldn't join the Rebels, and that Hera's leadership ability and Sabine's connection to Clan Wren would help the Rebellion in coming battles. He died hoping that there was a greater good being served with his sacrifice, and it wasn't that he wanted to die - him looking back to Hera was all the proof that was needed - but that the survival of Hope was important.

Rogue One is pretty self-explanatory. Rebellions are built on hope. What did they send us? Hope. Always, every time, when it comes to it, Hope for the better is what people sacrifice themselves for. They don't do it because they don't feel like their lives are worth it. They do it because if they didn't, then Hope would die instead. And Hope is what makes life possible.

The Mandalorian keeps up this trend, too. Din was doing his thing, collecting bounties and not caring about anyone or anything but The Way until he meets the Child. And at that point, he feels something, a greater purpose, and when he's given his task by the Armourer, he accepts it. At first, he wants to complete a Quest, but as time goes on, he bonds with the Child and, once he realizes that, everything from that point forward is Din Djarin, the Mandalorian, a faceless and ruthless hunter, hoping that he can make this child's life better in some measurable way. When Din finds a settlement that's in trouble, he could just get what he comes for, but he knows that the people are suffering and you can't ignore that he has the Hope that the Galaxy will, one day, be a better place, and he can make it a bit better by doing what he does. So he does it. And keeps doing it. Because the people are hoping for salvation and, even if he's not what they want, he can at least fake it well enough that they don't realize it.

So yeah.

Hope is what good Star Wars media is about. It's what it's always been about. And when it's ignored, we get TFA and TRoS.

[bthump]

what are the things you like and dislike about the '97 anime and the films?

ty for asking, i’m just gonna write a few long lists lol

97 anime likes:

the animation, including the like, yk the more detailed stills they pan over in place of action or to punctuate important moments, i love it

the gorgeous backgrounds

most of the colour choices. red eclipse, femto’s blue eyes, casca’s skintone, griffith’s mauve clothes, etc.

how close it is to the manga. like, it’s a solid adaption just by virtue of making very few changes.

so like, most of it really, because i like the manga

special mention to the entire lead up to the eclipse from griffith’s reality break to the sacrifice tho, because i think that was all pretty damn perfect. it’s the most important scene and they did it right.

actually also shout out to casca’s flashback to griffith and the dead kid, gennon, the river scene, all that. another difficult v emotional sequence that they nailed imo.

griffith thinking about how he “loves” guts during the monologue

skipped most of the griffith/charlotte sex scene iirc which i approve of

the glimpse of black swordsman guts in ep 1. it’s not perfect but it’s way better than the ovas starting w/ 15 yr old guts

the opening and closing themes. fucking love both songs ngl

also the opening monologue. never get tired of hearing it

the score

the portrayal of griffith was honestly pretty solid imo. i have very few issues there. and lbr that’s important lol

97 anime dislikes:

not a big fan of griffith or guts’ character designs.

just about everything that isn’t identical to the manga is a change for the worse

turned griffith’s scratch marks into that giant unexplained scar

adding extra scenes where casca is secretly impressed with guts’ skills in battle in an attempt to build up their relationship better, which instead just made casca look unfair for still being a dick to him for 3 years and made guts stupidly gary stu-ish

obviously the straightforwardly romantic portrayal of guts and casca’s relationship

through several seemingly minor changes (eg, skipping guts’ night of self-doubt after he leaves, giving guts’ stay with godo its own half-episode, making guts inviting casca along super romantic rather than the incredibly casual and assholish way he does it in the manga, etc) it makes Guts’ dream seem legitimately noble and worthwhile, with none of the like… implicit critique the manga has. like honestly it completely fucks up what i consider one of the central themes of the story lol

the pre eclipse stuff also fails to sell guts’ sense of regret - through things like playing guts’ theme while judeau is telling guts to leave, not repeating guts’ statement of regret after casca tells him to leave again, the tone remains consistently in favour of guts’ dream. wrong and bad.

like it really reads like the suggested tragedy is that guts doesn’t get the chance to ditch griffith with judeau and take off with casca and the raiders lol

also fucks it up by never directly mentioning guts’ csa trauma

also fucks it up by losing guts’ self-destructive single-minded urge to fight monsters that we saw thru the wyald stuff. i’m not gonna say that losing wyald was a bad decision, but they should’ve at least moved erika suggesting that guts just wants to fight zodd again to the fucking waterfall scene in question, which they portrayed completely sans zodd discussion, completely sans implication of the self-destructiveness of guts’ dream

like in the manga he nearly gets killed by the falling logs and just laughs it off like a dumbass while erika is concerned and suggests that guts is driven by something irrational and not actually a ~noble~ dream, ie, wanting to fight zodd again (ie, going deeper, his csa trauma), while in the anime we get a 2nd scene where he successfully slices through the logs as a super basic symbol of growth and a narrative pat on guts’ back that shouldn’t be there!

honestly just fucking everything about the portrayal of guts’ dream lol it just takes it at face value in a way the manga consistently never did and always undermined and critiqued, and it bugs the hell out of me.

guts is just drawn in a way that makes him look angry way too often and he often feels ooc to me bc of it. like he lacks a lot of the warmth he has in the manga imo

showing that griffith is awake when guts says “i’ll stay too” even tho in the manga those words are placed over a panel of him asleep for a reason like, ffs

lots of other random nitpicky details that only i give a fuck about because my opinions and feelings about the story are too strong lol. like not showing griffith’s face when he asks if guts thinks he’s cruel

oh huge one: moving the scene where the torturer rips off griffith’s behelit from about a day after he was imprisoned to right before his rescue. completely trivializes griffith’s torture because it still looks like he’s been in there for a day at most

why on earth did it end where it ended????????????? who’s bright idea was that? the perfect ending is skull knight riding tf out with guts and casca and femto not killing them, but then they also cut out skull knight’s first appearance so idfk man.

oh some downplaying of griffguts, like i can’t complain too much about this because it was still p homoerotic, but things like omitting guts assuming griffith wants to fuck him right before their first duel. boo.

ultimately at the end of the day as much as i do genuinely like the anime, it’s not telling quite the same story the manga was - the story it’s telling is more boring and basic. but because it sticks so close to the manga the good story still shines through? it just means there’s inconsistent tone choices and stuff, like the aforementioned grievances.

it’s like, they kept casca’s diatribe at guts line for line while she’s screaming that griffith needed him and a man can’t live on dreams alone, but they don’t extend that train of thought to guts going off to pursue his dream, while the manga does.

anyway despite that giant list of dislikes i still think the anime is pretty fantastic overall. i just also like, blame it for a lot of wrong fandom takes lol.

movie likes:

character designs! honestly imo everyone looked pretty great.

they played up the homoeroticism and i appreciate that

illustrating griffith being torn between guts and his dream through that lovely moment when he catches guts when he nearly falls off the stairs right before he catches charlotte, and in a more romantically suggestive way

the whole scene where griffith shows up at charlotte’s window thoroughly improved on the manga, so hats off there. loved how completely out of it he was to the point where he barely realized where he was and immediately turned to leave when charlotte was like ‘woah dude wtf,’ love that charlotte was the one to ask him to stay and then physically move his hand back to her tit, love how emphatically griffith was thinking about guts during that sex scene, etc. like it’s still not perfect, but it is a vast improvement.

griffith showing up in person after the hundred man fight was a nice touch

it was cool that they got a lot of the same english vas from the anime dub back, and they all did a gr8 job. like it’s a pretty good dub imo.

i liked that they moved ‘the crystalization of your last tear shed’ to after guts’ post-eclipse breakdown

compared to the anime at least gtsca was more low-key and chill rather than dramatically romantic. still don’t want it there, and still not as… unromantic as the manga, but i’ll take what i can get

the animation during griffith’s transformation into femto, yk that whole sequence, was cool

slan’s english voice was super sexy

ummmmm i feel like they conveyed the whole dreams are stupid theme, and guts’ decision to leave being a mistake, better than the anime? like i got the sense that the ova ppl recognized that was a theme, at least. i’d have to watch them again to really be sure of that tho

movie dislikes:

GRIFFITH’S. NARRATIVE.

like holy fuck they completely destroyed his character lmao

i cannot believe

no backstory! no tombstone of flame! no ‘do you think i’m cruel?’ THAT WAS THE REASON HE MADE THE SACRIFICE FFS HOW DO YOU SKIP IT????

no dead kid angst, gennon only in vague implication, no self harm - oh no wait we saw self inflicted scratches, they were just completely contextless and meaningless to the point where we could assume charlotte’s nails made them

no torture chamber monologue

no guts monologue in the tavern either for that matter

no rooftop scene

again barely the implication of guts’ childhood trauma, both the sexual abuse and the general parental abuse. one vague flashbacky nightmare doesn’t cut it, it’s the cornerstone of the story

like i get it, it’s a movie trilogy, you have to cut some things, but goddamn, cut out gtsca. trim the hundred man fight. add 20 minutes to the first ova and take the insanely long rape scene out of the third. trim down the whole eclipse sequence. don’t cut out like… the story. like they cut out SO MANY emotionally relevant scenes and kept so many much less relevant scenes, idek.

and like let’s be real here, they turned griffith from an immensely interesting and complex character into a 1 dimensional dude who is torn between a vaguely evil ambition and being in vaguely evil love with guts, just for the sake of streamlining the least interesting aspects of the story

they don’t even try to pretend otherwise lol, look at his fucking hilarious evil smile here

also while i’m looking at it, in general i think they failed at the whole eclipse sequence. looks, lighting, colour, build up of tension… there are a few minor improvements here and there (eg casca’s point of view shot of femto, femto telekinesising guts back a la the black swordsman arc which emphasizes his failure to act when he escapes), but overall it doesn’t work for me at all. like imo the anime has the exact same highs and lows as the manga, but while the ova avoids some lows it never reaches those highs.

they also had griffith overhear guts saying he wants to stay. i really don’t get why this happened twice lol, like… ok his face is kind of shadowed here but he’s still very clearly asleep? this is an important detail, guts’ interrupted words are even on that very panel, so why would you go out of your way to show that he’s awake and listening at that point.

the pacing sucked. 3rd movie was too long, 1st was too short, and they skipped waaaaaay too many significant scenes that should’ve been there as emotional beats

honestly the movies are pretty, they’re nicely fanservicey in ways, they capture some good subtleties and nuances at times, but they’re a husk of the story

oh did i mention the music during the eclipse rape? incredible.

also i am actually generally positive about the movies too despite what it seems like here lmao. i’ve watched them all like, 3 or more times and i find them v enjoyable.

i just have a way easier time listing nitpicky flaws than positives honestly. the flaws stand out to me, the virtues pass me by because i’m just enjoying them and not dwelling on them

and lbr here at the end of the day no adaption will ever really satisfy me unless i somehow find several million dollars lying around and make my own lol. and that would probably be a flop anyway.

[c-valentino]

What do you think of Riko as a character inside the books? (no HCs) / Any fave HCs you want to share? / Any pairings/ships you like with him? / fic recs? / art recs? / Kevin&Riko - do they have/had feelings for each other? / Thoughts on his finale scene? / Did you read Nora's extra content? // tag other bloggers you think have something interesting to say about him! (maybe someone we don't know yet??) #Thoughts on Riko Moriyama

What do you think of Riko as a character inside the books? (no HCs) From a writer’s point of view? He’s a fucking tragedy. (and no, I don’t mean the pieces of background story we did get on him, that’s been said and discussed before) He’s kind of the worst villain a story can have - and here is why: 

Riko is ‘one’ of the book’s antagonists, and to quote my German lit. teacher: “Antagonists act while heroes react.” - meaning it is often a villain who initiates any kind of dramatic change in a story. That said, why is Riko Moriyama a bad example of a villain? A good villain needs a plausible background story. The reader needs to actually understand what happened to the character in order to make him into what he is today. A good villain started out as an ‘ordinary’ person, same as a hero. Both undergo a series of events to turn them into what they are. If not enough depth and character development is put into a story the character becomes lifeless, doesn’t spark any kind of interest within the reader and (in this case) the villain becomes a ‘plot device’ - meaning someone who does evil things to create scenes that show more light on the main character and his reactions. (Neil has to suffer through some pretty over the top and kinda unexplained abuse from Riko in order to add to the tragedy and heroic survival in his character’s development). [unexplained meaning: Riko could just have done a million other things to him - it wouldn’t make much of a difference. As long as it fits the excessive violent behavior category it would have worked plot wise. There is no explanation why he is using knives (other than that it fits the whole scar theme of the books (Kevin, Andrew, Neil, Jean… all of them have scars)) … ] Or, to be very harsh here and I know it’s not quite THAT bad, think of those silly cartoons, Road Runner and Coyote - you know the coyote will do any kinds of destructive things, you don’t know why, it’s just his role, he’s a plot device. 

Of course there are ways to create a great villain without spending many pages on his background story. Take Makishima Shogo e.g. (PsychoPass season one), we know next to nothing about his background, yet he is one of my favorite antagonists. His character feels real because there are enough little aspects about him that add depth: he likes to read books (physical copies because ebooks lack character), he likes to quote from those books to drive his point home, he likes to dip his sweets into tea… - non of that makes him better/worse at changing/destroying society, but it gives us an idea of who the man behind that criminal mastermind is. 

Sadly, we only get the smallest glimpses of Riko. Overall his name is being mentioned 595 times in the trilogy, but we encounter him only a few times. Most of his actions happen behind the scenes. He’s also the best kind of HC goldmine you can find. Wasted potential makes for great fan content because there is so much left to explore (no matter if the author had to cut all the information out or cba to come up with anything to begin with. The fields of imagination are endless my friends!) Or, as Nora explained: “I wanted a stronger antagonist, so I kept giving him more power–and then I tore a chunk of it away in the final draft out of necessity. He had more presence in the second-to-last draft, just as Neil’s father did, but I had to delete entire chunks to balance the story out…” Basically all the information we have on Riko comes from Nora’s extra content (his whole backstory is in there). If you read it his character starts to make sense, becomes interesting and worth exploring. But it is what it is. You can’t really blame the readers for hating Riko Moriyama when they pick up the books for the first time. He is a shadow of a character in there. And let’s be honest, the extra content “doesn’t count” in many reader’s opinion. If it’s not in the books it didn’t happen! (true to some degree, but I’m not a purist. I research and dig for those extra pieces of information. I’d rather have four books with all the information on the side characters in there, I don’t need a sequel.)  So, conclusion: If you hate Riko Moriyama, consider reading Nora’s extra content and give him another shot. He is quite interesting.

Any fave HCs you want to share?oh geez…. endless supply of those • Young Riko wide-eyed on his first trip outside of the Nest (supervised &!! unsupervised) like… the things he wants to see/eat/try/buy, (with Kevin by his side/the whole team/on his own/some Moriyama bodyguard), him buying ice cream (wow that’s sweet), fast food (not rly his thing, too greasy), clothes (ripped jeans, t-shirts, that amazing black coat he sees on his way back, a hat - because all he has are workout clothes, Exy gear and suits)• Riko doing promo/commercial stuff for the Ravens, playing nice for the staff on set, but wishing some of them a very painful death because they are so fake… (kinda used that one before) • Riko doing drugs/alcohol for the first time (can’t hold his liquor even though Kevin seems to have no problems in that department, and oh, it pisses him off - gets a huge backlash from his uncle afterwards for being an embarrassment to the family name) (drugs are something he can’t really get to terms with. He likes the feeling they give him (at least some of them) but he absolutely hates the aftermath, remembering how they made him open up, bringing him close to losing control…(ravens are against doping btw) • Endless scenes of Riko/Kevin making out… Young Kevin getting curious at some point and the only one around for him to ask is Riko, Riko being so angry that something has to give and sadly that’s Kevin, both of them being hyped after their first official game(win) and making out on Kevin’s bed, both of them getting drunk at the victory celebration and Riko dragging Kevin off to somewhere that’s dangerously public and oh, Kevin, be quiet dammit… 

•Kevin is like an octopus while being asleep and Riko can’t stand it, it’s too warm, too sweaty, too heavy, too close…. - that’s why they make out on Kevin’s bed and he leaves afterwards. But there are times he wishes he could just go over there while Kevin is asleep. He does one night, when Kevin has been drinking with the older ravens… he has covered his ass and Kevin is gonna pay for it later… gets into bed behind Kevin and prays he won’t wake up…• Riko not admitting that there is more than Exy in his head sometimes… he likes psychology, astronomy, he’s good at math too and maybe physics would be interesting if the teacher wouldn’t be such a boring moron who takes ages to come to the point… but he can’t tell anyone because all he’s meant to be is the heir of Exy, and rly, what’s the point anyway? Chances are he won’t survive the end of his Exy career… • He likes music and some company gave them these awesome noise cancelling headphones. He likes them but only uses them when he is alone because he needs to hear the people around him…  • He’s an awesome dancer with remarkable body control, and so is Kevin, as they both find out on their first (and last) night at a club…

Any pairings/ships you like with him? Both Riko/Kevin & Kevin/Riko work just fine for me. I’ve written (Raven!)Neil/Riko/Kevin before, and if you put some work and thought into a well crafted AU setting even Riko/(raven!)Andrew works. - If it has to be straight… my best bet would be Allison - she has enough of an attitude to stand her ground.

fic recs?let me give you a few but it rly deserves a full list at some pointwhat if i did by MadHatterNO7 - Kevin/RikoNever More by biffes - Kevin/Riko Kevin/Riko/Jeanignominy by Saul - Kandreil but I still like Riko in this one… baptism by Saul can’t go wrong with Saul aka @unkinglythose are only the ones I can name on the spot…

art recs? Well, there is @shihoran , of course, she’s been posting daily. hers is maybe the sweetest Riko I’ve ever seen (nothing like I imagine him but gorgeous art!) I know @foxesrefuge is working on some stuff (since I’ve seen a glimpse of it! ha! no spoilers though) http://berry-muffin.tumblr.com/post/154991766150/insp-and-a-bonus-because-fuck-riko-moriyama    http://llstarcasterll.tumblr.com/post/157091722582 http://schwarzbrot.tumblr.com/image/138611768689 http://ziegenkind.tumblr.com/post/147315366365/here-you-go-nonnyand…. srsly, we need more Riko art!

Kevin&Riko - do they have/had feelings for each other? According to Nora’s extra content ‘yes’ they had feelings for each other. And I’m not talking the platonic kind of feelings. We’re talking the conflicted ‘adoptive’ brother/romance kind of stuff. Inside the books? Yes, I believe they have a nice textbook example of love/hate relationship to the very end. Riko can’t get over Kevin, even keeps his room untouched (as Neil tells us) and I could write you another two pages about that first interview scene. You can’t just ‘hate’ someone for no reason. Hate is a very personal feeling and it needs some kind of obsession behind it. Kevin tells us that he knows how it is to be with Riko. He also tells us that Riko wasn’t always like the way he is now. He’s gotten worse. You hear the Foxes call Riko a bastard, crazy… yet Kevin usually doesn’t outright insult Riko. Does he love him after what Riko has done to him? Probably not! Did he get rid of all his feelings from the time they grew up and learned to love Exy together? Unlikely.  

Thoughts on his finale scene? ¬_¬ you had to… I don’t like it. But that’s my personal (emotionally clouded) opinion. It works as a scene because it is fast paced and written in an almost detached way - like such an experience would be, I imagine. Hard to take in, slow to process, very overwhelming, scattered, scrambled brains and all. The scene itself makes me nearly choke on the tension and displayed/withheld emotions.

Did you read Nora’s extra content? Oh yes! Such an inspiration. I’d love to get my hands on some of the earlier drafts… *cough*moreKandreil/moreRiko*cough*

// tag other bloggers you think have something interesting to say about him! (maybe someone we don’t know yet??) #Thoughts on Riko Moriyama - Already did! :D