#im feeling NORMAL about the unique attacks of characters

[thehandwixard]

clutching my head doubled over that the things im into are always games that are dozens of hours long to long jrpg length because im going mental thinking abt my funny guys. and the last time i tried to let out my kh meta thoughts i got sucked into a like. fucking real world particle dimension spirituality talk so i just have to sit here

[valhalla-awaitsfor-us]

Hi! I hope you don't mind I take your reply to my post to talk a little bit about script writing as a scriptwriter.

This is in no way an attack, I just saw an opportunity to explain something as someone who works writing scripts.

At this point I think it's becoming clear that live action only exists because Netflix wants to have its own Game of Thrones, but that they are not going to respect the core of the original series, because their goal is different. Having said this, I want to review why the changes that are being made are incorrect (if the idea is to respect the story and the characters) focusing on the 3 protagonists: Sokka, Katara and Aang.

Let's start with Sokka, whose changes are perhaps the most "controversial."

As I said in my original post, The core of Sokkas character is that he is a boy who grew up trying to be a man since his father left for war. In that attempt, as someone immature and unguided, he had sexist attitudes, only to later mature and become a real man. Great example for young boys.

No, his sexism comments didn't last long, but they changed at a key moment in the plot: When Suki appears. Avatar is a special series because it was one of the first of its time to so explicitly touch on the topic of feminism. Rebelling in every sense of the word is a recurring theme in ATLA. Sexism was literally knocked out of Sokka when he met the Kyoshi warriors. That's why the scene of him wearing the warriors' clothes is so significant and why it's so important that at the end of the season Sokka has learned his lesson, because there is a direct comparison between him and Pakku. Sokka, on his path to becoming a man, was able to deconstruct his misogynistic mentality at his young age and without an adult guidance, while a man of Paku's age, admired and respected, was still rooted in his sexist beliefs.

It was Katara's act of rebelling against Sokka's sexism that freed Aang from the icerberg. Because, again, an act of rebellion, of standing firm in the face of injustice, along with redemption, are the pillars of Avatar. Sokka's journey encompasses all of those topics, and the fact that he is 16 and not 19 is essential to his character arc.

Is not that we want him to be sexist. We want him to be flawed. Because each flaw are unique to each character. It talks about their development and also about the themes of the show.

Also "Toned down" it sounds weird because as a kid I always knew Sokka was an idiot when being sexist. But it wasn't that bad that I was afraid of him or so angry that I hated his character. Because Avatar is a kid shows even if people from all ages can enjoy it. So when they said "toned down" I was really confused. It made me feel that for them, the only way to show him being sexist way to make him do some unredeemable thing.

Katara

So. Im gonna start saying that Im not a fan of Katara. I think her character is written incredibly well, but it just not for me. In fact, i do feel like we needed an scene between Sokka and her where they can clear the air about their mom. The things she said to her brother and to Aang, the only survivor of a genocide, were too hard to not have a talk after that.

NOW, After saying that, Katara is Katara because of her backstory. Seeing her mother die in front of her and being the only waterbender in her tribe lead her to feel the need to take care of everyone, especially her brother, to be overprotective, to be compassionate. To be Katara.

Sokka himself admits that sometimes when he tries to remember his mother he only remembers Katara. While Aang is a boy who must mature faster than normal, Katara is a girl who has already grown faster than normal and her journey not only includes rebelling and protecting others, but also recovering some of that lost childhood.

Katara is the representation of water. Healing and destructive at the same time. Turbulent but benevolent. I feel the live action writers, and even the actors and actresses, do not understand that the feminist message was already perfectly captured in the original material. The creators of Avatar created complex female characters and just because Katara's story is influenced by the concept of motherhood does not mean that she is not a strong character. She is a strong character because her story is influenced by that concept. Not because motherhood in itself makes us women strong, but because motherhood, specifically for her character, puts her at crossroads and forces her to go through an arc of transformation.

Aang

I'm going to be concise and short with Aang. The decision to have so many "distractions" in his mission is because Aang is 12 years old and does not want to face a war. I think it's something so basic that it seems dumb not to understand that a young boy doesn't want the responsibility of saving the world and seeing his friends die again. I think, maybe, just maybe, understanding that is not that hard.

If they wanted to write a story of wars, blood and darkness, they should not have chosen Avatar, whose protagonist is a little boy.

[branmuffins22]

for the toh ask game- 2, 8, 12?

from this ask game:

2. Ramble about your favorite character of all time as much as you want. We're listening

Ohhhh boy. Oh man. Oh geez. You play a dangerous game, starting out with the kicker.

The obvious choice would be Luz, right? because she's like, the perfect main character. Lovable, relatable, flawed, believable (mostly; those fireworks were a bit much), clever, emotional, funny, the list goes on.

But.

However.

I have to go with Vee.

To me, Vee is all those things and more. She's still relatable, but for completely different (some unaddressed by canon, some completely made up by me) reasons. She's the cutest sweetest little shapeshifter we actually got the chance to get to know (sorry Stringbean). She's flawed, she'd completely given up on Luz's return and was ready to throw away whatever parts of her life she didn't jive with, and then even after most of a day of hanging out with her, she was STILL kinda mad at her! She's got confusing emotions and she was able to admit it! She's a tortured and traumatized kid who's trying maybe a bit too hard to put it all behind her, and even her more fantastical struggles are made to make perfect sense in that context. She's clever and observant enough to blend in with humans (and even convince Camila she was Luz for a while), and she was instrumental in solving the rebus. She's funny not just in her sense of humor (which is anywhere from awkward to earnest to dry, all hilarious), but also in the dichotomy of being one of the more "normal" "human" characters in the show, despite not really being either of those things (part of a thought-extinct species, and unique even among others of that species. said species is a kind of magic-eating shape-shifting demon from another realm, and here she is in suburban connecticut, idly learning spanish with her friends).

She's my precious baby blorbo and I love her. She's chubby (I'm chubby), she's awkward around her crush (I'm awkward around my crush (and also in general)), she likes to wear warm colors and big boots (I like to wear warm colors and big boots (not that I have any that fit well enough for daily wear)), she's got a bit of an overbite (I had one when I was young), she is (or, I guess, was?) kinda sorta something like a twin (I'm a twin), her hair is poofy and long (at least in her epilogue design) (my hair is poofy and long), augh, she feels basically tailor-made for me. I'm not exaggerating when I say I learned to love certain parts of myself by loving them first in her.

She's perfect.

also. im gonna rant about her even more in the next bit, sorrynotsorry.

8. Any headcanons? If so, which are your favorite?

Soooo many. Like, enough that I'm writing a whole ass barely-even-canon-divergent AU just to give myself the excuse to explore them. Actually, kinda writing two if you count MatVNN, but it's more of a post-canon affair.

Probably my favorite, though, is Vee being trans (and a bunch of other flavors of queer). I'll admit, a lot of the things that make me like Vee so much are just Sorta Plausible Shit I Came Up With, and chief among them is my trans Vee theory.

So, I'll start with the canon stuff:

Vee is rather unique, even among basilisks. Her tail has 3 fins rather than the other basilisks' 1 or 2 fins, her eyes have a different structure (and more individual colors) than the others', and she has a distinct head and neck that the other basilisks don't have. She's also a lot smaller than the other basilisks: about half the size of III and IV, and even smaller compared to the "greater basilisk" which attacked Hexside (we'll call her the Inspector). In the epilogue, Vee's size doesn't appear to have changed much, if at all (hell, even in her human form, she doesn't look much taller), nor have the sizes of III and IV. The only change any of them appear to have gone through is that Vee has more/longer hair, some of which is a lighter cyan than the previous navy blue, which still remains at her roots and on her ears.

Those are the facts. Now, there could be any number of reasons for her unique traits.

The doylist reason is the easiest: she was designed to look smaller and more humanoid to appear to the audience as more sympathetic. Her strange eyes could just be a bit of fun character design, something to make her stand out on screen. No biggie.

The watsonian reasons are a lot more compelling to me though.

She could very well be quite young for a basilisk. Perhaps their eyes change shape and lose some of their color as they grow up. Perhaps the neck becomes less distinct as they get older. Perhaps even after the 3+ year timeskip before the epilogue, Vee was still prepubescent for a basilisk.

Perhaps the various basilisks are representative of different species within the same family (ex. the Inspector is called a "greater basilisk", but the others are just referred to as "basilisks"), and Vee's unique traits are staples of whatever specific species she is (I first came across this theory in A Blight on Bonesborough, by GeminiAlchemist, and they proposed "fat-tailed basilisk" as the name of Vee's species, mostly for the sake of a gag)

One of the more interesting theories is that she's only half basilisk. I wasn't the one to come up with it, but I don't remember who was, so for that I apologize, but basically, there was a theory going around for a little while after her introduction, that Vee was actually the bastard child of one of the other basilisks and Warden Wrath. The biggest point of evidence was the yellow pupils, a trait only shared between Vee and Wrath, as well as the fact that Wrath was clearly involved in the basilisk project, as shown in Vee's flashbacks in Yesterday's Lie. It's not my favorite theory by any means, but it's a super interesting one, very angsty.

My personal theory, however, and the theory on which I base a few of my other Vee headcanons, is that all the myriad differences between Vee and the other basilisks can be explained away by a simple case of sexual dimorphism in the basilisk species. "Number 5" was simply the only "male" basilisk shown on screen.

Now, what's the evidence for this theory? There is none! As with all the best headcanons, there's no real reason it should be true, but there's ALSO no definitive evidence it isn't true.

So, Number 5 escaped the labs, wandered into the Human Realm, took the form of the only human he'd seen, and spent 3 months at summer camp incidentally trying out being a girl. Turns out, she liked it! So when the time came to give Luz back her identity, Vee made her own new form a girl too.

Now, this headcanon comes with some... caveats? Complications? Sprinkles of realism? I like to imagine some extraneous silly little plot points surrounding this.

Gonna mention 'nads & stuff in purple, so skip past it if you're squeamish about people having body parts or whatever.

When Vee took on Luz's form, she didn't really know what was going on under all those clothes, so she improvised, and kept things as close to her basilisk form as possible. It was partly to conserve magic during the shift, and partly just because she couldn't imagine what to put there. This meant she had a dick, and probably a pretty funny-looking one, too, until she came across a human health textbook and got a better picture of what that whole situation is supposed to look like.

Eventually, during an accident with someone in the Cabin 7 crew (probably standard "woops, didnt realize you were changing in here" shenanigans), someone catches her with her pants down, and she accidentally makes them think Luz is trans. A silly little mixup, definitely no consequences in the future, for sure.

After this, Vee ends up learning about pride flags and their meanings, and starts collecting those things like trading cards. She is staggeringly queer. I tend to think of her as bi/pan/demi-rose, genderqueer, genderfluid (usually on a sliding scale between fem and neutral, but outside that range often enough to be noteworthy), and polyam (in theory, anyways, but even by the epilogue she's still only had one partner, Masha. Granted, she's only maybe 18 by then, so she's got a LOT of time left to try things out), but because that's So Many Labels, she tends to simplify down to Queer. Am I projecting? Yeah, a little. Maybe a lot. So what?

Anyways, when Luz comes back and Vee picks out her own human form, she mostly performs a 1-1 translation from her basilisk form to her human form (matching her standing height, size, approximate face shape, etc), and in so doing, takes on a few typically-masculine characteristics (like a mostly-flat, somewhat-wide chest, bodyfat mostly at her belly, and of course, a (normal, human) dick (most of the time, anyways; she is a shapeshifter, and can do whatever she wants forever)), resulting in her rather androgynous appearance. If her human form is gonna be her, it's gonna reflect her truth: she wasn't always a girl, but she is now. In the epilogue, her human form looks a bit more feminine/less androgynous than before (most notably with wider hips), as if she'd been on HRT for long enough to see some changes.

Now, I've also got all manner of general Basilisk Biology Headcanons, such as how shapeshifting works (magic is used to perform transformations, and reverting to their natural form doesn't use any; holding a transformation only burns calories, not magic; transformations are holistic, inside-and-out, with the two exceptions being the brain and whatever organ stores collected magic), how magical hunger works (it doesn't quite exist, they're not vampires, eating/draining magic is just a thing they Can do in order to transform, not a thing they Have to do to live; however, when a basilisk is hungry, it begins burning through its magic to stave off malnutrition, causing them to seek out magically dense food (really just magic in general, kinda maladaptive like humans' sugar cravings)), how mass distribution works when they transform (they retain their weight when they take on new forms, which limits their transformed size by how far they can compress/decompress their mass. this is part of why the Inspector was so hungry; they were near the limits of how far they could compress, and burning through calories like crazy to stay that way), their natural habitat (fins on their tails suggest they're at least semi-aquatic, but the fact that they stayed on the Boiling Isles as they fled from Belos suggests that they're not immune to (and thus not native to) the Boiling Sea, therefore I propose that they were native to lakes, the only bodies of water shown not to be boiling all the time. also they use their shapeshifting to change their bouyancy as they dive for mollusks or whatever), reproduction (internal fertilization, followed by egg laying; they can change their physical sex pretty much at will, because they're shapeshifters, but if it's not their "natural" form, it still consumes magic to get into that form and burns extra calories to hold the form; fertilization and pregnancy tends to go quite poorly if a basilisk changes/reverts to a form that doesn't have the proper equipment for whatever child they're currently bearing), and so on (basilisk eyes are adapted for underwater, leaving them relatively nearsighted unless transformed to be otherwise, and they have a short-term photographic memory to make assembling accurate disguises on the fly easier/possible), but I don't really feel the need to go tooooo into detail with all that >.>

12. What do you consider the most memorable scene? Why?

That's a very tough choice, between the graveyard fight in Thanks to Them (Very intense. Very beautiful, very powerful) and the Lumity dance in Enchanting Grom Fright (Very romantic. Very beautiful, very powerful). They both basically defined the fandom brainrot after their respective releases, and unlike the various season finales, there was little else cutting in to interrupt and distract from them. Just tasty, tasty action, one at the breathtaking height of fluff, and the other in the soul-crushing depths of angst.

A close third, to whichever one of those is only second-best, would be the duel for the portal key in Eclipse Lake (Very dramatic. Very beautiful, very powerful). Another big action scene, who'd'a thunk it, and another angsty one, too.

[chronicler-of-narrative]

Ok, since im struggling with some oc issues as of late, a few out of context details about my genshin oc, Sigurd:

His Hydro vision looks the same as Furina's (if you catch my drift)

He would probably have a lot of fondness for "red paints"

I'm currently super unsure of how to include a certain character from his past into the story itself, but I feel like she would make most sense as a Pyro Catalyst

Since obviously he's my favorite, I plan for him to have his own Trounce Domain.

And finally, he's a Hydro Claymor user who, if i can find a suitable excuse to make him playable, would be akin to a 5 star Candace, except as a Dps. So using a Hydro infusion (wih maybe some True Damage on the side?), to hack and cleave through anything in his way. Possibly i might give him a unique Charged attack (in reference to another Hydro Charged Attacker) as a sort of side dish/cherry on top of his Hydro-infused normal attacks.

[dykeyote]

obviously i know of the wonderful real and true lesbian hermie but i would still like to hear ur thoughts on her :3

HIII :3 thank u for the excuse to explain because truly i feel so strongly abt this . here is my extensive reasons as to why hermie unworthy could never be anything but a lesbian and ur hcs are all wrong and this IS a personal attack on you btw <- thats a joke this post is very silly and not meant to be an Actual Theory but i DO feel strongly

lezzermie realness: a manifesto

REASON 1!!!!!!!!! again . WHAT WAS THE BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM THING ABOUT . and this isnt "actor character randomly dresses up as kiera knightley from bend it like beckham for no reason" which to be clear . would still make me raise my eyebrows . HOWEVER hermie isnt just any kind of actor shes a SPECIFICALLY DC ACTOR . she ONLY does dc characters . the ONE other time is when she's dressing up as scary for like a Real Reason . this is not a real reason its not even a musical or a play or smt its not even theatre kiddy . what are you trying to say hermie others will silence you but i will let you speak

REASON 2!!!!!!!!!!!!! further reasons will be predicated on the assumption that scary marlowe is a: a lesbian and b: that her crush on hermie is lesbianistic in nature . this can be proven simply w the line "im not like other girls i dont like ned or earl but when im with you my heart shatters or smt along those lines i cant be bothered to check verbatim" . abt hermie . oh so youre not into GENERIC MASCULINE NAMES like OTHER (STRAIGHT) GIRLS but hermie is different ...... this is successfully✅ proven . also she compared her and scary to the joker and harley ..... and scary STILL had a crush . i dont think anybody could tolerate that unless it was from a lesbian 🙏

REASON 3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! with this assumption presumed ....... now i know what you were thinking in reason one when i asserted hermie only broke dc those tow times . "val thats not true he was jack on the titanic" . to that i say YES ...... she did an overdramatic romantic scene riffing on an iconic straight couple from a historical movie with (as we have 100% proven) a lesbian w a dykey ass crush on her . whats more lesbian than that . thats the butchfemmiest shit

REASON 4!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i hear you cry from the crowds . but valentine ur MISSING something . ur WRONG . because NORMAL!!!!!!!! to which i say normal is so obviously a girl to everyone but herself lets be real . the eldritch beast she has this deep connection with and empathizes with immediately is fixated on being a bad girl? she has a whole arc where she tries to be a normal son and boy to appeal to her parent who doesnt approve of how she chooses to express herself and picks a masculine name to go w it in contrast to . um . i mean i guess an adjective is gender neutral??????? hermies a lesbian FOR normal not DESPITE normal ......... also lesbians can be mlm and have complex genders too . me for example . bigender swag which hermie absolutely has

REASON 5!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! if we assume normal's arc is transgender THEN we must observe the parallels with hermie and come to the same conclusion of girlmie (or boygirlmie but bigendermie is a convo for another day) realness . both created to be a specific type of son (normal well Normal, hermie a joke machine) both Not Quite Right in a way they cant shake both reaching out for a new more fitting identity which in hermie's case EXPLICITLY includes gender nonconformity (we will discuss next bulletpoint) . and if we prove girlmie by way of her crush on scary (and as previously stated normal) we prove lezzermie

REASON 6!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! dressing up as poison ivy isnt necessarily lesbianistic because she dresses up as other dc villains HOWEVER!!!!!! i will argue that the way she goes about it is uniquely suggesting of dykery . a: she flirts with normal .... THROUGH poison ivy . distinctly RELATED to poison ivy . this is lesbian behavior and reinforces my prior point and b: she REPEATS poison ivy ...... which she rarely does with others she goes through Eras with the rest of them but abandons them after HOWEVER!!!!! she does poison ivy sexy and gets sort of interrupted . THEN does batman in the spiderboyz intro . THEN goes back to poison ivy in hell........ why does she only repeat the known lesbian 🤨

REASON 7!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HERMIE unworthy ... HER MIE .... like her and me ...... instead of her man (heterosexual in nature) she chooses herMIE . normal holds her face and goes YOURE HERMIE (her x me) . think about it guys . think about it ........

ok anyway thats enough of my ramblings . this post is very silly if u cant tell but i am a #believer

[dollarstoreartsupplies]

i lowkey would totally be interested in your richie and stan dance moms au lore. I read that fic ages ago and now can't get richie and stan being dancers out of my brain. especially because im a dancer myself

Richies strengths are performing (obviously), but i also think she would have this super cool and unique quality to her dancing while stan is super technical. and i think stan would struggle with a perfectionistic mindset (ugh dont we all) and sometimes lose her artistry while richie is relaxed and genuinely just dances for enjoyment, not really caring if shes not completely technically sound

(btw you are such a talented writer i could read ur writing forever. and you characterization skills are so fucnjkh good)

(Here's the fic for reference btw)

Dude, homie, bestie, my dear like it’s so STUCK IN MY BRAIN because like?? I in general am of the opinion that gals Stan and Richie were in dance classes as little kids together, because I think it’s fun, and I ALSO think they’re the two funniest characters to throw onto reality television? Like,,,, come on?  

(Also like I’m Bad at describing dance for a person who dances so unfortunately there isn’t nearly enough dance info forthcoming in this as there is in my brain)

SO the basic timeline and lore built out in my head is:

Age 2: Richie and Stan start dancing at the ALDC in those baby ballet classes, Andrea and Maggie become friends sitting in waiting rooms and tiny Richie and Stan baby bond INSTANTLY, so they’re best friends immediately 

Age 8: The show starts filming, and it follows the actual real life incredibly fucked up dance moms lore where everyone thought they were signing up for a short documentary style thing about dancing and got locked into YEARS OF TELEVISED CHILDHOOD TRAUMA

They’re in a one year contract at first, which then gets upped to a five year contract once the show starts picking up, so six years in total that they’re REQUIRED to be on the show.

Stan genuinely is very invested in dance and both her and her parents specifically put a lot of weight in her being successful (without meaning to be kind of fucked up about it), and she’s an only child with a stay at home mom who can spend all her time on Dance, so that’s why they sign on

Richie is pretty much Gonna Do What Stan Is Doing and is generally having fun (-ish) with the being a minor celebrity of it all because she’s Nine Years Old so she’s down

She does have one older sister but she’s way, way older (18 when Richie is 8 kind of vibe) so she’s going to college by the time the show begins and therefore Maggie and Went feel comfortable committing to it

(There are some episodes where Maggie isn’t there because of Richie’s sister and Abby thinks she’s a bad mom because of it and says it a lot)

It’s also important to note that they’re just normal people being intensely manipulated by production to sign on

At the start of the show A La Maddie (DISCLAIMER: i refuse to write any semblance of real person fanfiction, Abby doesn’t count because she fucking sucks, so decide on ur own if the normal real dance moms girls are there or there are just other random Dance Children) Stan is very much the golden child who Always wins and Always gets very good solos because she’s abby’s favorite

Their solos are mostly Ballet and Lyrical because they are technically incredible and a very pretty dancer

HOWEVER like you said she is SUCH a perfectionist (mood) and takes every loss REALLY personally, so it becomes a sort of toxic fandom mindset that she is a spoiled brat because they cry a lot and have panic attacks over not liking how a dance went (FILMED LIVE ON FUCKING TELEVISION AT EIGHT! WUH OH!) 

Richie is sort of set up to be a Jojo type character, where she’s REALLY REALLY fun to watch dance and a ball full of energy but because she’s so Much all the time the producers end up painting her as very, very rude and sort of lazy brat

But she’s a fantastic performer, which is crazy important in dance, and it’s not like she’s BAD she’s just not super technical? Which actually sometimes works in her favor because she ends up being a really a super versatile dancer

Jazz and musical theater are her Big Two but she’s pretty much good at everything except ballet because WHO IS? (Stan)

The dynamic is basically Stan is a incredible dancer but really just at certain styles (idk if I’m describing this well but she’s very much the kind of dancer you watch and think Wow She’s Good At Dancing and Doing This Correctly) and Richie is very much a jack of all trades master of none

They’re very good at duets though because Richie gets Stan to loosen up and Stan refuses to let Richie Not Practice Constantly

Richie’s coasting the bottom of the pyramid WEEKLY even when she wins because of her ‘behavior’ and Stan is usually at the top

Generally the production team tries to frame the two of them as enemies because they’re SO different that it makes good television for perfect, ballerina Stan to be constantly butting heads with obnoxious brat Richie but they’re genuinely such good friends it Does Not Work

One episode is set up to sort of push the Hate Each Other narrative in season one where they give Stan a really cheesy, big performance jazz number and Richie a really, really technical ballet number, expecting it to be a big competition and fight but instead they just help each other practice and cheer each other up when they get upset

Stan wins the first nationals, obviously

Age 9-10ish: By the second season it sort of starts to pick up in intensity and both of them start to get homeschooled/setschooled and the show becomes their entire lives, which is Bad

By this point both of their mental health isn’t Awesome but Stan is really not doing great, especially because they’re so anxious the social media perception is really getting to them, and her mom is trying really hard to get out of their contract, but they’re stuck. 

Stan and Richie (along with their moms) decide they’re both leaving together the second their contracts are up.

Someone else from their team wins nationals second season but because Stan is so in her head about everything she gets like fourth, which is also Bad For Her and the narrative starts to slightly switch from ‘golden child’ into ‘is she Still the golden child?’

Age 11: THIRD SEASON, though, Richie win’s nationals and Stan gets second, which like… isn’t supposed to happen

(Fun actual Dance Moms fact: pretty much all the competitions are rigged but nationals are Less Rigged like they’re tilted in their favor but the judges are a little more real)

Abby is PISSED and basically tries to make it seem like the judges messed up scoring or it was a mistake and it’s one of those Famous dance moms scenes because Abby is basically saying that Stan should have won because she is better and Richie is clearly very genuinely upset (which doesn’t happen a lot she’s very good at like making when she’s upset a joke when the cameras are around) and Stan fully stands up to Abby and calls her out on her bullshit 

After that the whole energy skews more against Stan where suddenly production is airing a lot more of the little insults they usually cut out specifically for Stan to try and push the agenda that Abby is unfairly nice to them

Everyone sort of blames Richie for it a lot of the time, though, and the two of them probably have a thinly veiled duet called like The Bad Influence 

Age 12: Abby really fucks up and says something Genuinely So Bad (and probably Pretty Antisemetic im ngl because have you fucking watched dance moms?) to Stan so production literally cannot make them stay legally, like with Kelly situation, where it could get them into actual trouble so Stan and Andrea are allowed to break their contract and leave the show

The show runners cut most of the argument out and edit it to seem like it wasn’t Abby’s fault

Richie and her mom try to follow but because it’s a specific situation that wasn’t aimed at Richie they aren’t allowed

They both know they’re leaving when the contract is up but there's still two years stuck on the show without her immediate best friend support system and it really sucks

People make a lot of sad edits about it and Richie thinks it’s really funny but also it's genuinely the crux of why she's QUITE so mentally ill (in general being hated by abby was never good for her but once Stan leaves it's ROUGH)

Age 14: Richie’s off the show, she knows she’s gonna be off the show, so she like fully flips Abby off in the dressing room after nationals and storms out with her mom and the show honestly just keeps it in because it’s good tv to have a big reason like that to explain why she left

They worked it out so Stan and her mom are waiting outside and they drive them home and hang out and it’s a good time :)

OTHER LOSERS LORE:

Richie and Stan were best friends with Mike from before the show and they went to school together/continued to post both of them leaving the show

She’s in One (1) episode for two seconds at like a party or something and Richie and Stan pretty much Just Post That Scene when they’re older, like if someone asks them about their favorite moment they’re like oh yeah when mike was there

She’s got a big social media following from the two of them and thinks it’s hilarious

They meet the rest of the losers in college

Bill and Mike are college roommates who are crushing hard on eachother so she becomes their friend through Mike

Stan and Ben are roommates and Ben is dating Bev so that’s how they become friends

Bev was a childhood Dance Moms stan, like ran a fan instagram account and went to meet ups because I think that's really funny don’t worry she’s better now

Bill and Eddie have been best friends since elementary school so she gets dragged to a lot of their hangouts and is completely and entirely unaware that Stan and Richie are like c-list celebrities for a WHILE

tbh this is like a very train of thought bare bones explanation but do with it what you will :)

[mymarifae]

Speaking of Deltarune, i dunno if you've talked about it before but What's your general opinion on Papyrus' role in DR? i've ben thinking about this a lot after it came to my attention how much of a mystery he really is. The thought that he could be the knight is both kinda funny and kinda scary (also and correct me if im wrong, but if DR's story was here before UT was made, i can imagine Toby going "hehe what if i made Papyrus (my antagonist) a goofy comic relief in this)

oh this was sent so long ago... um...

ok anyway. even though it's taken me several months to answer this. i'm so glad you asked!

there's a lot about papyrus that's shrouded in mystery - namely the sheer amount of power he seems to have compared to the rest of the cast and the evolution of his relationship with flowey over the timelines. it makes logical sense that deltarune will elaborate on what undertale only hinted at, but like.

the theory that he's the knight doesn't click with me. if someone wants to explain where this conclusion is being drawn from, i'd love to hear it! because - and no offense - it just feels like the title of The Knight is being slung onto him solely because he's a powerful character we kind of don't know a lot about (but that's like 85% of the cast at this point..) and we have yet to see him. i won't write it off entirely because who knows what will happen with this game, but i do very much doubt that the insight deltarune will give us into papyrus's character will be through him being. The Knight.

my personal thoughts on the knight's identity are, like... among these possibilities:

the knight is a character we haven't even been introduced to yet

there is no singular knight and it's simply a role that anyone can take on. the darkners' concept of The Knight is an amalgamation of every person who has opened a fountain ever

there is no knight. like at all. this is on a similar vein of the above bullet: because it's just a conceptual role, there just is no fucking knight 👍🏾

it's dess.

it really Is kris, and this reveal was made in Chapter Two because the identity of the knight is ultimately inconsequential in comparison to the concepts and plot points future chapters will introduce.

perhaps i just have a very particular and even incorrect interpretation/assumption of what the knight's role in this game will be. but at the moment, i'm not going to be easily swayed from these ^ theories. so.. as cool and kinda funny as it Could be, no knight papyrus in this house. it doesn't make sense. to me. with how i've come to understand the knight (which is to say i barely understand the knight at all because we literally barely have any tangible info about it).

(oh but even if he is the knight, i don't think this would make him the narrative's antagonist. i don't think deltarune is going to have a conventional protagonist VS protagonist set-up, period. also i wouldn't call papyrus in undertale a comic relief. does him quite a bit of injustice i think ^^')

i'm not even wholly convinced that the build-up around papyrus won't be some sort of red herring. like, yeah i think he'll play a fairly substantial role (maybe. my initial assumption from chapter 1 was that when we do finally get to hang out with papyrus, he'll just be like. normal. like sans is. and nothing ever happens with him. and i'm not writing this possibility out yet afgngkjf), but not necessarily to the extent that people are assuming. i think there's a lot of other weird shit in hometown that no one is paying attention to because the "a trousle.. growing further away..." flavor text is so fucking distracting. and i think that's on purpose. we're so focused on what we already know from undertale and drawing those connections that everything new and unique to deltarune is kinda flying over our heads. like honestly i personally don't give a damn about papyrus rn (I LOVE HIM BUT) i'm more concerned with, like:

the strange beast that attacked the dog burglars by the holidays' house

whatever the hell is happening with onionsan and the song they're hearing

the fucking caution tape

father alvin muttering to himself over gerson's grave

hometown's religion in general honestly

the bunker?

asgore's soul-colored flowers and the fact that he said they're "exactly" like the rose from the beauty and the beast when sans joked about it (did he mean that in terms of the glass jars or something more ?)

the striped bird npc

temmie's egg

clamperson

hometown's got a lot going on. yes we love papyrus yes the trousle getting further away is weird and concerning but i don't think it's going to be as important as everything else <3..

[minmin-pal]

I was floored when I searched jjba in the site I usually watch anime at and there were so many options, i kinda got confused but i found a 'watch order complete guide' so that's fixed but i never knew jjba didn't have that many fillers? apparently, all the ova's related to the story so it's recommended to not skip anything, excited to watch it tbh, long continuity types r a grind but the complex storylines are pretty rewarding when they finish im p sure, excited to see the animation too tbh

and ohh u both watched the prev seasons together? were you both able to understand the plot properly? (/genquestion/lyttheart) it never rlly occured to me that people watch anime 2gether since i usually rewind a lot (/lytheart) and oh wait, i'll make sure to hold off on reading the manga till after i finish watching the show then, ty for the warning :')! (/gen)

even though it got spoiled for you, i hope you were still able to enjoy stone ocean! (/gen) and yea i'm gonna need to agree, the character design for j geil is so wel-done it actually warrants an actual physical reaction from the audience (physical "yikes" from me lol), it really does fit his character or what i assume his characterization is meant to be xp does it make sense that the first time i saw his design i assumed his head was either: a rotten food or literal turd? idk haha(/lytheart) the art style definitely is dynamic and unique i can agree (/positive)

and ohh, using album song names as attack/power names is actually so clever, i don't know if i would've understood the reference until a few weeks but yeah it is deffo really smart(/gen) is there any other similar references like that? and woah, so kira is like a very plot relevant char (at least for those seasons im assuming) and oh part 1/2 are different from the others? looking forward to seeing how tbh but i'll find out when i watch that scene :D (/positive) a 'flaw' btw? i'm resisting the urge to find posts about it and watch for myself (/joke/lytheart) that sounds super cool

and i just searched for 'jjba part 4 rohan blue hair' scene, i don't know if i found it but i found some other scenes with different and p unique colorings. i'm really curious how they integrated that with the anime actually though i imagine it was around the fight scenes since those scenes typically have the most effects? and woah, his design definitely looks nice tbh, i don't know why but the bit about you saying "kinda cuz theyre pretty not bizarre (in comparison.)" reminds me of that one meme with the guy in yu-gi-oh w/ the normal hair as opposed to literally even in the series lol

and ohh, on rohan, i haven't seen many 'self-insert' type characters, at least not ones that have had good fandom reception?) but he does actually sounds really cool as a character from what you've said, i'm looking forward to seeing him carry the manga economy for a bit haha, that'd actually be a good promotion stunt now that i think abt it lol and yea no worries, ramblings r ver fun to read (/lytheart)

tbh i haven't seen much from csm aside from the makima memes and a fanart about one of the demon designs but it deffo looked very cool! and ohh, kobeni? she's a major character ryt? i never knew her name before but she looks super pretty tbh, and yay i'm glad you like her,! (/lh) i've heard the series gets kinda dark at some scenes? not sure about the specifics really, but from the scenes you've shown of him, denji's humor is pretty funny ngl xD and yikes for makima, idk anything about her tbh but if it's major spoilers i assume it's important to the story,, and yeah not liking her as a person is p understandable :'))

you've mentioned you read spyxfam and kimi ni koisuru satsujinki(found out the english trans is something like 'Killer In Love')? could I ask what you like about those? any scenes stuck out to you? liked and disliked chars maybe? (feel free to skip any questions btw!) slice of life is definitely a very fun genre tbh, is there maybe any anime/manga/whichever media that you don't particularly like maybe? or your just not that fond of? (random question so feel free to skip if you'd like to again btw) this got a tad long lol, sorry bout that! take care and thank you for answering the past few asks i've sent :D (/gen)

last bit- ur new pfp and banner looks super cool btw! is that kobeni? i just noticed the pins on her hair lol so i'm p sure, looks nice (/gen/lytheart) i was replying while reading the post btw so some bits from this myt not make 2 much sense--

YAYAYAYA the certified best way to watch it is to watch part 1 & 2 (phantom blood + battle tendency in the same like period of time?? like dont take a break after phantom blood ends (by break i mean stop watching for a month) then you watch 3, 4, then the rohan kishibe ova's. if ur in it for the fact its jojo id say to watch the anime ova version, then to watch the live action one later whenever you feel like it- its jojo but not art so it doesnt really pack that exact same punch after the ovas you watch part 5 and then 6 the one thing i'll say about jojo (other than every other thing ive said :D) is that araki does not give a fuck he WILL kill the characters you love and he will NOT feel sorry even the main character isnt safe i honestly would not reccommend reading past part 6's manga because part 7, 8 and 9? havent been animated yet the mangas just good to read because its the original you feel araki's like self in it (more) or whatever

(this is a Long one. like genuinely)

we both understood the plot really well jojo can be confusing, but.. almost... everything is eventually cleared up and its great also ,. the FORESHADOWING in this series is unreal. it does not exist thats how crazy it is /j

i still enjoyed stone ocean aswell i knew what happened but it still was like "w w o w that just happened" also it was the first time id seen cgi used in anime and it was super cool

the using song names for abilities stuff is like, really reoccuring i think almost every power after part 2 has some musical/tarot connection theres a lot more obvious (?) examples of this like "man in the mirror" named after the michael jackson song, or notorious b.i.g, or the one named metallica depending on the kind of music you like its more easier to pick up on the references

kira is VERY plot relevant. so plot relavant i insist you do not search him up at all it might be hard cuz ive been gassing him up but once you get there youll see why part 1/2 are different for a big reason which will become immediately clear 10 minutes into part 3 for that reason a lot of people say to skip the first two parts when starting but i just say No....? like. theyre plot relevant, they set the stage, and they bring in joseph and jonathan!!!! those guys are amazing and telling people to skip those part because what? cause its not like the rest is such a slap in the face them not being the same is the point!! part 1 and 2 are set way back like way back like with cowboys so theyre not going to have the stuff/ thing that made part 3 forward different because they just werent there technology wise!!! part 1 is such a charming part because jonathan is literally such a sweet heart like SUCH a sweetheart and part 2 is brought together by joseph and these other 2 characters (spoilers) plus part 1 is literally the most important season ever. i wont say why but. it is. season 3 only works because of the stuff it takes from 1 and 2, literally in show or just in like writing or art (as in the people from part 1 and 2, and the way the storys work) I AM RAMBLING.

uhhh rohans coloring switches and all or the big color changes like

that ^ aren't always cause of big scenes (though that one kinda is) thats whats cool about it though?!?!?!

honestly i think rohan started as a self insert but just became araki's favorite character which is so fun because its like no way a side-ish character got his own ova AND live action version hes just him (on the topic of the live action rohan ova--- i am SO glad they didnt make him. irl anime. becuz like whats the point then just watch the anime hes honestly just real rohan and its great they didnt make the actor dye his hair neon green or anything)

the devils in csm are super cool i love the designs cuz theyre. they re all so unique :DD i dont recall which but one of them really reminded me of like the collosal titan from aot (which is another show i really like) uhh you should def not search up ANYTHING having to with aot also like jojo its a series i watched with my brother :D he'd already watched it but he wanted to show it to me ANYWHP denji reminds me of joseph from jojo humor wise sorta. like ever so slightly (i kinda like denji more cuz hes just he makes me do that little throat laugh where you make no sound but you did definitely laugh

about sxf and killer in love it seems well ill staft with spy family but i love it because . found family is one of my favorite tropes ever ALSO LOID AND ANYA/ ANYA AND YOR'S RELATIONSHIPS R SO SWEET i have never awwed over fictional characters like i awwed over everyone in spy family

theyre so. :holding_back_tears:

i jus love how sweet it is. killer in love though i love for.... sorta the opposite reason i first liked it because the way the mc felt about this girl was just. really the same as how i feel about this.... one girl... ive mentioned her before i think so flatout i like it cuz i related to the mc but BUT hes kinda a serial murderer which is why i have to ask you to take everything i say with a grain of salt he is one flawed mc. like hes fucked actually hes mental but like.... i get it.... like i reread it and the entire time i was like yeah you do you bro i get it. ALSO ITS GENUINELY SO GREAT WRITING WISE AND VISUALLY it has no right being as pretty as it is visually like i censored the words cuz theyre spoilers but

its!! ITS SO its so prettyyyyy.... (also i really cant show where i relate to the mc-- cuz theyre spoilers aswell really but!! i can show you him

idk if itd register but he was ALWAYSS my layouts until really recently usually him and this one scene where he's holding a knife as the banner

for spy family i have no characters i hate honestly, but for killer in love i heavily dislike this one boy.

i dislike him so much... that i . dont remember his same

hes just not it if you read it youll see why theres another character like him,you actually meet him wayyy before this guy, and theyre both bad in the same way but the other guy is just so pathetic that i cant hate him. cause like i get it

uhhh i dont really like isekais or fanservice romance animes if its a romance anime and the main character is a brown haired boy, i 9/10 times skip it cuz theyre usually a miss the only isekai ive ever stomached is devil is a part timer and i just couldnt watch season 2 this one isnt particularly a genre but if the female interest looks 15 and has. double d's not that there arent girls built like that but if you cant make good female designs, you probably cant write a good story either (the only exception being one piece- but holy hell i cannot watch it. i know its great but what is. THIS?)

they all are the same girl and then you look at the male designs you get

are they from the same show????

another trope.. well design i hate and throws me off is Thigh Highlights. chest highlights. shoulder highlights. this one more applys to artists than anime honestly but 9 times out of ten if someone does little white highlights on their big breasted teenage looking characters chest they probably like little kids i have to say it 9/10 times they love children thats just how it is second i notice the shading like that i just cant trust them

also i dont mind how long it got dwdw im super glad you send these cause it always has me rethinking on stuff i like and forming newer opinions really :))

the new layout is kobeni!! im glad it looks nice to you :D (also the lengths okay with me.. usually t takes me a while to formulate everything so i go back and forth with drawing and continunt these... which is why some ideas might feel disconnected... everything made sense though) ive gotta like. give you a aname or something youre..... uhh idk if youd feel comfortable sharing so u are. uuh custard? :D

[scruffyssketchbook]

castle vees idea :)) -e

off anon to submit a long block o' text and yes i am the OCvees submitter from wayyy back too if you remember that (i have a lot of eevee ideas)

okay so!!

its sort of medieval but not, because its supposed to be that the eeveelutions have divided into kingdoms with different power structures and they all hate each other ofc, and each kingdom demands you turn into the e-lution (Ex: all umbre-doms must become umbreons or else they are Thrown To The Dungeons for being 'traitors').

the main character is an eevee named Ordi who hails from the Umbreon Kingdom. Ordi (12yo he/they AroAce) is very stoic/bland/serious and follows the kingdom's rules to the T (like a loser). He has a best friend named Jewel, whose outgoing and not afraid to voice her opinions, and he has an older bro (18) named Blanche, who is an umbre that dyed his fur white and his rings blue because he's Edgy and Unique and a Rebel who hates the umbre kingdom

the theoretical comic would start with Ordi in class learning all of this stuff, then the kids who've evolved into umbreons pick on him for not being an umbre yet (11-12yo is the typical evolve age). Ordi ignores them and goes home. at home he talks to his parents (stern government official mom and bored nerd dad, both sort of distant parents but still loving towards their kids, just not obviously) abt not evolving, since his bro Blanche evolved when he was just 9, to which they reassure him that his dad was a late bloomer and evolved at 17 (note: eevees who dont evolve by 18 are sent to facilities to force them to evolve or exile them). Ordi feels slightly better

Ordi runs into his brother as he's applying his blue rings (sorta like stickers over the normal rings? or contacts?) and they banter, Ordi kinda hates him in that "why is he so rebellious ugh!!!" he cant understand why his brother wants to look so flashy. their mom does have red ring contacts and plenty of other umbres have ring contacts too, but its kinda frowned upon to dye ur fur another color cause the black color is kinda a symbol of the umbreons.

anyway Ordi sees his bro sneak out and is partially just curious and partially worried he's doing something against the umbreon code. welp, Ordi is proven right as he follows his bro to the border (to which Ordi is worried about a Vaporeon attack since they border the Vapors, NOT the Flareons which is a trauma thing for the mom's backstory thats not important rn also Blanche's father might secretly be a Flare oop-). there, he sees his brother meet with an Espeon. NOT JUST ANY ESPEON. this Espeon is green. and not just dyed fur!!! she's shiny.

this is the Princess of the Espeons.

Princess Beauty.

Ordi is horrified to realize his brother is meeting with and DATING (and totally conspiring with!!!!) the heir to their mortal enemies' thrown. so ofc he confronts his brother and they get in a screaming match where Blanche tells him not to be a sheep and that he loves Beauty and nothing can keep them apart and Ordi is like "im gonna tell mom!!" Blanche is obvs like "no dont!!!" and Beauty sits there like "uh, im just gonna go-"

so somehow Blanche convinces Ordi NOT to tell mom or dad, and they head home all angy. they sleep and the next day occurs, Ordi goes to school, blah blah, exposition with bullies (the lead bullies are twins who also evolved young BTW. i forget their names or if i even gave them, but one's a guy, one's a girl and they come from a typically rich kid high pressure family). so the typical bullies pick on Ordi and call him an "ever 'vee" but Jewel defends him and gives the bullies a good ol' punch. a Middle School Playground fight ensues and Jewel starts evolving from the exp gained!

but Uh Oh it's morning, and exp gain + friendship (with Ordi) + sunlight = Espeon. so Jewel evolves into an Espeon which is a big No No and she gets taken to Jail. Ordi is shocked and horrified and wants to save his friend. he goes home and his parents sadly tell him this is the way, and his dad says he just has to stay quiet and obedient and do as he's told like always. his mom grimly (hesitantly?) agrees.

Ordi can't accept that his best friend is just gone forever now, possibly in harm's way, because she evolved into something she didnt even mean to!! so he HAS to save her, and, bitterly, he turns to his big bro and asks if his Espeon gf can help save Jewel. Blanche agrees and is like "see how corrupt the system is!" but Ordi wont admit so and says its just one mistake. so Ordi and Blanche go to meet Princess Beauty, who, of course agrees to help them, and Ordi thinks its just cause Beauty wants to save a fellow Espeon and have insight into Umbreon life via Jewel, but Beauty explains its because she believes all the kingdoms should learn to love each other, and that they need to live together in harmony, and that everyone should evolve into what they want. Ordi thinks thats BS but Blanche believes in it whole-heartedly with a side of pessimism like "but like that'll ever happen, all the kingdoms are rotten."

anyway, Beauty says she knows a 'vee who can help them, and that Ordi just needs to find out where Beauty is being held. so Ordi goes home and asks his mom (government official) and she tells him after a bit, and Ordi reports to Beauty. then, at night, Beauty sends a Vaporeon named Dewdrop (they/them) to do the rescue, which shocks Ordi because how the hell does an Espeon know a Vaporeon??? (then it starts to make sense cause duh, Beauty is meeting Blanche at the Vaporeon-Umbreon border, how ELSE would she be there? ...further more, why isnt she at her kindom's royal castle??)

so Dew uses the river to get to the side of the Jail with Ordi (Ordi is not happy abt the swimming and water and makes sure to extra hate it bcus eevees arent supposed to learn to swim until after they evolve in fear they become Vapors). Ordi is also unnerved because Dew doesn't say a single word at all to him, and they look super emotionless and kinda scary (which makes Ordi suspect/fear that Dew wants to kidnap them). Dew uses waterbeam or whatever to try and break a hole/wear down the water, and they do manage to get in!!! Ordi sees Jewel locked up (along with other evolved vees and even a few umbreons, all of which he thinks poorly of tho he does realize the hypocriticalness of his throughts). he tells Jewel he's gonna get her out of there but she's telling him to run, now, and he's like why??

and, predictably, there's an Umbreon police team there and they see Ordi and chase him. Dew takes Ordi and runs and Ordi screams and is like "no!! not without Jewel!" but Jewel uses a new Espeon move of hers (idk which) to knock Ordi away, and he and Dew barely manage to escape into the depths of the river and into the heart of Vapor territory...

or so Ordi thinks. once they surface and stay surfaced, Ordi screams at Dew to take him back and that they cant kidnap him, but Dew just shakes his head and starts walking. with no choice, Ordi follows him and they go to some strange... tunnel, bunker of sorts, that leads to a giant shelter. Beauty is there, and Ordi isnt sure if he's relieved or nervous to see her, but she greets him and questions where Jewel is and Ordi snaps that it failed. Beauty says that now that the guards know their face, they will be after them, and that Ordi cannot go home. Ordi is horrified and denies it and basically throws a temper tantrum, kicking and screaming and yelling (and crying), but then a Sylveon appears and Ordi is shocked into silence because a Sylveon??

everyone knows that Sylveons live like nuns in the mountains, far away from the war, living in bliss and peace and whatever lies they tell themselves. ALL kingdoms hate Sylveons because Sylveons think they're so noble and great being all 'peaceful' and wistful, but that they're naive and think that all kingdoms should just love each other like its a fairy tale.

this Sylveon is named Pixie and she is very hyper. so hyper that she shocks Ordi into silence because he just wasnt expecting it. she welcomes him to the Ever Vee resistance and that he'll love it here and isn't he Blanche's little bro??? aww how cute she can see the family resemblance!! Ordi questions what the heck she's talking about and Pixie lays out some plot stuff, saying that she's the leader of this Ever Vee base, where survivors of the wars and rebels and, well, ever vees can live together. Ordi is stunned, cause he thought that, aside from an insult, Ever Vees were just a group of outcasted unevolved eevees, not a.. rebellion group? Pixie just chuckles and says surprise! and welcomes him once more and says he can room with the other kids since they dont have space! then she just Leaves (giving Beauty a flirty goodbye).

Ordi has shutdown by this point and allows Dew to lead him to his room, where he meets a small, scared Jolteon who has bandages all over one side of her face and eye and is missing an ear. she doesnt say anything, just stares in fear, but then the other girl, a very loud and equally energetic as Pixie Glaceon greets Ordi (the Jolteon also flinches at her volume). Dew leaves them, and when the Glaceon introduces herself as Autumn ("but you can just call me Autie!") and the Jolteon as Jolty ("because we have no idea what her name is cause she wont tell us- well she doesnt say much anyway! more than Dew tho, they never ever talk ever!!") and then asks Ordi for his name and backstory, but Ordi just snaps at her to shut up and that he's had a difficult day. he storms to his bed and crawls in and puts the blankets over his head. he thinks Autie is quiet for once but then hears her whispering very loudly to Jolty about what weedle stung him or some other poke-metaphor for Cranky

the next day, Autie loudly walks Ordi up and he begrudgingly follows her (and she talks the entire way about how she's gonna be the greatest Glaceon warrior one day) and Jolty as they lead him to get breakfast. there, they meet the rest of the cast. the first is Vine the Leafeon, who is Autie's older brother. Vine is reprimanding Autie for being so obnoxious. then walks in Inferno the Flareon, who sneers at the newcomer and complains about having more dumb little kids in the building. Vine tells him that theirs more adults than kids and Ferno tells him to shut up, to which Vine does. Ferno demands Vine get him something to eat and Vine does and Autie glares at Ferno and says he doesnt like him and Ferno says the feelings mutual brat. Autie sticks her tongue out and then, of course, being a rational and mature 17 nearing 18yo, Ferno lits up a fireball at her, a 13yo child. (note: Jolty is also terrified and shaking and clinging to Ordi during this, which he hates/is confused by)

thankfully, another Flareon interrupts, with Dew at her side. this Flareon has a scar down her face, and glares firmly at Ferno and reprimands him. Ferno grumbles and says "Sorry aunt Smolder" and angrily walks away to Vine, who just came back and is oblivious to Ferno attempting to lit his sis on fire. Ferno roughly drags him along with him, even tho Vine wanted to eat with his sis. anyway, the adult, wartorn Flareon introduces herself as former General of the Flareons, Smolder. Ordi tenses, knowing how awful the Flareons are. As Ferno just proved, they are angry, blood-thirsty, aggressive, and vicious monsters who take no prisoners, merely kill for the fun of it. after all, that's why his mom moved away from the Flareon border ('isn't it?' he wonders).

but Autie happily greets and hugs Smolder, calling her mama Smolder. Smolder chuckles and says hello to you to, patting the energetic girl's back. Ordi questions if she's really her mom, but Smolder says no, Autie just enjoys calling her that. Smolder says that Pixie may be the leader, but she's the one in charge of the care for all 'vees in this base, the little ones especially. Ordi feels surprisingly calm with Smolder, but Jolty is still clinging to him and staring at Smolder like she murdered Jolty's family, so he's hesitant to truly trust Smolder or Dew or anyone else for that matter.

anyway, they eat, or whatever, yada yada. there's some yucky "flirting" between Vine and Ferno where it clearly establishes that Ferno is abusive/toxic towards Vine and just using him and Vine is spineless/desperate and stays with him regardless. also establish that Dew is mute and never speaks. some (reluctant on Ore's part)) Autie, Ordi, and Jolty bonding as quick friends. later, Smolder tells Ordi that his brother is here to see him and Ordi mad dashes to his bro.

he is upset to see Beauty with Blanche, but then demands that both of them take him home. Blanche says they cant, that he will be arrested on sight, that even mom and dad know now. Beauty says he's safest here and Ordi argues with them, but, ya know, eventually Ordi realizes that if he goes back he will be treated as though he had evolved into an Espeon, and that he truly is a traitor and then he has some Feelings about that and shuts down once more.

Beauty says she's gonna go talk to Pixie and gives Blanche a quick goodbye peak, then Blanche and Ordi make their way to (somewhere idk, lunch?), where Blanche tries to comfort Ordi that everything will be okay, that he knows its scary but that he'll be safe here and they'll still try to rescue Jewel, but Ordi doesn't respond at all and Blanche gets worried. but they're interrupted when Vine walks out of a room with a bruise on his cheek, to which Blanche is like "woah! Vine, right? are you okay?" and Vine is like "uh, yeah, uhm, its cool, I, uh," and stutters into oblivion when Blanche offers to get a berry to heal him. luckily, Autie saves Vine from his gay malfunction by squealing and hugging her bro happily. she then gets super interested in Blanche because he's "white and blue like a Glaceon!!!"

as Autie pesters him and inspects him, Vine tells Autumn to stop bothering him, to which Blanche questions why she has a Leafeon name when she's a Glaceon. Vine explains that they were from a Leafeon family, but that Autie had been obsessed with being a Glaceon since she was young. Ordi questions in disgust why a vee would ever want to not be what their kingdom was (doesnt she have any pride?) to which Autie exclaims that Glaceons are the coolest ever and who wouldnt wanna be one!!!! Vine explains further, saying that Glaceons rescued them when they were young and had gotten caught in an avalanche. Ordi is shocked and questions why Glaceons would save Leafeons when everyone knows they hate each other as much as Umbreons and Espeons do. Blanche starts saying that its ridiculous propaganda and that vees of any kingdom can get along but Vine interrupts to say "then they destroyed our entire village and left us orphaned."

there's a beat of silence and Blanche just goes "what?"

Vine goes into Backstory Mode and explains that the Glaceons that saved them were soldiers awaiting orders. they saved Autie and him for whatever reason, and were truly kinda nice to them, but that they were still young. Autie and Vine were too young to realize that Glaceons being in Leafeon turf was suspicious and didnt realize they were stationed there, awaiting orders... to destroy their town and capture the icy area that the Leafeons had stolen from them previously. Autie and Vine escaped when the Glaceon that had previously saved them recognized them and gave them mercy. Vine took Autie and ran way, but, Autie could not understand what had happened and idolized the Glaceons still, and, of course, evolved into one. now that she had done so, Vine knew they couldn't go to a Leafeon village, so instead he searched for the Ever Vees until he found Pixie.

And then Autie finishes it with "And now I'm gonna be the bestest Glaceon soldier ever and become their General just like Smolder was!!"

anyway not sure exactly what happens after that, but, basically, Ordi angsts some more but finds himself reluctantly becoming friends with Autie and Jolty, eventually he becomes good enough friends with Jolty that she quietly admits to him her real name is Emma, and also that her family and home was burned to the ground by Flareons. Ordi also becomes closer to Smolder and Dew, as they are both kinda parental figures and mentors to him. Smolder would admit to Ordi that her children were killed by the war and thats why she left despite being a General who had killed so many mercilessly; she could never imagine harming a child but hadnt stopped to realize that she had been killing many via orders to her troops. she forced Ferno to come with her per her brother's request, not that Ferno was happy about that as he still thinks Flareons are superior (and loves how afraid Jolty is of him).

there's some more Vine and Ferno being in a toxic relationship and Ferno being an a-hole to everyone always without remorse. he actually injuries Autie once and that makes Vine snap at him, but then Ferno smacks him and says he cant yell at him like that because he's just a stupid Leafeon who'd be nothing without him (yikes). Blanche comes to Vine's defense and Vine is blushy-blushy. Blanche and Vine become good friends.

there would be some cuts in the comic to Ordi's parents. his mom is super worried (dad is too, but the focus is on the mom), as she thinks about her past and, shocker, it's revealed she had fallen in love with a Flareon, but when she got preggo with his kid, he wanted her to join the Flareon's side, that the kid had to be a Flareon, it was in its blood, but she refused and the Flareon got angry and he and his buddies burned down her neighborhood (no deaths tho). she ran away where she met Ordi's father, who was kind and understanding and boring and they pretending Blanche was his instead of the Flareon's and no one was the wiser.

there's also cuts to Jewel, who plots her escape. when she goes to face a judge for her 'sins', which she thinks is totally stupid cause she'll be imprisoned forever anyway. but then, to her surprise, they say they have a special mission for her, that she can be a spy... at first she denies, but then... shocker!!! her former school bully (purple rings, female twin) appears when she's moping about her decision in a jail cell and the former bully says that she arranged for this by convincing her dad to do so, so that Jewel could have a chance at life! Jewel is shocked and questions why she'd do that and the bully (damn i need a name for her and her bro... Nora and Aron, there) gets a slight blush but says that she admired Jewel for being so strong and defending her friend like that... Jewel questions why she's a bully and Nora is like "i dont know! ...cause my brother is? ...everyone expects me to be perfect cause i evolved early and my dad's rich but i... i dont even know if i wanted to be an umbreon in the first place..." Jewel is shocked, but ends up accepting being a spy per Nora's request.

so anyway, there's some implied romance between Smolder and Dew too. nobody knows Dew backstory but Smolder, who teases them over it sometimes, but only kindly. Dew never says anything, even to Smolder, but they're close anyway (and sign language exists, ya know, although Dew still doesn't use it often). they are the eldest adults at the facility, as its actually kinda just the cast plus a few people who come in and out. even Pixie is younger than them. Smolder has a distrust in overly happy Pixie, who is supposed to be their caretaker, but is never really there when it matters, leaving the responsibility to Smolder.

Ordi also still wants to rescue his bff Jewel, as he doesnt know she's out of jail, and obviously Autie is super eager to stage a rescue, and Jolty is horrified but will follow them anywhere regardless. so, sneaking past their older bros, they leave and attack to sneak into jail again. honestly not sure what happens (Ordi nearly evolves tho? into an umbreon but he doesnt), but it fails, and then Pixie has to rescue them or something. Pixie is unusually cold as she acts like an adult for once and scolds them and says they have to ask her for permission first before they stage pointless rescue missions! when they return, Pixie takes Ordi aside and presents him with an everstone, which immediately horrifies Ordi and he attempts to run away but the door is locked.

Pixie tells Ordi that evolving is a curse and doesnt he want to be free of it? he can be a true Ever Vee then, and he can know everything he wants to. Ordi denies it and tries the door again, it opens, and he slams into Beauty. he hides behind her and tells her what Pixie tried to do, and Beauty is like "what? ...Pixie would never, are you insane? she wants everyone to have the freedom to evolve. i think you're just worn out after your adventure today, why dont you go back to bed?" and Ordi is shocked Beauty doesnt believe him but leaves. Beauty then turns to Pixie like "really?" to which Pixie is like "whaaaat? we need more eevees! not eeveelutions!" Beauty just sighs and says she can't just scare her boyfriend's lil bro like that, or else what will Blanche do if he found out? Pixie gets pouty and is like "your boyfriend??? excuse me. what am i chopped liver?" Beauty laughs and they kiss. (gaslight, girlboss, gatekeep)

anyway, i dunno how the rest goes exactly but its sort of like: we cut to Jewel spying (and Nora being blushy around her when Jewel relays info to her. Aron is still a whiny brat bully to her tho), and she learns stuff about the Espeons who have taken her in. they love their royal family a lot, and Beauty shows up at events to just kinda be paraded around. Espeons, to Jewel's disgust, pride themselves on being pretty (cause stereotypes), and dont have a super strict structure. they hate Umbreons and other 'lutions, but they're kinda lame in Jewel's opinion, because she's always prided herself on her strength, but they think she's weird for focusing on fighting and stuff. anyway, somehow Jewel would get close to the royal fam enough to follow Beauty, and wonders where she's going. she finds out Beauty is going to meet the Sylveons and Jewel finds out that the Sylveons don't just want 'world peace', they want everyone to be 'ever vees' so that they cant be 'cursed into eeveelution unless its pure like a Sylveon, who evolves from affection and love.'

so somehow Jewel and Nora would get into contact with Blanche (cause Jewel is worried about Ordi) and they'd go meet Ordi+ and Ordi and Jewel would have a tearful reunion (and Ordi would question why Nora was there but Jewel would defend her), but then Beauty would recognize Jewel and be like "wait a minute-" and there would be tension and then it'd be revealed what Beauty and Pixie's plans are (that the whole shelter for outcasts and orphans is kinda a lie. its complicated). Beauty and Pixie reveal their backstory, that they used to be BFFs from a young age (both born into the Espeon kingdom; typical Beauty was the princess and Pixie her maid), but as they grew, Pixie loved Beauty so much she evolved into a Sylveon, which then meant Pixie was outcasted, and Beauty was forced through many trials to become an Espeon. Beauty became bitter while Pixie was forced to find the other Sylveons by herself. the Sylveons then kinda brainwashed Pixie into their ideology (not that Pixie realizes that), and Beauty went on to hate her own kind/family for tearing Pixie away from her.

Beauty ended up meeting Blanche by accident because Beauty kept running away from home. she enjoyed running away to meet him cause it made her feel rebellious and stuff, but then Pixie found her and Pixie told her her plans/ideas, and Beauty agreed and also immediately had to date Pixie, but, ugh, Blanche was still her boyfriend and they had to break up. but Pixie told her not to, that they could use him, because Blanche's mother had connections as an official and trusted government official. if they could gain her trust through Blanche, they could use her to upend the Umbreon government while Beauty worked on destroying the royal Espeon family. (to clarify Beauty and Pixie are both evil and bad people who manipulate others for their own selfish goals)

so Smolder steps up and defends the kids but to her surprise her nephew Ferno would defend them/join their side and say that he knew this whole thing was stupid (he's just siding with the more powerful side) and then, when Smolder prepares to fight her own nephew, Beauty and Pixie, Dew joins them. Smolder is shocked, but Dew just guiltily looks away, and then Smolder wont fight, but Blanche, in complete anger, does, and Jewel, Nora, and the other kiddos do too, but obvs Beauty and Pixie are higher level + more experienced (Dew does not fight them; Ferno does but get's K'O'd be Blanche) so Smolder joins and chases them off. Dew looks back apologetically and signs "im sorry"

Vine comforts Blanche for Beauty cheating on him and everything, yada yada aaaandd.... then i kinda dont have any more idea juice lol. Dew would eventually come back and redeem themself/explain themself!! and their backstory would be properly revealed >;3. ...honestly idk their backstory lmao. but yaeh, thats what i can remember of it

thats it!!!!

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

[wetalkedaboutthisshinji]

More Jojolion Long ass texts

TOTAL SPOLERS TO THE LAST CHAPTER

I just have lots of thoughts about recent Jojolion revelations.

It took me a while but I think I´m finally at peace with the fact that the Calamity Arc was 90% sure the climactic Jojolion arc and that Tooru is Part 8´s entrance to the Jojo Big Bad Gallery TM, a supervillain group truly on the level of the Disney Villains. I´m only half joking lol.

It hurts bc I was (and still am) a strong believer on Big Bad Kaato. I LOVED the idea of a female Big Bad, especially one that gray and I was very curious about seeing her stand in a Stand Battle.I love evil ladies and that blinded me  I don´t even think Araki chickened out or anything, but that Big Bad Kaato clearly was never the idea for the story he had. Still, Kaato´s scenes, while too short, were damm cool, and Space Truckin´is a damm cool stand, but I still wish we had seen it more. I wonder if it could be used offensively? It at least can trap people from a distance, which is very useful. Im so angry bc its power was sooooo good for some JJBA weird moves, but alas.

One thing I love about Jojolion is that it completely goes against the normal tropes of a shonen/seinen battle manga in that most of the characters are just....people. It really is a Twin Peaks TM plot with more fighting. With the exception of the Rock Humans and Jousuke most of the characters are, like, some guy from town, at worst kinda shady and mean. We have housewives, a model, a divorcee, local businessowners, some doctors and an oddly viscious agriculture university student. Of couse Part 4, which Jojolion mirrors, had some of that, but IMO you really get more of a sense of normalcy on Jojolion, maybe bc Araki changed his way of writing a lot, maybe because Jojolion is more of an ensemble story, maybe because it´s less episodic. So you take these randos and give them superpowers and involve them in fights against supernatural beings and I think that´s part of the reason why the fights are so quick and to the point. Characters like Mitsuba or Kaato are really just normal people that happen to have stands so it makes sense for them not to do the whole strategic Stand Battle. And it bought us some awesome moments. Looking back maybe there were a bit too many “this character looked helpless but NO” but damm if it didn´t hype me up when reading it.

So, yeah, Kaato had her role, did her thing, and got Kei’d. And she was never evil, but rather, like Jobin, more morally gray and she died a martyr. And I wish both had more to do, but the part is long and Araki clearly wanted it to be a 3-way conflict with a clearer villain.....

evil twink Tooru.

Ngl I was at first really against Tooru and wanted him to be just a big antagonist and not THE big bad. After I calmed down and reread some past chapters I feel much more appreciative. I like how he really has a different dynamic, being a "mistery villain" but in a different way to Pucci or Diavolo. He really looks harmless and Araki clearly worked HARD with the misdirections. Theres a reason there were some fools (like me) still arguing against him being tbe antagonist. I checked his intro again back on the Doctor Wu fight and I really like how totally whatever the scene is the first time around. He absolutely could have been a minor character. Rereading it the whole thing is SO ominous AND everything Tooru says has a double meaning. I also like that his oddness can be chalked up to being a romantic rival to Jousuke, which threw off lots of folk (likeAs for WOU I'm also starting to like the fight more and more. The power over causality def is on the same level as power over time or space and I like how the characters are forced to think of loopholes and try out different ways to hurt him, playing with his "kill list" and such. I also like that WOU has limitations and that the Dr. and Tooru have to work with them to be deadlier, which makes them both so much smarter. I KINDA dislike how at the end he turned out to be so stupidly poweful that only Go Beyond can hurt him, which is not the worst Deus Ex Machina (Jousuke had to "figure" out his own stand --thats kinda symbolic for someone with duch a complex identity) but its a bit cheap for a 20+ fight.

Of course the real insanity is how unique of a stand WOU is. I dont think we had ever seen a stand this autonomous and smart? In my opinion thats what makes the fight so unique and Tooru so powerful. Its only balanced stat-wise in that neither Tooru or his stand buddy looks particularly powerful offensive or defensive wise in a conventional fight. Not that they needed it. Cant help but wonder how the hell could they add Tooru as a fighter if theres another JJBA fighting game. Maybe a double fighter?

Finally you gotta love the Magritte (hope im spelling it right) references with the doctor. Araki clearly was having fun and it added some "classic art" thing to the part. Kaato's attack and all of calamity also looked great, if we ever see Jojolion animated Im sure it will be a feast for the eyes.

Ofc maybe all this bs means nothing if Araki does pull a 180° next chapter. But thats the Jojo experience.

If anyone´s interested in this, how do you feel Tooru and WOU stack up against the other Jojo Big Bads?

[edge-lorde]

For the ask meme: 2 and 22 - for mom clone; 60 and 69 - for funny clone; 12 and 67 - for shitty clone; 62 and 65 - for bebe clone c:

hey thanks sending this!

for mom clone,

2. What is your character’s happiest memory?

mom clone is unique among my clone ocs in that he genuinely had a pretty good time in the horde pre-show. he was a cloning technician and genuinely enjoyed his job, so his happiest memory is probably seeing his brothers come together in their tubes and then come to life, free to go forth and do primes work across all corners of the empire UuU.

22. Do they have any nervous habits? If they know, what made them start doing them?

i guess a nervous habit for him would be that anytime anyone so much as says that there might be something wrong with one of the other clones, (like one of them telling him about a dream where his teeth were falling out,) it gives him a heart attack and makes him feel like he HAS to take it seriously even if he knows hes probably overreacting. post-hive mind has had him in constant babysitter mode by necessity.

funny clone:

60. Have they ever committed a crime, or something they felt was wrong? What was it?

only murder :). but does it really matter if no one brings it up?

69. Do they enjoy facing their fears? CAN they face their fears? If not, what do they do in a situation where they’re forced to face them?

enjoy? no. can? we're getting into spoiler territory here... at the moment he would either shut down and become unresponsive or ignore it and act like it doesnt effect him.

shitty clone:

12. Your character has the opportunity to have one wish granted. Would the wish only benefit them, someone else (one person or multiple), or everyone? And what would that wish be?

bring horde prime back. in his mind this benefits everyone.

67. What was the most acidic remark your character’s ever given to someone? And their reaction?

hmmmmm. im not sure. i cant remember all the things hes said in my comics so far and i dont want to spoil future comics.... i can see him doing something like say "that was almost a joke." without thinking, after one of his brothers, probably funny clone, says some normal observation to him that was definitely not meant as a joke.....

ive done that to one of my sisters before, completely on accident, and would be an accident for him too. funny clones reaction would probably be giddy shock, and then they would probably both laugh it off.

bb clone:

62. What’s something that really repulses them?

some of the crap hes going to be asked to believe about some basic clone physiology questions and the nature of the way they live, especially because he has no way of fact checking whether or not hes being messed with.

65. Have they ever eaten something unusual to their normal diet? What was it? Did they like it?

alas bebe clone is baby. he has not yet had the opportunity to eat anything. U______U

thanks again for the ask!

[hematomes]

i know we're all about the memes and being soft on here, but i have a little meta question? i keep seeing people talk about damage numbers and i'm ar56 and still have no idea what good damage is??? (i don't particularly care about what other people do with their game, but i've been curious. like, someone saying they do 40k damage regularly just sounds so unattainable?)

zkdkzk dw bub i can be serious from time to time

so what ill say now is not my personal opinion but good damage would be over 50k crit, mainly bc it's an achievement in the game, so it's somewhat reachable. im not talking raw dmg here, it's with support like bennett, sara or other characters + elemental reactions most of the time. could also be with bounty buffs!

however in my own personal opinion (kinda casual player? ar57 and still haven't been able to 9* the 12th abyss floor but it's also bc i kinda suck at this game) numbers aren't important, balance is. you can use different strategies - my favorite is permafreeze (with for example kaeya, chongyun, xingqiu, kokomi - or for full 4* you can add a lil sucrose here) bc it paralyzes the enemy, so you don't have to deal a lot of dmg to clear domains rather easily. + the 4p blizzard artifact set is basically made for permafreeze comp. anyway, what i mean is that with this team i deal like 4-5k per character on normal attacks, and i still clear most domains with no problem AND it's super fun

if you do want to improve your dmg tho, i'd suggest lots of crit, and up the characters talents as much as you can. crown your favorite characters. and use sub dps with good amounts of em (like mona, i run her on em and she can deal 135k on vaporize). as for elemental reactions, vaporize and melt are the most effective because they can crit, so for a good unique hit, it's the best!

you can also do some research on comps and shit, which would fit your main dps the best etc; for example, cryo + electro give the best phys boost (which is why most of the classic phys dps are cryo or electro: razor, eula, rosaria, kaeya... and then there xinyan my poor child), pyro resonnance boosts your atk etc. it takes a bit of time but it's satisfying!!

hope that helped, feel free to ask more specific stuff if im too vague <3

[popculturebuffet]

Top 20 Animated Episodes of 2020 Part 2 (#10-#1)

And we’re back.. The first part is HERE, which includes the first 10 and my thoughts on this past year in animation, so we can cut the long intro and get right into it. This is the best episodes this year had to offer in animation, and it’s , without meaning to, at least a third bojack horseman. On with the show. 

10. I Am My Monster (Steven Universe Future)  “We all had Steven when we needed him, but the only person who's never had Steven is Steven. He's always been there for us, so... how can we be there for him now?“ Oddly “The Future”, a finale I did really truly enjoy.. is not on this list. Really good episode, it’s just Future was easily one of Steven Univereses best season, tightining up the pacing without loosing what made the series feel special and really digging into some of more unhealthy aspects of steven’s life. And while the future is good and certanily the needed epilogue.. this episode is the climax, the cumilation of EVERYTHING Steven had done and gone though and something fans sadly saw coming and just had to simply watch, unable to help as Steven slowly lost himself. Previously on this list we saw him hit rock bottom and it only got worse: He went to home world, attacked white diamond due to his pent up trauma and once again ingored attempts to help him, this time from the diamonds and spinle, angrily refusing to listen to his own words she she sang Change at him.  This only got worse in the briliant and sadly edged out of the list “Everything’s Fine’ A really damn painful episode where steven tries to assert he’s okay and act normal.. only he cant and he destroys everything around him, and even repeats pearl’s text trick from a single pale rose with a pained voice message to connie saying to help steven. But the pressure of the LONG overdue intervension and the fact it came too late.. means steven confsses his recent sins.. and instead of taking them for twhat they are, spur of the moment acts caused by a toxic influence and a fuckload of ptsd and unreseovled issues with white that while certanly not okay are symptoms of a larger issues takes it to mean “Im a fraud”.. and thus he horriingly corurpts.  So here we are as Greg, Connie and the main gems all gap ein horor as Steven has corrputed himself, reduced to a monster whose not even malcious just.. sad.. so full of self loathing he can’t function and at risk of STAYING like that. And the relization hits hard.. and hits everyone who joins in hard. The auxilery crystal gems soon join but attempts from both groups to stop Steven do nothing. The diamonds arrive.. and not only are saddneed by what htey’ve doned but equally powerfless to stop him.  Everyone breaks down, blaming themselves for not seeing this sooner and for speding YEARS piling their issue on the kids, everyone ready to give up as they loose the person they care about most.. except one. Connie proves to be the hero of the episode, rallying the others with the above, pointing out Steven would happily help them if he could.. and that’s the problem. He’s spent his whole life fixing other peoples problems and focusing on that.. but never had someone to be HIS Steven. Fighting him’s not going to work.. he needs to know he’s loved... in the end the final battle of the series is not some struggle of life and death.. but of love. What wins the day isn’t a fight, though our heroes various powers do come in hand to restrain steven.. but it’s all of them, one by one telling them they love him in easily the most tearjerking moment of the series, cumilating in connie softly playing a kiss on his nose... and it’s this that FIANLLY frees steven from his self made prison.. finally realizing h’es not alone and that no matter who or what he becomes.. his family loves and forgives him. While we REALLY needed the next episode to wrap things up after this swell of emtitions. this was the climax the series desrved: after spending 6 seasons trying to help everyone ELSE and fix their issues he never should’ve had to.. it’s eveyrone else who gladly pitches in to fix steven’s own issues, to help HIM when he’s at his lowest point like they’ve been, and make it so he can FINALLY heal and finally find himself once and for all. IT’s one of the finest episodes of the series and easily the best of future. 

9. The Perfect House (Close Enough)  “I’m this close to connecting garfield, TO JESUS”  This one’s just really funny, charming and creative. Simple as that.. I could move on but eh i’m a wordy bastard. Once again we’re focused on Emily, this time as we find out an endearing hobby of hers: She likes visiting open houses and fantasizing about affording a better place she likely never will afford, one with trash can nooks, a kitchen and a living room that are fully seperate, and indivudal bins for tea and sugar... and when it’s pointed out she dosen’t drink tea it’s only because she has nowhere to put it.  But after Josh and Candace get them thrown out, if adorably so, Emily is forced to face reality... i.e. Alex, in one of the series finest gags, in his underwear with conspiracy boards trying to connect garifled to jesus and having a jug of his urine around for some reason. Did I mention I love this weirdo because I do. Brigette is painting in the ktichen.. using her body as the canvas, though in a bikini because the show wasn’t streaming only yet. You’ll have to wait a season for possible boobs. Naturally this just stresses her out so she goes to visit more houses while Josh vows to buy a family bike, a large circular bike for the whole family, as an activity because of course he does and of COURSE he also has a recurring issue of being mocked by some random kid about not having one. 

So she escapes and meets dave and caitlin, a husband whose family life is miserable and a child star who got emanicapted and they quickly form a psuedo family to look at open houses.. only to, as if to remind you what show your watching, instead end up in a tgif sitcom... and trapped in a styigian void, with only Emily desperate to get out. Also she’s been missing three days and Josh has some thoughts on that and goes after her.  Naturally given she’s crashing in on her fake sitcom family, this oly has him seen as a plot element, and Emily’s attempt at cursing and everything she can , while hilarious fail.. but the climax is what makes the episode and what inches it slighlty above quack pack.. which itself was fucking awesome. Instead of FIGHTING the format... Emily is forced to play into it, and realizes a cheesy moment of emtional honesty is what’s needed. She apologizes to her fake family, saying their nice but she has to face the world and to josh and much like Donald, seroiusly this episode was made years ago and there’s no way in hell frank knew about it, she just needed an escape but it’s more healthy: instead of wishing for a life she never had Emily just wants a break from the life she does for five minutes. She’s happy where she is, with her loving husband, wonderful daughter, impulsive but still carring best friend.. and well okay maybe not Alex, there’s somethihng really wrong with him, but as much as I love the guy I admit he’s not for everyone. I’m also a borderline feral man covered in hair who wants people to know i’m smart. I get him. 

IT’s this that sets her free.. and we get another amazing gag as Dave’s family shows up and Dave chooses the fantasy.. though instead of this being thorughly pogiant it’s just “classic dave”. COmplete with title sequence. And of course it ends on a family bike with Emily getting those tins from Josh. Their relationship.. is REALLY what makes both this show and this episode in paticular work. Here while Emily screws up, it STARTS innocently enough, simply faking being a family and spirals into tgif because while this show isn’t, possibly, in the regular show cinematic universe, it’s defintely in the same multiverse. She just wants some peace of mind from a chaotic life, but dosen’t resent her husband or anything.. he just frustrates her sometimes which is fair. But he’s never portrayed as an abusive asshat which you think would be a low bar to clear but.. you’d be suprised. Point is it’s a wonderfully weird and somehow still unique despite being one of three tgif parodies this year. Seriously that shit is a goldmine. It’s how Dashieel Driscoll got half a season out of full house and a good chunk of a very special epsiode as a whole out of it. Though a certain incident helped. 

Point is good show, jolly good show... and ew’ll be right back with the rest afte the cut

8. Agony of a Witch/Old Bodies, Young Souls (The Owl House) “You always thought you were better than me! That I could never Beat you at anything! “  “I AM Better than you!” “Then WHY WERE YOU SO EASY TO CURSE?!”  The Owl House was a show I took WAY too long to catch up on after missing the second half of season 2.. minus Enchanting Grom Fright which I caught first run and we’ll get to that story shortly. Point is my procastnation did me dirty here as this show , which was already fantastic just got better and better, cumulating in this epic, heartdestroying, soul punching, beautifully animated finale that takes everything the show has built up thus far, blows it up in some places and uses it to beautifully end in others, leaving us with a new road for the future.  So yeah naturally it’s been a long ride as one of Owl House’s strength.. is that no episode is filler. No really, each one has a purpose great or small in the larger narrative, and every major arc has been expertly paced and crafted, bringing us to this point. The only major arc or plot thread left out is Amity, and that’s honestly for the better. Make NO mistake, she’s a great character.. but like fellow great Donald Duck, she was left out because the episode had a LOT of emotional stuff going on, a lot of plot to fit in, and a lot to do and it’s simply better for her character and for the moment’s she’s bound to have in response to well.. everything happening here, to let it breathe next season rather than try to shove it into an already stuffed two episodes.  But this episode is one long string of payoffs, and payoffs creating more setups: So all season Eda, our loveable witch, has been grappling with a curse that turns her into an owl beast, one that’s been getting worse as far back as the mid season finale Escape from the Palisman. She’s been needing more and more elixer to combat it, a harrowing parallel to some real world diseases: Sometimes your meds can only DO so much to combat something actively killing you.. thankfully this time.. not speaking from personal experince.  And Luz finds out soon into the episode as Eda makes a cloak of witches wool, which can deflect powerful spells, to protect herself.. only to black out and go owl just as she’s saying she’s fine. Like most parents would Eda hid just how bad things have gotten and it’s gone from needing just one bottle of elixer to needing their entire suply, and even that barely worked. Despite her mentor’s assurances, Luz is now PAINFULLY aware her mentor is on borrowoed time... not helped by the fact the coven attacked earlier that morning and she finds out by finding hooty playing tea party with them, meaning Eda is outgunned, outmanned and while Lilith failed, again.. the emperor can now easily find her himself and send whoever he wnats and however many people he wants to fetch her.. and Eda can’t use too much of her magic or else.  So while Eda and King, touched by how much Luz has changed them, decide to throw a suprise party with King making a big cake to jump out of and Eda using witches wool she intended for herself to make her a cape. Meanwhile as you’d expect Luz.. is plotting a dangerous and life threatning mission: with a field trip to the Emperor’s Coven that day, one she was going to sit out because you know they hate her second mom for dogmatic and vile reasons the episode fleshes out, she finds out they have an artifact called the healing hat that can seemingly heal anything.  So she does what Luz does and comes up with an impulsive plan to heist the thing.. but for once her impuslivness isn’t played for laughs. Her mother figure is slowly sucumbing to a fate worse than death, for once instead of just acting rashly because Luz.. she’s doing so because she KNOWS, that she has no other choice. Nothing else in sight and she’s smart enough to know that if Eda had a cure she’d of told Luz about it. Even if it was dangerous or required a sacrifice or something Eda would’ve just left that part out.  But the trip serves a few other purposes besides getting Luz where she needs to be for the plot that makes it work: it elaborates on just what the emperor’s coven is like and WHY Emperor Belos gets away with everything: He claims to speak for the titan,  the giant dead monster whose body makes up the boiling isles and who, as Luz has discovered, is the source of the magic there. So when he bloodily, I mean it’ sa kid show so they dont’ say so but given how violent this one is i’m asssuming bloody, took power, he claimed they were doing magic wrong, killed any hertiics and set up the rigid coven system. It explains just WHY the boiling isles limits themselves, gives the whole thing a creepy dogmatic religion vibe.. something that i’m REALLY suprised disney let them get away with as they had to fight for gays in the series.. but at the same time shouldn’t be because hunchback of notre dame exists and Soul , released the same year, was a big gamble against the bible belt. So their not afriad of religious groups.. but they ARE afraid of homophobic groups.. which have a lot of overlap. 

Point is it’s a good storytelling device.. and cathartic given i’ve been playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses as I finally bought it with some christmas money. Good game, probably will talk about it in the future, not the point here. 

The point is that the visit gives us some worldbuilding that helps show just how much of a threat the coven is and why their so intent on capturing Eda. We also finally meet belos, god emperor and man tired of Lillith’s shit and giving her till twilight to get Eda.. or presumibly die. I mean he dosen’t say it but he sure is implying it as loud as he can.  That’s when things go pear shaped for Luz who finds the hat.. and LIlith who has found her barganing chip to lure Eda to her, which works as well as you’d expect and leads to the best figh tin the series thus far and one of , if not it’s best scene; A duel between edith and lilith. And while they fought back in Covention this time  it’s not a petty squabble between siblings masquerading as one trying to capture the other.. it’s  fight NEITHER can afford to loose. Eda can’t loose her protege and Lilith will loose everything, dying at best being cast out of the coven at worst, if she fails not to mention loosing what she feels is her only chance at saving her sister.  But it’s also VERY clear Lilith is groosly outmatched, and while no slouch herself Eda’s constant bragging about being “the most powerful witch on the boiling isles”.. is entirely backed up. Lilith barely is able to hold herself and only gets ahead by using a child as a shiled, going even lower than her sister. However the stress of this, the build of having been the older sister of someone who constantly outshined her then turned entirely against her, finally causes lilith to snap.. and reveal the curse is her fault. Cissy Jones delivery here.. is jsut perfect, showing a mixture of rage and pain, showing that she’s spent YEARS hiding this, years resenting her sister for constnatly being better desptie working harder and doing the right thigns. Even when she’s trying to HELP Eda, genuinely trying to undo her mistake as we find out and as we’ve seen genuinely sees the emperor as the wise and benevlolent god he portrays himself as.. she can’t let it go. SHe can’t see past her own bitterness to see her sister is right and if she could just let this go and work on Eda’s terms instead of forcing Eda into her world, then maybe it wouldn’t of gotten this bad. Maybe she could’ve told her. 

Eda takes it about as well as you’d expect, and Lilith.. uses this to threaten luz’s life and force eda to use up her magic to save her, leading to the series most heartbreaking moment and Wendy Mallick’s best acting so far as she bids her appretnince a tearful farewell. Luz RIGHTFULLY and angrily lashes out at lilith calling her a monster while Lilith takes Eda and urges luz to go home... and after a tearful ending with king realizing something’s deeply wrong.

So thus next episode after a history lesson from king and some suprisinging caution as he KNOWS what Luz is up against.. Luz still decides she dosne’t care. Eda’s sacrificed herself, to Luz it’s her fault she’s in this which while KINDA accurate missues some fine points such as her sister’s stubborness or the fact had lilith not shown up she could’ve taken the hat. And the fact LIlith saying the hat was junk was pretty unreliable. What i’m saying is maybe the child shoudln’t blame herself for being kidnapped while genuinely tring to reach the same goal. 

But Lilith soon learns to her horror her sister was right. While Belos restores Eda’ss sentience even fully owled.. he has no intrest in helping her, eveyr intrest in publicly petrifying her, and not even the slightest hint of remorse at betraying lilith this deeply. After all her faith in the man.. Belos spat in her face and told her to like it.  Meanwhile Luz goes on the warpath, and we see just how far she’s come.. and WHY Belos is probably so restrictive with magic and put it on such a tight leash: we see that with her natural power and just a handful of spells, the four she’s pciked up over the season, she easily curbstomps the conformotrium staff, gets to Eda fairly easily.. and fines sshe can’t free her and eda wants the door destroyed so whatever Belos wants with it, he can’t have it. Luz heads home, ready to destroy the door.. onlyt of ind two things. her magic dosen’t work there.. and Lilith followed her and grabbed king. After a breif fight and Luz angrily and rightously confroting the asshole, wish she was in Eda’s place.. Lilith admits luz’s right and gives her backstory: That her insecurity was so great that on the day before a duel with Eda to determine who got into the emperoror’s coven, she curfsed her own sister, with no idea it’d last this long or get this bad. And with no idea Eda had lost intrest in it and WILLINGLY gave her sister teh spot.. It’s very clear despite her masssive flaws that will need to be adressed.. lilith never stopped caring about her sister, and it took all this to make her realize that trying to fix the mistake on HER terms without including her sister.. instead has almost cost her it.  So Luz and King relucntnatly take her help, though the other two are quickly capatured when theyt ry to get to hte exceution platform and thrown in the cage with Eda.. which dosne’t help the coven’s reputation as gus and willow try to make a case for Eda. Meanwhile we get the SECOND best fight of the series as Luz challenges Bellows.. and it’s UTTERLY chillling and while he’s had scenes before this it’s here we get the true scope of who he is ..and that like eda the god complex is something he can back up. Whlie Luz proves just how strong she’s gotten by keeping up with him it’s barely, and it’s clear from the moment go, and one of the series best shots, with Belos creeply materlizing behind her before announcing “sure, i’ll play” that this is a game. She’s no challenge to him and he simply wants to see waht she can do and is mildly impressed if a tad annoyed at her actually damaging his mask. But with Eda, King and Lilith’s lives in the ballance the only way Luz can save htem.. is to give him waht he wants. 

Thing is, just like Lilith, just like everyone has, good an dbad all season.... Belos undereesitmated luz.. who left fire runes on the door, willnig to sacrifice ever seeing her mom again if it meant keeping him away from her. While he has no invasion planned whatever it is CANNOT be good. Luz saves them, and Eda flies them off with Belos saying the titan dismissed them. Also that Belos has a big penis.. super huge, size of a tractor that one. Yeah that’s the ticket. 

But we get  a happyish ending as LIlith does what she should’ve done a long time ago and apologizes, and Eda starts to fogive her, brought on by King earlier standing up to her as whle he’s not happy with her either, he realizes from her story she’s not a bad person.. just a very messed up one who couldn’t own up to her mistakes. One who belivied in the wrong person to fix her problem and finally takes repsonsiblity and part of the curse into her. So with the sequel hook of Eda having lost her internal magic power but still being able to use glyph’s like luz, we also find out the Emperor has the door and a mysterious masked minon,.. who i’m fairly certain isn’t amity only because it’s too obvious. This is simply how you end a season: It’s engaging, heartbreaking, well animated and pays off EVEYRHTING so far while setting up the season to come. It’s going to be a LONG wait till next time, mid-this year.. but I can wait. The high from this one’s going to last a while. 

7. Good Damage (Bojack Horseman)  “ That means that all the damage I got isn't good damage. It's just damage. I have gotten nothing out of it and all those years I was miserable was for nothing. I could have been happy this whole time and written books about girl detectives and been cheerful and popular and had good parents, is that what you're saying? What was it all for?! “

Bojack Horseman is one of the best shows of the last decade, and an important one to me. it was the first one I watched when we switched to all streaming. I really related to Bojack and his struggles with depresion and self loathing.. which backfired given he’s a much worse person than me and while I could relate, I also compared myself too much to a character who in retrospect is both far worse  and has FAR MORE issues than I do and diffrent ones at that outside of the depression and self hatred.  The point i’m framing is that the series and I have a complicated relationship and that coupled with how bad 2020 was meant it took until a few days ago to finally finish it, almost a year later. But I cannot deny how good the show is: it has faults, a bit of reptititon in some character arcs, casting a white woman as a Vietnamize-American woman (something both Ralph Paul Waskerberg and Alison Brie have apologized for to their credit), and .. I can’t think of a last one. They never brought Ralph back? Yeah let’s go with that one what the fuck there. So I felt I owed the show one last round and it payed off as the final stretch, while easily the hardest to get through due to covering the collapse of Bojack’s life, is easily one of it’s best. 

But before the fall, we get Good Damage, which instead of focusing on BoJack focuses on Diane, said asian woman voiced by a white lady, neurotic writer and Bojack’s best friend, who has moved to Chicago to be with her boyfriend guy, a chill, charasmatic and likeable buffalo cameraman. Things are going better than they ever have: she’s in a supportive relationship and thanks to her antidipresenants, while still her loveably neurotic self, is now not obessing over shit as much and is solving her problems with applomb. Even the weight gain from her meds, which she dreaded in the previous half of the season.. has insteead only made her look healthier and happier, and more beautiful than ever. 

The only problem is she can’t write her long promised Memoir, which Princess Carlolyn, her former boss, agent and loveable pink cat and single mother, has promised to a lot of celebrities. She TRIES, she puts lots of work into it, keeps trying to sit there but nothing comes out. And what makes the episode truly great is how this is presented. Bojack is no stranger to beautiful, visually diverse episodes, Stupid Peace of Shit being a notable example and one similar to this one but uniquely great in it’s own way, but this one is easly the bes,t using a squiggly crude style to show just how chaotic and uncomfortable diane is and how stuck she is. She’s TRYING, but she just can’t make her life’s story into anything GOOD, she can’t get the words out which as someone whose had reams of projects I never startd, even to this day and who has genuine trouble writing fiction.... I related to this like all hell. But even people who have never had an intrest in writng can just get the feeling thanks to the wonderful writing and animation, from cameos by the rest of the cast to Diane’s father showing up as a goblin to the word boxes showing what she’s writtne it’s just a treat.  But what centers this amazing visual represtnation is Diane’s internal struggles as an encounter with a rude sales person leads her off on a tangent..and to Ivy Tran, a teen detective whose upbeat, optimstic, and in a great bit outlines who she is in jsut the right amount, and solves mysteries in a food court. It’s a genuinely good idea, one I honestly think could support it’s own series... seriously get on that Ralph-Bob. Get on that. Point is it’s good.. but Diane’s so hung up on what she SHOULD be making, she can’t see what’s right in front of her, despite guy saying the passages are good.  Things come to a head when Diane makes a huge mistake and goes off her meds.. which from experince never ends well: for the entire episode she’s been under the impression she can’t write because of them.. only to be proven HORRIFYINGLY wrong. It’s a  VERY necessary aseop: that your medication will always be with you and that going off it suddenly, or blaming it for writers block not only isn’t true but is DANGEROUS. Diane spirals, cries and her writing gets dark and full of self hate. It’s then Guy proves just how fucking majestic he is: he figures out what’s going on after she tells him, and helps her get to bed so she can rest, puke whatever she needs and they’ll talk about things after she takes her meds again and gets her head on straight, when she’s in a good place to do so. As someone with mental illness.. ti’s nice to see a character who not only supports someone fully, but knows how to handle it. Instead of a shitty third act breakup like many shows would do guy stands by her.  He does however step SLIGHTLY over the line, if iwth good intentions and reason and send Princess Carolyn the Ivy Tran pages, because as he puts it he made an executive decision.. and when Diane is a bit annoyed by that as it does sound a tad douchey, he rightly points out she was in a really bad hole of a place, stuck in a loop doign something that even before going off her meds was clearly hurting her and going nowhere, and needed SOMETHING to snap her out of it, and did so not to hurt her or because he thought he knkew better or , like her ex husband, because he was oblvious to her needs; he did it because it was the hard but necessary thing to get her to seee she had something special and that she dosen’t have to constnatly tear herself up by diving into past traumas because of some internal obligation. 

Naturally Diane dosen’t take it despite Princess Carolyn not only being impressed but PREFERRING the ivy pages, as she was genuinely unaware Diane had something so happy and charming in her. While Diane is worried about it when the two end up meeting in person, we soon find out why: If all the damage she went through wasn’t “good” damage, things she could writ eabout and use later.. what was it for? Could she of just been happy this whole time? Did she waste her life. And in a rare moment betwen the two PC helps Diane walk it back, explaning that she can do what she always wanted: write something that makes someone like her feel not alone. That she dosen’t HAVE to make her life story into something complicated, just make what makes her and other people happy. Something PC’s daughter could enjoy one day. So Diane finally accepts that maybe there’s something else for her.. and then we get a segue into the next episode with bojack having a panic attack and pasing out but that episode, good as it was didn’t make it so moving on.  We also check in with Penny, the daughter of an old friend of bojacks who he nearly slept with and is stil haunted both by the decision and a drunken later visit to apologize... which isn’t helped remotely when max and page, two reporters inovlved in teh subplot that tears bojack’s life apart, start hounding her. While they have good intentions, exposing Bojack’s connection to Sarah Lynn’s death, the two’s methods still come off as creepy, following a, at this point , 21 year old girl whose been through ENOUGH home. While the two aren’t terrible people their actions.. are.. while getting hte story ismprotant is it truly worth genuinely harming this person. And penny wonders if she SHOULD air her story.. she ends up not.. but only because her mother, while lettiner he decide, poitns out it may not be worth all the pressure and possible trauma it digs up,especially since Bojack is getting what he deserved anyway. IT’s a decent subplot tha tties up a loose end but really makes our journalist characters feel like assholes for again, basically stalking and harassing a young woman who didn’t want to rehash the worst moment of her life. Otherwise top notch stuff. 

6. Heart (Parts 1 and 2) (She Ra and the Princesses of Power) “Don't you get it? I love you! I always have! So please, just this once... STAY! Stay. “

Now we get to the gays winning.. and to one of the best series finale in recent memory. And given the other two titanic shows ending, one of which we’ll get to’s ending in a moment, last year, it’s a huge compliment. Heart is how you end a space opera... with big wonderful speeches, great payoff, a huge climax.. and a beautiful cathartic kiss paying off the relationship at the heart of the series that ends up saving the universe.  So let’s just go ahead and crack open that pinata: The kiss.. was easily one of the best moments of animation this year and, at a time when the quarantine was starting, misery was spreading, and things looked pretty damn bad, having a major animated show, one of the biggest of the last few years, climax with an emotional moment between two women, one the series had been setting up since day 1... it was a huge step foward for gay representation in children’s animation, and warmed my big bi heart. And it’s not just good because of that: the fact it’s a giant pile of representation is wonderous, but it’s because it’s also well baked into the show. This is the conclusion of both their character arcs: Catra finally realizes Adora will not abandon her and her leaving the Horde was not choosing them over her.. it was simply doing the right thing. So instead of running or trying to escape she’s grown enough to fight for what she wants and fight for a future with Adora.  Adora meanwhile finally overcomes her martyer complex, her determination, especially after Angela’s death, to make sure no one else is gone and she’s the only one that suffers and looses. To make sure there’s nothing else. It’s Catra’s confesssion that FINALLY gets it through her thick skull that she dosen’t have to be alone or bear anything alone.. she’ll always have someone with her to do that.. and even before Catra.. she’s always had friends for that. She dosen’t have to be alone. So the two embrace and it’s fucking beautiful..and gives adora the full power of the doomsday device they went to shutdown in the first place, restoring the planet.. and allowing her to destroy horde prime’s fucking soul. I just want to reiterate that because it understandably got lost in the shuffle of the gays winning, but our heroine fucking tears out the main villian’s soul.. and it is SO damn satisfying given what a truly repulsive , irredemible, asshat Prime was. So the two finally get a future together, a chance to build and to stop letting the past define them. It’s wide open.  But while that alone would probably net it on this list but it’s damn good otherwise, an epic final struggle between our heroes and the horde for the fate of not just their planet but ALL of htem as Prime prepares to finally wipe everything else out in egomanical genocide. There are just.. tons of awesome moments in this one: Bow and Glimmer’s suprising but welcome love confession, Seahawk annoying mermista into fighting her chip, the people of etheria fighting back.. and the reason they do is easily the second best moment of the episode. With the chips down, not literally, and things looking bleak Bow hyjacks Prime’s egoamnacial hologram.. and broadcasts for everyone to fight, to fight back, and to END THIS. After spending most of the series as the one trying to keep his friends together, the glue of everyone.. it’s bow’s heart, courage, and voice, the one that lead his friends through some rough times and severed as reason when they needed it most wether they listned or not.. that frees the world and with Entrapta turns the tide at long last. It’s just a hell of a moment.  And the only other moment equaling it is Hordak freeing himself and deciding he is his own man, he made himself tha tway for better and worst and kills prime, at least before adora finsihes the job with the badass “I am HORDAK and I DEFY your will. “ It’s just a wonderful, epic finale that pays off most of the shows major arcs, gives our heroes a MUCH deserved happy ending after spending their lives at war, and let it be said one last time, gave gay representation in children’s cartoon one hell of a win.

5. Nice While it Lasted (Bojack Horseman) 

“ No, I need to tell you... thank you... and... it's going to be okay... and... I'm sorry... and... thank you... “

Back to back finales here and honestly both are REALLY close in quality, both satisfyingly paying off their series. But both take equal and opposite routes: Heart is an epic finale in scope size and impact... while Nice While it Lasted is a very stripped down character piece: there are other characters in the background but after the intro the only voiced characters in each segment are Bojack and one of the main cast, each one both showing how much said relationship has evolved since the show began, and giving Bojack time to reflect on his possible future. I say possible because one of Nice While it Lasted’s best aspects it that there’s no real concrete ending for Bojack. Ther’es still closure: after his life emploded and he nearly died, more on that in a bit, Bojack ended up in prison, offically for breaking and entering but unoffically for all the shitty things he did with him glumly accepting it. So one year later he’s out thanks to Princess Carolyn for her wedding, sober again thanks to prison and even started his own acting class at the prison he’s geninley invested in, inteding to continue it once he gets out. But otherwise.. his future’s in flux. HE’s sober for now, but he’s painfully aware that could change again, his friends while, with one excpetion, still having a place for him in their lives, have moved on, and his career is on the upswing again despite being a pariah a year ago because as I mentioned earlier and as PC brilliantly puts it

So he could become a better man, get his career back, make amends for what he did and stay sober.. or backslide and fall down into the same traps he always has. It plays into an aseop the series has always preached: There are no real endings, life just goes on. Even for the rest of the cast hteir lives aren’t over.. their just in a good place.. maybe bojack will, maybe he won’t. Tha’ts up to the indvidual viewer and I like that. While ambgious endings can be frustrating and I get while some preferred the more concrete if still somewhat ambgious ending of a view from halfway down, I feel this fits the series better: Bojack, like the end of every season is moving on to something new, but this time we don’t know what, and that’s okay. IT’s time for us to move on.  Well okay not from this entry as each vingette deserves some praise: Our first has Mr. Peanutbutter pick up Bojack from prison, and even get him a new suit.. and then another one offscreen because predictably for his life BOjack got meatball all over it. He also calms our hero down when he wants to go back to jail, letting him know it’s okay and he’ll be there for him.. unless his friend Erica shows up but what are the odds... 1:1. But what’s nice about it is while Bojack still makes jabs, it’s clear he’s gone from truly hating and resenting PB for being the betterversion of him.. to truly seeing the guy as one of his best friends, his jabs having gone from hurtful and bitter to wry and warranted. I mean they were warranted a lot back then too he’s just a lot softer about them. 

At the wedding Todd and Bojack finally reach some form of understanding after years of awkwardness, the two having reconclied but not being really remotely close or in each other’s lives hardly anymore after Todd’s understandable blow up at Bojack in “It’s You”. Here Todd has Bojack rush him to the beach to cary him on his shoulders.. to watch fireworks because he could tell he was overhwelmed, the two having found a rhtym again, with, like with mr peanutbutter, Bojacks jabs being a lot friendler and Todd having a respect for his own needs while actually being present for bojack instead of ignorant of how bad things were like he was at the start. He even helps BOjack see even if he DOES replase.. he can get right back on the horse, couldn’t resist that one sue me, and as the hokey pokey says turn himself around. 

After, in one of the best payoffs of the series, finally trying Hondedew and finding it’s not so bad, Bojack dances with PC, admittingh e half hoped he’d have to help her go thorugh with it before the two run through the scenario, and PC expresses some honest fears with bojack helping her showing how the two hav egone from a horribly stiffing relationship.. to two close friends who are probably stuck with one another for life. Sunk costs and all that. And if bojack does want to act again she knwos some people. But for now PC finally really has everything she ever wanted:: A daughter, and a loving husband in judah. 

Finally we have the most painful of the group because of course the Bojack finale wouldn’t be all sugar and would have to punch us in the gut. Bojack finds Diane again who hasn’t talked to him.. because he called her the night of his near death/sucidide and due to putting the blame on her due to being high out of his mind, made her feel like it was his fault during the 7 hours she could reach no one and thought he was dead. Diane is hurt, feeling betrayed that bojack promsied he’d be fine then possibly left her with the pain of his death on her concious forever. Thankfully she’s doing fine, as she’s now married guy and Ivy Tran is a huge success and probably a series now.. but it’s abudnantly clear her friendship with Bojack is over.. but even this bittersweet, and necessary, seperation, as Diane has moved past LA and Bojack needs to stop relying on her and stand on his own two hooves, still warms the heart as she thanks him and lets him know i’tll be okay, and endugles him in telling her one last story, a rathe rfunny one about prison movie night bfore the series ends on the melancholy and apporriate song mr blue as the two gaze out and they see each other and we see them for the last time. 

4 The Wasteland (Infinity Train) 

“I'm as good as dead, and if my last act is to bring you with me, sliver, I can't imagine a better way to go!” “Well, I can! “

So from a bittersweet ending to holy shit that’s depressing, we have our only entry from Infnity Train on the list. That’s not to say the series did bad this year. Season 2 was easily the series finest hour, taking the framework from season 1 and crafting a gripping story of a teenage mirror person who just wanted to live without assholes trying to kill her for what she fundementally IS, and be recognized as a person, with the help of a magical deer and a more optimstic teen grappling with his peer pressure issues.  The series was still undoubtly silly with a parasite voiced by Bill Corbett, wonderfully so, and again a magical deer named Alan Dracula, long may he reign, it simply deconstructed the nature of the train and thus opened up the floodgates. By giving us a denzin who, after years of being someone’s reflection in both senses of the word, just wanted to live and how that clashed with the train and the racist assholes she met alnong the way, from the ones who wouldnt’ stop trying to kill her.. to humans who considered her as nothing more than a plaything at best and something to get rid of at worst. While Season 3 was not bad, if a bit way too strcuturally messy and trying to do too much at once, Season 2 still handled the same issues but in a much tighter frame storywise.  And that’s why only one episode made it: Most of the episodes, espicially the later ones, are pieces of a large whole, with the show being heavily seralized. Which while a great approach intended for streaming, also means it was hard to find a chapter that worked that well on it’s own, steven universe future had similar issues. But I did and the wasteland is easily the darkest, harshest and most intresting episode out of the batch.  The episode opens at MT’s darkest hour: The apex told the mirror police where she is, Jesse is gone, and MT is now running for her life from the sadstic assshole and his spinless partner who want her dead just for existing.. gee can’t imagine why a bunch of assholes refusing ot acknolwedge other peoples opinons, rights or even existance was a big topic last year.. or this year. 

So while Mace, the main mirror cop, manages to handcuff her MT manages to throw him under the train. THe result is her trying to escape the train by wondering i’ts vast desert, forced to drag Mace along as he taunts her, bleeding out slowly from you know being bisected by a train. It’s a really moody peace as Mace mock’s mt’s dreams of escape and justify’s his own selling out, while MT pokes holes in that: he was so desperate to not nonexist.. he’s willing to kill others who just want the same. IT’s a damn hard watch but fuck if i’ts not compelling. 

And the climax is what makes it. MT finds out she can’t leave the bounds of the wasteland, as it only projects so far and after escaping the ghoms ends up back on the train, with Mace, not long fo rthis world trying to kill her.. so we get a 13-14 year old GRINDING HER HORRIFYING ABUSER UNDER A TRAIN WHEEL. Just jesus.. I mean I kind of get HBO Max’s point that MAYBE this is a bit much for kids. I mean i’ve seen other really dark stuff but holy fuck a man died.. and we see his blood splatter. But it’s this horrible, harsh moment that makes the episode.. as is MT”s reaction.. not one of triumph.. but of exaustion and horror at what she’s done, before steadying herself to prove him wrong. A hard one to write about but damn it was good. 

3. Enchanting Grom Fright (The Owl House)  “Dear Luz, will you go to Grom with me- Amity”  Now we THANKFULLY get to something lighter: the gays winning.. again. Coming out during pride month, phrasing, and only a month after the she ra finale we got this delightful episode. As I said earlier I watched this one first run: while I was super behind, I couldn’t resisit to the point I watched it before that week’s amphibia. I was that curious what was going to happen.  See as i’ve given out about quite a lot.. and I mean a LOT, Disney dosen’t have the best track record with gay representation: they don’t do horrible sterotypes or anything.. but they also don’t do much of anything for the most part. Alex Hirsch has outright spoke about how much he had to fight just to get Blubbs and Durland firmly together in the finale, and how the symbols for the love god were widdled down to just male and female. And around the time this episode came Disney was coming out of a REALLY bad batch of pr stunt gay representation: They made a big deal about the first gay x in an x having gay characters in avengers endgame, star wars: Deep Hurting and onward.. but these were cameos AT BEST, with the endgame one being so minor I genuinely didn’t realize the character was talking about dating a man and only found out afterwords. Sure Ducktales had gay dads, which is awesome and always will be.. but none of the major cast was allowed to be openly gay. I mean we know webby and lena are gay but hell if disney would allow that.  But miracoulsy.. shockingly and wonderfully.. Disney DID mange to finally just say fuck it and let some big gay rep in, something so obvious it can’t be ignored and that actually features the main character and one of the most major supporting characters. And what do you know, the good press and pats on the back outweighed the bad. It’s almost if giving up homophobic markets in exchange for doing the right thing.. is a GOOD thing while also being profable. Who’d a thunk. Point is via sheer perstiance, Owl House creator Dana Terrance got to not only make her lead bi, which Terrance herself is, but have her love intrest be a girl. And I find it genuinely wonderful that gay, bi, pan and what have you children can watch this and say “tha’ts me and this is okay”.  But even minus Owl House saying gay rights.. the episode is just REALLY good and part of it is who it focuses on. Amity easily has the most character devleopment out of the cast going from someone who walls herself off from everyone, revels in her superiority.. to slowly opening up to heroine Luz, realizing Luz is not a bad person and that Amity herself dosen’t have to be, and right before this starting the road to patching things up with her former best friend willow. Allt hrough this said friendship had been prettty, prettyy, prettyyy gay. And that’s wonderful obviously, but part of why I watched this was while I HOPED they’d get to be couple.. I wasn’t convinced since see a fucking bove. But I was happy to realize that oh my god I was wrong, the gays won all along. 

So with Amity a better person she’s naturally syampthetic when sh’es put front and center at hexside’s prom equvilent which while having a dance, gromprosals and a disco ball tha’ts also a sentient being, becuase boiling isles, it also has the queen or king forced to fight a horrifying monster that manfiests as your greatest fear. And, as we find out towards the end.. Amity’s is being rejected by Luz, having her love letter, which she fails to deliver due to running into luz.. and co (which is my faviroite gag of the episode and the adorable smiles gus and willow give in response are what make it). And . it makes sense. When you stop and think about it.. Luz is the best thing in her life. She got her to change as a person, genuinely cares about and adores her, just wants to be her friend and thinks the world of her. Given her siblings, while trying to be better, are two disaster bisexuals who just stopped a lifetime of untietonally harsh bullying and her parents are controlling asshats who made her abandon her best friend at a young age and she sees LILITH as a mother figure, just let that sink in given a few entires back.. yeah.. no wonder sh’es utterly terrified of rejection. Poor baby. 

Of course WE know Luz wouldn’t. Luz may be many things, including oblvioius to thte freaking obvoius as this story line has revealed, but shes not cruel and even if she said no, which I higlhly doubt she would, she woudln’t be a dick about it. But being surrounded by cruel assholes for some time has made Amity a bit paranoid so Luz volunteers to sub in to both genuinely help her friend.. and to prove to eda she can do this. Eda is also chaperoning. and looks neat in a suit, while King and Gus get a wonderful b plot of mcing the dance with the egotisticl king having issues with stage fright. I will get more into that when I review the episode proper, come back in a month for that.  But yeah while Luz does well when the time comes, and while sadly not wearing her otter suit does wear a wonderful tuxedo with a tutu.. she has her own repressed issues to adress as Grom takes the form of her mother, as Luz has been nursing guilt over not telling her the truth about what’s going on. Luz runs, and Amity ends up facing her fear to save her crush and the two get a wonderfully romantic, and desturctive dance together as they face hteir fear, untie as one and kill that motherfucker... well okay i’m not sure grom can die but it’s gone for now.  The dance sequence.. is easily one of the best scene’s all year, beauituflly animated and painstakingly planned out, with wonderful music.. it’s just awesome and what takes the episode ove rthe top, with the two perfeclty in synch as they take grom out in less than a minute. Also king become prom king and queen, he is best of both as Luz’s own personal issues put a damper on things. Also someone’s been writing her mom. 

Overall just a perfect episoe and a perfectly gay episode of one of the best shows going right now. Speaking of a perfect episode of one of the best shows going right now, tha’ts also on disney. 

2. Escape From the Impossibin! (Ducktales)  ”We have to keep them safe” “But not like this!”  So from some emotinal torment mixed with some lovely shipping, we get a whole buttload of emotional anguish but with a robotic scrooge and the time loop room and the time loop room and the time loop room, and time l...

As I said in part 1, Season 3 is easily Ducktales best so far, having far better pacing, character ballance and bolder and more intresting stories than ever before. While the first two seasons are still excellent, this one has taken everything great and honed it and no episode shows off just how great this season is than this one.  This one takes place in the fallout of “Let’s Get Dangerous!”, with the family dealing with finding out FOWL”s not only still alive, but is run by Bradford, head of scrooge’s board of directors former shush agent as we’d find out later, and asshole, who knows all their secrets. And given Scrooge is mildly paranoid on a good day and Beakly is extremley paranoid on her best day, it’s done a number on both as they’ve split the family minus launchpad, who just had a whole episode so fair enough, up: Scrooge has taken Della and Louie, wiht their see all the angels schtick, to test out his new security, while Beakly and Donald are securing the house while Beakly has webby throughly test the boys.  Neither side goes well. The bin ends up locking our heroes out due to Scrooge’s password being changed, and forcing them to work past it. Louie rises to the challenge, as does della.. but as they beat a robot versoin of scrooge, because of course the final test would be a robot version of scrooge, Scrooge is instead of triumphant at not being dead, incredibly depressed and furious. Because when told he’s scrooge mcduck he tellingly replies “AND WHAT IF THAT’S NTO ENOUGH’. For once.. Scrooge is SCARED, up against someone who knows his every move and is one step ahead, iti’s how it’s always been, no matter what he’ll do, he’ll always loose and Bradford will always win. I REALLY need to watch spies are forever, point is he’s scared and Bradford PROVING the point by revealing he was behind it and taking over the robot dosen’t help. Our heroes win though in a damn impressive action sequence, but as it turns out.. it was just a distraction.. but we’llg et back to that.  The other plot though is whyt his is so high. While the first plot is a fun romp with deep eomtional consequences.. the second plot is decidly far darker.. it still has some good bits as webby terorizes the boys and easily one of the best in the season when she horrifying imitates dewey, but its’ only when she does finally attack she realizes she’s taken it way toof ar. She’s terrorized her brothers, caused huey to break his leg and then turn her away when she tries to help.. all she’s done is turn them AGAINST each other and they can’t win this way.  Beakly strongly disagrees and clealry lost in her own paranoia and fear, prepares to attack huey.. and thus Webby steps in... leading to one fo the most heartbreaking and tense fights in the series as grandmother and grandaughter fight one on one but both are outmatched.. but Huey and Dewey, despite everything, refuse not to help their sister and help pull webby up, with Webby panickidly realizing something’s VERY wrong and her granny usually isn’t like this when sparring... and is also chasing them. This leads to the roof, in a rainstorm no less, and Webby relcutnatnly ready to fight even though she clearly knows she both can’t win.. and dosen’t want to anymore. Despite her wilingless to scrap, fight and train.. Webby dosen’t WANT to hurt her granny she just wants to help her. Thankfully, the boys attempt to stop this, while failing horribly, catches donald’s attention as he catches them, ntocies what’s going on and furiously refuses to let this go on. While Beakly tries to ignore it and fight..s he instead slips and despite everything, the rest of the group rescue her, with Webby impressing on her grandmother that they aren’t fowl. They wont’ win acting like them and tearing each other apart.. they need to be the family they are.  But if all that wasn’t enough turns out.. yeah, Bradford’s thing was a distraction and with the rest of the group distracted with Beakly, that meant his plan went off without a hitch: all the missing mysteries have been taken by FOWL, in a masterstorke that ties both plots together and brings what seemed like isolated adventures on their own in a tagnetally related plot into the fore. Everything so far has built up to this.. and despite the loss.. the family, having been through a dark night of the soul, is ready to fight back. They want the rest of the mysteries? Their going to have to fight clan mcduck in their elment. And it’s been glorious so far. A tense, well paced, hard hitting episode, this one’s a winner. and almost got #1.. ALMOST. But as much as I tried to not go with the obvious chocie, the one with tons of press and praise and that’s graced tons of best of lists... I had to go with what was honestly the best. So...

1. The View from Halfway Down (BoJack Horseman)  “Oh BoJack, there is no other side. This is it. “  This episode was my main reason for catching up with the series and finishing it off once and for all. Awash with praise and hype I was curious about this one.. and my curiosity paid off. This is easily one of if not hte best episodes Bojack put out in it’s storied run: it’s creative, impossible to look away from and devistating: in short it’s the show in a nutshell.. and it’s a hell of a view. 

Previously as mentioned before Bojack’s life blew up and he lost just about everything, from his friends, though as the finale bared out only one of them stayed away for good and for good reason, his only family in hollyhock, his house, even horsin around. He had nothing left.. so high on drugs and in his old house he passed out at the end of last episode.. and we wake up here with a recurring dream as Bojack has a dinner party at his mother’s house, another wonderful performance from Wendy Mallick. Everyone there is someone Bojack knew who died: his former best friend he betrayed Herb, Sarah Lynn his former child co start turned washed up 30 something he let die, Courdory, a co star who died trying to get off david caradine style, Crackerjacke, the uncle he never knew who die din the war and his parents, distant mother Beatrice as mentioned and his father, who is in the body of his hero secretariat who comited suiccide in this unvierse due to getting banned from racing, as that’s the kind of weird shit dreams do. Also Zack Braff, who has no real conncetion to bojack but still died during that time Mr Peanutbutters house sunk into the earth and his ex wife Jesscia bIel formed a death cult.  The group play a game of best and worst, lay into each ohter and have some really intresting conversations with Bojack confident of when it’ll end: before the show their always mentioing. But this time, it’s diffrent.. Bojack is there for it so we get a trippy and horrifyimng stage show as Bojack watches the various people one by one vo into a black door, allt he while bojack coughts up sludge and is persued by it, unaware where he was before this. Sarah Lynn gives one last song, a reprise of a song from previous in the series, Courdroy does a ribbon dance and zack braff gets on roller skates. And bojack has a frank conversation with his dad, with his dad/secretariat revealing he DID care but was just so filled with loathing he coudlnt’ admit it to his son and thus was an abusive ass.. and then reveals to bojack he’s not waking up and bojack horryfigngly see shimself, drowning ina pool. And while he frantically, heartbreakingly tries to flee... he can’t. There’s no exit for him. As herb tells him, this isn’t the afterlife, this is his brain making sense of his last moments, and ther’es no way of knowing if he’ll get rescued, no way to do anything but watch.. watch as his father secretairat shows suicide in all it’s horror by letting it know he wouldn’t of done it if he knew “the view fro halfway down”, a horrifingly haunting poem that sells just how bad it was. As beatrice and crackerjack also go we’re down to herb who introduces bojack... before going in himself, claming there is no other side. Bojack tries not to go genle and runs, and in a horrfying sequence is surronded by the ooze as he tries his damndest to escape.. but in the end he can’t. As herb said.. he can’t do anything about this. So speaking to his min’ds version of diane he accepts he probbaly won’t be coming back and we hear a monitor as we fade out. While we know it’s not the end now... there’s no way of telling then. 

The View from Halfway Down is a haunting, beatuflly animated, masterwork, taking 6 seasons worth of communinity and regret and shoving it in bojack’s face in an intresting way, while bringing back characters we thought we’d never see again for one last go round. It was patcually nice to hear LIn Manuel Miranda and Wendy Mallick again,, and Kristan Schaal is always great. The show ALWAYS had a horrifying habit of having it’s penutlimate episode be an utter gutpunch that broke you, with the finale picking up the peices and offering some hope.. and this was no exception. They literally saved the best for last, and it was worth the wait. The view from halfway down may be gahstly,.. but the view of this episode is hauntingly beautiful. 

So that was the list, and it was.. a lot taking 2-3 days to finish all together over both parts. But it was worth it and hopefully we can get back to some regular stuff later today. For now, thank you for reading, and hopefully i’ll see you somewhere in the sunset. 

[cassyapper]

OKAY IVE ACTUALLY PLAYED TWO SESSIONS SINCE MY LAST POST SO IM GONNA COMBINE THEM HERE SORRY FOR THE LENGTH BUT,,IVE COME SO FAR I DONT WANNA STOP NOW

this is gonna be very messy cause i WILL be jumping back and forth as things come back to mind so uhh pls enjoy this absolute ramble <3

anyway. i continued playing omori and boy do i have some Thoughts

so first session; i went through the pyre(something i forgot the full name sob) forest/sprout mole village/sweetheart’s castle in one go and let me TELL YOU. DOING THAT WAS FUCKING INSANE I WENT NUTS holy shit.

so anyway.

pyre forest!!!! the lil race against the big spider coming after u for disturbing the smaller spiders mechanic was very fun i had a lot of fun figuring out the best routes to take. i know normally mechanics like that lead to ppl getting frustrated cause u have to keep retrying but i had a lot of fun!!!! sum annoyance but good natured type, th kind that just makes u try harder u know? i just enjoyed it JKFN;FN; candles in the foggy forest....now That is an aesthetic

the rare bear scared the fuckin shit out of me i remember it didn’t attack me straight away so i was like “aw (:” but then when i press x on him it takes me to a BATTLE SCREEN AND SUDDEN THAT MF IS TERRIFYING I WAS LIKE WHWHWHWHWKJDNJ. very funny i honestly wished i recorded my reaction

also omori is afraid of drowning...................................i am breathing heavily. i think whatever happened to mari is related to at least one of the things omori is scared of. so either heights, spiders, or drowning it seems. spiders doesnt seem super likely as a contributor to her death, and while falling from a height is more realistic, such a senseless way of dying doesnt seem to rlly fit ? with the vibe i get from the kiddos in the real world. which makes me think maybe drowning/otherwise suffocating is how she died...but we’ll see. also due to the forgotten library part, we know omori explicitly feared spiders/drowning before mari died so it’s also probable im jus talking out my ass here but still,,,,thoughts

also this motherfucker?

literally fucking terrifying. IT’S BODY IS MADE OF SUCC’D SPROUT MOLES...i still have no idea what exactly it was doing to them but jesus h christ!!!! evil and fucked up. do not feel bad for curbstomping it

sprout mole village!!!! very cute, im v excited to send that one dude his brother’s care package. i like how, when theyre not lost, sprout moles can be real endearing lil guys,,,theyre not my fav lil enemies but (:

also for some reason omori is the first game ive played where i really care about getting achievements ? so i literally did the back and forth on my save file just to get all the season sprout mole achievements JKDJFJ;. i ended up sticking w spring tho before moving on for real cause spring is my fav season irl (:

also i felt SO BAD for cutting down that one sprout mole’s chistmas tree he was just trying to celebrate but i wanted to see that present and coincidentally becoming a christmas ruiner was an achievement so all’s fair in love and war i suppose

ALSO. th fuckin plant monster thing under the scientist sprout mole’s room. major little shop of horror vibes from the design, absolutely adored it!!!!! originally i did  just cut the wire holding the piano over it, ending it in one go, but i was very curious abt it so i reloaded a save file to actually fight it and

i know it only spread that gas to make the kiddos happy cause being happy reduces attack i think ? it decreases attack/defense but seeing the kiddos smile so much was nice (:

however

omori...sunny....son boy.........u good ?

and now. sweetheart

the way the sprout moles completely adore and depend on sweetheart gives me such awful evil vibes and combined with such a luxurious background was fucking incredible

sweetheart herself, speaking of. bitch (sorta affectionately, certainly not derogatory)

i talked to every sprout mole in the audience before taking my seat and i literally dont know why. even when i picked up the pattern of where the unique dialogue could be found (usually the sprout moles farthest right) i still talked to all of them......just in case ? i have no idea. i dont know why i did that. i feel it’s important that i note it tho

LMAO SO WHEN SPROUT MOLE MIKE DID THE MINUTE OF SILENCE FOR YE OLD SPROUT MOLE

I LITERALLY FELT SO FUCKING BAD LMAO I WAS LIKE OH MY GOD NO!!!!!! I DID THAT!!! I KILLED HIM!!! OH MY GOD!!! I WONDER HOW AWKWARD OMORI KEL HERO AND AUBREY FELT IN THE AUDIENCE HOLY SHIT THEY HAD FRONT ROW SEATS TO SPROUT MOLE MIKE’S MOURNING!!! MY GOD FJKFN;;

also sprout mole mike describing 3′7″ inches as ”towering” was the FUNNIEST shit i have ever seen. also i have to wonder, since sweetheart made up the whole show of sweetheart’s quest for hearts in the first place, if she was seriously down to marry a sprout mole if one suited her fancy. jus v funny to me honestly. SPEAKING of sweetheart’s dating patterns I NOTICED THOSE FEM SKELETONS IN THE DUNGEON!!!!! BI SWEETHEART!!!! SHE’S JUST AS DOWN FOR GIRLS AS SHE IS BOYS

i know TECHNICALLY not everyone is in the dungeon for failing to be a good enough suitor but STILL...COME ON. THIS WAS BEFORE WE KNEW THAT. SWEETHEART BI I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL

anyway

when the lights when out and lightning struck the third contestant, i knew Immediately something was gonna go down. and when the mustache sprout mole was like “oh yes!! u!! in the striped pjs!! u absolute beast ur perfect!!!” i KNEW hero had just been selected as the replacement i was goign completely fucking nuts i was like OH MY GODNFNG; HIS HEART IS ALREADY TAKEN BY MARI!!!!!!! STOP

i ended up taking so many screenshots during this part cause i was going feral so here take a glance just cause i love, uh, hero

OUR HERO IN SHINING ARMOR DJLBH;KFJB

also GOD FUCKING DAMMIT IM SHORTER THAN HERO

hero shaking on the stage when he was introduced...oh my HEART....IM SO FOND FOR THIS BOY WTF!!!!! DKJDN;N

this is not really NEWS to me since it’s implied hero is tall but like come ON..... sorry just every time i find out a character is explicitly taller than me i need to huff about it, moving on,

HERO FUCKS

sorry i just have so many screenshorts during this aprt cause i was going fucking crazy but

literally terrifying! sweetheart bathes in that shit!! christ!

is blood good for ur skin? i imagine, so long as like...gore isnt in it and it’s solely blood it cant be BAD necessarily......but good ? regardless very fucked up. besides the fact that well, uh, BLOOD, blood is also sticky as hell. ur telling me sweetheart willinglhy bathed in that shit? disgusting. at least thin it out

anyway I HAD SO MUCH FUN DOING THE PUZZLES AT SWEETHEART’S CASTLE....FROM THE DUNGEONS TO THE KITCHENS TO THE BALLROOM TO THE LIBRARY TO THE GARDENS JUST EVERYTHING!!!! IT WAS SO FUN I ENJOYED FIGURING IT OUT SO MUCH IT WAS LITERALLY DELIGHTFUL...I LOVE THIS GAME SO MUCH THE GAMEPLAY IS SO FUCKING EPIC I LITERALLY HAVE SO MUJCH FUN.......OH MY GOD I JUST. INCREIDBLE!!!! FUCK

also the lil sir maximus bit.........i honestly felt really awful over having to kill them ): i think i even tried running once but it wouldnt let me...it hurt man ): they were just a family....

um but anyway,

i think it was rlly sweet how aubrey protested to the wedding cause she was worried abt sweetheart,,,like i cant rlly explain it idk how to put it into words,,like sweetheart is clearly not mentally well and having an episode, and aubrey being the only one to say “hey what ur doing is self-destructive and isolating” just mmmh. she cares a lot,,,and *i* care aubrey

also sweetheart’s battle theme fucking SLAPPED...SO GODDAMN HARD IM STILL QUAKING OVER IT....FUCKING BANGER YO!!!!!! INCREDIBLE

ah but alas

BASIL........I NOTICED THAT IT WAS HIS GHOST/SHADOW DURING THE EXIT FROM OTHERWORLD AS WELL BUT JUST FUCK

im so worried about basil ):

and it being so obvious that none of the others can see...........them asking omori if he’s okay.....oh my god. i go nuts

and then...the forgotten library part

i literally cried, again, oh my fucking god

these kids loved each other so much they ADORED the time they spent with each other and im QUAKING to know WHAT HAPPENED TO MARI......HOW DID THE FALLOUT GO. I NEED TO KNOW I NEED TO KNOW I NEED TO KNOW

i know there are multiple endings to this game and on god i am not QUITTING until i get the happiest ending there is for these kids im literally a goddamn fuckign mess oh my god

MARI SHWOING UP IN THE LIBRARY AT ONE POINT AND LEADING OMORI...........IM LTIERALLY GOIGN INSANE OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD HE LOVED HIS SISTER SO MUCH HE’S SO CLEARLY LOST WITHOUT HER I CANT FUCKING DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. I NEED TO KNOW I NEED TO KNOW I NEED TO KNOW

GOD

okay sorry i just. ive said ti before but the grief in this game is so real and palpable and it aches, it aches so bad. also the white egret orchids in the library...i see u

but regardless.... session two real world electric boogaloo

LOVE that kel is like “so i need to run errands but u wanna come with me right? of course u do!” like fuck i rlly do. kel is just so delightful i would literally do anything to spend time with him

ALSO i noticed u can just refuse to open the door both times kel’s knocked now and it makes me wonder....if u could choose to ignore kel ? and then venture out urself or just ? i wonder what would even happen if u chose to not open the door. im CERTAINLY not doing it myself at the very least not this playthrough but i am curious...i bet that’s how u get a bad ending, by not talking w kel

but anyway....

aubrey and her gang not saying anything in the pizza parlor........i jus think abt that is all

ALSO!! pet rocks!!!!!!!!! LOVE this lil thing it’s so cute. jus rock paper scissors it babey

speaking of lil bits, love all the mini quests in the real world...it’s just rlly fun and builds up this cute lil town........it also makes me think that whatever happened to mari cant have been anything except an accident, bc no one comments on what a tragedy it was to omori. like if it was murder, there’s no way such a horrific situation wouldnt engulf the town for a bit and sweep over it for weeks at least, but that just doesnt seem to have happened. this is def me reading too into it tho;; point is neighbors nice (: also i got the seashell necklace and i go apeshit

ALSO......THE FUCKING...........CHURCH. I VISITED WITH KEL ON A COMPLETE WHIM CAUSE I WAS CURIOUS IF THE PASTOR WOULD TALK MORE ABT AUBREY BUT NO. INSTEAD HE TALKS ABT THE WEIRD VIBE FORM THE GRAVEYARD HE’S GETTING!!! AND THE DUDE WHO CHILLS IN THE GRAVEYARD SAYS SHIT ABT THE SPIRITS GETTING READY FOR SOMEONE TO JOIN THEM!!!! BITCH WAHT THE FUCK

THERE’S NOF UCKING WAY THIS ISNT ABOUT BASIL. THERE IS NO!!! WAY!!!! I SWEAR ON GOD IF BASIL DIES I WILL LOSE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ESP CAUSE THERE IS LITERALLY NO OTHER WAY HE COULD DIE EXCEPT SUICIDE THAT’S WHAT IT HAS BEEN IMPLYING OVER AND OVER I GO NUTS I GO APESHIT NO NO NO NO!!!!!!!!!!!!

FUCK

OKAY SORRY I JUST. HHHHHHHHHHH

baby has acquired baby

kel’s family is rlly cute,,,,v heartwarming. i trust them

i do worry abt like...the stark difference between recognizing kel’s accomplishments and hero’s...i just idk. i just keep thinking abt that bit in kel’s story abt hero’s depression when his parents focused on hero and ignored him, and i just. kel’s family is good People but i worry if kel has a good support system...i jus........): i am watching

ahh THE BASIL MISSING PART MADE MY HEART LITERALLY FUCKING DROP..I WAS SO FUCKING PANICKED I WAS LIKE OH MY GOD THIS IS IT BASIL IS DEAD

THANKFULLY HE WASNT BUT HOLY GOD HOW THAT WHOLE SITUATION PANNED OUT MADE ME GO NUTS!!!!!!! BASIL...AUBREY...HER GANG.......FUCK OH M YOGD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

THANK G O D I SNOOPED AROUND KEL’S HOUSE BEFORE LEAVING I WOULD HAVE H A T E D TO FIGHT THEM ALL AT ONCE IM GLAD I WAS ABLE TO JUST PEPPER SPRAY THEM JESUS CHRIST

oh my god kim like asking for aubrey all concerned before deciding to trust her and leaving.....kim i diagnose u with lesbain

the whole fucking. basil almost drowning scene. i seriously feel like ive changed like as a person over it. i am thinking . i am thinking. i am only evee thinking about mari and how omori just loved her so much and how the thought of her gave him strength. th pic of her ghost holding omori’s hand in the water made me cry

MMMM BUT. HERO!!!

I DIE I DIE I DIE HE’S SO PRETTY FUCK ALSO HIM PICKING UP BASIL WOOOOOOOO THIS IS WHAT IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THAT’S WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT YEAHHHHHHHH

god i feel so bad about leaving aubrey tho. shes so clearly not okay and she so clearly did not mean to push basil in and oh my GOD I JUST...PLEASE....PLEASE CAN WE JUST TLAK TO HER I NEED TO TLAK TO HER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I NEED TO FUCK

the ghosts of omori and aubrey on the swings made me cry out like i had been physically assaulted

AHH BUT THEN TAKING BASIL HOME AND WHILE HE’S IN HIS BED HE JUST SAYS “oh sunny...there’s not way out of this...is there?” I LITERALLY GO BUCKWILD APESHIT INSANE STUPDI!!!!!! BASIL YOURE PUTTING UP A LOT OF ALARMING FLAGS HERE!!! PLEASE DO NOT FUCKING DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!

FUCK. CHRIST. HELL. SHIT. THIS GAME IS DRIVING ME FUCKING CRAZY

GOD

oh my god but the day ending with hero and kel sleeping over at omori’s house...im kdnd im jkdim im not uhm okay THEY BUILT A BLANKET FORT PLEASE..I LOVE THEM

goddd hero going into the piano room....playing sum........and then asking omori abt the song he and mari used to play on violin...and then THE TITLE SCREEN MUSIC STARTS PLAYING....HI. HI HELLO HI YOU CANT FUCKIGN DO THAT HI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FUCK YOUFBJFGJNGN;EJNE; IM GOIGN NUTS

also the name omori comes from the piano.............interesting...i wonder why sunny likes being called omori in the dreamscape...

god but omori not having a srs hallucination cause he’s w his friends and he feels safe...im gonna sob

However. i did glance into the bathroom mirror. AND INSTEAD OF THE EYE MF IT’S A DISTORTED AS HELL GHOST MARI???IM SO FUCKIGN SCARED. IM SO SCARED. WHAT THE FUCK. WHAT THE FUCK? CREEPY AS HELL!!!

ohh my god this GAME

so finally i ended up in whitespace again. do NOT like that omori is completely alone in the world!!! what the FUCK!!!!!!!! I AM SO SCARED AT ALL TIMES. im literally about to go play sum more tho after dinner so i will see what happens. god i jsut......this game is so fucking good it has me by the balls dude. SO glad i decided to play it bruh

anyway thanks for reading all of this if u did, it’s an absolute monster ik and ur a real one

[gayregis]

blood and wine rewrite au basic layout

i already posted something like this before but i cant find the post so im just rewriting all of this from the top of my head

everyone’s repurposed roles:

geralt - he’s still a witcher. he’s geralt of rivia. obviously. i don’t have time or interest to think about how to rewrite the entire witcher 3 game to be lore-friendly, but i assume there would be less triss and more dandelion involved in it. for this let’s just take him as geralt having done everything in tw3 but with the personality of geralt from the books because geralt from the games doesn’t have much of a strong personality good for writing or thinking about.

regis - a bitch. nah jk. he’s same regis but just what he was like 100 years ago when he got his head cut off. he’s less spiralling-into-doom than he was then, and is less desperate and hopeless overall, but is slowly getting there once again. he doesn’t remember anything about learning from his mistakes and becoming a good person, because this regis didn’t get any of that. to this regis, it’s like no time has passed at all since he died, and he’s ready to start partying again without any thought of the consequences. he’s moved to toussaint because everyone’s already tipsy there and the north is plagued by war so it’s not a really great source to be drinking from (like if there was a sewage leak near the vineyard you sourced your wine from). he doesn’t remember anything about maturing up or about becoming a surgeon or about the hansa, so that sucks.

dettlaff - not a fucking maniac. actually a character geralt will likely spend a good amount of time talking to. total character overhaul because he does not have a personality in the actual DLC. he arrived in toussaint because he had heard that regis had returned and wanted to fix things wih him, he had previously left him.

syanna - not a fucking dumbass, yet still naive in her own way due to being blinded with the promise of power. in this, she is planning to stage a coup on the duchy (because she is the older sister, so it IS her right by law) and she supports regis’ slow dive again into uncontrollable insanity because it helps her prop up rumors that her sister’s reign is ineffective against real threats and is cursed. but this alliance does not go as she planned...

orianna -  in this, she is the owner of a gladiatorial school (instead of an orphanage), and is still like in canon a wealthy and influential individual of beauclair, yet reclusive from human society. she is regis’ best friend and goads him on, because she never fixed her own issues with alcoholism and now is elated to have him back and forgetting that they had disagreements which drove them apart in the first place. they’re best friends (NO romance) and it’s just good to see how insanely different orianna and geralt are because they’ve both been regis’ close friends at different points in time.

the purpose of this:

fix regis’ relationships with the vampires. he slowly drove all of his good friends away by going off the deep end and many are likely wondering whatever happened to him. but books regis would never consider partying like that again, so we bring the party regis back and then slowly de-escalate him into normal books regis again, and we finally get closure with him and his old friends.

cool dramatic stereotypical vampire shit. i’m talking about a final battle or conversation in a giant dark castle with large open windows and billowing drapery.

regis’s hairstyle

give syanna actual agency as a character and give her motivations that extend beyond pure revenge (although they are related to revenge) and make her more unique so she is not just a ripoff of renfri. 

demonstrate anna henrietta and geralt’s relationship as it was in the books. he was genuinely intimidated by her and i interpret him as being jealous of her relationship with dandelion, so he in practice was quite withdrawn around her as she was her overemotional and embellished self

give dettlaff an actual character, holy shit. i hate how sorely underdeveloped he is in the game. i understand why because it’s not meant to be writing, it’s meant to be a video game, but come on. i hate having the vampire with the cool character design be the ultimate villain of the whole narrative. in this, he’s someone geralt can talk to and sees himself in. he’s emotionally mature and doesn’t mix with the other vampires. since we already know what regis is like, we don’t have to sit through dettlaff making excuses for him and trying to describe what his character is like. we also get a better view of regis’ past through dettlaff’s lense. 

give orianna an actual character, holy shit. i hate how they didn’t even try with her and just used her as a “surprise, she is quite evil!” gimmick. have her actually have a larder for blood that is lore-friendly yet still jumps out at the audience as morally wrong.  give her more personality and development.

examine regis’ backstory without actually getting into every single year of those 4 centuries. we can examine how it started good, turned bad, went worse... there’s a lot of loss involved and i think this would be nice to process it.

roughly what happens (under cut because if i ever do write this fic out, this is spoilers, literally the synopsis of the whole thing):

anna henrietta sends envoys to geralt. they establish that the duchess has no conflict with geralt and that her conflict was with dandelion, only. she has requested his help because he effectively dealt with many monsters while he was in beauclair and established a trustworthy reputation (also, he’s famous, and toussaintoirs are superficial). instead of the beast of beauclair killing particular victims, it’s the countryside which has been plagued by vicious attacks of the devil knows what.

geralt arrives and examines the scenes of the attacks. the sincere majority of the victims are alive, so he speaks to them. they remember nothing, but woke up with their village fucking absolutely trashed and with vomit everywhere. they all have wounds on their necks. geralt thinks he knows what’s up, but is reluctant to deal with it because of his memories of regis, who he misses

damien de la tour is assigned to geralt as a sort of backup. they argue and geralt manages to get him to stay put in beauclair while he rides to a village they believe will be attacked next. it’s not even a full moon so the vampires don’t even come out in their bat form (disappointing) but instead just mesmerize their way in in humanoid form. dettlaff sneaks up on geralt who is (ahem) staking out the situation, and is like hey dont kill regis hes not evil hes just misguided!! and geralt is like REGIS? EMIEL REGIS? THTS WHO’S LEADING THEM? i ..... i know him.... and dettlaff’s like what the fuck how... then they get caught and regis is like oh hey dettlaff who’s this guy and geralt feels very left out :( and also sad bc regis doesnt remember shit and geralt even lists the hansa members by name and regis is still like O_O ok yeah im just going to hypnotize you to get lost ok goodbye! but dettlaff prevents him from doing this and they both get thrown out of the party.

after the party geralt is a mess and is like wtf so hes back and what... how... huh... and dettlaff doesnt know how he returned or why he returned either but they compare geralt’s knowledge of how regis died with dettlaff’s knowledge of how regeneration works and they figure out that regis just regenerated from his past body and that’s why he doesn’t have any of his memories from when he turned good.

then they eavesdrop a little more and find out that syanna has been talking to regis and making deals with him (its... not really like she thinks, regis really hasnt been doing anything he doesnt want to. shes just like “hey can you attack this village here” and regis is like yeah i was gonna host a party there tomorrow night ...) so they are like who the fuck is this woman and track her down to her base of operations, and then they find out that THEY got followed by damien de la tour, who identifies her as sylvia anna. geralt is a little miffed on behalf of dandelion that damien seems to be so close to anna henrietta but i digress.

geralt reports his findings to the duchess but does NOT mention regis because the duchess knows who regis is. then we get the same vampire talk from canon b&w where the duchess and damien are sorely misinformed on every single thing ever.

geralt is defeated and has no idea on how to fix this and hes looking hard into a mirror by candlelight and then decides to go to bed so he turns around and regis is right behind him like hey. cue ‘holy shit what the fuck’ moment and freaking out. regis explains himself and says that he doesnt remember him but the fact that he gave so many specifics weirded him out and he kind of wants to know more out of curiosity. also he wants to talk to dettlaff but feels too bad about how he argued with him like 3 centuries ago that he cant just ask him directly.

so they talk and geralt is all :(( and regis is like ok well. i kinda want to get these memories back because they sound pretty significant and also im pretty miserable. but also im not going to stop partying bc its the only thing that makes me feel alive rn. so long!

geralt and dettlaff talk to orianna and she dislikes them both but still talks to them and then regis materializes and also begins bothering them and its quite civil but this scene just serves to demonstrate how annoying they are as friends lol

there’s scenes where you can either save damien / syanna from being unalived by the vampires’ / regis’ hand, only if you let syanna die will the duchess be mad and accuse you of being heartless like dandelion is and then geralt and the duchess actually get into an argument bc of that comment but geralt ofc loses bc hes scared of her lol

no matter what you get regis his memories back but your decisions to either continue helping him or not is what makes him change or not. even after he gets his memories back (or because he gets his memories back?) he decides to raze beauclair bc hes just so fucking miserable and geralt has to talk him down, if you are harsh and not understanding and shame him etc then he doesnt change, if you condemn his actions but still offer your support then he does.

if you offer your support > geralt talks about the hansa like For Ever and regis then adds in everything and yay regis is back to normal. theres like a wholesome montage of geralt being like “just TRY to sew up a wound i promise you you will be good at it” and regis does and hes splendid at it. regis and dettlaff finally make up and are bros once again. we help orianna with her issues and she realizes stuff but is still going to have a drink once in a while. if syanna is alive she doesnt hate on any of this but just decides to make up with the duchess and then become captain of the guard (damien gets fired for being a dumbass).

if you do not offer your support > regis goes to cry in a delapidated creepy old castle and you have an epic fight (geralt is backed up by dettlaff) and he turns into a bat and geralt almost dies, they manage to decapitate regis again and put him in the ground and set a timer for 50 years

if you redeem regis then there’s an ending scene where the duchess is like “oh regis i didnt know you were in town” and hes just like <:) ahaha... yeah...

cue crying about milva/cahir/angouleme For Ever. maybe link this with the fic where geralt and regis bring them all back as ghosts/real ppl and then they have to deal with those consequences

[shooks-stupid-stuff]

i have the text dump, it has lots of lore and will probably break the text limit-

SO BASICALLY JACIAN AND TAIANA SHIZ BASICALLY ALL I HAVE COME UP WITH FOR THEIR RELATIONSHIP AND PLOT STUFF AND YES-

so basically they first meet in act 1 of the main plot (tm) which is really just adventure to go stop odd thing thats happening (idk exactly what atm but thats not really important).  Jarcian is basically a knight whos working for an unknown(at the time, we'll get to it later) person, and he has been tasked with impeding the progress of the main group.  how does he plan to do this? well, despite literally having troops at his disposal (who all adore him and are 100% loyal to him, they love their goofy captain), of course he challenges the main character group to a one on one duel, because he is just a goofy villain who fights fair and lives by his honor.  Of course Taiana accepts his challenge, being a knight herself, and they proceed to have a draw.  Out of respect, and because he's lowkey thrilled that someone has taken him seriously for once, Jacian concedes and retreats for the time being, but not before he and Taiana declare each other to be rivals (with like 75% of the main group just being so done with both of them and wanting to leave).  They have a few more encounters after this, with taiana always insisting that they take up his challenge fairly rather than just like have everyone defeat his forces because she feels he's not a bad guy and actually at this point considers him a friend, and after a while Jacian begins to think that he might be developing feelings for Taiana, which he really doesnt know how to feel about so he consults his second in command, Anton (short for Anthony; this man is just a side character but he is like the best side character ever and im 100% giving him a unique design bc he's just like the most supportive dude ever-). i plan on making a short comic based off the conversation they have but basically Jacian has his suspicions confirmed, and goes full panic attack and sad mode bc oops literal forbidden love this is so sad : pensive : .  There are like 2 more encounters between the main group and Jacian's group, both of which Jacian is just like being very obvious on accident but taiana has no idea what a social cue is so she just doesnt pick up on any of it, and then major plot shit happens and we're onto part 2.

in part 2, things get kinda angsty and really can split off in 2 different directions, with one being significantly less angsty than the other. basically, shit goes down, and all 3 of the main kingdoms are all just kinda in conflict now.  Taiana ends up becoming the queen of her kingdom (called Serenia) and, despite her appearingly newfound confidence and leadership skills, she is internally in turmoil due to previous plot events (and this only gets worse with future ones) and is beginning to fall into a state of self doubt due to the pressure she puts on herself to protect everyone coupled with the fact that she cant, and failed to protect her own father and brother.  After a bit of rebuilding and strategizing, Taiana decides to lead a counterattack against the neighboring kingdom of Grysia who's king, Natalio, has basically backstabbed every other kingdom and had invaded Serenia while the main group was out doing other stuff (his son is also part of the main group, and some real shit happens there but thats another tale for another ramble-).  It turns out that Jacian serves him, and is having one hell of a moral struggle right now.  His knights honor forbids him from betraying his lord, but he's unsure if he's truely doing the right thing as he's been complacent to so many inhumane atrocities that Natalio has preformed.  But in the end he decides that he must stick to his duty to the very end, no matter what (and let me just say, once natalio shows his true colors he does some bad shit, like really damn bad. but again, another disscussion for another day).  Eventually, the main group is pretty much on the castle's doorstep, and so Natalio makes the decision to send Jacian to put a stop to them. More specifically, to their leader, who at this point is Taiana.  Jacian of course, really doesnt want to (but as he later figures out, Natalio knows of his crush and plans on having the two destroy each other, with the result of one being killed and the other being emotionally destroyed. as I said, natalio is a very bad man), but his duty commands that he must, and so he tells Anton to make sure his troops escape the conflict together, and heads off to his final duel, where he intends to head to his grave and take his secret with him.  When he confronts the main group, he is much more solemn than he normally is, and he challenges Taiana to one final duel. and despite every other duel they had resulting in a draw, this one results in a loss from Jacian.  As a final wish, Jacian begs Taiana to take his life, as he'd rather die at her hands than at Natalios.

now, since im thinking about the plot in terms of it being a game, there actually is a branch in the plot based on a choice made at this point (mainly bc the angsty one is more interesting character development wise but the not angsty one makes me happy and i want to see these 2 be happy together-). so the two choices are basically to take Jacian's life, or to spare him.  ill go over what each choice leads to in order.

choose to take his life:  Taiana tries to take Jacian's life, but she just can't bring herself to.  She already internally feels as if she's lost or come close to losing many of the peopleshe holds dear, and she could never bring herself to kill someone she considers a friend.  Seeing this, Jacian smiles before apologizing to her for everything, and thanking her for the joy she's brought him, before telling her he loves her and taking his own life via stabbing his sword through his chest.  His intent is to save her the pain of taking his life by ding it for him, but this ends up pushing her over the edge, as she blames herself and sees it as yet another failure to protect someone she cared about.  The main group ends up defeating natalio and liberating Grysia, but Taiana is left with menatl and emotional wounds that would leave her unstable for much of the remaining plot. it doesnt help that she eventually realizes that she loved him too.  His former troops, which had deserted the war just as he asked, end up joining the Serenian military, with Anton becoming the captain of the knights.  This mainly leads to alot of character development for taiana, and how she learns to cope with and accept the fact that she cant protect everyone, no matter how much she wants to.  (there also is another really angsty part later bc main villian has some bs powers but uhh we've had enough sad i thinkand this is getting really long-)

choose to spare him:  Taiana refuses to take Jacian's life, to which Jacian retorts that she had to if she wanted to get past.  Of course, she once again refuses as she wont harm someone she cares about, especially when she's already lost people she cares about and is really close to just losing it.  She then states that if one of them had to die, the he should take he life, much to his dismay.  She stands firm on this, and he attempts, but his feelings finally overpower his sense of duty, and he just cant.  but at the same time, his honor won't let him betray his lord, and if he goes back he will just be killed.  He and taiana argue a bit, with taiana trying to convince him to join her before finally breaking down and just letting out everything she's had pent up inside since the the end of part 1 of the plot (different story for a different day)  Jacian lets out some emotional baggage of his own, including confessing his feelings for taiana,which she is completely surprised about.  They talk and mildly argue for a bit more, with Jacian eventually surrendering to his feelings, and vowing to right the wrongs made by his complacency before thanking Taiana for helping him to remember why he became a knight in the first place, and abandoning his old sense of honor to take up arms with the main group and find a new sense of honor, fighting for the people as taiana does rather than just for one corrupt man.  Natalio really isnt suprised by this, and simply says that he'll send them both to the grave by his own hands, before being defeated by the main group with the help of Jacian's troops because yknow, theyre loyal to Jacaian before theyre loyal to the king.  During the 6-year skip between part 2 and 3, Taiana and Jacian end up getting married, and similarly to the other option Anton is appointed captaianof the Serentian Knights, and remains a close friend to Jacian (along with the rest of his troops, theyre his bois).  This mainly leads to more development of Jacian and how he interacts with the other charcaters in the main group, as well as him helping taiana to cope with many of her insecurities and issues, and offering support in a way that none of the other characters in the main group can (i meant to not this earlier as well, she may be very close to other characters as well, such as xayvion, but they just dont understand certain aspects of her personality deep down as well as Jacian does. The two are just a pair of overly excessive goofy knights, and though they may be slightly different they understand each other in a way no one else does).

and uhh thats basically it, this was way more than i meant to write and i really need to go to sleep now so uh yeet- anyways i love these 2, thank you for coming to my ted talk-