#i think its mostly a narrative thing to the audience

[charmac]

why do you think dennis doesn't pursue any women in season 16? it's a huge contrast to how he is in previous seasons so it must be a deliberate writing choice & i've been dying to hear detailed theories about this

Every season for the past, well I don't even know how long, has always had some kind of 'Dennis pursuing women' narrative written in, for sure, but I think it's maybe less of a Dennis x Women plot, and more of a hard-scene reminder that this guy is a freak, he plays games, he is a sexual predator (and he's fucked up).

Take the last couple seasons: 13, Escapes; 14, Gets Romantic; 15, LW7; 16...Frank vs. Russia. These plots for Dennis are continuing to establish and reaffirm that this guy is in the 'dating' game for the hunt, to evolve and beat any challenge that presents itself. Sex is a game he needs to win at, and he continues to find new ways to approach that. We aren't seeing this side of Dennis' life so we know he's into women or that he has sex, we're seeing it because we're continuing to learn and understand that he's always playing a game, working a narrative. He's not out there dating or having sex for a connection, he never has. He's getting something else out of it.

I'm not sure I really have a theory, or even need to dig more than surface level here. I think Frank Vs. Russia is that same plot that you might say was 'missing' this season. It's the same thing, just men.

In Escapes we only learn Dennis has a sex escape room because Dee gets caught up in it, but he's been doing this. We were none-the-wiser, because Dennis' sex life only rears its head to the Gang when the narrative calls for it. I see Frank vs. Russia as very similar (and same writer, look at that). We learn about The S.I.N.N.E.D. System because Dennis revealed it to Dee and Mac to get them off his back, but he's been doing this. It's the same narrative we've seen for years, really truly: Dennis pursues women people in creepy (or freaky) ways because sex is a game he needs to play in order to win.

Why don't we see him pursue any women in Season 16? Well, we don't often get more than one Dennis sex plot, but I genuinely think having this as the stand-alone sex (in the butt) plot of the Season just better highlights the fact that Dennis "anyone can get a guy to bang them once" Reynolds plays for both teams, in equally messed up ways.

So, it's not a seasonally "Dennis pursues women" plot, but a seasonally "Dennis has a fucked up relationship with sex" narrative :)

[vidavalor]

I don't think that The Kiss is the big reveal in The Final 15.

Neither is Aziraphale getting into the lift/elevator.

The very last thing we hear-- Tori Amos' cover of "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square"-- being the song Crowley hears in The Bentley?

That's actually the biggest thing in 2.06.

It's arguably one of the biggest reveals in the series to date. How so?

Because this moment canonizes that "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" is not only a song that the show chose to play over the end of S1 for only the audience to hear... it is, indisputably, Crowley and Aziraphale's song.

This moment says that they have a song.

This moment says that their song contains lyrics about being "so in love" that "the whole world seemed upside down."

This moment says, without any doubt, that they're already a couple.

It exists in a way that completely undercuts any idea that the kiss that occurred a few moments prior was their first one-- even as the story is also designed in such a way as to lead some viewers to think that it might be.

This moment takes the heavily-evidenced-but-still-kinda-theoretical and makes it clear to the audience that they were correct about what they put together about Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship to this song in S1.

It says that when we heard the pianist in The Ritz scene in 1.06 playing an instrumental version of this song? As we suspected, it wasn't a coincidence. As of 2.06, we can go ahead and see that bit of S1 for what it was-- that she was playing it because Crowley and Aziraphale had requested it, wanting to hear their song.

It says that those of us whose ideas that this song might have meaning to Crowley and Aziraphale based off of Aziraphale's "dine at The Ritz" in 1967 and the song containing the lyrics about angels dining at The Ritz, along with how much of a relationship conversation 1967 is, were correct.

It says that Crowley and Aziraphale have a song. A romantic one, with unambiguous lyrics about being in love. A song they already had prior to S1 because they requested it at The Ritz in the S1 finale. A song they already had prior to 1967, when Aziraphale was using its lyrics as shorthand between them.

In S1, Tori Amos' cover of their song was used non-diegetically over the end of the season-- meaning, only we could hear it. The characters could not. Clues existed that the song had meaning to them but we didn't have overt proof of that in S1.

We do now.

We do as of the end of S2, where the same cover of the song was used diegetically. It's now one that Crowley can hear as well as we can, as The Bentley plays it for him. Likely because Aziraphale asked it to. It now exists within the characters' story-- not just as music playing for our benefit over their story.

I think that this ten or so seconds of the song playing when Crowley gets into The Bentley are given to us so we can reframe our ideas of what is going on-- especially what was happening in The Kiss scene-- around this knowledge.

Like most of Good Omens' important things, it's a narrative magic trick. It's information relevant to what came before it that is only received later. Its existence then changes the context of the prior scenes and recontextualizes our understanding of what we were watching.

Right now, the audience is looking mostly here:

And, if they're not, they're looking over here:

And there's certainly much to look at in those both of those moments, for sure, but... the actual last moment of S2 is the big thing. It's the one that says that this isn't a story about a couple that has never gotten together; this is a story about a forbidden, secret romance.

They're a couple who has spent their existence pretending they're not one-- not to one another but to the world. The last few years? Not really, as Crowley said... but, also, not really openly, either. There's a South Downs Cottage with their name on it in The Finale, though...

[mysticalalleycat]

I think something really interesting about TMA vs TMP so far is the different use of suspense, which I actually think "the cake scenes" (as I've started to call them in my head) are really good shorthand for.

In TMA, we spend four seasons very slowly getting the hang of things alongside the protagonists. We take all of that time to slowly understand how the world works, how fucked up it is, and how fucked up it can get. The narrative waits until we have a deep understanding of that (although maybe not entirely complete yet), until the characters and world have hit a new, very deep low. Then it throws us back to the start. It gives us cake scene number one (Jon's birthday) and says "Hey remember how when this started they were all (mostly) happy and just regular people working a kinda weird job and they were all friends and had joy?" And it hurts! Because we know how bad it is now, so the sharp contrast to how it was before it all started hits hard!

TMA's suspense is built on the audience not understanding what's happening alongside the characters, so the depth of tragedy happening to them can only be understood in retrospect.

TMP doesnt rely on TMA entirely, but it's written with the understanding that the majority of its listeners will have listened to TMA. It knows that a lot of the audience may not know exactly what's going on here, but they know the general shape of the world and they know exactly how bad it can get (thanks MAG200).

Because it's writing for (mostly) that audience, TMP doesn't have to write about its tragedy only in retrospect. The suspense comes both from not knowing what's happening (like TMA) and from knowing exactly what's happening while the characters don't (whooo dramatic irony). The audience knows what the fears are and how they can effect the world--Sam and Alice don't.

So TMP's cake scene (Teddy's going away party) happens at the start. "Look at all these people being (mostly) happy and just regular people working a kinda weird job and all being friends and having joy! Doesn't it hurt knowing exactly how bad things could get for them?"

And it does. We are two episodes in and nothing has happened to Alice and Sam, but it's already very clear that we are audience to a tragedy. Even if they don't end up totally fucked, it's clear that their arcs will be tragic.

[whileyoureinschoolidothisallday]

Fixing MHA's Ending So It Follows Through With Its Core Themes (And It Basically Fixes Itself)

I don't like retconning at the best of times, but turning what started as essentially a Hope focused narrative into a "realistic" tragedy at the very last second is some wild work.

So I'm gonna do what I do best as a fic writer and fix it!!!!!

The Summary

So, I'm pretty sure all of us were on mostly the same page up until the very last panels of the Shigaraki fight (Having AFO being just "born evil" was probably the start of things not being great, but I'm willing to let that slide because it doesn't really effect the overall function of the story that much). Once that and the epilogue started is where I mostly saw people being like ????????? to a lot of choices, so I'm going to focus on those two sections only.

We're gonna be rewriting:

-The deaths of the Villains + Kurogiri (obvs)

-The overall post-War actions and reactions

-The continued existence of the Commission and the Hero Rankings

-Hawk's fate

-Spinner's fate

-A liiiiitle tweak to Chisaki's fate

-Slight tweaks to the Todorokis

-and finally What to DO with the Villains + Kurogiri now that they're alive

And we'll be starting with...

Toga

Now for a battle that was so beautiful, this really did end up completely falling apart.

I'm not gonna justify every single Villain Rescue I do, but Toga's really comes down to one simple reason for me:

Her bullies literally wanted her to die as atonement.

You don't...typically make your character's fate agree with their bullies or abusers (otherwise???? why are you explicitly portraying them as bullies and abusers to the audience if you want us to ultimately agree with them?????)

Throughout most of the story prior to this, Hori made it a staple in the show that dying for the cause, hurting yourself for the cause, martyring yourself or otherwise telling someone to kill themselves for the cause is a vile thing to do. So, it makes ZERO sense why he would suddenly retcon this at such a critical moment, especially since he already set the stage for it to be wrong in the first place.

(also does anyone also think it was weird/creepy that Hori LITERALLY has her do this with Twice and she very explicitly says "Don't be stupid I don't have to give all of my blood away"? No? Just me?)

Everything happens the same, she still thinks she's sacrificing herself, "If only, if only", blah blah blah

AND THEN...

Hawks

This is such low-hanging fruit plot-wise it actually feels offensive that it went nowhere

Nothing happens with Hawks. We all say it, fans and non-fans alike. He is wasted potential incarnate. His story is a circle and it so easily did not have to be that way because of one simple writing decision:

Hawks and Toga share a blood type.

Up until now, it really did seem like Hawks learned nothing from Jin's death. The first thing he says when he sees the clones is, "We have to kill them now!" But then, picture him still battered and broken from his fight with AFO, wingless, but there is still SOMETHING he can do to save someone's life.

And he puts the needle in his arm instead, and before she can question it, he tells her Jin would want her to live. He's not gonna make the same mistake twice.

(I also think it'd be nice if he said something like how lucky she is, to really go full circle with the Jin story, but I'm not trying dialogue here lol)

And that leads us to...

Shigaraki (and Kurogiri!)

This is a double feature because with the way I'm doing it, I can't save one without the other.

So, something that happens during this and is super anti-climactic and seemingly pointless is Midoriya losing his hands. He gets em back in like 2 seconds, because Eri gives him a surprise rewind almost immediately after. The actual point of it was just to show the brand new rule that physical damage that happens in the vestige world also happens in the real world, so that killing Shigaraki a few chapters later would still make sense.

We're gonna get rid of that rule entirely and just say that Midoriya does not lose his actual arms in the fight, and psychological damage in a ghost world does not reflect physically in reality (or idk. If you DO want that to happen, then just say the embers of the vestiges protected him one last time or something).

And because he doesn't lose his arms, Eri still has a surprise rewind to use.

But before we get to that, we actually have to save Shigaraki. So, here's the super complicated rescue rewrite I came up with. Ready?

Kicking AFO out of his brain and giving him back full control over his body simply does not kill him.

That's it!!!! That's really all that needed to happen!! It was a very conscious choice to make that kill him! It's actually more work and details to kill Shigaraki than it is to save him!! Hori already went out of his way to say that Nana's vestige protected him so that he wasn't completely swallowed by AFO, just so he could say goodbye before fading away anyway. What if, considering the fact that hatred of Nana is what damned him, love FROM Nana actually just plain ol saves him? Full stop? We come full circle. It would make it a fantastic mirror to the Todoroki fight and solidify the theme that love from your/a family, even a broken one, will save you!!

And then further in the background, Bakugou doesn't randomly kill (?????? Even after reading it again I'm still really confused about how Kurogiri dies. I think this is what happens?????) Kurogiri, and instead starts to lose control like they feared. But then, refusing to give up on him, Aizawa hits him with the now-available Rewind Juice and it finally, finally stabilizes his mind for good.

The day is saved.

And that just leaves...

Touya

Unfortunately my stupid husband can't stop trying to kill himself for 2 seconds despite my best efforts to convince him otherwise, so there's really nothing I can do about the extent of his injuries

However, there's LOTS I can do about the way we're treating said injuries! =D

First of all, because Touya is my favorite, I do wanna allow myself the space to briefly rant about how his entire situation was handled because brother. first of all. It's so incredibly obvious that he was supposed to die on the battlefield with his comrades. That man had no fuckin eyeballs by the end of that fight, bffr. And then it was like Hori remembered the thing about the noodles and was like 'oh shit I better at least wrap that up lol' so he brought him back--eyeballs and TEARDUCTS magically intact btw so naturally the audience with reading comprehension was like 'oh he's healing somehow I guess'--just to get that specific moment on the books (and maybe just to draw Touya in his Batman Who Laughs era because I mean he does look pretty sick in the tank) and then turned around and killed him again. With no explanation what the random functioning tearducts and magical regrowth of eyeballs was about.

Like...my guy, you ain't gotta do all that. Again, it's so much harder and more complicated to kill him than it is to keep him alive. Not to mention he was killed OFF-SCREEN. WE DON'T EVEN GET TO SEE ANY--IF ANY--CONVERSATIONS HE HAS WITH SHOUTO OR HIS FAMILY, WHICH WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF NOT KILLING HIM ON THE BATTLEFIELD. INSTEAD OF THE SEXY SHIRTLESS SERVING-FACE-AT-A-FUNERAL IMAGE OF TOUYA WE COULD'VE SEEN A FLASHBACK OF THEM TALKING AND HIM SMILING AND BEING HAPPY WITH THEM FOR WHATEVER TIME THEY HAD AND THAT STILL WOULD'VE BEEN MORE SATISFYING. Y'KNOW. BECAUSE THAT WAS THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT OF THE TODOROKI PLOTLINE?????????????VSSSBBNM,.;;PUSAAXXGHIIRWDFGG

But anyway.

Fixing Touya's death is really simple. We can do two things, actually.

Work with the deus-ex Ice Quirk a little bit, make the Phoenix Theory canon. Ice heals him, the tank is a giant fridge. Lo and behold, it would explain why he magically healed eyeballs and tearducts. It's an incredibly slow process, but eventually he'd heal enough to be out of the tank and in a normal hospital setting for the rest of his recovery. It also gives him a goal to pursue for the future, I.E learning how to control the new side of his powers and mayybeeee getting interested in studying Quirk Biology in the process 👀

He simply!!!!!! Doesn't die!!!!!!!!! Out of ALLLLLLL the MHA characters, I would 100% believe you if you told me that Touya Todoroki nevertheless persisted. That's like...his entire character. You don't even need to give me a reason. His entire character up until now has been 'the one that's somehow still alive' to the point that the fucking Dr. Eggman lookin ass mad scientist that brought him back to life in the first place (in WORSE condition) was like 'yeah no idea how he's still here that's scary'. I'm sorry, the entire fucking show I've had to see A. An old man without a face with a back alley ventilator system shoved directly into his stoma that's somehow fine and talking perfectly, and B. Another old man missing his ENTIRE digestive tract for years and is still up and walking around somehow with no G-tube or colostomy bag to be seen, so I think by the power of God and Anime, Touya could probably survive his injuries and it would be within the realm of believability for the show. In fact, it's LESS believable that he stayed alive through all that by spite alone and then when he finally gets offered love and acceptance, that determination and tenacity to stay alive suddenly goes out the window. If anything, it should've made him MORE determined to live.

Sorry I got carried away with that one. But there. Everyone is saved and the core themes are intact.

Now we just have...

The Overall Actions and Reactions Post-War

Gonna sum this up really quickly:

-The cameras never turned off. They're built for Quirk resistance because they're a fucking newscast in a Hero society if their technology broke every time there were heavy Quirk exchanges there would never be any fucking news. Making them conveniently lose footage so none of the civs can see the Villains humanity is just rubbing salt in the wound and serves no narrative purpose in line with pre-established themes. Everyone saw what was recorded, and it helped the Villains' cases for rehabilitation.

-We do not censor out this battle in future history books. Everyone is very familiar with the final fight and the events and circumstances leading up to it. It is not erased from public memory as soon as possible. In fact, it's frequently studied and referenced when making new policies to avoid making the same mistakes. Hori. Wtf.

-We do not reinstate the Hero Rankings in any way shape or form, and Shouto is the biggest voice in dismantling this system. Voila, this is now actually the story of how they all became the greatest Heroes, because they aren't ranked. They're all literally the greatest Heroes, and so will everyone after them.

-This IS actually portrayed in the epilogue, but yes, let's be LESS reliant on Heroes and police and MORE invested in the community!!!!!!! Even more so than what's portrayed!!!!! Take another bit from Spider-Man: Anyone can wear the mask!!!!!! Let's make a world where Heroes have too much time on their hands and not just make more of them, right????????? Remember that????????

-WE DO NOT REINSTATE THE COMMISSION. WE GOT RID OF THEM CORRUPT HOES FOR A REASON!!!!!! NO A CHANGE OF THE GUARD IS NOT ENOUGH TO FIX IT WE'RE NOT 7YRS OLD!!!!! HORI. WTF. The only thing I want them to be in charge of is licensing Heroes. I want these fuckers to be the DMV of the Hero world and that's IT!!!!!!!

Which brings us to...

Hawks' Fate

I don't even fuck with this man like that, but he did not deserve to become CEO of the organization that groomed and abused him since he was a child when all he wanted to do was chase tail and fuck off to a beach somewhere. Considering the fact that he also, like, killed people he shouldn't have, let him retire like Endeavor, please. We're done giving the old guard power and privilege, especially when they explicitly did not and do not want it (and when they did have it, they misused it). The only thing I want this man involved with is Toga's recovery alongside Uraraka. Specifically, I want him paying for it and anything else she might need. Fuck it, you know what, make HIM Endeavor's personal aide instead of Rei!!!! He gets to be a little simp and Endeavor gets a replacement son to fill Natsu's spot. Everyone wins.

(He does deserve that hairline tho. I ain't fixin that.)

So that leaves...

Spinner's Fate

I'm not changing much here, besides the fact that now Shiggy is alive and I think they should be ✨Roommates✨ eventually (and obviously he's gonna be much less riddled with survivor's guilt). I still think he should write that book, but I also think that with his multiple Quirks, he should team up with scientists to understand how Quirks work in the body (and maybe get some of them removed from his).

And next...

Chisaki's Fate

I just think this guy needs to be in the same place as the other Villains, at least for a fraction of the time. Why is he just...out. He was also in that daycare and could definitely use some help before we just let him loose in the streets because he said sorry (Can the League just say sorry then??????????).

I do think afterwards he should get involved with something chemistry related tho, cause those bullets of his came in clutch.

And on that note...

The Todorokis' Fates

And by Todorokis I mean two of them, specifically Rei lol

Yeah, she's not gonna be Endeavor's nurse for the rest of her life lol. That man has more money than God, he can hire an aide like everybody else. In fact, they're not even living together. Do you remember how earlier in the series, he gave them a new house? So they could live away from him and he would be in the old house by himself? I liked that plan. Let's go back to that plan. I'm not gonna go as far as to make them divorce, if they're together they're together, but I think separation is a necessary must at this point because if they MUST stay together, they should at least try dating for once???????? Girl was actually bought like maybe they figure out if they even still like each other at all, or ever did.

(Also, I have to laugh as a motorized wheelchair user that Hori drew her pushing Endeavor all happy and blissfully. Motorized wheelchairs are not meant to be pushed like that lol. They have push features for emergencies and small around-the-house distances of course, but uh, mine's 350 pounds without me in it. It's not usually anyone's first choice.)

But there is one more Todoroki I have a lot to talk about, so that finally brings us to...

What Do We Do With The Villains + Kurogiri Now That They're Alive???????????

We take everything from comic books except what would actually makes sense with the story lol

Surprise!!!!!! We're doing Arkham!!!!!! This is another low-hanging fruit thing that I'm almost a little offended that it wasn't implemented. Obviously Arkham has its problems in the Batman canon that we're gonna try to avoid, but I honestly think Batman villains and the core MHA Villains are pretty similar in their execution in that they are primarily mentally ill victims of society who have done very terrible things, but the audience (and Batman himself) is actively rooting for them to get better over just rotting in jail or being killed. Two-Faced has killed sooooo many people and has relapsed a ton, but I ultimately still want to see him get better because he was Batman's best friend once and a good man, and what happened to him was a tragedy. I think all the Villains deserve a space where they can humanely heal from their issues and gain support, while also being safely separated from society while they're still dangerous to themselves and others.

Oh, but Batman and his endless money bought Arkham. Who do we know who has access to trust fund money, an investment in the mentally ill, and the bonus of a medical background that could fund such a thing?

Ladies and Gentlemen, please put your hands together for...

Natsuo Todoroki!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My mans graduates from college and immediately uses his money as a doctor and his inheritance to open up Rindou Sanctuary, in honor of his mother Rei and named after her favorite flower (I don't think he'd want to give Enji the satisfaction of his last name attached to his greatest achievement). He's head doctor on site and the board, and visits Touya every shift once he's healed enough to be transferred to the facility. He is very invested in his brother's treatment and refuses to lose him again--at least not until they're proper old men.

It is publicly funded by donors and taxes alike, and Enji, naturally, is always the highest donor. Call it reparations.

And there you have it! That's how to fix the epilogue. It took longer to type than think about. I could care less about canon shipping, so y'all can keep that (or not). I'm just here to fix the structural problems that have no reason to be here at this point. As I said, once I redrew lines Hori already set up and just abandoned, it pretty much fixed itself.

Hope you enjoyed it and I hope it eases the grief a little!!!!! They're alive look I fixed it!!!!!! <3

(also feel free to use anything I said in here in your own fix-it fics!!!! Just tag me so I can read them 👀)

[horse-girl-anthy]

essay on the UFO motif in RGU (and YKA) under the cut

one of the things that makes aliens so interesting is their versatility. YKA uses the classic alien invasion trope as the set up for its narrative; aliens as outsiders, infiltrating human society and sowing paranoia. as anyone who's seen the show knows, this premise is soon subverted. fear of the other is used by the invisible storm girls to justify securitization and eventual militarization, while the main characters work to break down the self-other dichotomy.

RGU doesn't feature its UFO motif so prominently; or anyway, it's not present from the beginning of the show, but instead scattered throughout. this marginality does not make the motif any less important, however. let's take a look at the text to see how the motif itself is used.

in almost all instances, UFOs and aliens are associated with the shadow girls. the first time they're mentioned is in episode 9.

in the skit, A-Ko insists she saw a UFO, while B-Ko says it must have just been a shooting star. they argue about this for a while, until A-Ko changes the topic to disillusionment: she knows that Santa Claus, wizards, fairies, princes on white horses, and kind-hearted, true friends only exist in fantasy. but she begs to be allowed to keep her belief in UFOs.

the inclusion of UFOs in this scene may not seem particularly meaningful. the skit draws a constrast between childhood illusions and adult cynicism, notably including "true friends" on the list of fantasy creatures. with hindsight, though, this choice does seem purposeful. maybe A-Ko wants to believe in what the UFOs represent, which is more clearly spelled out as the show goes on.

in episode 12, the shadow girls list "normal things" for people to do: study normal subjects, get a normal job, fall in love normally, get married normally, have a normal family, and live a normal life. but they conclude that being normal "has nothing to do with them" and proceed to board a UFO so that they can "go back to what's normal for them."

this is an obvious parallel to Utena's arc in the episode, where she rejects how society wants her to act and reclaims her own normal. but it's also telling us something about the shadow girls.

the shadow girls don't just "want to believe" in UFOs--it seems that they are aliens. they're "from Planet Kashira" according to Ikuhara; "Inhabitants of Planet Kashira" is the title of the shadow girls track on the first OST.

I think what this is telling us is that the shadow girls are outside observers. they're not natural citizens of Ohtori but exist at a remove from it. they can interact with the story, but they're a constant reminder that something beyond it exists--that the "rules of the rose crest" are not the laws of the universe.

from episode 13 on, the shadow girls put on their plays after returning to earth from their UFO. episode 24 ends with an encounter between Suzuki, Yamada, Tanaka and the UFO. we see the "monkey-catching-robot" again; once it successfully bags its prey, it enters the craft and flies away.

I could probably provide a reading of this scene if I tried, but mostly, I think it's there to round out the Black Rose arc. it's rather tongue-in-cheek; the UFOs are a part of the silly side of RGU. this eccentricity is humorous, but in my view also tied to the theme of individuality, which requires unapologetic strangeness. there's also something to be said for RGU's use of the inexplicable and uncanny, which often have a far deeper impact on the audience than concrete story elements.

in the final arc, the shadow girl plays begin with their UFO crashing into the chairman's tower. this is as clear a metaphor as one can hope for: the shadow girls and their alienness are a destabilizing force. maybe they're not revolutionaries--the crash appears to be accidental--but their randomness, their strangeness, their lack of propriety are a threat to the order, the masculine rule represented by Akio.

that's about it for the shadow girls. but as I mentioned, aliens are brought up in another context: the episode "Nanami's Egg."

the line "Nanami's some kind of space alien" is rather famous, and that part of the episode isn't hard to read. she's worried that she's seen as a freak, an other, by her peers. however, we also get a return of the motif at the end of the episode.

after abandoning her egg, Nanami is unable to put it out of her mind and runs out into the night to find it. she sings and dances with it, but after a bedtime conversation between Utena and Anthy, the show cuts back to Nanami, now bereft of her egg again.

she finds it, grown 100 times larger, propped up in the woods. she promises never to abandon it again, but it seems not to forgive her, shooting strange beams at her in attack. then it fades and lays before her, cracked open.

I think this scene is adding a new dimension to the egg metaphor: in the final moments of the episode, the egg becomes a symbol of Nanami's self. she tried to be rid of it, as she killed the cat--but just as she did then, she found herself regretting it. but she's unable to forgive herself for it, feeling that she's betrayed herself and lost something very important for the sake of a false normality.

to finish this essay, I'd like to reflect on how the motif of alienness is reflected in the larger themes of RGU. in the episode 11 commentary, Ikuhara wrote the following:

I tried to live true to myself. “You’re just like an alien,” someone said to me one day. They must have been telling me, “You’re not normal.” In other words, apparently “living true to yourself” means “living as an alien.” And so I became “an alien all alone in this world.”

alienation, individuality, and deviance are all major themes in RGU. the shadow girls present a positive image of what it means to be an alien: they are carefree and unconstrained. however, for the other characters, being an alien--an individual--is not so easy. it sets them apart from the social order and may even put them in danger. therefore, RGU depicts the defiant joy of deviation, along with the pain that often accompanies it. individuality may be a threat to the system, but that's exactly why it's difficult to achieve.

finally, "alienness" serves as a great metaphor for self-other encounters, as I've touched on throughout this essay. if we are individuals, that means we are fundamentally separate from one another, because we cannot experience each other's experience. thus, we are each of us aliens to each other.

Anthy asks Utena this question as if she truly does not know, as if Utena is some mysterious being encountered in a dream. they are drawing closer together, and so the fact of their alienness is only becoming more pronounced. it will take the rest of the show to find out if contact is possible.

[clairedaring]

Ahead of the Spare Me Your Mercy Finale premieres, here's an interview with screenwriter Lux on the portrayal of Euthanasia in the series

(source: mgronline; machine translated with minimal edits, my apologies for any inaccuracies)

The series "Spare Me Your Mercy" (Thai title: การุณยฆาต), airing on Channel One31, is approaching its conclusion. Starring Tor Thanapob Leeratanakajorn and JJ Krisanapoom Pibulsonggram, the series is based on a novel by Dr. Sam Isaree Siriwannakulkorn under the pen name Sammon. Known for works such as Manner of Death, Triage, Bite Me, and the recent 4MINUTES, Sammon's novels often intertwine themes of BL (Boys' Love) with medical narratives.

However, in this Channel One adaptation, the producers emphasized that the focus is not on the BL aspect but primarily on the medical themes. Lux Sirilux Srisukon, the creator and scriptwriter of Spare Me Your Mercy and a skilled member of the production house, explained the reasons behind adapting this story and delved into the nuances of the plot. Even though euthanasia is not yet legal in Thailand, the story explores how patients may make end-of-life decisions without violating medical ethics.

“Sammon's novels are mostly BL novels and include numerous love scenes. However, we deliberately chose not to present it as a BL story. While the characters are two men in love, we approached it with a dark drama style. The characters are gay, but we don’t offer [fan]service in every episode or include NC (explicit) scenes. This was our intention from the beginning when we started making this series.

We did this not because of censorship, airtime or actors. But because what we are trying to tell was heavy and serious. Having NC would steal the attention of the story because what we were going to talk about was dark drama and euthanasia. Some fans of the novel might be disappointed, but we think we have other fun things to offer, even if there’s no NC scenes. Our way of thinking is that this is not like a series that serves [the audience] (t/n: I understand Lux is trying to say that this isn't a feel-good, healing vibes serving drama).

For instance, in traditional male-female dramas, if the protagonists fall in love, they simply do. Similarly, this story is like any typical drama—it’s not about portraying same-sex or opposite-sex love, but it is just two people who love each other. We depict love scenes the same way we would in any regular drama. Viewers will see that these two characters love each other because we don’t see gay love as different from heterosexual love. It’s just two people finding each other, forming a bond, and falling in love.

When we spoke with the original author, she was also very supportive of this shift because she also wants to highlight the theme of euthanasia. Sammon's focus is also in line with the adaptation but since she is also a Sao Y and a BL novel writer, she understood her audience and enjoyed writing in that style.”

Lux says that she wants to clear up the misconceptions that many people may have that euthanasia must be caused by illness/ medical conditions, not because of life dissatisfaction or laziness and want to inject death.

“We wanted to portray what euthanasia really is because there are many misconceptions. People often misunderstand it in two extreme ways. First, they see it as equivalent to suicide. Second, they see it as an escape for those dissatisfied with life. For instance, some on X (re: Twitter) think, ‘I don’t need to think about the future; I’ll just live my life and then get an injection to die.’ That’s not possible anywhere in the world. That's a misconception.

Euthanasia doesn’t mean you can request an injection to die simply because you’re tired of life. Even in Europe, where euthanasia is legal, there are strict requirements. You must have a certified medical condition specified in the law, endorsed by at least two medical specialists, and the illness must be truly incurable and that you are waiting for death. The purpose of this law is to prevent these individuals from suffering. Instead of suffering for another year, they can die. It's not about being bored with life or lazy to live or not liking yourself when you're old, so you let them inject you with a lethal dose. They don't do that. Many people misunderstand that if you don't want to live, you can go for euthanasia.

But on the other side, some people say they wish the law would pass so they wouldn't have to take care of themselves when they're old. I'm bored, so I'll just go and get an injection. That's not how it works. Even in countries where it's legal, they won't do it. Or if a father has an illness that is still treatable, they won't allow it either. It’s only available for those truly nearing death, as certified by medical professionals. In cases where it is allowed, in countries where this law has been passed, as I explained earlier, and they only provide euthanasia to the relieve suffering of patients who are waiting for death.

And there are some countries that have already passed the law on euthanasia, and they have changed their minds and gone back to using the old law. The term 'euthanasia' itself is not beautiful. There can be many legal loopholes.

For example, a patient is very sick and old, but they don't want to die, but their relatives don't want to take care of them. They go and arrange for euthanasia. But if there aren't laws for it, there will be legal loopholes to allow murder. Some people may not be able to move or walk, but they still want to live. They don't want to die. The most important thing about euthanasia that doctors must discuss, which we will demonstrate in this case, is the patient's wishes. You must do it with awareness and a genuine desire to do it yourself, not pressured by relatives.

It's not like, "Mom, I can't take care of you. You're such a burden. Let's take you to get an injection." We understand that this is a sensitive issue. We don't want to cause arguments, but we want you to understand what we're trying to convey. Think seriously. Because if the day comes when the law needs to be changed and you don't understand it, when you ask yourself if you really want the law to be changed, we won't be able to answer because we don't really understand it.

Euthanasia in Thailand — Is It Suitable?

“Euthanasia is a thought-provoking topic. We interviewed doctors, and they said that euthanasia isn't suitable for wealthy people. If you ask a doctor in an expensive hospital, he will say that euthanasia is not suitable for Thailand because [the hospitals] already have everything that patients need to get through their final days well. But the condition is that you need money.

However, for poor people, just getting painkillers once a month is difficult. They have to endure the suffering. The doctor who wrote this article is the one who visits patients' homes. In small hospitals, when they encounter such cases, they think, 'Maybe there really needs to be something. Isn't euthanasia a necessity?'. Poor people with terminal cancer, in excruciating pain, but there is no one to take care of him, bring him medicine, or take them to see a doctor. Do they have to lie down and suffer like that? How are they supposed to live?' The accessibility to and public health welfare of our people are not equal. This is what we really wanted to convey.

I understand that BL fans might be disappointed, but if we focus on NC scenes to make people swoon, the core of the story will change. The weight of the story will go more towards that than the presentation of euthanasia.

The series will also feature other things to consider, one of them being a ‘living will,’ which has been legally recognized for decades. You can write a letter of intent stating that you are seriously ill, unresponsive, a vegetable, and do not need to be resuscitated. It is similar to a will, a 'patient's will', however, if you become unconscious and don't have full mental capacity, you won't be able to do this. And the doctor cannot not save our life because it is unethical. If doctors do not help, it will become a criminal offense, which is the same as letting us die.

This is legal and there's laws for it, but no one knows about it. It can be done without a lawyer, just with witnesses. We make one copy for ourselves and another for the hospital where we receive treatment. If we have the symptoms listed in the document, the doctor can let us go without providing treatment. We have to do it ourselves, relatives can't do it for us. This is not a legal loophole, there is a law for it, it's just not promoted. This is legal tool that can be used instead of euthanasia because it comes from the patient themselves. Everyone can become terminally ill. Cancer can happen to anyone. And when you're in those situations, how would you deal with it if euthanasia is not legal? You have to think ahead about what you will do."

tagging @recentadultburnout who can help vet for me if there are any inaccuracies from these machine translations

[cherrytea556]

Lore Rekindled; The Lore Olympus that should have been

To be honest, I checked out the rekindled version before the original one and now having reading the original as well, it's extremely odd. Y'know goodbye volcanic high where the original was a mess but a group of 4chaners made a parody game which turned out to be of better quality than the original? This is like that but replace 4chan with tumblr users, mainly @genericpuff whose series is pinned in their tumblr blog where you can check all of the episodes, especially updated ones. In this post, I will be praising this series of how it fixes the problems of the original

The Pacing

One thing I notice about lore olympus and lore rekindled is the pacing. Not just the flow of the story but where it chooses to focus on. Now in lore olympus, the pacing is kinda a mess and its mainly to do with what it focuses on. An example is the magazine plotpoint; in the original, its basically kinda there in between doses to focus on other stuff like persephone and hades together, persephone's sa (i'll get to that later), eros story, zeus and hera etc...The flow generally isnt that bad per say (except for persephone's sa cuz that was way too quick) but for a story meant to be a romance between hades and persephone, you'd think it idk, it would focus on persephone and hades specifically, not eros which is another example of; its flashbacks. Eros specifically has such a dragged out flashback in episode 12 which we didnt need or at least with that much exposition when it should've naturally expand in the story and that's what rekindled does. The magazine plotline has turned into the first conflict of persephone and hades as we see how it affects their lives and relationships. This works for its pacing better because it doesn't give you too much stuff to jumble with, making the narrative more concise and easier to understand where the story is going. And with the flashbacks, rekindled cuts out the fat in the flashbacks from the original to a perfect balance where it gives exposition of the characters while also leaving mystery for the audience to be intrigued, my favourite one would have to be this (though it more of a nightmare than a flashback specifically speaking);

It's of persephone in a greenhouse her mother placed her in with this red eye thing following her from outside the greenhouse. I have no idea of this lurker if its her metaphorical rage or a danger in her life but either way, i am intrigued by its presentation.

The Characters

When reading lore rekindled and lore olympus, the characters are definetly an odd experience. For lore olympus, the characters arent exactly uh....great per say. I think the main reason for this is how their ultilised, with characters like eros, hera, hectate etc being there to mostly be a matchmaker for hades and persephone even if it was initially seen as wrong like with hera and hectate, be antagonistic as a way to have conflict between hades and persephone like minthe, demeter and recently leuce even if ones had reasons too like minthe with hades emotionally cheating on her and demeter because lets be honest, she had a point. Then there's hades and persephone, whoo boy where to start with them.

Hades starts off as a creep eyeing at persephone during a party, specifically at her body and still lusts persephone even being aware that shes 19 and he's 2000 years old. Also is a shitty boss, father AND contributes to slavery with it while being adressed in some way, doesnt change him which isnt good for a character that's meant to be the main protagonists love interest.

Persephone though, I can get the self insert vibes. From favouritism towards the story, being who most of the men in the story are attracted too, portrayed as a 'cinnamon roll' (they actually said that early on in the story, im not kidding) who cant do no wrong. She acts like a teenager rather than a young adult which makes the scenes where shes sexualised just more uncomfortable (and they already unnecessarily were) along with adding that uncomfortability to the romance

But with rekindled, they expanded on the characters much more than they originally were. Persephone for instance has turned from a 'sexy baby' legal teenager to an actual young relatable adult with agency and allows her to screw up (e.g, getting drunk on her own rather than eros drunking her). Her adult attitude makes the romance between her and hades not only more palpable, but also strays away from the infantilisation/uncomfortable sexualisation of her character which is nice to see. Hades also is written well in the series from how it acknowledges his faults while still making him likable. And thats the same for every character really, their personalities are much more fleshed out and nuanced which makes their characters feel real to life, gaining effectiveness for more emotional scenes with them. An interesting thing too is that they even expanded the magazine guy's character from making fake news for profit into feeling guilt over what they done, standing up for persephone which is a pretty nice change.

No Sa Plotline

Not like you cant have sa in your story ever but if you never planned it from the beginning and only did when people tell you that the scene you drew from your comic was sa then....maybe just not do it. Lore olympus does exactly that where while an attempt was made, it goes on to retcon it into making apollo (the guy who sa'd persephone) into a lesser evil like that would made a difference instead of just cutting it out from the very beginning. Lore rekindled thankfully just made apollo into his pilot version, a shitty bf but more likeable and expanded upon (which should have been his portrayal from day 1). His shittiness doesnt come up in the story, more like self absorbness/egotisticalness although with its recent chapter of the magazine guy offering persephone lunch, it might reveal some cracks or at least further down the story it will be revealed to us which futhers how effective rekindled character writing is in how its expansion of characters would give us the feels. That or portray him as not a good match for persephone, either way much better than the original.

Artstyle

Lore olympus has a pretty good artstyle (at least in s1/the early episodes, s3 is just kinda goofy) but lore rekindled has got a good artstyle which is on top, more consistent too. Here's some examples;

Comedy

It's objectively funnier than lore olympus, no question asked

All in all, if you want to read lore olympus, i recommend you to read the lore rekindled one instead as it's better in every way. Give it a read.

[hamletthedane]

Hamlet’s Age

Not to bring up an age-old debate that doesn’t even matter, but I have been thinking recently how interesting Hamlet’s age is both in-text and as meta-text.

To summarize a whole lot of discussion, we basically only have the following clues as to Hamlet’s age:

Hamlet and Horatio are both college students at Wittenberg. In Early Modern/Late Renaissance Europe, noble boys typically began their university education at 14 and usually completed at their Bachelor’s degree by 18 or 19. However, they may have been studying for their Master’s degrees, which was typically awarded by age 25 at the latest. For reference, contemporary Kit Marlowe was a pretty late bloomer who received a bachelor’s degree at 20 and a master’s degree at 23.

Hamlet is AGGRESSIVELY described as a “youth” by many different characters - I believe more than any other male shakespeare character (other than 16yo Romeo). While usage could vary, Shakespeare tended to use “youth” to mean a man in his late teens/very early 20s (actually, he mostly uses it to describe beardless ‘men’ who are actually crossdressing women - likely literally played by young men in their late teens)

King Hamlet is old enough to be grey-haired, but Queen Gertrude is young enough to have additional children (or so Hamlet strongly implies)

Hamlet talks about plucking out the hairs of his beard, so he is old enough to at least theoretically have a beard

In the folio version, the gravedigger says he became a gravedigger the day of Hamlet’s birth, and that he’s be “sixteene here, man and boy, thirty years.” However, it’s unclear if “sixteene” means “sixteen” or “sexton” (ie has he worked here for 16 years but is 30 years old, or has he been sexton there for thirty years?)

Hamlet knew Yorick as a young child, and the gravedigger says Yorick was buried 23 years ago. However, the first quarto version version of Hamlet says “dozen years” instead of “three and twenty.” This suggests the line changed over time. (Or that the bad quarto sucks - I really need to make that post about it, huh…)

Yorick is a skull, and according to the gravedigger’s expertise, he has thus been dead for at least 7-8 years - implying Hamlet is at least ~15yo if he remembers Yorick from his childhood

One important thing sometimes overlooked - Claudius takes the throne at King Hamlet’s death, not Prince Hamlet. That is mostly a commentary on English and French monarchist politics at the time, but it is strange within the internal text. A thirty year old Hamlet presumably would have become the new monarch, not the married-in uncle (unless Gertrude is the vehicle through which the crown passes a la Mary I/Phillip II - certainly food for thought)

Honestly, Hamlet is SO aggressively described as being very young that I’m fairly confident the in-text intention is to have him be around 18-23yo. Placing his age at 30yo simply does not make much sense in the context of his descriptors, his narrative role, and his status as a university student.

However, it doesn’t really matter what the “right” answer is, because the confusion itself is what makes the gravedigger scene so interesting and metatextual. We can basically assume one of the following, given the folio text:

Hamlet really is meant to be 30yo, and that was supposed to surprise or imply something to the contemporary audience that is now lost to us

Older actors were playing Hamlet by the time the folio was written down, and the gravedigger’s description was an in-text justification of the seeming disconnect between age of actor and description of “youth”

Older actors were playing Hamlet by the time the folio was set down, and the gravedigger’s description was an in-text JOKE making fun of the fact that a 30-something year old is playing a high-school aged boy. This makes sense, as the gravedigger is a clown and Hamlet is a play that constantly pokes fun at its own tropes and breaks the fourth wall for its audience

The gravedigger cannot count or remember how old he is, and that’s the joke (this is the most common modern interpretation whenever the line isn’t otherwise played straight). If the clown was, for example, particularly old, those lines would be very funny

Any way you look at it, I believe something is echoing there. It seems like this is one of the many moments in Hamlet where you catch a glimpse of some contemporary in-joke about theater and theater culture* that we can only try to parse out from limited context 430 years later. And honestly, that’s so interesting and cool.

*(My other favorite example of this is when Hamlet asks Polonius about what it was like to play Julius Caesar in an exchange that pokes fun of Polonius’ actor a little. This is clearly an inside-joke directed at Globe regulars - the actor who played Polonius must have also played Julius Caesar in Shakespeare’s play, and been very well reviewed. Hamlet’s joke about Brutus also implies the actor who played Brutus is one of the main cast in Hamlet - possibly even the prince himself, depending on how the line is read).

[howtofightwrite]

Now you got me thinking...I've been thinking about writing a fic where the (in-universe) desensitization of violence for the main characters is a running theme. My main issue, however, is managing the violence within said narrative because, as you've said before, violence has diminishing returns. While I don't want it to be a gorefest from start to finish, I do want part of the horror to be having to engage in it, no matter what steps are taken to avoid it. If I'm not careful, I could end up with a weaker story for all the violence in it. What could I do to maintain this theme without it losing its impact due to these diminishing returns?

So, there's two different things going on here, and ironically, it's the same term, and mostly the same process.

When I'm talking about your audience becoming desensitized to violence, it's more that they become acclimated to the degree of violence you're comfortable with exposing them to. Again, “diminishing returns,” because as you expose them to more violence, they become more acclimated to that violence, and the shock value will subside. Similarly, the ability to build tension on the threat of violence occurring falls off when you're willing to engage in violence, but that doesn't mean you can't build tension, just that you need to be a little more careful about establishing those stakes.

Also, when most people write violence, they tend to establish implicit boundaries. It may be that only certain characters engage in violence. It may that certain areas are exempted from violence. At very mechanical abstraction, with some writers, you can tell when they've introduced a location that is exempt from violence. Even if you're getting into diminishing returns, violating these kinds of boundaries can keep the violence fresher than you'd expect. The formula of slasher films put a lot of effort into maintaining shock value by creating misleading boundaries that you'll pick up on and then violating them in new and novel ways.

Outside of some genuinely stomach churning violence, you're not likely to permanently move the needle for your readers. You're not actually desensitizing them to violence; just your willingness to depict violence.

I feel like I need to make a clarification: Too much violence doesn't mean the story will be bad. Normally, I offer advice with the assumption that you'll want to manage and maintain as much shock value as you can from your violence. However, that's not the only valid approach. That said, too much violence can cause your readers to disconnect from the work, so that is a legitimate consideration. Also, this doesn't mean the story loses impact. Unless the violence is the story, which is a somewhat weird edge case, violence won't necessarily reduce the impact of the story as a whole.

The example of slasher films, earlier, really does illustrate what I mean when I'm saying that lots of violence (even gratuitous violence) isn't going to necessarily mean that a story will be bad. (Though, this could spiral into a much deeper argument about the artistic merits of that genre.) To some extent, your choice of genre already starts to prepare the audience for a more violent experience. You're preemptively trading shock value for a higher baseline.

The second thing is your character being desensitized to violence. While there is something to be said for getting your audience into your character's head space to the point that they accept it as their own, doing that with desensitization to violence is extraordinarily difficult. (And, really, it's a tricky route to go in general. In most cases, the audience will simply assign whatever dissatisfaction they have onto you or the work, rather than realizing you were being clever.)

So, how do you show someone is desensitized to violence, without trying to simultaneously traumatize your audience? You show the consequences of that desensitization. This can show up in a character's sense of humor, their overall outlook. They may be more clinical about violence, more casual about its consequences (at least, superficially.) They might have an incredibly dark sense of humor, which might not come up most of the time.

In a larger context, a character who has been desensitized to violence may come across as basically normal, outside of a narrow band where certain concepts don't bother them. This is especially true with a specific brand of military humor, where violence has been rendered mundane for the individual, and the people they interact with on a regular basis.

Now, audience desensitization to violence can create a very weird situation. Where an absence of violence is more unsettling. Not because they're worried about what could happen, but because they're waiting for it all hell to break loose. It's one thing to simply call it, “tension,” but it is a very distinct kind of anxiety you can invoke, if you're careful. In the opening of a story, when the genre is clearly established, I've seen this compared to the ratchets on a roller coaster's first ascent. Everyone knows what they're here for, everyone's here for the ride, click, click... and then the lights go out, and the screaming starts.

I'm trying to make it sound easy, but violence is one of the more challenging things to write. That doesn't mean it's impossible, and you don't need to sit down and carefully sketch out every detail before you get going. The biggest thing to be careful of are that you don't want to overuse it, but you have a lot of flexibility to tell the story you want with the amount of violence you need to communicate that story.

Though, it might take a few tries until you get a tone you're happy with.

-Starke

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[doublel27]

I thought joong was straight? He is quite into dunk lips but beyond that i thought straight. I don't even read him as bi?

Look, I neither actually know nor care what Joong’s sexual orientation is. That’s between him and whomever he chooses to tell. And most of my Joong knowledge is adjacent to my knowledge of FKT, AouBoom, EarthMix and DaouOffroad because he’s close with all of them. I more know of him then know him, so I could be missing stuff.

I would say, in regards to your ask, Joong doesn’t appear to have the painful knowing that often comes along with growing up queer in a society that doesn’t want you to be that a lot of other queer people use as a tell to identify each other. The thing that makes us, as queer folx, hesitate or get shy when it comes to things straight people wouldn’t think twice of. And while I do use that in my analysis sometimes, I also know members of Gen Z across the world actively work to resist that shyness and that shame that comes with internalized homophobia and honestly the real-world consequences that can come from being proudly out.

What I do know is he is 1000% into the fanservice portion of his job. Now either it’s his job and he’s having the best time being gay for pay, its his job and he’s excellent at pretending to have the best time pretending to be gay, or he is just shamelessly queer and has said fuck the knowing.

This man is out here yelling into full concert audiences “where is my teerak” and when the audience yells back saying SHHH! he didn’t ask for them, he asked for Teerak! He’s hugging and kissing Dunk at every opportunity and posting various shots of Dunk’s bare waist in crop tops during this THK filming area. He strikes me as the kind of man who reads the RPF about himself. In The Heart Killers book fair panel this past week, he talked about his love of reading BL novels and imaging himself and Dunk in the lead roles. Take that for what you will.

He also expressly stated in an interview alongside Dunk this week that he insisted on being paired with a partner the same height as him. Specifically stating, he thinks it’s a stereotype that one member of an imagined pair/branded couple is always bigger than the other and he didn’t want to lean into it. He wanted to go against that narrative.

As @firstkanaphans and @respectthepetty pointed out, he has a shit ton of queer friends and has close relationships with the members of GMM that are most likely to be clocked as queer (whether they are or not is also not expressly public knowledge and some folx that people clock as gay are straight because femme isn’t exclusive to gay men) Which again, either he’s the most down for the cause straight dude that exists or he’s also queer. My stance is considering he and Daou talk about how close they were to starving trying to make their first shot at being idols happen, I hope they’re having the best time in Thai BL fanservice land being shameless and getting that money.

To end, let me paraphrase my beloved Kit Harrington: to believe you can tell the level of queerness someone embodies just by looking at them or listening to their voice or looking at their hobbies, you’ve missed the entire part of Heartstopper.

Which is why I keep all my speculating to mostly private convos and tumblr where I can pretend celebrities don’t live because we’re all mostly anonymous on here and this site is hell to search. Don’t @ folx on Twitter or on their IGs or their TikToks. Don’t try and out people with YouTube videos. Let the Schrödinger’s Gays enjoy their boxes.

I know I have other anons (I see you. I am maybe coming soon) but this required less work on my end to compile my answers.

[twig-tea]

Why We Are Gives Me Anxiety

I have been fighting myself on this We Are post for weeks because I wanted to make sure I knew what I wanted to say and was able to say it. I feel the need to say off the top that I don’t begrudge anyone who enjoyed this show and I’m genuinely glad it brought comfort to people. The show in and of itself, as 16 hour-long episodes of fluff (shout-out to @stuffnonsenseandotherthings for using this word to pinpoint the genre for this show, because it’s perfect), is not offensive or bad or wrong or any judgmental or moralistic word. And it does some things well; the centrality of the friend group was a lovely aspect to this show, and the chemistry in the friendship group scenes was on point. All of the couples have good romantic chemistry as well, and the show is packed with butterflies-inducing moments. 

That being said, I did not enjoy watching this show. I watch television mostly for the story; This show felt more like watching 16 special episodes for a show I hadn’t seen (I think this can be attributed to the point made by @italianpersonwithashippersheart in her post here that the show assumes the audience comes to the show with a pre-existing buy-in to the ships). The lack of overarching narrative structure of We Are gave my brain nothing to hold onto and I spent so much of every episode futilely trying to figure out how scenes worked with what had come before, what the show was trying to say, what these characters were thinking–all of which I knew was the wrong way to be watching, but it’s the way my brain works, so I spent a lot of the show frustrated. In short, this show wasn’t for me. 

But that’s not why I feel the need to write about it. Shows are fully allowed to not be for me, I usually can differentiate between when a show is doing something I don’t like well, or when it’s failing at its own goals. And I don’t begrudge people with different taste getting catered to sometimes; my refrain is that most problems of representation are not solved by calling for less of something, and rather than wanting something not to be made, I’d rather champion for more and a greater variety of content. And lord knows there’s enough BL to go around these days (shouting out @respectthepetty’s post along these lines, which I loved) . But We Are still worries me, and I’ve been trying to find a way to articulate that my concerns are not actually about the show itself, in isolation, but rather about how it feels like part of a pattern. This is my best attempt at laying that out. It’s going to get a little ramble-y, so apologies in advance.

Shout-out to @bengiyo who first articulated this anxiety in his post from relatively early in the show’s run . Ben gets into some of where I’m coming from with concerns about what this show means for the genre in this post, which as he mentions we've chatted about in DMs. I’m really grateful to him for these conversations because in isolation, I worried that I was being alarmist. It was helpful to have confirmation that he was feeling the same way so that I could get out of my own head.  

Ben mentions in his post that New Siwaj has been in this business a long time, and I, like Ben, have jived with him for years because he manages to imbue queer angst into his shows in a way that resonates with me, even when he’s had missteps. I'm going to lay out some of the major highlights of his work for those who haven't followed New for years.

He was an editor on Love Sick, arguably the start of the Thai BL genre as we know it today, and a show full to the brim of queer angst. He directed Make It Right, one of my favourite Thai BL comedy series. This show was also an ensemble centered around a friendship group (though admittedly it didn’t balance the friendship and romance content as strongly as We Are), and it covers so many topics that felt refreshing at the time and still are rare (morning-after sex visits to the clinic because things went poorly, hooking up on the apps, sex acts beyond just penetration, suicidality, I could go on). He also was involved in the GMMTV Waterboyy series–this was his first work for GMMTV that I am aware of. That show had a lot of issues but did explore internalized homophobia and bullying.

He worked as a cinematographer on En of Love, which is again similar to We Are in that it has several couples connected by a friendship group (and is several novels in one series), but each couple was given its own miniseries instead of bundling them into one show. En of Love also still dealt with some serious queer angst, especially in the Love Mechanics story [Sidenote, Niink, the director for En of Love, stuck with New and moved on to work for Wabi Sabi].

At this point, New created his own company, Studio Wabi Sabi, which he's said in interviews was to gain more creative control over what he was working on. And his stories became arguably even more explicitly queer and inclusive of queer trauma. He screenwrote and produced Love By Chance (which folks may not remember or know, but that core story starts off with Pete being blackmailed for being gay until Ae convinces him to come out to his mother and shut down the leverage for blackmail, and a good chunk of Pete’s character arc is unlearning internalized homophobia and not seeing himself as ‘corrupting’ Ae) and then Until We Meet Again. The queer angst in UWMA probably doesn’t need my help spelling out, but just in case anyone doesn’t know the summary, this show was about a queer couple who committed suicide in the face of homophobia in the 1980s, and were reborn and given another chance to be together in present day. I did want to note that in both of these series (LBC and UWMA) the core romance itself has no major conflicts; both AePete and DeanPharm felt like they were intentionally side-stepping so many of the usual BL drama tropes of jealousy and misunderstandings through trust and communication. Dean and Pharm’s story took that even further by having so many of the usual drama pitfalls for a gay couple just not be a problem; their only drama comes from their past lives, in a beautiful exploration of the breaking of intergenerational trauma. So many external threats to their relationship ended up being non-starters, and this was my version of a comfort series for that reason. 

From there, New started working with GMMTV again, and directed My Gear and Your Gown. This series was, to my knowledge, the first GMMTV BL series to mention HIV and to show characters getting tested at the clinic, and while it wasn’t perfect representation (didn’t get into PrEP, treated HIV as a death sentence), it felt like an important milestone.

[I’m skipping the sequels and specials he did for series I already talked about, because they don’t feel that important to the story I’m telling here and this is already so long, but I wanted to acknowledge that I’m not covering everything in his oeuvre.]

He then directed 7 Project, which had some serious storylines dealing with bullying and struggling with life in the closet, out of Wabi Sabi, and then Star and Sky out of GMMTV. Star in My Mind included one of the main characters in a beard relationship for years, and some controversy over the adaptation choices to make Daonuea (Dunk’s character) less polite than in the books. There was drama around the pronouns and characterization in that show (both Daonuea and Khabkluen use guu/mueng in the series, but in the novel, Daonuea uses rao; he also curses in the series and novel fans complained that he was too ‘masculine’). I thought it was an interesting attempt at a departure from BL character tropes to try to make Daonuea more evenly matched with Khabkluen in terms of his gender presentation in the show. Sky in Your Heart also included some angst about whether people of a particular station could be gay. Both of these shows (SIMM and SIYH) were also very trope-y, but they had clear throughlines. 

My Only 12%, the next show New directed out of Wabi Sabi, contains one of my favourite moments in all of BL, in which Seeiw sees Love of Siam and cries because it makes him realize he’s gay. There’s this heartfelt moment where he asks his sister, if there’s nothing wrong with being gay, why doesn’t the film let the gay characters have a happy ending? Despite the weird PSA ending, this show remains one of my favourites.

This is an aside but I’ve long been fascinated about this moment in New’s history: he played himself in War of Y, as a director of BL who is sick of being forced to make BL shows full of fanservice; he treats the actors with disdain and cuts marketable high heat scenes from the show which makes everyone nervous for the show’s future. Later we see him and the actor characters on set for My Only 12%, much happier. I ask myself about this moment at least once a week: Did he write this self-insert? Did someone else write the character and he just played it, and the similarities to his style were (were not?) a coincidence? I hope someone knows and tells me one day,

From there, New functioned as an Executive Producer of Dear Doctor, I’m Coming for Soul [I think this was the first outsourced project by Wabi Sabi]. This series’ entire plot is a metaphor for living in the closet and waiting for the time when the main couple can be together fully without having to hide. 

He directed A Boss and a Babe for GMMTV (which had its problems for sure, but also had Cher as an out gay man at the workplace dealing with casual homophobia in a way that was extremely satisfying), and then Between Us, which is maybe the least queer feeling show Wabi Sabi produced on its own, but did go into the issues of dating and the closet while trying to become a star (if I’ve forgotten something from this show let me know, I only watched it the once). One of the things that was so strange about this show was it being a sequel to UWMA but not engaging with the same themes. The only mention of real world queerness I can remember was the acknowledgment that they can’t get married in Thailand and Dean and Pharm discussing again going abroad and getting married there. 

Absolute Zero was a complete mess of a show; New directed this one for Wabi Sabi, and it has some similarities to UWMA in the sense of there being an attempt at saving the gays from the bury your gays trope, this time via time loop rather than reincarnation, but it did not take the issues it raised seriously enough (including the age gap created between the two characters by virtue of time travel). 

And that leads us to We Are for GMMTV, which as Pluem (@happypotato48)  wrote in his excellent post about this, includes Toey using nu and other 'feminine' or 'youthful' sounding language, but also apparently dropped the main conflict of the novel between Phum and his father (because his father disapproved of Peem).

Why did I go through all of that? Because I wanted to lay out how I've watched New Siwaj’s career go from finding a way to tell incredibly poignant and healing queer narratives (by creating his own company, and fitting these moments into the GMMTV series he did work on) to stripping out queerness from the shows he’s creating in the last year or so.

And this is a pattern we’re seeing more widely at GMMTV in particular, but also in Thai QL more widely. This is something that was touched on but not really discussed in the most recent episode of The Conversation podcast (the 23.5 and only boo! episode here). In both 23.5 and Only Boo!, the show faked out a homophobic parent and then treated their kids like they were silly to assume the worst, and I hated that.

Both Ongsa and Kang had internalized homophobia in their respective series. Both were terrified of telling their mothers about their homosexual love interest. And in both cases, their mothers told them something along the lines of 'of course I will support you no matter what'. In Ongsa's case, even though she was outed by Sun without her consent, she's the one who ends up apologizing for her hesitancy and feeling foolish for her concern. In Kang's case, the show never challenges his mother's assertion that she'll always support him even though we know she hasn’t (she was the one who wanted to prevent him from studying art before his father died), and it’s the audience that was left feeling foolish for our concern. 

In the GMMTV round table for Pride Month, it was mentioned that the decision for Ongsa's mother to be accepting of her relationship with Sun was made in order to model good parental behaviour for the older generation in the audience. In the novel, Ongsa's mother presents a significant conflict, but this conflict was erased from the show. I don't know if the same decision was made in Only Boo! for the same reason or not, but either way, the show definitely signalled to Kang's mother having an issue with Kang's relationship with Moo, and then said "sike", which I did not enjoy. The Conversation panelists were correct in the conversation linked and transcribed above that this wasn't the most egregious misstep either show made, but it feels like a telling symptom of the larger overall narrative problems that New is also now succumbing to.

It seems as though telling stories stripped of queer conflict is being seen as progressive, and possibly also easier to sell, and this is where my anxiety lies around what this will mean for Thai QL content in future. 

For the record, I am all for creating queer content in which we envision a better world for ourselves. But when that is the goal, understanding where internalized homophobia comes from and thinking through how removing parental objection will affect the character and the story is vital to the story and characterization remaining coherent. Otherwise it just ends up feeling like the show is telling queer kids that they're paranoid, rather than rightly worried (like I wrote about in this thread on My Love Mix-Up Thailand, where the same decision was made again to fake out a homophobic subplot that was removed from the adaptation but was present in the source material).

These choices speak to adaptation choices with an eye for specific moments and story points, rather than to a narrative or character arc, which is where it feels like they fall into the wider pattern of what @bengiyo, @shortpplfedup and @ginnymoonbeam were describing in their discussion: shows caring more about hitting specific meme-able story points listed out on a whiteboard than about making cohesive sense or having something coherent to say. 

[So as not to leave it out: I don’t think there were concerns of homophobia in the Wandee Goodday novel (novel readers feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about this) but the show faked us out about homophobia concerns anyway, which again really bothered me during that watch and which adds to the pattern.] 

Now, of course, as I stated up at the top there is value in the creation of different kinds of media. These shows sell different fantasies than the ones I want to see, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have value.All of BL has some amount of fantasy that it’s buying into, that’s what comes with the territory of ‘fiction’. The BL bubble (in which homophobia doesn’t exist and all men are gay for each other) is a version that is at its most extreme; nothing bad ever happens that isn’t quickly resolved within an episode, so there is never narrative tension, and nobody really needs to be that concerned about how anything will go ever. I do not find these relaxing because I can’t buy into the fantasy they’re selling; for me, the lack of narrative tension is so unbelievable as to ruin my immersion. But I can see why that would be appealing for someone whose brain is not always on alert and running at 11/10! The problem I am anticipating is when the majority of content is made that way, and when it is done in a way that takes up all of the mainstream space. I think it’s notable that the only show that’s really felt not in the queer bubble from GMMTV in 2024 is Cooking Crush, which was done by a subsidiary team within GMMTV (and the same team went on to make Only Boo!). And this is why We Are caught my attention and made me nervous; When a director who is known for his representation of poignant queer angst makes an entire 16-hour series in which there are no significant conflicts at all and the only hint of homophobia is in Toey’s reference to being bullied prior to the timeframe of the series, I get worried about who is going to be making the queer angst shows in future!  

For the record, my personal preference for comfort shows are the shows that do not pretend the world is perfect, but do depict an idealized subset of that world→where there’s a group of people that support one another through the bullshit of others and the less than perfect world that surrounds them. Shows that teach us to be kind to one another, and ourselves. Shows that say the world is going to suck sometimes, but we can be good to one another, and not lose sight of who we are, and make space for others to be themselves. A few of my favourite Thai series that do this would be: 

Bad Buddy

Cooking Crush

City of Stars

Knock Knock Boys

Miracle of Teddy Bear

My Only 12%

Secret Crush on You

To Sir With Love

Until We Meet Again

(and of course these occur in non-Thai shows as well. A few examples of my favourites: What Did You Eat Yesterday, DNA Says Love You, Light on Me, Oppan, Marahuyo Project, TsukuTabe, Tadaima Okaeri, Koisenu Futari, Joshi-teki Seikatsu, Gameboys, Hehe and He, Twilight out of Focus, She Makes My Heart Flutter)

These are shows in which there are explicitly external judgments on the relationships in the show and/or the characters for things intrinsic to who they are, and the characters build a support structure in which folks are encouraged to be themselves within that ‘bubble’ (Bad Buddy walks a fine line because it’s within the BL bubble but the problems that the main couple face are so a direct allegory that everything feels familiar; this is also the case with Tadaima Okaeri, which is both omegaverse and one of the most beautifully kind shows of all time). 

So for now, I still have the other smaller Thai studios including Kongthup Productions (who made Knock Knock Boys; we’ll see whether their latest series Monster Next Door deals with any queer angst or not), idolFactory (just finished My Marvellous Dream is You, which had a ton of queer angst, and is currently doing The Loyal Pin, which I have hope for on this front), DeeHup (currently making I Saw You In My Dream, which I’m holding out hope for) and StarHunter Entertainment (who made City of Stars, but whose record is a little spotty on this front; Their latest, Sunset Vibes, has not done a great job of handling the theme of office relationships and blackmail so far, and feels very much in the bubble) to look forward to. 

But as you can see even just by virtue of the caveats I included above, it feels like this shift is happening in the smaller companies too (harder to see a real pattern with fewer data points, which is one of the reasons why I picked on GMMTV–in addition to it being the largest media conglomerate in Thailand and therefore able to take it). Maybe it’s nothing, maybe I’m just an anxious person. Or maybe I’m just wrong about what would be best for the genre and for queer people in Thailand as well as viewers all over the world. But I, for one, would find it a loss if Thai QL decides en masse to pivot away from queer angst, and right now it kind of feels like that’s what it’s doing. In this context, to reiterate my original point, the existence of We Are is not a problem, but is one in a set of exemplars that raised specific alarm bells due to the people involved and their history in QL and queer representation, its deviation from the source material, and the surrounding shows that seem to indicate a pattern rather than a one-off. 

[fazedlight]

What's Wrong with 5B?

(aka: how It’s a Super Life ruined everything)

The premiere of season 5 was simple. Kara fucked up, felt deeply sorry for it, and revealed her secret to Lena (driven solely by her guilt) after far too long of gaslighting her. Unfortunately, it was a bit too late, Lena was already (rightfully) pissed and about to exact a(n outsized) revenge about it. Easy peasy.

We see Kara struggle with it a little. She gives Lena the superwatch, looking super guilty the whole time. She brings Lena international treats, talks to Alex about how she’s nervous about interacting with Lena. But she seems to have underestimated the damage she’s caused - and Lena is going through a major disillusionment. 

Both of which are mostly in character from my perspective. But with the caveat that, I knew the basic summary of the Rift before I watched the show. So those were moments the characters were already building to in my head. (I know some people think that Kara’s reaction in season 3 was out of character, or that Lena’s reaction in 5A was out of character, and those are valid opinions that are worth exploring! If I watched the show unfold live, maybe I’d be in that camp too.)

We then see Lena’s betrayal and Kara scrambling to pull Lena back from the edge into an anti-villain arc. The Crisis happens, Kara visits Lena, and Lena calls Kara out - “What did you think would happen when you came here? That you'd tell me everything in a fit of selflessness, even if it meant that I knew how you betrayed me, and then I'd just keel over and forgive you?” Kara still knows she did something wrong, and vows to never do it again.

Aaaaand then It’s A Super Life (beloved/beloathed) happens.

I really liked the episode the first time I saw it. I was a supercorp shipper who hadn’t read a single fic. And on its face, I mean, they dedicated the entire 100th episode to the relationship between Kara and Lena and trying to repair it. It failed, sure, but they'd make up eventually (again, I was spoiled).

But that episode was really about absolving Kara. It was a bizarre conclusion. Kara no longer had fault, because any reality they tried out would’ve failed. … which makes no damn sense. Even if no reality could work (I’m skeptical), Kara didn’t know that at the time she made her decisions. She still has fault for the harm she knew she was causing (even if it happened to work out better than the alternatives she didn’t know about).

I think this is a narrative shift. This isn’t just about the in-universe “Kara believes she’s absolved”. This is a writer's ploy to change the narrative and make the audience think that Kara didn’t have fault. Writing this as a character flaw might’ve worked, maybe, if they had Kara reexamine her assumptions later. But as a narrative? … the shift fell completely flat.

The rift was canceled at this point. Suddenly it was no longer the story of two people’s flaws interplaying in the worst possible way. Suddenly it was: Kara is right, Lena is wrong, let us never speak of it again.

It makes everything that comes after really grating. The end of 5x19 (where Kara goes “maybe I’m ready to forgive you now” and shakes Lena’s hand) feels completely empty, because there’s no acknowledgement from Kara that she fucked up - a fact she fully understood at the beginning and middle of the season! It bleeds into season 6, where we never see Lena hash things out with the superfriends or with Kara post-return. It makes the finale (Lena’s “You made me a better person”) fall flat. At this point multiple people in the fandom have pointed out that it’s Melissa’s acting that is Kara’s saving grace (though even that has limitations, as many of us felt with Sadie). But Kara as a character really suffers - and with it, her relationship with Lena, and Lena's arc - because the writers did not make a convincing argument for their shift. 

The hero’s always right, I guess? The main character can’t have major flaws? (I hope someday we learned what instructions they were getting in the writing room 😂)

For my own sanity, I have a whole slew of conversations(/arguments) in my head that I place into season 6 to fix some of this (as well as making Mxy a liar who was trying to make his friend feel better, rather than those other timelines being real). But while they’re canon-compliant… they aren’t canon. What we needed was something on screen to make the relationship shine again, to have Kara revisit why her rationale absolving her in the 100th episode didn’t follow at all, and have Lena work through her issues with Kara and the rest of the superfriends. But we didn’t get that.

Which means everything post-100th will always feel wrong to me.

[agentgrange]

I saw this post and couldn't stop thinking about it, so here is the answer I gave after some consideration-- I'll tell you when I find out. Sometimes it really feels like it depends on your Agents, and what they're accustomed to. I have two groups that I play with, one is mostly serious with a handful of gallows humor quips while the other one is absolutely clown-shoes-goof-goof-times. You could lovingly craft a deeply unsettling body-horror scene or run a tried-and-true encounter straight out of an established campaign and your mileage will greatly vary depending on your audience. That's not *necessarily* a bad thing, a handlers job is to guide a narrative in a way that's first and foremost fun for the players. If they want to take it seriously and buy into the horror they will, but if they want a bit of levity then there's nothing wrong with playing to the crowd. But I do really, really empathize with struggling to convey the awesome and terrible might of some cosmic horror with nothing but your words in a group of people that (hopefully) instinctively feel at ease and jovial while fooling around playing games with their buddies. Here's a few practical pieces of advice I can give you.

Try to cultivate an unsettling environment for your players. This one seems obvious but is actually really hard to get down right, especially when people mostly play online these days. But you’d be surprised how much regularly providing good visual aids, a Discord bot playing ambient music, and a good playlist can really set the tone for your session. Don’t just provide visual aids for the money shots of alien greys and deep ones either, running a campaign based on The Conspiracy era gives you ample opportunity to post a ton of weird, liminal 90s photographs to set the vibe for everyone even during otherwise mundane scenes.

Make a point of explaining to your players the difference between what they are experiencing and what their characters are experiencing. Yes, facing off against a 8ft tall fish man with a crossbow is inherently ridiculous as a fictional abstract. Its an entirely different experiencing actually being there, face to face under an incredible amount of stress seeing something that should not exist. In a lot of ways your players aren’t their characters so much as they are mad gods guiding their characters’ fates. THEY can laugh from the safety of this higher dimension we all exist in, that’s part of the fun. Hell their characters might even have a passing thought or two about how absurd the situation might be—but that entire time they’re fighting their lizard-brained instincts just to stop from mentally imploding. Let them laugh, but then tell them how their characters' hands might be shaking, or how any clever quip they wanted to say just comes out as a mumble as their body betrays whatever thoughts their rational mind tries to convey.

Know the rules of comedy. Comedy usually needs a straight-man, so if your players are goofing around don’t be afraid to give them a straight-man NPC to react to their antics in a way that makes it feel like you’re in on the bit but keeps the narrative going. Better yet, try to get ahead of it. Set up designated low-stakes areas in your story that are designed to add a bit of levity. They say comedy comes in threes, so you should structure these segments to let your agents to do some dumb shit about three times before they get all the sillies out and are ready to move on. And the emotional highs during these side quests will just make the crushing lows in the main plot feel that much more horrifying.

Building off that last one I have one more secret, forbidden technique. Buyer beware on this one honestly, but I cannot overstress just how much. Players. Love. Silly. Characters. And as David Lynch has proven, you can have silly characters that are still deeply unsettling. Try adding a few characters in that flip the script on your players and make *them*  want to play the role of the straight-man reacting to what your NPCs are doing every once in a while. If done right, it can kind of trick them into taking things seriously or feel like the eerie out of place comedy is at their character’s expense even if the players are in on it.

I hope some of this was at least partially useful. Good luck out there.

[un-pearable]

internally: decent movie. more tolerable than the previous for most parts. rewatchable. FINALLY has a soundtrack that sounds like sonic and DOESNT have gratuitous plot-irrelevant human scenes. sonic gets to do sonic stuff!!!!! characterization makes sense given previous movies and (very slightly) nudges him towards something potentially interesting. not inventive AT ALL (missing everything intriguing about SA2) but could be worse

externally: while some lore omissions make sense given the world established by the previous films, those choices are boring and others they make are completely baffling changes. rouge omission harms the whole thing. i dislike the entire direction they’ve taken with their sonic characterization and the themes and they fundamentally miss key traits for everyone involved . why did we do this. what was the point

it’s fun. more consistently enjoyable than the previous but that’s mostly bc the scenes that bothered me with the aggressive Carryness had tails in them so i could just watch him be cute.

lore change to make him another mystery alien is annoying but frustratingly makes sense given the context. i’m not torn up over it <- don’t care about shadow and didn’t expect much going in . the missing part of maria’s story is ridiculous though (why is she just there??????)

i love herrrr i love her 70s energy and outfits and i will incorporate the roller skates. its soooo cute . the godzilla movie with the biolizard is pretty funny but that’ll totally piss off diehards. i do think they do good job of showing shadow + maria as friends and why he cares so much about her but that’s mainly just the scope of a film vs a video game

COWARDS THOUGH . SAYING “THEYRE CHILDREN” ON SCREEN TO INTERRUPT A SHOT-FOR-SHOT RECREATION OF HER DEATH??? THATS THE POINT. SHES A CHILD. ITS A TRAGEDYY

the shots directly from the shadow 2005 intro…. unbelievable . hilarious

akira bike slide ON VERTICAL BUILDING is cool i’m here for it

low budget flight and actual sonic-esque music…. i accept my crumbs

knuckles is lame. literally stolen joke from sonic boom w the team knuckles stuff. i wanted him to fight sonic over the ME so bad

the wade reveal is physically painful like i knew it happened in the show but he sucks sucks and right after the only satisfying scene w the humans (shadow fuckin up tom) . ME you deserve betterrrrr

torn on the overall message. i think it’s a more coherent film than the last two and the message isn’t terrible - it aligns with sonic’s overall freedom and choice vibes. but having shadow be a tag along to eggman’s schemes is a weird choice given he was pretty explicitly the one who wanted to . yknow. blow up the earth in the first place and just gave eggman the tools in SA2. this version takes a lot of agency out of his story bc gerald is here. which is weird since the whole explicit theme is choices!!

fucking gerald. can i kill someone. mr carrey i hate him

extremely dragon ball combat. which is fine but unexciting . WHERE the fuck did the emeralds go at the end they just??? gone??? they detransform and (incorrectly) sonic falls out of super and shadow dies but the emeralds flat out do not appear in the film again after they initially transform . what happened

FINALLY giving us a heart to heart AND live and learn for the fight ONLY TO CUT AWAY TO TWO MINUTES OF CARREY SHENANIGANS. illegal . egregious. im glad he’s dead

the shift from sonic having to inspire shadow to be better and move onto his past to . shadow pulling a ‘you’re just like me’ is lame. hello again scourge .

like it’s a logical change especially given the target audience and the kind of stories that are popular rn but it’s sooo less interesting than SA2’s thing

shadow being confronted by sonic bc he challenges his belief of being exceptional and makes him reconsider what it’s possible to be -> shadow being sonic’s narrative parallel bc they both had one (1) human they liked who they would do anything for

^^^ it’s bad. not unwatchable like sonic 1 but bad change. makes sense for this established universe tho so i get it

tails is great . colleen should be paid more

WAIT THINKING ABOUT LIVE & LEARN AGAIN. I CANT FUCKIN BELIEVE IT at least they had the music still playing when they cut back to the fight scene but that bullshit w the egged men. torture

yay shadow dead!!!!! no that final endcredit didn’t happen

the moon shot was cool. sadly now sonadow fans will claim the moon <- IT WAS SONKNUX TERRITORY FIRST

rouge would have made this film 1000000000% better

why so many metal sonic???????? hi amy

at least she’s cute i’ve seen so many bad edits since 2020 at least she’s cute. i’m intrigued w the cloak choice what’s going on here. just to hide the outfit so they can change it? reference? hmm

fascinating implication for whatever 4 is going to be. in my heart carreybotnik stays dead and we get a pseudo heroes where metal is pretending to be him. but alas i fear the family focus for eggman in this film is leading up to. him making metal sonic and treating him as his kid. which could be fucked up in fun ways but i’m so tired of carreyisms

they did say 2027 though which is an extra year than the last two got…. what are you budgeting guys

why oh why is shadow consistently the only character who gets any emotional arcs or storytelling it taunts me…. can’t even hate the guy bc he’s the only one with interesting stories . this story sucks and it’s still better than what knux got . orz

sayonara shadow the hedgehog

[thydungeongal]

I think that 5E having fanbase that mostly doesn't want to play it is good, actually.

If they really outnumber people who want dungeon combat game, wotc can allow themselves to do a total reboot - make 6E a basically different game, keeping only six stats and foundational systems like d20+stat modifier and AC and HP and classes, but otherwise make a very lite-weight game suited for recreating actual play experience with found family or whatever 5E players want (I don't play 5E).

It's a decision that would benefit everyone. Wotc will profit off new players because they are already trapped in their ecosystem, and even if already avid 5E players don't want to buy new books, newcomers will. 5E players will get a game they actually want. Oldies who don't like it can just move to Pathfinder or OSR, so they won't be deprived of games. Hell, wotc may even start their official line of OSR with new settings and adventures and easily get a share of that market as well!

Like, D&D as it is already suffers from incompatible legacy that can't be thrown out without enraging fans, and if this continues for too long it will collapse. But this way it can survive by transforming into a game that 2020s fandom wants.

Games Workshop pulled way riskier move with Warhammer and ultimately succeeded, I think hasbro can do this as well

Thing is, I don't think WotC will ever do it, because they have pretty much managed to cultivate an audience that is so incurious about game design that they think D&D not supporting the type of gameplay they want isn't a bug, it's a feature.

Ultimately, as I have said before, D&D held hostage to nostalgia because it has to adhere to a certain shape of what D&D "has to be," and even though it's actually one of the worst games for supporting plucky found family heroic narratives people will insist it's good for that because the people in question don't think of D&D's rules in terms of incentive structures and genre emulation, but instead as just "stuff" that the game has which means that the game can do the "stuff." Basically, many of these people think of RPG rules in terms of the shape of dice being rolled, instead of the behaviors that RPG mechanics can actually incentivise and how rules actually shape narrative.

I do agree that D&D not being the game most of its players want it to be is good in some way, but not because I think WotC is ever going to address that contradiction: it means that the aforementioned incurious players who genuinely don't care about game design are kept captured within WotC's walled garden, but at the same time those people who do genuinely care about games producing specific narratives will have to look to reconcile that contradiction elsewhere. We just have to keep throwing Molotov cocktails inside of WotC's walled garden to make people aware of the fact that they live in a false paradise.

[mounthuatruther]

I read a review that said that Chung Myung is a flat protagonist with no real depth to him and I'm just like????? ???? What?? lol like were we reading the same thing? What really hooked me in this story was Chung Myung's motivations. It was chapter 4 of the webtoon. After seeing Mount Hua in ruins and being super angry he slows down for a minute and wonders if this is all his fault. From there, he begins to take responsibility for the fall of Mount Hua and feels immense guilt that is touched upon more and more as you continue to read. This webtoon is so precious because it makes Mount Hua a sect that you root for and want only the best for in the end. The novel really compels you to feel Chung Myung's rage, guilt, sorrow, regret, loneliness, joy, pride, etc. and it makes me so emotional. I read mostly while I'm at work and I've straight up cried. The beauty of it is that it is not a hard read either! Like I don't have to decode through layers and layers of implications and subtext. Put some respect on my boy's name. Excluding the novel, the webtoon does pretty well with his character and story telling.

I took creative writing and major in film and to me, he is the perfect protagonist. When creating a story with a narrative and a protagonist one of the first questions you want to ask yourself is, "Why should the audience care about them?" The Return of the Mount Hua Sect answered this question from EVERY ANGLE. The first three chapters of the webtoon are pretty much like every other reincarnation manhua: person is killed awfully, wakes up back in time, restarts but knows how to get stronger faster, and then pursues this path. As I previously stated, they start to change it up when we reach chapter 4. We see Chung Myung start to take responsibility AND blame for what happened to his sect. We start to see how he viewed his sect as his HOME. His home is in RUINS. The side and supporting characters help to add to this as well. Chung Myung feels deep sorrow for the elders who have been taking care of the fallen Mount Hua for so long. We see Chung Myung go from the angry old man who is mad that things have changed to the grandpa who wants his home back and to get back at everyone who had a part in its ruin. HE COUNTS HIMSELF AS THE MAIN PERPATRATOR. He truly wants what's best for the kids of Mount Hua and cares deeply and is very passionate all while shouldering these burdens alone. AND THEN HE LEARNS TO OPEN UP AND GROW AND CHANGE

As we keep reading, we see Chung Myung's character development!! I don't want to spoil it because it is mostly stuff from the novel but talks about his past self like he was a different person, he makes multiple notes on how he acts differently or thinks differently, he is trusted by those around him when he wasn't in the past

Overall, Chung Myung's story is very compelling and he is MY HEART