#its only redeeming quality is the voice. which has nothing to do with the character design. its just the same voice actor (beloved)

[empresskink]

Guys be so for real rn...

Yall actually like this??? And prefer it over the old design (from the first show)????

[ajxrn-archive]

Obviously I know (some) of your thoughts on Childe, but what do you think of the other harbingers?

YIPEE I love the harbingers ‼️ I’ll rant under the cut.. I had a huge obsession with the harbingers a few months back and I still do (in fact my brainrot is coming back so this is a perfect time for you to ask this)

Starting off with Pierro. I find him so interesting as a character because when I was diving into the lore of the harbingers I originally thought that he was number one?? Apparently he’s the director because capitano is no. 1.. I think that’s interesting. So what mainly intrigues me about him is the fact that he’s khaenri’ahn. The Tsaritsa has got to be different from the other Archons because of the fact she literally has a Khaenri’ahn man help run her military. I wonder what their relationship is with each other. Is it anything like dainslumi? I can picture it being that way but more cold, you know? The fact he’s based off the commedia dell’arte stock character Pierro (the fool/jester) is really interesting to me too.. they all have their connections to the characters in one way or another so I wonder what exactly his is.

Now onto Capitano. So far I think he is SO fucking cool he might be one of my favorite harbingers atp. Design wise it’s definitely a favorite but also the fact that he has so many similarities to Kaeya? If hyv were to make him related in some way to kaeya that would be so funny to me.. a lot of people do the pierro is kaeya’s dad thing but honesty I think Capitano would be a cooler connection lowkey? Also generally the ragbros situation would be 10x worse if kaeya was related to the fatui in some way, no matter which one it is. Anyways back on capitano, I’m mostly interested to see how his motives lay out and what his relationship with Mavuika is. The fight seen with him and her was so neat like the way they laid it out was so.. idk. I have a thing for fire/ice character relationships (not in a romantic way.) also what interests me even more about him is that The Captain in the commedia dell’arte is described as a ‘braggart’ type of person, so I’m wondering if he would use his ability to “convince people who knew nothing about him beforehand” to try and manipulate people in Natlan to revolt against Mavuika for the current issues and whatnot.

like I wonder how this'll play into his character in game/story wise. I hope he'll be playable sniff sniff.. Anyways, now onto this fucker!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dottore is one of my favorite harbingers. I am an avid Dottore enjoyer. He’s cunning and genuinely awful and there’s no redeeming his ass he’s going straight to hell 🙏 and that’s what makes him such a GOOD character. He genuinely has zero redeeming qualities about him. He literally uses people and children for his experiments without second thought. He has clones of himself. He possibly killed his girlfriend in his school days. (If the zandik lore is right.) He was literally expelled from the Akademiya because of how awful he was.

I cannot fathom how amazing of a character he is. I think in games we need to have more characters who are just genuinely fucking evil and we don’t just “hate” them for it. I honestly dislike how people hate him JUST because he did bad shit, like have a better reason than that tbh? "He hurt collei/He's the reason crepus died/he gave scara so much trauma" I LOVE ALL THREE OF THOSE GUYS AND DOTTORE</3 Don't hate one character only to love the next. anyways dottore supremacy..

Anywho, onto Columbina. Honestly she intrigues me so much. She's so powerful that not even childe wants to fight her, what is up with that??? I think its also interesting how in the commedia dell'arte her title is technically Little Dove but it’s Damselette in the game. we like,, do not know much about her at all to be honest?? The harbingers voice lines about her interest me so much, especially arle's. It's very. vague??

Arlecchino: "She is a very special Harbinger. Pose her a question, and the answer you receive will be entirely unpredictable, if she sees fit to give a proper answer at all. Regardless, any answer you do receive is sure to be an interesting one."

Childe: "The Fatui Harbingers are ranked by strength, and I have no idea why that girl is No. 3. I'd test my skills with every Harbinger who ranks above me if I had the chance, but when it comes to her... something just doesn't feel right. Anyway, you should be careful around her."

Scara/Wanderer: "Let me ask: what should you do if you were to encounter a "damsel" who is oblivious and innocent at any given time, and unconcerned and unfeeling in any given situation? If it were me, I could at least challenge her to a fight. But if it were you... with your conscience, I would stay away from her."

Judging by voice lines alone, columbina is very, very powerful. she seems to beat around the bush with questions (arles voiceline) and is very mysterious even with the other harbingers. (childe saying something doesn't feel right) I've seen theories that she belongs to the seele race which is honestly pretty cool, but I think i'd need to see her in game or hear more about her first. I'd assume that Arlecchino has a rather close/interesting relationship with columbina. Not purely because of the fact they do in the commedia dell'arte, but because she was the only one out of the three to not tell the traveler to be careful around/stay away from columbina.

Arlecchino herself is a really well written character to me and I notice that a lot of the fandom don't understand her entirely (myself included.) Something i notice the most is how people tend to dumb her down to the Father of the house of the hearth, either portraying her as a wonderful parent (incorrect) or as an awful one (also incorrect.) She's definitely a highly flawed person who does put her children in danger, although she absolutely cares about the children of the hearth. I wouldn't say she's a child abuser/groomer/any other stupid shit the fandom says about her. Her wiki quite literally says that she's flawed but not as awful as Crucabena:

Her (possibly?) being khaenri'ahn is also so interesting because WHY does the tsaritsa keep having connections with khaenri'ah in her military of all things. I have so many questions.

We do not know much about pulcinella at all but I do find it SO intruiging/interesting (can someone give me another word for this HELP) that he's close to childe. he visits childes family for him, iirc, which is suspicious when you read the commedia dell'arte lore.

I do think he's doing this for self gain to be honest. He's a manipulative person, so he could be manipulating childe into relaxing around him to the point of letting pulcinella get near his family, which could end really badly to be honest.

Next up is scaramouche. I feel like the scara stans themselves don't even understand his character that much, because they're too busy yelling at people about raiden/dottore instead of focusing on his character itself. I think he's a LOT more than mommy issues short boy and actually his character is really deep. His name in the commedia dell'arte is also Little Skirmisher (instead of balladeer, though I'm not too sure what that means) and what's most interesting to me about his commedia dell'arte connection is how (IIRC, this could be wrong but i found this out last time i was talking about the harbingers and the commedia dell'arte) scaramouche's "mask" was later removed, which him being removed from irminsul could be a nod to that.

What's also a neat nod to the commedia is how scara "influences the audience to do his bidding." I think in game they referenced this by him influencing/controlling that one woman in sumeru (i forget her name) to be his first follower and do as he says.

Okay so truthfully i don't have many thoughts on sandrone but something that makes me curious about her backstory is the fact that in the commedia she is known as "Peasant.” what else is neat with this is that she looks like that one girl from Fontaine (Mary-Ann) I don’t really know/remember the the lore of her but hm.

What’s even weirder abt the similarities is that Marionette (her title) means Little Mary IIRC? I don’t think she IS Mary Ann since she’s dead but she could have connections to her. Anyway I don’t have many thoughts on her ngl.. </3 genshin give us sandrone lore PLEASEEEE

Next up is my fucking WIFE ‼️‼️ (la signora)

everyone who hates her sucks lowkey she’s such an overlooked character like her lore is so fucking?? sad?? Everyone reduces her to “haha ashes” and it annoys me tbh. Her boss fight was a pain in the fucking ass though ROSALYNE WHY.. it took me 20+ tries

I genuinely love her backstory it makes me so sad honestly. Through her grief and rage she became feared and hated. Idk I wish people would talk about her a little more?? Because she’s so interesting?? She has ties to ancient mondstadt isn’t that sick.

something that interests me the most about her character is how they made her somewhat different from La Signora in commedia dell’arte? She’s continually described as a woman who often cheats on her husband in the commedia, but when you read genshin Signora’s backstory it’s interesting to see how it’s mostly focused around how her loss of her lover threw her into a grief induced rage (basically, it’s centered around her grief and love)

as for her similarities, these two images explain it well:

Honestly I wish we had got to explore her character more than the information we have now. Genshin is so evil for killing her off tbh.

Pantalone I know like NOTHING about. I think he’s a really neat character. A lot of people dumb him down to “evil baizhu” but I do think he has a lot of potential to be a really good character

Basically he’s a capitalist ‼️ kidding but for him, he seems so far to be REALLY similar to Pantalone in the Commedia. I dont have too many thoughts on him either because we don’t know much about him yet </3 pantalone lore when….

and you already know most of my thoughts on Childe so I will save the rant for another day because that would get me fired up (I am losing words this rant sucked the life out of me HELP)

oh wait another thing that is neat about the harbingers entirely is how the trailer for them was called a Winter Night’s Lazzo (I think) but that’s another reference to the commedia dell’arte :)

[tripleglitchwriting]

My earthspark Season 2a thoughts

Warning: SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE THING!!! And a lot of rambling. And negative thoughts.

As much as i hate to admit it, I was kind of disappointed. It’s not that it was bad, I did still enjoy it, but I feel like there was so much missed opportunity.

The show wasn’t well advertised for, especially season 2. I have a feeling Hazbro doesn’t really care much for it. I think the team that works on the show is great! They’re obviously very talented, passionate, and hardworking, but (so far) season 2 saw a definite downgrade from season 1.

The animation is the first thing that comes to mind. While it is still tv show quality, when compared to season 1 in some parts it feels clankier and less polished. Though I don’t know much about 3D animation other than it’s hard, so I suppose I can’t really critique something I have no practice in.

Then I come to the characters. Here I see the seasons biggest flaw. Starscream’s character arc got completely obliterated, (though they did at least mention his interaction with Hashtag) Nightshade got sidelined compared to the other terrans, and Breakdowns character arc also got the boot.

Breakdown interacted with Bumblebee once, and it was in the finale while they were fighting in the background. If it were just this plotline that got pushed off, I would be fine with it. It’s hard to fit in every single character thread in 9 episodes while also introducing new things. Except it wasn’t just this.

In season 1 they set up the perfect redemption arc for Starscream. Him finally meeting someone that actually listens to him, Megatron’s past abuse and Starscream feelings about his subsequent redemption, it was really interesting to see! But then he pulled a Steeljaw and decided to make New Cybertron. Character wise, sure, I can see why he would want to do that. However, it totally disregards his past interactions. We don’t even know how he found out about the titan, there are so many missing pieces.

Then there’s Cosmos. I think Cosmos is great! I think it’s cool that his voice is Weird Al! I was so excited to get to the next episode and see him take Robbie’s offer to join team Terran and the autobots… and then we don’t see him again. They even set up a potential conflict with Megatron being redeemed! And then nothing! My theory is they couldn’t afford weird al for another episode. Maybe he’ll be back in 2b?

Personally, I don’t like the chaos terrans. It’s an interesting concept, and it isn’t executed as poorly as it could’ve been, but they just fell below the bar for me.

Aftermath has one character trait and it’s hitting things. For the start of his character, that’s fine! Having him only see value in destruction is an interesting foil to Jawbreaker and the rest of the terrans. However, even after the episode with him and Jawbreaker, he doesn’t change. He steals the cave water (which, by the way, how do they get fuel now???? Does it come back???) and goes back to being terrible. I can see what they were trying to do with him, it’s cool having a character that was made to be evil go up against characters who try and Steven universe anybody that shows a hint of the possibility to change. But there’s just nothing interesting about Aftermath. They don’t even dive into his relationship with Breakdown that much after his debut episode.

And then there’s Spitfire. I have mixed feelings about her. On one hand, shes pretty much the shape the hedgehog of transformers. She’s the mean edgy version of an already established ‘good’ character who is designed to be better than said already established good character. On its own that’s pretty overdone, and so is the body switch troupe. It’s a good hook but super predictable. She’s more interesting than Aftermath, at least she has a reason to stay evil, but she just feels like a plot device to create conflict rather than an actual well-formed character. Maybe that’s what she is? On the other hand, her debut episode is really well directed! It was some fantastic shots and combat sequences! I absolutely love what they did with that! The fact she nearly killed Wheeljack was really surprising (in a good way) to me! It even played to Wheeljack character by having him be the first to figure her out!

A good amount of the episodes were as well directed as episode 6. They have a lot of good moments! Some I even laughed out loud at! It may just be the fact only half the season is out, but really 2a felt a bit empty. We got no new characters other than Cosmos (who had like 10 lines and then dipped) the chaos terrans, and the fairmiestero. There were a lot of missed opportunities in that department and in the department of pre existing characters.

Nothing new about Megatron (though I did enjoy the part we got to explore cybertronian culture with the polyhex tournament!) and no comebacks of older characters (where is prowl).

I thought the quintesson lore was pretty interesting though! They will probably be the villains of 2b. I still have hope for the series. They could right a lot of wrongs with the next part of season 2. I sincerely hope these loose ends get tied up.

I’m tired, I have more to say but the energy to type it all out is not there. I also didn’t proofread this so sorry if it’s just rambling and spelling mistakes haha.

[just-jae]

Mufasa

I have so many thoughts.

So many of them are bad.

But only if I treat the story like American cinema, rather than an African folk tale.

Bc it does echo the character and story patterns of a folktale, many of which are simple and obvious.

Anyone who grew up on them might have found Mufasa grossly predictable and weirdly detatched from its roots, which is english theatre. (Ex. Scar was originally characterized as a character who’s redeeming qualities were his charisma and intellect, yet he has the exact opposite traits in Mufasa where his biggest trait is cowardice and entitlement—not that he wasn’t entitled before but cowardice is new) The story themes are those typical of kids stories (which many folkmtales are) rather than adult stories, (Which many old English plays were)

Meanwhile Mufasa got the Gary Stu treatment. All of the characters that felt like real people were antagonists or characters meant to demonstrate flaws, like sexism, sloth, and corruption.

Mufasa’s attempt to basically manipulate Sarabi into liking Taka by lying to her gave me red flags, that was an insult to her character, imo. Her preference for Mufasa came off really shallow. Like, I get it, he’s the cooler of the (only) two options, but its literally just his skills.

And this is just a few of the gripes I had. If I judged to movie by American Media standards, big sigh of disappointment.

But if I judged it as a traditional folktale. Its okay it hits all of the beats and moves exactly like a folk tale would. I never liked folktales specifically because of their tropes. And I was hoping the Mufasa story would be something new.

There were many major improvements on the first Lion King remake’s animation, the characters were distinct, their expressions expressive, their personalities stood out from one another (except all the supporting lioness characters were a voice actor away from being the same character. I enjoyed the antagonists. Was annoyed by the protagonist's, and the ending really tested my suspension of disbelief what-with there being an absurd number of animals in that specific location all at once for no reason.

Like, having outcasted Albinos grouping together to get revenge is an interesting idea. But THAT and the main character’s conflict has nothing to do with eachother. Even his brotherly bond with Taka had nothing to do with his inner conflict. Taka’s betrayal just made him a little angy at the tail end of the story.

It wasn’t even an interesting betrayal, literally the classic “you took my girl, the one girl in the group, and now you and everyone else must die”

like…. i know that was not the story everyone was wondering about.

[idontknowijuststartedsomething]

Against most odds I’m still excited for Hazbin, but I gotta say the marketing strategy so far has been absolutely awful, including the new trailer. (Not Vivs fault, as marketing is usually a completely different entity that is mostly or entirely out of viv and the crews control)

I’m trying to look at as if I were someone who’d never heard or seen anything about the show before seeing this trailer. Never heard of vivziepop, helluva, or hazbin. Just some random guy scrolling thru Twitter. I feel like it’s doing a poor job selling or informing people who are not in the know about the show. Like someone seeing this trailer with no prior knowledge would probably not guess they’re supposed to be in hell until maybe the pentagram on the season 2 banner.

Most of the marketing up until this point feels like it’s only to sell the show more to people who are already gonna watch it. Which is fine, except there has been next to nothing trying to market it to general audiences who haven’t heard of the show. And you kind of want more people to know about and be interested in watching if you want a successful show.(again, this is not directed at viv but the people making the marketing decisions). By successful I don’t mean good quality, lots of great shows or shows I love have or had like four people watching when they aired. I mean a show that brings in views and ad revenue and ratings for the platform or network so that it doesn’t get axed for not performing well enough.

All the marketing before this trailer, in case I missed something, has been gifs on the shows Twitter account, which is likely seen primarily by people who follow the account and already know about/are excited about the show. Its probably not reaching a ton more people then those who are already gonna watch.

And the trailer. Agains someone who doesn’t know who these characters are or clues to what the shows “about”(Charlie trying to redeem people) probably still wouldn’t just from this trailer. It still just looks like random clips. It’ll probably draw some people in who see the trailer, are interested and then look it up, but I still think the trailer could do a better job of selling the show or at least letting you (the viewer who has never heard of this before) know kinda the “gist” or some of the conflict that’s gonna be in the show.

All or most of the marketing feels like it assumes you already know what the show is about and who these characters are and are familiar with the setting, and a lot of general audiences or prime video users probably don’t. A lot of it, especially the gifs, feel like they’re just to hype up the show to people already hyped for it. I don’t see a whole lot being done to market this show with general audiences, to sell the show to people who have never heard of it and have no prior knowledge of Hazbin Hotel. Which, if you wanna market just to the fans, that cool. But don’t except to get many new viewers on board.

And, going into pure speculation and red strings territory now, if and big if they are doing that with the line of thinking of “it’s not for everyone”, I don’t think that tracks. Invincible (the ANIMATED show on PRIME)probably isn’t for everyone, and is based on something where there was probably already a dedicated fan base. I’ve never read invincible or watched it(although just thru memes and pop culture osmosis I kinda know what happens in the show) but the first trailer does give me a good idea of who these characters are on a basic level and some of the gist of the show or conflicts. The main takeaways from that trailer is that Mark feels tremendous pressure trying to live up to his dad’s legacy, it’s a violent show about superheroes, and that marks dad has something else darker going on. Even if you’d never heard of invincible, it gives you enough to be like, oh I see, maybe I’ll check it out. It does enough to hook the show to someone who has never heard of it.

Maybe we’ll get a longer trailer later with actually voices that sells the show or the idea of the show more, but for now, I just feel like all of Hazbins marketing has been more for fans, not to actually market the show outside of the fandom to general audiences.

[hotcocoabombb]

archiving my thoughts on sonic 06 with some light revisions since I'm hoping to abandon twitter now :)

Sonic's campaign:

I finally beat Sonic's campaign. Did I enjo- no. Not at all. This was absolute ass. It felt like torture. I forced myself to do this out of curiosity. The last cutscene was nice but Jason is so bleh as Sonic he took me out of it. Elise and Sonic had a good relationship but the rest of the story was dumb, the gameplay was either boring or frustrating, and honestly the only redeeming qualities were the music and the story being laughably bad. So I give Sonic's campaign a 1.5/10, although that could change depending on the other campaigns

Shadow's story:

Just beat shadows campaign. I think past me summed it up well. This was better than Sonics campaign, but in the same way where I'd rather get punched in the face instead of getting punched in the balls. There's no mach speed and no level quite hits the low of Sonic's Kingdom Valley, but overall this just wasn't fun. It was less frustrating and more boring, which honestly I'd take in a heartbeat. Also I don't see why people rave about his characterization in this game so much. Like yeah that sure was how shadow the hedgehog would react in this moment. Nothing groundbreaking, idk why people lose their shit over it all the time. The story is still weak as fuck, mephiles is an awful villian with no presence, and the voice acting is very meh. I'd give it a 2.5/10 overall. Better than Sonic's but not by much.

Silver's Campaign:

I just beat silvers campaign and holy shit he is the best one by FARRRRRR. Sure, silver is slower in a speed platformer, but because 06 controls so awfully the slower speed actually helps the game feel, plus his hover helps how bad mid-air movement feels. And his levels are all fun! The ball puzzle genuinely didn't give me any issues somehow so ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ it's fine lmao. This is still sonic 06, so it's not amazing, but I actually had some fun. 5/10. I might play some of these levels again one day. Onto Last Story!

Last Story/Final Thoughts:

Unfortunately the energy from Silvers campaign didn't carry over. End of the World is rage inducing making you use all of the broken characters that aren't fun to control, and the final boss is boring, but functional at the very least. On its own that gets a 3/10. As for the game itself, Sonic 06 is like the kid who fails every exam. Like you can tell he's trying but it's just disappointing yet expected at a certain point. Everything good in this game would be SO much better if you experienced it in any other Sonic game. The only thing this game has going for it is Silver's Campaign, which isn't even that good, it's just relatively better than the rest imo. All of this leads to me just feeling like I wanted to play any other game in this franchise, and it just made me feel like i was slowly decending into madness. I'm glad I played it, even if just to give myself the experience, but outside of a few levels from Silver's campaign I never wanna touch this game again. This is the 2nd biggest exercise in frustration I've ever had, and I'm not exactly chomping at the bit to play it. Onto the story. It's terrible. Aside from Silver, who may just be my favorite Sonic character now, this whole game just has awful writing. When they try to pull emotional moments at the end, they didn't land bc I didn't care. Sonic dying is actually the dumbest fucking part of this game. His death scene literally made me cackle the first time I saw it. Frontiers ending pre-update 3 handles this better, and that was rushed beyond belief. Every part of this story thats "good" is, once again, better in any other sonic game. People rave about Shadows writing but honestly it's only slightly above sonics, and way worse than silvers. It may sound like I'm trying to be contrarin but this is seriously how I feel. But TLDR, Sonic 06 is one of the most dreadful experiences I've ever had. I was begging it to end by the time I reached the end of sonics campaign, but instead it dragged itself out for 2 more tedious campaigns, an ending that underwhelmed more than frontiers, a shitty final boss, and made me never wanna touch my 360 again. 3.5/10. The only reason it's not lower is because of Silvers campaign, and the music. Never again

[my-words-are-light]

'Deus Ex': How To Write Villains With Humanity

I really like this scene from Deus Ex. A lot of writers think giving a villain humanity means giving Bloodsaw Ignites-Kittens a jarring moment in which she reminisces on her mother's cooking or says "Good morning" to her receptionist or, Mary Shelley forbid, has a flashback about their abusive childhood because of a horrible parent to whom "giving them humanity" seems to not make sense to the author for some reason when they do the same for Bloodsaw Ignites-Kittens.

What Deus Ex does here is take a villain with absolutely no redeeming qualities but give us a moment to remind us that, for all of Walton Simons' nanotechnology, he is still a human being interacting with human systems.

Context and transcript will follow below the video:

The stoic Walton Simons is the right hand man of the megalomaniac Bob Page, who orchestrates the evils you face throughout the game. He also effectively controls the organisation you're in, which in turn makes Walton a superior officer to you. Indeed, he's been appointed as the director of FEMA after Bob effectively bribed a senator with the cure he's monopolising for the plague he's manufactured.

You first meet Walton after you finish the first mission. Assuming you didn't kill the "terrorists" and captured them like you were ordered to, Walton will personally interrogate them and ask that he not be disturbed. Should you listen in, you will find that he is more than willing to abuse his power in threatening the families of the captives. From the intro cutscene to this point, you know that Walton Simons and Bob Page are monsters who will do anything and everything to get what they want and nothing is beneath them.

Later on, you return to HQ again and hear that Walton is paying a visit to Dr Jaime Reyes. Oh no! Is he going to threaten Jaime with EVIL SCIENCE? Is he going to abduct the good doctor and experiment on him? What could be possibly be planning with the game's most sympathetic character according to what I remember of a game that came out twenty-two years ago?!

So you go down to the doctor's office and overhear the following conversation, which plays in the above video clip:

Dr Jaime Reyes: "What kind of pain?" Walton Simons: "Behind the eyes. A sharp burning. Almost electrical." Dr Jaime Reyes: "How's your bioelectric level?" Walton Simons: "It's always at a hundred percent. I like to stay prepared." Dr Jaime Reyes: "That's probably it right there. Free radicals. You should charge your systems only when they've been significantly drained." Walton Simons: <slowly, as if surprised> "I wasn't informed of that." Dr Jaime Reyes: "It's a lot like an electric razor. If you leave it plugged in all the time, the battery loses its zero point. Just watch your levels." Walton Simons: "Interesting. Thanks, Doctor." Dr Jaime Reyes: "Let me know how it goes."

And that's it. It's just a regular medical checkup. Even the man who works for the man who wishes to control everything and become effectively a God, he still needs to go to a doctor for an eye checkup because he couldn't tell what the problem was himself. What's more, he's cooperative and doesn't hide anything (owing probably to his stoic nature), his tone of voice indicates he wasn't expecting the diagnosis to be what it was, and he's genuinely thankful for the help.

This is what makes a villain human, which isn't the same as what makes a villain sympathetic. Bloodsaw Ignites-Kittens is an attempt to invoke sympathy that often falls that because it doesn't align with what we know of her villainous actions, or the Freudian backstory behind her actions is so weak that it feels like it was thrown in there for the sake of avoiding criticism of a "flat" villain.

Walton Simons is not sympathetic in the slightest; he's just as power hungry and monstrous as his boss. However, Walton is human. That's the thing about humans; they're complex but that doesn't mean they're sympathetic, because plenty of humans act with complete disregard for everyone around them and solely for the sake of their own profit, power, and survival. However however, that's the thing about humans; they may be seeking to build a new Enephtee-mining factory off the coast of Peru but that doesn't mean they don't need to try and find a time in their busy schedule to get a check-up now and again.

Also, I'd just like to say that this diagnosis is brilliant in terms of the themes of the story of Deus Ex. Walton Simons is injured because he keeps himself at 100% bioelectric charge at all times, basically being at the peak of his power to address any problems that come his way. The doctor telling him that this is a bad thing for his health shakes him; for the sake of his health, he has to not be powerful all the time. Considering the goals of Bob Page, it's a neat way of the story telling us that the pursuit of absolute power won't go well for you.

[sk1fanfiction]

the many faces of tom riddle, part 2

 -you dislike frank dillane’s portrayal of tom riddle only because you don’t think he’s attractive-

FULL DISCLAIMER THAT THIS IS JUST MY OPINION OF A CHARACTER WHO DOESN’T HAVE THE STRONGEST CANON CHARACTERIZATION, AND THUS ALL THIS IS BASED ON MY CONCEPTUALIZATION (and this time, featuring a bit of armchair child psych from a student).

Wait, don’t clutch your pearls just yet. Compose yourself.

I am about to explain why it’s not actually that bad, and Dillane’s portrayal is vastly underappreciated.

I definitely agree that his portrayal comes off as ‘creepier’. It’s not helped by the stylistic decisions in the scene -- the smeary, green filter gives the scene a sinister quality. 

Even Slughorn looks suspect here, which is somewhat appropriate, given that he is complicit in this crime. 

Again, this scene is very much intended to be slightly off.

You’ll notice (and I’ll discuss this again when I talk about Coulson’s portrayal) that Dillane is almost always shot from at least slightly below, which makes the lower third of his face look bigger (and thus more menacing). The lighting also makes his eyes glow in a really unnatural way. There’s an echo-y effect to make his voice (and not Slughorn’s) sound unnerving.

People talk about how Coulson would have looked in this scene, and if he was filmed in the same way (monotone, smeary/shadowy filter, and always from below), he’d look a bit creepy, too.

But all of this, imo, is for a pretty good reason. Slughorn isn’t the POV character. Harry is. Harry is learning about how a young Lord Voldemort wheedled the secret of Horcruxes out of an unsuspecting teacher. Unlike in COS, he expects Riddle to be evil. And, so, Harry’s new perception of Tom Riddle literally colors how we perceive him.

Take this shot, for example: he does that head-tilt thing that Coulson does, and it’s actually... kind of... cute???

Imagine Dillane filmed from slightly above, like Coulson usually is, and it looks even more innocent. (I mean, come on, he does not look like he’s killed four people, does he?) It’s not hard to imagine teachers being taken in by this kind of act.

Even that little smirk he does when the camera (aka, Harry’s gaze) pans in, is for Harry’s benefit. No one else noticed that. 

However, I still fail to find this creepy, like, at all. Yes, it’s a fake smile, but he’s portraying a different side of Tom Riddle to Coulson. Whereas, in COS, he’s in his vindictive, murderous element, where he’s free to express himself, in this scene, Tom Riddle is doing what he does best -- manipulating and managing appearances. 

This entire scene is an act. And because Harry knows it’s an act, it should look a bit stilted. 

From the Hepzibah Smith scene in the books: Voldemort smiled mechanically and Hepzibah simpered.

So, Harry is pretty adept at parsing Tom’s fake expressions.

But just look at the expressiveness in his face: he goes from brooding, he blinks, and his entire face changes to this charming (fake) smile. 

At the risk of sounding elitist, I’m a bit tired of seeing the word ‘psychopath’, which is not an actual medical diagnosis recognised by any psychological or psychiatric institution, being tossed about, especially with reference to Tom Riddle (and from a neuroscience perspective, it’s doubly annoying). There’s no such thing as ‘insanity’ or ‘psychopathy’ or being ‘crazy.’

-although I use it too a shorthand in conversation to distinguish ‘canon’ Tom from his ‘softer’ OOC counterparts, I really shouldn’t-

Unfortunately, I’ve seen the ‘psychopath’ comment used time-and-time again as an excuse or a full explanation of ‘why Tom Riddle went evil’ (JKR in fact, has made a weird comment in an interview, basically saying that ‘psychopaths can’t be redeemed or learn adaptive coping skills’ or whatever), which really just goes to show the lack of understanding and compassion when personality disorders, especially, are concerned.

But what I like most about the opening of this scene, actually, is that first, listless expression. And this is where we get slightly into headcanon, but Tom Riddle is the opposite of a happy, mentally healthy teenager. By Dumbledore’s own admission, he has no real friends. He has no parental figures, no real attachments. Yes, he might derive some pride or enjoyment from being good at magic and top of his class and all that, but I really don’t think even Tom finds that truly fulfilling. There is nothing that makes him happy. 

In fact, although some might perceive it as ‘creepy’, I think that listless expression is an accurate window into Tom’s psyche. 

I know people aren’t big on Freud, but I think that he does make some interesting points (also, cut the guy some slack for being relatively open-minded for the Victorian Era, and inventing psychoanalysis and while yes he did say some sexist stuff, good luck finding a field of science that isn’t male-focused and makes crazy generalizations about women, especially back in the day) about the possible origins of thanatophobia, the fear of death.

According to Freud, thanatophobia is a disguise for a deeper source of concern -- he did not believe that people were capable of conceptualizing their own death to that extent. Instead, he believed that this phobia was caused by unresolved childhood conflicts that the sufferer cannot come to terms with or express emotion towards.

Now, I know Freud almost always attributes mental distress to childhood experiences, but I think in this case, it really has some merit.

According to attachment theory, the basis of how we form attachments in adulthood is dictated by learning it from experiences with caregivers in the first two years of life. We know Tom was born in an orphanage, and that he didn’t cry much as a baby, and subsequently, probably received very little attention. Compounded with possible genetic factors and his caregivers being afraid or wary of his magical abilities, he later struggled to form attachments because of this -- I would actually go so far as to say that by the time Dumbledore meets him, Tom Riddle is severely depressed. 

And that flat affect and anhedonia, I think, comes over very well in Dillane’s portrayal. There’s kind of this resignation -- a very deep sadness and loneliness to his character.

Of course, he doesn’t derive any comfort or fulfillment from human interaction, because (to borrow the description from the Wikipedia article on ‘Reactive attachment disorder’, which Tom meets all the criteria for) he has a “grossly disturbed internal working model of relationships.” In other words, he is unresponsive to all offers of attachment because of this unacknowledged trauma.

(You could arguably class Tom as having an avoidant attachment style, but I think in his case the trauma and its effect on him are severe enough to call it disordered.)

RAD isn’t particularly well-characterized (especially neurologically) and quite new in the literature, but here are some links if anyone is interested in doing a bit of digging: Link 1 | Link 2 | Paper 1 | Paper 2

And, instead of trying to resolve this conflict in a healthy way, or at least recognize that this is why he can’t be happy and try to learn how to cope from there, he (a) represses the desire for human attachment and (b) funnels that negative emotion into being the fault of Death, the Grim Reaper (again, to borrow Freudian terms). 

And we all know how that turned out...

(And now, this should go without saying, but psychoanalyzing fictional characters has nothing to do with assigning a morality to mental disorders. Mental illness is neither a cause nor an excuse for criminal behavior -- in the same way that the cycle of violence is a phenomenon, not an excuse. Tom Riddle did not become a genocidal murderer because, in common parlance, he was a ‘psychopath’ -- he was not necessarily ‘predisposed’ to evil and could just as easily chosen to not follow the path that he did -- instead, he willingly made poor choices. This is a descriptive analysis, not a justification -- a ‘how’, not a ‘why’)

Here’s a Carl Jung quote that articulates it better:

“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”

Yes, he’s a bit stiff (and a lot more formal than in COS during his *conversation* with Harry). But, and here comes the controversial bit, this is appropriate for a portrayal of a schoolboy in the 1940s. The upright posture is accurate -- respectful, polite -- everything Tom Riddle would have been expected to be (and even Coulson, in that scene with Dumbledore in COS, is quite stiff). Even the way he looks at Slughorn and maintains eye contact is very *respectful.*

And, Dillane (I think he’s seventeen or eighteen here) actually looks like a believable sixteen-year-old. I’m sorry, I love Coulson’s portrayal as well, but he looks around nineteen in COS; so in HBP, he probably would have looked at least twenty-two or so. (Sorry, not sorry).

This may be influenced by my own interpretation of the character (because I imagine Tom always looks young for his age, and Dillane fits that archetype, but I don’t think that’s very popular), but I think young Tom Riddle is supposed to be *cute* and a bit stiff/shy/awkward (being charming and awkward is very much possible), if you consider the way Dippet and Slughorn treat him. 

To support this, he says very few words to Hepzibah Smith (in the book, that scene’s not in the movie), and is very... bashful and coy during the whole interaction? I think yes, he’s charismatic, but he’s not loud, suave, openly flirtatious or particularly verbose. Tom Riddle should have a quiet magnetism, and to me, that came across in Dillane’s portrayal.

"I'd be glad to see anything Miss Hepzibah shows me," said Voldemort quietly, and Hepzibah gave another girlish giggle.

...

"Are you all right, dear?"

"Oh yes," said Voldemort quietly. "Yes, I'm very well. ..."

Even the ‘ugly, greedy look’ described in the books, when Slughorn starts spilling his secrets, is there. This is how he’s supposed to look! Slughorn glimpses it, but doesn’t understand its significance. Harry does. 

“Slughorn looked deeply troubled now: He was gazing at Riddle as though he had never seen him plainly before, and Harry could tell that he was regretting entering into the conversation at all.”

Remember the context of this moment, as well: He’s just discovered how to create multiple Horcruxes. Excuse him for looking a bit creepy (if not now, then when?).

Here’s two direct quotes of Harry’s impression of Tom Riddle in that scene: 

“But Riddle's hunger was now apparent; his expression was greedy, he could no longer hide his longing.”

“Harry had glimpsed his face, which was full of that same wild happiness it had worn when he had first found out that he was a wizard, the sort of happiness that did not enhance his handsome features, but made them, somehow, less human. . . .”

Tom Riddle’s Horcruxes are a direct metaphor for his refusal to allow himself to heal from his trauma -- instead, he continues to inflict destruction on himself and others.

His desire to continue creating more Horcruxes sort of resounds with the fact that self-harm can also become a compulsion.

I’d also like to digress a bit to discuss the Gaunt Ring, while we’re at it. While we’ve talked about his attachment issues in general, this discussion is particularly pertinent to father figures. And while Tom’s attachment issues are extensive, I think there’s ample evidence that as a child, he craved acknowledgement and acceptance from a father figure -- the man who gave him the only thing Tom truly owned -- his name. He would have had a vaguely defined mother figure in Mrs. Cole, perhaps.

"You see that house upon the hillside, Potter? My father lived there. My mother, a witch who lived here in this village, fell in love with him. But he abandoned her when she told him what she was.... He didn’t like magic, my father ... He left her and returned to his Muggle parents before I was even born, Potter, and she died giving birth to me, leaving me to be raised in a Muggle orphanage ... but I vowed to find him ... I revenged myself upon him, that fool who gave me his name ... Tom Riddle. ..."

We know that by June of 1943 (COS flashback) Tom has already uncovered the truth of his parentage; he knows he is the Heir of Slytherin via the Gaunt line, and he describes himself to Dippet as ‘Half-blood, sir. Witch mother, Muggle father.’

In Part 1, I discussed the high probability that as a presumed ‘Mudblood’, Tom Riddle was treated rather poorly in Slytherin House. But by this scene in the fall of 1943, he is surrounded by a group of adoring hangers-on. Why?

In my opinion; the Gaunt Ring. We know that Tom stopped wearing it after school, so its sentimental value couldn’t have been that great. We know he likes to collect objects (which I believe stems from his attachment issues -- he seeks comfort in things instead of other people).

Signet rings (such as the one belonging to Tutankhamun seen above) were used to stamp legal documents and such, in order to certify someone’s identify -- like an e-certificate, if you will. Like Tutankhamun’s ring, the Gaunt Ring bears an identifying symbol -- Marvolo Gaunt tells us proudly that it bears the Peverell family crest.

By the Middle Ages, anyone of influence, including the nobility, wore a signet ring. Rings in antiquity were auspicious -- they signified power, legitimacy, and authority. And so, I believe that all the Sacred Twenty-Eight families would have worn these, too.

And so, bearing the Gaunt Ring would have established Tom Riddle, symbolically and in the eyes of the Sacred Twenty-Eight (his future supporters and followers), as the legitimate heir to the House of Gaunt. This is why, I believe, Tom coveted the ring as soon as he saw it -- not just because it was a family heirloom, and not just because he thought it was a pretty toy for his collection.

(He curses it so that no one else but him can wear the Gaunt Ring safely.)

This is why, to make the legitimization literal as well as symbolic, Tom murders his father and grandparents. It’s not just an act of vindictive, murderous rage due to his perception of being rejected by his father (although it is that, too). And so, Tom, abandoning his search for a father figure (and possibly also giving up on the possibility to allow himself to heal from his own personal trauma rather than continue to inflict it on others), ‘cleanses’ his bloodline, to make himself truly legitimate. It’s rather telling that instead of affirming his legitimacy as a Riddle, which would have put him in line for a nice inheritance, and hey -- money is money -- (thus accepting his half-blood status), he simply kills them all. He has done all the murdering he needs to become immortal (and he hasn’t had the discussion about multiple Horcruxes yet); but yet, he does it again. Frightening stuff. 

(Just look how the others look at Tom. All but the one to his left -- possibly Nott, Rosier, or Mulciber -- have their torsos turned towards him. Their attention is on him, while he knowingly regards the viewer/Harry. Tom seems a little uncomfortable with the attention.).

“And there were the half-dozen teenage boys sitting around Slughorn with Tom Riddle in the midst of them, Marvolo's gold-and-black ring gleaming on his finger.”

...

“Riddle smiled; the other boys laughed and cast him admiring looks.”

...

“Tom Riddle merely smiled as the others laughed again. Harry noticed that he was by no means the eldest of the group of boys, but that they all seemed to look to him as their leader.”

The ‘gang’ are true hangers-on; Tom doesn’t seem to pay them much attention. 

So, if not via careful flattery or charisma, the attraction must be status.

And perhaps yet more telling...

"I don't know that politics would suit me, sir," he said when the laughter had died away. "I don't have the right kind of background, for one thing." “A couple of the boys around him smirked at each other. Harry was sure they were enjoying a private joke, undoubtedly about what they knew, or suspected, regarding their gang leader's famous ancestor.”

That, in my opinion, is as good as we’re going to get as proof that Tom’s shiny new signet ring (and by extension, his new status) made a big impression on his fellow students.

So, when he returns to Hogwarts, he is ‘pureblood’. He is cleansed of his Muggle roots, and becomes the legitimate heir of the House of Gaunt, now well on his way to becoming Lord Voldemort...

Watch the scene again, with a critical eye, and imagine Slughorn’s perspective, instead of Harry’s. There’s nothing creepy about Tom Riddle... unless you know what he is...

Strip away all the effects of Harry’s gaze (and notice, here he’s still looking at Harry), and he’s quite the charmer, actually.

(I will concede that I don’t like the promotional images where they have him looking like he’s up to no good. And I do wish he blinked once in a while.)

My challenge to you: Rewatch the scene with an open mind, and let me know if you agree that Dillane’s portrayal comes off as depressive rather than ‘creepy.’ And if not, why do you dislike his portrayal?

[ssadumba55]

Family Isn’t Blood (Fatherly! Jack Sparrow X Reader)

Request: Hello i have an requests for pirates of Caribbean. Can you do one when reader is lik 16 and have no parents and a crew in Jack sparrow ship and he is like a father fiquer to her and she isl like a daughter to him but she is always mean toward him and once jack got in troble and she tried very hard to save him and succes and he is like teasing her about it. Sorry if its to long and its ok if you dont like it

 A/N: Probably super out of character, but I kind of like how it turned out so.

Growing up had been rough. You’d never had a place to call your own, as far as you could remember. Your parents had died when you were young, leaving you to fend for yourself and you had been on your own ever since. There was no sympathy in the world for a poor orphan child like you. Every day was spent trying to earn your keep, never staying too long in one place.

Then you bumped into Jack Sparrow.

It had been a complete accident. You were working on some of the ships in the dock, struggling to carry something probably, when his ship pulled into the dock. Ships were always pulling into the dock, you didn’t even look up from your work until, of course, he was right beside you trying to get you to tell him where things were in your little village.

“Please, can’t you see I’m trying to work?” You asked, slightly annoyed as you tied what felt like your hundredth knot that day. He looked around, then back at you.

“You’re a little young to be working in any capacity,” he pointed out. He wasn’t wrong but you were tired and stressed after a lot of work that day.

You picked up a box from beside one of the ships. “I’m thirteen, work is all I have, sir. Now can you please leave and get drunk somewhere else? I’m working here.”

Something about you intrigued the pirate that day, though you had never figured out what exactly it was. Some of the crew speculated it was probably the fact you reminded him a lot of himself, out fending for yourself. The world was a dangerous place on your own, nobody knew that better than Captain Jack Sparrow. He offered you a place on his ship, work that you could do with ease and a place you could basically call your home.

Maybe it wasn’t a traditional home that stayed in one place, but you didn’t mind. You could see the world and never even have to leave the deck.

Of course, you would never admit that to him. Sure, he had shown you a great kindness by letting you stay on his ship, but you didn’t need his help. If he hadn’t come along, you would’ve been just fine on your own. Plus, he was a drunk and he was always getting into trouble. You’d never spoken so much as a kind word to him since you’d stepped foot on the deck of the Black Pearl. There was no need. He knew you were thankful, and you knew you didn’t need to say it.

But now you were at a crossroads. It had been three years since Jack had taken you under his wing, even though you wouldn’t exactly call it that. You were pacing the deck of the ship, every now and then looking up to shore and scowling slightly. He had promised he wouldn’t be long, but he hadn’t been back for hours.

There were few redeeming qualities about Jack Sparrow, but he was usually a man of his word, no matter how bizarre that word was. He wasn’t off somewhere getting drunk and losing track of time, there was definitely something wrong. But the crew didn’t seem to think so, which left you in an odd predicament.

You could go to shore and drag him back yourself or wait and potentially risk getting caught yourselves by whatever had your captain.

“Captains orders, he told us all to stay put.” Gibbs watched you as you walked around the ship, grabbing things you might need and got ready to head to shore.

“Yeah, well he’s not here, is he? You stay here, just in case he does come back, but I’m going up there to grab him myself.”

You didn’t say what was unspoken. Jack Sparrow was the closest thing to a father figure you’d ever had, even though he was far from being the best one. He’d taught you mostly everything you knew about being on the seas. This wasn’t just a rescue mission so you could get back to moving, this was a rescue mission to save what little family you had left. You couldn’t be on your own anymore, no matter how much you hated to admit that.

There was definitely something off as you slowly slunk your way through the little town you’d stopped by. Everything was quiet, which was typical for this hour, but it still felt eerie. You spent a lot of time wandering, not knowing where you were going. Where had that stupid pirate gotten himself stuck now? You pushed a door open to escape some guards walking your way and turned, realizing you’d entered some sort of jail. There were cells and they were all full. They didn’t even look up as you walked by, eying them uneasily and gripping onto your rucksacks strap tighter.

“… There has to be another way out of here.” You mumbled, but there was nothing as far as you could see besides cells. There were so many cells, though the number of people inside each was quickly diminishing. You wondered briefly if this was where you’d end up if found here.

“(Y/n)!” A familiar voice called, and you whipped around, studying the cells closely. There was nobody there. You turned around to keep going when you heard it again. ��Oh, come on, (Y/n).”

“Who said that?” You pulled out a dagger from your sheath, it was the only weapon you’d been able to find on such notice on the decks of the Pearl. You held it out in front of you, walking slowly back the way you came. As you walked, slowly and cautiously, a hand darted out to grab your wrist.

“Not sure what yer hoping to do with that,” the voice chuckled, amused and you let out a yelp, dropping the dagger. You looked up, glaring at Jack Sparrow as he leaned casually against the bars of his cell, flashing you a winning smile.

You let out an annoyed noise, bending down to pick your dagger up. “That’s not funny, Sparrow,” you snapped, tucking the dagger away.

“Not even a little?” He asked, grinning. You tried not to let your anger get the better of you. You were here to rescue him not kill him, though that was getting harder by the second.

Immediately, you bent down to get a good look at the lock that was holding him in his cell, ignoring any comments he made about enjoying his time in the cell. There had been a time where you had needed to know locks and how to pick them, it was the only you could get food. Though you were out of practice, you could still remember what you needed to do.

Reaching into your pocket for something to pick the lock, you found what you needed and set to work. He was quiet now; you could feel his eyes watching you as you worked on the lock. Even with his stare, you didn’t falter. You couldn’t falter. This was depending on you and you were going to give it your all.

The lock let out a click and you grabbed it, throwing it to the side. Pulling on the bars, they came open with ease and you tucked away your lockpick for future use, grateful that you’d still remembered how to use it. You gestured with your arms grandiosely, letting him know he could walk forward and join you.

He did, swaying slightly and you knew he was drunk. You didn’t say anything, but you grabbed him by the arm and pulled him the way you’d come, three years on the sea had made you slightly stronger than you’d been before. There was no place for weak, scrawny people on the Black Pearl.

“Ye came back for me,” he smirked, looking at you slyly from the corner of his eye. You scoffed and shook your head.

“The crew was worried. I was tired of hearing them whine so I’m doing something about it.”

“That’s not the only reason ye’re here, admit it.”

You could smell the alcohol on his breath and wrinkled your nose, but he was right. You paused. He stood there swaying and you stared ahead, at the door that would lead you back out into the little town. You felt tears threatening to fall, since when had you been about to cry?

You were only a kid, you reminded yourself, a kid forced to grow up way too soon.

“Fine, alright. I care, is that what you want to hear?” You asked, wiping your eyes before the tears fall, not wanting them to leave tear tracks. “You and the crew are the closest things I have to a family and I can’t lose another family. So just. Get your shit together.”

You grabbed his arm again and kept dragging him. No more words were exchanged the rest of the way back to the ship. He set sail immediately and you sat on the edge, looking down into the water. Somedays, when you weren’t feeling great, you’d contemplate jumping in and joining your parents. You don’t know why you never did.

“They’d be proud of you.” It was as if he could read your thoughts, he leaned against the ship’s edge beside you. You laughed bitterly.

“How would you know?”

There was a moment of silence, which made you inwardly snort. Of course, he was just saying that to make you feel better. He didn’t actually believe it.

“Because I know you and if they’re anything like ye, then they would be proud of who ye’d become. Also, because I’m proud of ye. Ye didn’t have to come back and save me, ya know?” He took a swig from the bottle of what you could only assume was rum. You felt your face heat up.

He wasn’t your parents and he could never replace them, what you’d lost was the chance of a normal life. The chance to grow up with love and support, to actually experience the joy of being a child. But, as he stepped away from the side of the ship, heading back to the steering wheel that Gibbs was managing in his stead, you had to admit to yourself; there were far worse ways to spend the rest of your days than by Jack Sparrow’s side.

[maevelin]

I know you didn't enjoy Nesta's book that much. What were the parts you didn't like and were there things you did enjoy?

I found the plot very basic and simplistic. The author has the tendency to overhype certain things and then drop the hints and the foreshadowing or write something totally anticlimactic about it.

An example for the anticlimactic part is how the former books had presented the Blood Rite as such a horrific event. One that in order to survive it Illyrians trained their whole life and then you take a few completely untrained individuals, train them basically for a few months a few hours in the mornings (I mean it is as if they went to the gym) and then they are ready to own the whole thing. It was ridiculous.

You introduce the concept of Valkyries and instead of writing an actual story about it you give a child’s play with some girls basically saying...hey they sound cool, we have no idea past the surface what and who they were or if we are basically appropriating their culture but let’s make a new club about it. I mean...why not just introduce Valkyries in a more grounded way, even the rebirth of their nation and lore, in a more realistic way? Instead you get a lost female tradition and you have males teaching girls about it. Take Thor Ragnarok for example (one movie that has not won me over as much as others). So why not introduce a new character that is a Valkyrie, even the last of her kind, a jaded character that has quit life just as Nesta and then create a story to reignite the myth of the Valkyries into something new that Nesta would accept and embrace.

Although for the life of me I don’t understand why PTSD and healing has to be connected with that sort of training in the first place. Why get a character like Nesta and  turn her into a Xena type of character all of the sudden...because that’s the only way to show inner strength or any kind of strength? I just don’t get it. 

However I did appreciate Nesta’s journey at certain parts although some felt forced in order to accept the Inner Circle bullshit and when people had predicted that in the end Nesta would how to bow and kneel to the ‘awesomeness’ of the Inner Circle so to be welcomed into the Night Court and be redeemed I am pretty sure no one expected this to literally happen. It gave me such a visceral reaction.

I couldn’t have disliked the IC more in this book even if I tried (and boy there were dubious, problematic and outright offensive and abusive things in their behavior) but what I didn’t like was that Nesta didn’t have an interesting story plot wise. Her journey of healing was okay and it has some interesting and beautiful moments but the story surrounding it was sloppy.

I hated the concept/threat of throwing Nesta in the Court of Nightmares but just from a creative perspective it would have made the book a thousand times more interesting. The dynamic felt off in general and in the end it felt as if the main concept was not resolved but the realization came that there was no main concept. 

Say what you will for the first three ACOTAR books but they had a goal, a purpose, a target. Feysand and Feyre’s personal journey were the focus but the their books served far more than that thus making those parts work in a solid (at least as far as these books are concerned) structure. Here we got some treasure hunt but everything was left open ended and it was not even focused entirely on Nesta and Cassian. I felt robbed somehow especially given the dynamic Nesta’s powers had and based on that alone a personal story could have been built upon that potential that got wasted for the most part. We could have gotten an epic storyline and we...did not.

AND YOU KNOW WHAT? Nesta DESERVED  a GREAT VILLAIN/ANTAGONIST for her own story and she did not get that (come on Briallyn was such weak sauce and unremarkable)  and I am offended on Nesta’s behalf to be honest LOL

Nesta’s voice and the way she was written was reminiscent of Feyre’s at parts but I assume this is because of the writing style of the author but it still felt jarring if not OOC at parts.

And I felt that some behaviors we had seen in previous books (how Cassian avoided her in Acowar and so on) were overlooked and the good things Nesta did along with the bad (how she went after Feyre after Tamlin took her and how she was ready to sacrifice herself to give Feyre a chance and how she was so focused on saving children and so on) were completely ignored all so to ‘excuse’ how she was treated and how she deserved to be treated that way by all others and how she had to redeem herself. And yeah she had to face her wrongdoings because she had been abusive too but I felt there were double standards concerning her which I did not appreciate in the way the book was written.

In the end I found the sacrifice of her powers a beautiful thing for her personal growth but at the same time I also got the intention behind the writing that has nothing to do with Nesta’s journey and that is disappointing.

There was also the usual writing style/editing that has its issues and I got really tired with the phrase “like calls to like”. Like...okay we got it the first hundred times enough already.

All that been said there were things I enjoyed in the book too.

1. The House... which let’s face it it’s Tardis to Nesta’s Doctor.

2. Nesta’s connection with music and dancing was beautiful.

3. Her love of books? Brilliant.

4. The scene with the Kelpie? QUALITY STUFF! 

5. As was the description of Nesta entering the Cauldron.

6. The scene with her nightmare engulfed in silver flames was amazing too.

7. Hello Nes and Lady Death!

8. Cassian’s protectiveness over Nesta was also nice especially when he was able to man up (no I won’t go for male up LOL) and stand up against certain bullshit behavior targeted at Nesta.

9. Emerie and Gwyn were cute and their relationship with Nesta beautiful although it did also feel rushed at parts. I would have much preferred that build up to have happened with her sisters but given the fuckery of the IC in general I will take this and savor it!

10. Azriel was a relief and I would have liked more interaction between him and Nesta. Brilliant indeed.

11. I HATED Amren but I loved the parallel of what she had once told Nesta:  “When you erupt, girl, make sure it is felt across worlds” and we got this scene when Nesta. (P.s You unmade her...She had it coming LMAO)

12. The cookie offer in the end made me laugh.

13. Overall Nessian was cute and thankfully Cassian wasn’t the same creep he was in Acofas. Although his low esteem and blind servitude left much to be desired at times.

14. The smut at times was making me cringe but the sexual drive and dynamic of the characters felt appropriate given their personalities.

15. I also liked Feyre’s inner thoughts when Eris asked Nesta’s hand in marriage and the way she was protective of Nesta and wanted to end him LOL.

16. Speaking of which...everyone wanting Nesta as their bride was very funny and after a while it kept happening and I couldn’t stop laughing.

17. Nesta’s first “I love you” was given to Feyre and thank you!

I think that’s about it.

[depressedkakashihatake-fics]

Training Interuption

Hatake Kakashi/Maito Gai

3937 words

Edited by: @mireleth

Thirty minutes late.

It was unlike Gai-sensei to be late. Usually he was the first one to the training field, a smile on his face and more energy than an adult had any right to have. And to be late when he had promised to show Neji how to add more power to his gentle fist? It was just inconsiderate, and a tiny bit worrying.

“We should go look for Sensei,” Lee’s voice broke the silence that had fallen between the three of them, his words laced with worry. “What if he is injured?”

“I’m sure nothing bad happened,” Tenten spoke up. “Gai-sensei would only get injured on a mission, and since we saw him at team dinner last night we know he didn’t go on a mission without us.”

A good point. Any mission that could cause Gai-sensei an injury severe enough to prevent him from attending their morning training would take longer than a night. Still, it was out of character for Gai-sensei to be late, and since he doubted that his sensei was taking punctuality lessons from his eternal rival, something had to be done.

“We could check his apartment,” he suggested, cringing when both of his teammates looked at him. “We can’t start training without him. He had the training plan and Lee’s not going to focus if he’s worried.”

“I guess you’re not wrong.” Glancing down at all of the scrolls she had scattered on the ground to work on while they waited for their sensei, Tenten sighed. “L-let me just clean up.”

“No need to clean up.” Neji moved into an attack stance when he heard an unfamiliar voice nearby, his byakugan activating and searching the area for the intruder's chakra signature. “Gai said there was someone on the team I’d like to meet. Should have just told me he had a weapons enthusiast, I would have shown up earlier.”

Spotting a chakra signature nearby, he prepares himself to strike only to see the chakra moving around the area and coming to a stop directly behind him. Doing a one hundred eighty degree turn, he aimed his gentle fist attack at the intruder’s abdomen only to have the man grab his wrist and pull it upwards over his head. 

“He did let me know to watch out for you though.” Turning his eyes up towards the man’s face, Neji narrowed his eyes. “Punchy little shit, aren't you?”

“I am Gai-sensei’s student, am I not?” There was a moment where the man actually looked impressed, but that quickly shifted into disinterest. Feeling the grip on his wrist being released, Neji watched as he was quickly forgotten in favour of Tenten’s scrolls still scattered on the ground. 

“You’re not wrong about that.” There was a fondness in the words. “Gai would have all the punchy students. Speaking of which…”

Turning his attention back to the three genin, he examined each of them individually. From the way his eyes scanned over them Neji could tell that he was trying to size them up. See what he was dealing with.

“My name is Shiranui Genma, and I’m going to be taking over your training for today.” It felt like someone had punched him in the gut. He had gotten his hopes up. Allowed himself to look forward to the training that Gai-sensei had promised him last night while they were enjoying sushi together as a team. “Don’t look so upset about it, kid.” Glaring back up at Gemma, he huffed. “Gai woke up this morning with a fever and no energy to spare. That second symptom would be enough to cause concern on its own. So, after a bit of arguing, he agreed to have me train you this morning in his place while he rests.”

That was… different.

“When Gai-sensei has been unable to teach us in the past, he sent Kakashi-sensei in his place.” Lee made a good point. It was out of character for their sensei to send someone that they didn’t already know. “Why would he send you this time?”

“Maybe he wanted to give you a fun sensei this time?” Neji’s pretty sure that both of his teammates have the same unimpressed looks on their faces as him. “Jeez, ok. Kakashi’s busy today.”

Not a favourable answer, but he was going to have to live with it. 

“And what can you teach us?” Lee continued, the usual excitement in his voice replaced by an uncertainty that sounded completely out of place coming from him. “If Gai-sensei sent you, your taijutsu must be impeccable.”

A moment of silence and they had their answer.

“If your taijutsu isn’t up to par with at least Kakashi-sensei’s, then why are you here?” Perhaps it was a little harsh, but it was true. They needed a sensei who could improve the skills that they already had, not one that would just fill a spot. “Is there anything you have to offer us as a sensei?”

“Punchy and rude.” Genma glared down at him. “Are you sure you’re a Hyuga and not a Hatake?”

Whatever commentary was being made about his personality, Neji ignored it. That wasn’t the point of conversation that he wanted to focus on at the moment.

“Do you have any redeeming qualities?” he continued, ignoring Tenten when she jabbed him in the side. A silent message for him to tone back the ‘rudeness’ that others might pick up in his words.

“I’m Konoha’s top weapons expert.” Useless to him and Lee, but he could already see Tenten starting to vibrate with excitement beside him. At least someone would get something out of this disaster. “A tokubetsu jonin of Konohagakure, member of Team Choza alongside Ebisu and Maito Gai.”

“Oh,” Lee’s eyes widened, “you, you were on Gai-sensei’s team?”

A sharp nod of the head, and Neji knew that Lee was gone. A chance to find out about Gai-sensei when he was their age, from someone other than Gai-sensei? Considering Kakashi-sensei never told them anything, this was as good as a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Still, there wasn’t much here for him. He had no interest in learning about weapons more than he already knew. Tenten was the weapons expert on their team and he wanted to leave that to her. It was her passion, he wasn’t going to impede on it. Plus he really had gotten his hopes up for that training Gai-sensei had promised him. 

“I think I’m going to go do something on my own.” He hadn’t actually meant to say that out loud, but with all eyes on him now he was kind of stuck. “It sounds as though this would be a great moment for Tenten to get some one-on-one training with someone who aligns more with her interests. While Gai-sensei certainly doesn’t leave her behind in our daily training, even helping her find her skills for summoning inanimate objects and creating a unique fighting style with it, he wasn’t the weapons enthusiast that Tenten was. 

“In that case, perhaps it would be best if Neji and I trained together today while Genma-sensei focuses on Tenten.” Lee’s arm came down around Neji’s shoulders as he spoke, a proud smile on his face when Neji looked over at him. “I could use the time to spar with my rival; what do you say Neji?”

Not an optimal situation, but better than nothing. 

“Does that mean…” Tenten looked up at Genma with hopeful eyes.

“I guess we’re focusing on weapons today.” The smile on his face says that the tokubetsu jonin is in no way adverse to this outcome. “Just try to stay out of trouble, you two. Gai will never forgive me if you two get hurt when I’m supposed to be watching you.”

“We’ll be fine,” Neji assured him. “Come on, Lee. Maybe today you can actually land a punch.”

“I will land five punches!” Lee proclaimed proudly, beaming when Neji glared at him. “Just you watch, Rival. You won’t be able to keep up with me during our spar.”

Unlikely, but he’d certainly be impressed if Lee did manage to do it.

Watching as Tenten returned her attention to her scrolls, sitting down beside them while Genma-sensei sat across from her, Neji turned and headed towards the exit with Lee hot on his heel. It would be best if they took their training somewhere else and avoided getting in the way of Tenten and Genma-sensei if they decided to start throwing weapons around.

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Training was not going nearly as well as Neji had hoped. 

Lee was certainly doing better than expected. He had improved a lot since their last proper spar, meaning Neji was going to have to keep a closer eye on his teammate’s training regimes. 

Still, simple spars were not what he had planned for his day, and he was starting to get agitated with the entire situation.

Blocking another kick from Lee, Neji placed his hands on his waist and sighed. “This isn’t good enough,” he grumbled under his breath, watching as his teammate clambered to his feet. “I want to improve. I need to become more efficient in battle.”

“What do you want to do then?” Lee asked with a genuine interest that surprised him. He had no reason to be worried about Neji’s training, but he seemed as invested in it as if it were his own. 

Not to mention he didn’t really have an answer. The only way to get better was to find out what Gai-sensei had in mind for his training, and that wouldn’t happen until he was able to tell Neji himself what he needed to do to improve his gentle fist.

“We could go visit Gai-sensei.” Lee’s suggestion caught his attention, but it wasn’t that easy. If Gai-sensei was sick he was likely in no condition to give Neji his training plans. “I’m sure Sensei has it written down somewhere. He always has notes on our training.”

A true fact. Neji had seen the book that Gai-sensei always brought to their training. The one he wrote down new team formations and training ideas in. An idea he had gotten from Kakashi-sensei one day after forgetting the training plan he had come up with for the team. A common occurrence apparently, since Gai-sensei was used to challenging himself to new and interesting training methods and had never really thought about a set training plan before.

The sporadic self challenges didn’t work for everyone though. Neji himself preferred the well thought out plans that his Sensei kept in the book. 

Whatever it was Gai wanted to teach Neji, he must have written it down in his book. He wouldn’t risk forgetting about something that he spoke so highly of just yesterday. He’d want to make sure he remembered every detail. 

It was decided then.

“Let’s go find Gai-Sensei.” Meeting Lee’s eyes, he tilted his head when Lee gave him a confused look. “Don’t tell me you don’t want to go. He may be sick but we both know you still want to see him.”

“Well, of course I do,” Lee whispered, “but I wouldn’t want to impede on his recovery. Genma-san said that he was sick enough that he couldn’t come to training. For Gai-sensei to miss training he must be extremely sick. If we show up there he may try to push himself too much and impede his recovery.”

Surprisingly thoughtful of Lee, but deep down Neji knew his desire to see their sensei would outweigh such a thoughtful response in the end. Not that he would call Lee out on it. The choice was up to him in the end, but Neji knew what he was going to do.

“If you want to wait here, I’ll be back soon,” he promised, turning his back to Lee and doing a quick calculation of which route would get him to the Jonin apartments as quickly as possible. “I’m sure you’ll find a way to keep yourself entertained in my absence.”

Jumping towards the exit he couldn’t help but smile when he sensed Lee following right behind him. As predictable as always. 

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Gai-sensei’s window was easy to spot even from the streets three floors down. With a large red tortoiseshell statue sitting proudly on the window sill, one that the team had all pooled ryo in together to purchase for his birthday a few months ago, it was hard for anyone who knew the man to miss which window belonged to him.

“Try not to knock down the statue this time.” He glanced over at Lee, who sputtered when he heard the jab. “We don’t have Tenten with us today to catch it before it hits the ground.”

Not that Lee and him weren’t fast enough to catch it themselves if it did happen to fall again. Tenten just always made sure to let them go up before her because she didn’t like being crowded on the small window sill together, so she didn’t have to go chasing after it when it fell during their last visit. She just caught it while she was waiting for them to go inside of their sensei’s apartment. 

“I won’t knock it over,” Lee promised. “But I will be the first one up there, so watch your step when you join me.”

With that said, Lee didn’t bother to wait for Neji’s response before jumping up towards the lowest available ledge. The only stepping stone he’d need to help him get up to their sensei’s window, though at the rate his skills were going Neji wouldn’t be surprised if he could make the jump from the street soon. 

Giving his head a shake, Neji quickly followed Lee, intent on getting the information that he had come for and leaving as soon as possible. There was no doubt in his mind that seeing his students would cause Gai-sensei to disregard what he needed to do in order to heal, and would result in him pushing himself to train when he should be resting instead.

“Oh…” 

Landing on the window sill by Lee’s side, Neji frowned when he heard the discomfort in his teammate’s voice. It was unlike him to say such a thing when it came to Gai-se—

“Oh…” It felt as if he had been slapped in the face. Of all the things to find themselves interrupting, it had to be this? “Didn’t Genma-san say that Kakashi-sensei was busy today?”

Lee nodded his head, but said nothing. His attention was focused completely on the scene in front of them. One that Neji really wished he wasn’t being subjected to at the moment. He was certain that finding your sensei cuddling up in bed with another person was something that every student wanted to avoid in their lives. 

It was awkward and made him wish that he had just continued his training without complaints. It was a much better outcome than… this.

“This hardly counts as busy,” he grumbled under his breath, glaring at the two jonin. “There’s no reason he shouldn’t have been able to train us if this is all that he’s doing.”

“To be fair,” Lee turned to look at him, a soft smile on his face, “Tenten is getting training that she otherwise would not have gotten. We should not be upset about that since it will hopefully improve her fighting style which can only make our team stronger.”

A true point, but Neji was still a little bitter.

Kakashi-sensei was a skilled in Taijutsu. He had to be in order to even stand a chance against Gai-sensei in their spars, or to keep up with him when they were battling side by side. He would be able to explain to Neji what he needed to do according to Gai-sensei’s training plans. They had all seen him using Gai-sensei’s training notes when he had taken over their training for him before.

“You two should be training right now.” Neji glared over at Lee when he responded to Kakashi-sensei’s statement by slapping a hand over his mouth, as if that would solve the problem of them being caught spying. “There’s no point hanging around outside. You’ve already been seen.”

He’d like to think that he could train himself to go unnoticed, but considering the tattoo he had seen on Kakashi-sensei’s arm during one of his competitions with Gai-sensei, he didn’t think it would be possible. The jonin was hardwired to notice everything and everyone around him. To go unnoticed around him would be near impossible. 

“I guess we’re going inside.” Not waiting for Neji to agree, Lee slipped inside of the open window and set his feet on the floor, smiling when Kakashi-sensei glanced over at them from the bed. “Hi.”

Following his teammate into the apartment, Neji frowned as he looked at the scene in front of him. It still made him a little uncomfortable seeing the pair like this. So exposed and open. It was as if he was intruding on a private moment.

“You can stop making that look, Neji.” Kakashi closed his eyes, though for once Neji could see the way his lips turned upwards into a smile. The usual dark blue mask was nowhere in sight and it only made Neji feel worse about being here. “It’s not like you caught us doing adult things. We’re just laying in bed.”

As far as he was concerned that was ‘adult things’. He certainly didn’t know anyone his age that would cuddle up to one of their friends when they were sick, hiding their face in the other person’s neck. Frankly, Gai-sensei looked like he was comfortable where he was. Like he couldn’t imagine being anywhere el—

“Oh.” Scrunching up his nose, Neji glared at the silver haired jonin. How had he not realized this before? “Really? You?”

“That hurts.” Kakashi-sensei threw a hand over Gai-sensei’s back, right where his chest was hidden under the other jonin’s body. “Am I not good enough for your sensei?”

This really wasn’t something that he wanted to be thinking of. His sensei’s love life was none of his business and it wasn’t why he was standing in this room staring at the pair with disgust.

“I don’t understand.” Neji closed his eyes, willing himself not to look at Lee with a look of utter annoyance. “Is there something that I am missing?”

Sometimes he wondered how Lee can be so dense about the things going on around him, but there was also a part of him that wished that he could miss the obvious once in a while. Like now, in this exact moment.

“We came here for a reason, Lee,” he reminded his teammate, cringing when Gai-sensei shifted in Kakashi-sensei’s arms and turned his face towards them with a happy sigh. “W-we really should get going quickly.”

“Gai-sensei looks comfortable.” Lee took a step forward and leaned in close, grunting when Kakashi-sensei reached out and flicked him in the nose. “Owww.”

“If you’re looking for his notebook it’s in the top right drawer of his desk.” Narrowing his eyes, Neji glanced over at the drawer in question, questioning himself for the first time since he had decided to come steal a glance into his sensei’s notebook. “But if I can offer you some advice…”

He wasn’t particularly fond of receiving advice from anyone other than his sensei, but it was unlikely that Kakashi-sensei would let him leave without saying whatever it was that he wanted. 

“Let me guess.” Crossing his arms over his chest, he sighed. “Don’t look in the book and just hope I can improve myself without Gai-sensei’s training plans?”

“Well, it worked for Gai.” Tilting his head, Neji leveled the jonin with a look that told him to explain himself. “When he was young a lot of Gai’s improvements came from his own determination to become stronger. He didn’t rely on his sensei to have all the answers for how he could become stronger, though he did listen to him when he had suggestions.”

Pursing his lips, Neji glanced over at the drawer once more. He really had been looking forward to whatever it was that Gai-sensei was going to teach him. It had been the only thing he could think of since they finished dinner yesterday and all went their separate ways.

The ways he would be able to improve himself. How much stronger he could get.

Of course, he had always been able to improve himself even before he became part of Team Gai. While he was naturally talented he still had to train to keep his skills honed, so why wouldn’t he be able to improve himself with his own hard work as well? Lee and Tenten were able to do it, so perhaps he could as well. Even just a little bit. 

“We weren’t here for the book anyways,” he lied, knowing full well that Kakashi-sensei could see right through him. “Lee was worried about Gai-sensei. It’s rare for him to get sick so he wanted to check in on him.”

For a moment he thought that Lee might argue with him. He had no right to lie for him after all, and nothing to gain from it.

But Lee said nothing, and just smiled when Neji looked over at him.

“I guess now we know that Gai-sensei is in good hands.” Lee smiled back at him. “We should get back to training.”

Nodding his head, Neji turned his back to the bed and made his way towards the window, well aware that Kakashi-sensei was watching him every step of the way. Stopping in front of the open window, he took one more look back at the bed. 

Other than moving his face out of Kakashi-sensei’s neck, Gai-sensei hadn’t budged at all since Neji and Lee’s arrival. Not even the smallest action to show that he was trying to get more comfortable, or that he was restless. 

Sick with a fever and drained of all of his energy, Neji absolutely expected to see his sensei having a restless sleep. It wouldn’t be new to him, since he was always tossing and turning in his sleeping bag whenever he slept during one of their many training days that ended with them sleeping under the stars. 

But he looked comfortable, and somehow Neji knew it wasn’t because he just didn’t have the energy to move. For some reason the jonin with endless amounts of energy and a constant urge to keep moving and stay active was calm, content and comfortable laying there in Kakashi-sensei’s arms.

“I don’t understand his taste,” he admitted, smiling a little to himself when Kakashi-sensei chuckled. “But I’m glad he has someone who’s got his back.”

“Always.” A simple word full of so much promise. Neji didn’t think it was possible for someone to convey so much love and trust with so few words, but there it was. “Now get out of here, before he wakes up. It took me an hour to get him to lie down and go to sleep.”

Somehow that didn’t surprise Neji at all.

“Come on, Lee,” he glanced back at his teammate, “you still have to hit me in training.”

He could see Lee bursting with excitement at the reminder of his own personal challenge, and for the first time that day Neji thought that maybe it wasn’t such a waste. He wasn’t going to learn how to improve his gentle fist, not today at least, but he’d get to see Lee try to hit him in a fight.

And honestly, that itself was entertaining enough to make up for the loss in his training.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael in the Mainstream: Artemis Fowl

Since the early 2000s, Artemis Fowl has been languishing in development hell, and it really is a mystery as to why. The series has everything you could possibly want for a blockbuster young adult franchise: it’s a charming blend of science and fantasy with rich worldbuilding and mythology, it has enjoyable and even complex characters who go through great character arcs over the course of the series, it has an enjoyable major antagonist, an insufferable smug villain protagonist who goes through a stellar redemption arc over the course of the series, and tons of crazy heists that combine scheming and fairy magic. There was no reason this couldn’t have existed as a competitor to the Harry Potter series, but alas, it was not to be. The young adult fantasy franchise languished for decades in development hell, until finally Disney pulled it out and put Kenneth Branagh at the helm. Finally, we were going to get the Artemis Fowl adaptation we deserved!

Except we didn’t.

Artemis Fowl is legitimately one of the worst adaptations of any work of fiction ever. It has been held up alongside The Last Airbender and The Lightning Thief as part of the Unholy Trinity of terrible adaptations, and I’m not even going to try and pretend that this “Honor” isn’t well and truly earned. This film is an utterly abominable bastardization of the beloved franchise, to the point where this feels like an entirely different story that had familiar names slapped on it at the last second. If you want to know what horrific extents this film has butchered the story and characters, read onward, but there’s no way I’m going to pretend this film isn’t awful right off the bat.

There is literally nothing in this film that works. Nothing at all. Starting from the opening scene, the establishing shots, you can tell things are wrong – there are news people around Fowl Manor? Mulch is being interrogated? What is going on? The film from the word go is simply making one thing absolutely and abundantly clear: this is not the Artemis Fowl you know. The film goes out of its way to do the opposite of the franchise, merely using names and vague concepts in an attempt to sucker fans into watching it. Butler’s first name, an emotional reveal from the third book, is common knowledge; Opal Koboi, a cunning and threatening major villain who was the antagonist for almost every novel starting with the second, is here reduced to basically a personification of the voice on the phone from Scream; Root, once a short-tempered man who was hard on Holly as a method of tough love to push her to be the very best LEP had to offer to prove women belonged on the force, is here a woman who, while just as angry as ever, robs Holly of a major part of her arc and reduces her to plucky female sidekick. And even outside of that, as its own thing, the movie is just utterly incomprehensible. The story is rushed and confusing, with lots of exposition and action but with no context or cohesion. Things happen and things go from scene to scene, but none of it makes any sort of sense. A character will switch allegiances within a few minutes, characters will somehow find a way to survive deadly attacks offscreen… the worst offender is a character death they try to push off as emotional, despite there being no reason to care for this character, and when all hope seems lost, a deus ex machina saves the day! My wife, who is unfamiliar with the series, and I, a huge fan, both struggled to figure out what was going on at any given point; the movie is really that bad at communicating what is happening, which is even more baffling because the film is a pathetic hour and a half in length, a distressingly short amount of time to establish a new science-fantasy franchise of this scale.

The characters are almost all terrible. Artemis is the standout with how awful he is; no longer the cunning criminal masterminds of the book, Artemis here is more of a somewhat smug little brat who is overly emotional and, worst of all, NICE. He’s so nice in fact that by the end of the film he has managed to speedrun his character development and arcs with Mulch and Holly, who consider him their close friend and ally. Butler is pretty bad here as well, mostly because he is given almost nothing to do and is seemingly only there because he was in the book. In fact, his crowning moment – when he took on the troll – is instead given to Artemis and even Holly, with Butler ending up severely injured. It’s a bit nasty that they changed Butler to be black and then had his (white) master steal his greatest moment; it’s giving me flashbacks to Kazaam. Opal is hit pretty bad as well; being made the big bad of this loose adaptation of the first book’s plot – which is amusingly one of the few books she had absolutely no role in – wouldn’t be so rough if she was more of a presence and not just some vague, hooded figure who threatens Artemis over the phone and generally does nothing to warrant being an adaptation of the baddest bitch in the series. She’s rather ineffectual and they even try and give her a sort of sympathetic motivation, one where she resents humans for pushing her kind underground. It really is a disgusting waste of a character who could easily rival heavy hitters like Voldemort in the awesome and theatrically evil department.

Holly is almost okay, but her entire arc and a big chunk of her narrative purpose is robbed by making Commander Root a woman. Root, played by Judi Dench, is honestly one of the better characters since Dench has Root dropping lines like “Top o’ the morning to ya” with gravelly deadpan seriousness which makes the character unintentionally hilarious, but the cheap laughs don’t really make up for butchering the story of one of fiction’s finest ladies. As a side note, they have made Holly 100% white despite her skin being described as nut brown rather frequently in the book, and the now white Holly together with Artemis steal away Butler’s biggest moment. And that’s not even getting into how they neutered Juliet, who has also been race lifted but was turned into a child who barely appeared in the film. I’m not usually one to toss about racism accusations, but there’s a lot of red flags here that Branagh’s usual colorblind casting just doesn’t excuse.

The most consistently enjoyable performance is Josh Gad’s as Mulch. From the moment he was cast, I knew he’d do a good job and capture the spirit of the character, and he does! ...sort of. The decision to have Mulch be a giant dwarf and narrate the story in a crappy Batman impression while also violating literally the most important law of fairy culture (don’t tell the humans anything about us) by spilling the beans to M16 is unbearably stupid, and a lot of his jokes are just relentlessly unfunny. But I think that Gad does leak a bit of that Mulch charm at a few points, and it’s apparent he at least somewhat gets his character, which is not something that can be said for anyone else in this film. Sadly, much like his standout performance as Lefou in the live action Beauty and the Beast, he can’t possibly save the trainwreck of a film he’s in.

I guess I’m not entirely surprised by this film. I mean, a lot of quality young adult literature from the past two decades has been horrifically mangled in the wake of Harry Potter – Inkheart, The Golden Compass, The Lightning Thief, Ender’s Game, and Eragon – so this movie really isn’t an anomaly. But it is the culmination of a horrible trend. This is the zenith of horrible young adult adaptations, or perhaps I should say the nadir of adaptations as a whole? For all the flak I could give those other adaptations, on some fundamental level they still understood something about the source material. Ender’s Game still understood it could not erase the ending where children are revealed to be being conscripted to perform the ethnic cleansing of an alien race. Eragon couldn’t completely ruin Saphira, try as it might. The Lightning Thief… well, I mean, I guess the Medusa scene was mostly faithful. But Artemis Fowl? Artemis Fowl goes out of its way to be the opposite of its literary counterpart that there is no way to justify even saying it is based on the book by Eoin Colfer; it would be like having a movie about kids hanging out at the mall and doing mundane stuff, except they’re all named Jesus and Peter and Paul and then saying it’s based on the Bible. Just using names doesn’t mean anything, you actually have to use the themes and characterizations too, and this movie does none of that.

This movie is most comparable to The Emoji Movie. Neither of these works really deserve to be called a “Film” since they are basically whatever it is they’re trying so desperately to be stripped down to the bare essentials. The Emoji Movie is the most basic, by-the-numbers animated adventure film with a “be yourself” message you could ever hope to see, with a story so absolutely basic that just watching the trailer will allow you to predict the every motion of the plot. Artemis Fowl on the other hand is the most cliche-ridden fantasy epic franchise-starter you could imagine, and that’s if you’re able to penetrate the ridiculously dense and cluttered story and are able to make sense of what’s going on. I can think of absolutely no one this film could ever appeal to. There’s not a single redeeming thing about it. The movie is flashy, trashy junk that should never have been released, and Disney honestly did the right thing by releasing this on their streaming service because it would be outright disgusting to charge movie ticket prices for this tripe. The fact Disney has more faith in the eternally-delayed New Mutants theatrically speaks volumes about the quality of this film.

I can’t in good conscious say that this is the worst film of all time. F4ntastic is probably a much worse butchering of characters than this film; Disaster Movie is much more horrendously offensive and unfunny than this; hell, Chicken Little is probably a worse Disney movie because as awful as everyone in this film is, at least they aren’t Buck Cluck! But I don’t think there’s a single movie I hate more than this one. Lucy can finally move over and sleep easy knowing that the fact it’s not based on a pre-existing work has finally saved it from the #1 spot on my worst list; Artemis Fowl is now the reigning champ. Kenneth Branagh should be ashamed of himself for making and releasing this (and doubly ashamed for having the gall to unironically compare his slaughtering of Artemis Fowl’s character to Michael Corleone), Disney should be shamed for putting more money into this film than they did into BLM charities, and I hope that Eoin Colfer finds whatever he was paid worth it to see his greatest creation butchered and disrespected like this.

[infinite-xerath]

Runeterra Retcons 6: Shyvana

I’ll be honest: before doing the research to write this script, even I had no idea how complicated the history of Shyvana’s character was. Counting her current lore state, Shyvana has had no less than five different bios over the course of her existence, putting her in the same league as Warwick in terms of retcons. While I personally think that her current lore state is relatively fine as-is, there are definitely some aspects of her story that could use a little polishing up.

As always, though, we need to first take a look at Shyvana’s history in League and see what the core of her character concept is. With that established, we can try and build a more solid foundation for Runeterra’s resident half-dragon. So, without further ado, let’s see how she was originally envisioned in her very first bio.

Alright, so, Shyvana is a straight up human-dragon hybrid, conceived through… Well, the traditional means. I do think it’s interesting to note that this is actually the first mention of Celestial Dragons we get in the lore. Apparently, the concept for Aurelion Sol goes back all the way to the early days, though I doubt Celestial Dragons were anything like what we know them as today. Hard to say, given that this was the only mention of that entire subspecies in the old lore.

But, enough beating around the bush. As a whole, I think this bio is fine, all things considered. It leaves a lot of unanswered questions, sure, but it’s a decent basis to build her character off of. Most importantly, this bio establishes Shyvana’s connection to Jarvan IV: something that has remained consistent through every iteration of her character. While Warwick’s ties to Soraka were constantly fluctuating and eventually severed in his recent bio, Shyvana’s relationship to the Demacian prince is something all her future incarnations would carry over. Speaking of, let’s check out her second bio and see how her first retcon was handled.

So, Shyvana’s no longer Celestial in nature, which is probably for the best given that her element was always aligned more with fire than space. What’s more, it’s now established that half-dragons like her are hated by both humans and dragon-kind. Also, apparently most, if not all dragons can shape-shift now. Frankly, there are still a few mysteries left by this bio, such as who killed Shyvana’s father and what even happened to her mother. Still, it’s not awful, though Riot apparently decided that they wanted to give her a more active role rather than just being saved by Prince Jarvan. Thus, do we receive her third bio.

Alright, so once again, no real mention of Shyvana’s mother, and her father’s identity is still kinda vague. By this point, another recurring theme of Shyvana’s story should be evident: tragedy. Riot seems quite insistent on giving her the whole dead parent trope for her backstory, yet that’s never REALLY brought up in her character besides a single voice line: “By the blood of my father, I will end them!” Once again, we know nothing beyond the fact that her father was a dragon and her mother was inhuman. It might also be worth noting that no mention of shape-shifting is present in this version of the story, so… Take that how you will.

Still, I like this story because it helps to better establish a bond between Shyvana and J4, having them fight together to bring down a mutual enemy. This, in turn, turns the initial concept of Jarvan merely saving her out of pity to a relationship born of mutual respect. This was Shyvana’s backstory when I started playing League, and so this is the version of the character that I grew most familiar with. Still, Riot would retcon her again after the 2015 reboot, leaving us with her fourth bio. Buckle in folks, because this one is the longest by a landslide and there’s a LOT to go over here.

Phew! OK, that was a LOT to take in. Frankly, you could make an entire analysis about this version of the lore alone, but let’s just go over some of the major talking points, shall we? For the first time, Shyvana is no longer the offspring of a human and a dragon, but rather the result of a human using magic on a dragon egg. The reason for this direction is most likely because dragons in Runeterra can no longer shapeshift, so they needed to find a new way to justify her existence.

Once again, we touch upon the Vastaya Problem, where we have an entire race of half-human creatures that Shyvana could have easily been slotted into. Would the existence of dragon vastaya really be that much of a stretch, Riot? Well, I already harped on about that quite a bit with Warwick, so let’s just move on, shall we?

The fourth version of Shyvana’s bio is the first time in which her mother actually takes a prominent role: that of an antagonist. Yvva is actually pretty compelling as a villain, antagonizing Shyvana all her life while her father tries to protect her. The one major issue I have with this is that, if Shyvana’s dad knew about Demacia and that its petricite could conceal his daughter, why did he not think to bring Shyvana there sooner? I suppose he needed to train her to control her power first, but could the petricite not have also helped with that? Oh well. That’s a bit of a nitpick in the grand scheme of things, I admit.

The other major change here is that now the dynamic between Jarvan and Shyvana has been changed once again. Now, SHE is the one saving HIM, a complete reverse of the original story. While I don’t exactly have a problem with this, I do think Jarvan agreeing to help her fight Yvva comes off as a bit abrupt, and the Demacian soldiers seemed a bit too ready to accept her into their home. I mean, yes, she saved their prince, but fear of magic is rooted DEEP into their society. This is the same nation that would rather let entire fields succumb to disease and rot than rely on mages to sustain the crops.

While there are some other small issues I could nitpick about, I honestly think that the way they handle Jarvan and Shyvana’s team-up is the biggest by far. For a little context: Jarvan’s whole backstory is one of repentance. He gets cocky and tries to retake some land from the control of Noxus without the sanction of the king, and his recklessness and inexperience wind up getting his men killed and himself gravely injured. This is what leads to him being found and saved by Shyvana.

Though Shyvana’s bio would be rewritten one more time, the way in which she and Jarvan meet and team up to take on Yvva remains more-or-less the same. Frankly, I’m not a big fan of this. I like the idea in concept, but the fact is that Yvva isn’t really Jarvan’s antagonist. She is a threat to Demacia and Jarvan does redeem himself by helping to bring her down at Wrenwall, but it feels more like he’s just jumping in to help Shyvana deal with HER problem out of gratitude.

That being said, this is an analysis about SHYVANA’S character, so let’s take a look at her fifth and final bio to determine her current lore state, shall we?

Alright, so I’ll be honest: I think this might be the worst version of her story so-far. To begin with, it’s not even really clear WHY Shyvana is the way she is. At least the previous version of the lore made it clear that a human mage tampering with the egg is the reason why Shyvana became a half-dragon, but in this story, the baby mutates just because of his proximity? Even then, that may not even be the cause. “Whether it was the act of removing it from the nest, or the last moon of autumn giving way to winter, something had changed.” So, yeah, it’s even really clear what caused Shyvana to take on human qualities.

Also, can we just acknowledge another bizarre line from this bio? “From an early age, she was able to shift her form into something monstrous, akin to the half-dragons of ancient myth.” So, hold on, there have been half-dragons before Shyvana? This is something that’s occurred in the past? Can we get some elaboration on this? No? We’re just going to ignore that. Alright then. Moving on.

This version of the bio tries to reintroduce the tragedy of Shyvana losing her father, but it’s honestly handled a lot less gracefully here, in my opinion. He’s just a random human mage that decided to raise her out of pity, and his death is kind of pathetic, honestly. In the previous lore, Shyvana’s dragon father gave his life defending her, whereas this nameless mage is just killed unceremoniously in Yvva’s rampage. Even his burial feels rushed and anticlimactic.

As for Jarvan’s introduction this time, well… My prior thoughts still stand. Shyvana’s lore has always been connected to his, but I truly believe their relationship was handled best in the third version of the lore, where they had a mutual enemy to bring down. Hell, he doesn’t really even do much in the showdown against Yvva other than have his soldiers fire arrows. It all feels like a hyper-condensed version of Shyvana’s fourth bio, which is understandable given how long it was, but a story like this kind of needs to be properly fleshed out if we’re meant to actually CARE about the individual story beats.

 So, with all that said and established, let’s get into the meat of this one, shall we? Without further ado, I present to you all: my reinterpretation of Shyvana’s backstory. Please, enjoy.

Among the many breeds of dragon that inhabit Runeterra, few command as much fear and respect as the rare elemental drakes. Though they command the primal magics of the world itself, elemental drakes are be reclusive creatures, typically lashing out only when their territory is disturbed. For this reason, the lands near Nockmirch remained untouched by mortal settlements for centuries, as all knew the name of the beast who ruled them: Yvva, the fire drake.

For years, Yvva inspired tales of terror and reverence alike, feasting on travelers and traders who dared to intrude upon her lands. Even her mate, Urgrin, feared Yvva’s power and fiery temper. Unbeknownst to Yvva, Urgrin was no ordinary dragon: in truth, he was a member of an ancient vastayan tribe with the power to take on draconic form. As his kind dwindled in number, what few of Urgrin’s people remained scattered to the winds, with Urgrin himself maintaining his draconic form constantly in the hopes of finding a strong partner.

At first, Urgrin believed himself fortunate to partner with an elemental drake, but as their clutch of eggs began to hatch, he felt himself growing increasingly worried. Only one of these younglings bore Yvva’s primal fire, meaning that the rest would likely be discarded or eaten. When the final egg hatched, Urgrin was shocked to find not a dragon youngling, but a girl with purple skin and horns. He’d not thought it possible, but this child was vastayan just as he was, and her birth would expose Urgrin’s secret to Yvva.

Fearing for both his life and girl’s, Urgrin fled the under the cover of night. Resuming his vastayan form for the first time in decades, Urgrin took shelter in the northern mountains, hoping that the cold of the Freljord would deter Yvva’s pursuit. There, he raised his daughter in secret, naming her Shyvana out of his lingering respect for her mother.

For a time, Shyvana and Urgrin lived in relative solitude. Urgrin taught Shyvana all about her vastayan heritage, but as she grew, it became apparent that Shyvana had inherited something from her mother as well: the primal elemental magic of a fire drake. Urgrin spent years teaching Shyvana how to harness her rage, hoping to keep his daughter from succumbing to the same fiery temperament as her mother. Though this training seemed effective at first, Shyvana’s power only grew with time. This power, in-turn, became a beacon, luring Yvva to the far north in pursuit of her stolen child and traitorous mate.

One day, as Shyvana was returning from a hunt, she was shocked to find her house ablaze. Two great dragons clashed in the skies above, one of whom she instantly recognized as her father. Shyvana tried to join the fight, only for Yvva to turn her wrath on the half-blood child. Urgrin shielded Shyvana from his mother’s fury, astonishing even Yvva with his strength. Even so, Urgrin was clearly losing the fight, and so he bid Shyvana to flee south to a land called Demacia, where petricite walls could dampen her magic and shield her from Yvva’s wrath. Begrudgingly, Shyvana did as told, trekking through the mountains as her father gave his life on her behalf.

After a long, hard trek, Shyvana finally reached the land her father spoke of: Demacia, a kingdom made of petricite. She quickly found herself an outcast, forced to hide from the magic-fearing humans that lived inside petricite walls. And yet, just as her father said, those same walls served to dim her power and hide Shyvana from her mother’s fury. Even still, Yvva would not relent so easily.

For years, Yvva scorched Demacian settlements near the border in search of her daughter, forcing the Shyvana to remain constantly on the move. Hunted by her mother and persecuted by the people around her, Shyvana found herself utterly alone in the world. Finally, after years of dogged pursuit, Shyvana had had enough. Embracing her inner fire, Shyvana took flight on blazing wings and ascended the mountains near Nockmirch, where she found Yvva waiting for her.

The two drakes clashed for hours, primal flame against primal flame. Their battle charred the nearby plains and melted stone, yet for all her ferocity, Shyvana was ultimately no match for her mother’s fury. Yvva sent her daughter plummeting into a nearby river, content to leave her half-breed daughter to drown. As Yvva fled, however, Shyvana dragged herself out of the water, reverting back to her humanoid form as she gasped for breath. Battered and beaten, Shyvana wandered blindly for days, knowing full-well that her mother would likely come for her again soon.

Eventually, Shyvana encountered a young man in charred armor at the base of the Argent Mountains, who himself looked to be barely clinging to life. She learned that this man, too, had sought to challenge Yvva and lost. His soldiers had sacrificed themselves on his behalf, leaving the young man stranded and alone. Sensing an unusual kinship with this stranger, Shyvana offered to bring him to the nearest Demacian settlement, and to her surprise, the stranger agreed. Even after revealing herself to be Yvva’s daughter, the stranger bore her no hostility.

The people of Cloudfield were not so inviting. At first, many were terrified of Shyvana, and yet their fear turned to elation when they realized who her companion was. This man, she learned, was none-other than the prince of Demacia himself: Jarvan IV. Seeking to end Yvva’s reign of terror on his kingdom’s borders, the prince had set out with a handful of elite soldiers, only to return to home in shame and defeat. For coming to his aid, the people of Cloudfield begrudgingly allowed Shyvana to remain amongst them to heal her wounds while the prince .

Though grateful for their hospitality, Shyvana knew her presence would only draw Yvva to her sooner or later. As she made to depart, Shyvana was approached by Jarvan once again, this time with a proposition: alone, they had failed to defeat the fire drake, but together they may stand a chance.

Jarvan and Shyvana traveled to the fortress of Wrenwall, where they began to develop a plan. Jarvan would organize his troops and set traps in place for Yvva, while Shyvana flew ahead to garner her mother’s attention. Though reluctant to place her faith in these mere humans, Shyvana understood that this would be her final chance to avenge her father. Sure enough, when Shyvana neared Nockmirch once more, Yvva’s furious cry shook the heavens themselves as she began her pursuit.

Once again, the fire drakes clashed, but this time Shyvana wasn’t planning to defeat her mother with raw force. Instead, she led Yvva closer and closer to the fortress of Wrenwall, where Jarvan and his soldiers were waiting. Believing her daughter’s retreat an act of cowardice, Yvva was taken totally off-guard by the volley of petricite bolts launched from the fortress’s ballista. As the bolts tore into her scales, Yvva felt her power weakening, and Shyvana was quick to capitalize on this. Once again, their battle was intense, yet Shyvana now had the upperhand as Jarvan himself led a new battalion into the fray.

Even weakened, Yvva fought hard until her last breath. She tore at her daughter’s scales and devoured Demacian soldiers, yet in the end, the fire drake was outnumbered and outmatched. Shyvana sank her teeth into her mother’s neck while Jarvan plunged a spear deep into her forehead. In that moment, the flames of Yvva finally flickered out, and the soldiers of Wrenwall cheered in triumph.

In the aftermath of the battle, Jarvan approached Shyvana once again, this time with another proposition: in exchange for her loyalty, he would offer her a place among Demacia’s elite. Awed and humbled by the prince’s might and valor, Shyvana knelt and swore her loyalty on the spot. Though many still harbor doubts about the half-dragon, she serves her prince with undying devotion and respect. Shyvana’s fire burns for Demacia and Demacia alone, and those who threaten her new home are to learn that even a half-dragon’s fury is not to be trifled with.

Alright, so, the biggest and most notable change from the get-go: I made Shyvana vastayan rather than human. I understand that this might seem a bit controversial to some, but it doesn’t really contradict or change anything. Shyvana is simply called the half-dragon; there’s never any mention of what her other half actually is.

Ideally, I would have liked to keep her half-human as well, but since Riot clearly wants to remove the concept of dragon-human intercourse to produce an offspring naturally, the only option that remains is the contrived method of “it happens because a human was near the egg.” Like, that’s the same sort of logic as Rengar becoming anthropomorphic because he was raised by a human hunter as a cub. It’s just silly, if we’re being honest, and the human “father” in Shyvana’s last two bios has been such a non-entity that they don’t really even bother to give him a name.

So yes, I’m making Shyana half-vastayan, not unlike Sett in a way. Again, I get why some might take issue with this, but I feel like that’s a much easier and simpler route to go with. Of course, the other big change would mean rewriting a bit of Jarvan’s story as well, though that’s kind of inevitable; the two are so closely intwined that changing one story kind of has to impact the other.

Now, I don’t think J4’s current bio is bad enough to warrant a full rewrite, but as I stated before: I think his story would work a lot better if he also had a personal reason to fight Yvva in the first place. I think that having him lose soldiers to her rather than some random Noxians fits more thematically and gives him more reason to team up with Shyvana. I also wanted to give him a bigger role to play in bring Yvva down, to further emphasize that she’s an opponent Jarvan and Shyvana could only defeat by working together.

Overall, Shyvana’s current lore state isn’t the worst I’ve seen, but it could definitely do with some improvements. I hope you all enjoyed my take on her character, as this was possibly the lengthiest retcon to write. As always, though, feel free to share your thoughts down below, and I’ll see you all next time!

[fanmode-activated]

Things I ought to talk about regarding skam france s5 (basically a long ass rant)

Being the first original Skam season to be made by a remake, there is, of course, going to be many things to discuss about Skam France. It has always been the more dramatic one of the remakes in terms of cinematography and events. The show looks like you’re watching something very produced and professional as opposed to the more “authentic” look that the original show had. It’s not that important honestly for me regarding the quality of the show, it’s more a question of taste, whether you like it or not. The actors are older than their characters, which is not a bad thing in and of itself. It hasn’t been affecting the show negatively is what I’m saying (unless we’re talking about Charles, but I lowkey love Michel and Marilyn’s chemistry, it made me care about their relationship in s2. Only s2. Otherwise fuck Charles). Like every other version, the cast is talented and fits each other well. I think my main issue is that Skam France (and some other remakes, but this is about France) seems to have missed the purpose of Skam, which is to give teenagers hopeful stories that teach them how to communicate.

I want to start by saying that there were a lot of good things in s5. The choice to make it about Arthur was smart, because he is a mysterious guy who would say the weirdest shit unprompted, like how he slept with a 34-year-old woman (we still don’t know what that was about btw), and we basically knew nothing about him, except that he thought his dad was an asshole. He was a blank slate to work with, which is somewhat of a dream.

Making the main theme of the season be about deafness was, in my opinion, a good idea. It had the ability to teach people about a community that is very rarely portrayed in media. It gives D/deaf people representation, which is always good, as long as it is done carefully and respectfully. Luckily, the Skam France team seems to have done its research. They worked with a deaf run theatre company and made sure to hire deaf actors, just to be accurate. Whether every medical detail of Arthur’s sudden deafness is realistic and accurate, I can’t say. It seemed reasonable to me, but someone with more experience would have to tell me. On the technical front, everything seemed fine. 

Having Arthur’s dad be abusive was a good idea, because it is a reality, and it would be beneficial to show in the Skam style how this reality affects teens and how to potentially get out of a bad situation.  In theory, I am on board with that. What I have an issue with is the second part of that story, which I will address here. 

Like I said earlier, the deaf storyline was a great idea. They managed to include other disabilities through the characters of Melchior and Laura, which was amazing. They are adorable and I know some people felt really happy to be represented that way. Noée and Camille are a great addition to the cast, I mean Noée is an adorable badass, and Camille is a toned-down Mika, I could not have asked for more, they’re literally perfect. I think there was a great potential to make them sort of guides for Arthur, friends he needs in this new journey and they achieved that in many ways. However, I could have done without the love triangle. Mainly because, love triangles are so overdone at this point, it’s painful. I mean, literally everyone is so done with love triangles, can we come up with something else, please? From Skam, I would expect a little more originality. Especially Skam France, who unnecessarily pushed the love triangle in s4 with Manon, Sofiane and Imane that didn’t really exist in the original and got a pretty huge backlash. I thought they would learn from their mistakes, considering that the characters often mention previous seasons in s5 to refer to mistakes they made as people, so it’s kind of ironic that the team wouldn’t make an effort themselves to correct their mistakes. 

The first major problem with this for me is that they introduced Arthur and Alex as being in a happy and loving relationship. Now, personally, I would have loved if they weren’t in a relationship at all because I mean a) imagine a season where the main character’s problems don’t revolve around a ‘love’ problem somehow, and b) it’s not really realistic to me that they would all be in relationships seeing as they are teenagers. But, forgetting about that because my personal experience of being a teenager is not necessarily universal, since they decided to have them be in a relationship, what was the point if it was only to throw trouble at it? It’s absolutely believable that they would have problems in their couple, and the first part of the season was actually very good at showing that. Arthur’s main problem was acquiring a disability and having to learn to accept it and live with it. The journey was very realistic, and the way Alexia reacted to it was also good and realistic. I was absolutely happy with that. But then, at the same time, we had Noée. She was purposely coded as a romantic interest, but not too much (she was introduced in a pool, the most romantic Skam location, I mean subtlety much?), just enough to confuse the audience. She was what Arthur needed a lot of times, a friend, a guide, and we could see that she had some feelings for him, but if we actually look at the facts, they didn’t interact that much, and a lot of those initial interactions were spent fighting because they had different views about Arthur’s deafness. But let’s say that I ignore the facts and focus on their emotional connection, which I totally believed, on Noée’s side anyway. Why did they do it? I have a few theories. Arthur is constantly torn between his hearing and the deaf world and they decided to represent that with his relationship with Alexia and Noée. Now, I’m not one of those people who need to pick a team (because binary is bullshit, black or white, male or female, good or bad, life is more rich and complicated than that, I don’t subscribe to a binary view of anything), and for those who do, remember that both of them are amazing representation, a confident bisexual girl and a deaf girl as romantic leads is badass either way. But, I reiterate, why make the effort of making Arthur and Alexia’s relationship strong and rootable for, if you’re going to introduce another viable love interest? My guess, like I said is that both girls are representative of the deaf and hearing world, and his relationship to Noée mirrors his relationship to his disability in some way, but if that’s the case then, it’s pretty reductive to both girls. 

Noée was shown from the very start as being this independent, strong, confident, caring badass woman. She immediately reached out to Arthur when she saw that he looked like he needed help and guidance. She headbutted a guy who came onto her when she repeatedly told him no. She’s very proud of her deafness, and she has issues with hearing people because of childhood bullying and her father not loving her. In short, she seemed like a complicated, three-dimensional person. So, when clip 12 of episode 8 happened, I was very confused. The way the scene was written is very messy. First off, Arthur only “breaks up” with her because he doesn’t want to be like his dad (which is another thing we need to address later). He refers to the obstacle of their relationship as being communication, which is not actually an obstacle because, with patience and care, any language barrier is obsolete. I mean there are plenty of couples who don’t speak the same language that exists, deaf and hearing people included, so, not really an argument on his part. The second problem with that scene is that it’s constructed in a way where Noée is the one who has to run after Arthur and make the effort of talking out loud. Disregarding the fact that I hate the trope of “the deaf person who doesn’t like using their voice using it in a dramatic moment to be perceived as romantic” (I didn’t like it in Switched at Birth, I don’t like it now), it’s a very ableist view of what qualifies as romantic. I guess there is an argument that could be made about the fact that it’s like if let’s say someone is afraid of heights, but they go on top of a building to save someone who’s about to jump or other instances of conquering one's fear for a loved one. I don’t agree with it, but the right arguments could convince me maybe one day.  Noée having to go against something she’s been uncomfortable with forever to say “I love you”? I absolutely do not believe it at all. She doesn’t love him. She cares about him, sure, she likes him even, that of course, I see it, I have eyes, but love? Big word for someone you met what, 4 weeks earlier? Either she doesn’t know what love is and said it out of fear, which I don’t know about, but it could be realistic I guess in some parallel universe, OR it was a ploy by the writers to be dramatic and have Arthur look back at her in a telenovela, 90s soap opera, early 2000s K-drama fashion right before getting hit by a car. Now, could it be argued that Noée suffers from abandonment issues because of her dad? Maybe, but if that was the case, based on the content we’ve had, it’s a pretty far-fetched theory that seems like an attempt to redeem bad writing. I mean, just the fact that he literally gets hit by a car adds to the very unrealistic dramatic flair of the entire clip. It feels like every drama show, which Skam is not supposed to be. It’s hard to enjoy the good acting when the story is so out there. My other main problem with this story is that they want us to believe that Arthur is also in love with Noée. The problem is, they don’t show us, they just tell us. “Show, don’t tell” is a pretty basic film technique, especially in Skam. If they wanted us to really believe that he loved her, they would’ve shown him stalking her Insta, or researching CIs after she talked to him about it, we would’ve gotten some clips of him alone obviously thinking about her, but we never do. The only time she’s relevant is when she’s physically there, or when it has to do with Alexia somehow, he never seems to think about her in a romantic way, only when she might be a problem. So when he tells her that he loves her in the last episode? I don’t believe it for a second. 

The love triangle also reduces Alexia to an “issue”, because in the second act of the season, she goes from loving supportive girlfriend to “oh no I hope she doesn’t find out”. At that point, the only outcome was for Arthur to end up alone and figure himself out, which I think was their goal, they wanted him to end up alone and figure himself out, and that’s an amazing lesson to have, I mean it was the ending of season 1, but they didn’t execute it well. There is something there that didn’t need to happen or needed to be handled differently, and it wasn’t, which just left a bad taste in my mouth. I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I know better than professional writes, but as a Skam watcher and general TV and movie watcher, even I can tell that this was not handled properly. I did like Alex’s break up song, not gonna lie. 

Now, onto the matter of his dad. As I mentioned before, him being abusive is a good storyline. Arthur had mentioned before that his dad was an asshole, so that being the reason is actually good. However, I don’t think the execution was well done. The set up was perfect for a good story, but somehow it fell short. The first clip Arthur’s father was introduced was perfectly executed from a storytelling perspective. There was an immediate shift in both Arthur and his mom’s demeanor, where they tensed up as soon as he got home. Then Arthur looked clearly uncomfortable when his dad was pressuring him into medicine. Everything about that scene screamed “something is not right here, but I can’t tell what”. Very good setup for a physical or emotional abuse situation. For the next few weeks, every scene with the dad was a bit meek, meaning he was being harsh, but so was Arthur and it was understandable. Arthur was going through the biggest change in his life and his dad just wanted him to look out for his future. While the way he talked seemed a bit asshole-ish, it can easily be explained as a parent wanting his kid to be okay. It was confusing, because the “threatening” aspect seemed to be gone, so we were left wondering where was this going. Then came the big reveal in episode 7, that Arthur’s dad is the one who made him deaf in the left ear by hitting him too hard (which by the way, I did not need to see, what is this, wtfock?). Before we continue, let’s take a second to look at the format the original Skam followed for its stories. The main character is faced with an initial problem that lasts for half the season or a few weeks more (Eva is friendless and she doesn’t trust Jonas, Noora is falling for William but doesn’t want to, Isak is gay but can’t admit it, Sana struggles with her dual identities and liking Yousef). That first problem is half-resolved and the main is faced with problem 2 (Eva cheats on Jonas and is being bullied, Noora gets assaulted, Even turns out to be bipolar, Sana loses herself and fucks up with her friends). Then by using communication, they fix both problems (Eva fixes things with Ingrid and her friends and breaks up with Jonas to find herself, Noora talks to Mari, confronts Nico and fixes her relationship with William, Isak talks to his friends and Sonja, accepts his sexuality and gets back with Even, Sana talks to Isak and her friends and fixes things with them, before fixing things with Yousef). If we follow this model with Arthur, this could have worked perfectly. Problem one, Arthurs becomes deaf and now has to learn to live with it. We see the impact it has on his relationships and himself. Problem 2, we learn that his dad is abusive and now this is his problem for a few weeks, like he tells Noée about it, and she tells him that this is abusive behaviour, and he tries to be like no it’s not, but then it becomes undeniable as the weeks go by and then he talks to someone about it, maybe his mom and/or the police, and so we get a mini-resolution that’s not necessarily immediate, just like with Noora and Nico, where we don’t see the trial or anything like that, but just the action of admitting that his dad is an abusive person and taking actions to protect himself. Then we conclude with him finally fully accepting being part of two worlds, and maybe those two worlds start to merge. This would have perfectly followed the format of the original and would have kept the realistic yet hopeful message. And there is no need to put a love triangle in the middle of it!

This was a very long tangent that addressed both the abuse and the love triangle to get to a specific point, which is that, the dad cheating storyline is very out of place in a show like Skam. I’m not saying it’s not out of character for him, I very much got cheater energy from him, but the stories told are supposed to be about problems faced by teenagers that can be fixed by learning to communicate (or made better, I’m not saying Noora’s story was fixed by talking, it just made her more in control of her situation, but it was still a very serious problem.) But Arthur’s dad cheating on his mom is not something Arthur can fix, it’s not even related to him, it’s a parent problem. All he can do is live through it. Does it affect him? Yes absolutely. But did they need to parallel Arthur’s behaviour with that of his abusive father for him to realize that it was wrong? There are other ways to do that! It feels like they just wanted to have the dramatic dinner scene, where Arthur and his dad scream at each other and reveal everything in a very dramatic Hollywood way. ( And that storyline took us away from his deafness for a while by the way, like did he momentarily stop being deaf? Idk, it was weird for a while. Also, did Arthur need to out Alex at dinner? Lmao, talk about trying to shock your parents.) And, quick tangent, when Arthur told his friends about cheating, can we talk about Yann and Lucas’s responses? They tell him not to say anything? May I remind you of season 1, when Emma tells Lucas about her cheating and he told her not to say anything because he knew that if she did, she would be forgiven? And Yann, who knows what it’s like to be cheated on, and knows that telling her himself directly might help (or not, but still) is also telling him to not say anything. Like, did they forget about their own lives? This is just more proof that they wanted drama from this situation, which is kind of sad. Basically what I’m saying is they made the second half of the season a dramafest, which turned me off so much. It reminded me a lot of s3 of wtfock, which relied on drama way too much for its own good and mad me constantly mad at a bunch of fictional teens. And, maybe this is going too much into details, so I understand if not a lot of people agree with me on that but, Arthur was never alone. In every season, the character reaches a point where, in their POV, they feel like they are utterly alone and that no one cares for them, and they have to be the one to make a move to reach out and communicate with others. It never felt that way with Arthur. He always had either the boys, Alexia or Noée in his corner, he never reached that point of total despair. It’s not a bad thing per sé, it just feels like something that is supposed to happen in Skam, it’s part of the character’s journey, and here it was left out, but instead, we got a lot of useless plots.

Now, the last thing that irked me about the season, (and I know it’s nitpicky and detail-y) but I realized applied to the whole series was the dialogue. Skam France’s dialogue was always too fast, but I always saw it as “oh well the French speak quickly in general and their humour is very quick and dry”, so I didn’t mind it much, because I was used to it and at least we had some quiet times. But in this original season, they talked so much! It’s like, they’re always on, there’s no pauses, no awkward silences, and Arthur doesn’t have many clips where it’s just him alone thinking. They don’t seem to realize people aren’t always funny, they’re not on all the time. It worked well when it came to showing Arthur’s personality, he’s the guy with the jokes, and he makes them even at awkward times, but in group settings, it’s like we were in Gilmore Girls, like, breathe. 

Last thing I want to address before concluding this very long and unnecessary rant. The finale. I didn’t want to write about it before I watched the live on youtube after the season, but I was translating and the live was lagging, so I barely caught glimpses here and there, therefore I cannot talk about season 6, since I have no idea what they discussed, and I can’t talk about what Niels or David said about the choices for the season. But I can talk about the finale. That last scene with Noée and Alexia was very weird and felt very forced. What was its purpose except make Alexia and Arthur be on good terms for next season? I don’t know. It’s like they wanted to wrap it up immediately when it’s not something that can be done naturally that way. I do wanna shout out Alexia for learning more signs than Arthur in days than he did in weeks, what a queen. Second thing, I don’t know what all the thing with season 6 is, like what veto on characters they got from NRK or whatever, but what is clear is that they wanted the season to revolve around Daphné, since she’s the one we’ve been getting hints of for the entirety of season 5. But if that was the only way they could thing to introduce Lola, it was weird. She just appeared out of thin air (except that one scene in detention where we saw her back), and so I don’t care about her at all. Like, I have no investment in seeing her POV, so making her appear suddenly in the finale is not the greatest move. I wish they had built her up at least a little, like her herself, not just by having Daphné acting weird. And let’s talk about that last shot, where a group of people stood in the middle of a party in front of a mural, holding hands. Realism who? is what they said. I mean sure it was cute or whatever (why was Lucas crying, y’all are seeing each other next week, i-) but it did not have its place there. It felt like they really wanted that scene but didn’t know how to wrap the season nicely. Something felt really off to me. Then again, the entire second part of the season had me very confused, so maybe my perception is biased. Maybe I’ll love it on a future rewatch. All I can say is that it didn’t feel Skam like at all.

I don’t want to end this on a negative note, I mean I tried giving my opinion with somewhat coherent reasoning behind it because you can love something but still critique it, but I know negativity is a very easy train to get on, so let’s finish with the stuff that I loved this season.

Emma and Arthur’s relationship, I actually missed her and loved that they managed to seamlessly bring her into Arthur’s life, I was afraid she would be left behind because Manon isn’t there. 

Basile and Arthur’s friendship, it was honestly the highlight of my week a lot of times, they literally destroyed toxic masculinity.

Alexia in general, I was glad to see her be overall amazing, we love the bi rep. 

Lucas’s hair. Do I need to explain it?

Background Elu and Background Sofimane. We like happy couples. 

No Marles (I don’t hate them I just don’t care for them).

Episode 2, Clip 3. 

Camille watching the drama unfold in the background and being like 👀

The LSF lessons 

Melchior and Laura

Camille and Mika

Robin’s acting, he’s very talented, he made me care about Arthur.

Some other stuff that is not coming to me right now.

[hamliet]

2Ha (up to 120)

Or, Hamliet’s review of the most blatantly ‘problematic’ novel she’s ever read, which has beautiful writing and themes, and an intriguing plot that she apparently wrote a Jin Guangyao AU of without realizing it last year. Whoops. 

This is my fifth Chinese web novel, btw, after reading MXTX’s three novels (all of which I think are thematically rich and top-quality writing and character development-wise) and Female General and Eldest Princess (which has great main characters but shoddy writing). To a degree a lot of this might be due to the translation, but 2Ha is absolutely beautifully written in its dialogue, metaphors, and descriptions. 

The story revolves around the redemption of an evil emperor--Mo Ran--who commits suicide in the very first chapter, only to wake up as his fifteen year old self with a chance to redo everything... but he actually doesn’t (at first) have all that many regrets or think he needs redemption, so there’s that. Thematically, it seems to mostly be coherent so far, but it’s hard to say with only 120/300 chapters read, and I’ll discuss the ‘mostly’ below.

The main character, Mo Ran, is basically what would happen if you combined Xue Yang with Jin Guangyao and Wei Wuxian in a blender, but then strained out the decency Jin Guangyao and Wei Wuxian in particular clung to. If Jin Guangyao and Wei Wuxian are, archtypally, akin to the Kylo Ren/Loki archetype, then Mo Ran is Darth Vader or Thanos. 

What I appreciate about this is that the novel doesn’t make Mo Ran sympathetic because it doesn’t have to: we empathize with him because he is framed honestly. There is not an attempt to manipulate sympathy, but there is an honest portrayal of complexity without whitewashing, and that is a wise choice on behalf of the author. He’s a straight up bad dude who sucks rather than a sympathetic person who clearly wants to be good but through a combination of circumstances and personal terrible choices, is not. Or so it appears at first until Mo Ran eventually realizes/remembers that he did want to be good after all, once... and it’s directly stated as much. Yet those desires have been beaten out of him, and often he’s the one who did the beating on his own soul. 

Basically, the novel seems to be asking whether it is possible for even someone that cruel, that evil, to be redeemed. And the answer thus far (up till 120) seems to be that yes, he can be, but in a complex sense. 

Of course, there are all manner of... elements that make it a novel I absolutely encourage caution towards before engaging. The translators are great with warnings, and I had to skim some parts. There is violence, but to be honest it’s less violent than TGCF, as someone said to me before I read and which, thus far, is a sentiment I’d agree with. My main issues is its portrayal of sexual assault, which I honestly think it’s unnecessarily graphic and eroticized at parts. That said, the story does frame it fairly responsibly (as something reprehensible, but the eroticization of some brief flashbacks contradicts this and so undermines the overall framing). Rather like Scum Villain, it also seems to be aware of the unhealthy dynamics in the ship (particularly the initial age gap) and so layers it with contradictions (he’s actually lived to 32, so he isn’t fifteen; Chu Wanning is then de-aged too, nothing happens until they’re older anyways). The layering works in multiple ways, because the novel seems to, at its core, be about exploring the very limits of love, redemption, etc., in each and every crevice of possibility. 

On a personal level, the chapter where Mo Ran is awaiting judgement to get into hell and the memories of all the people he has tortured and killed start calling out his sins, and then we flashback to Chu Wanning asking Mo Ran not to forgive him, not to forgive others, but simply to forgive himself after Chu Wanning subjected himself to Mo Ran’s worst impulses, and it’s this memory, this phrase, that stops the sentence before its even written, that quiets those voices... I found it deeply meaningful, and that was perhaps my favorite chapter. It encourages empathy and enduring suffering with each other, suggesting that an honest understanding and love saves us. There’s a theological aspect to it that resonated with me as well (and, as a side note, I’m curious to read the entire thing before charting it out, but there seems to be a very clear alchemical influence as well). 

However, I earlier mentioned the slight eroticization that seems to make murky the overall framing. There’s also one recent plot twist that seemed to damage the themes. I really, really didn't like how Rong Jiu's story ended even if it's ambiguous. It essentially is, as the author even directly said in her author's notes, just that Rong Jiu wasn't lucky enough to find someone who wouldn't give up on him. After Rong Jiu spent so much time pointing out the disparities in fairness to Mo Ran (why do you get a second chance while I don’t?), to have his story presumably end with "f*ck you got mine" really does not work. At least in MDZS, while Jin Guangyao isn't saved and Wei Wuxian is, Wei Wuxian empathizes and points out that it's because of a rotten society in the end, rather than just "sucks to be you." I really hope this ends up being wrong and she didn't actually continue to leave his fate up in the air as she stated she planned to do in the author's note, because if she did, that's depressingly contradictory to the story’s themes. It’s one thing if Mo Ran will later go back and save Rong Jiu, which is where I hope it’s going; it’s entirely different if this really is the ending for him, and would keep the novel from thematically approaching MXTX’s level. 

So yeah. I am eager to see where the novel goes, although the translations are on hiatus (hats off to the translators for their beautiful work!) and I’m wavering on how desperate I am as to whether to try the MTA translations or not... 

A theory that very well may be wrong: I suspect the mysterious black-veiled water user is actually Shi Mei, mostly because Shi Mei is likable yet missing serious flaws, unlike every other major character, which makes me suspicious. He also had that very weird line during the Lake Arc when Mo Ran was captured, and water is associated with healing, which Shi Mei is also associated with. Oh, and Water Mystery seems very interested in Mo Ran loving Shi Mei and protecting his life. So if he isn’t Shi Mei, he’s someone connected to him. 

For now? 8/10, but with serious warnings for those who might seek to read it. 

[kob131]

https://twitter.com/CJ_Black0/status/1261143893166473216

You know, this shit is a picture perfect representation of why I say that these guys should just stop with the pretenses and just say ‘RWBY bad’ over and over again.

I've joked about how funny it would be if RWBY pulled the rug from underneath our feet & had bumbleby not be endgame. But all jokes aside, considering the state of #RWBY, RT & the RWBY fandom as a whole...the writers kinda HAVE to not only make it canon, but ideal. 

Yeah, I heard the same shit for years about redeeming the White fang. How did that go again?

What I mean is that RT has been on some pretty hard times lately & it's cashcow has seen far better days. Let's not kid ourselves, RWBY is sustained mostly by people who care more about the relationships & labels than the actual story & characters.

Except considering that the analysis scene is still thriving and non-relationship shit is still thriving-

That ain’t true now is it?

A majority of the fandom seems to be comprised of people who've stuck around from nearly the beginning. And sure, new faces pop up here & there, but it's not the massive surge that the Beacon arc brought in.

Really, because I heared that most of the old guard left because the writing was SO shit. Isn’t that suppose to be true?

Or are you guys both full of it, proclaiming whatever fits your narrative instead of trying to reflect reality?

And this isn't even touching on the overall quality of the writing within the show, which has honestly barely-if not outright hasn't-improved at all from its early days. 

Still gotta lug around that giant cross called ‘nostalgia’ even as the things you botch about are primarily rooted in the beginning...

To put it frank, RWBY is pretty much becoming an isolated franchise, where the only ones who really care about it are those who were already here. 

Do you actually have a THING to back that up? Any analytics? Any stats? Anything whatsoever other than your word, something rendered completely worthless by your own actions?

And nowadays the show seems to operate on 1 golden rule to keep it afloat, "shipping sells"

...

https://store.roosterteeth.com/collections/rwby#/sort:ga_unique_purchases:desc

This is a link to RT’s merch store, specifically their RWBY merch orgnazied by their best sellers. See something that doesn’t add up?

Shipping merch takes FOREVER to find on here...and it’s the Ren and Nora shirt. Not even Bumbleby, the so called ‘selling ship’. Bumbleby shit doesn’t even show up until, at best, the second page with the Yang Vs Adam shirt. And I do meant at best because Blake’s nowhere on the shirt.

This is factually untrue. Shipping is not selling. What is selling is character merch.

And it doesn't matter which side of the argument you're on or what you ship, you can't deny that the most talked about topic in RWBY is the ships.

Actually I can. Bumbleby is only talked about as much as it is because half of it is from you fuckers strawmaning it into importance. I’ve seen more people talking about Ironwood and Team RWBY than that nothing ship.

You think ships are all that there is because you don’t engage with anyone but shippers. You willfully blind yourself to anything not shipping related so you can pretend that’s the top issue.

And at the head of it all, is bumbleby. The golden child of the CRWBY & problem child of the fandom.

By ‘CRWBY’ he means TWO members. Barbara and Arryn. Nothing about the writers, the people with ACTUAL control over the story. Just two voice actors from a company with a lassiez fair approach to handling their employees. 

And by ‘problem child’ he means; ‘scapegoat.’ We’ll discuss that later.

With shipping pretty much largely holding the vessel that is RWBY afloat, & bumbleby being a large component of that pillar with an even larger following behind it, what do you think would happen if that component never came to pass? Well, RT would face the Wasps' wrath.

You mean like they were beforehand? You forget CJ, your methods and your positions were once held by those same wasps. You’re all pretty pathetic.

And frankly, I don't think RT could afford their cashcow taking a serious blow like that. I mean, they're still planning on having RTX later this September while we're still heavily dealing with the pandemic, showing that they probably can't afford to NOT do it.

That doesn’t even make sense. ‘While we’re still heavily dealing with the pandemic’ In May. Four months away. While we’ve begun reopening the economy.

And the second being the wrath of the fandom over Clover's death. Some of those who were upset weren't upset because Clover himself died, but rather the ship Lucky Charms was now dead & they felt like the writers queer baited them...even though Qrow & Clover never hinted at romantic attraction.

You mean a fraction of what they got from Pyrrha’s death? Who was not only a part of a much bigger ship but was also a woman so people generally gave more of shit.

With the company in bad conditions,

Which can’t be solved by shipping.

, RWBY itself slowly fading more & more into mediocrity and obscurity

He says as it’s held up better than numerous other shows.

nd the fandom going into a frenzy over a ship that wasn't even hinted at existing in the first place

Said ‘frenzy’ being small peas compared to the absolute shitstorm that was the hiatuses of Volumes 3 and 5.

...the writers HAVE to have Blake end up with Yang in the end.

Ah huh, sure. How many times have I heard shit like that.

None of this really holds up huh? Well, consider this.

Ignore the actual meaning of the words he’s using and instead listen to what his statements feel like. Also consider that many of things he’s said, while bullshit when compared to facts, are running narratives among his audience and his own circles.

Now compare it to something like say...CNN’s coverage of Trump. Looks eeirely similar huh?

The actual content of CJ’s words don’t matter. He could talk in vaguely negative gibberish about RWBY and it’d serve the same purpose. It’s just meant to rally his base and draw in people already thinking like him. Just like a politician uses a bunch of clichés to rally their base and draw in more radicalized people. You see it every day of your life on the TV whenever you here about Trump’s new scandal.

This is why I say people like CJ can just replace whatever they are saying with ‘RWBY bad’.  Much like how a politican just says what you want to hear or sell you the feeling you are feeling, they do the same just in regards to a show.

Also why this disgusts me. There’s no substance to what is being said: it’s just people being whipped into a frenzy and cults being built.