#he just changes so much and its a really satisfying arc

[kizzer55555]

DPxDC: Jarro Adopts an Alien

Ok, so Danny has a space obsession and a protection obsession (I headcanon that as a halfa, Danny has two obsessions like all Halfas do which makes them unique to other ghosts.) and so while he can get his fill protecting people in Amity, he struggles with his space obsession. Sure, he can look up everything he can about space and the stars on the internet. He can stay up until 2 am looking at the stars (who needs sleep? He’s a ghost, he can go days, or even weeks without sleep if he wants, same with a lack of air or food.) but it’s just not enough. He craves to learn more, see more. Just as Dani gets that itch to travel, Danny wonders. What would it be like to see the stars up close? Are they really as hot as a dragons fire breath? Hotter!? Or maybe they are so hot they are cold. What does it look like to see plasma dancing across the surface, or touch the gasses of Jupiter? Does Pluto have ice caves like the far frozen? How many planets are actually out there? What about Mars. There’s a whole species living there with a language and culture Danny can’t even fathom! Oh what he wouldn’t give to talk with martian manhunter or Superman. 

And what’s stopping him from exploring this? He can fly. He doesn’t need air. He can go intangible if it gets too hot and he’s practically immune to the cold. He wants to touch a space rock! See if they are smooth because there is no wind or earth to rub against them and erode the surface. He wants to see what planets they come from. What minerals they might have. He wants to know if there are currents in space. All of these things are right there just above the atmosphere. Surely it couldn’t hurt to take a quick peek. So he does. During a particularly bad day Danny flies as fast as he can until the earth’s gravity looses its effects. Until his hair is floating as of it’s in water even more than normal. Until he can feel when breathing no longer became a choice (still not necessary though). And it…was beautiful. To be surrounded by space. To see the earth like this. Pictures just didn’t do it Justice. He flew across the solar system and as he passed planets, he longed to fly through them. To search every crevice and learn their secrets. But he had a bigger prize in mind at the moment. The crown jewel of their universe. The closest star he could find. The sun. 

Danny was mesmerized. The plasma really did dance across the surface. Like a never ending performance of science and beauty. There were sparks that few in arcs. Danny flew down and played in them, making a game to see how many he could fly under. His ghost core purred in delight. His obsession had never been more satisfied. He spent hours out there. Just exploring what his solar system had to offer. So when he returned? He couldn’t just forget. Pictures and online science theories had nothing on the real thing. He wanted to explore some more. So he did. Every night he would go out and explore the cosmos. Flying from planet to planet. (Either the Martians were still around and Danny made friends with them, even learning their language, or he just looks at their ruins to learn as much as he can). And with both obsessions now being filled, Danny is more settled. More confident. And he can focus better. Everyone notices the change, even his teachers. They just think that he’s paying more attention to his education now. He’s even better during his ghost fights. 

But Danny can fly awfully fast. And he soaks up information even faster. Soon his trips take longer and longer as he flies further out. Sometimes he can barely make it back in time for school. And he can't go every night. Sometimes the ghosts won’t wait for daytime so he has to make sure the town will be safe in his absence. Although he’s been able to take more trips ever since Valerie joined the vigilante ranks. But still, he’s getting farther and farther from earth each night. Until one day he’s visited every planet, every star, every comet or debris in their solar system. Which would be fine. He could deal with that if that was all there was. But it wasn’t. Danny saw the stars just out of reach. He saw places the Milky Way was leaning towards. He saw just the barest hints of new solar systems with new planets and stars. And he knew of legends from lanterns that they had posted online. Heard tales from some scientists that have made better telescopes. And his core itches. It aches to know more. See more. Yet he can't go further. And this puts him in a sort of depression. Suddenly he’s back to his old self. Lagging behind. Distracted. Zoning out. Crashing into a few more buildings during ghost attacks. Yet he tries so hard to be satisfied with what he has. He can still fulfill his obsession…it’s just more like chewing on a granola bar rather than eating a decent meal. He’s almost becoming lethargic. 

So one day he goes to Frostbite to see if there’s anything he can do to lessen the effects. But the yeti just takes one look at him and gives him the infimap. And suddenly Danny is in a whole new universe in seconds. The planets are purple. The stars are blue. He’s pretty sure there are furry blob-like creatures living on one of those planets. And suddenly he gets that itch, but holding the infimap, he knows he had time, so he lets himself go. 

And for a while it’s good. great even. Since he can’t keep asking the yetis for the infimap, he goes over to Wulf to see if he’s up for an adventure. Most of the time he is and they go exploring the galaxies together. And then Wulf had the genius idea of teaching Danny how to make portals. It took a long time but soon, he could concentrate the surrounding ectoplasm enough to weaken it and pull. It took a while since Danny didn’t have ecto claws and would have to use his pure will. But this would allow him to follow his obsession anytime, anywhere. So it was only a matter of time. And once he figured it out? It was like something was unlocked. Danny had never before understood how Ellie could travel so much. But now he did. That feeling when you discover something new. When you add to your reservoir of knowledge. When the patterns in the universe just click. There is nothing Danny could compare it to. And to explore that whenever he wanted? It was so freeing. While Wulf sometimes still joined Danny’s adventures, Danny did most of his explorations by himself. 

He meets various planets and aliens. So many different cultures. He learns thousands of languages. Tries all kinds of foods (and it’s a good thing his ghost self has an iron stomach and he’s basically poison resistant.) even found a whole comet where blood blossoms grew. (Which he most definitely avoided). And wasn’t that fascinating? To find out they were from space. 

And then during his travels one day he met a space alien starfish. 

It was actually a funny story. A meteor shower was about to attack a planet of talking blue monkey creatures with 4 arms. Danny immediately started diverting them and was soon joined by some lantern corps (which his inner fanboy wanted to talk to so bad.). And a tiny starfish in a…Robin uniform? Oh and the starfish could apparently do martial arts which was interesting to watch him karate chop a meteor. He could also talk directly into Danny’s head which the halfa found more interesting. So they got to talking and apparently his name was Jarro. He seemed to be helping the lantern corps as a ‘proxy from earth’ to make better use of his skills. 

Danny would run into Jarro a few more times. Sometimes he was with Lanterns and sometimes he would just be exploring the galaxies. They started forming a pretty strong friendship and Danny would start seeking out the starfish alien to travel with him. He knew all kinds of space facts. Apparently he had an eidetic memory. When they explored, sometimes Jarro would just stick to part of Danny. Wrapped around his arm, his waist, sometimes just sticking to his back like a strange backpack. But they always had fun.

So Danny was happy. He could fulfill both obsessions and got a space pal. Everything was great!

Until the GIW caught him. 

It would probably be the worst day of his life.  There was an explosion in the lab. Something set up by them after they realized Danny frequented that place often. So they set a trap and blew it up. Thankfully, Jazz was at college during this but both his parents were home. When the explosion went off, Danny had tried putting a Barrier around them all. It took everything he had to maintain it. That’s how they found out he was phantom. Danny had a few moments where his parents said they accepted him but he couldn’t hold the barrier for long. His parents said that they loved him and then everything went green. He woke up in a lab, tired and injured. His only saving grace being that he remained in phantom form. And he was determined to remain so. 

Danny’s time at the GIW was a haze but eventually, he managed to escape. Bleeding, and tired, and still recovering from the burns in the explosion, Danny made a portal straight to Amity. Only when he got there, it was a ghost town. Streets were empty, buildings were boarded up. Even the Nasty Burger was deserted. As for his house, there was nothing but a crater left and some scattered debris. Danny looked everywhere but there was no one. No Jazz. No Sam. No Tucker. No one. and he was tired. And everything hurt, and he needed a friend. Someone he could trust. So in a daze he made a portal and tried to just project safe. Safe safe safe. Somewhere he knew he would be protected. And so Jarro got a surprise when his space buddy suddenly popped out of a green portal, bleeding green and clearly passed out. He didn't know what to do. He didn’t know how to help him. But Jarro knew someone who would. 

So with a speed never before seen from a tiny starfish, he flew to earth. Bringing his friend straight to his father. Because surely batman could help!

And with his appearance, the green blood, the knowledge of space facts. The lack of wanting to talk about where he came from (and the nightmares crying out for his parents). This is how the bats became convinced that Jarro brought them an injured alien. 

[project-sekai-facts]

Hey I've been wondering, could you explain Akito and his death symbolism? It's been constantly mentioned or implied in his recent focus songs and VBS covers (getting lines about "death" or "dying" and the likes)

It's just because the fandom is using that to mischaracterize him as an overly depressed and suicidal guy (another Mafuyu copy; pls save him and Tsukasa) and I just don't think that's what the writers mean to say and the point of his whole character!!!

(prefacing this: I'm aware there was a thread about this going round twitter a while ago, I haven't read it specifically because of this ask and if anything is the same that wasn't intentional and I apologise)

A large part of Akito's character arc is his difficulty with improvement and his sheer determination and passion that goes alongside it. He had always viewed his lack of natural talent and unrefined skills as something that made him inferior, which only led to him pushing himself to his extremes, and trying to face things independently and head-on. This is something that's touched on heavily in the STRAY BAD DOG event, where we get to see him learn to rely on his teammates more and realise that he isn't alone. Find A Way Out continues his arc of personal development, with him realising he's actually not so different to the people he looks up to, and finally learning to accept and feel confident with his improvement instead of just pushing forward almost desperately. It's that idea of him finally realising that he won't always be a step behind everyone else and good things are actually coming with his hard work.

Building off that idea, it's like a sort of rebirth. And that's where the links to Kashika come in. Kashika is a song about death and longing which gets horribly misinterpreted and has led people to believe Akito is suicidal which is simply untrue. The thing that's dying in this context is Akito's old self. The child who had no talent and was falling so far behind everyone. The child who worked so, so, so hard to be perfect is dying. And that sounds like a negative thing but it's really not. It's a metaphor for Akito reflecting on himself and moving on from the past and breaking new ground.

The 2DMV adds another layer to this with its marigolds, which not only symbolise death, but also can symbolise a renewal. And in this case, renewal refers to Akito's growth following the events of FAWO. He finally faced up to his past mistakes and overcame them, but even then he won't let himself feel relief. It's only with the help of Taiga's story about Ken that he's finally able to be more satisfied with himself and how far he's managed to come. He's finally able to break out from that belief that he's forever going to be stuck behind, and he's able to have faith in himself. Realising that Ken was just like him and managed to get to such a high level of skill and be so respected by those around him finally lets Akito believe that he too can reach that same light.

The butterflies in the background again symbolise renewal or transformation. It's not about death as per se, it's about change. Change and growth and transformation are recurring themes in prsk's character writing, and Akito is no exception. While on a surface level, Kashika is about death, if you put it next to the story, it's about regeneration. Akito is moving forward and leaving the old him behind, he says as much in the FAWO story.

If you actually read the lyrics to Kashika, it's genuinely kinda shocking to me how much people misinterpret its connection to Akito as a character. Like I get the song talks about death a lot and wanting to die, but particularly in these extracts you can see some of the key points of the FAWO event - Akito's determination, passion and self-acceptance. It's a song about Akito growing up, physically and emotionally, and saying goodbye to his past self.

Now as anon pointed out, the marigolds previously appeared in his card from Light Up The Fire. And while in the case of this event, it was most likely drawn to connect with the story surrounding Nagi's death, but it's worth mentioning that every character had their own flower, so the marigolds are specific to him.

As I mentioned in today's fact, aside from being associated with death, grief, and mourning, marigolds can also have positive connotations of optimism and passion based on their warm and vibrant colors. One of the key elements of LUTF was despair and grief, shown through more ways than one. Whilst the truth of Nagi's death came as a shock to the VBS and the others, the following battle with Taiga crushed their hope to the point that everyone except VBS gave up. VBS decides to keep trying for Nagi, and again there's that idea of a renewal. They know the truth now, and are going to come back and get better. Now while this is more general about VBS, the marigolds are still specific to Akito, considering how he's always been the most determined one who has taught himself that the only way he can succeed is through sheer perseverance. Whilst it applies to all of VBS in this instance, it applies even moreso to him.

Also it leads very nicely into his fes card story, which follows after the events of LUTF from his point of view. Something notable about his fragment sekai is that it's a completely barren wasteland. It's dead. And to top it all off, he gets amnesia. However the whole point of his sekai is to remind him of his determination, remind him that he has never once given up on this dream, how he's fought and fought to hold onto it and shouldn't let what happened with Taiga and the truth behind RW strike him down. Despite the area being dead and barren, and despite the fact he can't even remember who he is at all, he still pushes forwards and keeps walking through the dangerous environment because he knows he can't just sit around, he knows he has to do something. He knows it's not a choice, it's a necessity for him to persevere, even if he can't remember why. In the end he does remember, and finds a single flower that is managing to flourish despite the harsh conditions, and he even compares himself to it because truthfully they're one in the same. Even in a hopeless situation, Akito manages to pull through. In a metaphorical sense, he can't truly die, he still finds a way to thrive even if the world is against him. His determination truly is the core of his character.

And that leads us nicely to BURN MY SOUL, which I would consider to be the end of his first character arc. Despite having learnt a lesson about his true strength and potential in FAWO, he still hasn't reached that full potential, and he still believes that he needs to keep pushing and keep working. Through Ken's advice, he's able to realise that he's been so focused on perfection that he's bottling up all the passion inside of him. Because he's so passionate about music and it's this passion that fuels his resolve that is ultimately his core, his soul. And especially after everything that's happened, the fact that there's still a lingering sense of despair after the incident with Taiga, he needs to truly let that passion burn and realise that his true potential has been inside of him all along. His role as assigned by Ken is to light up a fire amongst the people again, so he let's the fire within him burn freely for the first time, and it works exactly as needed and is able to rekindle hope throughout the town and in one of his teammates.

Back to that idea about how metaphorically Akito cannot die, I really like the symbolism of fire within VBS and Akito in particular because it's framed in such a way that the fire lit by RW is a flame that can't burn out. Even with things such as CRaZY's "I'm so ready to die" and the "I'm going to pry it open like I'm going to die" voiceline that plays when you pull his WL card, it's not meant in such a way that he wants to die, but in a way that he's going to put his all into it as if it is the last thing he'll ever do. Akito doesn't want to die, he wants to live to see things through to the end. He's too determined to let anything snuff out his flame, and even then that makes me think of the original usage of snuffing out a flame, which was actually to trim the wick so the flame could burn brighter. If you care enough about that dumb candle analogy, you could say that Taiga/the events of LUTF tried to extinguish Akito's flame, only for him to come back from the dead (and quite literally considering the wasteland in his fes card), and now he's only burning brighter and stronger.

Akito's death symbolism isn't a negative thing. Akito isn't someone who wants to die, he's too determined to die. No matter how much the universe tells him to give up he'll never stop pushing and never stop breaking down the walls around him until he sees his dreams through. All his death symbolism is equally tied to the idea of rebirth or even just living. Kashika is about him leaving his past behind and moving forward, his fes card is about his passion counteracting despair, and Burn my soul/CRaZY/Break down the wall are all about him being so fired up that he's going to act as if it's his final day. He's learning to be satisfied with his life and where he is. He's ready to live and to say he wants to die is a great injustice to his character arc.

[wonderer399]

Sebastian's Love for Ciel ❤️‍🔥🥀🩸

For Sebastian, a demon like him the concept of 'love' is something is very new...something he doesn't understand yet .... the realization he is facing from his day to day life, being with Ciel ...is slowly starting to change him.

The contract he had with his prey...at first he thought it was a quick meal for him. However, Ciel does makes his task harder...a lot harder. Sebastian soon learned and discovered many new things being with Ciel.

It is not just for the sake of the simple contract .... Sebastian clearly has lot more feelings for Ciel than he himself realizes ....he doesn't let Ciel show that, sometimes Sebastian is also hurt while protecting him ...however, his 1st priority is always Ciel , therefore Sebastian is happy as long as Ciel is satisfied.

Ciel made him 'think a lot like a Human'.....Ciel made him understand what does it feels like being human...experiencing all the emotions...from the highest highs to the lowest lows....Sebastian was with Ciel through his every thick and thin moments...

Ciel made Sebastian into a better version of himself .... he is not just limited into his butler role .... for the sake of the circumstances he had to take certain extreme measures...even outright defying Ciel's order sometimes....even going beyond lengths for protecting Ciel and his reputation.

Sebastian is seen even going beyond his strength to protect ciel ..risking his own life in this process .... no matter what

Sebastian can't really label his feelings towards Ciel however he started to notice his own obession and posessiveness towards ciel

Its the day to day small gestures and kindness towards Ciel makes Sebastian so special...thinking of every needs of Ciel and how he will react ...Keeping in mind of Ciel's every likes and dislikes....Sebastian takes his pride in making Ciel satisfied at all cost

Sebastian can't the take risk of loosing Ciel...even if it means to defying Ciel's orders

In Green Witch Arc, Sebastian gets humbled again through many unpredictable circumstances....for the 1st time ever Sebastian truly felt helpless...helpless in being able to save Ciel's life from danger...he even started to question if he truly feels human emotions or not

Seeing Ciel in this horrible state like this....Sebastian truly felt what it is like to loosing a loved one

Without any thinking Sebastian jumped into the tub with Ciel for his emotional support ....protecting him at all cost ...for the 1st time ever Sebastian knew what 'fear' is ....thus, revealing his vengeful side as he kills all the german scientists..

In the Blue Cult arc Sebastian clearly looks extremely concerned as he doesn't want to repeat his mistake of putting Ciel's life in danger again....he can't take the risk of loosing Ciel anymore....Sebastian even blamed himself for being able to protect Ciel properly

As Ciel is seen symbolically bathing in darkness...absorbing all the dark side of the world and his commitment towards the contract... Sebastian learns how to be more 'human'....how to experience his emotions in a more humanly terms...it brings both Ciel and Sebastian together much more closer...closer enough to trust each other...caring for each other's need...watching Ciel's back all the time

Ciel made him realize what it is like to be human....He is experiencing new emotions with Ciel everyday...he isn't quite there yet to be lebeling it as love...in his terms it would be 'caring, sympathy, extreme posession and obsession'

Lastly, one thing I want to say is this ...Sebastian clearly learned how to be more 'vengeful' towards anyone whoever tries to hurt 'Ciel' ....making him more 'human' ....more like 'ciel' ...being able to understand ciel...being able to sympathize with ciel and his childhood struggles ..therefore, he is always there by Ciel's side ...to the end...and will forever be in his side.

[saintsenara]

What parts of canon do you find the most frustrating/that you are dissatisfied with/wished that was handled better/explored more? Mine is the inconsistency of Voldemort as a character. How he is described as being perhaps the most talented student that Hogwarts has ever seen and so powerful and intelligent but regularly made such dumb decisions e.g. in the final battle where he still uses Avada Kedavra despite seeing it not work before. I like the explanation that Horcruxes rotted his brain

thank you very much for the ask, @sarafina-sincerity!

the parts of canon which i find the least satisfying all have the same thing in common: their morality is individualist.

the harry potter series has - at its core - a really profound and very black-and-white belief that good and evil not only exist but are rooted in the individual. and while i understand why this is the case - the later books in the series are governed by the genre conventions of folkloric epic and, especially, of christian folkloric epic, which means that the whole seven-book narrative arc ending in a battle between christ and satan after which all is well is only to be expected - i don't like it.

so here we are... ten things i hate about canon, for fanfic writers to win my heart by interrogating in their work...

i hate the series' insistence that everything is fine once voldemort is dead

the middle books in the series - especially goblet of fire - do a really interesting job at hinting at the endemic rot in the ministry of magic, and the ways that the state and its enforcers perpetuated harm during the first war that was indistinct from that perpetuated by the death eaters - above all the use of internment without trial for suspected death eaters [which is a reference to something the british state actually did in the 1970s!].

they show how widespread blood-supremacy and magic-supremacy is, even among people who don't openly support voldemort; how the wizarding population is kept deliberately ignorant by what appears to be state-controlled media; and how no serious efforts have been made to eradicate the conditions which enabled voldemort to attain such power.

this is then forgotten completely in deathly hallows, where the fact that almost the entire civil service keeps working for a government which is committing genocide is hand-waved away with "oh, people are scared", and both the epilogue and jkr's post-series writing take the view that kingsley manages, as minister, to preside over a government which easily sheds all its old prejudices and starts working properly.

i don't like this! i think it's just much more interesting for corruption to be impossible to fully eradicate from the government, for blood-supremacy to have long-standing causes which actually take a lot of very hard work to untangled [especially the fact that the wizarding world not appearing to have a welfare state means that those whose lives are poor or unstable are prime targets for radicalisation], and for kingsley to have the same capacity for leaning on the prophet and worrying about his polling numbers as any other politician...

i hate that the series changes how the death eaters are written between half-blood prince and deathly hallows

connected to this shift from the series hinting at the broader issues in the wizarding world to a flat battle between good and evil is that the death eaters, their aims, and their modus operandi are written very different between half-blood prince and deathly hallows. in the former, the death eaters can be situated very easily as anti-state sectarian terrorists who have all sorts of complex analogies within british history and politics. in the latter, they're just caricatures of pure evil - which is why the death eaters introduced from the latter stages of half-blood prince onwards, especially the carrows, are considerably less interesting as characters than those, such as lucius malfoy, barty crouch jr. and bellatrix lestrange, who are introduced earlier.

it's also why the voldemort of deathly hallows feels so uninteresting. i don't like the fanon that the horcruxes render him insane at all - when he's shown outside of the epic battle between good and evil in that book, he's shown to be as lucid and cunning as always - but he ends up having to flop because his only purpose in the overarching narrative is to be killed. in the earlier books, in which he's a paramilitary kingpin poisoning and corrupting a society which was designed to exclude him because of the fact of his birth in revenge for its treatment of him, rather than satan and hitler's lovechild, he is so much more interesting.

i hate the series' belief that slavery is fine

obviously, one of the biggest examples of state malevolence in the series is that wizards own slaves. like many readers, i loathe that the house elf plotline ends up being reduced from its potential for radicalism in chamber of secrets - in which dobby mentions whisper-networks of elves who decry their treatment at wizards' hands - to what we see from goblet of fire onwards - in which elves love being enslaved and think that any attempts to free them from their subjugation is cruel.

i also hate that elves' freedom is then hand-waved away as part of the general race towards "all was well" with the implication that hermione found it easy to undo what appears to be centuries of state-sanctioned oppression without any pushback at all.

the house elf plotline is one of the clearest distillations of the series' individualistic morality. harry abhors the treatment of dobby at the malfoys' hands entirely and only because he doesn't like the malfoys. he abhors voldemort's treatment of kreacher, but sees absolutely no issue with sirius' because he likes sirius - and he clearly sees no issue at all with his own legal mastery of kreacher, seeing as, literally minutes after the end of a war in which the good guys fought for the rights of muggles and muggleborns to be seen as fully human... he is considering ordering his slave to make him a sandwich.

i hate that the series doesn't show the realities of resistance

the reason i think the whole "why does voldemort keep using avada kedavra, isn't he supposed to be clever?" question arises is because the series is incredibly resistant to the idea that the good guys must have to kill as well, which makes it look like it's only the death eaters using it while the order use lots of clever magic that the stupid terrorists are too thick to think of.

this is idiotic - not only because the killing curse is canonically flawless unless the thing you're blasting is your own horcrux and so the order would use it for efficiency's sake alone, but because the reality of being a resistance fighter is that, even if you're on the "right" side, you are going to have kill people or they will kill you.

lupin is completely right in deathly hallows that harry is breathtakingly naive to avoid shooting to kill and that - without the protection of genre conventions allowing him to be preternaturally merciful - his resistance to killing is going to result in him being destroyed by the enemy. it is inconceivable that the rest of the order don't using the killing curse - and the question of what this does to their souls [is it murder if you believe yourself to be justified in your actions?] and their senses of self post-war is so interesting to think about - and i wish we were shown this in the text.

especially because molly absolutely blasted bellatrix with it.

but i also hate that the series thinks that violence is fine when the good guys do it

this is primarily another example of the black-and-white "this is fine because harry's good" theme which runs through the series, which we see in things like harry using sectumsempra on draco malfoy in half-blood prince or the cruciatus curse on amycus carrow in deathly hallows. harry's overarching response to committing attempted murder is to sulk that the incredibly minor punishment he receives is reducing the time he could spend hitting on ginny, and his response to torturing amycus is "lol. lmao."

the series thinks - again and again - that cruelty and violence are completely fine when the person they are perpetuated against "deserves" it, and it does not bang.

and that the series allows the good guys more complexity in characterisation

the role played by the house system in the story - and, above all, the fact that our heroes are all connected to one particular house with straightforwardly admirable associated characteristics - means that the villains receive less opportunity to also have positive traits intermingled with their negative ones - and, therefore, complex and interesting personalities.

i also dislike that when non-gryffindor characters - especially slytherins - do reveal themselves to be brave and loyal etc., instead of recognising that this is because bravery can be multi-faceted the series suggests that they should be recategorised as "belonging" to a "good" house.

or, in other words, me and dumbledore's "i think we sort too soon" line in deathly hallows are enemies for life.

i hate that the series blames merope gaunt for dying

and - of course - the main way a villain isn't allowed as much complexity as a hero is that the series never examines the impact of voldemort's childhood on his adult self. while we see hints throughout canon of just how profoundly affected he is by his institutionalised childhood and the weight of his grief over his parents [his mother especially] - such as him learning as a baby never to cry for attention because it's futile - this is hand-waved away throughout the series by dumbledore-as-the-voice-of-god as irrelevant. the eleven-year-old tom riddle is straightforwardly evil, that he grows up in an orphanage is used as nothing more than narrative colour to underline how creepy he is, and dumbledore's spectacular mishandling of their relationship is viewed by the series as undeniably correct right up to the very last moment [when harry imitates dumbledore by - and we should call it what it is - deadnaming voldemort in their final confrontation].

but the most egregious thing that dumbledore does when discussing the course voldemort's life takes is blame merope gaunt for her own death in childbirth, by implying that witches are immune to one of the most common causes of death throughout human history if they just try hard enough and then saying that a nineteen-year-old girl whose life appears to have been nothing more than unrelenting abuse and misery [perpetuated both against her and by her] lacked the moral fibre to try hard enough.

and this infuriates me.

i hate how the series treats female characters who don't fit its narrow spectrum of "correct" womanhood

merope is but one victim of the series' general issues with treating women who aren't its heroes - all of whom are exactly feminine and beautiful and clever and talented enough that we know they're good people, but not any of these things in an extreme which could make them vapid or arrogant or defiant of social norms or so on.

the series takes a very low view of women who exist outside of narrow boxes - whether they are interested in a hyper-feminine aesthetic [lavender brown, rita skeeter] or a more masculine one [marge dursley]; conform to stereotypes about being bitchy, flighty, or vapid [pansy parkinson, romilda vane] or refuse to adhere to social expectations to be polite, meek, and demure [fleur delacour]; are unmarried, are not inherently maternal, and/or are cruel to children [bellatrix lestrange; petunia dursley; dolores umbridge]; are unrestrained emotionally [cho chang; moaning myrtle] and so on. and i don't like it.

and i also hate that - connected to this - the series uses physical appearance - especially weight - as a shorthand for [female] characters we're supposed to dislike.

what it says on the tin, really - if the series doesn't like a character, especially if the character is a woman, you can almost guarantee that they will either be fat or be unusually thin.

and finally...

i hate that the series prioritises one form of love - love as suffering and as sacrifice - over all others

part of the series' march towards the epic two-person showdown between good and evil is that harry is made to endure trial after trial - including his death for the salvation of mankind - in the name of love. obviously this is because he becomes, by the end of deathly hallows an allegory for christ, but it also fits into the series' view - articulated most frequently by dumbledore - that love, suffering, and sacrifice are all synonyms.

the acts of love the series foregrounds - snape's willingness to endure anything because of his love for lily; sirius' willingness to rot in azkaban and caves and grimmauld place because of his love for james and harry; harry giving up a love that's like "someone else's life" with ginny so he can go die - are all sacrificial, and the series generally takes a dull view of love that is fluffy, silly, carnal, selfish, soothing, transformational and so on. lavender and bellatrix's open adoration of their lovers is mocked; dumbledore's sexual desire for grindelwald is punished by his sister's death; tonks and lupin's uncomplicated happiness in the birth of their son is not to last.

but happy endings and silly jokes and forehead kisses are love too. and the hill i will die on is that they have even more potential to bring about the salvation of the world than constant suffering and abiding.

[galacticlamps]

ok I have A Lot of thoughts about the staircase confession (well really about Edwin's whole character arc, but all roads lead to rome) but for now I just wanna say that, yes, I was bracing myself for something to go terribly wrong when I first watched it, and yes, part of me was initially worried its placement might be an uncharacteristically foolish choice made in the name of Drama or Pacing or Making a Compelling Episode of Television but at the expense of narrative sense--

But I wanna say that having taken all that into account, and watched it play out, and sat with it - and honestly become rather transfixed by it - I really think it's a beautifully crafted moment and truly the only way that arc could've arrived at such a satisfying conclusion.

And if I had to pinpoint why I not only buy it but also have come to really treasure it, I'd have to put it down to the fact that it genuinely is a confession, and nothing else.

That moment is an announcement of what Edwin has come to understand about himself, but because it takes the form of a character admitting romantic feelings for such a close friend, I think it can be very easy, when writing that kind of thing, to imbue it with other elements like a plea or a request or even the start of a new relationship that, intentionally or not, would change the shape of the moment and can quickly overshadow what a huge deal the telling is all on its own. But that's not the case here. Since it is only a confession, unaccompanied by anything else, and since we see afterward how it was enough, evidently, to fix the strangeness that had grown between him & Charles, we're forced to understand that it was never Edwin's feelings that were actually making things difficult for him - it was not being able to tell Charles about them. 'Terrified' as he's been of this, Edwin learns that his feelings don't need to either disappear completely or be totally reciprocated in order for him to be able to return to the peace, stability, and security of the relationship with which he defines his existence - and the scale of that relief a) tells us a hell of a lot about Edwin as a character and b) totally justifies the way his declaration just bursts out of him at what would otherwise be such a poorly chosen moment, in my opinion.

Whether or not they are or ever could be reciprocated, Edwin's feelings are definitively proven not to be the problem here - only his potential choice to bottle it up - his repression - is. And where that repression had once been mainly involuntary, a product of what he'd been through, now that he's got this new awareness of himself, if he still fails to admit what he's found either to himself or to the one person he's so unambiguously close with, then that repression will be by his own choice and actions.

And he won't do that. Among other things, he's coming into this scene having just (unknowingly) absolved the soul of his own school bully and accidental killer by pointing out a fact that is every bit as central to his self-discovery as anything about his sexuality or his attraction to Charles is: the idea that "If you punish yourself, everywhere becomes Hell"

So narratively speaking, of course it makes sense that Edwin literally cannot get out of Hell until he stops punishing himself - and right now, the thing that's torturing him is something he has control over. It's not who he is or what he feels, but what he chooses to do with those feelings that's hurting him, and he's even already made the conscious choice to tell Charles about them, he was just interrupted. But now that they're back together and he's literally in the middle of an attempt to escape Hell, there is absolutely no way he can so much as stop for breath without telling Charles the truth. Even the stopping for breath is so loaded - because they're ghosts, they don't need to breathe, but also they're in Hell, so the one thing they can feel is pain, however nonsensical. And Edwin certainly is in pain. But whether he knows what he's about to do or not when he says he 'just needs a tick,' a breather is absolutely not what's gonna give him enough relief to keep climbing - it's fixing that other hurt, though, that will.

Like everything else in that scene, there's a lot of layers to him promising Charles "You don't have to feel the same way, I just needed you to know" - but I don't think that means it isn't also true on a surface level. It's the act of telling Charles that matters so much more than whatever follows it, and while that might have gone unnoticed if anything else major had happened in the same conversation, now we're forced to acknowledge its staggering and singular importance for what it is. The moment is well-earned and properly built up to, but until we see it happen in all its wonderful simplicity, and we see the aftermath (or lack thereof, even), we couldn't properly anticipate how much of a weight off Edwin's shoulders merely getting to share the truth with Charles was going to be, why he couldn't wait for a better, safer opportunity before giving in to that desire, or how badly he needed to say it and nothing else - and I really, really love the weight that act of just being honest, seen, and known is given in their story/relationship.

[darkcircles4lyfe]

What are your thoughts on the recent chapter?

This is a pretty vague ask but I’m pretty sure I received it yesterday. If not… oops?

I’m actually so excited for the next—that is, the second to last—chapter as someone who was deeply affected by chapters 391-395 and who just loves Toga Himiko in general, so so much. I’ve really grown to love Ochako’s arc too and I’ve come to trust the process here. I didn’t know about everyone freaking out until after I read 428 officials yesterday, and I’m not worried like that. We’ve been in this type of cliffhanger situation multiple times before.

The news that the end of Himiko’s and Ochako’s fight wasn’t recorded hit me hard, just like it hits Ochako, because the world doesn’t get to know who Himiko really is. There’s nothing Ochako could say on her behalf that would compare to actual footage of her pain, anger, joy, love, sorrow, and sacrifice.

…which is to say, Himiko does not serve as a martyr, a tragic, cautionary example. I’ll remind you that that was what the PLF reporter wanted her to be, and she was controlling and patronizing. Let’s think about this as a choice Horikoshi is making, to discard the only ammunition he had to make Himiko into an example and have it be even remotely compelling and satisfying. Boom, gone. There’s no footage. Why?

On the other hand, this is actually an advantageous turn of events if it turns out Himiko survived, because more calculated actions can be taken to keep her safe. I’m starting to see this as a turning point not necessarily for society as a whole, but for the hero profession and its purpose, wherein under Hawks’ leadership the hero commission could become the exact opposite of what it was. It’s no accident that the first half of this chapter is devoted to showing how the next generation and the public were both ~so inspired~ by class A’s actions in a way that mimics the chain of inspiration that motivated class A to begin with. Only this time, Ochako and Izuku are deeply uncomfortable with it! They don’t want this chain reaction to keep going the same way forever. These people look at them and have no idea what they’re actually going through or what they’ve seen. Future heroes who don’t know the real story. That’s very upsetting. Now they are starting to see firsthand how a pattern of collective forgetting is perpetuated. It won’t change until someone like Himiko is actually saved. No bright future without a place for her in it.

I’m excited because this chapter directly confirms Ochako’s awkward, overly cheerful mask for what it is, as it finally starts to crumble. In hindsight, she’s probably done this a lot in the past as well. It casts her whole character in a new light. She and Himiko are so much alike in this way.

I still have high hopes for this storyline because of how much it resonates with me as a queer allegory. Of course, Himiko is also literally queer, but I mean the symbolic stuff about her quirk and her family’s rejection. As a trans person who spent a long time in the closet convincing everyone around me that I was a normal, happy girl, whose pain and rage only festered and grew stronger, who was perceived as selfish and destructive, who was determined to live for myself but still doubted if I had any future at all… I see Himiko’s story as so perfect, so real, that I can’t imagine it ending poorly. And it doesn’t have shit to do with canonizing that ship, either. I’m not worried.

[ewingstan]

Worm and other media that won't just let you shoot the Joker, part 1:

Worm comments on the structure of stories, especially superhero stories, in some interesting ways. There's a lot of stuff that happen in superhero comics for no real reason than that it needs to happen for the story to be interesting; a huge amount of Worm's worldbuilding is devoted to taking these things and making the fact that they have to happen an explicit in-setting constraint. For instance, superhero stories tend to have more powerful heroes face off against much more powerful villains than their less-powerful allies, to the point where it seems like super-powerful threats are coming to earth every few weeks just because it wouldn't be interesting to read that comic otherwise. It gets weirder when you compare what villains end up visiting the cities of uber-powerful heroes vs the cities of less powerful heroes: Gotham mostly just has to deal with serial killers while Metropolis is a magnet for evil gods. Worm plays with this by having the Endbringers exist only because the big hero needed something to fight in-text: it changes "powerful heroes need powerful villains or else it wouldn't be interesting" from a Doylist justification to a Watsonian one. Then there's the fact that so much of the horrible conflict in Earth Bet is explicitly caused by Gods making sure the powers they grant people lead to increased conflict, the fact that one of the most powerful characters does what she does because the plot path to victory says she needs to, etc.

But the big one is Jack Slash, and how he's only able to get away with his bullshit because he has plot armor as a secondary power. As WB says here, "Jack's a reconstruction of the Joker type character in the sense that you can't have such a character take such a high profile position in the setting, without having there be a cheat." The Joker and similar characters are only able to keep being relevant threats in their stories because the narrative bends to let them win and stops them from being killed. Jack Slash is only able to keep being a relevant threat because his power makes the universe bend to let him win in the same way. Not only does this make for an interesting obstacle (its almost like they're fighting an authorial mandate!), but it skewers the use of similar character's plot armor and how unrealistic and unsatisfying it makes their stories.

But wait, what does it mean for a story to be "unrealistic" in the context of superpowers? Is being unrealistic in those contexts actually a problem? For that matter, what does it mean for a narrative to bend to let someone win? Its not like there's an objective way fighting the Joker would go, which the author is deviating from by letting him survive.

[Stuff under readbelow contains spoilers fo, the movie Funny Games and the book Anybody Home?]

Maybe we could say that if characters like the Joker were real, and put in the situations they are in their stories, they would end up being killed really quickly. But is that a reasonable way to judge stories? A narrative where such a character is killed unceremoniously to satisfy a need for realism isn't any less an expression of the author's deliberate choices than a story where the character keeps showing back up to satisfy a desire for fan-favorite characters. And while Jack Slash's arcs help show why deviating from "realistic consequences" in the service of keeping a character alive can make a story exhausting and screw with an audiences' appreciation of stakes, it doesn't make a strong case against the concept of villains having plot armor in general. A story isn't necessarily worse just for being constructed to keep the villains alive—all stories are constructed, and sometimes being constructed that way makes for the best story.

That becomes more clear when you take the premise of Jack Slash as "killer who wins because the mechanics of the universe says so" and make clear just how much "the mechanics of the universe" really just means "the story". Which is how you get Peter and Paul from Funny Games.

I'd highly recommend watching Funny Games (though for the love of god check content warnings), as well as Patricia Taxxon's review of it that I'm cribbing a lot from here. But to summarize, Funny Games is a movie written and directed by Michael Haneke about a family's lakeside vacation being interrupted by the appearance of two murderous young men, who capture them in their own house and slowly torture and kill them off. At least, that's what it seems to be about initially. It marketed itself as a somewhat standard entry in the genres of torture porn and home invasion thrillers, and played itself straight as one for the majority of its runtime. But then one of the two villains of the pair, "Paul," starts talking to the audience.

It starts small: after crippling the family's father and revealing that he killed their dog, Paul has the wife look for its corpse outside. While giving her hints, he slowly turns back towards the camera and smirks, before turning back. In isolation, maybe it could be interpreted as Paul smirking at Peter, seeming to look out at the audience only because of clumsy blocking. But then it happens again. Paul tells the family, who are completely at their mercy at this point, that they're gonna bet that they'll all be dead within twelve hours. When the family refuses to take the bet, asking how they could hope to win it when he can clearly off them all whenever they wish, Paul turns towards the audience and asks "what do you think? Do you think they stand a chance? Well you're on their side aren't you. Who you betting on, eh?" The audience is being acknowledged; their role as someone invested in the story is being examined by the ones introducing the stakes.

But the biggest moment comes near the end, when the mother grabs the shotgun she's being threatened with and blasts Peter. Paul startles, grins, and then hurredly grabs a tv remote and presses rewind. The movie itself suddenly rewinds to right before the mother grabs the gun, and plays again with Paul grabbing the shotgun right before the mother reaches for it.

Its a truly incredible moment, in that its the perfect way to forcibly take away the audience's suspension of disbelief. It forces the audience to acknowledge that they're viewing a story, not something happening to a real family. After their moment of catharsis against the villains, Paul makes the confront the fact that the movie will end however the creators want it to, and if they want the villains to win they'll will regardless of how little sense it makes. Fuck you, we can go from being set in the normal world with normal rules to the villains traveling back in time with a tv remote, because a story does whatever its creators want. Haneke just decided to make that obvious in the most jarring way imaginable.

But maybe the best way to illustrate Funny Games effectiveness at this type of artful unveiling is comparing it to its less-effective imitators. I've recently finished Anybody Home?, a recently-published book by Michael J. Seidlinger. It has the conceit of being narrated by an unnamed mass-murderer, guiding a new killer in their first home invasion. I started reading it before I watched Funny Games, and even afterwards took a while to realize the unnamed narrator wasn’t just a pastiche of a Paul-like character but was actually supposed to be read as Paul himself. Seidlinger was having his book be a sort of unofficial sequel to Funny Games, narrated by its star. Once I realized, a lot of the books details suddenly clicked. The big one was the constant references to “the camera" and the idea of murder being a performance for an audience, one that needed to be fresh and original to make “the cults” enjoy it. Take these passages from page 77:

If it happened, it would perturb. It would create suspicion. It wouldn’t end up ruining the performance, and yet, it could have derailed our casing. The camera can have all it wants; either way, it’ll make it look better than it really was. It’ll strip away the cues and other planned orchestrations and it’ll show the action—the actuality of each scene, each suggestion…

This is a spectacle, above all. The craft pertains to keeping and maintaining a captive audience; behind the camera, you’ll never know how it happened—the trickery that made the impossible possible, the insanity so close to home. It is spectacle.

Through online activity, the son made it clear that something is happening at home, yet we cannot be certain if he has noticed the camera.

These all point to the idea that the murders are being viewed by an audience rather than just by intruders, that this is a performance for said audience's benefit more than anything else. But notably, it also reinforces the idea of these characters having an existence outside of the camera: the camera shows the action and "strips away" the cues behind it, the victims have a life outside the camera such that they could plausibly sense that the camera is now here. The victims are sometimes described as playing into their role, but always metaphorically; always as if normal people start acting like characters when put in certain circumstances. Whereas Funny Games posits that characters will behave however the author wants them to, denying the claim that stories are realistic simulations of hypothetical scenarios.

The whole thing is predicated on the idea that there needs to be a guide, that the villain of a home invader movie is really in danger of something going wrong. Paul/The narrator keeps giving directions on what needs to be double checked, what needs to X, and its completely against the spirit of the role Paul served in Funny Games. If something goes wrong for the villain they should just be able to rewind and do it over, because the story was written for them to succeed. Anybody Home? throws out Funny Games theme of the story being on rails, of the winner being whoever the author wants it to be and the events following whatever the author wanted rather than what would "really" happen. It throws out the whole idea that it’s all just a story, by supporting the idea that the characters have lives not captured by the camera—or more relevantly, not captured on-page.

Because Seidlinger using the language of film in a book leads to different things going on with the fourth wall. The way Funny Games and Anybody Home? make the camera explicit are just different, and the former does it much more interestingly than the latter. Seildinger’s characters aren’t looking back at the reader, the fourth wall is never actually breached. Funny Games has Paul look into the camera to address the audience, making clear how it’s a story being set up for the audience's benefit. Anybody Home? invokes the idea of a camera tracking everything home invaders do in general, having it be a third-party force that’s itself an unseen character contained within the story, observing the intruder's crime rather than the reader. Why is it still a camera, if we're in a book rather than a movie? A character in a book talking about a camera watching them does not convey any of the same meaning as a character in a movie suddenly looking into a camera and smirking at the audience!

By the end, you realize that this is caused in part by the book's bizarro take on how horror movies exist in this world. It reveals that in its setting, all horror movies are adaptations of real home invasions, which get recorded by unseen mysterious forces. Killers enter a home and enact violence, are filmed by some supernatural camera, the footage gets leaked to the public, and then the killers sell the rights to the work to studios. The events of SAW really happened, but the movie was just an adaptation. Funny Games really happened, but the Paul in the movies was just an actor playing the Paul narrating this book. The killer's victims eventually realize that they're "victims," but not in the sense that they realize their characters in a story, only in a sense that they realize they got sucked into their world's magical realism bullshit.

Ultimately, while the book does the same trick of being all about how horror stories are “for” us, it gets rid of all the tricks that made it work for Funny Games. It even strips it's in-universe version of what made it special; Funny Games is just another adaptation of a real home invasion. All the meta stuff that makes it interesting in its genre are just gestured at as aesthetics.

So what makes Jack Slash in Worm succeed where the killers in Anybody Home? fail? Both are constructed to be entertaining for a 3rd party who stand-in for but aren't actually the audience; the entities in Worm, the cults in Anybody Home?. But Jack Slash doesn't mix his metaphors. Worm may turn various real-life factors affecting a work into in-story mechanisms of the world in the same way Anybody Home? does. But it doesn't also base itself off a text that takes in-story mechanisms and breaks them to force the audience to see the various real-life factors affecting the work. In effect, WB pulls off a trick Seidlinger tries and fails because WB wasn't taking another metatexual story and stripping it of what made it interesting.

Though that introduces the question: can such meta-moves be mixed? Can you have a text where story conceits become explicit plot mechanics the characters are aware of, while also having characters really look at the camera and tell the audience that its all just a story? Can you actually sell it and make it something interesting?

There is one story that tries this. I don't know if it pulls it off, but it certainly makes a lot of interesting moves that create a fascinating whole. It even comments on the Joker in the same way Worm does, having a character who seemingly cant die because the roll they play in the story is too impor—

Ah fuck.

Continued in part 2.

[dccomicsbracket]

Batgirl (2000)

Perhaps my single favourite piece of writing in the comic book medium. This was my introduction to Cassandra Cain, and is the perfect place to get into her. Everyone should read Batgirl #19, and bask in the way it lays out the core of Cass' character with surgical precision. Puckett's Cass is fascinating: a fine balance of absolute confidence in her ability, crushing guilt about her past, a desperation for redemption and to see others redeem themselves, and a fundamental belief in the preservation of life. 1st batgirl on going, very good overall run, do it for Cass everyone its quite literally required reading for cass, babs, and steph. the way kelley puckett is able to explore cass’s character through her relationships with the other bats and the parallels between her and bruce is actually insane. theres so many little details in the visual story telling as well that just make the experience that much better. the fluidity and expressiveness of the art also adds on to the overall experience. it is literally DCs magnum opus Life changing series.

Young Justice (1998)

It's 6-8 fifteen year olds living in a cave, and their only adult supervision is a robot wind machine one of them graffiti-ed all over within the first five minutes of meeting him. The only two with anything even RESEMBLING normal childhoods are the demigod and the son of two billionaires (literally just some guy). They have an alien motorbike and at one point they save the world from aliens by playing baseball. Everyone in it is just so stupid all the time and I love that for them (god bless ����) Never has a comic quite that batshit and quite that sincere graced my presence I just love it and I enjoyed reading it

Blue Beetle (2006)

Just a good introduction to a character with a satisfying conclusion. I love you, Jaime, a guy who's just trying to do his best for his loved ones and his local community. I love you Khaji Da, scrungly lil dude speaking in glyphs. I love you, Brenda, and your complicated relationship with your aunt who adores you, but is also a crime lord. I love you Paco, a genuinely good friend. I love Jaime's family and the way they all adjust to Jaime being a superhero. I love the effort made to portray Jaime as a person with community and connections. i looove jaime sososo much he's such a fun protagonist and the developement of his character + his relationship w khaji da is sooo interesting and well written. i love seeing him bond with his little alien bug parasite !! all of the side characters are also so great like brenda and paco are so fun and la dama is suuuch an interesting character. jaime's family is also so lovely they clearly care abt jaime so much and its nice to see a kid superhero with parents who respect and also deeply care abt their kid. the art is also very fun overall its just a really stellar run Quite honestly one of the best written comic runs I've ever read, DC or otherwise. It flips so many standard comic book tropes on their heads and does it well. The main character is the epitome of just some guy and he is my favorite of all time. AMAZING characters. Fresh perspectives on comics tropes that are so overused it's hard to imagine comics without them. Everyone is worthy of respect and treated with dignity, even the villains. Khaji Da's character arc is amazing. And the adults make me laugh so much. Guy and Peacemaker as mentors who IMMEDIATELY recognize this kid is FAR more emotionally mature then they are, so they're not going to bother with that side of mentoring!

[whoistrash]

Why change matters and how Amphibia did it better than The Owl House.

"Watching and Dreaming" made me cry a lot during its premiere. I was amazed and, I'd say, dazed by it. Then I forgot about it for a while. Now I finished re-watching Amphibia for the first time since TOH ended. My hype died down, and I have some thoughts. A lot, actually.

Amphibia's ending was incredibly painful and made me sob like a baby for two whole weeks the first time I watched it. That's because it was not only beautiful and heartbreaking, but truly GOOD. Brilliant, actually. I absolutely agree with a statement that any other ending would literally be a contradiction to the whole main plot, especially Anne's arc. The girls had to learn to let go in order to grow as individuals - the thing they had the biggest problem with. Saying goodbye was the only logical option, plot-wise. It still hurt like hell, though. Separating the multidimensional, against-all-odds relationships (especially my beloved spranne. Ouch, ouch, ouch). The Owl House does no such thing - everybody stays together. They live happily ever after.

Paradoxically, I think that it's the main reason why I'd choose "The Hardest Thing" over "Watching and Dreaming" every single time. I know we shouldn't really compare them in EVERY aspect, since TOH had way more things to deal with in the final episode, but the fact that Luz got to not only stay, but to freely travel between worlds as she pleases really took the whole "growing up and finding your true self no matter what the other people do/say about you" thing out the door. Luz from season one, episode one, and Luz from the finale are not really that different. Well, she certainly became more traumatised and depressed than before, but in terms of personal growth? Nope. Luz - from the very beginning - was cheerful, open, caring and very selfless, willing to literally help every stranger she met no matter how it would affect her. She had little to no boundaries, but, well, you can't argue that she was A GOOD, SELFLESS PERSON. Now, we could say that her arc here would be learning that sometimes you should put yourself before others, that you can't save everyone, that you can't trust every person you meet. And she learns it! She fucking does! She helps Philip not knowing who he will become, and then suffers from the consequences, because she helped the wrong person. And then it's all erased, when she saves Collector's life and meets Papa Titan (or whatever we call them).

I have so much to say about this. All of TOH's "villains" (Amity, Lilith, Hunter, The Collector) that were given a redemption arc literally get turned into lifeless, edgy trauma dumpsters, that suddenly loose all of their previous character, quirks and sass (well, maybe except for Lilith, she just started to express them differently, I think, but still, it was WAY too big of a change). I won't dwell on it (since many, many fans called it out already - as they should), and will focus on something different. The only one marked as irredeemable is Belos. Good. Okay. He's irredeemable, because he's a white, christian puritan who won't listen to anyone but himself. Also a genocidal maniac. That's the lesson for Luz here. "You can't save everyone. Some people are just straight up evil". And it's very, very true. But.

From all of the "villains" I mentioned before, Belos is the one that had the most reasons to, let's say, take a dark turn. Those reasons are what makes him irredeemable - he's just too convinced he's right, because, in his mind, he has evidence to prove it. But how do we learn about this? Maybe by seeing his part of the story? Maybe by learning about his brother and Evelyn, about their relationship? It couldn't be straight up awful, since Philip literally brought his brother back to life over and over again, he wanted his brother, or at least the picture of Caleb that satisfied him the most. There was more to it than only "you betrayed me and now I will hate you forever". Do we get to see any of that? No. Instead we get an all-knowing, all-doing being that literally choose Luz as "the one" for being kind and trusting, that convinces her that Belos is, indeed, a lost cause. Do you see where I'm going with this?

Luz, the person that on the literal episode two was told that there is no such thing as a "chosen one" and that she can't always hop into action to save everybody, because, it's, well, not always possible, DOES EXACTLY THAT in the finale by taking a bullet for The Collector, the, you know, very freshly redeemed and suddenly cute and funky villain, whom Luz trusts immediately. AND SHE IS REWARDED FOR IT BY BEING MADE THE CHOSEN ONE. BY A GOD-LIKE BEING THAT CLAIMS TO BE ALL-KNOWING AND CAN DECIDE WHO IS RIGHT AND WHO IS WRONG, BECAUSE OF PERSONAL (King) REASONS. Just like, you know... Belos? The irredeemable villain? And then Luz lets go of the moral dilemmas that's been keeping her up at night for the past months, makes up her mind, defeats the bad guy, learns nothing, and gets to stay in the Boiling Isles and on Earth. With her beautifully redeemed girlfriend and friends whom she kept secrets from and lied to out of fear of being ostracised (you see the pattern here, right?) for, again, months.

I love Amphibia. I love The Owl House. But Amphibia handles it's "villains", generally wronged characters and the whole change/no change thing way better. Well, maybe besides the Core - they got a bit wasted in my opinion. But still. Sasha. Grime. Marcy. Andrias. Anne herself. They learn and change. And more importantly, they face consequences and come to understand and accept them. There's no "chosen one" here. Anne gets the proposition because she's the first one to use the music box for good in literal millenia. A fact, plain and simple (not an opinion based on personal motivations), that makes sense plot-wise, and adds so, so much to Anne's arc. Because Anne from season one, episode one wouldn't care. The one from the finale cares very damn much. And that's the biggest difference.

Saying goodbye makes the message way stronger. The more I think about it, however, the more I'm starting to be afraid that there's no The Message in The Owl House to begin with. Luz learns very little, yet ends up with everything she ever wanted. There's no power behind it. The "find the right people and choose to trust them, not everyone will be your friend" and "some things are out of your control, some people are just bad" aspect is even weaker, as proven by basically the whole season 3. I will end it by my favorite quote from Amphibia, that I think about on daily basis. Have a good day, y'all.

"Change can be difficult, but it's how we grow. It can be the hardest thing to realize you can't hold on to something forever. Sometimes, you have to let it go; but, of the things you let go, you'd be surprised what makes its way back to you."

[jellophoid]

finished yakuza 4,,,I hate this game.

okaaaay finished yakuza 0, let us see if we can watch the rest before the new game comes out👩‍🍳

[oddp1ant]

A handful of loose reflections I wanna put down before time moves on, things change etc

One, Viktor. The biggest thing I'm feeling right now is grief. We knew he was doomed from the start, to lose parts or all of himself, but seeing it happen still hurts. I was unsettled during act 1, feeling so much of him was already lost with little fanfare - would the narrative just move on? I'm actually mollified by this second death, seeing it delivered with narrative and emotional weight, even if we haven't gotten the (Jayce's) reasoning for it yet. Plus, I'm fairly confident we've yet to see his final evolution. So again, he was already (mostly) gone, but now it's like the narrative has acknowledged it, too. Even less will be left off him in his final form, but by god, I hope it's his wrath. If he's truly left an empty shell for the arcane I think I'll cry.

Second, Jayce. What the hell man. Explain yourself. Ngl I love him so much, seeing him get cut up with a chainsaw and apparently run through the arcane autoclave was oddly satisfying. Both him and Mel felt a bit, idk, like they'd gotten a PR treatment in arc 1? Like I love the "my place is here in the lab with you" and "Viktor will return to us" as much as the next guy but both of these characters have been very shitty to Viktor very recently and erasing that feels too cheap. I'm glad to see Jayce return to making Big Swings in the worst possible direction. I only wish he'd said something to Viktor before. Well. Y'know.

Speaking of Mel, I absolutely love the arc she's getting. Even just the fact that she's getting an independent arc, tbh. Most beautiful woman in the world is also magic? Gays stay winning.

And it feels almost redundant to mention but. The sister arc. Suffice to say I'm chewing drywall. The scene in the glow mushroom tunnel. Vander. Possible Vi Jinx Cait teamup in act 3. Love me some natural character/relationship development!!!!!!

Side note: love the ambiguity whether Vander is actually at least Vi's bio dad. Get it, you dog.

I'm not ready to talk about Isha.

Finally, I'm feeling a peculiar kind of melancholy for the diverse but largely congruent Divorce Era fanon that sprung up in between seasons - the visions of Machine Herald and Defender of Tomorrow built from an amalgamation of League and Arcane, making a shared space for creators to play in that has birthed some of my very favorite stories. It's been so, so much fun and I'm floored by how much of it was really founded in shared fandom interpretation and imagination. Now that Arcane canon has set out its own, unique direction, I wonder if this nebulous genre and its characters - a Machine Herald that is neither of League nor Arcane but all our own, the meeting and friction points between Jayces Giopara and Talis - will fade into the past, a weird limbo between the solid pillars of canon, or if its grounding in league lore will keep it alive.

- Honorable mention to the fics where arcane-adjacent and league-ish versions of jayvik meet and fuck absolutely nasty about it. You're the real ones. I could (and have, thank you to my very patient, non-fic reading friend) talk for hours about the complexity and depth of character explored in robotfucking timetravel porn. And none of it, not just the stories but the shared framework and subtext they're based upon, would exist without the beautiful minds of fans! Thank you ily.

[filmmarvel]

Sex Education Season 4 Review

Unfortunately it wasn’t as good as the others. It’s less that it was bad or that I didn’t enjoy it, and more that it sort of failed in its duties as a finale. I really liked the finale, it wasn’t until I finished it that I was left like… that’s it?

Starting with the Pros: I’m glad they had the sense to end it here. This season has gotten hated on pretty hard so far, which makes sense, but isn’t quite deserved. Even though it wasn’t as good as it COULD’VE been, it was still good! In particular, Aimee, Eric, and Adam had wonderful and satisfying arcs which I found quite compelling and felt like a lovely send off to each of their characters. Maeve’s ending, despite being a point of controversy, was fitting. She had a difficult but moving season, and her destiny was always to be a writer. As disappointing as it is that she doesn’t end up with Otis, I thought the writers justified it quite well. It would’ve simply felt wrong for her to stay back in Moordale just for Otis. She was always going to get out.

This brings me to the Cons. I have to say, my biggest disappointment with this season has to be Otis himself. Being the lead character, I really wish they would’ve chosen a more personal storyline with more depth to it to send off his character. Instead, they had him acting like a child the whole season. He’s the primary character and yet he has the least interesting, least sympathetic, least moving storyline. It was all about his relationships with Maeve, Ruby, and Eric, and his competition with O. Nothing really about him. They didn’t give enough closure as to how his future looks- he’s no longer the school sex therapist, which is disappointing. He agreed to think about working with O, but that’s all, and that isn’t the most satisfying conclusion. They left him in a very nondescript place. Additionally, many former cast members weren’t in this season. As a result, I felt that there were a number of missed opportunities. My other big complaint is, predictably, the change in setting and new cast of characters. I really didn’t love the new school. I don’t think I need to elaborate on that too much, it was just kind of over the top in a way that felt misplaced and unrealistic. As for the new characters, most of them weren’t bad, they were just unnecessary. The one character I did have an issue with was O, who was a rather grating presence. Which I don’t think was something all that good for a finale. I didn’t find her character at all interesting or sympathetic. She was really annoying, and didn’t grow on me at all over the course of the season.

To sum things up, I wish the writers had just focused on the characters they had already. The new characters weren’t as interesting (naturally), and I thought the season could’ve benefitted from more of a personal journey for the characters we already know and love- such as Otis, Jackson, Ruby, or Viv. When a show ends, I always really like to have some closure on where each of the characters are headed in the future, such as new passions, future relationships, careers, etc. While again, they did a lovely job with this with a few characters, there were a lot of characters who just left me unsatisfied (namely the aforementioned 4). I enjoyed the ending, but it left me feeling like a lot of precious time was wasted with new characters and misplaced storylines. It didn’t feel as though the writers quite understood how important this season was, and failed to treat certain characters with the care they deserved.

[powertaco]

What are your thoughts on WR development overall and your thoughts on WR being developed/made canon in V10?

Ugh I am going to ramble about everything here I can feel it...well you asked for it. I apologize for none of it, and if you all hate me at the end well I don't mind.

Volume 6 and before are pretty much great. They go from kinda at odds to tentative friends, learning to trust, and rely on each other, best friends, pining over one and other and V6 was a loooot of WR for us to feast on.

Afterward I felt like it got sidetracked. There could be various reasons for this (in hindsight I feel like Penny being given a way bigger role so her death could hit harder is to blame for part of this because realistically how long has Ruby known Penny? A month?)

Even if you don't like the ship they're supposed to be canon best friends so I take personal issue with almost all of volume 9.

I think it was sloppy writing that didn't move the story forward, and even though I don't care about Bees I feel like they still got shafted since they basically were forced to confess to move things along, and them doing so made them miss out on the sister/supposed friend and her problems, and only showcased the worst sides of the relationship.

For example Yang let's Ruby scream at Weiss but only moves to do something when Blake gets yelled at. Blake and Ruby still have...less dialogue than Ruby does with Ren I think etc.

Jaune was too present merely because his entire deal took away from Ruby's imo.

I've said it before but frankly Nora falling and learning who she is away from Ren so when she sees him in V10 she's ready for the relationship is far more satisfying to me narratively.

Leave Jaune above ground so he has to deal with the fact that he thinks he failed his friends and they all died and let him learn from that experience instead.

This also doesn't take into account that Jaune's one interesting change in 9 (being old) is taken away via random deaging (although I guess this makes deaging canon and hey young maria this is how dwr can still win! more at 11!)

Generally when characters go through a volume you want some sort of arc for them to go and change through. Weiss gets none of that. Out of all the characters nothing really happens to her, and she doesn't change at all. She's just sad about Atlas. Neat.

There's no time for it just like there's no real time for Ruby.

In Ruby's own words 'gotta help Jaune right?' and they do. Ruby removes herself from the census, which is how its framed, and they stop to...help Jaune.

There are a few moments that are WR'ish in 9. The Nevermore summon, Weiss believing in Ruby, and calling her name first etc, but overall Weiss's main job is to backslide.

I said it before but in the market Neo, the perfect assassin is after Ruby, and they split up. Weiss goes 'gross nosehairs', and ditches her best friend who she already knows by that point is NOT doing well.

This is not Volume 1. This Weiss is not that petty, and she's literally had to manhandle corpses. The fact that she wouldn't stay near her canonical best friend, and leader is asinine, and only happens so she can be alone to meet the smith.

Even if Weiss can't help Ruby fight Neo she's an extra pair of eyes (and Neo doesn't care how crowded it is in the market), and just being there for Ruby can help.

With all that said RWBY is big into symbolism. When WR are together in almost all the side spin off material it means something. Manga Anthologies has them making heart eyes and flirting like every other page. Ice Queendom was a love letter to WhiteRose (precious?). The movies, etc.

When their weapons rest next to each other on screen like the Bees do? It means something. When their flowers break ranks to be near each other (and Weiss's flower is the lily please note)? This means something.

Ruby can stand and jump from missile to missile but has to wrap her arms around Weiss to stay seated?

If Chibi continues it's pattern of predicting things in the main plot then the fact that Weiss is the woodsman in the fairy tale means a loooot as in several versions of that fairy tale the woodsman marries little red after helping her deal with the wolf problem (which varies by the story).

They're the knight and princess for each other. Ruby comes into Weiss's live turns it upside down, and helps her change. Likes her for her genuinely and wants to be her friend at the start. Through this she changes the world for Weiss, and helps her grow, and Weiss in turn helps Ruby be the leader she can be.

But yeah I guess that's just friends things and they should date some guys they've had like a half a dozen lines with instead? I don't get it really.

She and Oscar punch each other in the face, and they talk about strategy. Oscar has a younger kid crush on her, and Ruby is awkward because that's her headmaster in this kids head. Oh right he went in for a hug she ignored. Peak romance.

Jaune and Weiss have almost no interactions, and when he saves her at Haven her response isn't to be like 'omg i love you' it's 'keep doing it i have work to do'. Are they friends now? Sure, but that's about as far as it goes.

It remains that outside of group hugs the only person that's allowed to initiate contact with Weiss almost all the time outside of battle is Ruby.

Ruby knows when she needs help and will guide her away when she needs it, but other people don't' touch Weiss unless she does it first because they know she doesn't like it...except Ruby.

I have tried to look at other relationships for them, and I honestly don't see them as realistic.

Even Penny would need a lot more development to make it work. I get that it's cute and wholesome but they've known each other for again a month, and Penny just defers to Ruby.

Ruby needs a partner and equal not a submissive enabler. That's a relationship you have with a pet, and not a person.

Now if Maria were young and hot that'd be different...

Anyway...

Ruby and Weiss are partners. If they're allowed to have the much needed conversations they never seem to get, ie haven, ever after, Ruby's mom, everything, etc.

Then is it possible? Maybe. If they do go WR I suspect it'll be more hints, and slow ramp up until the final season.

I would expect it either on the eve of the final battle, or literally during it maybe as in Weiss gets feds up with waiting, and decides to do something about it.

More likely at this point is they'll both just end up single with maybe faint hints so fans can imagine what they want for it.

Would I prefer it if it was WR so the team can truly be family? Yes, but I don't even know if we're getting a volume 10 at all to be honest. The fact that it wasn't announced at the last festival, and we get an extended eppy, and then nothing after the last movie?

Not making me feel super confident. I could be wrong though. On many things. Except Young Maria.

[chaifootsteps]

Vaggie is a wasted character… She can almost be my top favorite but she doesn't even has a reliable background. In this new lore of hers she used to be one if not the best exterminator for maybe years, decades, centuries, who knows? they never explain it but they do show her saying that it has been a lot since she really meant to stab someone and missed it, so she was a merciless killer but suddenly felt guilty/pitty out of nowhere and had mercy on a child which is actually a hellborn since he looks a lot like a cannibal and exterminators are supposed not to kill hellborns? Wtf. Also not knowing angels can be harmed but her eye was stucked out and her wings ripped off by an angelic sword? And one of the worst is her being Charlie's simp…Her whole role and arc is based on her struggling with herself not being enough for Charlie and that's it, but not satisfied with that she didn't even managed to be useful neither for Charlie or the hotel... MY GOD! What was the point of her recovering her wings by the power of love/script, which is also ridiculous, if she didn't even used them from the very beggining and got Dazzle killed?! Also why didn't she recovered her missing eye if already her wings? On battle, even with one arm left Lute still gave her a hard time fighting her an Vaggie struggled with that as if she didn't had both of her arms..!! This only exhibits that she was not even written, if we remove all relationships from her and just let her be she would still be as unnecesary and irrelevant for the sotry events, she never did something meaningful; the commercial? Alastor himself did it, acquire weapons from Carmilla? Again Alastor could have did that, they are overlords…

I hate to say this but if we remove her from the whole story as if never existed it barely changes and not even as a drastic or remarkable one…

Can you imagine how cool that could potentially be, an arc that really rolls up its sleeves and delves deep into how much Vaggie loved being an exterminator, or at the very least loved stabbing people?

[fanfic-inator795]

SPOILERS FOR “THE END”

Okay so, much like the ending of Amphibia, I’m sure this ending’s gonna be controversial for some people for being so bittersweet and for it also ending with the two BFFs splitting seemingly forever… but honestly? I fucking loved it.

While the penultimate ep felt slightly rushed and just a tad unsatisfying due to all they had to cram in and wrap up, I love that this show’s finale was ultimately focused on just Molly, Scratch, and the latter’s series-wide arc of changing for the better and “being brought back to life”, as the TGAMM show bible put it.

Having believed in the Wraith feeling since the start, I was afraid that the Todd reveal would feel rushed given that the crew lost the 3rd season of set-up they wanted, but thankfully it managed to feel fairly natural since - while Todd himself may have been a more subtle hint that you’d only notice if you were paying attention- again, Scratch’s arc and the clear changes we see from him are made known throughout the series. So by the time you finally get to the big payoff, it feels like a natural conclusion.

For all the info dumps we got, I also felt like the ep was pretty well paced as well, still having jokes that made me laugh so it never felt too heavy or melodramatic. I also love that all the major characters in Scratch’s life got to play a role in this one final adventure. I also love that - for as important of a role that Adia played in helping Scratch regain his memories - it wasn’t framed as Scratch choosing his old BFF over his new BFF, but simply Scratch choosing to be brave and live the life he always wanted deep down instead of continuing to run away/hold himself back.

As for what could be seen as the Most controversial bit - Scratch forgetting his time as a ‘ghost’ - I feel like this was incredibly well crafted too. Like anything else in TGAMM (and as Molly herself says) there’s still that spark of hope hinting at Scratch still remembering Molly and the impact she had on him. He’s going to live with those memories and the importance she gave to enhappifying in his heart, even when he doesn’t consciously remember these things.

What’s more, the show also subtly but beautifully emphasizes that even if Scratch won’t fully remember Molly and the others until he’s officially died, the time he spent and the things he did for others as a ghost still mattered - they’re still going to be remembered by Molly, the McGees and their friends, and I LOVE how they also brought back Scratch’s silly toboggan-sneeze curse as just another way a part of ghost-him is going to stick with all of them no matter what - no matter how far apart they are.

While I would have liked one final song (which, I guess we arguably did get that in the credits) I also feel like ending the show on Libby’s Maya Angelou quote was the perfect summation on the show’s core themes - to not just do good for others, but for yourself. To live your best and happiest life.

In my opinion, this truly was just a master class in satisfying series finales. We didn’t need any big final battles or a ton more drama, just one last beautiful character piece that isn’t afraid to be somewhat bittersweet in order to fully sell its message while also still being just as fun and enjoyable and lovely as the rest of the series.

Really, the only thing that makes me kinda sad is that Scratch never said goodbye to GhostShark - but hey, he’ll see him again eventually, and honestly my hc is that the Jeoffs are taking care of Sharkie for him in the meantime. Other than that, this was a 10/10 finale for me, absolutely no notes.

Now… obviously this was the finale that the TGAMM crew was always leading up to, I assume once they realized that they weren’t getting a s3 they asked Disney to give them one final ep to wrap things up. If that wasn’t the case though and this was always meant to be the s2 finale, I guess s3 would be about Todd slowly remembering his life as Scratch and eventually coming back to Brighton alongside Adia to help Molly stop Jinx’s revenge or whatever. But… eh, I personally don’t think that’s needed.

I think the show ended perfectly, leaving just enough ambiguous for fans to still imagine how Molly and Scratch’s adventures are going to continue one day while at the same time being super satisfying - probably the best series finale that we’ve seen out of any modern Disney cartoon.

[canmom]

the main reason the ending of Hades is frustrating is because on all technical levels it's a brilliant game. the actual moment to moment gameplay is tight as hell, its art direction is incredible, the way it presents its story is a perfect answer to the problem of 'how can you put narrative in a roguelite'. as a game dev working in a similarly small team, there's so much to inspire there.

if it wasn't so thoroughly well made it wouldn't be as frustrating!

moreover on a line by line level the writing is generally really strong - the game does humour very well through characters like Theseus and Skelly or just the way Zagreus plays off the bosses, and while there's so much in the game that not every line will be a winner, the baseline is solid enough that it makes wandering around and talking to everyone between runs very satisfying. Zagreus has a compelling motivation as a protagonist, and his interactions with his dad are really tight. the Olympian gods are generally much more one-note characters but that doesn't really matter as much (Jen Z's illustrations do a lot of heavy lifting of course).

like, yes, ok, Zagreus through his attempts to escape becomes tied up in the stories of the various people of the underworld, and through his stubborn busybody nature he puts right a bunch of needless problems that were persisting for no reason other than insitutional inertia - I get what they're doing there. so, it's the story of how he reunites his family and convinces his dad to try to be a better person (at least as far as his family is concerned...). you have the narrative reversal of 'trying to escape' becoming 'bringing back mum', it's a character arc of changing what you can and reconciling what you can't. but I don't think it sells how sad that is, and the epilogue arc especially is just such a clunky afterthought.

it's also frustrating because I know Supergiant can do better. Bastion, Transistor, and especially Pyre - perhaps not as avant-garde as something like Pathologic, but all had a comfort with a bittersweet or ambiguous ending, and didn't feel the need to wrap up everything neatly with a bow. Pyre especially had an intriguing, rich story that responded in fascinating ways to how you play it, it's so structurally brilliant.

I hope the sequel mixes things up a bit.