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kitkatopinions · 4 years ago

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The baby boy himself, Whitley!

(for the ask meme)

Whitley is so my baby, I love my child so much. I’m realizing I say ‘I’m really excited for this one’ for like every character I get for this ask game, but it’s because I’m having so much fun! These take a bit to write, but they are honestly so interesting to me, so as an fyi, if anyone does have any character they want to ask my about, but thinks they might be too late, or I might be uninterested, I’m still totally interested! It just might take me a bit to answer. :)

My top three ships for the character

Whitley/Oscar is my top ship for this in canon currently. It works best if Ozpin could somehow be separated from Oscar (which is theoretically possible I guess,) but yeah. Farm boy vs rich boy, they look cute together, their personalities could vibe, and they’re both snarky, but at heart caring and compassionate. Whitley/Mercury. I mentioned this in my Mercury ask, but I was writing a fic with @why-i-hate-rwby-now where Whitley and Mercury were thrown together and had to work together to escape their abusers, and I just kind of started shipping them while writing it. O.O Also Whitley/Penny is cute as heck and I could totally see her grounding him and also making him loosen up, while Penny thinks he’s funny and interesting.

My three least favorite ships for the character

Whitley/Blake. I don’t understand this ship, Blake just feels like more of an adult atm compared to Whitley - a literal child. (Yes, I realize I ship Whit with Merc, but A. I thought Merc was sixteen while I was writing that fanfiction and he acts kind of on the young side, while Blake has been acting ‘as an adult’ and being treated ‘as an adult’ for two seasons at least while directly talking to Whitley, and has always been more of a mature character for her age anyway.) But on top of that, Blake seems to treat Whitley like an in the way child and is kinda judgey to him, while Whitley barely seems to notice her. Whitley/Henry Marigold just feels bad. And Whitley/Yang. Again, Yang has been written as a nineteen year old demanding to be treated as an adult (though I wanna say she’s less mature than Blake) but also Yang is a hotheaded character and has been acting pushy lately, and that’s fine as a character flaw, but I feel like it just puts me off her for Whitley especially.

My biggest criticism for the character

He’s treated like he’s not a victim??? Like, his abuse and neglect and even his struggles are just... Not really gone into or acknowledged very much, Weiss acts like he has to prove himself before she can show him the slightest bit of sympathy or affection when she’s his big sister, his relationship with Jacques is glossed over and he isn’t given closure there, Willow’s neglect isn’t really acknowledged seriously, Winter seeming totally disinterested in him doesn’t feel like it even matters, Weiss is treated as blameless in her and Whitley’s problems. And the writing kind of frames Whitley as having gotten a redemption, when the worst things he did was be a bit of an asshole while in an abusive situation as like a fourteen-fifteen year old with no aura or glyphs or fighting ability. Emerald and Whitley’s volume 8 arcs should not be comparable! Emerald is a full on murderer and was still willingly working with Cinder to attack people as a nineteen year old woman, and yet she and Whitley are treated very similarly by the narrative (helping one person and then that ‘making up for’ their ‘past mistakes’ and then them just being on the good side and carrying the team’s actions until the pathways arrive and they both go to Vacuo. To be clear, I think this framing was too much for Whitley since he never even needed a redemption at all imo, and not enough for Emerald, the literal murderer of Penny who was just recently willingly helping Cinder try and murder Penny once again.) Whitley should’ve been treated as the child he is, he should’ve been treated as the victim he is.

My favorite thing about the character

His potential dynamics, but specifically with Weiss. He and Weiss both had almost the exact same upbringing, only Weiss actually had more support, but guys... The way the two of them coped had similarities, but were also very different. Weiss hid behind anger and sternness, Whitley hid behind peppiness and smiles. Weiss copied Winter, Whitley copied Jacques. Weiss was always afraid of people putting on acts around her, Whitley was constantly putting on acts as a means of survival. Each of them are plagued by jealousy, pettiness, judgmental behavior, and they both have good qualities that are similar, but they both are too prejudice against each other to see those good qualities and need to learn to understand where the other is coming from. Weiss is a fighter, but a follower, while Whitley seems to have a bit of a ‘fawn’ tendency, but plans and enacts schemes under the table (even if it doesn’t have to be, like with Nora! Whitley’s instincts were to just figure out how to help Nora and then go off and do it alone without telling any of the obviously antsy people with guns what he was doing - after he was spying on them lol.) I just love the possibilities that exist with two characters that are so similar, but so fundamentally different. Also I’d love to see him resentful of Winter and snarky and passive aggressive with her, and Winter not really getting the problem, and Weiss having to mediate between them. Idk, there are so many possibilities of amazing interactions and connections Whitley could have with the others, and he could be a really new, good viewpoint if he was allowed to flourish. And maybe became kind of a ‘guy in the chair’ more permanent part of the team. Like, I know we don’t need more character bloat, but let me dream!

A headcanon I have about them

Before Weiss lost her inheritance, Whitley was sort of tasked with learning everything but being head of the company, like he was learning the financial side of things, the technological side of things, ordering, inventory, scheduling, all about Dust and mine operations... And Whitley’s naturally academic and a fast learner, so he absorbed a lot of it. But yeah, I think Jacques was trying to train Whitley up to be a sort of always available PA of Weiss’s that could handle anything she didn’t want to do / was too busy to do, and that was something Whitley really resented too. His skillset was essentially being crafted around helping Weiss, but never learning how to actually manage the company itself and severely lacking in the social side of things, like he’d never be able to make a proper speech. Also, like pretty much everyone I think he plays piano and writes his own music compositions (which in my headcanons he subconsciously writes to include vocals only for him to then get bothered that even his music seems influenced by Weiss. XD) Also I know this is three headcanons, but if he had been trained to fight, he would’ve used duel pistols and would’ve eventually developed a ‘born out of trauma’ semblance.

What I would change about them if I was making a re-write

I’d just allow his status as a victim to be recognized and for him to have the sympathy I feel his character deserves. I’d have him and Weiss both framed as having contributed to their bad relationship, but Weiss - as the sister four to five years older than him - would be the one who makes the first moves towards repairing it, proving she has changed enough to put aside her pettiness and be there for the brother she does truly love. I’d also get Willow away from him, or at least let Whitley be angry and distant and not have their relationship fixed over the course of an in-universe day. This is why I say there should’ve been another Atlas season, which I think is what I’d do when it boils down to it. With every plot point coming fast and then being pushed on the back burner for the next plot point, there’s no time to focus on any of it or to give the character’s sufficient growth from it. So then things like Willow having her hand glued to Whitley’s shoulder feels very ingenuine, because their ‘growth’ was so rushed. So yeah, I’d really just add an extra season and let Weiss recognize that Whitley is also an abuse victim, make her be the one to start making steps to be there for him, and let things like his relationship with his mother come slower and not be an easy fix. Also I’d have Winter acknowledge that she has a brother more regularly and have her actually care about him, even if she hasn’t shown it well at all.

What I I think of their character allusion and what (if anything) I would change about it

Whitley has no assigned character allusion and his name doesn’t offer very many hints, since it literally just means white meadow/field snow, but it’s easy enough to assume that like Weiss and Jacques - Snow White and Jack Frost - Whitley’s character allusion has something to do with the cold. I agree with the general opinion that he’s connected to ‘the Snow Queen,’ and is likely meant to be Kai, a once kind hearted boy who gets a piece of a magic mirror in his eye that only lets him see the bad in people and gets kidnapped by the snow queen. His best friend Gerda goes on a quest to save him - encountering a land of eternal summer and a talking crow amongst other things - and temporarily forgets him due to an enchantment, but then finds him almost frozen over and saves him by crying on him and through the power of her love that literally makes people and nature bend to her will, Gerda rescues Kai and dislodges the mirror piece from his eye so that he can be cheerful again. Pretty in tune with how the writers wrote things. I don’t mind this, but if Whitley is meant to be Kai and Weiss is meant to be his Gerda, there were two missed opportunities here that could’ve been great. One, Gerda is reminded of her love for Kai whenever she sees red roses, and Ruby and Whitley have a few similar mannerisms and kind of similar coping through their ‘cheery exterior’s’ even f Ruby’s lost all her sass and Whitley’s never had her spazzy, dorky, rough around the edges traits. I think it would’ve been cute and make for a more interesting dynamic if Weiss had mentioned to Ruby in volumes 1-3 that Ruby reminds her of her brother, and if it had made Weiss both harder on Ruby (since she and Whitley are estranged and he does drive her crazy a lot lol) but it also made Ruby all the more endearing to her and is one of the reasons they could be friends fairly fast despite Weiss’s early animosity (since she loves her brother and the traits he shares with Ruby compliment hers.) The next missed opportunity I can think of is that everyone thinks Kai is dead in the Snow Queen for a bit, but Gerda doesn’t believe it and goes looking for him instead. You could easily fit this into a narrative where everyone else has given up Whitley as a lost cause, but Weiss won’t believe that and is determined to help and to get close to Whitley again, which is what I think I’d want to go with. But also, a Whitley death fake out? That could be very good and very emotional. And it’d be easy omg. Weiss could think the Hound has killed him sometime during the fight (even if just for a moment,) but also if Whitley had been the first one to fall in the void instead of going through to Vacuo O.O

Idk if we’ll ever get his character allusion confirmed, but if it isn’t someone from the Snow Queen, I feel like the whole fandom will say “What?!” at the exact same time. XD

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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House of Mouse: “Goofy’s Valentine’s Date” Review

Come on in mouskeeteers! It’s Valentine’s Season here on popculturebuffet, and while I may be single, I do love a good romance story. I find them sweet, sometimes hilaroius, and endearing when done right. And the bane of my existance when done wrong, but we’ll be getting to smidgen of that too. Point is I may not be getting any romantic love this season but I can sure celebrate it. So for the next two weeks we’ll be diving deep first into some ending with one heck of a closer.

So for our opening act since i’ve been going on in to the House of Mouse a lot lately, and since I NEARLY missed this one if not for Kevin, we’re going to be looking in on my boy Goofy as he grapples with being lonely and Daisy misguidedly tries to help him. Blind dates with a manquin and Mortimer hitting on women to predictable and justified results insues under the cut.

So as usual for house of mouse we’re chunking this up by segment. Let’s go.

Donald’s Valentine’s Dollar: Easily the segment of the night and the best House of Mouse short i’ve seen in a rewatch so far. The short is simple but awesome: Donald has only a dollar to spend for V-Day, and wants to buy daisy a tiny but sweet box of chocolates, but his dollar blows away in the wind and he chases after it. And that’s.. it that’s our premise. But it leads into fast paced looney tunes style shenanigans with donald zipping up and down kites and later taking goofy’s broken one and putting it on like wings Arthur Everest styles and taking after it. Also the nephews show up and dick around with their kites because their douchebags in some shorts. Also donald tries to punch a whale.. well a whale kite but still let it be said there’s a short where donald tries to punch what he thinks is a sky whale. And that is wonderful. The climax is also really sweet, as Donald gets the dolalr, after another briliant sequence where they play hide and seek in the clouds, only to find it sold out and himself dejected waiting for her thinking she’ll be mad.. only for her to present him with the very gift he was going to give her and the two to share a look.

It’s cute enough on it’s own but after SEVEAL weeks of having to put up with the three cabs version it’s NICE to have a Daisy back whose not an overly demanding monster from some stygian hole in the sky. Not much else to say about this one. I’ts just REALLY good and I could easily recommend checking it out on it’s own.

Mickey Saves Minnie: The Stairs This is one of those short segments from Mouseworks that lasts about a minute and is off a simple recurring premise, in this case Mickey saving Minnie from some sort of bizzare fortress of pete’s.. in this case THE STAIRS!

I said STAIRS. In this case Gimmicked stairs with all kinds of traps: boxing gloves, giant balls...

And giant slinkies. I knew one day they’d grow big and kill us all but they all laughed at me.. well whose laughing now.. well still them because Mickey gets past them easily. Pete turns the stairs into a slide but mickey rebounds by pure luck via slinky and uses one of the boxing gloves to win, minnie kisses him and this was real fun. Nothing really deep to go into just a fun few minutes of my life i’m glad i’m not getting back. Speaking of wishing I had minutes of my life back....

Pluto’s Arrow Error: Well this one’s messed up. Look Love Potion plots genuinely ONLY work when the writer knows that giving someone something to make you fall in love with them is inehrently messed up. It worked in Buffy because Xander did so for vengance after Cordellia broke up with him, which granted she did REALLY hurt him but it’s still a bit of overkill. However while it ends up backfiing and making every OTHER girl in school into him, and psyotically so as the episode goes on, he never indulges, as he KNOWS it’s wrong and not under their power or choice. Basically it was one long deconstuction of this nonsense.

My point is unless it’s used to deconstruct this type of plot or for some shenanigans, Love Potion plots are inherently creepy at best and rapey at worst. So naturally we get one with Pluto trying to make a dog who dosen’t know him love him instead of trying to woo her, and accidently making her bodyguard/boyfirend I guess chase after him for 2 minutes while he’s tinted pink. And yes i know he’s a dog, but he’s an intellegent dog who should knwo this is bad and never gets called out on it and his punshiment.. is one long gay joke.

So yeah while not the worst love potion plot i’ve probably seen, or love magic or what have you, I could make a list of those and might some day, it is still pretty uncomfortable and easily a dead spot in an otherwise pretty enjoyable episode.

Goofy’s Valentine’s Date: And fitting it’s accompanying shorts, the good ones anyway, this is a simple plot with funny gags. It’s valentin’es day at the house of mouse and Mickey encourages everyone to kiss their sweeties. So we get Aladdin and Jasmine, AWWWW always shipped those two so adorable, a toy soldier and some other toy from a work im unfamiliar iwth and Timon turns down Pumba. Come on man, who are you trying to kid me or the censors?

But Goofy’s depressed since he dosent have a sweetie and Daisy feels bad for the poor guy while Minnie tells her “not to meddle”.

Minnie from a buisness standpoint, he’s crying while reading the menu and clealry not in great mental shape. Setting him up with someone or even just talking to him will help with that. And from a human being standpoint... your being a cruel ass to NOT help him in any way shape or form. The guys a fucking widower. He’s probably been lonely for some time and more focused on raising max. And since no one knows where Peg is he dosen’t have a lot options now he is ready to date again. It’s not MEDDLING to help a clearly lonely person whose gotten over his grief move on, it’s just called basic human decency. I expect that from cablleros daisy Min not you.

So Daisy does end up meddling, in part because she thinks it’s shuffling around coins, and sets him up with a secret admirer.. without actually getting him one.

So Minnie does agree to help and they.. put him in a blindfold and have him date a manquin. In front of the entire restraunt. I have no words.. since this is pretty funny and Goofy’s shenanigans while blindfolded, because it’s a BLIND date.

Also sidebar it’s very weird that she DID set Lincoln up with a blind date once but didn’t pull this gag. Point is it’s some funny stuff including Gus, in his first apperance on this blog seriously how’d it take so long, eating the shakes he orders since Goofy can’t see.

Tying into the resolution to this is Moritmer, who spends the episode as you’d expect.. hitting on various characters. He hits on the wicked step sisters, whose cat attacks him, he hits on the lady gargoyle from huncback and her two friends rightfully beat his ass, he hits on madam mim who set shim on fire and he hits on the queen of hearts who somehow DOSEN’T cut off his head, and you know is married, and does launch him into goofy spoiling the ruse. Honestly I found this funny both because Moritmer is objectively hilarious and because the show DIDN’T take his side at all or give him anyone, and he suffered consequences for sleazly hitting on women. He also called himself a wonder man. No sir the only wonder men are these guys.

And if your wondering about the secod one there was a whole song about it.

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Your welcome. So Goofy’s dejected until after Pluto’s cartoon where it turns out he had a secret admirer after all. it’s clarabelle! Awww.. and Daisy says “Well it’s better than a manquin” what a supportive friend you are. And she’s STILL better than cabs Daisy. Point is happy ending pulled sorta out of their ass, as she showed up earlier but sitll it woudl’ve been easy to have Clarabelle chime in during their scheme or something and have Minnie set them up to fix it. Or Donald or Mickey. Donald was absent outside of the short. That’s not fair. But overall not a bad wraparound, ending is a huge copout and feels like not much, but i’m starting to think that’s usual for season 1. I do KINDA ship the two, but usually I prefer her with horace or him with Peg Pete. Yeah you heard me and you cant unhear it and frankly I don’t want you to. We also get a funny add about the Queen of Hearts valentine’s service. Overall not a bad episode. Fun gags, a cute premsie and only one really terrble short. Check it out this valentein’s and hopefully disney will have this show up on plus by next valentine’s. Until the next rainbow, it’s been a pleasure.

#house of mouse #goofy goof #minnie mouse #daisy duck #mickey mouse #donald duck #mortimer mouse #clarabelle cow #peg pete #queen of hearts #pluto #pete pete #peg legged pete #disney

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itsclydebitches · 4 years ago

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With respect, Ironwood brought an army to deal with a covert threat. In his FIRST appearance he'd had ozpin removed from the tournament staff with secret meetings. He was told many times his embargo was hurting the city, he kept a woman on life support prisoner and his treatment of Robyn convinced a technically legal protest into an outright criminal. Not to mention he abandons the best defense humanity has against the Grimm to keep some control. Shooting a dissenter seem very in character

“Ironwood brought an army to deal with a covert threat” - For which he was suitably chastised by Ozpin. It’s a whole conversation in “Welcome to Beacon” and, back when RWBY was doing a better job of handling these complex issues, that conversation gives weight to both sides. Ironwood isn’t trying to, idk, take over Beacon or something with his army. He wants to be prepared in order to help people. “I’m just being cautious.” Ozpin points out that scaring everyone won’t help, but notably the story acknowledges that Ozpin’s preferences are far from full-proof. “Do you really believe your children can win a war?” Can you prove to me that the kids we’re training will be enough when the shit hits the fan? Ozpin doesn’t have an answer. He dodges answering by saying only that he hopes his kids won’t have to fight, not that he has unwavering faith that they will win. Then Beacon falls. Ozpin dies. Ironwood is left alone with an entire kingdom to keep safe and I think it’s worth acknowledging that he did that. Mantle is far from perfect, there’s a lot there to fix, but the people are alive and that’s in part thanks to the soldiers that keep the grimm from eating them all. The rest? That’s due to Penny, a symbol of hope that Ironwood gave to the people. He learned that from this conversation with Ozpin.

“In his FIRST appearance he'd had ozpin removed from the tournament staff with secret meetings.” - It’s not Ironwood’s first appearance. He meets with the inner circle, has his talk with Ozpin, introduces his Atlesian knights to the public, attends the Beacon dance, discovers Ruby fighting Cinder, later compliments Ruby for her initiative in Ozpin’s office, confides in Glynda that night, and helps defend Vale against Roman’s attack. So your implication that as his “first” appearance this tells us he’s really an irredeemable person is not accurate.

Second, I’ve seen this claim a lot the last couple of months and I finally went back to find/watch the scene for myself (it’s in “Breach”). These were not secret meetings. Ironwood “reported” to the council which I assume is what he’s supposed to do. Given that he is a Headmaster. And this is the council overseeing the schools. Keeping updated is their entire deal. Were these reports fair to Ozpin? We don’t know. You might assume they’re full of lies and horrible misrepresentations, but that’s not what the text tells us. Ironwood told the council Ozpin’s plans, then the council said, ‘No way are you holding the Vytal festival with those precautions alone.’ Then the council asked Ironwood to provide troops for additional security. Did Ironwood manipulate the council and paint Ozpin as a villain to get what he wanted? Maybe. Did Ironwood objectively say precisely what’s going on - Ozpin thinks his huntsmen are enough to keep everyone safe in the event of an attack - and the council, independent of him, came to the conclusion that it wasn’t enough? Maybe. Again, we don’t know. What we do know is that Ironwood is doing all this because he honestly believes it will help others. He begs Ozpin to understand that: “This is the right move, Ozpin. I promise I will keep our people safe. You have to trust me.” And you know what? He wasn’t entirely wrong. No one could have predicted that Salem’s minions would take control of his army. Ironwood did, however, predict that there would be an attack too large for a bunch of students to handle... and he was right. Beacon fell because a those half-trained kids weren’t enough to hold off a major attack, but Ironwood did everything he could to try and prevent that. In a slightly better world where his army wasn’t unexpectedly taken advantage of, that could have easily been what turned the tide of battle and saved Beacon instead. The world where everyone views Ironwood as a hero for providing those extra forces is just a smidge away from the world where everyone views Ironwood as a villain for inadvertently providing the enemy with those extra forces... but the forces themselves are not a black and white bad thing to have. Not in a world where your festivities are interrupted by the giant bird trying to eat the audience.

“He was told many times his embargo was hurting the city” - Yes, the embargo hurts the city financially. Ironwood is attempting to keep it from being hurt in the ‘everyone is wiped out’ kind of way. Post the Fall of Beacon he’s unsure if the other Kingdoms will declare war against Atlas or not, so it’s not wise to continue giving them one of the easiest means of attack. That’s the official story, but Ironwood (and the audience) know that Salem has also been collecting dust for a while now... so how about we stop giving her any more? Was this the right move to make? Are short-term economic difficulties worth avoiding the risk of potentially supplying enemies with the means of destroying you? I can’t answer that, but it’s not a clear-cut bad decision like you’re making it out to be. Retroactively we can say that no one attacked Atlas and Salem seems to have stopped collecting dust because the writers forgot about it... but Ironwood doesn’t get to see into the future. He didn’t know things would turn out this way. Once again, he’s trying to prevent tragedies, not just survive them when they come along. The balance between short-term sacrifice and long-term protection is far from an easy thing to strike and a character’s failure to achieve perfection despite their best efforts says more about their luck than their morals. Ironwood is an incredibly flawed man, but those flaws have always shown throw via his attempts to help others.

“He kept a woman on life support prisoner” - Are we talking abut Amber of Fria here? Either way that’s a gross misrepresentation of what happened and, frankly, does little to make me receptive to your other arguments. Amber was attacked, Qrow brought her back to the inner circle, Ironwood kept her alive so that the rest of the power wouldn’t immediately pass to Cinder (and, I would think, because this group isn’t in the habit of just letting friends die if at all possible). Fria was the Winter Maiden, she got dementia, and Ironwood had her live out the rest of her days in a facility so that a) no one murdered her, b) a Maiden with dementia didn’t wreak havoc on the city (we saw her powers go wild during the fight), and c) the power passed to an ally when she finally died. How do you know Fria was a prisoner? Was there a scene I missed where she said as much or, just as likely, might she have agreed to these precautions once her memory started to fade? Amber, meanwhile, was in a coma and unable to consent to anything. Ironwood did not kidnap her for nefarious experimentation, nor do we have any evidence that he held Fria hostage. That sort of thinking only makes “sense” when we’re already inclined to paint a character’s every action as morally corrupt. Is a 80 year old who keeps wandering into the street held prisoner because they were put in a home where they could be taken care of? That’s this with the added complications of “The 80 year old could kill everyone with magic. Or reveal to the world that magic exists” and “A lot of people want to kill this 80 year old” and “If they succeed the world is #screwed.”

“His treatment of Robyn convinced a technically legal protest into an outright criminal” - Robyn is a criminal. Ironwood never stopped her from protesting. He required that she a) not spy on a classified project, b) not keep his men from working on that project, and c) not steal supplies meant for that project... all actions that are illegal. Honestly I’m not entirely sure what this phrase is saying. That Ironwood forced Robyn to become a criminal? If so, we once again need to discuss agency and how Character A doing something that Character B doesn’t like does not give Character B blanket justification for every horrible choice they might make.

“Not to mention he abandons the best defense humanity has against the Grimm to keep some control” - I’m not sure what this is referring to either. What defense? The wall? Amity? Mantle? “To keep control”? That’s another incredibly simplified and subjective view of events. I’ve already done enough work on this blog to explain why, based on the group’s current knowledge, Ironwood’s plan is horrifying but also the best they’ve currently got. It’s not a grab at power, no matter how easy it is to paint it as that and move along. The morality of these actions is absolutely in question, but the motivation is not. We’ve seen no evidence - and a great deal of evidence against it - that Ironwood is simply out to maintain power.

Nothing here proves that Ironwood would be willing to shoot an allied kid. “Ironwood did controversial things in the name of protecting others” does not equal “Ironwood is willing to murder an ally.” Rather, these things contradict because we’ve spent six volumes with Ironwood pushing every limit possible to help others, not attack them. Lists like these likewise ignore everything that Ironwood did which doesn’t support shooting Oscar: every conversation he’s ever had where he didn’t attack someone for disagreeing with him, every action he’s taken being in the service of helping others (even if there’s disagreement about how to best go about that), him flipping his gun around when Qrow (presumably) attacked him, reassuring the Vytal students that there’s no shame in running from the fight, confiding in Glynda, standing up for Weiss, sending Yang her arm, being overjoyed to (he thinks) see Ozpin again, willingly training Oscar, choosing to trust RWBYJNR with both his plan and the relic, listening to them later about Robyn and telling the council about Salem, destroying his arm to protect the people, choosing arrest rather than, I don’t know, just trying to straight up kill Team RWBY for daring to say no to him. Because isn’t that the Ironwood you’ve described above? Someone who won’t hesitate to do anything to get what he wants, even murder? It’s a compelling character, but I don’t think we’ve seen that character anywhere prior to Volume 7′s finale. That character is the opposite of who we had before. When things get tough, stressful, and traumatic the show has said, time and time again, that this is how Ironwood treats his allies

So it’s a bit jarring to suddenly go, “Never mind. He shoots them now.”

#rwby #rwde #mymetas #Anonymous

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choleraciemna · 4 years ago

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Those ears make me so very curious!

In the expo hall where we meet Selena for the first time the rabbit ears obviously seem to be a part of her costume. Regular human ears are seen between her gray hair strands (I'd never guess she's a known high level cosplayer honestly, I supposed Selena worked in some cosplay maid cafe and her nice but rather cliche outfit was a uniform worn by staff*) And I thought the tail was attached to the dress by one of those numerous bows and her hair was coloured or it simply was some lovely wig (may be borrowed from Ayanami Rei cosplay set)))

Later in the Saucy Gull those ears looked undoubtly natural as if Selena was ilephta. Her skin tone also seemed to change becoming much more relative to her hair and fur. (It's weird enough considering all the other ilephta we'd met have got different human skin tones. Yes, I've noticed the stripes on Sage's cheekbones and albows** making him look more cat-like and that white spot Balsam had on his throat just like an ox and certainly those sexy white freckles on Rime's swarthy face reminding of deer specks. But all those features look like regular skin pigmentation to me. And when I saw Selena's new Astraean image I guessed she could be all covered with short grey fur now like a real rabbit!)

Then in Felix's route we see her even mowing those ears naturally. They definitely are part of Selena's body now. (Did the tail also became real tail I wonder? Can she move it?..)***

So may be some magic changes happened to Selena when she crossed the edge of the realm. And may be it is how Astraea influences at strangers in some cases. May be we could become some kind of ilephta also if we had such a potential. And I don't mean a furry costume. I guess it must be something in one's heart or soul or deepest mind level...

Then I thought we can't be sure enough Selena's from our realm. What if she's an Astraean traveller just like Anisa's mother mentioned in prologue****. In that case Selena could be ilephta from the beginning and it means she needed some conspiratorial cloaking to protect her privacy on Earth*****(By the way I guess Anisa can be part ilephta with her beautiful cat eyes and those vibrissae-like strokes on her cheeks and yet regular human ears and no tail. It means her mother could be ilephta and also needed some camouflage for her Orlando trips...)

It leads me to still rather unformulated idea Astraea and Earth could appear to be equal realms. And the game mc used to play could be not a figment of some Earth dev's imagination but a result of some mysterious and suspicious Astraea magic activities. Honestly this though made me feel relived a bit. I'd hate to find mc awaking from all that like from another dream!

Finally I guessed falling to another realm just after trying to speak to some rabbit had to be quite simbolic))) It reminds me of certain English classics and of so called rabbit holes in modern physical science. Oh well here we go again! Is Astraea supposed to be a foreighn world existing somewhere physically or just a realm of some tallented writer's imagination? Can the author of that game appear to be also a mage connecting realms? Or even creating realms...

It's really funny all this mystical mess in my mind is inspired by just a pair of two cute rabit ears (drawn with love and skill I have to admit). One must never underastimate the power of cute little things especially those ones covered with fur!)))))))))))

________

* My inner otaku immediately imagined some tall and wide-shouldered person wearing it shyly and proudly at the same time...

** Am I the only one wondering if Sage has got more of those lovable cat-like stripes on his skin somewhere behind his clothes?.. Two of my three cats have stripes on their legs for example...

*** What does it feel like I wonder the most)))

**** Oh well what's really important during that conversation Anisa first told us trans-realm trips were somedays normal at least for some Astraeans and then she admitted she was suprised a lot by us 'cause such transfers must've been impossible after some kind of magic cataclysm connected somehow with the Starsworn last battle 5 years ago or more likely with their mysterious opponent.

***** Oh no, poor Selena! Imagine just for a moment wearing fake rabbit ears to hide your real rabbit ears on the top of your head and one more pair of fake ears on both sides of your head!.. Cosplayers are incredibly patient I knew it)))

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theholycovenantrpg · 4 years ago

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CONGRATULATIONS, MIMZ! YOU’VE BEEN ACCEPTED FOR THE ROLE OF RAPHAEL.

Admin Rosey: I never really thought that Raphael’s application would be so f u n to read. Macabre? Absolutely. Impassioned? Of course. But hilarious to the point where I was giggling? Definitely unexpected but that is what made this so enjoyable and it is ultimately why this application received a r e s o u n d i n g yes from each of us. There was a perspective that I always envisioned for Raphael but was never able to articulate it myself until you laid it out, word by word, with this application, Mimz. Raphael is such a multi-faceted and character that holds so much potential, and the way that you wove it into every aspect of the application made this so fun to read. Thank you so much for taking the time to produce such a wonderful application! Your faceclaim change to Kendrick Sampson has been approved. Please create and send in your account, review the information on our CHECKLIST, and follow everyone on the FOLLOW LIST. Welcome to the Holy Land!

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias

mimz

Age

Personal Pronouns

she/her

Activity Level

i’ll typically check the dash every day, and i try not to keep replies stewing for longer than a couple of days! that said i can be a little slow, especially around exam seasons.

Timezone

pst

Triggers

REMOVED

How did you find the group?

miss minnie bleubeard’s blog

IN CHARACTER

Character

raphael, with a fc change to kendrick sampson

What drew you to this character?

short answer: divine amorality sexy HAHAHAHA

long answer: there was something i read a little while ago about some of the best surgeons being able to dehumanize their patients to a rather frightening degree. there’s a level of abstraction that you need in order to not let your empathy get in the way of the practice of medicine; ultimately, a body is a body is a body, right? and then there’s the moral quandary of healing - it is a doctor’s duty to heal, but what does that actually mean? to what extent is a doctor’s duty to relieve suffering? to obstinately prolong life? if the body heals but the mind still ails, is a person healed? what i’m getting at, here, is that in some ways the healer is the most dangerous character of all.

when i read raphael’s bio, there was a quote in that article from a surgeon named david cheever that came to mind: “as a result of anaesthetics, the surgeon ‘need not hurry; he need not sympathise; he need not worry; he can calmly dissect, as on a dead body.’” to me, raphael is an explosion and expansion of this concept. raphael is, quite literally, a medical ethicist’s worst nightmare, and to me, that’s absolutely fascinating. without sympathy, what separates a healer from an educated control freak with a god complex? with raphael, we can extend this concept to its furthest extreme. raphael isn’t even human - how could he even begin to sympathize with an experience so foreign to him? why would he worry about something trivial as human suffering when it essentially exists as a theoretical concept to him? divine beings have no reason to play by human rules, and as a creature raised by god’s side raphael was so far removed from the concept of human suffering that it’s sort of a no-brainer that he developed a sick fascination with it, like a child who managed to con their parent into buying a grand theft auto game and is obsessed with running over pedestrians because the stakes never quite feel real. it’s a perspective i’d absolutely love to explore in a group rp setting because the nature of rp means that it’s kind of...completely unsustainable? like as writers we’re shoving these characters together, which means that raphael will have to be exposed to mortals. there’s room for a lot of character development there, and it seems like something extremely interesting to explore.

BUT HERE’S THE THING⁠—and this is where the character gets really fun, in my opinion. i’ve talked a fair bit about god complexes already, but when applied to raphael an interesting question is raised: how much is a complex, and how much of it is actually being divine? what really made me want to get my grubby little hands on the reins of raphael’s story was seeing the disconnect between the way his connections are written from raphael’s perspective versus the other character’s perspective. it’s a fun little hubristic shade that makes him an unreliable narrator and infinitely more interesting than a simple morality thought experiment. i think it’s easy to see raphael as this super cool, all-powerful master manipulator (i think that’s a pretty accurate take on his self-image, in fact), but he’s not the only player in this game. for every pawn he’s trying to move, there is someone else trying to use him in a similar way, and i don’t know that he truly understands the ramifications of that. see, i think it’s easy to reduce raphael to the points i discuss in the previous paragraphs because that’s what he wants you to think of him. but this is a world of gods and superpowers and magical political intrigue and game of thrones doesn’t exist so nobody can tell him that he’s on the path to becoming a cersei lannister (admittedly i haven’t watched got so this reference might not be right but i feel like it’s right so uh. yeah!). maybe i just like to see arrogant men getting knocked down a peg? this might be a projection of that. i dunno. i just know that there are quite a few mind games and mental gymnastics to untangle with raphael and that’s fun. he’s fun.

also. i would like to once again reiterate: divine amorality sexy. it’s not good, to be clear, and i don’t condone it, but i’m just saying.

What future plots do you have in mind for the character?

WHEN THE CITY CRUMBLES AROUND YOU AND YOU HOLD ITS VESTIGES IN YOUR HANDS, WHOM DO YOU BLAME?

i think Raphael’s big character arc revolves around a simple question: how far are you willing to go to achieve what you want?

ostensibly, it’s an easy answer: very far. but when your desire is antithetical to your very purpose, when chasing it puts you at odds with the thing you’ve worked to build, do the goalposts move?

(the correct answer is that raphael did not build caelum. he simply destroyed god.)

let’s say, hypothetically, that raphael gets what he wants. the world is thrown into war and chaos and destruction, yadda yadda, raphael gets his blood and his suffering, great. he’s lived through this before (a couple times, actually), so you think he’d realize by now—eventually, the dust will settle. people will tire of suffering. and where will that leave raphael? how many times will you remake the world to watch it burn? can you ever be fulfilled chasing a temporary high?

(the correct answer is no, but raphael is an immortal being. more importantly, he is a patient one. he will wait a million days for rome to be built, if only to witness the single day in which it will burn.)

i think raphael needs to reckon with these questions. i think he’s lived far too long with his mentality unquestioned and that has made him both insufferable and a major threat to society. this is a long and pretentious way to say that raphael honestly kind of needs a hobby whatever the thc-verse equivalent of therapy is, but i think any sort of positive character development is contingent upon a recontextualization of suffering and chaos and raphael’s masks.

of course, this isn’t to say that introspection will only lead to positive character development. perhaps a raphael who looks deeper into his psyche will come to understand that his desires outweigh his role; perhaps such thoughts will push raphael over the edge of propriety and into something more outwardly despicable. no matter what, though, i think that the direction of raphael’s character development will be largely shaped on how he decides to prioritize his⁠ roles and goals.

FOR WHOM DO THESE HANDS HEAL?

let’s discuss the archangels, shall we? despite it all, raphael genuinely loves his brothers. i would argue, even, that raphael believes that his scheming is in service to the other archangels; he’s not blind to the way complacency has softened the angels. at this point, the only true threat to the angels is themselves—if michael wants to to unlock a state of sanctifying grace, it will happen at the hand of one of his kin.

i spoke earlier about raphael’s goals ultimately being futile. this is largely because they are diametrically opposed to michael and gabriel’s goals, and while raphael knows this intellectually, i don’t think he’s quite thought about what the long-term implications of that conflict entails. he’s so caught up in the conflict between michael and gabriel that he’s neglected to consider how he factors into the dynamic. could he be the common ground that brings michael and gabriel together? could he be the final straw that breaks them apart? he is excited for the fighting, the fallout; but has he stopped to consider what the long-reaching effects of such a rift may be?

raphael is breaking his family apart because he loves them. will that be enough, when he is sent to pick up the pieces? whose side will he fall on, if he is to pick a side at all?

DID PYGMALION FALL IN LOVE WITH THE BEAUTY OF HIS CREATION, OR THE BEAUTY HE CREATED?

i said this in the previous section but i’d like to reiterate it: i think a big reason raphael is Like That is because the stakes have never quite felt real to him. raphael’s a pot stirrer, but he’s not a creature of action. to this, i say give him real stakes. to be honest, i don’t know exactly what that entails, because i could see a number of ways in which tangible pressure manifests itself for raphael. perhaps his meddling with michael and gabriel steps too far, and his brothers perhaps the angels become suspicious of his maneuvering, in which the spider is drawn into his own web of intrigue. maybe we apply positive pressure, where the ails of the world require a healer and raphael is tapped to higher purpose⁠—and higher power. maybe raphael will find himself tempted by the very demons he holds in contempt.

the point is that raphael has largely been a character who acts through others. even now, we see this through his grooming of romilda, with his subtle manipulation of michael and gabriel. i want him to become a more active character, either by his own volition or by his hand being forced.

similarly, i’m extremely interested in seeing how raphael navigates the political elements of this verse. i expect it stings a bit to be the only archangel not given a position of leadership; perhaps he holds lingering resentment toward zadkiel for being given a role raphael had expected to receive. does he subtly undermine zadkiel’s leadership? i want to watch him play up tensions with the vices, to hide a vicious war-hawk perspective under the guise of a concerned healer. i want him to smile in abaddon and samael’s faces and plot their suffering in his mind. i want to see the snake slither in the grass, to return to his original form as a spider spinning a web of intrigue across his court. yes, i want a more active raphael, but i think the political drama is ripe for development, as well.

WHEN I SPIT UP MY SINS AND BEG FOR REPENTANCE, WHAT WILL COME UP?

this one’s a long shot, but i could maybe...see...raphael……..falling. i can guarantee you that the idea has never even crossed raphael’s mind, and that he would literally rather be smited than be cast out of caelum, but i can see it. i think he might be happier, actually; if he fell, he could really lean into the chaos and suffering thing without any compunction.

of course, this is something infinitely easier said than done. were raphael to be cast out of caelum, he would have nowhere to go. infernum would never take him⁠—he’s made far too many enemies among their ranks. he could wander the holy land, but he’s far too proud to bind himself to its existing social systems. (he wouldn’t be able to look gabriel in the eye.)

raphael would have absolutely nothing.

but he would also be free.

that’s right, i think that a horsemen-style liberation arc would be an absolute banger for raphael. again, i don’t think it’s feasible unless a very specific set of circumstances happen, but just imagine a raphael with nothing to lose, free to go absolutely apeshit. his only prerogative is to make sure you have a bad day. he is free to sow whatever chaos, whatever suffering he so wishes across the land. WHEW.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character?

yes, but i don’t see him going down easily.

IN DEPTH

Driving Character Motivation

entomological curiosity, in short. consider: why did god leave the apple in the garden of eden? why do humans keep animals in glass cases? why do children burn ants with magnifying glasses?

raphael wants to observe the world. a good healer must understand his patients at a fundamental level, and such truths are only revealed when the subject is broken down to its basest parts. you see, raphael was weaned on temperance and virtue; there is a lush decadence to emotional extremes that he finds most fascinating. they are debased. they are crass. they are wantonly sentimental, in a garishly beautiful way.

but this is not all. he wants to stave off boredom, and these are the tools he has to play with. for all of his machinations, raphael is a simple being. raphael has no grand ambitions, no lofty ideals, and that is what makes him so dangerous. he wants to be amused. he wants to be stimulated. he wants to observe a world in which things happen.

ostensibly, this is not as selfish a motivation as it may seem. as a healer, raphael knows something that many do not: serenity cannot exist in perpetuity. it is impossible for the world to remain unchanged⁠—even if the change is not evident, it is happening. an eternal peace is all but a stagnation of the kingdom; the only thing stagnation breeds is degradation. the angels are weakening because they are not being challenged. michael and the virtues may be doing extensive research to find an alternate explanation, but raphael knows this to be the truth.

of course, the irony underlying the selfless explanation of raphael’s motivations reveals the truth of the matter: it is a farce. perhaps it is a lie that raphael has even convinced himself he believes, but it is farcical nonetheless. raphael claims he wants to invoke change because stagnation is dangerous, but riddle me this⁠—if this is true, why has raphael never changed? centuries upon centuries have passed, and the world has changed around him, but raphael himself has remained largely unchanged. he is the orchestrator of change, not its agent nor its subject, and that is just the way he would like things to stay.

Character Traits

CHARISMATIC - there’s a reason very few have cottoned on to raphael’s true nature, and it’s not (just) his pretty face and magical girl-esque aura. there’s something effortlessly captivating about raphael, a pace to his cadence that has you hanging on to his every word, a lightness to his smile that makes you want to coax it out whenever and however you can. everything about raphael puts people at ease, except for his eyes, which tend to put people on edge if he’s not careful. he’s not gregarious or the outgoing sort of charismatic by any means, but he does manage to exude an overwhelming charisma.

PATIENT - it’s important to remember that before raphael turned on god, he waited for him. raphael performed healings for centuries and never raised a hand against his father in that time. think of all the angels that fell, that rebelled; raphael was not among them. no, raphael played the dutiful son, allowing his resentment to fester and boil deep underneath his skin, but never to surface. for centuries he served loyally, biding his time. remember: lucifer fell. raphael did not. which one killed god? as i mentioned in the plot section, raphael will wait a million days for rome to be built to witness the single day it burns. prolonged suffering is perhaps the most beautiful of all. fortitude goes hand-and-hand with patience.

INTELLIGENT - in a few ways. raphael is well-studied, with extensive knowledge of biology and chemistry and history and politics. raphael is emotionally intelligent; he hides his true nature behind a veneer constructed to meet expectations. he may not be as talented as gabriel in this regard, but it is a skillful construction nonetheless.

MANIPULATIVE - i mean. yeah.

ARROGANT - he thinks he’s smarter than god???????????????? tbf god was a bit of a headass in this universe but we’ve all read enough tragedies to know where this kind of hubris ends up going.

CRUEL - there’s a bit to unpack here. i’d argue that there are two types of cruelty: malicious cruelty and callous cruelty. raphael is certainly capable of both, but i think he embodies the latter. with certain notable exceptions, raphael’s cruelty is rarely personal; it is a thoughtless sort of cruelty, the type inflicted upon beings considered expendable. raphael is selfish and petty and powerful, and these traits coalesce into a casual cruelty.

In-Character Para Sample cw: light gore

Look at how they look at him. God’s good little lambs, lined up all in a row, passive and pliant and patiently awaiting benediction. Patiently waiting for Raphael.

Raphael hates them.

No. This is false. It is difficult for Raphael to muster up stronger feelings toward mortals than a vague sort of amusement, the sort of affinity one might have for a particularly stupid kit when it does something surprisingly clever. In this regard, he understands that he differs from his kin. Gabriel, in particular, has developed a particular fondness for the mortals. Why anyone would wish to strip mortals of their most fascinating behavior⁠—to the point of openly defying their Father⁠—is beyond Raphael. He has given up on trying to reason with his brother on the matter.

The first supplicant is beckoned forward. They pray to the Lord and Raphael touches their forehead with one palm, cups their chin with the other. His fingers splay carelessly around a throat all but bared to him and the ceremony is so mechanical Raphael allows his thoughts to wander⁠.

How easy it would be to tighten his grip. How beautiful it would be, to watch the lamb’s naive adoration flash into fear, to watch fear darken into betrayal and resentment and the most beautiful emotion of all: despair. He can feel the pulse at his fingertips. It would quicken in a stress response, he knows. It would quicken, then it would pound, and then maybe it would stop. It all falls to Raphael’s whim. In this moment, Raphael holds their life in his hands. They have all but laid on his sword for the promise of absolution and when they look up at Raphael with their dumb, trusting eyes he can see the sparkling tracks where tears once fell, down the hollow of a cheek into the pool of a collarbone. He finds himself overcome with the desire to trace the fall with his tongue. “Give me your pain,” he murmurs. Let me taste it. Let me understand.

He takes it. He does not taste it. He does not understand.

He releases the mortal. Those beautiful tear tracks are already fading. “The Lord be with you,” he says, and perhaps he even means it. His Father’s gaze burns into his back, even from a world away. He’d laugh at the irony, were he free to. Is this the weight you so desire? he wants to ask the devotee. No, Raphael knows the truth: God’s love is a shackle. God’s love is a leash and it is holding Raphael back from his fullest potential.

“And also with you,” the lamb responds. Their head is bowed obediently in prayer and they shuffle away, appropriately awed. The next supplicant is beckoned forward.

The light of Raphael’s presence obfuscates the darkness in his eyes.

—

Later, much later, Raphael finds himself studying his hands. He flexes them, balls them into fists, stretches his fingers as far as they will spread.

How easy it would be to tighten his grip.

The hand is at once an individual unit and a summation of individual parts. The hand contains twenty-seven bones and thirty-four muscles connected by over a hundred ligaments and tendons. Wrists connect to metacarpals, which connect to carpals, which taper off into delicate phalanges. Individually, each of these parts are largely useless; were Raphael to take a scalpel and drag it through a tendon, across the joints, the strings would be cut and the puppetry would cease to dance. You would be left with a small pile of carpals and metacarpals and phalanges, loose strings of muscle and tendon. At times, it is difficult to fathom how such mundane component parts are the instruments of extraordinary acts.

Raphael flexes his hand, watches bone shift under skin. If he remembers correctly, mortals have an idiom about knowing your hands, or something along those lines. He will not pretend to be familiar with mortal culture. Did you know that, wings aside, mortals and angels all have the same bone structure?

Of course you did. It is common knowledge that God made all beings in His image, or so the story goes.

This is an easy answer, but one with interesting implications. Let us extrapolate. If mortals and angels are essentially biological mirrors, and each are made in the image of God, does that mean that God will bleed like His creations? Slide a scalpel across God’s knuckles—will His puppets cease to dance?

Raphael could find out. It would take only a single blade, sliced through a single tendon.

Now, Raphael is not so arrogant to believe himself the blade. He would not even consider himself the hand. Such a role requires a particular kind of conviction—

( —and that sort of conviction is made manifest in bitter disillusionment⁠—the sort inflicted upon Michael. How easy it would be to find himself in his brother’s ear, whispering of their Father’s capriciousness and the unnecessary cruelty that resulted for the poor, poor humans— )

( —and that sort of conviction is made manifest in righteous anger⁠—the sort inflicted upon Gabriel. How easy it would be to find himself in his brother’s ear, whispering of their Father’s neglect and the unnecessary cruelty that resulted for the poor, poor humans— )

( —and that sort of conviction is made manifest in a whetted hunger⁠—the sort God gifted to each of His angels. Hunger breeds hunters and heaven is full— )

—that Raphael simply cannot embody. Rage has never been his forte.

Consider, however, that the hand is controlled by nerve impulses. A spark is all the hand needs to transform from a collection of bone to an agent of action. Yes. He clenches his fists. Here are the bones, the veins, the tendons, the muscle. Angels and mortals all share the same bone structure.

Does God?

Extras

pinterest.

raphael has classically beautiful wings. i’m talking TEXTBOOK cherubic angel wings, with the sweeping white feathers and all. raphael kind of hates them, though he takes a great deal of pride in them.

raphael doesn’t have a signature weapon. he’s proficient with blades, yes, and fights with a surgeon’s precision, not the strongest nor the fastest but eerily efficient in his blows. but he is a healer—at the end of the day, his empty hands are all he needs. (his empty hands are what you should fear.)

raphael hates the heretics pro forma but. but. he cannot deny a certain...fondness for them. the heretics exhibited such dedication to a futile cause; they believed their suffering to be something noble. it’s a laughable notion, certainly, but a sentiment so distinctly human it’s almost charming. should they wish to return, to throw themselves on the knife over and over and over, well. raphael shall not complain. he shall smile beatifically, perhaps abate their suffering, even⁠—and watch them do it again.

in a modern au, raphael is a reality tv producer. ok actually he’s probably a surgeon but i think he’d make a very good reality tv producer. alternately, there is a universe out there where raph fixated on like...baking, or k-pop, instead of suffering. those are good timelines, i think. maybe not the k-pop stan timeline.

raphael is the living embodiment of that dwight schrute “we need a new plague” meme.

#accepted #accepted: raphael

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kyu-bri · 4 years ago

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Magia Rapport pt 2

@magiarapport

August 24th prompt: What was your favorite event, and why? Is it because of gameplay or the story?

It’s hard to choose so I’m gonna just, gush a bit.

As you can probably tell I’m very biased toward the OG girls, I started Magia Record primarily because PMMM had become my new obsession and I wanted some sort of constant flow of content out of decade old anime lmao.

But another thing I think I hooked onto was Inu Curry’s writing. They really know Madoka Magica and aren’t afraid to really play with them- something the writers for a spin-off gacha game (as with most spin-off stories honestly) can be scared to do. Inu Curry made references, revealed secrets and built upon the story we already know- which lets be honest is what we always truly want from a spin-off series. Magia Record proper does this well by putting more magical girls into the world and letting us see things work out better for them than for the original cast, but what I really appreciated with this story was getting to see that old original cast get to get in on that, and these events managed to do that without watering them down any.

Under the cut is me going on for 3000 words about why I love these three events I’m so sorry. TL;DR at the very end-

I’ll go in release order,

A La Carte Valentine was one of the first if not THE first event I got in on. I was eager to bc 1 Gay Magical Girl Shit Guaranteed. And ofc 2 OG Cast participation.

I want to preface by saying I actually loved all the girls’ stories in this. I was very much still in a state of getting used to Iroha’s gang let alone trying to care about the secondary girls. I knew Tsukasa had this angsty Twins Separated At Birth Deal and liked seeing her home life (also I immediantly stanned Take. Regular well-meaning dude who has no idea whats going on just trying his best and hating his boss). I knew nothing about Ami except Cowgirl Meguca and getting the bulk of her personality in one short even I think really kept me from being absolutely sick of her, she’s just a cute silly teenage girl who could be in literally anything and I was able to just endearingly giggle at that. Hinano managed to do the heterosexual unrequited crush cliché without me groaning or missing any of her regular personality. Also was there a Ren part? I don’t remember because everything Ren does feels like a Soft Yuri Valentines Special. Also I love Momoko. Ok moving on to what I Really wanna talk about.

Madoka is genuinely my Least Cared About of the Holy Sextet. I don’t think she’s bad or even boring- Madoka has a depth to her character, like, really deep- but that’s not something ever really touched upon by the fandom. Even when people like her and make her the Heroine she’s Supposed to be, it’s usually in the context of “Girl who feels nothing but kindness and happy thoughts would cut off her right hand to feed to a hungry dog. Isn’t she so Good????”. And honestly, while I understand the point it was going to make, I wasn’t crazy about her sacrifice in the end of the series. (Team Homura “Rebellion Is Good Actually” ftw) All because I think that I’m an Adult Woman watching this like “You are 14yrs old and need to be home playing Sims and not sacrificing yourself for the greater good you stupid silly little baby girl”

So my point is here near all fan content I encounter tends to emphasize whats sort of my least favorite facet of Madoka. I don’t think she made the ‘wrong’ decision in the context she and the story were given, but it’s still a sad thing to show a depressed(!!!) insecure girl resolving to give away her very existence so that every other girl on earth has a chance to just Dream. Oh and they still usually die young. But that’s ok because then she takes them and lets them sleep peacefully forever in her Heaven Basement (Yes I am bitter stan Homura I would yank this savior complex infant girl out the sky too)

MY POINT BEING (The servers closing let me BLEED OUT ALL MY FEELINGS) This event did not do that!!! It made Madoka…….. EVERYTHING SHE SHOULD BE??? ALWAYS??? Showed her HOW WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO VIEW HER??? (Read: Happy and Alive and Confident at no foreboding or sacrifice of anyone else!!!!)

She is Sassy and Surrounded By Friends and Really Funny??? And we get this Ridiculous Oh My God On Crack metaphor about her being this all-powerful apocalypse bringing being which is representing her love for the universe through her Witch form of Wanting Everyone To Be Happy And Safe With Her??? And she still risks herself to save everyone as is her Thing to do but we get to have her do it without erasing her existence as a human being at the end and if that is not some GOOD SHIT????

Ok next:

NGL Sayaka’s (fav character, inarguable best girl, can u not tell) parts in MagiReco til like the last arc have always left me a bit disappointed. She was the only late comer of the OG girls from what I understand and it kind of gives her the air of what a lot of the second(/thirdary?) girls suffer from. You can tell the writers can’t even figure out a trope to apply her to to make her easy and two dimensional to write about so they just don’t know what to do. They definitely try to make up for it (especially in the anime which Praise Be but that’s probably Inu Currys doing) but she’s still lacking like, any of the depth of her personality. Which, I guess I could anticipate. Because most of the fandom tends to as well. (again)

Gonna stop complaining and get on with- That didn’t feel as much the case in her Valentine event. Sure it was still the same formula of “The Issue Is Kyosuke” but that didn’t play out as grueling as her personal story did with “Nine Episodes Of “The Issue Is Kyosuke””

There was one big glaring heart-aching detail of “Mami isn’t really there because SHES IN A FUCKING CULT RIGHT NOW” which kind of jarred the event out of the ho-hum silly valentines sidestory these events usually keep up.

Sayaka has this crisis about Doing Anything Meaningful With Kyosuke which we all know what That’s calling back to, but in this environment we get to have Kyoko come right up and be in a position with her to earnestly and affectionately Push Her To Do It. The lonely little tsundere bitch girl pushes her Not Friend to Give The Bastard The Gotdamn Chocolate Already and for a moment you can only think about What If’s and If Only’s. Sayaka’s is still the weakest of the threes stories in this event but it worked harder to show us different sides of the characters then 6 chapters of Another Story managed to do.

And then there’s fucking Homura.

I will be, eternally grateful for Kuro. As a character that becomes metaphorical for the 2D ways we initially viewed the feathers and just NPCs in games in general, and also like, giving Homura a friend she actually cares about that isn’t the tangled dark web of Bullshit she’s gotten tied up with Madoka in. Please ask me about all my AU’s where Kuro is Homuras first girlfriend.

Seeing Moemura in Magia Record has always been a bit surreal, we never really understand just what stage of Trauma this Homura is in because Multiverses Are Hell, but this event gives us a good chunk of a Homura who still has hope and faith both in the world and Madoka. Theres this wonder to her that while still bogged down by terrible experiences still has the energy to be Trying. And she sees a girl who used to be like her- which when you think about it is probably what Madoka saw in her- and she wants to help. Because Madoka helped her. And Madoka is the best thing in the universe and maybe Homura can be just a little bit closer to that.

Kuro is too far gone though, as is the reality frequently in this series, things don’t work out just because of circumstance. Kuro was a bullied, insecure little girl who realistically shouldn’t have had to become a rampaging monster because of it. We’re reminded of this being the reality of the Madoka universe. Homura, is reminded of this reality. Homura loses this one chance to bring hope into the world like Madoka brought hope into hers.

And then her story ties into the ending of Madoka’s. Madoka saves her life yet again, even as Homura continues to feel miserable and empty. But at least Madoka is with her. The girls then share a quiet, intimate Valentines together. And you sort of understand how Homura fell so far into the darkness that the only thing she was able to still care about and fight for was Madoka’s safety.

That shit slaps. It slaps you right in the heart and causes fucking bruising but then u want it to do it again because you’re masochistic and Meguca Is Suffering.

Anyway I hope Kuroe slaps our hearts more in season2

MOVING ON!!!!

~Nagisa’s Wish~

Ok, I don’t remember what got me so simp over Nagisa, I think it was the heart-aching irony that Mami adopts the witch that fucking ate her. But that is my baby now and I’d die for her. Fandom Charlotte whose pink and silly and loves her mom and is Mami’s cancer-riddled girlfriend is cool and all but she isn’t a tiny Halloweeny baby whose fucking bitter angry and manically obsessed with cheese due to PTSD.

I had saw a summary of Nagisa’s Wish reposted just to quickly explain Nagisa’s backstory, and as such immediately had to search out if that crazy ride was true- so I actually watched this whole event probably before I downloaded the game. It was surreal on its own but replaying it when it came to NA didn’t lessen it any- I got to process more of what I was witnessing and as result stanned Yu pretty hard.

I guess to explain my Emotions here, saving Yu for later- calls for me to just, describe who Nagisa is as a human being and my headcanons surrounding it all with what this event gave us. Whether you consider it canon or not it’s one version of events that we were given and that I am all for accepting.

Nagisa’s Mom was a celebrity, she could have been an actress though I also like the idea of her being an Idol. She met Nagisa’s Dad oh-so romantically and got knocked up- they very well could have been married but it doesn’t seem clear enough. He seems to have left too suddenly for legal matters like that. Nagisa is approximately 11, and while she seems to remember her Father, she doesn’t in the sense of having had a relationship with him or any feelings. Her Mother has to “explain” why he left, so Nagisa was probably still young even if not a baby. What I’m getting at here is the timeline for when Nagisa’s Mom Got Like That. Nagisa can remember her from before she was, and then says that she got sick after her Dad left. So what I’m wondering is did Daddy Momoe ruin this young rich girls life, give her syphilis and then leave her with a baby she was unfit to care for in poverty? I know half of this is running on anime logic but Holy Shit all the possible ways reasons and ideas for why things could’ve gotten This Bad.

Is it ridiculously dark and edgy that the original story we were given was “Girl wishes her dying mother could have her favorite cake but then realizes OOPSIE-DAISY I could have wished for her to Not Die instead!!!!” got turned into “11yr old hates her abusive mother so much she wants to make her suffer in the most symbolic way she can and then goes mental when she isn’t able to do it”??? Yes. But if I had the mental capacity to I have to admit I was in a position to be just as bitter at that age too. I can’t call it unrealistic. I may infact be projecting hard with how much I support and enjoy this backstory.

Anyway Nagisa was in such a state of trauma and distress at a horrifically young age when she died that it broke her mental faculties so severely that even when she came back as a literal Angel of God she had blocked it out so deeply and thoroughly she seemingly regressed to an even younger capacity and hyperfixated on the trait that she has before used to try to bond with her Mother who she had died hating.

And that also slaps u right in the heart.

A N D T H E N !

~Beachside Bonds~

Just the simple structure of this story was so enjoyable and nicely done. We finally get to see the OG girls in a context we wouldn’t be able to in literally any other scenario. They’re going on a summer vacation together and Homura is sentimentally journaling every single second of it. Is this mayhaps because she’s never gotten to be this happy and blissful with these girls she loves so much??? Of course this is are you not paying attention what the fuck. Homura is so optimistic and healed and hopeful she’s acting like what she might actually be doing as a normal teenage girl. (A heartrending contrast to the end of her Valentines Special)

We get nothing short of pure fluffy Slice Of Life shenanigans on the beach which even includes a bunch of the Kamihama girls that the OG crew knows! And they talk about it! And introduce eachother! And their friends commentate on it! Ren gets to see Kyoko Not Being A Bitch and then Sayaka teases her about having made friends and oh my god my heart is turning into cottoncandy as we speak Mom holy FUCK

Sayaka’s existence fucking matters in this story! It’s her families Hotel they’re staying at and she has relationships and memories with the creepy twins that live there and she talks like a fucking person??? And gives opinions??? That aren’t just copypasted “Justice is Good and Bad things are BAD!!!!”

Mami is fresh out of her fucking Cult Drama and she’s still trying to be cool Senpai but then she DECKS Homura in the face and gets scared by the ghost stories and then turns into pudding and waxes nostalgia at Kyoko out of nowhere IT’S ALMOST LIKE SHE’S A FIFTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL????????

G H O S T S ? ? ? ?

Y U ! ? ! ? ! ? !

(IS G A Y ! ! ! !)

This whole fucking backstory and truly horrifying Romeo and Juliet on Acid love and death story between Yu and her girlfriend and like if I wasn’t fascinated enough by Yu just being the creepy organ harvester before but apparently thats what she became after she literally made some sort of wish that erased all of her memories besides the nickname her sweetheart used for her and coincidentally also added to her the task of killing all Bad People?????

Yu made a wish to be able to get rid of All Bad People preserving the innocent version of herself who grew up with this girl and it was right after a failed double suicide attempt on fucking Doomed Lovers Cliff fucking Lifetime Will You Ever.

It then pairs with Homura whose PTSD gets to shine through a bit in being unable to believe any bad sort of Madoka which how could you try to force her to at this point while Also pairing Homura with Ren in the “Gay Love Saved Our Lives: Traumatized vers & Vanilla vers”

I don’t remember if there was a symbolic finale and tbh I have forgotten a lot of the details with Yu and her girlfriend Whatsherface because that shit was just so shocking and bizarre to read and much too painful to reread in a timely fashion just.

That shit hurted but it was full of so much love and hope both doomed and stolen but still was wrapped up in the comforting concept that This Is The Universe Where Homura Gets To Be Okay This Time.

She’s still scarred beyond comprehension and this ghost drama accentuated it all but at the end of the day this is still the Safe Universe where all of them are alive and the Holy Quintet are friends and they’re all going to be okay (Godoka & Aniplex willing) and so many of us love Madoka Magica because it shows girls fighting through the same pain we’ve been through and keeping their hope alive and here we get to see them actually find peace in a clunkily written fanservicey spin-off mobile gacha game and hey, that made me happy while I got to experience it. Thanks for the ideas and memories and tragic backstories and funny thirdary characters MagiReco I’m gonna take em all and Run.

Akjsladbfalkjfsbslk If you read this all without getting a migraine or blocking me ily thanks for listening!!!!!!

TL;DR

Me likey A La Carte Valentine bc it’s silly and gay and I simp Kuro

Me likey Nagisa’s Wish bc sawft baby is good and so are Tragic Edgy Backstories

Me likey Beachside Bonds bc Gay Ghosts and Our Girls Finally Get To Be Happy Peaceful(ish) Teenage Girls and that’s all I want for them ;w;

Reeses In Pieces ya’ll

1Ten 2More 3Words 4To 5Hit 6(3000 7Words 8Woo 9Boy 10Howdy

#magia rapport #magia record #pmmm

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itscolourmix · 5 years ago

Photo

Messy lil things i drew for a certain non-canon event which i just refer to as “The Titan fight” . MC gets overpowered by Invictus and is forcefully turned into a Titan. I wrote a small story about him noticing strange things before it happened, and he goes to TF (nickname for @novadly ‘s Au Gary) for help since they both had connections with a Titan/s. You can read below

disclaimer that im not a professional writer and i know i’d have plenty of mistakes in this story. But please keep in mind that im not aiming for a masterpiece but rather, me just trying to describe what i see in my mind to the best of my ability. Please enjoy.

“Welcome back to “watch me try and describe with best detail what I pictured in my mind” Ft TF & MC.

So yeah I’ve talked about a (non canon) idea where, before MC got possessed by Invictus and turned into a Titan, he actually felt it coming weeks prior. And that, during another Multiverse party he seeks out TF to help him since he’s also linked in some way.

Annnddd yeah, I kind pictured MC finds TF chilling in some booth with his legs on the table, in his own little world. As I’ve sorta drawn out, MC asks to talk to him & while TF isn’t fully prepared he says yes anyway.

MC struggles with an opening sentence, but eventually just lands on ”........something’s wrong” and it all comes flooding out. Everything feels different, day to day things seem off. His hallucinations aren’t as frequent, but when they come, it’s almost as if they’re trying to get something across without even saying anything. It’s been about two weeks and MC’s paranoia is sky rocketing. He feels as if the curse is lying low, waiting for something, but what? he has no clue whatsoever. By this time MC’s already in some sort of panic. He’s stressing out about it. He’s terrified. He wants help.

TF’s a bit overwhelmed, but he keeps listening, kinda hoping some idea will magically appear in his mind. But it hasn’t come. He’s already at a loss for words.

I guess TF manages to ask a few more questions about the situation, like, did it start for any reason, is there anything consistent with the hallucinations, and what does MC think it all means.

MC’s just about to finish a question when he gets hit with a similar weight you might feel when your low on iron. When your head feels heavier and your vision gets blinded for a moment. Of course in this version there’s a sudden sting that makes him wince a little, and when he finally blinks it away the whole party’s muffled, like someone covered his ears. Everything’s in slow motion. Some feeling gets him to look out in the crowd and there, hidden among all the other Gary’s , is this massive black wolf just standing there with its head lowered, breathing heavily like it’s gone for a big run. But the breathing's loud, and growls in a way. It sounds like there’s gravel in its throat.

It echoes. It’s got big, maroon coloured eyes, which glowed so fiercely that it almost seemed like it was on fire. It was like staring into the sun, which hurt MC’s sight & immediately hit him with a headache painful enough that he squeezed his eyes shut and turned away. He could still hear the breathing echo. This was obviously another hallucination, but had no idea what he was supposed to do with this.

By this time, TF’s clicked together what was going on, and so he leans across the table and shakes MC’s shoulder gently enough to not startle him, and calls out his name loudly enough that he could focus on him.

“Yo, are you good?”

“I..” , MC trailed off. He attempted to focus on where TF was exactly, and the hallucination seemed to slowly slip away. But the breathing still echoed. MC looked down at his hands. He was falling apart, his skin from the hands down was unraveling like ribbons, blood came pouring out of his arms, his bones where separated into pieces that all floated around him like there was no gravity.

“I’m....uhhh...”

His eye’s were bleeding out, bleeding all over his clothes. Everything got darker. He felt tired all of a sudden, really tired, like he could fall asleep and never wake up. But he fought at it. He blinked hard a few times, and found TF’s concerned stare. “I....” MC’s voice cracked from fear “I don’t know..”

He stared at his left hand, which was slowly disintegrating, and ran fingers through his hair with the right. Pulling the hair back out of his face for a moment. He had no idea what to make of this, but it was proving his point.

“I don’t know what’s going on with me”

MC was so desperate that he was ready to fall to pieces. He was inches away from another sob fest. He just wanted an answer. He just wanted help. He tried so hard to fight the tears back when he looked TF straight in the eye and said “I need help”

“Please,” he begged, “ I thought coming to you would be the right thing. I need help. I need to figure this out.”

TF almost sank into his seat with more guilt that ideas. He couldn’t help, and wasn’t even ready to face the intensity that came with all this. His eyes darted around, too nervous to look MC in face. He finally shrugged and built up the courage to say “Dude, I....I don’t know how to help you....I’m not exactly the smartest guy around”

“But,” fear kept building in MC’s chest, “You’re linked to Bolo, aren’t you?!”

TF forced a smile, which looked more anxious than anything “WAS. TWO YEARS AGO”

The anxious smile unnaturally stretched wider and a pained wheeze escaped him “He chose me to be his successor even though I have like 0 of his brains..” TF was looking at MC now, “I don’t even know what I’m doing half of the time with these powers”

So many things were consuming MC at this point that all he could do was lower his eyes and ask, “He doesn’t even exist as a gut feeling? Or like some force ghost? None of his conscious is around anymore?”

TF nodded, “Man, honestly? I kinda wish he did. Right now I’d prefer to be back when he was just a voice in my head. A force ghost would have been the coolest thing. But, no. I’m sorry”

There was a brief silence before MC sighed, defeated. “So, I could be screwed? Whatever they’re planning to do...that’s just it?” MC felt like giving up. He wish he did ages ago. Maybe things would’ve been easier then. Seeing MC look this tired and unhappy made TF already feel a deep regret. It was difficult, seeing an alternate version of yourself depressed, but to let them down? Like yeah, a lot of people let people down. And maybe you can let yourself down from time to time. But to see it happen in front of you. To see a reaction. It was enough .TF’s anxiety was traded for that small spark of determination. He had to come up with something, give this guy some hope.

“You know what? Why don’t we go with my gut feeling ? A good old Goodspeed feeling! From pal to pal.”

Mc looked up at him.

“I say, we wait it out. If you can’t make out what’s going on and I can’t, then we need to collect some more info. Let these things come, but try not to get too spooked. Try and read what’s going on. Write it on a sticky note and piece it together. From what you’ve told me, yeah, somethings definitely afoot. But nothing the Master Commander can’t handle, right?” TF leaned over once again to deliver a light fist bump to MC’s shoulder. “Your powerful! And cool! And your super tough. You’re a super tough Goodspeed! I believe in you, dude. You’ve kept it together this long”

The first, genuine smile broke out from MC’s lips, and he chuckled a bit “How the hell have I?”

“ I donno bro, but your fantastic at it! So keep going.”

They shared a fist bump

“Thanks. I’ll uh, take your advice into account”

After a moment, MC moved his way out of the booth, but before he stood up, TF reached a hand out. “Hang on! Just before you go. Does anybody know about this? What you’ve told me”

“....No. I don’t want to worry them. If I told Star his eyes would be glued to me 24/7. He hates Invictus so, if it sturs trouble for me I’m not sure whether he’d try to kill me or not.”

“Well, just in case, maybe mention it- or, if anything happens, let me know. If you can’t come maybe send Star?”

Mc tittered, “If things hit the interstellar fan, then yes. But let’s hope not”

....

little does he know

#final space #colourmix's art #starboy #mc #tf #gary goodspeed #yeehaww #titan fight

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megashadowdragon · 4 years ago

Link

itsclydebitches

sent by anonymous

“In his FIRST appearance he’d had ozpin removed from the tournament staff with secret meetings.” - It’s not Ironwood’s first appearance. He meets with the inner circle, has his talk with Ozpin, introduces his Atlesian knights to the public, attends the Beacon dance, discovers Ruby fighting Cinder, later compliments Ruby for her initiative in Ozpin’s office, confides in Glynda that night, and helps defend Vale against Roman’s attack. So your implication that as his “first” appearance this tells us he’s really an irredeemable person is not accurate.

Second, I’ve seen this claim a lot the last couple of months and I finally went back to find/watch the scene for myself (it’s in “Breach”). These were not secret meetings. Ironwood “reported” to the council which I assume is what he’s supposed to do. Given that he is a Headmaster. And this is the council overseeing the schools. Keeping updated is their entire deal. Were these reports fair to Ozpin? We don’t know. You might assume they’re full of lies and horrible misrepresentations, but that’s not what the text tells us. Ironwood told the council Ozpin’s plans, then the council said, ‘No way are you holding the Vytal festival with those precautions alone.’ Then the council asked Ironwood to provide troops for additional security. Did Ironwood manipulate the council and paint Ozpin as a villain to get what he wanted? Maybe. Did Ironwood objectively say precisely what’s going on - Ozpin thinks his huntsmen are enough to keep everyone safe in the event of an attack - and the council, independent of him, came to the conclusion that it wasn’t enough? Maybe. Again, we don’t know. What we do know is that Ironwood is doing all this because he honestly believes it will help others. He begs Ozpin to understand that: “This is the right move, Ozpin. I promise I will keep our people safe. You have to trust me.” And you know what? He wasn’t entirely wrong. No one could have predicted that Salem’s minions would take control of his army. Ironwood did, however, predict that there would be an attack too large for a bunch of students to handle… and he was right. Beacon fell because a those half-trained kids weren’t enough to hold off a major attack, but Ironwood did everything he could to try and prevent that. In a slightly better world where his army wasn’t unexpectedly taken advantage of, that could have easily been what turned the tide of battle and saved Beacon instead. The world where everyone views Ironwood as a hero for providing those extra forces is just a smidge away from the world where everyone views Ironwood as a villain for inadvertently providing the enemy with those extra forces… but the forces themselves are not a black and white bad thing to have. Not in a world where your festivities are interrupted by the giant bird trying to eat the audience.

“He was told many times his embargo was hurting the city” - Yes, the embargo hurts the city financially. Ironwood is attempting to keep it from being hurt in the ‘everyone is wiped out’ kind of way. Post the Fall of Beacon he’s unsure if the other Kingdoms will declare war against Atlas or not, so it’s not wise to continue giving them one of the easiest means of attack. That’s the official story, but Ironwood (and the audience) know that Salem has also been collecting dust for a while now… so how about we stop giving her any more? Was this the right move to make? Are short-term economic difficulties worth avoiding the risk of potentially supplying enemies with the means of destroying you? I can’t answer that, but it’s not a clear-cut bad decision like you’re making it out to be. Retroactively we can say that no one attacked Atlas and Salem seems to have stopped collecting dust because the writers forgot about it… but Ironwood doesn’t get to see into the future. He didn’t know things would turn out this way. Once again, he’s trying to prevent tragedies, not just survive them when they come along. The balance between short-term sacrifice and long-term protection is far from an easy thing to strike and a character’s failure to achieve perfection despite their best efforts says more about their luck than their morals. Ironwood is an incredibly flawed man, but those flaws have always shown throw via his attempts to help others.

iron-and-ice I never thought I’d see people referring to Ironwood providing comfortable protected residence to an elderly woman in possession of magical WMD powers as ‘imprisonment’. Fria, unlike other ‘good guys’, understood what her duty was. Vol 7 MVP, undisputed.

#rwby #rwby fria #rwby ironwood #james ironwood #general ironwood #ironwood rwby #itsclydebitches

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takaraphoenix · 4 years ago

Text

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 5

1. Favorite character of this season?

Anya, I love her arc this season. She's just kind of been... there, in season 4, running along. No one really acknowledged the demon thing, there was no real bonding between Anya and everyone, she was just there. This season, finding her place in the world? Working at the Magic Box, then her in The Body – I mean seriously, her confronting mortality like that, I love it. I love her growth.

2. Outstanding minor character (positive or negative)?

Dawn. Sure, technically you could argue she's a “main character”, however... she's barely even a character, she's a plot-device so that really qualifies her as a minor character for me.

I always disliked Dawn, even when I was a teen myself. With some things, perspective shifts when you grow older, but Dawn just... always sucked. As a teen, I found her to be a cringey parody of the teen girl experience and now as an adult I still think that this is the peak of what a middle-aged man thinks the teen girl experience is. She's a cheap, one-dimensional caricature of a teenager.

She is a whiny brat, she constantly acts like “no one sees the real me”, she becomes a kleptomaniac to try and gain attention, she acts like no one loves her even though everyone constantly fawn over her every chance they got, she is a spoiled little brat that is completely unappreciative of all the things she gets. It's like they crammed every single shallow teen stereotype into this one character, making her a very one-dimensional character. Which is a bafflement considering Willow, Xander and Buffy started out as teenagers but they were always fully fleshed out characters with actual personalities. Heck, Cordelia was the most stereotypical character in the teenage years but even she got more depth and individuality.

Though I'd like to point out that while, as a character, Dawn is incredibly obnoxious, I do like her as what she is – a plot device. The way she creates new dynamics among the Scoobies, how other characters play off her and grow on her existence, the villain-plot she triggers.

3. Favorite character dynamic?

Too many, honestly. I adore the way Tara-Buffy grow in this season. Generally the friction between Spike and the Scoobies. Spike and Dawn in particular. The Buffy-Dawn dynamic too – Dawn being such a blank slate of Teen AngstTM allows for the other characters to shine in comparison. They get a new dynamic here, through the New Kiddo that puts them in perspective. Caring, gentle. The sisters-angle is a new one for Buffy and I do love her as a big sister, even if I wished her retconned sister had like... an actual personality.

4. Favorite canon romantic ship?

Spike/Buffy. Sue me, I'm Spuffy trash. Always been. The way he cares for her, the things he's willing to do. The little things. The self-sacrificial side, how he drops everything to help her whenever she needs him. And, I know, I give other ships flag for things equal or less in comparison to some of the shit that's happened/happening between Spike/Buffy, but see that's where taste comes into play. Liking and disliking things is just... all about that taste and tastes differ. For me, Spike/Buffy hits all the right spots. I love them so much.

5. Least favorite canon romantic ship?

Riley/Buffy. Once again. Seriously, this is just such a bad relationship. From the get-go she constantly put herself down to lift him up. Holding back her powers – which, of course, because otherwise she'd snap him in half during sparring – but pretending that's the max. She is always going out of her way to make him feel special and useful.

And he goes and gets fed on by a vampire and has the audacity to blame it on Buffy, because Buffy doesn't make him feel wanted enough. Even though she continuously tries making him feel important. It's ridiculous. Complaining that she didn't think about calling him when her mom went to the hospital, like she didn't have something else in her mind there? Setting her an ultimatum that she has to give him a reason to stay. After he essentially cheats on her, by sneaking around with vampires and letting them feed on him for the rush.

Now to go and leave with his little military buddies once more. After everything the military has done to him...? Their relationship was so bad for Buffy.

6. Favorite episode?

The Body. This is the singularly best episode... ever. In all television I've ever seen. This episode is overwhelmingly good. Sarah Michelle Gellar's acting is overwhelming in this episode. The choice to exclude music entirely, not even sad ones. How silence is allowed to longer, how unnerving the background noises become due to this silence.

The writing too, of course. Anya's words about death and mortality are so intense, they'll always stick with me. And not just her. Xander, Willow, Dawn, how they all handle this in a different way.

The choice alone that Joyce dies from something so fundamentally human, something no one could have prevented, something Buffy couldn't have fought. And – yes, that reaches ahead some – but the fact that the next episode also serves to have this unfold. It's not just “death and move on”. It's being dealt with, it's being digested, it's being taken seriously.

Too many writers feel the need to fun things up when it's getting serious, because they are afraid to lose their audience if there isn't a joke every five minutes. There is not a single joke in that entire episode. This show is funny as hell, but they know when not to joke. There is nothing to be made light here, this is serious, they are truly suffering. They know how important that is.

I've seen this episode surely a dozen times now. I cry so much every single time. Not just once. There are so many well-written, well-acted and well-executed moments in this episode. It's brilliant TV-making. It encapsulates what's so brilliant about this show overall; the human element, suffering, pain, dealing with pain, the balance between seriousness and humor and knowing when not to use humor.

7. Least favorite episode?

Episode two Real Me. It's the Dawn introduction episode and I've made clear what I dislike about Dawn; this episode introduces it all in the most teen angst cliche possible – writing a diary entry about how no one sees you for who you are and like no one could ever actually understand you.

8. Favorite Monster Of The Week?

...Dracula. I still... I consider that episode a fever-dream. It's one of the ones I opt to forget about whenever enough time has passed since my last rewatch because it just... doesn't fit into this show at all, it feels like a whacky filler arc in an anime, or a one-shot comic spin-off. But it's fun.

9. Least favorite Monster Of The Week?

This season doesn't actually have much of those. There's 4 or 5, depending on how you'd count, out of those 22, because this season is very streamlined about the Big Bad, more so than previous seasons were, and it is also very focused on the human issue – on Joyce's sickness and then her death. Out of those few, I guess the “let's split Xander in half” demon from episode 3 was my least favorite. It was... boring and due to this season's streamlining the fact that this was the most fillery filler episode felt a bit out of place, really.

10. Rate the overarching villain!

SO FREAKING GOOD.

Glory is a truly glorious villain. She's a god. But she is so – so frantic, so manic. She is fun to watch as a villain. The sheer size of the threat too. Which, it figures. There's always an escalation of threat.

(We will get back to that in the season 6 review though.)

Glory may just be my favorite Big Bad on this show, which only adds to how much I love this season. It's one of my favorites. Granted, I have a lot of favorite seasons.

Bonus: Other thoughts?

I love this season so very, very much. The human element, the growth, the villain-plot, the relationship developments. It's an incredible season. I'll get back to this when I finish my rewatch and actually do my ranking of seasons, but I am rating each episode – 1 to 5 – and getting the point-average, to have a more factual look at how much I loved a season. This one is through the roof, it scored an entire 1,5 more in average than season 4 did. There's only one episode in this that I gave a 1 to, but there are so many 4s.

That ending, to truly kill off your main character like that. So many gut-punches – but deserved gut-punches, not the ones that come out of nowhere and only serve shock-value.

I greatly enjoy and love seasons 1 to 3, but this season – this season reminds me why Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the best damn TV show ever created.

#Buffy the Vampire Slayer #Season 5 #Phoe's Random Show Rants #Buffy Review #Phoe Watching Buffy

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treatian · 4 years ago

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The Chronicles of the Dark One: The Dark Curse

Chapter 130: Just a Normal Conversation

The best way to prove that what he'd seen was nothing but his imagination was to show that nothing had changed. He had to prove a negative. And for that he had to make sure that things carried on between them as it usually would have so that when he sent her away one day, he'd know for sure. It helped, he thought, that the castle was getting busier, that people were coming to him again, and they'd resumed their normal business almost entirely. She was cleaning again, he was working, he'd even popped out a few times to see Regina and to spy on George, making sure he was good and broke. The panic hadn't quite set in with him yet, but he could feel that he was nearing that. That was a vision he knew he could trust, it was one that made sense given the Kingdom's affairs.

Still, even with the busyness he continued to enjoy their talks over tea, even if he knew he shouldn't. It was really the only time they spent together acknowledging one another. They shared meals, but they weren't chatty. Tea time gave them the opportunity to talk about the one thing they had in common: books. Well-read as she was, she could talk for hours if he let the conversation go on that long. She saw the stories not only as they were but also the deeper meaning behind them, as well as things like symbolism and foreshadowing that he had to admit were lost on him. He wasn't aware if she knew it or not, but he usually read what she did, just well after she'd read it. Once she placed it on her shelf, he was happy to grab it and explore it secretly.

But today, as he glanced over her shoulder to figure out what she was reading, he was more than happy to find a book that he was familiar with. He'd gotten it in a deal once, thinking it would be informative, but at the end of the day, he'd found no value to it. He didn't want to leave it out in plain sight, considering where it had come from and that it might encourage questions he didn't want to answer, but…had he really put it in her library? Was that one of the books that he'd summoned up there? Apparently, he had, but…she had no idea what she really held in her hands right now. He wondered, what did she make of the strangeness of it?

"I've always been rather fond of that one myself," he commented to initiate the conversation. He enjoyed their talks, and he really thought that she did as well, but sometimes pulling her out of a book could be a difficult task. He'd noticed a correlation depending on how bent over the book she was. If the book rested on her lap and her back was curled over examining it as the rest of her body stilled, then it was a good one. If the book rested on her lap, she kept her head on the back of the chair, her hand idly moving over a leg or the chair's arm, it was less than captivating. Those were the days that she was easy to distract and even did some of the distracting herself. Other times, like now, he could tell that she was itching to return to it. Conversation always brought her some relief, but it wasn't as good as reading it.

"Yes," she agreed with a smile while he poured himself another cup of tea. "I'm enjoying it as well. I've never heard of the author though…" he turned just in time to see her close the book and look at the cover. "'C.S. Lewis,'" she read aloud. "I was hoping to read more from him, unless this is the only thing he's ever written."

"It's the only thing in my library," he answered confidently.

She gave a small nod and cast her eyes down at it sadly. He felt a pain in his chest at her disappointment and had a stray thought that he wished he had better news for her, but he willed both the thought and the pain away. The visions weren't real. He didn't feel anything for her. And he could prove it by carrying on a normal conversation with her and continuing to feel nothing.

"Although I find it hard to believe that a writer like that would only write one book," he added quickly. He wasn't quite the scholar she was, but given the book's background he knew that much. As to whether or not the author had written more…he didn't know. One day, hopefully soon, he would be in a world where he had that answer, but until that day arrived, speculation was all he had. And a little hope could go a long way, especially with someone like her.

"I don't suppose you could look for me?" she asked carefully, looking entirely unsure about the comment. He could understand why. It was a request that made the voices in his head scream at him; all negative things, of course. Looking for a book for her was a far cry from ignoring her and giving her dresses in secret. To actively look for something for her…

But was he going to turn her down because he didn't want to do it? Because it was inappropriate? Or because it was a step that would make those images true? He wasn't afraid of his imagination. He wasn't afraid of it because it wasn't true. And this was exactly the kind of proof he needed. He could look for a book for her, and send her away one day when he learned the truth, because she didn't mean anything and never would.

"I'll look," he answered. She blushed and he quickly put his nose down so he could sip at his tea. There, things could continue as they normally would have and it meant nothing. Nothing! It was just a simple conversation, one like they might have had before his mind had wandered. Everything was fine.

Except for the way her heart raced at the news.

He'd look for the book for her, but she had to understand the chances of ever finding something like it, in this world, were slim to none.

"But I should warn you," he corrected quickly. "Even if more exist, the chances of coming across one are slim."

"Why?" she inquired, looking confused at his statement. Perhaps she really didn't noticed…

"Not all the books in that library are from our realm," he informed her, watching her carefully for her reaction to his words. What would she think of it all, he wondered. "That one, for example, I got in a trade. It's rare, coming from A Land Without Magic."

"Another realm…" she muttered. Her tone was one of amazement and confusion. She trusted him and his words, obviously, but he didn't know if she believed it all, clearly. "Another world? A land without magic?!"

"My, my, my, Dearie, you didn't think this was the only one, did you?"

"I've heard stories, but I never assumed it was true!" she blanched.

"The stories you've heard are true," he smiled, looking into the fireplace. "Worlds of all shapes and sizes, histories and realities, ones you've read about and ones you could never dream up for a thousand years. Worlds too numerous for even I to count. But getting to those worlds is a task all on its own, especially the ones where magic doesn't thrive. Thus why relics, like the one you're holding, are so rare."

He watched as she shook her head looking utterly baffled and overwhelmed. She put her head back against the chair, taking it all in, he assumed. She was a smart woman, it wasn't often he could teach her something, but he liked the way that he had now. She'd heard the stories but didn't believe them. But she did now? Just because he said so, she believed it? Why did that fill him with a gust of pride that made him want to stick out his chest and challenge that fiancé of hers to a duel?

"You suppose it's real?" she questioned suddenly, demanding his attention once more. "Do you suppose there is a world like this?" she asked, motioning to the book. "With a Devil, Wormwood, an Uncle named Screwtape?"

Her eyes were desperate, searching his own for an answer he wasn't entirely sure about. The book came from The Land Without Magic and he'd been told it was a fictional story there, a fortunate thing, otherwise he probably would have assumed that was how that world really was. And perhaps it was, for all he knew? Maybe that land did have devils and angels as the book suggested, but the truth was he didn't know. But was it possible for angels and devils to exist in another world? One with or without magic? He didn't see why not.

"I'm sure it's always possible."

It was a vague answer but not on purpose. If he could have told her definitively one way or another he would have. Just to get that look off her face. The look of…confusion?

"Why did you want it?" she asked quietly, keeping her eyes trained on the book in front of her.

"What?"

He saw her swallow nervously then finally glance up at him. "Why would you want it? The book, I mean. If it came from A Land Without Magic, then it must not hold any magic or power? Why would you want it?"

"It's rare," he responded simply, but he had a feeling that the question was anything but simple. What was she getting at?

"If its rarity meant something to you, it would have a place and be better taken care of than this. Why exchange anything for a simple book weathering away in the library with no magical value?"

"Because it came from that realm," he snapped before he could catch himself. That was what she was getting at? She wanted to know his interest in another realm? Or in that realm in particular? He couldn't understand why that was important to her or to anyone. "I thought it might be helpful, informative, but it's a simple yet brilliant work of fiction and nothing more."

"Helpful? Informative? What-"

Before she could finish her thought or he could figure out what she was working through in her head, there was an unmistakable bang at the door that meant a visitor had arrived. He didn't have any meetings scheduled, so he could only assume it was someone coming to make a deal with him. It was one of the rare times he could honestly say he was torn. He needed to go back to work, it was what he normally would have done, but he could tell that she was coming up with something and he couldn't decide if he wanted to ignore the door and stay to hear her theories or stay just to shut them down.

Leave. Obviously, he was going to leave. The visions were nothing, and he wouldn't pretend like they were something. In a normal day, he would leave her and go make his deal.

"Back to work," he declared, moving quickly away from her and to the door. "Enjoy your book," he tossed over his shoulder, wishing he could stay and enjoy it with her.

#Rumbelle #Rumple #Rumpelstiltskin #Dark One #Belle #ouat #ouat fanfiction #fanfic

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tanadrin · 5 years ago

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hey *whispers* hey. hey. i saw your post in the wow tag. i would read THE SHIT out of your interpretation of wow lore. i have homework right now but i think i might just read through your blog a bit. the characters have always been such a high point for me (listen. i know knaak did a lot of shit. but you can pry Krasus from my cold dead hands he was EVERYTHING to middle school me) and i feel so conflicted over what theyve done to the characters - sylvanas, anduin, everyone. would love ur take

You might be a little disappointed, most of my blog isn’t about WoW (it postdates my WotLK raiding/RP guild phase, and I’ve only just recently got back into it with Classic). Lots of opinions on WoW characters below the cut.

I actually don’t hate Krasus as a character. He’s fine, he’s not a Designated Idiot Ball Carrier like some of the others are. In re: the dragons generally, I don’t like the simplistic thing WoW lore does a lot where one faction leader going bonkers turns the whole faction into baddies for no apparent reason, because all political entities are monoliths except when they’re not. I’m also not a huge fan of how crowded the, erm, metahuman bureaucracy on Azeroth has become in the lore–like, the Keepers and the Dragon Aspects serve similar roles, and the lore could have done fine with one or the other, and the dragons were here first (and Ysera and Alexstrasza are BAMFs), and so should get to stay.

Sylvanas is bae, obviously, and Sylvanas as Warchief was a terrific move plotwise. I think it’s a pity they had to kill Vol’jin to do it (because I am also very here for Warchief Vol’jin), but she is obviously the more interesting choice. Speaking of Warchiefs:

Thrall doesn’t have the Green Jesus Marty Stu quite as bad as some people think, but he does kinda have it, and I don’t see them grappling quite with the fact that he done fucked up. Like, not only did he install a Warchief who should have had all smart members of the Horde tugging at their collars nervously when he started his rule, Garrosh turned into a Sha-summoning Old God-corrupted, casual-atrocity-perpetrating maniac, not to mention all the bullshit on Old Draenor I do my best to forget about lest my blood pressure spike. We don’t really get a satisfying mea culpa from Thrall for that, and then his response is to fuck off to fiddle around with the Earthen Ring for a bit, before retiring to a farm in Nagrand. Keep in mind, one of the whole reasons the Horde came together in its current shape in the first place is because of the charismatic, hopeful figure of Thrall. It ran the very real risk of splintering under Garrosh for good (ESPECIALLY after the murder of Cairne, RIP Cairne Bloodhoof, you were too good for this world), and even the most unifying successor (which I think Vol’jin was) didn’t have Thrall’s inclusive, unifying vision. Sylvanas doesn’t, either, and even more, is sort of low-key hated by everybody else, so while I don’t think she’s a maniac like Garrosh who would recklessly divide the Horde, she’s also not, I am forced to admit, necessarily the ideal Warchief from a political standpoint.

Even if he didn’t return to the post of Warchief, Thrall had a moral obligation after the Garrosh debacle to try to help hold the Horde together and heal the divisions his negligence caused. At least to throw his support behind Garrosh’s successors, and not to pretend that Deathwing’s death meant everything was OK forever, job done. And if he wasn’t going to do that (and he has excellent motivations for not wanting to do that!), I think the consequences of that have to be explored. I think some people would blame him, and be justified in doing so. I think somebody like Varok Saurfang, who has had decades of experience with the damage bad leaders could do, would rightly be a little pissed, even as he sought Thrall out for help, that Thrall had let the Horde he built languish under subpar leadership. Thrall has been selfish–and that’s great, because he desperately needed some character flaws more significant than “cares too much” and “believes in people a lot.”

Anduin: better than Varian, still a little bland? Varian was a Professional Idiot Ball Handler, who seemed to do stuff not out of a coherent conception of his character, but just because the plot required a Generic Human King to do it. Plus there was all that stuff with the cloning and the kidnapping that never really made any sense. I like Anduin’s optimism; I like that he feels like a thoughtful, reasonable guy, who’s doing his best in often-impossible circumstances. I feel like they could show him being a little more frustrated sometimes, though, and a little pissed at people like Jaina who obstinately refuse to do the strategically correct thing even if it means setting aside their resentments for a bit. Disclaimer: I play almost exclusively Horde toons, they may address this better in the Alliance quests in WoW.

But oh man, besides the Draenei, I hate most what they did to Jaina. Jaina was that rare jewel, an optimist in a world whose setting demands perpetual chaos. Yes, yes, Theramore and the mana bomb, I’m not suggesting she should be made of stone, but it breaks her character to have her suddenly go from someone trying to forge a lasting peace between the Horde and Alliance in WC3–to the point where she would see her own father dead–to someone who now blames the whole Horde as one no exceptions for what happened at Theramore. Should she struggle with grief and pain and anger? Absolutely. But she should deal with them in more complex ways than “now I am become the mirror image of Daelin.” Nevermind that even if she did that she should at least regret not listening to him back in WC3. (Do they address that in BFA with the introduction of Kul Tiras? Idk, I haven’t played BFA at all yet.) It seems like Jaina’s role now is to be the Person Who Hates The Horde, and honestly, that’s a tired trope. It’s just not interesting, it has no nuance, it has no interesting outcomes. You could maybe get away with it with the generation of leaders from the Second War like Daelin and Genn who knew the Orcs only as the fel-corrupted servants of the Burning Legion, but it’s obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together than the current Horde is a very different animal politically and strategically, so even if you hate the Orcs with a burning passion, that is not going to transfer to the Tauren, nevermind onetime allies like the Blood Elves.

Gul’dan: oh my god the time travel plot was so stupid. Did the whole universe get duplicated in the alternate timeline? Since travel between the universes is cheap and easy that means there’s a whole nother Burning Legion with a whole nother Sargeras out there that’s still a huge fricking threat! Not to mention a whole nother Azeroth! Did just Draenor get duplicated? That doesn’t seem to match up with the fact a lot of the Burning Legion characters in WoD seem to be parallel universe versions of Burning Legion villains we already know, but it’s not directly confirmed or disconfirmed. Is it some sort of weird Bronze Dragonflight timey-wimey thing that doesn’t have its own independent reality? Ok, fine, but obviously this alternate Draenor has enough of an independent existence for us to visit it again and see what it’s like decades later, not to mention bring some of the people there back. Gul’dan was a fine, if one-dimensional villain but bringing him back from the dead was dumb, dumb, dumb, in a setting where death often feels meaningless and seems to be reversible at random. And the general incoherence of magic in the setting combined with the perennial incoherence of time travel plots (Gollum voice: *we hates them!*) really just reduced WoD to a quivering mess of plot holes, like febrile fan speculation made manifest.

Tirion Fordring: good example of a purely heroic character done well, which WoW has few of. I think because he actually has challenges to overcome, and he doesn’t feel like an idiot.

Bolvar Fordragon: Literally did not know or care who this guy was until the Wrathgate cinematic, but what they did after that with his character was terrific, 10/10.

Malfurion, Tyrande, Illidan: These characters all bore me to tears. My WotLK main was a druid, and I’m a big fan of the druid lore, so I wanna like Malfurion, I really do, but he’s just so dull. Partly because it doesn’t feel like he has any real limitations on his power, just whatever the plot demands he be able to do or not do at any given moment, partly because he just feels like a stiff-necked scold. Tyrande is even more one-dimensional. Illidan is pure 3edgy5me, and the demon hunters in general feel like they get to be too cool to actually traffic in any of the pathos of what should be their emotional equivalents like the Death Knights and the Forsaken. It’s like, “oh man, my life is so tormented, I have these bitchin’ horns and tattoos, and I’m, like, totally immortal, here, hold my rad sword thingies for a second.” At least with the Death Knights you get the feeling that being a Death Knight is a genuinely miserable experience, so there’s some genuine conflict at the heart of the class: sure, you play as a hero, but not the kind of hero you’d necessarily want to be. Demon hunters are just pissed they don’t get to sit at the cool kids’ lunch table, and Illidan genuinely acts like a giant asshole and then gets self-righteous and whiny when his friends and family are like “Dude! Stop being such an asshole!” There’s room for a prickly character, who’s a dick, but who’s our dick, and maybe that’s what they were going for, but Illidan is just the worst.

Azshara, Lady Vashj: The Naga were a giant fucking mistake. A symptom of the inability to let backstory stay backstory, to have to resurrect and retread the same events over and over again that plagues serials when lesser writers without original ideas get let loose on them. Settings like WoW (like Star Wars, like Star Trek, like Dune) are whole universes. You should be expanding the borders, making them feel bigger, more fine-grained, more alive, not beating the same major characters to death over and over again. The ancient Kaldorei are way more interesting as a lost past and a lesson in hubris than fish-snake-people who live under the sea.

Also, water levels are dumb and I hate them. This applies to coral-and-shellfish themed zones regardless of whether swimming is involved.

Cho’gall: I loved the “insane nihilist death cult” reincarnation of the Twilight’s Hammer Clan in World of Warcraft, and Cho’gall as the many-eyed crazed ogre mage with two heads was great. Would much rather have more Cho’gall than Guldan 2.0.

While I’m on Cataclysm: one thing you don’t often feel in worlds like WoW is the possibility of real defeat, because for extradiegetic reasons, it’s impossible to truly lose in any long-lasting way (or, in quests like Battle for the Undercity in WotLK, they just… don’t let you, which feels dumb as heck). I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of a post-apocalyptic fantasy world, a world where the bad guys won, and all the worst things the good guys feared came to pass. I think this is one reason I loved the original interpretation of the Draenei so much, because we saw in Draenor what that really looked like. It was bleak, and it was poignant, and even though it was set within a silly melodrama, it actually moved me. Cataclysm did something similar with the postapocalyptic time-travel instance (time travel being used well for once in WoW!), where you saw that Deathwing’s victory wasn’t just an abstract possibility, but a thing that could actually happen. It made the possibility of defeat feel more real, and it gave you a taste of that same bleak, poignant feeling: this, it said (just for a moment!) is what failure looks like, an Azeroth without life, without hope, in which everything you ever struggled for was utterly in vain. And that motivated you to work even harder to prevent it.

Alleria, Turalyon: “You last saw us in WC2, and since then we’ve been fighting a thousand years (subjective) of endless war against the Burning Legion and been irrevocably changed by the experience” is actually pretty great! But if I were going to rewrite WoW lore, I would make that a thousand objective years and set the final victory over the Burning Legion in the future, at a time when the Alliance and Horde have made a durable peace, and Azeroth has moved on from decades of endless war. I think there’s a real problem with trying to make the player one of the heroes that brings down Sargeras for good because it’s *such* an epic battle, but it’s a massively multiplayer game. Making every player the grand master of their class order was bad enough, but when you are obviously playing out entirely different diegesis from everyone around you, even if you didn’t have problems like sharding and a glut of phasing and cross-server activities and instant teleportation to dungeons, it really feels like a single-player RPG with a chat function. I mean, conflicting diegeses is always going to be a problem with questing-based MMOs, but suspension of disbelief worked when you were plainly one person embedded in a larger effort, like in vanilla, BC, and WotLK. But “you are one of thousands of people who is the Best Warrior Ever and sole Leader of the Warriors, and who has the Only Artifact Weapon that somehow also has thousands of copies”… yeah, that just doesn’t work for me. I feel like I’m being pandered to, and not in a fun way, like with the Pandaren.

Sargeras: I like that they retconned Sargeras to have a better motivation than “demons made me nihilistic.” The idea of a void-corrupted titan being something so terrible a member of the Pantheon would shatter worlds to prevent it is interesting. But the Void gods still feel… kinda non-threatening? We don’t see them actively working to threaten anything we really care about, the Void is mostly a pretty passive abstract force like the Light, and in general I feel like the setting isn’t really dualistic, but er… trialistic? Is that a word? In that there’s a three-way opposition between the Void, the Light, and the Nether/Arcane, from the perspective of which each is the opponent of both of the others, but that’s never laid out explicitly anywhere.

#wow #wow lore #world of warcraft #sylvanas #thrall #jaina proudmoore #warlords of draenor was the WORST #and Legion wasn't much better plotwise

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kaiayame · 6 years ago

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post s8 thoughts

the good, the bad, the mixed.

the good

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

romelle was back! her hair was cute.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

veronica and axca had super gay vibes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the bad

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

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

like wtf was ep 13.

what.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHERE IS MY FORMAL WEAR EPISODE

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

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

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

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

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

adam didn’t magically come back from the dead.

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

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

omg they never explained the altean colonies...

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

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

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

i feel zero closure tbh, lol. whatever.

the mixed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#spoilers #so many spoilers #vld spoilers #voltron s8 #voltron #my thoughts

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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New X-Men Xtrospective Part 2: Germ Free Generation (Annual, #117-120)

Hello all you happy mutants! And welcome back to my look one of my faviorite runs of one of my faviorite super teams by one of my faviorite comic book writers!

For those of you just joining us.. it’s been a while. I did the first instalment of this retrospective back in early January as a present to my friend for christmas, as he had never read E is for Extinctoin and what with this run being vital to the current, utterly brilliant Krakoa era of X-Men. But with both Black History Month and Valentine’s day, February had no real room for this one and march ended up being just as crammed with me doing essentially the entire della arc of ducktales in one month. I didn’t mean for this retrospective to get pushed so far back, but since I gave up doing weekly coverage of Final Space I had some room on the schedule so this retrospective is back with a vengance with two entries this month and hopefully at least one a month afterword to keep it at a decent clip.

Last time I covered the background of this run and didn’t really find much for the issues after, so I won’t have to spend as much time on background.

So since i’ts been a few months, a refresher is probably in order

PREVIOUSLY, ON X-MEN: Our merry mutants enterted a marvelous new era. As Charles redidciated to the dream with new equipment and a new uniforms our hero encounter a new villian: The Mysterious Cassandra Nova, a powerful telepath who used an uwitting patsy from the trask family and a defucnt sentinel factory to slaughter the mutant nation of Genosha, killing 16 million mutants in the most horrific act of genocide against mutants ever known. And the fact there has been more than one genocide against mutant kind MIGHT, just MIGHT be the reason they blackmailed for peace with life saving drugs instead of helping willingly and freely in the current comics. Just maybe.

Cassandra was captured by the X-Men soon after but escaped and nearly got a hold of Cerebra only to be stopped thanks to a combination of former enemy, genoshan resident at the time of the genocide, and that bitch Emma Frost who snapped her neck and Charles himself who uncharacteristically shot Cassandra in the head. That night Charles took a bold step over that would change the X-Men forever and told the world on live tv:

While all of this was going on we got caught up on the team’s personal struggles, currently consisting of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast and Wolverine with Emma joining as of the issue we’re about to cover. Beast is grappling with a secondary mutation that makes him look like Aslan, the jesus of narnia and all lions. Meanwhile Scott and Jean are grappling with their non existant sex life as Cyclops possesion by Apocalypse shortly before this story has severely rattled him and caused him to close himself off emotionally.

So that’s where we pick up. Our heroes are now no longer hiden saftely in the shadows from a world that hates and fear them but are out front and center with the world watching. And we’ll see both how that helps their cause and how it puts them directly in the cross hairs under the cut. Content Warning: This review discusses Transphobia and a scene involving a school shooting. If either of these are a trigger for you or something you do not want to read about please skip this part of the retrospective for your own well being. Thank you and have a lovely day.

The Man From Room X:

We have three stories today: an annual that introduces our final team member and the main villians of our next arc, a one off that moves the main plot for the first 12 issues along, and a three part arc about said villains. Before we get into the Annual, I have to talk about it’s weird gimmick: The issue is entirely sideways. I don’t mean it’s bad though some parts are problematic I mean when bought it’d be on it’s side and in my trade I have to flip the whole thing over on it’s side to read it. It’s just a .. weird choice. Not the weirdest thing about this issue somehow but not unexpected from Grant as they like to play with the formula.

We open in said Room X, a location in China where a mutant named Xorn is kept and showed off to a mysterious group of dickweeds in suits representing “Mr. Sublime”. His jailer, General Aao Jun,, shows him off as most bad guys would : By undoing his helmet and thus disntegrating two innocent children just by looking at them. Sublime says they have a deal.

Meanwhile also in China the X-Men are there for a funeral and Emma and Scott trade insulting questions back in forth: She mocks him about his lack of sex with Jean lately and he brings up her criminal past. As for why Emma’s still with the x-men.. it’s out of pragmatisim. WIth Genosha gone, the x-men are the saftest faction to throw in with.

As for why the X-Men are in China, Charles has rapidly expanded his operations now he’s public by setting up X-Corps, a multinational humantarian aid organization dedicated to helping mutants in need wherever they sprout up. He’s set up offices in Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Mumbai and Melborne.

He’s also half assed it, at least for the Hong Kong office and only gave them two employees: Domino, who those of you not as familiar with the comics may remember from deadpool and Risque.. who I honestly had never heard of before New X-Men and frequently forget existed. I just looked her up for the first time and she’s a minor mutant who was an associate of X-Force and Warpath’s love intrest. She could compress matter causing it to implode. My assumption here is that Morrison simply picked a minor mutant at random for the job.

But yeah naturally with only two mutants charged with, according to domino “All of asia” went horribly and the x-men are there for Risque’s funeral and to find out what happened. Unsuprisingly it’s tied into our cold open: Risque had found evidence of a mutant trafficking operation and died fighting them off and Dom is naturally f eeling in over her head since said operation involves the chinese goverment, who according to her exccute most mutants at birth and John Sublime and his cult.

We soon see a press confrence from this asshole and find out what his deal is: Sublime is the head of the U-Men, a group that belivies they are a “third species” of mutants trapped in human bodies that deserve to have the surgery to make them into mutants, and thus wear weird suits until the world is pure and allows them to have surgery for it.

Yeahhhh this.. this is really fucking uncomfortable and is going to be present throughout today’s piece so let’s just go ahead and rip that band-aid off: The U-Men come off as HIGHLY transphobic. They use terms similar to trans people call themselves trans species and are trapped inside a body they don’t belong in. It’s VERY uncomfortable to read as a result and something that hadn’t really sunk into till thsi reading but once it had.. oh god does this not age well.

The one thing that keeps this from runing the run and Grant Morrison as a whole for me.. is that I do not think for one second it was intentional. Grant themself is genderqueer, nonbinary and a cross dresser. None of this means they CAN’T be prejudice, being Queer does not magically make you immune to being prejudiced. But before this Grant had the genderqueer sentient street Danny the Street over in doom patrol and a trans main character in his book the invisibles, Lord Fanny. And given New X-Men’s biggest flaw as a whole is clumsy early 2000′s unforutnate implications such as a good chunk of the things about Cyclops affair with Emma, we’ll get to that at the right time, Angel in the next arc and Dust, who was introduced as from afganastan wearing an outfit not seen in the country and speaking a language not spoken in the country. Grant didn’t make these mistakes TWICE, it’s why I still have respect for them, and this won’t be the first or last comic i’ve forgiven for being stupid for it’s time. But I will still call Grant out when I see it. Just because I respect an author just because they changed my life does not mean I won’t call them out when they fuck up. And if they prove to be truly vile, have harmed someone or what have you I will cut them the fuck out of my life. I’ve done it with JK Rowling, Warren Ellis, Brad Jones and Joss Whedon. I would do it with Grant if I truly belivied they were transphobic and instead didn’t just write something very stupid without thinking the metaphor through 20 years ago.

So anyway back to the comic book bollocks as Wolvie and Dominio prepare for an infiltration and flirt a bunch. We also find out Jun is a mutant himself with a power only Grant could dream up: his skin, hair and what have you that falls off him turns into a naked golem for a bit before expiring. And if you hadn’t read this issue before reading this review, yes that actually happened. While the first arc had a BIT of Grant’s trademark batshit insanity, the series REALLY starts to pick it up from here: This issue has a mutant with functioning star for a head, a poorly thought out bucnh of sci fi new age organ theives, and a general whose power is “makes naked clones out of his dandruff”. Oh and his fondest wish?

I just... I don’t know how to respond to that. I don’t know how you respond to an old man’s weird murder fetish that he tells a somehow even creepier cult leader while said cult leader is paying him to buy a star man, and their both surronded by the creepy old guy’s skin golems that weirdly look like mudokons. Look i’ve read Grant’s entire utterly bonkers run on doom patrol. I’ve seen a man who looks like a question mark use a bicycle that makes everyone high like their on LSD for president. And THIS is what breaks me.

So while.. THIS is going on, Dom and Wolverine plan to do it all night long on the professor’s credit card, no really he gives all his professors carte blanch to use school fun, and inflitrate, Dom through the elvator this horrorshow just took place in and Wolvie james bond style. Also I gotta say I REALLY love how Morrison writes Domino. She’s wittiy, entertaining and her power is as awesome as always, super luck if you didn’t know. It’s a real shame he didn’t add her to the team: She wasn’t on any other x-teams, with X-Force having been rebranded into X-Statix by this point. She would’ve been a fun addition to the cast.

Naturally wolverine is found out.. but that was the entire plan, for him to serve as a distraction then cut his way to domino while she steals something from the vault. As for the rest of the X-Men, Cyclops, Beast and Emma are all downstairs in the parking garage and find a secret entrance. Jean is not on this trip and that’s a major plot point for this run. This is where Risque died.. and it only get’s worse when Hank goes inside, finding a bug like child, basically htink a giant caterpillar but with tons of human arms inttead of legs with her wings cut off.

Thankfully as Logan and Dom escape above, the U-Men are dumb enough to storm down bellow.. and while they incapacitate beast with some launched tiny knives, designed to incapcicate but leave them in tact for harvest, Emma beats the shit out of them and get the info out as only she can....

Granted she could’ve just turned back to normal and used her telepathy.. but what fun would that be? Plus they have blockers and you know CUT UP A FUCKING CHILD. SO yeah fuck them, let emma have her fun.

Thanks to her they find out the U-Men are a front for illegal organ harvest, and while they can’t prove sublimes attached Emma suggests killing him. Good idea but Scott suggests the lighter approach and we find out what Dom stole, a key, something Emma can psychcially scan. She warns it might take her a bit to get something.. only to be flooded instantly and we find out who the man in the box was. Shen Xorn... i’ll let emma tell you more herself.

It’s stuff like this why, despite some serious flaws like the U-Men debacle and some stuff to come, some I mentioned above other that’s just with the plot that i love this run. Morrison just gets how to really tell an x-men story and the real tragedy of being a mutant. That just for being diffrent, you get shut out, or in this case thrown into a box when you could’ve and should’ve been something more. As emma turns herself to diamond to deal with the psychic backlash, Beast has some solemn words to share.

That night Scott rests in his bedroom while presumibly hearing some truly horrific and sexy things next door while talking to jean before clocking out.. only for Emma to head in in a sexy dress with champagne. What happened? Well we won’t know for sure for most of the run.

The next day the U-Men prepare to load and we get some scrap of what the idea was supposed to be: John talks to Ao Jun about his procedures. We see wings crudely sewen to his back and his throat implaants hurting “But one day I will fly”. THe IDEA is their supposed to be lunatics, people who envy mutantkind but don’t actually respect their culture or their sense of personhood. It’s not the worst idea and had Grant not used trans termnology for htis, it would’ve been a great one. I think he INTENDED for them to be coopting the idea of being trans and what not to maks their true intentions.. which is problematic due to debates like the ones on bathrooms where a lot of transphobic asshats make the bad faith argument a bunch of people are going to pretend to be trans to assault people.

We’re.. we;’re not even to the main storyarc yet.

But things soon go wrong as Xorn’s starhead starts to collapse into a black hole, with no solution as the x-men took the key to his helmet.. and assault the compound. Turns out the star collapse thing is Jun’s revenge on humanity for lockig him down here and he gets his neck snapped. Scott has a solution though.. and it’s stuff like this why I fucking love Scott Summers and get annoyed when people call him “boring”: He realizes Xorn is comitting sucicide.. so he’s going to talk him out of it. Not just for everyone else but he deserves to live. And while Emma points out only logan among htem knows chinese and she can’t get through to Xorns’ head due to the way his brain works, Scott has a simple workaround: Use the nearest chineses speaker to teach Scott chinese. So.. with that he talks to Xorn.

And that my friend is Scott Summers. A man who faced with powerful man whose given up, whose lost all hope... convinces him he can still go on. That living’s better than dying.. and that it does get better. The issue closes with Xorn basking in the sunlight for the first time in decades while Domino sweats having an extremley powerful unknown mutant out in the world. Scott’s already thought of that.. and signed him up with the x-men. Granted it won’t be until our next article that he actually fully joins the team, but w’ell get to that next time.

This issue is great... while the U-Men stuff is pretty bad and isn’t going to get better, the tale of xorn is excitiong, Aao Jun is an intresting antagonist and the sideways gimmick suprisingly works. So now we’ve finshed our apitizer let’s get on to the main course.

Danger Rooms:

We open in well.. the Danger Room with Beast training a new student.

This is Beak. Beak is my faviorite character Morrison came up with and one of my faviorite X-Characters. Beak is a bird like boy who can fly, it’s just a struggle and due to looking diffrent and not having the most impressive power has very low self esteem. It’s also part of something Morrison took a concerted effort to do: introduce more mutants with genuinely odd apperances and drawbacks. Like we saw with Ugly John last time and Aao Jun in the previous issue, Morriosn really likes adding weird mutants but he also uses it to give a genuine downside to being one. While this isn’t NEW to x-men, Morriosn upped the scale and number of characters like this with weird powers and apperances. We see a bunch of human passing ones too but the backgrounds just jammed with all sorts of unique designs and students. It’s also the point where the school became far more crowded like the movies, a good call on my part both to help those coming in from the movies, and to help sell the mutant baby boom going on. After all it wouldn’t make sense if the school was just about 5-7 students and a bunch of grown adults doing superhero stuff like usual would it.

But we get to see that Hank is a good teacher, as he reminds the boy that he’s getting better and won’t be an x-man overnight, and worries about him to the professor, wanting the boy not to slip through the cracks, figuratively, and not to feel like an outcast.. especaily here. But Hank dosen’t feel blue for long, metaphorically he was blue long before he became the lion minus the witch and the wardrobe, as he has a date to night.. and so does Charles.

Or rather he did.. his girlfriend trish, a long time love intrest of his and a reporter.. breaks up with him. Over voice mail. While in washington. And the reasons she gives are not great

Yes Hank’s transformation is radical.. but not only was it not his choice... she’s being a coward, sending the message it’s okay to dump someone because hteir a mutant or because they happen tobe diffrent and that efffects your career. Again it’s moments like this that make the run soar over the more awkward bits.

Meanwhile Logan’s off doing logan stuff, i.e. gazing at a deer. Wow. Jean followed him. Both notice a space ship: Despite recently outing himself as a mutant, leading to an increased number of students and a bunch of rioting morons at the gates, Charles has decided NOW’S a good time to take a vacation to the Shiar empire. As for why Jean’s really out here, her marriage to Scott isn’t doing so good and while Logan encourages her to stay it’s just not that simple: Her telekenisis is coming back, stronger than ever. She feels the most alive she’s been while he’s shutting her out and feeling his deadest. She tries to turn to logan for comfort but he shuts her down. Just wait two decades jean... he’ll open up to a threesome. In all seriousness though having Jean try and come onto Logan .. will backfire slightly on later storylines. But we’ll get to that eventually.

In the basement Hank is studying Cassandra or rather a virtual version of her since her body is naturally in storage. And he’s found out something disturbing: She’s Charles Genetic Twin.. oh and it gets way worse. The Professor’s weird behavior? Barely staffing the hong kong office, leaving suddenly with rioters t the gates, outing himself? About that...

Cassandra tourtures Hank with the possiblity he’s devovling and then tries to mind controlli him into cleaning himself with his diploma when Beak enters. The good news is this allows hank to shake off her control and tackle her, showing off why hank mccoy is fucking awesome in the process.

That is the Hank McCoy I know, love.. and miss dearly. The one we’ll probably never get back sadly after what others did and what Percy’s had to do to reconclie with all they did.

Unfortunately beak being around means cassandra can force him to beat beast into a coma with his bat. She plans to tear Charles dream down around him and make him watch.. and cryptically says he tried to kill her. She then cheerfully leaves Jean in charge.. and talks about just how much damage one could do with an entire interstellar empire in the wrong hands....

This issue is also excellent and sets up the next two arcs nicely while giving us a nice peak in hank’s head. Great stuff. The artist also hid the word sex in a lot of the images see if you can find them.

Germ Free Generation Issue 1:

So now we get into our main story for today. This story and the one before it were drawn by Ethan Van Sciver whose a talented artist.. but also highly contrversial for being a conservative. I myself.. don’t know what he’s said or did, though calling himself “Canceld Superstar’ on twitter really isn’t a good sign. So I really can’t comment on it but I also know someone would mention it if I didn’t bring it up and if you know what he did please enlighten me.

So we open with a school shooter who also scooped out a guys eyes and is part of the U-Men. He get shot by the swat team while making his speech> it’s an effective opening but one that’s become more uncomfortable to read with each passing day due to school shootings going up and up in number. And mass shootings in general and I... I need a second. I need something to relax me

Thank you Stoopy. Your doing Odd’s Work.

So the news reports on this and we soon see how Jean watches the news.. by using Cerebra to read the minds of every person on the planet. Neat. Everyone’s talking about them. We also get a hint for later as we hear on the suicide of one martha johanson who wrote the note in her own blood. She’ll be important later.... and I mean that both in the context of this retrospective and for the fact she’ll go on to be part of x-men in perpetuity.

This is also where another great concept of Morrison’s pops up: Mutant culture. After all mutants are a minority, they should have their own culture. It’s something Hickman’s era has taken and ran with, but it’s a damn good idea and one that it shoudln’t of taken almost 20 years for someone else to use given Decimation was undone way back around 2012 in Avengers Vs X-Men, aka that event half hte articles on the mcu around the fox sale used as either their image for the article or asked about happneing. And yes that is a pet peeve of mine: while I do think like Civil War AVX could use a movie version to make it better, I don’t think it’s an event that could be done right away and would have to be almost entirely redone anyway given the context for AvX is entirely couched in decimation i.e. something NO ONE wants in any x-adaptation.

So it turns out while watching the news in a next level way Jean is also talking to Logan. “Stay out of my personal fantasies”. Yeah I .. I don’t think your ready for a hairy canadian dry humping a transformer.. specifically killbison. And yes.. that is an actual transformer and why yes, I have been waiting to bring him up.

And he is , and I am not making any of this up, part of a group of decpticons known as the breastforce. Your life is better for knowing that and you are welcome.

Anyway as you’d imagine a genocidal old woman in her brothers’ body leaving the X-Men to fend for themselves after having a teenager bludgeon one into a coma after publicly outing them with a rabid bunch of bigoted morons at the gates has not gone great. Henry is still out and despite the short staffing Jean needs logan to stay where he is as he’s close to an emerging mutant and within range to go get her.

Emma of course has never been so fucking irate in her whole life and is plotting various forms of psychic tourture with the help of her proteges the Stepford Cucokoo, 5 teenage mutants who functoin best as a unit and are easily some of MOrrison’s most prominent additions to the x-cast. Unlike a lot of the x-kids, they’ve been featured prominently in every era of x-men after this including the current one.

Jean decides for a less “Make them hate us even more” approach, but no less pissed off, opening the gates and going out directly to chew out the assembled bigoted morons, pointing out the ones carrying “Mutants Go Home!” signs are especailly dumb as this IS her home. And while she dosen’t point this part out, it’ the same for all of them: most of the mutants are either adults who choose to live here, teenagers who along with their parents choose to live here, or in the majority teens who have no where else to go due to either being abandoned by their families or it being way to dangerous for said families for them to stay due to bigoted assholes like the ones holding mutants go home signs.

A member of the press asks if she’s willing to talk to the media and she refutes most of his bullshit allegations: He asks if their building an army, she and Scott respond they are not and are simply educating mutants and protecting them. When he counters with the fact their living weapons and wearing uniforms... she counters with the fact she’s wearing them to protect herself, rightfully, from people like her, and the x-men are an aid orginzation going where needed to protect the world and while asshole points out no one apointed them.. jean shuts him down by pointing out there are no mutants in goverment and a genocide just happened, so someone has to do the job. Another random asshole tries to pipe up with “Genosha declared war on us” and Emma senses this is just going to go round and round and round and simply presses the assembled mob’s “bliss buttons” in their brains to knock them out. Non violent but honestly warranted: A dangerous part of bigoted assholes is they’l bring up racist bullshit to try and couch it like an actual conversation. None of these complaints really hold water if you looked at the x-men’s history for more than 5 minutes. Yes Charles is training them to fight and yes hte ingial class was an army but every class since has only been trained for self defense: they still got into adventures and what not, but it was usually by their own choice or because they were thrust into them by circumstance. Xaviers is exactly what jean said and endudgling these morons, while good on paper, only makes them seem legit.

Jean retreats to the infirmary where she’s on the verge of breaking down from the sheer weight of everything. Cyclops proves that despite not being the best husband right now... he still loves his wife, offering to go look into Sublime with Emma and hoping Hank wakes up. Turns out his mind for now is a big blank room.

So she can’t get any info off his skull, and neither of the two think what happened with Beak adds up. Something is up here. Their also coming down with colds which will be important later. And just as important.. Magneto is becoming a symbol among people and merch sales with his image are on the rise. We then get this.

So Jean is trying to be a supportive, honest wife, and while the questions incredibly insulting.. his answer is equally so. Spoilers, as mentioned we do get an answer long after this.. and they did not. So Jean is wrong to be suspcious, at this point, but is at least trying to be polite about it and gave him the benifit of the doubt.. and Scott basically said he slept with her without actually saying it despite not having to. You could’ve said “no we did not have sex, we simply talked all night”. It’s not ENTIRELY better given the horrible state of their relationship right now, but it’s still better than HEAVILY implying he rocked her body to the break of dawn for no damn reason.

So we meet our next major addition to the cast Angel Salvador, an abused teen who is a mutant.. and whose abusive and molesting step dad beats her and throws her out over this. The scene’s a bit overdone, coming off like an after school special.. but it’s what happens AFTER that’s truly heartwrenching.

A poor scared teenager clutching herself, finding herself homeless alone and desperatly wishing she wasn’t what she was. It’s just a striking image and shows how well Grant uses the mutant metaphor. I could easily see myself in that position had my parents not been good peopl and had I come out far sooner as bi. The idea of desperatly hoping your not what you are simply becaus eof what hell it brings, despite all the joy it can bring too. . it’s heartbreaking to hear.

Naturally though things don’t get much better as the next morning the U-Men have found her, calling her a freak and successfully kidnapping her.. if only because while she uses acid spit to escape, she flies into a power line.

We then get Sublimes meeting with Emma and Scott and a BETTER use of teh u-men as while Grant made the horrible mistake of calling them “transpecies”, seriously what the fuck were you thinking, the way sublime frames it here is a MUCH better, much less accidently bigoted concept.

The idea isn’t bad: A group of humans jealous of the mutants powers, blatantly ignoring the horrible downsides and mountain of persecution that comes with being one. Grant just made the mistake of couching in in Trans metaphors, clearly trying to have the U-Men steal from Trans People too as a way to make themselves seem legit. And I say if you want superpowers.. fine.. wanting to be a superhero or a mutant is fine, the issue with the U-Men is their copoting a culture, trying to be part of mutantkind without having any of the drawbacks and by actively butchering them. It’s why the concept HAS shown up elsewhere; it’s not TERRIBLE, Grant just made a bad creative choice that’s only gotten worse as Transphobia has ramped up further and further.

Sublime denies it when our heroes bring up Hong Kong.. but naturally he’s simply just keeping them talking long enough to bring out his trump cards, an army of u-men and a brain in a jar he uses to incapacitate them.. and announces his plan to use the school as an organ farm for his third species.

Meanwhile Logan finds the U-Men in their truck preparing to rip angel apart.. and given he snikit’s soon after.. i’ts very clear whose REALLY about to get ripped apart.

Germ Free Generation Part 2:

Part two begins wth Sublime monologoging about how Mutantkind are just cattle to them and reveals the brain is martha’s, her sucicide having been faked and her brain currently being controlled to use as a weapon.

So while Johnny monlogues we find out what happened with Wolverine last issue he didn’t cut up the guys yet as they fired their little flichete guns at him... it was about as useful and effective as you’d expect and the massacre you were expecting occurs. Though in a nice bit of reality the fact wolverine’s soaked in blood and just killed a bunch of blood shockingly does not make the already frighttend teen feel he’s safe and she spits acid on him. Logan pours some stuff on the acid, figuring rightly a black ops murder farmacy would have something to counteract it and tells her she’s safe now .. and tells the guy behind him not to try it. He’s stupid and does anyway and likely gets a claw to the head off panel.

They go to a diner to eat and find a local asshole who threatens them with a shot gun to leave once angel uses her power to digest and goes on a rant about how he snapped his own son’s neck to prevent him being born a freak. Just.. fucking hell this arc is not good for my depression. We get some more angst from Angel and whiel her dialouge is not the best, i’ts a too bit mark millar flavored edgelordy for my taste and if I wanted that i’d go read Ultimates or Ultimate X-Me, her pain is real and Logan helps her through it.

Back at the Mansion the U-Men are on their way to strike, whlie Jean unaware continues to buckle under the weight of all the shit she’s had to deal with, feeling SOMETHING is making them weak with the colds and something worse is going on and thus tries going to Beak’s mind instead and gently helps talk him through it, showing her grace and empathy.. and in return finding out Charles was the one responsible. The alarms flair up and Jean tries calling the police now that’s an option.. but it goes exactly how you’d expect.

Also a second artist took over for this issue and the next Igor Kordey. He’s fine, but not nearly as good as Quitely or Van Sciver and it shows. Meanwhile Beast awakens and heads for the body drawer with Cassandra’s body, and professor’s mind in it.

However Jean’s finally had enough and got her second wind. She’s outgunned, outmanned and left to her own devices. And she’s fucking fed up with it. She steels herself and assembles the students. This is obviously a last resort.. but some of them can defend themselves and their going to need to. But today they won’t be learning.. they’ll be teaching and as the U-Men call them defensless Jeans simply asks “Are you sure about that?”

Germ Free Generation Part 3:

So we come to the finale of this arc. Angel is once again an ungreatful brat to logan and he opts to just leave her there if sh’es going to be like that pointing out being a mutant sucks, it’s going to keep sucking.. and she needs to deal with it instead of lashing out at him and herself over it.

We get back to the U-Men, one of whom is utterly flabergasted they want to him to cut of Cyclops head... only for Emma to awaken.. and take back her regular form meaning she has her telepathy back. The only reason they were able to get her ealier is she was in diamond mode which is stronger but lacks that, a nice way to check and ballance her new powers. She quickly takes them out and disables Martha.

Back at the school we get one of Jean’s definting moments for me and a true chance to show how badass she can be. Before this while Morrison wrote her well, and his version’s still my favoirite, she didn’t really get to do much and was motly in the background. This arc has been her time in the limelight, having trouble grappling with all the stress of running this place by herself.. and emerging from it stronger, more capable and ready to kick some racist weirdo ass. She tries a few diffrent tactics first, having a mutant with a voice power project it to make them think their san invisible army and having the cuckoos fuck with their heads but when both fail, Jean REALLY gets to show off. Thier blade ammo gets turned into a cool looking 3 dimensioinal shape with her telekneisis, and in a cool moment and a wise use of something gross makes the only one of them with useable powers throw up, before issuing a badass boast, wreathed in flames all while she crumples their guns into uselessness. and tears open their suits.

Bad ass.. and logan and Angel arrive just in time for the cecendo as hte u-men flee in terror

The Phoenix has been Reborn. Jean Grey has risen from the ashes and returned to full power.

Meanwhile Sublime is pankcing.. and it gets worse when Emma shows up, fully enraged after all of this and has some words for him.

Iconic. Emma prepares to drop him out of a building but Scott rightly tries to get her to back off, pointing out the pr nightmare it’d create and the fact that they have enough evidence ot shut him down. Martha however has other ideas and gets him to let go of his own accord, falling to his death.. but given he’d aranged a stunt for the press apparently this gives our heroes deniability and Martha her revenge.

So we end this three parter as Jean revels in her new power, and Beast returns with an announcment:

Final Thoughts for Germ Free Generation: This arc is pretty good if forgetable. The struggle of Jean to run the school herself and her rising from the ashes of her own pain at the end with the power of the phoenix at the end is fantastic, finally both giving her a chance to shine.. and a worrying sign for her friends given what her phoenix force copy whose memories she has a copy of, long story, did is awesome. The other parts are okay and ehhhhhhhhh though. Scott and Emma’s investigation into the u-men while having a really good climax, is pretty standard x-men stuff, and Wolverin’es trek with angel is just okay with Angel being highly intolerable during this arc, with Morrison trying a bit TOO hard to make her a “realistic” teen instead coming off as horribly unplesant. She’s supposed to just be lashing out but comes off obnxious as a result. That said this arc does furhter a lot of Morrisons best idea and introduce more, and is a great setup for our next arc, which we’ll get to in two weeks. Soooo

Next Time On X-Men: We find out just what the hell Cassandra Nova is, what her plans are, and what happened with her and charles as our heroes come down with a cold as the might of the shiar empire bears down on them. It’s IMperial in two weeks.

Next Time ON This BLog: Speaking of long Delayed Projects, I finally return to The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck as a young Scrooge starts his prospecting career, learning the ins and outs from a rich new mentor, and finding the price tag striking it rich comes with. Raid a copper hill with me tommorow.

If you liked this review, subscirbe for more, join my patreon, and if there’s a comic you’d like me to cover suggest it in the comments or outright comission a review from me via ask. See you at the next rainbow

#new x-men #grant morrison #cassandra nova #shen xorn #beast #hank mccoy #jean grey #cyclops #scott summers #wolverine #logan howlett #angel salvadore #beak #barnell bohsk #the stepford cuckoos #the u-men #john sublime #marthan johanson #ethan van sciver

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douxreviews · 6 years ago

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Legends of Tomorrow - ‘The Eggplant, The Witch, and The Wardrobe’ Review

“Mikey! Mikey, Stop!”

Legends continues to ramp up the action as it moves into the final phases of its too short fourth season, and on the way makes the most important statement about relationships that's ever been uttered on genre television.

Have I mentioned how much I love this show?

One of the most consistently impressive things about the way Legends of Tomorrow tells its stories is the way that they're able to take what should be standard, if not cliched, plot set-ups and somehow turn them into something unexpectedly fantastic. Last year, Zari's turn at reliving Groundhog Day gave us the amazing 'Here I Go Again'. This week we get that thing that genre shows love to do wherein one character physically enters another character's mind in order to 'save' them from whatever has caused them to fall unresponsive, and therein finds a world built almost entirely of visual metaphors that help them work through a bit of character development before we get back to the season's larger plot.

So, yes. It's essentially Sara Lance as Willow Rosenberg in 'Weight of the World'. With the small difference that Ava, our Buffy-surrogate in the set-up, is actually able and willing to have a profoundly frank and adult discussion with her inside the, for lack of a better term, 'dreamscape'.

And really, I know that this gets mentioned in these pages a lot, but that's the greatest strength that Legends of Tomorrow has; the way that all of the characters are allowed to behave like rational and emotionally available adults, despite also being time travelling superheroes. It's sure as hell that none of us saw that coming, back in the Vandal Savage days.

Case in point, look at the way that they completely skated past the obvious 'everyone but Ray blames Nora for Hank's death' plotline here. That was obviously what we were being set up for back at the end of 'The Getaway', and yet within the first couple of scenes this week we have the Legends find out that Nora is on the Waverider, she says 'I swear I didn't kill Hank', and Constantine essentially responds, 'Yeah, we totally already figured that out. It was actually fairly obvious, and just the tiniest amount of follow-up on our part established what was really going on. We're totes good, Nora.' And everyone immediately gets on the same page on the issue, because they're all behaving like reasonable adults. That is huge. That just doesn't happen on television.

Even Nate only needs to take the smallest of moments questioning whether or not Nora is guilty before he processes what he's being told and accepts it, and that's the one instance in which they could have legitimately gotten away with a character responding in a destructive way because he was responding emotionally to his father's loss. But they didn't go there, and it cannot be overstated what a positive and refreshing example that is to see.

It's particularly clever of them, because of the way that they pulled the rug out from under us at least twice this week regarding the heavily foreshadowed Nate/Ray schism that we were all bracing ourselves for. Nate finds out that Ray has been harboring the woman he thinks killed his dad, and he responds by listening to what his friend is telling him, accepting what he's being told, and reaffirms their friendship. A little later on we see him accidentally punch Ray in what we assume is going to be the beginning of their 'Civil War' style breakup, only to immediately get ahold of himself, apologize, and embrace his friend. An apology that Ray accepts without hesitation, I might add, because Nate's actions were both completely understandable under the circumstances and immediately apologized for.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the world's greatest ever example of positive male friendship. I'm starting to believe that if we can just get enough people to watch this show, we might actually find a way to counter toxic masculinity. Wouldn't that be nice?

All of which is a roundabout way for me to get to the point that I've been growing to realize that it's really the character relationships that make this show. Witness, for example, the curious level of kindness that Constantine shows to Gary when he wants to hold vigil for Ava. Gary, by rights, should be pure dorky comic relief. Constantine, as a character type, exists almost solely to deflate that kind of comic relief character. And yet when push comes to shove, John goes to Gary's D&D nights. John cares about Gary. That's a nice detail. Similarly, it's notable the way that Mick is willing to help out Zari in something as trivial as crafting sexy text messages to Nate. Mick of even two years ago would absolutely not have been doing that.

Which brings me back to my initial point as regards that important statement about relationships. After a truly enjoyable series of sequences in the 'evil purgatory Ikea', Ava and Sara have some incredibly frank and direct talk about their relationship. And during that talk, they're both so amazingly emotionally available to one another and so willing to be vulnerable with one another. I honestly cannot think of a healthier relationship on television, ever. Not in the sense that they don't have problems, because they clearly do, but in the way tat they're willing to acknowledge them, and admit when they're in the wrong. It's messy, and it's real, and I love every second of it. And just when I think it can't get any better, Ava says;

"Let’s be honest, neither of us needs anybody. But you are who I want."

Yes. That. A million times, that. Can we amplify that message about a billion times, until it drowns out all the rom-com 'I need you to complete me' bullshit? Because that would be wonderful.

Be more like Nate and Ray, people

So what have we learned today?

To stop including this section in the reviews, because trying to condense a logically consistent universal rulebook of how timeline changes work in this fictional universe is absolutely nothing compared to what we should be learning from the character relationships. Also, clearly no one involved in the show is worrying about it.

Everybody remember where we parked.

This week the Waverider pretty much stayed where it was in Washington D.C., 2019. At least, it logically must have been sine Zari could send texts to that year, and Ray bounced back and forth between the ship and the Time Bureau.

Sara, meanwhile, went to actual literal purgatory to rescue Ava's soul. Purgatory, in this case, being an obvious Ikea knock-off called 'Megastor', complete with umlaut.

Quotes:

Ray: "Hey Sara! Great news. Hank was killed by a demon!" Nora: "'Great' was not the word he was looking for."

Ray: "She’s not a liability. She’s a survivor."

Sara: "You two are with me. (To Zari) Woman the ship."

Gary: "Conspiracies, embezzling, paper trails. I feel like Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich."

Nate: "If this is my dad’s mistress I’m gonna jump out a window."

Sara: "Ava, if you check out, you die." Ava: "Well that’s kinda on the nose, isn’t it?"

Charlie: "Being honest, wind powers- just not that scary." Mick: "Yeah, you’re like a magical hair dryer."

Nate: "Yeah, hi. We’re looking for Mr. Uh… Mr… T."

Zari: "I don’t even know why I’m talking to you two about it. You don’t even date humans." Mick: "Love’s love."

Nora: "I know how hard it is to watch someone you love become a demon." John: "Yeah, well too bad there aren’t any Beebo’s around to hug it to death."

Mick: "Here. Use words. It’s erotic, but vulnerable."

Bits and pieces:

-- Yes, I realize that they were actually in purgatory, where her soul was currently stuck, but all the semiotic rules at play here clearly were working on the understanding of 'dreamscape'.

-- So apparently Neron wanted Ava's body to host somebody called Tabitha, I assume she's his demon girlfriend.

-- The trope of the bad guy having a favorite whistle-tune so that we can identify what body he's jumped into later is super clichéd and tired. I still didn't see it coming that he'd end up in Ray though.

-- You should absolutely never pay less than $800 for a mattress. Under any circumstances.

-- It's not clear what actually happened to Nora in that ritual. Are she and Ray going to end up as Tabitha and Neron? I'd be down for that.

-- Absolutely nothing about Hank's magical creature zoo makes sense, and he certainly wouldn't have needed a demon's help to set it up. I hate everything about that plotline, with the exception of Mikey T, who is awesome.

-- Zari, Charlie and Mona giggling about texting boys shouldn't have been charming, but was completely 100% adorable.

-- Dirty secret time, I adore assembling flatpack furniture. Honestly, it's my favorite thing in the whole world. I'm not kidding.

-- The effect of aging and de-aging as the sat on the mattress was really nicely done. A very clean low tech solution which worked well.

-- I'm actually really surprised at how quickly Mona has begun feeling like a natural part of the team.

A really good episode with a lot of really positive things to say about adult relationships, both romantic and otherwise. I just wish it hadn't involved the stupid magical creatures zoo plot, because it's stupid and muddies the waters as to what Neron actually wants to accomplish.

Three out of four flatpack dressers.

Mikey Heinrich is, among other things, a freelance writer, volunteer firefighter, and roughly 78% water.

#Legends of Tomorrow #Sara Lance #John Constantine #Ray Palmer #Nate Haywood #Zari Tomaz #DC Comics #Legends of Tomorrow Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews

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