#i love love love the narrative arcs and they're my favorite part but as far as the characters i feel like we're almost still at chapter one

[veliseraptor]

Top five spiciest untamed opinions!

man, I've been in my own little corner of fandom for long enough that I feel like I struggle a little to parse what is spicy of my opinions and what isn't, but here's a go at it

The Untamed is a show with complex, morally grey characters that's telling a slightly different but not inherently inferior story. Maybe I'm just a bit defensive about this, and I have with time come to appreciate a lot of things about the novel over the way they play out in the show, but The Untamed was the first version of the story that I fell in love with and I think at least some of the criticisms of it overstate the degree to which it morally simplifies the story. I think, whether because of requirements of censorship or other reasons, that the moral messiness of the story is subtler, I don't think it's absent, and while Jin Guangyao in particular falls victim to a pretty intense villain edit the narrative still has plenty of sympathy for him (even if the audience, all too often, does not). I think it's telling a slightly different story (as others have discussed), but I think it's a strong adaptation that still works with the underlying themes of the text.

However, that being said, The lessening of Wei Wuxian's culpability, as in the introduction of the second flautist, weakens his character. I feel like the character of Wei Wuxian as we see him in The Untamed still has the recognizable flaws of the character from the novel - I think the degree to which they're sometimes claimed to be toned down is overstated, which I think I've written some about before. He's still at least a little arrogant, causes problems, has a definite temper, and doesn't always respect other peoples' choices, among other things. But what The Untamed does do is remove some of his culpability, or at least temper it - both for Jin Zixuan's death and the massacre at Nightless City, which are two moments that contribute to a strong tragic arc in the first life, which makes for a more powerful (imo) arc in the second life. Removing, or at least lessening, Wei Wuxian's culpability for Jin Zixuan's death and Jiang Yanli's death makes him more a victim of circumstance than of his own human flaws, and at least for me, a character who is doomed by their own flaws is a far more compelling one than one who just happens to fall victim to outside forces. It makes him, I would argue, more passive and less of an active force, and I think the culpability for those two deaths - and the loss of control that causes it - makes for a more powerful narrative than that of a man who is victimized by someone else's actions.

Jin Guangyao was a good Chief Cultivator. I see people talk about him as though he was corrupt and evil and just plotting all the time, but the Bad Things™ he does mostly happen before his tenure as Chief Cultivator and, even taking those into account, have a limited impact on the world at large (with the exception of Nie Mingjue's death, but even that I would argue has more personal repercussions than broader political ones). As far as his responsibility for the cultivation world at large, we have no evidence prior to his downfall that he is negatively perceived by people, except for the fact of his birth/origins.

this is more MDZS-related than Untamed specific, but: MXTX deserves praise for writing "problematic" and messy queer sex, but it's just not hot. I don't have a whole lot to add on this one, but one of my least favorite parts of some corners of The Untamed fandom are people who are thoroughgoing MXTX antis who are quick to cry about the ~problematic~ aspects of Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian's sex life (which, honestly, I think are overstated a lot of the time, as is the weirdness of the sex scenes); however, in my opinion, the sex scenes as they stand just aren't very sexy, and I don't think that's intentional (as it arguably is in SVSSS). The sex scenes may be a shortcoming in the text, perhaps, but not the one certain people think it is.

this is again a stronger argument in the novel but I think it's present in the show as well: Jin Guangyao and Wei Wuxian are "there but for the grace of god" foils, but not in the sense of Jin Guangyao being "Wei Wuxian if he made bad moral choices" but in the sense of "who Wei Wuxian could've been if his circumstances were different." I've definitely written about this before and how much it drives me nuts the way people treat narrative foils in this story in general as Goofus and Gallant style duos, but this is a specific one. I think Jin Guangyao is an example of a story that runs alongside Wei Wuxian's, but ends in a different place, and I think the story isn't saying that he ends in that place because of something inherently worse about Jin Guangyao, but because of the way his circumstances happen to diverge from Wei Wuxian's in specific key ways. In some ways his ending is even a near beat-for-beat rewrite of Wei Wuxian's death, and Wei Wuxian receives the grace of a second life not because of any inherent merit, but actually because of his bad reputation. I think this goes for Xue Yang, too, actually.

I absolutely know I'm forgetting things and there are probably things back in my bitchy opinions tag that I could dig out, but here's at least a few that came to mind.

[yardsards]

Forever mourning that we would’ve had a scene in the finale where the protagonists apparently reach a resolution with Odalia on some level??? It got cut so Camila could take her place and hell yeah more for Camila, never gonna apologize for that. But man it’d have been nice to have both. The Odalia-Collector storyline set up in CotH was evidently going somewhere there but in the end the finale was already extended ten minutes past the usual mark.

Also yes plsss on the twins! Emira my dearrrrr you were molded into the new Odalia into the next showman matriarch while your sister was meant to become the next Alador the next moneymaker!!! What are your thoughts what if we had a storyline about you being your own person!!! I have to acknowledge that there’s always someone who’s going to have to take the fall for another character to shine at this point in the story but man.

i'm actually mostly happy with how things ended with odalia. i really like that amity never forgives her and continues to go no-contact with her. far too often, media does a "but they're your PARENT, it would be wrong to cut them out of your life" message, and having that be the dominant cultural narrative can be really harmful to victims of parental abuse. so it was VERY refreshing to see a story that said "this character going no contact with her abusive parent was the right choice"

that said, i think there could have been a way to give odalia's storyline more of a resolution without tossing that down message down the drain.

see, you know how i've complained before about how making odalia a full-on villain really undercut her storyline as just an abusive mother. how it accidentally kiiinda had the implication of like "the abuse on its own wasn't enough to cut her off. she had to be willing to kill literally her entire race in order to earn that." which i don't think was intentional.

i think it would have been cool if the resolution to her arc was like. she's no longer a full on villain. she helps our protagonists and makes up for her involvement in the big plot. she's technically on our side now... but that still doesn't make up for the abuse, and amity still is better off without her in her life.

i'm imagining a scene of like, after odalia helps the gang with the collector in some way, she talks to amity. says something like "i will admit that you were right, for once. helping with the day of unity was a poor business decision on my part." and maybe even a "these months with the collector have shown me you weren't such a bad daughter" perhaps followed by a pompous "so i will forgive your little outburst at the factory and accept you as a member of my family again" (despite, y'know, being the one who got cut off)

so amity goes off on her. says it wasn't about the day of unity. or, at least, wasn't JUST about the day of unity. that it was about the years of being treated like a puppet rather than a person (cue some kind of clever shot of the collector's puppets). she says that he friends have shown her what real love is supposed to look like, and her time with camila has shown her how mothers are supposed to treat children, and that none of odalia's actions have matched that. so she says that no, she will not be allowing odalia to be her family anymore.

and odalia doesn't understand, just keeps arguing that she only did these things because she wanted what was best for her family. and so amity leaves.

-

AND YESSS THE TWINS. like. i get it. the show had a lot going on and not a lot of time, of course the protagonist's girlfriend's siblings aren't gonna get that much time dedicated to them. but man. i love me a fucked up family and i want to know more about those two so bad. emira especially. like her twin brother (who, up to that point, had exactly as much relevance as her) got his own episode subplot and she got nothing! and like she interests me for all the reasons you said AND like. she seems to be odalia's favorite (perhaps tied with edric, perhaps even above him) but she seems even more cynical about BOTH of their parents than amity does. AND LIKE she's got eldest daughter syndrome despite being a TWIN! she seems to feel responsibility for looking after her brother who is the exact same age as her! i need to know what's the deal with that dynamic! god the fic ideas and headcanons i have about her that i never got around to writing/finishing

[utilitycaster]

🔥 each member of vox machina

Vax: really the sadboy narrative for Liam has always been stupid but it's egregiously bad that it started with Vax, who is like, sad for maybe a fifth of the episodes and largely because Liam O'Brien's actual mother was dying, like, with all due respect what the actual fuck, fandom.

Vex: I am the founding and probably only member of the "Vex is my favorite character and also I am 100% cool with Colville's depiction of her." The generosity she shows even very early on in C1 is still a generosity borne of some degree of security - they have a keep by then - and I also just don't think you have to like a character to write them fairly. Granted it's been a minute since I read early VMO but nothing stood out to me as out of line with my understanding of Vex.

Pike: repeating myself once again but I like Pike a lot and wish we could have seen more, but because we didn't, people who say she's their favorite in C1 do tend to turn me off in that I feel they're looking for a relatively flat and widely praised character to project onto rather than a character who goes through more messy development.

Grog: I think he's often underestimated and I was guilty of doing so myself, to be honest, until I saw Travis play more and until I personally got better at D&D. Also I still maintain that playing INT 6 sensitively and well is infinitely harder than playing INT 16, all things considered, and this is yet another reason why people should play high INT more often.

Scanlan: Also underestimated; I do understand being turned off by the whole extremely horny playboy thing but as I've said before Bard's Lament is a major litmus test for me: if you think Scanlan is completely at fault here, you are wrong, and if you think he's not partially at fault, you are also wrong.

Tary: I genuinely love him and think he's a great character and one of Sam's best, but while his character arc is strong the Taryon Darrington Arc of the VM Campaign, through no fault of his own (and partly bc I personally think D&D Hell, especially pre-Descent Into Avernus publication, is kind of boring), is one of the weakest parts of the campaign because it's kind of a grab bag of loose ends. With that said I would happily watch more Darrington Brigade-one shots.

Percy: Percy is also generally a litmus test in that it's like. Is he a good person? Eventually I believe he becomes one, and even before that I think he's very sympathetic and deeply traumatized and like, 24, so I get it, but also, who the fuck cares. This ties into the Essek and the Ashton opinions and all kinds of other stuff but why are people so invested in fucking absolving their blorbo of all sins? I want someone who's lived enough of a life to have done some heinous shit because that's fun and interesting and it's pretend and also because then they can have a rewarding character arc by either working towards redemption or coming to terms with who they are or spiraling into tragedy.

Keyleth: I like Keyleth a lot but I am, as this post indicates, far more sympathetic to Vex, and so while I do think Keyleth is a fairly good person she is also extremely sheltered and naive and terrified of doing the wrong thing and I would have, like Vex, wanted to scream at her half the time were I just a random NPC wandering about the campaign. On the other hand C3-era Keyleth? fantastic no notes she has grown up in such an interesting way.

Tiberius: I think we, and by we I mean people capable of separating the art from the artist, can recognize that his concept actually fucking slapped and unfortunately he was played by someone who absolutely sucked in a myriad of ways. I would love to see the alternate universe in which the same general concept (prodigy sorcerer from Draconia who is full of themself) had to face not just the destruction of their civilization but the realization that they were taking advantage of the Ravenites and while they did not deserve to be killed by Vorugal, had done nothing to justify aid from those they had subjugated either. Like, the alternate world in which one of the current cast members or like, a close friend of the main cast (Ashly, Erika, Mary Elizabeth) played this is one I'd love to see.

[jullythevamp]

ok here are my opinions of nocturne s2 as someone who rewatched all 4 seasons of castlevania and the 1st season of nocturne for idk how many times

spoilers below the cut

so i did not know s2 would come out bc netflix decided to stay quiet and not advertise it! 😍 lovely

it's almost 8 months since the last time i watched season 1 so i did not remember all the details but i did not enjoy it like i did with all 4 seasons of castlevania. i watched season 2 today and i already prefer s2 over s1

good parts

the animation is soooo good even if i prefer the old art style over this new one the animation is soooo much fluid esp in the last 2 episodes

alucard is finally here !!! my fave from the main series and seeing him made me so happy :( his scene talking about da vinci... u 2 had gay sex say it . also the scene of him getting out of the river wow

also alucard mention of trevor :( stop

droltas backstory !!!! i love actual character building instead of just throwing characters into the narrative !!! the fact that she was the big boss instead of erzebeth made so much sense !!!! and she got her ass in the end !!!

the night creatures revolution !!!!! i love a story that happens in france around the revolution (im obsessed with innocent for this reason) and seeing the night creatures fight against erzebeth people while eduard sang a song he heard in HAITI????? wow

ofc annette is one of the best things of this show by far, i love her journey of finding her powers, even tho she did not show up her power as much as last season her arc was soooo good to watch i love her sm seeing her hugging her mother :((((((

and my favorite part of this season by far, MARIA!!!!! MARIA MY BELOVED DAUGHTER !!! her struggle with her powers and her mother becoming a vampire was sooooo idk how to even say it!!!! also the fact that as soon as she discovered that she had more powerful beings to conjure SHE WENT AFTER HER FATHER!!!! GET HIS ASS!!!! GIVE YOUR FATHER DAUGHTER ISSUES BY KILLING HIM !!!!! also her relationship with juste :((((((( so cute

mid parts

idk how to feel about richter so he's here. hm he's a good protagonist. idk what to say about him he's just cool

olrox and mizrak... i adore them but idk i feel like they could be so much more this season. also no gay sex. i know they're in the middle of war but why. also mizrak had to be transformed last minute? also couldn't they show it in full? like why cut it i loved that scene but why can't u just show the full moment

bad parts

olrox spent the season doing a whole lot of nothing??? last season he was actually doing something but from ep 1 to ep 6 he's just there. well at least he slays in the final battle

marias father whose name i forgot and i don't care enough about him to remember died in such a cool way and just. died. where's haunting the narrative? he was a forge master i thought he would try to at least protect maria in his ash form?

getting the story behind erzebeth and drolta just now kinda made s1 look like shit bc these 2 were just the villains and in s2 they are, yk, characters with motives and such

alucard seemed so weak for some reason? like yeah it was obvious that in castlevania he was going to not be the strongest in the room but how many years have passed since then?

also something about him giving his sword to richter made me mad for some reason like idk if he would do that...

annette leaving the spiritual world bc of ricther did not made me happy like girlie is SO POWERFUL she has the blood of OGUM SHE COULD DEFEAT THE BEAST BY HERSELF AND RETURN NORMALLY

some people commented that this season feels rushed and i am lowkey inclined to agree, some of my problems with this season could be fixed by just making it 2 episodes longer

overall i did enjoy it i am just really picky i give it 3,9/5 :D

here's my final ranking of all castlevania seasons:

castlevania s2

castlevania s3

castlevania s4

castlevania nocturne s2

castlevania s1

castlevania nocturne s1

that's it um ... thank u for reading c:

[sapphic-agent]

Let's Talk About the Sports Festival

*Note: this is a long one so strap in*

Oh boy, here we go.

I did touch briefly on this in my first ever post on here and I mentioned it a few other times. But I've got a few thoughts and I think this arc deserves a little exploration as it plays a crucial part in setting up our characters for the rest of the series.

I have a love/hate relationship with the Sports Festival overall. I think it does well for some characters, not so well for others. I'd like to take some time to break down how some characters benefit and how others don't and really evaluate the arc as a whole.

Uraraka

I think Uraraka's a great place to start. Now, in my Bakugou analysis I did say that I was unhappy with the match, mostly because it panders to Bakugou to make him seem better than he was. And I stand by that, the narrative was trying to shove a "positive trait" of his down our throats since all we had seen from him up to this point was all negative. It was Horikoshi's first attempt at subverting expectations, I think.

However, I actually do think this fight was good for Uraraka as a character.

Uraraka isn't the fastest or strongest or smartest in 1A and previous to this that was fine because being those things wasn't her goal. She wanted to be a rescue hero and provide for her parents, she didn't set out to be particularly ambitious like Izuku or Todoroki or her other classmates. However, this proved to be somewhat of a hinderance to her succeeding as we see in the Cavalry battle. She pairs up with Izuku because she needs to rely on him if she wants to stand a chance of winning. And because of that, she feels like she can't fend for herself.

I think pairing her up against Bakugou was a good thing. Not because he treated her with "respect" or as a serious opponent (because he didn't), but because it pushed her to her limits and forced her to think outside of the box. She refuses Izuku's help because she knows she can't use him as a crutch going forward so she devises her own plan. And even though she loses, she still gets to shine and prove herself (we'll get back to this point with a certain character later). It also acts as a hallmark for her character, that she has to really push herself if she wants to be able to stand with (or even against) her stronger classmates.

Now, whether or not this setup pays off later is for another post, but I think Uraraka is one of the only characters this arc really does justice.

Izuku

If I'm being honest, the Sports Festival is far from the worst arc in the series for our beloved main character.

The race was great, of course. Because he can't depend on his quirk like everyone else, Izuku has to put all his critical thinking skills and strategic prowess to the test. The race is actually one of my favorite parts of the show because a kid from the bottom of his class (at the time) rises above everyone else and absolutely no one (including us) saw it coming. He has a major disadvantage and still comes out on top. It really ties in well with All Might's advice to stand in front of everyone and say, "I am here."

Now, the Cavalry Battle is a different story. To be fair, I don't think it really hurts or helps Izuku's character all that much. He has to think on his feet and strategize carefully, but he already did that in the race. His leaderships skills aren't really displayed all that much either (it's present, but Bakugou, Todoroki, and Monoma take much more of the limelight here). They could have taken more time to develop this role for him, but it's nothing really major to complain about.

The tournament is a little different. Obviously, Izuku couldn't win because if he had it wouldn't have been realistic. But his fight with Shinsou shouldn't have happened. The only reason they're matched up is for Izuku to break out of his hold with One For All. It doesn't do anything for his character (I might even say it hinders it because Ojirou specifically told him what to do and he ignored it) and really only serves as Shinsou's introduction, which could have been done with any character.

(Bakugou should have gone up against Shinsou. It would have humbled him; he would have lost to an "extra," one of the very people he talked down to. It would have also taught him that having a strong quirk or a weak quirk isn't what makes a hero and that power isn't everything)

However, the Todoroki fight does do Izuku's character justice. Because Izuku has always put helping others over winning or being the best. It's what makes him a true hero. He still makes Todoroki work for it and gives his all in the fight, but he does it with the genuine intention of helping. And that's what it means to be a hero. If the race was showing off his skill, then the tournament was showing off his heart. Those are the two sides to being a hero after all.

(If only the pro heroes had any semblance of sense to realize that)

So overall I am split on if this arc is good for Izuku or not. It does well with some things, poor with others. However, I do think that if Horikoshi had kept a similar approach with him throughout the story, it would have done him a lot more justice.

(At least more than whatever Dark Deku was supposed to be)

Iida

I don't have much to say on him other than that I think it would have been beneficial to showcase his skills a little more. He's supposed to be the second most intelligent in 1A and he got fourth on the quirk apprehension test. It would have been nice to show him off a little more like they did with Todoroki and Bakugou.

However, I do understand that his performance in the Sports Festival is meant to take a backseat to what's going on in his personal life. And for the most part that is done pretty well. The tension build up his actually really good and it sets him up to shine in the Stain arc.

I also appreciate his approach towards Izuku. He respects him and sees him as a friend, but also knows that Izuku is still an adversary. It's a unique approach to rivalry in anime and also sets up his role in the Stain arc well.

So it's not a terrible arc for Iida, but it could have been better for him too.

Bakugou

I know, I know I don't want to either but let's just get through this okay?

Obviously above I said what I said about how he should have fought Shinsou. And I stand by that. The Sports Festival was the best way he could have been humbled and taught humility. Having Bakugou fight Shinsou and lose could have aided his redemption in the long run.

Now, one thing that bothers me about the Sports Festival is that it seems like the narrative constantly goes out of its way to make him look better. Oh, Bakugou meets his match from a student with a copying quirk who rightfully calls him out and catches him off guard? Let's have him overcome the (truthful) assumptions and beat him and still qualify even though he was completely focused on the wrong things. Oh, the crowd thinks Bakugou is being overly harsh on someone who clearly isn't on his level? Let's have Aizawa vehemently defend him and tell everyone he's showing her respect when he obviously isn't (and even doubles down after the fact). Oh, Todoroki has just embraced a part of his quirk that's more than enough to beat Bakugou? Nah, let's have Todoroki throw even though he just had an epiphany about how his power was his and not his father's.

You see where I'm going with this? No matter what, this arc absolutely bends over backwards to portray Bakugou in a positive light. Where our other characters lose, struggle, and get put through the wringer, Bakugou is handed a win (literally and figuratively) multiple times. It's part of what pushed me from genuinely enjoying the Sports Festival to somewhat disliking it.

Bakugou is never allowed to struggle unless everyone around him is struggling too, most of the time worse than he is. This is a pattern that persists throughout the series. And it started in this arc.

Todoroki

You know how I said that Uraraka was one of the characters that this arc did justice? Well, Todoroki was the other one.

His set up in the Sports Festival is fantastic. Before this arc, we knew he was important. He was strong, aloof, and the only one who could intimidate Bakugou. The way they ease us into his character is very well done from his little mannerisms to revealing his backstory.

I know most of us agree that he should have beat Bakugou. However, him winning or losing the final match never really mattered. What mattered is that he made peace with his quirk and his trauma. And through Izuku he opens himself up which not only leads to him being a loyal friend, but also makes him a better hero in the long run. He is undoubtedly the character that develops the most.

(It's also through Todoroki that we get a bit of world building. Endeavor is the first example of a corrupt hero we see and we're introduced to the concept of quirk marriages)

Unfortunately, like Uraraka, this setup doesn't pay off that well later, but again that's a story for another day.

Yaoyorozu

An unfortunate flipside of Todoroki is that Yaoyorozu's character goes through the opposite.

A pattern with Yaoyorozu is that Horikoshi seems to fluctuate between wanting to treat her as a serious character and going out of his way to screw her over. In the race, she's a victim of Mineta's perversions (there's also the cheerleading bit, but that happened to all the 1A girls so it doesn't pertain to just her; it's still shitty though). She's barely present in the Cavalry Battle, only serving as a support prop for Todoroki's team.

And then the tournament is the final nail in the coffin. Yaoyorozu before this was shown to be calm, collected, and intelligent. She also- by the Quirk Apprehension Test results- has the most control and prowess over her quirk in 1A. So it's odd that she lost to Tokoyami so easily.

Not to say that she necessarily should have won, but for her to not realize what Tokoyami was doing was out of character to say the least when she was shown to be very observant. And if Horikoshi was going to add this insecurity aspect to her character in the Sports Festival, she should have gotten more attention beforehand. At least then it would have made a bit of sense. But to give her this vaguely hinted emotional moment out of nowhere was... weird. She has barely any screen time and no growth or development to lead us into this point. And she barely gets any after this moment. There's almost no payoff or point to this.

(*cough* maybe focus less on Bakugou and give other characters a chance to shine *cough*)

Yaoyorozu might have been the character screwed over the most in this arc.

Shinsou

Wasted potential. Like I said before, having him take down Bakugou would have really hammered in how dangerous his quirk can be. It shows him as an actual threat. Having him get ringed out by Izuku in the first round doesn't do anything for anyone's character. It makes his entire introduction lackluster.

Final Thoughts

So yeah, those are my thoughts on the Sports Festival. Good for some characters, not so much for others. I always like to read fics where it gets rewritten because so much could have changed for the better. What do you guys think? Did I miss anything?

[mermaidsirennikita]

ARC REVIEW: The Beast Takes a Bride by Julie Anne Long

4.5/5. Releases 10/22/2024.

The Vibes:

—Beauty and the Beast (most obvi)

—weapon-grade pining

—big stern man meets lowkey bratty woman (his wife)

—covert boning (like... everyone is covertly boning in this book)

Heat Index: 7/10

The Basics:

Alexandra Brightwall should be relieved when her husband, war hero Magnus, bails her out of prison. The problem? They haven't seen each other for five years. Not since the day after their wedding, actually. Stern and cool, Magnus knows their marriage was a huge mistake, so he has a proposal. He's on the verge of being created an earl; he just needs to present a good face until that happens. As long as Alexandra helps him put on the facade of a harmonious relationship, he's happy to give her a life of luxury... far from him. Needless to say, this is a lot easier said than done.

The Review:

Julie Anne Long is always funny; but the best kind of Julie Anne Long also punches you in the gut. This? Does just that. In fact, I think it's my third-favorite JAL, after What I Did for a Duke and After Dark with the Duke. It kind of gave me everything!

The thing I've struggled with when reading a lot of recent historical romances is that everyone is very... nice. Sedate, even. They don't act out, they're fundamentally good people who don't fuck up, and so on. This is not that kind of book. It's not that Magnus or Alexandra are so horrible. They're clearly good people with good hearts and good intentions.

They're just also... delightfully flawed. She's a bit bratty and flighty and tends to act on impulse. He's stern and struggles with forgiveness, and has a tendency to want to win at all costs. Neither of them are by any means monsters (though Magnus is referred to as a "beast" by the gossips, and in one of my favorite microtropes, IT KINDA HURTS BIG GROWLY MAN'S FEELINGS WHEN PEOPLE CALL HIM BEAST). But they have their issues, and they haven't dealt with them, and that's why their marriage combusts before it can really even start.

Also, they're both pretty bad at talking about their feelings, and make judgments about each other that aren't really fair. Here's the thing, though: All of this makes sense, because they were kind of strangers marrying. You get the most glorious pining thoughts from Magnus, and it's clear that he was besotted with Alexandra from the start... But he really didn't get to know her as a person. He didn't let her be a flawed person.

And it's a surprisingly complex thing, the way Long both lets us luxuriate in the swoony romanticism of Magnus's initial feelings for Alexandra (and my God, is it romantic... this is just an achingly romantic novel, in general) while never condemning Alexandra for her resistance. Because Magnus's feelings can be genuine, and he can be right about this inexorable chemistry between him and Alexandra; and he can also push Alexandra too far too soon and go about making their relationship a reality in a bad way. And then act affronted when she doesn't respond well to being pushed.

They're both messy people who nevertheless have, as Magnus, one of those guys with a Good Sense About Things (hence him being good at war) amazing chemistry. The kind of tension that just has to be fulfilled. It's delicious, and it's part of what makes this one of the hottest books I've read by Long. I mean. Holy shit.

It's also just like... so sweet? I felt as if I really got to know both Magnus and Alexandra, despite the narrative being brisk and also, like every book in this series, offering time to supporting characters. Few people can pull this off. Long is one of the best romance writers I can think of in terms of noticing the small details that have a big impact. The little notes about Magnus's past that tell you so much about why he is the way he is. The beats for Alexandra that remind you of a depth he doesn't necessarily want to see in her, five years after she broke his heart.

(And: I LOVE what drove them apart initially. Handled with such humanity! A thing I think a lot of authors wouldn't have done!)

Also—for Jane Austen fans. Imagine Colonel Brandon local pushing the marriage with Marianne, and then having it blow up in his face. With public sex. This is the look!

Of course, I have to note those supporting characters. I always love catching up with the regulars. When will Dot and Mr. Pike figure it out? How loud is Dot going to be when they finally do it? A small subplot in the book is basically a lot of supporting characters being pushed into horniness because of the awkward situations that arise when a honeymooning couple rooms at the Palace. It is glorious. It leads to some super funny yet sexy moments between our two mainstay couples, Delilah and Tristan (Lady Derring Takes a Lover) and Angelique and Lucien (Angel in a Devil's Arms). The way these books keep giving me Lustful Married Couples is. Everything!

The Sex:

Again... this is one of the horniest JAL books I've read! You do genuinely get more sex on the page than a few of the previous installments in this series (four scenes between our main couple, including one particularly exciting moment), plus a lot of hardcore flirting/implied sex between two other couples... and then the "it's funny, but now everyone is talking about loud sex and it's getting hot in the room" loud newlyweds.

I really loved how Alexandra and Magnus had sex, though. The impetuousness of it all. The way he just SNAPPED around her. And honestly? When he's right, he's right. He knew they'd be great in bed together, and, like... yes. I also super appreciated how he used Alexandra's Lust for His Body against her. So great.

Basically: It's funny! It's emotionally devastating at points! It's sexy! This is what we want from Julie Anne Long, and it's a damn good marriage in trouble/second chance book. So excited for everyone else to read this one.

Thanks to NetGalley and Avon for providing me with a copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[nihilnovisubsole]

phew! finally a weekend where i can set aside enough time to type up The Promised Endwalker Stream-of-Consciousness Post. i finished the base story... a month ago? but work has been busy, and i think tumblr benefits from me being quiet sometimes. anyway, what a ride. when you've been building up to the end of your arc for a decade, you want to hit it like an earthquake, and that's exactly what they did.

i think people love endwalker because it fires on all cylinders. it returns - in both story and vision - to the eorzea we love, and the dev team gets to show off everything they've learned. the dungeons and boss fights are dynamic and imaginative and colorful and bring the game's epic sense of scope to bear. the story callbacks are juicy. the music is orchestral again. we're back home, and we're saving the galaxy. what's better than this?

i love that we go to garlemald. i don't - i mean, you know, i don't like garlemald. i shouldn't have to qualify that. but it's hugely narratively satisfying to see the face of the enemy we've been fighting since the first few hours of ARR. you don't think about them when you're beating them up in castrum centri or ala mhigo. they're star wars bad guys. then you meet them on their own turf. you observe firsthand how they starve and cannibalize their own people to feed their obsession with state power and military strength. the wintry environment makes it seem all the more barren and desperate. my favorite part by far. i wish we'd spent more time there.

actually, on that note:

there is an argument that endwalker should've been two expacs. i've heard similar about stormblood - ala mhigo should've been the whole thing, and doma should've been either patch content or an expac of its own. the prevailing theory is that, after ARR, the devs are afraid of letting arcs run long. i can't speak to that, but i wouldn't have minded, that's for sure!

i won't pretend not to be biased. i've noted in many xiv posts that it hurries through its political plots to get to the magic stuff. i felt more conscious of it in heavensward and especially in stormblood. i made peace with it in endwalker. with dessert this good, who am i to complain? i can do small character drama on my own time. for now, the game wants royce to be a big damn shonen hero, and that can be fun, too.

speaking of characters, urianger and estinien have grown on me. this is the arc where, for me at least, the scions have congealed. they're all good, but with any large cast and custom player character, you tend to form the meatiest bonds with a few specific ones. i think royce appreciates urianger's cooler, more mature head. they're both so formal. he realizes she's someone he can confide in. i think she sees estinien as a gifted, but hotheaded whelp, which i find very funny. patience, child. stop sulking. do your breathing drills.

i love thancred's MGS sequence and in from the cold too. they're stressful, but i love that the team tried, you know what i mean? the fact that you can fight enemies in a pinch makes those duties way more bearable than some other games that experiment with stealth.

in from the cold as a whole, honestly. If You Know, You Know

all right, i can't avoid referencing spoilers anymore, sorry. there's a sense of classical tragedy to the whole elpis sequence. it's like watching macbeth or hamlet. you know how it's going to end, and you know you're powerless to stop it, but if they'd just made that different choice! but we had to leave eden. the warrior of light had to end up where they are to finish what elpis started. i don't do fate/destiny plots, but this? i'll take it.

i also knew what would happen going into ultima thule and still came away from it moved. it's strong writing. that's all there is to it. sure, the visuals are haunting, but the dialogue has to sell a gauntlet of difficult character moments, and it pulls it off. on the design side, there's some interesting intentional friction that forces you to linger in the zone and sit with its sense of despair. that part where you have to search the empty park for signs of life? oof

with the majority of the MSQ under my belt, i started sniffing around for what else there is to do ingame. i tried ninja. did terribly. i tried sage. did terribly too, but at least that gave me access to the healer role quests, which, ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). the nier raids are gorgeous. i even did the controversial werlyt quests, and terncliff is so cute. i kind of wish we could have another story there!

what's next? i dunno! right now i'm burning through the hildibrand quests before i continue on with endwalker's patch story. the field operation stuff seems interesting to do after the MSQ, in a "hey, you saved the world, but we have more missions for you" way. i've also contracted Triple Triad Collector Disease, so that'll keep me busy for a long time.

all right. one last thing. Real Gamer Moments: i was in a mount-farming party recently, and i said that i sort of collected mounts, but only used the ishgardian chocobo. it's a roleplay thing - it's the chocobo royce took when she ran away from ishgard. one of the party members said "haurchefant would be proud of you." AUGH

[pikahlua]

so, I dunno if you typically answer questions like this, as it seems like most of your Asks are related to dissecting the manga, but!

in your opinion, what's the best way to write a post-canon fic without getting wrapped up in keeping it loyal to the still-unfolding story?

for context: i'm writing a (potentially long) post-war-arc fic at the minute, but seeing as how the arc is still ongoing, I'm finding it challenging to not stop and rewrite and every time i learn something new. perhaps this is a stupid problem to have lmao, but you seem so good at untangling the MHA narrative threads, so I guess I'm just curious if you have any tips for folks trying to weave 'em in our own way?

thanks in advance, and thanks for all your hard work in general <3

Aww I love this ask!

So if you think about it, there are plenty of great post-canon fanfics out there that were written without the full context of the series. The lack of information those stories have about the end of MHA does nothing to hurt those fics.

You have several options really. You can commit to adapting your story in future chapters to what may happen in the MHA canon as it goes, but that's a pretty difficult path to take. I started my fanfic based on the assumption we would eventually learn AFO's real name, but now I'm realizing I'm going to have to come up with a solution to the possibility he may have no other name. You could pick a cutoff point in MHA and write a story that doesn't rely on any information that might come later. You could write based on an alternate set of events to fill in the blanks so that your story is canon-adjacent and divergent. In any case, you have to accept the fact that you're writing a story before the source material has ended.

The real question you have to ask yourself is: what does "keeping it loyal" mean to you? I'd advise you to remember that, no matter what, you're not writing something that will be part of the official canon. That gives you a lot of space to move around. If you try to stick too rigidly to the canon when you don't know how MHA ends yet, then ask yourself what your story is even about in the first place. If your story is so up-in-the-air right now that the important beats in it could change at the drop of a hat depending on what happens in the canon, then you don't have a story; you just have an idea. There's nothing wrong with that per se. Plenty of authors write without knowing where their story is going or how it ends yet.

My suspicion though is that's not your problem. I'm guessing that you're just worried about small details or references to events in the canon that may incidentally occur in your story. To the best of your ability I would advise that you don't worry about such things. Just write KNOWING you will do that. It's a feature of fanfic to do so, not a bug. Anyone reading your fanfic will know that.

So now I come back to the question about what does "keeping it loyal" mean? I am writing an AU fanfic. I have to ask myself often what I care about when it comes to "keeping it loyal" because AUs have the potential to diverge so far from the canon material they're practically their own original stories. In this case, "keeping it loyal" to me is about the characters. When I write these characters, are they behaving in the way I would expect them to in the canon? I've chosen major events in my characters' backgrounds to make them behave similarly to how they would in canon because to me, the appeal of an AU is in seeing how my favorite characters would behave in a new environment. By extension, I've also chosen some events to happen in my fanfic that maintain similar themes to the canon. My characters may have to change some from their canon counterparts based on the specific events that happen to them, but there is a core vision of the canon in my heart I always try to come back to.

It's a lot easier to keep that distance between my story and the MHA canon because I'm writing an AU, and that helps me to answer your question because the obvious things my story and the canon have in common are the characters and the story themes. Those two elements would be my answer to you. The line becomes grayer when you're writing a story set in-universe to the canon. My best advice is to not get caught up in those details. It's far more important that you write and get out your ideas. You can always come back and edit things later, EVEN AFTER PUBLISHING. That's the forgiving nature of fanworks. That said, I personally think canon-divergent/alternate canon stories are supremely underrated, so I would embrace the label. It's up to you if you want to do that or just try to adapt to the canon as you go, but IT'S OKAY if your story doesn't completely match up to the canon. It doesn't make your story any less loyal to the source material so long as you maintain that integrity in other ways. No one is reading fanfic because they expect it to be a rehashing of the exact events in MHA anyways. They're expecting something new, something additional, whether it's an embellishment, a soliloquy, or an entirely alternate set of events.

Just write what's good for your story right now, and everything else is incidental.

[comicaurora]

Hey I'm getting into DnD, do you have any podcast or series of a DnD campaign to recommend? I know there is critical role, but wich one of those should i start with? Is there a better beginning than critical role? I am lost here, please help

This is gonna very much depend on your personal preferences and attention span! I recommend sampling a range of DnD podcasts to find your personal tolerances and what parts appeal to you. I'm not the most widely-read person in this space because frankly most DnD podcasts are on too slow a boil for my attention span, but I've got a few you could check out-

Critical Role is the biggest and most well-known one for sure, but pacing wise I personally can't get through it. I love it in concept, but it's slow enough and huge enough that my brain zones out in the downtime and I lose track of important details when things speed up again. I think my first successful exposure to it was a brisk two-hour video that's just a Best Moments Of Grog compilation. That's also why I've been really liking The Legend Of Vox Machina, which keeps all the biggest and best moments but paces them like an actual story instead of a game. It's not representative of the experience of playing a TTRPG, but it is a lot of fun.

I personally enjoy limited-run miniseries a lot more, because they work better for my limited attention span, and on the critical role front that means I recommend EXU Calamity, a Doomed Heroes far-distant prequel to the modern setting of CR. Only four four-hour episodes and it's on a bit of a slow boil for the first three, but because everybody involved knows how the story's going to end, there's an endless drip of dramatic tension along the way. The DM, Brennan Lee Mulligan, is going to show up a lot more on this list.

On the subject of short miniseries DM'd by Brennan Lee Mulligan, Escape From The Bloodkeep is my personal favorite and the one I revisit the most. Six two-hour episodes, deeply unhinged and intrinsically comedic as it's a full-series parody of Lord of the Rings. I recommend it for a lot of reasons, not least of which being that Matt Mercer, who is an excellent DM, gets to play, and his playstyle is a great example of how to roll with the punches and the dice, since his extremely menacing nazghul captain is afflicted by a string of hilarious failures and he kind of just owns it, to the point where his character arc becomes accepting his worth as an individual with the power of friendship. It's a great example of not taking yourself or your character too seriously, which is a vital skill for players to learn in order to handle the whims of the dice sometimes (or often) not cooperating with your narrative wishes. If CR isn't working for you but you're interested in what you can pick up from this extremely talented DM, this is a good way to get that!

Dimension 20 (Collegehumor's DnD branch) has several series I really like, most of them DM'd by Brennan Lee Mulligan again. His DMing style really works for me, and he takes an approach to pacing that I quite like, so they're generally a safe bet for me. One I categorically recommend is The Unsleeping City, an urban fantasy DnD game set in New York City. This one is 19 two-hour episodes, so longer than the other miniseries but still much shorter than CR, and it can give you a bit of a sampler for (a) the genrebending you can do with DnD and (b) a longer-form story with a less rigidly determined finale than the previous examples. Brennan's DM style is very cool, and he puts an unusual amount of focus on characters getting solo vignettes, which is sometimes considered a bit gauche in DM circles because it means the other players don't have a whole lot to do during those solo conversations, but it works for him and his players and the effect is very cinematic!

But if you want to see a different DM's style in the same space, A Court Of Fey And Flowers is run by Aabria Iyengar, one of the EXU Calamity players, and she has a very different but also cinematic DMing style! The game is also a hybridization of DnD and a different system for facilitating Jane Austen romances, which is dope. Only the first episode is up on Youtube, but that should probably be enough to let you determine if you want to check out more.

I'd be remiss if I didn't at least mention the two DnD Actual-Plays I'm in, Rolling With Difficulty and Heart of Elynthi. Rolling with Difficulty is subdivided into three seasons of 8-10 four-hour episodes each, with each season having one overarching plot or threat but mostly being composed of episodic adventures - it's a Planescape series, meaning most episodes take us to a completely new plane of existence to deal with its unique geometry, fun denizens and wacky threats. It's also a lot more edited than some actual-play podcasts, with an effort to avoid the slow parts and the dice-rolling, mental math, "what am I gonna do this round," etc. Heart of Elynthi is an ongoing series that's only about five or six episodes in, with an overarching mystery in the background and a "collect the things to save the world" plotline in the foreground. It also streams new episodes on Twitch on (some) Wednesday afternoons, so if you'd benefit from a live chat to hang out and talk with during games, that might be worth checking out to see if you like it! Elynthi also has had some pretty cool behind-the-curtain stuff about how the players can handle in-character disagreements without them turning into IRL fights, which is something I don't think I've ever seen another DnD actual-play explicitly unpack but is also extremely important for players to consider, so that's fun.

[ultfreakme]

Hi, Riki! How are you? Now that you've finished Arcane, what are your top 5 fav moments from the series (you can pick top 5 each for s1 & s2 or top 5 from s1 + s2)? Also, who are your top 3 fav characters? Which do you like best s1 or s2? Why?

So, I'm kinda confused, can I ask why are there so many hate for CaitVi & JayVic ships? Sorry if I ask too much....

Hi!!! I'm doing good~~ Thanks for asking anon!

Hmm, this is hard, I think I overall liked S1 better, so top favorites scenes:

Vi parkouring through the Undercity: I am a sucker for Vi, I just like seeing her happy and that was the happiest we ever see her.

Vi + Jayce taking down the Shimmer manufacturers. The fight was too cool.

Sevika + Jinx vs. Smeech: I love the song and the fight is just fun

Ekko in the final fight rewinding time: I have a huge soft spot for him and I am so happy he got his moment. That sequence where he's fighting the robots and keeps turning back time to redo things was amazing.

Jinx & Isha montage when Isha took the shot against Vander: Super painful, but also beautiful

Favorite characters!

Vi, easily my favorite from the entire show. She always was and she always will be. She has so much love inside her, and she keeps loving people and protecting people. It's to her detriment, but it's a part of her to be a protector. I wish the narrative would've let her love without hurting for once.

Ekko: I don't post about him often, most of my arcane posts are like, jayvik, but that's primarily because i have a hard line between personal stuff and fandom stuff. Ekko is who's going to stick with me for a lifetime. His leadership, the things he stood for, and his heart are simply beautiful. A person who saw all the darkness the undercity had to offer and decided to make something beautiful anyways. Someone who'll never, ever give up on hope. I wish I could be like him. I love characters who can hope despite the bleakness of the world because I can't, and I hope I can learn from them.

Viktor: Idk his arc is just very compelling to me and made me see things from a new perspective. It's kind of an overdone story but the way it was written explored him really well.

Season 1 is easily my favorite. I liked Arcane because of the classism and ableism discussion but that died down in S2. I still had hope for the liberation of Zaun, Vi was the MC, there seemed to be hope for a revolution.

Okay so the hate for CaitVi and Jayvik...

CaitVi:

To keep it short, a lot of people have issues with Caitlyn's barely addressed fascism and the large class and power difference between Cait and Vi. Caitlyn gassed the undercity, she was about to shoot a child when Vi was telling her to stop, then hit Vi, and she never apologizes for any of it directly. No one even really confronts her about ti and the one person who does is framed by the narrative as being just as awful as her(Jinx, also I think Jinx is a lot more forgiveable). She also calls Zaunites animals & got Vi to be an enforcer when they're the ones who killed her parents and locked her up in prison.

The tone-deaf writing of the class issues and police brutality, when many people are still watching people who look like Caitlyn do things that caitlyn did as an enforcer during real-life protests. The story equates Jinx's grief & Zaunite's violence born primarily as a form of protest and a way to fight back as equal to Caitlyn going into dictatorship after one tragedy. Specifically, POC have major issues with CaitVi because of this.

JayVik:

They're now trending and getting far more attention than CaitVi. People are saying it's fandom misogyny in play again, which definitely plays a role. A lot of JayVik fans post a lot of racist takes on Mel or completely mischaracterize her. Same for Sky. The POC women getting sidelined for the men.

There's also, like homophobes pissed off that people are saying jayvik can be read as romantic. One of the head writers, christian Linke, said stuff that just made the "Is jayvik canon?" question worse and there's lots of infighting. Or there was, it seems to have died down a little bit afaik.

That's all from me!!! DW about the questions I love answering asks!!!! Hope the last bits gave an idea of what's happening rn?

[emeraldotter]

It's really interesting seeing your opinions on TMA on top of the art and I'd actually love if you shared more! I'm like, the exact opposite about S5, no longer needing grounding made the individual episode stories hit less for me and I loved the metanarrative if only for how much more it moved compared to earlier ones. Getting more perspectives on it, having to think on it more, would definitely make it easier on my next relisten.

I'll be placing most of this under a cut, since I have a lot of opinions on S5 and I will be sharing major spoilers for the entire series. TLDR; I like the dreamlike quality of the stories, I like the more controversial subject matters, and I have a personal preference for the prose style(s) in S5. On the flip side, I don't like some of the choices in the overarching plot. Yes, I'm unfortunately That Fan.

I'll start by saying: I like season 5, overall. I think the ending is very impactful and some of the emotional beats really moved me. As someone who started TMA for the short stories (and went in totally blind), I approach each episode with that mindset, at least in part. Someone who prefers the metanarrative will probably have very different opinions.

The stories in S5 felt like stories that the writer had been saving to tell. Not all of them are 10/10s, but they felt more personally affective because their horror elements were more extreme while also referring more explicitly to lived experiences. I didn't need plot connections to them because I felt personal connections to a lot of them. It would take me longer to list the stories I like than the stories I don't. Part of that is purely personal preference, of course; I enjoy surreal visuals and belletristic writing.

Admittedly, I found some stories got a bit too on-the-nose, but I appreciated that the writer dared to depict more controversial topics. The stories felt sincere. I love horror because it’s a great vehicle for exploring painful (and often "inappropriate") subjects. I always felt like TMA shied away from some of the darker themes over the course of the series, so I enjoyed seeing the writer tackle issues that were only really alluded to in the earlier stories. 171 The Gardener, for instance, is way more effective than 090 Bodybuilder, which did not go far enough to be genuinely scary or emotionally impactful (to me.) The same could be said for many of the stories in S5, in my opinion.

I love the dreamlike quality of a lot of them, as well. The prose doesn't need to be tied down by a witness narrative structure anymore, which allows the stories to possess more creative framing. They're surreal and sometimes unnerving, as a result. The way that Jon and Martin drift through the ruined world contributes to that, in my opinion. It feels very Virgil-leading-Dante to me. We have these nebulous, strange environments, then we are plunged into stories that range from absurd settings (166 The Worms) to frighteningly mundane (188 Centre of Attention), which, no matter how weird they may get, hinge on very real human fears and tragedies. The first part of the season feels like a long nightmare to me, for that reason.

Then S5 keeps going and the metanarrative gains prominence and… Well, I just don't like the direction the plot takes. Most of my issues are with the themes and character direction, but I also didn’t like the pacing closer to the finale. I spent the whole Georgie/Melanie cult arc waiting around for the show to end. It didn’t add anything for me.

I acknowledge that my favorite characters in TMA are Elias and Tim, so that definitely affects my perception of S5. (And I was a Web Martin truther so... Yeah.) I also felt very strongly about some of the morally ambiguous questions that built up over the course of TMA. Characters like The Distortion and Elias offer interesting alternatives to what I believe are common moral opinions on violence, self-preservation, autonomy, and identity. These are all important topics to me, personally, and I enjoyed seeing what all of these issues mean for someone like Jon, who has again and again made his choices, but has made them under terrible circumstances without full knowledge of the consequences. Coming from S4's amazing finale, which made Elias's character even more ambiguous, I was curious what other points the story would raise about these themes.

And then S5 happens. The season where The Web comes in with the steel chair, most OP player on the server, and the story starts to feel a bit ridiculous. (And I like The Web!) It left me feeling like...okay. None of this mattered, then. I was very dissatisfied by the moral issues the story emphasized as well as the moral issues it de-emphasized. And the ending was just the cherry on the top of the never-ending Jon suffering cake. No one is sympathetic to him by the end, not even Martin or Georgie, and the narrative feels uncritical of this. It's genuinely hard for me not to feel like the story hates Jon.

(I'm a bit bitter. But I'm also an Elias apologist. My opinions are, as a result, insane.)

That all being said, I actually like the ending. I think all the actors brought their A games to the conclusion. I hate how Jon's decision is depicted, but I like how painful Martin's betrayal is. I like Jon's speech about the history and nature of fear. I like Martin and Jon's final moments. I felt like the actors had fantastic romantic chemistry there. (Not sure what that says about the story or me.) I enjoyed the ambiguity of their fate at the end because, to me, that serves as part of the tragedy. Jon didn't want to become "another mystery" and that's exactly what happened. (Well, I mean. He's dead. Right? He's so dead.)

I understand why people like the S5 narrative. I personally found it somewhat dissatisfying, because I think it could have been something else. But it's not my story and that is okay.

(This response originally had an additional 3,000-word-long whiny fanboy screed about most of my problems with S5, including separate Martin and Elias rants, but I possessed the moral fiber to cut it. You're welcome.)

I'm very normal about fiction.

[md-guel]

Hello and happy guel wednesday!! we're slowly coming up to the end of the first half of the anime, which brings us to another meaty episode for guel's arc! in-depth conversations about family trauma and the actualization of it, what doesn't episode 9 have?

guel comes back into the picture during suletta's evening stroll, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one who thought that this would be guel's opportunity to get back into the cockpit and score a win again. suletta's looking for a pilot and he's a damn good pilot who's just missing a mobile suit!

it's too bad that he turned down suletta's invitation, but the conversation they had after is one of my absolute favorites because of how it just highlights their similarities with each other, and what that means for them both in the long run.

one of the points that have been established about the two of them by this time is how much their parents defined their identity, for better or for worse. so even when by this episode, suletta is already soaring high in her victories while guel has pretty much lost everything he has to lose, when suletta asked him "you love your father, right?" and told him that she understood where he was coming from because she loved her mother, too, any gap between them just got reset to zero.

it's a passing line, but it's enough to show that guel and suletta are actually mirror images of each other, and that they've always been bound to each other ever since the start, which is a really interesting narrative device for me. they're both ace pilots, they're both under the thumbs of their parents, they're both doing what they're told to do in a corrupt system that's too big for their naive upbringing to fully comprehend. and going forward, that becomes a recurring theme between them and their respective character growths.

I always thought this scene was heartbreaking because even though guel had pretty much found a friend in suletta and was ready to move forward with her, his complicated feelings with his relationship with his father holds him back. he and suletta may both be similar, but their standing and the way they're progressing with their own identities is far too different at this point. and guel is lagging far behind from suletta who feels sure about her relationship with prospera. or is he? she's shown to be leaving him behind, but what if it's actually the other way around?

then the next day, the call comes from his father saying he's pulling him out of school and he's going to teach him how to make money. telling him how to live his life as he does, and this is the point where the lifeline guel has been hanging onto finally snaps. now it's clear to him that his dad only wants him as a projection of himself and he stuck it out there in the camp, in the marriage game for the hand of a woman he was never even attracted to, for nothing

I'd already mentioned this before but I really think that part of him winning all those duels was because that was guel fighting to keep his place in his dad's table. miorine was his ticket to a pat on the back. he's a golden child who constantly needs his dad's approval to function, and now even that is gone from him. it's sad, his love for his dad is starting to become some object he doesn't know what to do with, after living all those years bearing its weight, even when it's getting too heavy. but sadly again, it had to happen for guel. this is when things start to get interesting for him, after all

[aq2003]

almost forgot. ten's run episode ranking (nine ranking here)

some stray thoughts and opinions under the cut

my overall ranking for the series so far would be 4 > 1 >= 3 > 2. donna sweep babygirl

"i have brain damage" tier would've been called "the qpr meth has gotten to me" but then i remembered how absolutely glued to the screen i was for sound of drums <3 all of the other episodes there are either donna episodes or episodes where ten goes through horrors specifically bc donna isn't there and sound of drums is the exception lmao

by default i think simm!master is the best main villain in ten's run. he is still very goofy like the cybermen and the daleks (and 98% of the villains in this show really) but simm!master has that toxic doomed yaoi backing him and that means everything in the world. rtd drop your simm!master spotify playlist

it is SO CRAZY how an episode called "planet of the ood" can make me cry. but it did. and i love it for it. i love the ood so much. they are my little guys

stolen earth/journey's end was my least favorite arc in main series 4 - which is just a testament to how much i loved the rest of it lmao. like i still rly liked the finale, and the scene of davros pointing out that ten turned their friends into soldiers and how it was framed almost like they were being put on trial. Was so fucking juicy. but it felt overall like the story was doing that "trying to include everyone" thing and the pacing felt off as a result. like i rly needed the donna mind wipe scene to be longer it was goin so fast i couldn't process it

42 goes so crazy and i love it so much bc to me it is the defining tenmartha episode. you have that showcase of deep inherent trust, of swearing to save each other, of being the person the other needs bc is there anyone else. but you also have ten screaming at her to kill him so that he won't hurt anyone and then at the end, deflecting and refusing to talk w her about it. "burn with me martha" is like that previously-unspoken-now-brought-to-front undercurrent to their whole relationship and ten says it while being possessed by a rageful vindictive sun. waow

i really dislike the temporary companions (astrid and christina in voyage of the damned and planet of the dead respectively). not the characters themselves but the timing and role they have in the story and how they're framed. i do understand that part of ten's character is that he gets attached very easily and can't stand being on his own, but also for astrid this was directly post-martha where ten's realized he's been fucking up her life by acting the way he did. and for christina this was post-donna and pre-time-lord-victorious. forming a friendship that ends w/ tragedy or ten pushing them away i can see, but romantic tension is pushing it HARD. which leads me to my next deranged point

ten is aroace to me i'm so sorry society he clocked the aroace meter the minute the story decided to introduce donna and then in series 4 make them the soulmates of all time while there isnt a HINT of romantic tension between them. and there is something so narratively aspec about ten being created by and for love but sometimes his love isn't enough/isn't the right kind and everyone will leave or find someone else. being an alien can be a metaphor for being aroace if i'm crazy enough about it (and also if their humanity is a constant theme to their arc that is hammered in time and time again)

i forgot i was supposed to talk about the episodes hold on a second

one of the most out of body experiences i had was watching love and monsters, really quite liking it (despite finding the ending weird) because it's a grounded and solid episode w strong characterization and really great jackie and rose moments, only to find out this episode is nearly universally despised by the dr who fanbase. help girl

the human ten arc probably has the most underrated villains in the show. i just really love that concept of monsters that need to eat timelords in order to survive, and ten giving them one chance to be spared of his rage and die peacefully by turning himself into a human for a hot minute. it's just really neat idk.

time lord victorious my babygirl. like oh my god i was wondering for the entire time how the fuck does ten go from "vain/overconfident but at heart always driven by his love for others" to "god complex" and the answer to this question is "you take away everyone he cares about and make him watch more and more people die in front of him until he just fucking snaps". at the end of waters of mars i was almost expecting him to knock 4 times on the tardis door himself and was so glad it didnt happen. etc etc. i'm also really glad that it doesn't last for more than 5 minutes. what he does essentially haunts him for the rest of his (short) life and that's so so important

end of time part 2 doesn't get a ranking. it is simultaneously the best episode and worst episode. it made me cry my eyes out three separate times. like it's not even an episode anymore it's like an experience. specifically one akin to watching a good friend you made over the course of 16 days die in front of you. i felt my soul being sucked out and i wont ever feel anything again (until the 60th anniversary specials fix me). god fucking bless

but pairing up martha and mickey out of nowhere was so so fucking bad and i need to actually murder whoever made that decision

[joju-but-trek]

Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2, Episode 20: Ouroboros, Part 2

I'm so glad no one got erased on Solum. Or did they?

With this episode, we close the door on Prodigy season 2. What a ride it's been. I loved this season and all the successful swings it took, and I am still overwhelmingly impressed by how much they crammed into 20 episodes while still making it entirely coherent. Hats off to the whole team for that. 10/10 for the episode, 9/10 for the season

This review has to be in three parts because of the absolute bombshell that happens halfway through the episode and because we need to talk about the season as a whole.

For the first half of the episode, I loved the escape sequence. It felt a bit like they'd handled too much of the plot in the last episode and didn't have much to fill out the finale, which does make sense with the twist halfway through. I feel like if I were going to make this part a little more exciting, I would have had the Loom creatures get onto the ship and cause some chaos, or maybe have Dal and Ma'jel flying outside with cover fire, but what we got was excellent. And it caps off with the montage of the whole show so far, which was pretty emotional.

And with that, the episode and season 2 end, except HAHA SUCKERS YOU THOUGHT WE FORGOT ABOUT CONTINUITY.

I'm still in shock that they actually followed through and did the Mars attack in this episode. I didn't think they'd show it, and I actually had to pause the episode when it happened. Aaron, if you're reading this, first of all thank you so much for this amazing show and for engaging with the community, and second of all, I'm fascinated by why you did this. What was the reasoning? Because there's so much loaded into having it happen and disrupt everything that it feels like it can't just be setup for getting the new ship together, it feels deliberate to have a paradigm-shattering event break everything you know and love right at the last minute. It's handled well but holy shit it's a massive gut punch.

Janeway's mini-retirement only works in the context of keeping the twist, and it does make sense that way, and I'm glad she got a scene to object to Starfleet's reprioritization. I think it would have been better if she'd explicitly argued against abandoning the Romulans - I don't think anyone brings it up at that meeting - but at least she's still putting up a fight. Her strategy of getting the main cast onto a new ship and back to exploring is fine, but I do hope that if/when we get a season 3 they go to Romulus and get involved there.

Aesthetically, I love the new uniforms. The flashback uniform from Picard is one of my favorite designs, and all the senior officers were wearing it at the end. The Prodigy crew gets a variant of it that I'm not as fond of, but it's more in that style and I appreciate it. I also love that Murf is in one now too. They let him get away with dress code violations for way too long.

We also get the conclusion of Dal's arc, which is excellent. One of the problems with setting someone up to be First Officer is that eventually, they're going to take command. And having Dal accept the FO position because he wants to grow before taking command is a great way to balance the humility and patience arcs that he's been developing.

For the season as a whole, we've been gifted some of the best Star Trek has to offer. It's a serialized narrative that still has time for fun individual beats, while also focusing heavily on building out a cast of very real characters and giving them space to grow. It gets weird in the ways Trek is supposed to, but it never forgets about the people the show is supposed to be about, and I love that. Great job, Prodigy. Go Fast. Hopefully we meet again for season 3.

Also, next time around please put Dal in a room with Tom Paris.

[georgieluz]

what's your favorite part about each hbo war show?

the homoseggsuality?

ok lemme be serious for like three whole seconds, my initial answer to this was the characters. i'm someone who can't enjoy media if i don't like how characters are written. i don't mean i can't enjoy something if i don't specifically like the characters as people, but if i don't vibe with how they're written within the world as characters, then i generally struggle to stay invested in their stories. i love characters with actual personality and the one thing these shows give us is characters with personality! and we can point to the characters being based off of real people as being the reason for that, but i don't necessarily think that's the biggest reason. i mean, there are MAJOR things that were different about these characters in most of the shows, so i do think it was about characterisation, not just depiction of the real men, that made the characters who they were in the shows. so, yeah i think overall, my favourite thing in each of the shows would be the range of characterisations and stories being told. i think it's why the hbo war shows appeal to anyone in the fandom, because there's something for everyone? take the pacific, for example, i love to see which thread of narrative fans favour most out of the three. all are valid choices, but it's just very personal which ones we gravitate toward.

so yeah, so far we have gay and characters.

and gay characters

but let me focus properly on each show individually:

for band of brothers, i think it's the storytelling structure. the focus on an individual character in specific episodes to not just tell a story, but to start a dialogue with the viewer about certain themes. and we don't always get to follow those people that we're focused on after their contribution is done, they're snatched away from us, much like people are snatched away from us in life. but for that hour or so, we are consumed by them. we see them, we feel their struggles and their inner conflicts, and pain, and we see and feel their light too. they focus us on something specific and they go deep with it. and even though they may not get the most attention in every other episode, we become completely attached to them. but not just them, but everything they're telling us as well. their stories didn't die. they live on in every post we write about them. yes, even the silly "he's my babygirl" ones. especially them, in fact! i think this is just something that band of brothers did really well. yes, i would like more of a lot of the side characters. i, of course, irrationally want 37 more hours of chuck grant sitting there looking pretty, or alton more and speirs staring each other down for a good hour or so, or more george because he's my GUY and i want 50 hours of just his face, okaY!? but i'm aware that i was never going to get any of that and what i did get was something pretty special in itself. so yeah. i guess, the method of storytelling and use of characters would be my specific favourite for band of brothers. the structure of the show and the format also, bc let's be real, it was the ding ding ding winning formula that started the whole thing and is one of the main reasons limited series are such high standard these days too!

ok, next up, the pacific! anyone who knows me is probably waiting for me to say eddie jones! or hoosier! or ack ack! and you'd be right!! except if i'm being serious (and i know it's been more than three seconds, so by right, i don't have to be serious anymore) then i'd have to say that my favourite thing was sledge's individual character arc and journey. the effect of trauma on one single individual. seeing how it seeps into him and infects him from the inside out. how it changes your very dna (metaphorically, don't come at me PLEASE). these are stories that need to be talked about. i think it's a really important thing they needed to show in depth, and i didn't think they'd be able to do it in an ensemble show, but i think they did it about as well as they could. it was subtle, but not in a way where it was overshadowed or pushed under the rug. it was the main element of his thread of the narrative and actually treated with depth. the show could have easily have used the usual war media excuse of "they didn't care about that then so we're not gonna dive into it too deeply now" or gone the usual predictable and garish route that those that do depict it often follow. so i would say that his arc was my favourite thing about the series. but on a lighter note, my other favourite thing was h-company's friendship. i probably don't talk about them as much as i talk about eddie and ack ack, but i really do love them as characters and a group. i know i whine about leckie being annoying all the time, AND HE IS, but i genuinely enjoy him as a character and his role alongside them. i think the thing i was most disappointed about was not getting to spend that much time with them as a group. i would have loved more episodes of them together. they were such an endearing group of guys and brought an element that i think was needed amongst everything else going on. i'm still not over the show taking hoosier away from me after 5 episodes. that shit was Not cool and i personally don't think i'll ever forgive them. no i won't accept it happening in real life as a valid reason for him leaving. they could have LIED okay?! they could have pretended! IN THIS HOUSE WE SUPPORT CREATIVE LICENSE. WE SUPPORT LYING. WE SUPPORT THE BENDING OF THE TRUTH. ACK ACK IS ALIVE. EDDIE JONES IS ALIVE. HOOSIER DIDN'T GET INJURED. HE WAS FINE. I GOT 5 MORE EPISODES WHERE EVERYONE WAS FINE AND THERE WAS NO WAR AND THEY JUST HUNG OUT ON THE BEACH TOGETHER. LIFE WAS SO GRAND. ok, i told you i was about to get unserious again, so if you're still reading this is on you actually. i did nothing wrong. ever.

also, let me just formally apologise to anyone who just wanted to read about my gen kill opinions and had to scroll all the way down here through that mess. i'll just put my Serious Hat back on, and i'll be right with you, one moment!

okay, i'm here! i'm rocking the Serious Hat once more, so let's talk about my favourite thing about generation kill! this one may be less clear because i've not had as much time to find an eloquent way of expressing my own thoughts about the show as much as the other two, as i watched them earlier, but i do have a lot of things that i love about gen kill, so maybe i'll just throw all of those at you instead. nate fick is obviously one of those things. i'm sorry. i know i said characters already, but i don't think you understand... that man has me in the biggest chokehold ever. i am simply a dog waiting at his feet for instruction. i am the blood running through his veins. i am picking him apart under a microscope. i am thoroughly Obsessed. and it's unhealthy. it's unhealthy and it's all-consuming. i personally need someone to snap me the fuck out of it because what the fuck is this?!?!?! stark sands what have you done????? is this how brad feels? is it? IT IS. it must be. fuck, man. sucks to be us, i guess. ANYWAY. serious hat slipped a bit for a second, but i actually stand by it. nate fick is legit one of my favourite things about the show. so yeah, nate. but i also appreciated that the show was critical about the war, and the military and us government's involvement. it didn't handhold us through that either, it just presented us with what it was saying and left us with "how do your learned experiences and beliefs affect your reaction to this? what does this make you feel and think?". every one of those men was fucked up and flawed, and it's not an easy ride to have your protags without the sugar coating, but that's what makes it the show it is. it can be uncomfortable and you have to be critical with your viewing experience, you don't get to sit back and just enjoy the jokes or the stressed gays staring into each other's eyes. i've discussed that before, so i won't go into it again, but i think it's the one of the most vital things about the show. but it doesn't shy away from letting us in on these men either. you still get attached to some, you still have your favourites. they're the fucked up bad marines, but all the same, you collect them in your palms. it takes good writing, and performance and portrayal, to do that. i think it was very well made as a whole as well. the dialogue was pretty great. the use of very realistic background dialogue, messy and overlapping, was something i really enjoyed about it. having subtitles switched on brought so much more to the show, it's always fun hearing all the guys bickering in the background of shots. and i would die on the hill arguing that they contributed to the narrative bc they did! nothing in film or tv production is ever just There, everything is a construction with a purpose and all of those throw away lines had a little bit of impact on the narrative each episode, but yeah, just the writing in general. the screenplay to be specific. in fact, i'd love to read it, so if anyone knows where it can be found please send it my way, so i can be lazy and not have to search for it. i always love to read the screenplays of shows that have good dialogue and writing and this is very much one of my favourites in that regard!

so to sum it all up (serious hat off, ofc)

the gay. the characters. the gay characters. and nate fick.

and good dialogue and writing and narrative structure!

(ok, i put my serious hat back on for a second there)

ultimately, i just fucking love stories. i can be cynical, in fact, many people who know me might say it's one of my defining personality traits, but fuck, humanity is fickle and fragile and messy and chaotic and i just wanna hear about it all!!! and maybe that's what attracts me to hbo war shows, what i love about all of them the most.

[infizero]

pokespe reread: gold, silver & crystal chapter - closing thoughts! 🟡⚪💎

finally i've reached the end of gold silver & crystal!! this arc has SO much packed into it and there's so much to talk about, its a little overwhelming;;

7 dexholders to keep track of, the switch over to yamamoto as artist, and of course lots of action and character development across what is still the longest arc in the whole series......

i had a blast rereading this chapter in particular and also have a lot i want to talk about, so let's go ahead and get into it!!

first i wanna talk about our main man gold here since i love him so much and also he sucks <3

i specifically wanted to highlight how different he is from red. you might assume they're kinda similar at first, but gold is so much more selfish and rude than red ever was. and i mean that as a positive thing, it makes him more interesting imo. i like that gold often helps people out for more selfish reasons, and so when he runs into someone like silver for instance just saving someone because it's the right thing to do he's like "WTF MAN STOP STEALING GIRLS FROM ME" and silver is just like ?

it is sort of hard to tell how much of his obnoxious behavior is actually supposed to be read as bad? like him groping blue near the end, or him being misogynistic to crystal when they first meet. i think it is clear though that the narrative views him as flawed even if not specifically for those traits, so i think it's fine idk

also for me at least it doesn't make him feel unredeemable or anything lol. gold is literally 10 years old here and while it doesn't excuse his behavior, i think it's fairly easy to read it as him just being ur average 10 year old boy who's just acting like how he's seen around him. he'll grow out of it guys i swear

speaking of how our environment shapes our worldviews, i love love LOVE how gold and silver are set up as being like total opposites in terms of how they grew up and how that influences their behavior (and you know what they say about opposites)

right away we learn that gold grew up in a loving home full of pokemon who he views as being like his family. everyone in town knows him and likes him, etc etc. this is perfect set-up for everything we learn later about silver and is part of why they clash so hard, i rlly rlly like it.

and speaking of gold and silver, i have so much i want to say (and HAVE said) about their dynamic and how it evolves over the course of the chapter

i just love these two so much and the state of their relationship at the beginning compared to the end of the chapter is like. actually insane. im obsessed with how gold goes from following silver so he can catch him and bring him to justice, to not really caring about that anymore and just wanting to know wtf his deal is, to wanting to help him so bad that he literally refuses to let him fight on his own even when silver specifically tells him to

^ "i don't care who he's going up against... i still don't see why he has to fight alone" THIS LINE IS CRAZYYYYYYYY

i love how they start out absolutely hating each other but keep having to work together for plot reasons, and progressively get friendlier and friendlier with each other. i'd honestly argue that even though it's a similar rivals to friends kind of arc, i'd say they're actually far closer/care about each other more by the end of GSC than red and green were at the end of RGB.

one of the standout examples of this, and i'd say one of my favorite scenes in the whole chapter, has to be when they run into the masked man together for the first time.

pryce threatening GOLD in order to keep silver down, and that being the context in which he berates silver for having compassion is crazyyyyy like. ok. so we're saying he cares about gold and pryce is using that again him. ok cool cool (walks into the ocean)

AND THE WAY THAT GOLD STICKS UP FOR SILVER AND SAYS THAT PRYCE IS WRONG AND SILVER IS STRONG...... they actually make me crazy.

it really is crazy how much their relationship develops, like they're at each other's throats in the beginning and then by the end of the chapter silver's blindly rushing into danger to try and save him and asking if the reason gold is fighting is for him <- this is still so fucking gay WHY DID HE SAY THIS. UNPROMPTED. THIS LINE HAS HAUNTED ME FOR YEARS WHAT IS THE STRAIGHT EXPLANATION FOR THIS

also gold being the one to bail silver out at the end when he was the one who wanted to catch him at the beginning..... sooooo good i love that kind of circular shit (this chapter has a lot of that, which i'll get into more later)

also before i shut up about preciousmetal. i've gotta shout out this underrated moment where gold becomes furious at the idea of silver getting hurt

^ "if you've hurt him-!" SINCE WHEN ARE WE SO PROTECTIVE OF HIM. I THOUGHT YOU HATED HIS ASS

ANYWAYS. i also love the thing of the starters all being friends who get separated from each other. i think that's really cute and adds further depth to the dynamic between gold silver and crystal

SPEAKING OF WHICH, i wanna talk about crystal's introduction.

first off i wanna say that I FUCKING LOVE CRYSTAL OK. do not get me wrong i love her and i love seeing her in action here

i do think though that her introduction definitely makes the pacing feel weird. building up gold and silver and the rest of the dexholders' stories for 2 volumes only to abruptly switch to a new character's story....

one, it makes the story kinda feel less tight/cohesive overall (it feels kind of like a random side quest, even tho it does obviously have significance) and two, while i love crystal, they're not doing her any favors by interrupting the preexisting characters' stories to suddenly focus on her, a completely new character, for sooooo long.

i enjoy this part of the chapter but it definitely does feel a little out of place, and i think it'd feel even more weird for a first time reader since they wouldn't already be familiar with crystal

while talking about this part of the chapter though, i also want to say that this was probably the best time yamamoto could've replaced mato as artist if it had to be in the middle of a chapter. it comes as soon as we transition over to crystal for a while, meaning we don't see characters like gold and silver in the new style until we've already gotten used to it, which i think is a great little bit of luck(?)

also while talking about crystal ummmm her mom sucks i still hate her. she's irresponsible and somehow doesnt give crystal enough attention while also having the attention she does give her being unnecessarily rough. booooo

speaking of people i hate, HELLO MASKED MAN. he sucks so fucking bad. he is SUCH an interesting and intimidating villain, i love his role in this chapter. his design is so cool, and him taking control of what remains of team rocket is such a great way to tie those two plot points together. he's just fun to hate, and they even managed to give him more depth as a character WITHOUT trying to actually redeem him. also HE FUCKING ACTUALLY DIES THANK GOD!!!!!!! norman take notes

i will say that once you meet pryce, it's kinda obvious he's the masked man LOL. i mean i cant speak from the perspective of someone who didnt already know that when reading but it seems kinda obvious to me lol. though when you see him and the masked man at 2 different places at once during the tournament, it does sort of reintroduce that doubt and kinda fakes you out that maybe they aren't the same person. so idk i think the mystery element is fine lol. esp since we dont meet pryce for a while anyway

and now let's talk about the poor kids who had to deal with this fucking guy. oh my god blue and silver make me want to throw up and die in this chapter its gonna be so hard for me to put this into actual words but i will try

ok first to get it out of the way. i had NO MEMORY of them actually just flat out calling them siblings, this is the best fucking thing to ever happen to me. i won. anyways

i dont even know where to start. it's so apparent how much they care about each other, and specifically how much blue looked out for him when they were younger. the fact that during the scene where will and karen are tormenting her with ho-oh and visions from her past and her first thought is just "at least i protected silver so he doesnt have to suffer this pain" makes me ILLLLLLL.

blue having to put her own feelings aside and focus on looking after silver from such a young age is an aspect of her character that makes me CRAZY, tying into her just having to grow up too fast in general. her absolute devastation when she realizes they got silver too is literally heartbreaking i deadass was close to full on crying that whole fucking scene

AND SILVER WANTING TO PROTECT HER FOR ONCE GODDDDDDDDDDD I NEED TO BE PUT IN THE PSYCH WARD. younger sibling naively trying to help older sibling but only making things worse literally slaughters me every time. i think doomed siblings are some of the most tragic relationships you can write in anything ever and these two for sure are a big part of why i love that kind of thing so much

narratively speaking, i really like how we progressively see more and more glimpses of blue and silver as kids throughout the chapter until it culminates in us actually getting a flashback to when blue was first kidnapped and the montage of her and silver growing up together. that progression feels rlly satisfying to me

moving on, i like how we finally get a conclusion to red's offer to be the viridian gym leader from all the way back at the end of RGB! but specifically, the way that they use it as a framing device for exploring red's condition, which is what i REALLY want to talk about

red makes me CRAZYYYYY in this chapter. i cannot emphasize just how much i LOVE that he actually has lasting damage from being frozen in yellow. it would've been so easy to just brush it off but NO. we actually get to see red be effectively disabled for a while, and i love every scene about it we see.

seeing red pushing away people and acting like he's fine, and having that be treated by the narrative as a bad thing which he needs to learn from and learn to accept help from others.... its soooo good. watching him come to terms with everything and understand his limits (turning down the gym leader position despite wanting it for years) is reallyy really compelling

and not only does red have serious physical repercussions from yellow, but it's also clear that he's not the same kid he was before, judging from how he has pika stay behind with yellow so he wouldn't get hurt again (showing his lingering guilt about the incident) and how he acts cheerful and energetic as usual on the outside while secretly being very anxious and rattled by his injuries

i do very much wish, as i always have, that red didn't get fully healed on mt silver. not because i want him to suffer, but just because i think having him be effectively disabled in a way is really compelling and interesting, and it would've been really cool if that just became a part of his life he had to adjust to. and like, i understand that that kind of injury might not even have permanent effects in the first place but. idk. these are just some of my favorite red scenes in the whole series and i really wish it could've been a permanent part of his character

he did at least struggle with his condition for a FULL YEAR, and judging from how it took sabrina a whole year of soaking in the lower level mt silver hot springs to recover enough to be back in fighting shape (and the fact that red had to be on his bike at the end of yellow because he was in pain and having a hard time standing), it's likely that his injuries were way worse directly after the events of yellow. so at the very least we have a whole year of red dealing with being disabled, even though we don't get to see it

also speaking of sabrina, i really like how she and red have this kind of solidarity with their shared condition, regardless of them being on opposing sides. i think that's cool

i also wanted to mention just how much i love red green and blue's bond in this chapter :) we mainly see red and green interacting, and i rlly like how much they clearly trust each other and can work together so effortlessly.

and even tho we see blue interacting w them less, i like how both she and green lent red their starters when he was going up to mt silver!! shows just how much they care about him and also how much they wanted to make sure he would be ok on his own up there :) which also screams to me that they witnessed that whole year where red was dealing with his condition and had to learn to look out for him and make sure he wasnt pushing himself too hard. which. ack

also on the topic of green. i dont like chuck sorry just had to get that out there. like i mentioned in a previous post i dont think he's a bad guy, he means well, not like norman or anything, but he did not need to be so hard on green when he was like what, 8. like calm down bro

anyways MORE BLAINE AND MEWTWO YAY. blaine being healed by entei but losing his bond with mewtwo in the process, which also in turn does allow mewtwo to finally be free and do as it pleases, is the perfect place to take their storyline imo.

it was lovely seeing him and mewtwo together but that was the main problem with the previous status quo, mewtwo having to stay with blaine, in the master ball, in order to keep him alive. im glad that mewtwo can finally be free without having to rely on humans for once :)

ok last point before i get into some of the end stuff - yellow gender reveal 2 electric boogaloo!!!!

i basically already said everything i wanted to say about this scene in another post so im kinda just gonna repeat that here lol. (also reminder that we're viewing this through my non-binary yellow agenda, where they enjoyed being in disguise because it let them not be a girl, rather than being a boy)

red was basically the last person (that they're close with) and the most IMPORTANT person that yellow could continue to Not Be a Girl around and i think that explanation makes yellow's strong aversion to coming out here make a lot more sense than it does within the original text

like. literally why else would they have this weird obsession with not yelling red they're a girl? other than like, they feel bad about "lying" to him and dont want to admit it or something?? if yellow enjoyed presenting as something other than a girl, it makes perfect sense that they wouldnt want to tell red (the person they care about the most) they're a girl and would literally only reveal that fact when ABSOLUTELY FORCED TO. and they very clearly do not look happy about this

like it is shown IN THE TEXT that yellow, for SOME reason, wants red to continue believing they're a boy. gee i wonder what explanation for that would make the most sense!!!

yellow not wanting to be a girl is so unbelievably easy to read. like they are so fucking transgender it's crazy. sorry kusaka you wrote a non-binary person! mine now!!

ANYWAYS. really getting into the climax now, i really liked the thing of everyone sending their pokemon to help out, very sweet and uplifting :) i LOVE the indomitable human (and pokemon) spirit babey!!!!!!!

the two big callbacks at the end, Boy and His Lapras and the shitty silver wanted poster, are really cool and it makes the whole chapter feel really circular and complete, i thought that was a really cool way to tie everything together

^ also would just like to highlight how gold tenderly holding silver and crystal's hands and giving them the feathers while thanking them for all the fun they've had together before he sacrifices himself and their absolute devastation when they think he's died is literally one of the best moments in all of pokespe and you can fight me i do not care. i love these three so fucking much

finally, i just want to say how much the end of this chapter feels like the end of an era. mato retiring as artist along with just where it leaves off story-wise... it feels like a very satisfying ending while still being open enough that it doesn't at all feel unnecessary that they continued way past here. that final illustration of the kanto and johto dexholders together after everything fills me with so much nostalgia its actually crazy

OK AND THATS BASICALLY ALL I HAVE TO SAY. i think despite just HOW many moving parts there are in this chapter, for the most part the pacing is good and everyone gets the right amount of screen time and development. even more minor characters like blaine or bill!

now that i've finally finishing writing all this, next stop on my journey is the mt silver training chapter!! i mentioned before that as a kid i actually had no idea that there was so much time between when it was written and where it actually takes place chronologically, since the site i read pokespe on back in the day just had it between GSC and R&S lol. i literally only found out it was made in fucking 2013 or whatever like a few days ago. shits crazy

but yes that should be a fun little thing to revisit :D and then i'll finally be caught up to where i randomly started with ruby & sapphire, and i can move onto FRLG!!!! see you then :)