#it’s so frustrating that they made this one of her main flaws— something that damages her relationships— something that turns a lot of the

[crystalelemental]

Recent super fun Reddit post about how 1/5 SS Silver is super frustrating and not as good as other PokeFairs got me in some kind of frothing state. Probably because this entire subreddit is a bunch of cowards who are like "the blackout won't do anything, it's just hurting our community," proving once again that Pokemon fans don't deserve rights. Anyway here's 2/5 Silver with his 1/5 grid beating some shit up, including off-typing Lucian.

Look, I'm not going to pretend SS Silver doesn't have flaws. But the notion that SS Silver's flaws are all that extreme is laughable. "He needs two support slots to do his job!" H!Caitlin bro. H!Caitlin gives him literally everything. "But he still needs crit support." If you really want to be greedy on the Buddy move, Aaron exists. At 1/5, you don't need speed buffs, so this checks out. "But why should he need so much support as a PokeFair?" Because they all do? "But look at all the other PokeFairs that came out this year and also SS Hilda." That last one is some serious cherry-picking but sure, let's talk about the others.

Emma needs help topping off Attack and Speed for full effect, and is unreliable at setting her own Poison. Lysandre needs help with special attack. In both scenarios, LA is a nightmare, where Lysandre also needs speed for gauge management, and both nearly require support to reapply their needed status, or their DPS just drops. Woe upon them if the foe is immune. SS Diantha and SS Hau are literally dead without their field effects. If we're talking 1/5, Hau is barely worth discussing, while Diantha can do okay in CS but not LA. For the ones that are super self-sufficient, like Eusine and SS Lana, that self-sufficiency comes with a high price. Eusine's DPS isn't that impressive, and at 1/5 he has none of the sync that distinguishes him from any other Water DPS. SS Lana basically doesn't have a sync, and her single-target DPS, like Eusine's, is pretty bad. That's the tradeoff, they either get to be super self-sufficient, or super powerful but clunky. Take your pick.

SS Hilda is an odd one to bring up because...well yeah, she is insanely powerful and easy to set up. Frankly I'm not sure why they made her so ridiculous. The only real limitation she has is that, at 1/5, her sync sucks ass. My wife has her EX, and it's frankly staggering how bad her sync is without Rising Tide. Even on-type is a bit of a mess.

All this to say...Silver is fairly standard for a PokeFair. If you choose not to invest in him but expect him to perform well as a damage dealer, prepare for disappointment, or to allocate the necessary investment into his success. Aaron is mandatory for a non-3/5 Silver. I can entertain the idea of Lillie, who actually has a fantastic tool in Full Power granting +3 Atk and Sure Crit to make the most of Buddy Move on turn 2, but she's a terrible tank so that was not a fun time. And I can entertain the idea of BP Clemont, but he's Ground weak and that wasn't happening with Bertha. Then again, neither was Lillie who is Poison weak. Basically, a lot of his good tools get specifically bopped this week. It's sad, but also kinda funny. But the point is, traits exist. And when people point them out, and the response is just "Yeah but those are baaaaad," the problem is you. I'm sorry Lillie isn't also a godwall. Not everything gets to be perfect. Figure something out.

Vs. Bertha (Aaron) Aaron does well enough. The main benefit of this kind of team is survival against physical. Masked Royal's debuffs are handy, and Aaron can bulk up provided it's not High Horsepower/Poison Jab at the outset. On-type, even uninvested, Silver's sync does respectable numbers. The real fun is that late-game, provided Aaron's alive, you can flinch with Attack Order and potentially stagger that last turn. I will make the general note that Silver is also frail. So the Earthquake thing was...dire. You really want to make sure the sides are weakened, or that Aaron hits a flinch on them, or it gets bad.

Vs. Bertha (H!Caitlin) Caitlin's hilarious bro. This is so much more consistent than Aaron. The Synchro Heal + shields throwdown is just immaculate. Silver's so much safer here. And you get to run Colress, who is just...so stupid. He's so dumb, I love him.

Vs. Lucian (H!Caitlin) Now here's a fun one. So, off-type this week is usually done with Lucian, because his attacks are the least scary. No natural accuracy buffs, Zen Headbutt and Reuniclus are pretty inaccurate, Colress shenanigans peak on this fight. There is, however, a lot more than bad accuracy rolls that can go wrong. For starters, Silver missing crit on sync. Love when that happens. For another, you will not tank sync without shields, so the rotation is thus:

Caitlin TM, Silver Buddy, Colress Screech.

Caitlin TM, Silver attack center, Colress Screech, Silver sync.

Adrenaline puts you in a better position for three turns later. The goal is spam damage on Lucian, cap Silver's attack if Tricksy didn't MPR, and boost special defense. When Colress has lowered special defense, spam Mirror Shot for evasion. Caitlin takes second sync, just before Lucian gets where he's going. Hope for a quad queue.

At this point, RNG goes haywire, because you need some misses. Hope for Zen Headbutt spam; often Caitlin can take one of those, and they're lower accuracy. Psychic will destroy her. Ideally, Lucian keeps swinging and doesn't use X Accuracy All until later.

From this point, Silver takes every sync. The first will not come anywhere near KOing Lucian, but it puts him in range that you don't need to spam DPS on him. Hit Alakazam once during the interval between third and fourth sync, then sync on Lucian. If his allies dropped...good luck with the quick queue. Provided it works, Lucian will drop. Alakazam is now in range of your new DPS, and the denial prevents Swift from sure-killing your ass. Unfortunately, if both allies are down, you must dodge Psychic. Success here means a two-shot, you win. I'll also note, my 2/5 Silver would have a much easier time of this, thanks to Endurance on grid. It's a good skill, recommend.

This is nowhere near a clean win, but you get the gist. It's possible. Also, if Silver were EX, it'd probably be a hell of a lot easier. But that's the point. It can be done, and the tools are there. It's just clunky. Because he's not 3/5 and EX. That's how it works. Silver's good. Apparently stupid good, since his current solo count is goddamned 9. In a lot of these cases, the problem was less about Silver being clunky, than his supports just being bad for the stage. So like...I dunno what to tell you dude. Skill issue.

[greypetrel]

🙈 SEE-NO-EVIL and 🌌 MILKY-WAY for Aisling :)

Hello Mary, thanks for asking! :D

Tis the prompt list

🙈 SEE-NO-EVIL - whats a side of your oc that they don't want to show other people?

In general she has trouble showing that she's struggling or feeling something not really socially acceptable and that will make her appear weak or unpleasant or a dead weight.

Mind me, she's genuinely cheerful and isn't pretending, but it takes her a lot to really open up and vent, as much as a good listener she is, she will just tell you she's perfectly fine if you insist and ask her what about her. If you can't help her "fix the problem", she'll hide it and take care of it herself so she won't "bother you" with her feelings, she's the one who takes care of others, not the opposite.

In Haven and at Skyhold, also, she doesn't really feel comfortable in showing off anything too Dalish. She started hiding because she felt out of place and horribly different and distant from everyone at the start, in Haven, and it terrorised her. As time went by and she learnt that the environment was very Andrastian, nobody really made her questions about her former life... She just kept everything private, prayed in the privacy of her room (she build a small altar on the loft, you can't notice it if you don't climb up), will divert the discourse every time someone asked her to speak of her clan, partly is to protect them from too much attention, partly is not to feel any more different and a fish out of water than she normally does.

🌌 MILKY WAY - what was the inspiration behind your oc? what was the first thing you decided about them?

Oooh this is great, thanks for asking! It's gonna be long, so there's a cut. Tagging also @shivunin who asked the same question:

I wanted another Dalish because I liked it. I decided that if Alyra was basically a human tank that shows very little her emotions, I wanted for Inquisition someone sweeter and kinder, very in contact with her emotions who likes to feel things ("If I feel it and digest it, it's not gonna return in the form of a demon"), but not weak, it became so melancholic as I started highlighting the character, as in

The loneliest people are the kindest. The saddest people smile the brightest. The most damaged people are the wisest.

So...

I think the closer character to her I can think of is Winry from FullMetal Alchemist. Awfully competent, clever, prone to melancholy, still coping with loss, the mom friend and the shoulder to cry on, always supporting.

And Brod from Everything Is Illuminated (the book):

"She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum. Brod discovered 613 sadness’, each perfectly unique, each a singular emotion, no more similar to any other sadness than to anger, ecstasy, guilt or frustration. Mirror Sadness. Sadness of Domesticated Birds. Sadness of Being Sad in Front of Ones Parent. Humor Sadness. Sadness of Love Without Release.”

Kate McKinnon's character in the 2016 Ghostbuster for the scienific part (that movie is... not good, but Jillian Holtzman was not a flaw in any way), with a big sprinkle of Murphy from Interstellar.

Margarita from Master and Margarita also is a big inspiration (caring, self-assured even if gentle and kind, open-minded).

Add: a touch of Padmè Amidala political-wise (in a place of responsibility from too early an age, very responsible and serious, competent but caring to a fault, ultimately believing that diplomacy is the ultimate solution).

And as for songs: this is her playlist, but the main songs that inspired her were Lay Me Down by the Oh Hellos, Blood in the Wine by Aurora and Queen of Peace/Free by Florence + the Machine.

EDITED 1: She and Solas, particularly in the DadWolf AU, are inspired vaguely by Roy and Alexandria in The Fall (2006).

[karama9]

Very good analysis.

Marinette haters tend to be unforgiving of her mistakes and flaws, which is... not the right way to look at it for this show.

Miraculous is about getting things wrong and how we react to it. The victims, every episode, literally calm down and stop taking out their feelings on others. And by so doing they get to go back to their lives. They're not even burdened with guilt, they forget everything.

Chloe, by contrast, never calms down. She takes out her frustrations on everyone, all the time, knowingly hurting a lot of people, and rejects every plea to stop, every chance to become better and be rewarded for it.

Initially, it's the same. Something occurs causing sadness or frustration, the person does not manage their emotions and hurt others. The difference is what happens after that initial outburst. It's simplistic because of course, in real life, if you hurt someone they don't get better when you calm down. The amount of damage and the effect of stopping are very, very amplified.

Which should give everyone a hint on how to interpret Chloe's behavior. For the most part, when she's not super powered, her bad actions are closer to realism. But she doesn't ever stop those bad actions and never regrets them. The whole point of every akumatization is the idea that you can stop being bad and start being good and it matters. Chloe refuses to do that. She exists to show that some people just be like that, but to stay on point, she is refusing to be symbolically "de-akumatized", choosing to continue to be hurtful. It doesn't get any clearer than having her literally try to catch her akuma back at one point.

Now, Marinette... well, for one thing, there's a different starting point with her for every 'crime' she commits as Ladybug or for Ladybug related reasons: she's making mistakes due to emotions, but she's not driven, most of the time, by self centered desires but by fear and a strong sense of responsibility. She's still doing some things she shouldn't. And that's because the same basic path is still being shown for her: get overwhelmed by an emotion, act badly, and then stop and shift. But just like she's starting that path from a slightly different place most of the time, she also ends in a different place than the akumatized victims. She remembers everything. This causes more fear, more messiah complex, and the stress absolutely does heighten her emotions in less critical issues as well, affecting her judgement.

But beyond that, the pattern is still the same. She has feelings, she reacts badly, and then she pivots and changes her behavior. Sometimes it takes a while because the fear and messiah complex make her think she's actually minimizing potential harm. When she finds out she's not is when she stops.

The whole moral here is that you can stop doing bad things and start doing good things and it absolutely 100% matter that you made that change.

It's very, very simplified and extreme because it's a kid's show, but for crying out loud, the monsters of the day are all redeemed, Chloe's main fault is NOT changing, how do you miss the fact that the show is about redemption and changing for the better?

Marinette would not be able to meet this objective if she was perfect to start with. And if you can't forgive the errors she makes despite the fact she's doing exactly what the narrative says someone needs to do after doing something bad (i.e stop doing that), you're trying to change the whole thematic and point of the show. You'd have better luck watching something else.

I just need to rant about Miraculous

Can someone seriously explain to me why Marinette never communicates with Chat Noir? Reruns are playing on my TV and the Scarabella episode (Hacksan) is playing and I literally cannot get over the fact that Marinette most likely knew that this trip was coming up for a while and did not think to tell her partner "Hey, I might have to leave for a couple days and I can't get out of it. I'll try to think of something" And instead she just completely leaves him in the dark, like she always does. His anger in this episode is absolutely justified, yes even his violent reaction to Scarabella thinking she was a villain. When I first started watching this show, I was 14 and now I'm twenty and I've been a Chat Noir fan since the beginning so maybe I'm biased. But I feel like the further into the show we get, the more they keep ruining and building Marinette's character like they're on a fcking see-saw. She's always been a lot and I could get behind it, but frankly it gets harder and harder to like Marinette as time goes on. Which sucks because I do lover her, I think she can be pretty complex sometimes. (I also gained the Autistic Marinette headcannon a few years ago thanks to Ao3 and I adore it) Like, I know this girl is only fourteen but seriously it sometimes feels like she doesn't learn from her mistakes and I cannot stand characters that don't truly learn. (Yes, I'm aware she does learn from her mistakes but it feels overshadowed by her constant disregardment of her hero partner.) They are literally two-halves of a whole.

[henryhas2moms]

“that’s your problem regina, you’re always looking for someone else to blame”

cw abuse

regina blames snow for daniel’s death (and at least partially for everything that happened after). snow did betray regina’s trust but really, cora and leopold are infinitely more culpable and ill intended. regina goes through something similar, blaming emma when she brings marian back from the past, and again with zelena when hades kills robin. regina has a consistent problem of not knowing who to blame because of fucking course she does— she’s been abused multiple ways by multiple people her whole life and all of her abusers have told her it’s her fault! her mother says “i wouldn’t have to use magic on you if you were an obedient daughter” the king says “i wouldn’t have to lock you in your room if you didn’t write about your feelings for other men in your diary” (for one thing) rumplestiltskin says “you wouldn’t have a problem crushing hearts if you were a good student— oh you just crushed a heart? you monster!” so she’s unable to blame the perpetrator bc to her they’re invulnerable, (remember regina didn’t grow up in a world where the heroes defeat the villains, she lived in a world where villains crush heroes under their heel, at least until she became the villain herself, and how deliciously ironic is that?) she’s desperately trying to find someone to blame, someone who screwed up, other than herself, so she looks next to her and sees someone she trusted not to hurt her, who betrayed her, no matter how little they intended to, because really, maybe, she blames herself for trusting at all. after all, as heart breaking as it is, when regina reconciles with snow in season three, the person she blames for daniel’s death is herself.

she tells robin “my first love, daniel, was killed because of me. because he loved me.” which is a terrible thing for regina to believe about herself, moreso because of all people who died because “[regina] loved them” (daniel, henry sr, cora, robin) regina had the LEAST responsibility for daniel’s death. of these, i (and most viewers, i would hope) would argue she only bears responsibility for henry sr’s death. but this quote from “snow drifts” leaves us to wonder what regina believes/feels about the rest. textually, regina blames snow for “tricking [her] into killing [her] own mother” (regina’s words) which further complicates things because regina knows it was snow’s (and rumple’s— we won’t let him off the hook) manipulations that killed cora, but it’s crueler than that because for the trick to work she needed to trust snow, at least for a moment, and then snow gets metaphorical blood on regina’s hands when she lets regina put cora’s poisoned heart back in her chest. robin’s death at hades hand is even more complicated because regina seems to accept it as robin’s choice, to take the blow meant for regina “love is sacrifice” and how awful is it that after all this growth regina, who taught snow that “true love is magic… it creates happiness” associates love with pain and loss. then zelena saves regina and kills hades and it’s very touching. but then in season six regina blames zelena for robin’s death because zelena’s trust in hades allowed him to kill robin, which is a few steps removed from real culpability, but one step further, regina trusted zelena’s trust in hades (it’s getting convoluted, i know, but that’s how they frame it in “sisters”), and that broken trust is what splinters and hurts again. and honestly, it would take another paragraph about the split queen arc and then maybe another looping back to the author arc to reallllly explore this to the fullest. but what a cruel and terrible thing, for a character who’s been loved so badly, who’s been loved in ways that hurt her, for so much of her life, for a character with the most resilient heart, who loves unconditionally and unselfishly she would die for those she loves, who loves deeply enough to give her son true love’s kiss without her heart, for this character to believe her love gets people killed? that’s horrible.

[redspiderling]

I’m seeing comments that Taskmaster was the “worst MCU villain” and that the twist fell flat. I thought it tied well into Natasha’s arc. I can understand TM fans not liking the change, but there are a lot of dumb takes too. Saying that the climax inadequately showed Nat washing her hands clean, or that she had already “gotten over” it before. Even though Nat is so haunted by regret that she later throws herself off a cliff? Why does this movie go straight over some people’s heads?

Hiya anon!

Well, there's a few reasons why people can have these reactions, and not interpret the film as it was meant to. Some reasons are more innocent than others.

For example, Marvel did push the whole "Taskmaster will appear" message while promoting this film. We know they did this to hook in a very specific crowd. I find their frustration understandable because Taskmaster is a minor character, compared to the Russian family.

I don't understand though what those people's expectations were. This movie isn't called Taskmaster. It's called Black Widow. Natasha is going to be the main character. Even if Taskmaster was closer to the comic book version his role wouldn't have more prominence, or development, in the film. Everyone was saying that this movie was going to be a tribute to Natasha Romanoff, so, what gives?

I found the twist very satisfying. I don't see how that was "Natasha washing her hands clean". Just because the girl survived, doesn't mean that Natasha didn't make the choice to sacrifice her life. If I shoot a person and they survive, I'll still be put to trial as an attempted murderer. Natasha's decision allowed Draykov to turn his own daughter into a mindless tool. All Natasha got, was a moment to look her past action in the eyes, acknowledge the brutality of them, and apologise to another victim. Because they were both victims of the same system.

In regards to how this movie sits in reference to Endgame: It undoes a lot of it. Natasha's emotional state in Endgame would realistically be different if she had gone through the soul-searching adventure of Black Widow beforehand.

Even if her entire Russian family had been dusted she'd just be even more determined to fix the world, she wouldn't despair, and she wouldn't have looked so abandoned. Because the Natasha of Endgame was broken not by the events of Infinity War, but by the resignation of the surviving Avengers- they were the ones who left her alone to shoulder that burden.

Finally, while I rarely acknowledge the scene in Vormir as anything other than moronic and completely unnecessary, I do need to make this point clear:

Natasha didn't sacrificed herself because she thought herself unworthy. Marvel sacrificed Natasha because they thought she deserved it.

Natasha loves her people deeply, and she is just that strong, and that brave, and that heroic, that she could just run towards death without a thought and without a hint of fear. And Cate showed us that in Black Widow, where she made her jump off one crazy spot after another, when she literally jumped into nothing to save Yelena. Of course, Cate is smart and she brought Natasha back to us after each and every crazy jump. Because a character doesn't have to fucking die to prove that they're heroes.

Finally, this movie goes straight over people's heads for a lot of reasons.

For one thing, people are used to the male gaze, and focused on the wrong things. Like whether the human trafficker gets enough of a development to make us feel something when he dies for example. And then when the movie disregards that character like the bastard that he is, and just blows him to smithereens, they're disappointed because they're like "hang on, you just killed him off before I had a chance to bond with the lad!". And to them, that's a flaw.

Another issue is that Marvel movies tend to be very clear about who you're fighting against. It makes it easier when a villain has a face, you know? Even CAWS had enough baddies to make us direct our anger to specific characters (like Rumlow, Pierce, Zola, Sitwell), while the actual enemy was an organisation/system in place.

So when Black Widow comes along, viewers who are used to the system above are confused. Because if Yelena isn't bad, and if the Widows aren't bad, and if Taskmaster isn't bad, who is?

Our patriarchal, sexist society. That's who. The mentality that creates men like Draykov, who think of women as commodities. And how can you possibly show them as villains, when they're literally all around us?

You don't. You focus on the women, and how we deal with that pain. This movie was about people who were damaged by a fucked up system. And the movie itself couldn't offer a solution to fix the system. It could only give us the satisfaction of watching a trafficker get blown up, and the relief of watching those women free themselves from that hell. It showed us that there is hope in surviving. It gave us back what Endgame took away.

Anyway, to chose off this rant, don't be upset anon. I mean, there are people out there who, to this day, think Endgame was one of the best movies of all time. Rotten Tomatoes has it rated at like, 95%. Some people are just interested in the surface of things, and the rest of us just have to accept it. Enjoy our moment of vindication, remind yourself that Natasha's living her best life, hopefully stay away from twitter, and all will be well.

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

Lila Rossi: I’d Say She’s a Good Villain, but Then I’d Be Lying (300 Follower Special)

Deception and cunning are easily two of the most important traits an antagonist could have. It shows that even if they don't have the strength to overcome obstacles, their wit is more than enough. This kind of trait is why characters like Lex Luthor, David Xanatos, and Princess Azula are so beloved, simply because of how intelligent they can be as villains and pose a real threat to the heroes.

It's clear that the Miraculous Ladybug writers want Lila to be seen as this, but the writing seriously fails to back that claim up.

Easily one of the most controversial characters in Miraculous Ladybug is Lila, mainly for the writing surrounding her. But there was a time where she was actually more of an ambiguous character, mainly for the lack of screentime she had until Season 3. But unfortunately, the more appearances she's had have painted a very poor portrait of an antagonist.

Lila's Tragic and Sympathetic Motivation for Hating Ladybug

Lila's first appearance was at the tail end of Season 1, “Volpina”. She was a new transfer student from Italy, and quickly made friends with a lot of her classmates for the lies she told, including being friends with Ladybug (which Alya blindly believed without doing any research like any excellent journalist). But because of how close she was getting to Adrien, Marinette, in a rare act of selfishness, transforms into Ladybug just to chew out Lila for lying about knowing her, humiliating her in front of Adrien. And this is the only motivation we get for what Lila does afterwards.

I'm not saying that it's wrong for Lila to get upset at Ladybug for doing this, and I like the moment of weakness Marinette has, but this is literally the only explanation we get for Lila deciding to side with Hawkmoth, a literal terrorist. As much as I hated the way the arc turned out, I could still understand Chloe siding with Hawkmoth, as it was clear that Hawkmoth was manipulating her and taking advantage of her ego. Lila? Ladybug's mean to her one time, and that inspires her to conspire with a complete stranger who brainwashes people to attack the city, which endangers innocent people and causes God knows how much in collateral damage if not for Miraculous Ladybug fixing everything.

I just don't get how a single negative interaction with someone is enough to conspire with a literal supervillain. Even in Season 3, when Marinette and Lila truly became enemies, it was because she risked exposing all the lies she told, which could damage her reputation. Sure, it's petty, but it makes sense for Lila to want to keep up the illusion. If she was simply an antagonist to Marinette in her civilian life like Chloe was before “Miracle Queen” , I'd be fine with that, but the writers clearly want her to be seen as on the same level of evil as Hawkmoth. I'll get into why that doesn't work later on.

Why Lila is an Excellent Liar

In my Master Fu analysis, I had pointed out that despite all the flaws he had, the narrative insisted on portraying him as an incredibly wise mentor. The same problem applies for Lila as well. We're supposed to see Lila as an expert manipulator and liar, but her lies are insultingly obvious. She always claims to be friends with celebrities and does all these awesome things, and in an age where we can have almost any question answered thanks to the internet, nobody ever stops to question her.

It's even more frustrating when you hear Lila talk about saving Jagged Stone's cat, when Jagged Stone is established to be very fond of Marinette (evidentially more than his own daughter), and nobody ever points that out. I think if Lila's lies were more stories about her travels around the world than outright lies about real people, it could have worked. It'd still be hard to believe, but it's something.

But this is a problem with writing shows aimed at children. As much as we hate writers who need to spell out things to kids, sometimes, they just don't understand some of the media they consume. Seriously, I never got this joke in SpongeBob as a kid, and I can't believe Nickelodeon actually approved this.

So the dilemma when writing a show with children in mind is finding that sweet spot between assuming your audience can figure it out, but not being too vague in your details. It's even harder when you need to find a way to convey the fact that someone is lying without being too obvious. Unfortunately, the show clearly fails to do that

Okay, this is going to sound like an incredibly weird thing to cite, and I only know about it because I used to know someone who was a huge fan of the franchise, but the movie Monster High: Friday Night Frights does a better job of subtly explaining to the audience that a character is lying. Please, just hear me out.

The movie follows the main characters competing in their high school's roller derby for the season after everyone on the usual team gets injured, and the championship match is against another school whose team tends to cheat to win matches. How they manage to do this without getting caught is anyone's guess. While the main characters are practicing, their coach, Clawd, notices a spy for the enemy team taking video of them to study their moves. In response, he calls over one of the athletes, Operetta, to chew her out for her showboating attitude. In reality, he's alerting her to the spy. Only using facial expressions, he clues her, and by extension, the audience, in on the fact that they know what the opposing team is trying to do.

This soon leads to Operetta pretending to tell the enemy team about their secret plan for the championship match, which was really an attempt to outsmart them to gain the advantage in the final stretch. The brilliance of this is how the audience is informed of this with no dialogue, and there's no scene afterwards spelling it out for those who don't get it. It manages to convey deception without being too obvious that Clawd and Operetta are being deceitful.

I think if there were more subtle hints to show the audience Lila was lying, she would be seen in a better light. As it is, Lila's lies are just pathetic, and it's ridiculous that everyone believes her. Which leads me to...

Lila, the Master Manipulator

I once read a Star Trek: Voyager fanfic that poked fun at the series by claiming that the reason a lot of the dumber episodes like “Threshold” and “Twisted” happened was because one of the crew members was an alien who unintentionally produced mood altering pheromones, with Captain Janeway actually realizing they were all high because of said pheromones, while two of the unaffected crew members were wondering what the hell they were doing before they found out the cause. Why do I bring this up? Sometimes, it feels like Lila is an unintentional parallel to the alien in that story.

Like so many characters, it's clear the show desperately wants the audience to view Lila in a certain way, but her actions do very little to actually back up that claim. When she's not using lies to tell stories about so many famous people she knows like her uncle who works for Nintendo, Lila is using strategies to manipulate everyone that are so obviously deceptive, the Thermians could pick up on them. Everyone and their mother knows how ridiculous a lot of what Lila does in episodes like “Chameleon” and “Ladybug” are, and I've talked about them before, so I'll try to be quick.

First off, as someone who had access to accommodations through high school and has had assistance in college so far, there is no way in hell that Ms. Bustier should take Lila's tinnitus at face value in “Chameleon”. If a student has a disability that could interfere with the education process, physical or developmental, not only does the school have to evaluate their performance, and determine if they're eligible for an Individualized Education Program, or IEP, but her teachers would have to be notified in the first place. As her primary educator, Ms. Bustier would be part of the team to oversee Lila's IEP and determine what accommodations she needs to help her learn better with her tinnitus and arthritis. But because the writers don't know what Google is, they just ignore it,  assume that Lila can just say she has a disability, and have everyone believe it. Even when Eric Cartman pretended to be disabled to compete in the Special Olympics, he put in more effort to look the part, even if he looked like a caricature.

Then there's the fact that that in “Chameleon”, everyone just believes Lila when she says Marinette stole her grandmother's necklace when not only is said necklace from the Agreste line of jewelry, but Alya, who is Rena Rouge, can't pick up on the fact that it's a fake. All she does to justify these lies is come up with a sob story about how nobody believes her, yet nobody ever tries to defend Marinette except Alya one time, and it was after she got expelled.

Or what about in “Oni-Chan”, where Lila thinks having Kagami kill Ladybug while claiming she'll back away from Adrien is a good idea? Let's say Oni-Chan does kill Ladybug or at least take away her Miraculous, what then? We know Lila wouldn't go through with this promise, and as soon as Kagami sees her harassing Adrien, she'll be ripe for akumatization again. Overall, not a great plan.

And yet somehow, this last example is what made her worthy enough to become one of Hawkmoth's most trusted agents. I'm just going to say it: Lila is not a good fit for the power of illusion. Whenever she's Volpina or Chameleon, she always goes out of her way to make a big show instead of being subtle with her deceptions. “Chameleon” is the worst offender, as even though Lila gets the power to shapeshift into someone else, instead of being discreet and cornering people into kissing them and gaining their appearance, she just runs around to get Ladybug's attention instead of being subtle. Even Felix had the bright idea to pretend to be Adrien to catch Ladybug off guard. How do you lose to something that happened in “Felix”?

Despite all of these screw-ups, we're still supposed to see her as this master of deception worthy of allying with Hawkmoth in both his supervillain and civilian form, when really, she's a terrible liar on the schoolyard and on the battlefield.

Why Lila is an Important Character

In the grand scheme of things, Lila just isn't as important of a character that the show loves to parade her around as. She's nothing more than a plot device used to raise the stakes in an episode, given how much reality seems to bend over just to accommodate for her lies. Even when the show alludes to her being part of bigger things, like her deal with Adrien, or her rivalry with Marinette, they don't even go anywhere.

She just feels pointless when you remember Astruc's brilliant idea to force Chloe into being the final Akuma for the season while Lila isn't even mentioned once. She only really makes appearances whenever the writers feel like it, which is why it’s hard to take her seriously. Why should I take this character seriously as a threat if the writers refuse to take her seriously as a threat? Why build Lila up as a big threat and not give her a major role in the finale? Why even include her in the show in the first place when you could show Chloe being more manipulative to fill in the plots Lila plays a big part in?

As of the time I am writing this analysis, four episodes of Season 4 have aired, three of them have been about lies or deception, and Lila hasn't been mentioned at all. It honestly seems like she won't appear unless the writers need a easy way to drive up the conflict, so they can justify it by saying that Lila's “superpower” of lying is more powerful than the common sense of everyone else.

I'm sorry this post was shorter than the last one, but compared to Master Fu, there's not that much to say about Lila that I haven't already said. Even the show barely gives her any attention, so it's hard for me to really find a lot to talk about.

[jeongyunhoed]

Past-Present-Future Black Dahlia

Two major tragedies bring Lee Mirae closer to the edge as she goes through the stages of grief in a more violent manner that would affect not only her relationships with her boyfriend Jeong Yunho and her half-brother Choi San, but also has her becoming closer with the immortal mutant Kang Yeosang. Fueled by rage, grief, and pain, along with a very rude awakening that has Mirae spiraling out of control and questioning everything she holds dear.

Group: ATEEZ Member: Yunho Pairing: Jeong Yunho / OC Genre: Action, adventure, angst, fantasy

Watch Out! : Violence, blood, death, grief and loss, major character deaths, use of weapons, some jealousy (but no cheating ofc), implied smut (not sure if there is any but i’m putting it out there nonetheless), mental illness (probably?), gambling and alcohol

Anything else? : Mentions of other idols of course as well as other characters. SuperM, Dean, Chanyeol, Zelo, soloist Park Jihoon to name a few.

Author’s Note: So... I didn’t expect this would happen for some reason? But it’s interesting how things unfold when you just wing it. Anyway, more reveals ahead a.k.a Yeosang reveals what more he can do and not just suck the life out of people/mutants.

Masterlist

Chapter 6

Loud yelps of pain echoed what looked like a ballroom found within the abandoned school that Ten created. Jongin was seated on top of an operating table, his injured leg that had a gaping wound was being tended to by another male, wearing a suit. Dr. Lucas Wong, another telepath that also had extensive medical knowledge. “She tore through your muscle and the tendons, this might take a while to repair, the tissue damage is extreme and even if it did, there will be some discrepancy in the weight distribution when you walk,,” Lucas muttered as he wiped the rest of the antiseptic over the wound. 

“Yeah, she did,” Jongin bit his lip to stifle the groans leaving his mouth in pain. “Even threatened to wipe out my entire family while she did it. She’s got quite a grip.”

“I’m surprised she didn’t do the same to you, hyung,” Lucas glanced at Baekhyun, who had a brace on his neck. 

“Yeah well, I thought she needed to know who was making her suffer. I don’t regret it one bit of course,” Baekhyun frowned, sitting back against the red chintz chair. 

“And now you’ve turned her loose against us when we should be convincing her to join our cause,” Mark said. “You chose to pursue your vendetta over the greater goal that we plan to achieve, and from the looks of this, it seems like Ino has already let it slip that you and Jongin tampered with their Danger Room. We aren’t the enemy, the non-mutants are.” 

Baekhyun fell silent. “To be fair, it was fun helping them out in their plans, it gave me something to do,” Taeyong spoke, his feet up on the table that had Lucas’s medical journals, making the doctor swat his feet away while he dressed the teleporter’s wounds. “I think she also turned Yeosang away from the venture though.” 

“See?” Mark sighed in frustration. “We need her and Yeosang. Yeosang wields significant influence, granted that he practically owns the entirety of Seoul. With Mirae, it’s going to give the venture the added muscle.” 

“You mean she’ll be our enforcer,” Jongin chimed in. 

“In a way. If people have a problem, we can convince her to take care of it. She’s got a lot of skills, skills that must be utilized. She’s let herself go ever since she got rid of the Utopian cult,” Mark explained. 

A portal soon appeared in the middle of the room and Ten stepped out of it. “She’s here. And she’s pissed, and at the same time sad,” He said. He glanced at Baekhyun. “You should’ve kept the ruse going, hothead.” 

“She blew up my house though,” Taeyong pointed out. 

“You’ve got the money, you can build a new one,” Lucas muttered, dressing Jongin’s wound. “Taemin’s still not done from his meetings, is he?” 

“Nope. But I already told him what happened. He should be here in an hour? Two hours tops,” Taeyong replied. “He’s not going to be happy.” 

“Damn right I’m not.” 

Taemin had appeared by the door, looking evidently pissed off. He slammed his jacket down on the nearby desk along with his briefcase. “Didn’t even give me some time to get my stuff before she blew the place up.” 

Lee Taemin was also a telepath like Mark and Taeyong, but his main powers were mostly being able to mimic or augment a mutant’s powers. If Taemin were near an omega-level mutant, he could only mimic but not surpass their abilities completely. Unlike his younger brother Taeyong, who could turn into a diamond form to shield his mind from other telepaths, Taemin’s was naturally present, and he often used it to hide from other psychics. If there were even other psychics apart from them. 

Ten put a finger to his lips. “Shhh. I placed her in one of the rooms of this whole...estate. If I were to go to her now, she would hear everything you are all saying. We wouldn’t want a repeat of what happened in the mansion now would we?” 

“So what’s our next move?” Taemin asked. 

“We call on Ino, ask him regarding what to do about Mirae, and then maybe approach a few willing politicians. I heard not everyone remained arrested after that encounter with Chun Doohwan’s adviser,” Mark explained. “Some are desperate to make a comeback in the political scene. Even after they were exposed.” 

“How are you framing that? I’m not so sure people in this country are keen to forget something like what they did,” Taemin questioned. “Actually, people in this country don’t forget nor do they forgive unless they’re like us.” 

“You could say the same with everyone everywhere, it’s just that we feel it more here,” Taeyong argued. “Then again, it’s not like they know who we are.” 

“Exactly. We should take advantage of the flaws of this society. We’re the superior race, and they will know about their inferiority soon enough,” Mark said. 

It was making Jongin think. “Since that could take some time, I wonder what we plan on doing with Mirae? Are we just keeping her here? Clueless? You forget, you can’t read her mind.” 

“You don’t need to read a mind like hers to know what to do with her, silly,” Ten smirked. “All I can say is that all of you better watch your backs with her. A person who is grieving over the loss of the people closest to her will not think straight, but a person like her who is grieving over losing three people she holds dear? I wouldn’t be surprised if she does turn around and wipe out your entire lineage. She almost did that with you, didn’t she?” He turned to Jongin. 

“How can she do that while she’s over here?” Jongin raised a brow, until he figured out what Ten really meant. “...You wouldn’t.” 

“She’s got every reason to hate each and every one of us now that she knows you were all behind the deaths of her friends. With the shield in her mind, no telepath can control her,” Ten pointed out. “Of course, she doesn’t know my affiliation with the rest of you so she may leave me out of this.” 

“Bring it on, then,” Baekhyun said. 

“Really? You’d really take that risk? I could tell her where your families and loved ones are right now and you can watch them go bye-bye at her hands,” Ten looked satisfied seeing the older male get uncomfortable. 

“I’m already dead to my family, what makes you think I still care?” 

“Enough, Chittaphon,” Taemin rolled his eyes. “We get it. The only one she can’t kill in here is Mark, but even his own life isn’t certain. We need to control her somehow. We’re not the enemy. The non-mutants are.”

“There is a way,” Baekhyun raised a brow. “Choi San and Jeong Yunho. I’ve been thinking of making my next move towards them. Make Mirae really alone.” 

~ 

“How much longer do we have until we get there? How do we even get there?” San looked over at Junhong. They were still driving down the road that seemed to lead to the city proper with Yeosang’s help. There was a kind of uncertain quality about the city, as if it was part of a certain time yet had modern technology. The people living in the city were wearing different variations of the hanbok, styled in either coordinates or as dresses and suits. 

“It won’t be long,” Yeosang replied from his seat, making all of them look out the windows. “One kilometer more and we’ll be able to find her, or them, or both.” 

“We don’t have much time, unless Yunho can teleport us even at this time, by the time we get to her, she’ll have probably made up her mind,” San said. 

“When I was at those ruins, what I saw gave me chills,” Wooyoung said quietly. “It’s as if all I could feel from that place was rage and sadness. Junhong, both Hyuk and Chanyeol meant so much to her, didn’t they?” 

“Oh yeah they do. If they survived the explosion, you can imagine we’d get things done faster,” Junhong glanced over at them. 

Yeosang sighed. “Oh well, here goes nothing,” He closed his eyes and muttered a few words, making others look over at him. 

A flock of seagulls was flying out of the way of the van, making all of them whip around to look out the window. Their surroundings changed. They were no longer in the city proper, but they were at a dreary-looking street and at the end of the street was the gates of the school. “...Yunho?” Hongjoong glanced at the taller. 

“It’s not me,” Yunho looked just as surprised. 

Yeosang shook his head. “Well that spell was rusty,” He muttered. 

“Spell? What do you mean by spell?...You can do magic?” Mingi stared at him. 

“It’s a gift I try not to use very often. It takes the fun out of everything,” Yeosang casually replied. “I must confess I fear I might be losing my touch with it.” 

San grabbed him by the collar. “You mean to say you could’ve brought us there without having to travel?!” He couldn’t help but yell. 

“In my defense I didn’t do that when I came to the rest of you,” Yeosang yanked his hand off his collar and straightened himself up. 

“You better figure out which side you’re on because it seems to me that you’re buying them some time,” Hongjoong shot at him. 

“Give me a reason not to kill you right now,” Yunho suddenly looked over at him. “You could’ve saved us the time.” 

“Whenever I use magic, I will need to feed. It uses up my energy and turns me into a ghostly hag,” Yeosang held up his hand, his skin becoming translucent, revealing the veins that were becoming more and more visible.

“You are an old hag,” San pointed out. 

“Regardless, the more I use, the hungrier I will get. I don’t think any of you would be willing to give your lives to me, and thus control is needed. It’s one of the downsides of my abilities. That and, I tend to absorb the memories of those I kill,” Yeosang said quietly. 

“In that case, you’ve now got a reason to feed,” Hongjoong said as Junhong pulled the brakes. 

“All of you have your weapons, I can stay behind and wait. There are communicators with you, so you should be able to talk to me and each other in case you split up,” Junhong turned to them. “Good luck. Get Mirae back.” 

“We will,” San nodded and the rest of them got down.

The eight of them faced the massive gates of the estate. “Do we climb over or do we break in?” Seonghwa asked, an idea immediately coming to mind. His eyes and fingertips glowed green, the chains locking the gate coming apart, opening the gate in front of them. 

“I’m here to remind you that we’ll be dealing with a few telepaths and teleporters. Be careful,” Yeosang said as they walked inside, a cold gust of wind hitting them. “As much as it pains me to say it, San is our best bet to get to Mirae. I’m sure they already know of his relation to my dear, as much as they already know who Yunho is in her life.” 

“So we need to watch Yunho and San, is that it?” Hongjoong deduced. 

“Precisely,” Yeosang replied, only to duck out of the way when he felt something strike him. It was an axe, Mingi’s axe, and the taller male himself was attempting to strike him. 

“Mingi!” San tried to stop him, but he wasn’t answering and instead tried to strike towards everyone else, making them take out their weapons. Mingi seemed to be in a trance.

“Mingi!” Hongjoong sped around the taller male. “He’s- What’s happened to him?!” He dodged a shuriken that was thrown his way. Wooyoung and San had joined in the fray. 

Yunho dodged his strikes with an axe, only to run out of the way when he saw Jongho charge towards him. “Oh no, Jongho!” He yelled, avoiding the spikes that were protruding from his arms and legs. Jongho was also in a trance. 

Yeosang took out the concealed sword from his walking stick and knocked Jongho out of the way. “They seem to be under a spell- They know we’re here,” He said, realizing the situation. “One of them’s controlling Mingi and Jongho, or should I say two- Mark!” 

A portal opened from one side of the grounds and out stepped Mark himself, followed by Lucas. “I thought as much, Yeosang!” The immortal said. 

“Can’t get your hands dirty?” Yeosang cast a spell only for it to hit Lucas instead as he saw Taemin step out from the same portal and Ten. 

“Why would I need to?” Mark scoffed. 

“We’re not the enemy,” Taemin said, his eyes and fingertips glowing the same green glow as Seonghwa who was already trying to redirect the shurikens and axes that Mingi was throwing while also dodging Jongho’s kicks and punches. He disarmed their weapons, throwing them to the side. 

“Where is Mirae?” San asked. 

“She’s safe, somewhere in there. But I’m sorry to say that you can’t get to her,” Ten replied. “We need her.” 

“And we need her,” Yunho stared at them. “We’re not joining you and your Project Apocalypse and neither should Mirae.” 

“Ah, Yeosang told you. I guessed as much, he’s turning into a literal vampire before our eyes too,” Mark gestured to the immortal, whose skin was becoming even more translucent, his eyes turning icy blue in color. “You might as well show them how you actually look after all of that magic, you know.” 

“Still sore about Julia the Elder choosing me over you after all,” He said. 

“We’re not the enemy as you all seem to believe. Mutants are the inheritors of this earth, we’re all on the same side here,” Lucas reasoned. 

“Oh really? Then why is Mirae being kept?” Hongjoong questioned. “You’ve got her, we want her.” 

“You’ll have to get through us first, then,” Mark said. 

“No problem,” Hongjoong said, before speeding past Lucas and Taemin, knocking them off their feet. 

Mark took out a swiss army knife from his pocket and shook his head. “Care to duel, Yeosang? To the death as it seems,” He said. 

“I’d want to stick around more, no thanks,” Yeosang sent a hex towards him, sending him to the end of the field, almost knocking into the pillar. Wooyoung transformed into his shadow form, slithering across the ground and capturing Ten, nearly getting sucked into the portal he was trying to create. 

Mingi took out his lighter, sending blasts of flames towards  Mark who reappeared, making him fall over, covering his face in pain. “Chanyeol taught me that,” He grinned. 

~ 

Mirae looked out the window from the room Ten placed her in. She was getting restless. She wanted to know where Baekhyun and Jongin were, and possibly kill them when she found them. The room she was kept in gave off the impression that it was once among the opulently decorated rooms in the school, perhaps a room of a teacher or school head. 

“Mirae.” 

She turned around upon hearing the familiar voice. It was Ino. “So now you’re here.” 

“I am, and I don’t blame you for what you did to me-” 

Her eyes and fingertips glowed and she reached into her pocket for her deck of cards. “What makes you think I’m sorry for what I did to you? You deserved it as much,” She hissed. 

“Baekhyun, Jongin, their entire group has a cause worth fighting for.” 

“And Hyuk and Chanyeol are collateral damage, is that it?” Mirae flung a charged card towards the older male, only for it to explode through him. “Baekhyun killed them, and he killed Jihoon too. And you let it happen.” 

“Their deaths were a price to pay!” Ino tried to reason, dodging all the cards being thrown at him. 

“They never deserved that! And you know it!” Mirae yelled and a shockwave of energy suddenly reverberated around the room, causing cracks in the windows and walls. Ino saw his face had traces of burns caused by the shockwave. “They never deserved to die!” She yelled again, sending another shockwave that made the furniture burn and disintegrate and Ino felt more burns on his skin. 

“You’re becoming stronger, Mirae,” Ino realized as the burns on him were healing. “Remember what Junhong said to you-” 

More shockwaves of energy reverberated around the room, the ceiling and the walls already on the verge of collapsing. “All this time I was living with guilt thinking that I was responsible for it, when it’s you- You let everything happen!” She shouted, another shockwave making everything collapse and fly outwards. 

“It was the price to pay for Project Apocalypse, Mirae!” Ino tried to reason again, even if he knew it was inevitably futile. “There are people willing to die for causes greater than themselves. It’s time mutants had considerable influence in the world, we have a right to live in this world just as much as everyone else does. Out from the shadows, no longer hiding.” 

“What makes you think I was hiding? What makes you think Hyuk and Chanyeol were hiding? Jihoon wasn’t even a mutant yet he was killed!” Mirae threw another card at him followed by another, the second card ricocheting off the column as it exploded, knocking it over. 

Ino looked up and everything that was about to crumble down froze in mid-air. Baekhyun and a limping Jongin appeared, followed by Taeyong. Baekhyun released a beam of light towards her face, making her fall over, covering her eyes. Taeyong transformed into his diamond form and charged towards her, Mirae knocking him over before he could strike. 

“You don’t even bother to see that your friends are out there right now,” Baekhyun tried to blast another beam of light towards her. “San and Yunho, did you really care for them?” He taunted, only to gape when the beam of light hit the staff she had extended, the energy coming from her being redirected towards him and sending him flying towards the other side, Jongin teleporting in time to catch him. 

The whole school burned down into ashes and shockwaves reverberated all throughout the grounds, making everyone in the midst of their fights fall over on the ground from the impact. Taeyong, Jongin and Baekhyun appeared close to the rubble as Mirae emerged from the ashes. Ino had also reappeared, the burns on his hands and face healing. 

Yunho got up upon seeing Mirae and he ran up to her. “Mirae! Mirae!” He called out, only to get pushed inside a portal. 

“Yunho?” The glow in her eyes faded. “Yunho!” She called out, running towards the portal only for it to close, making her stumble and fall over. Mirae looked over, her eyes scanning the ground for San and getting back on her feet. “San!” She called out. 

“Mirae!” San got back up on his feet only to get pushed inside another portal that closed before Seonghwa could keep him out. 

“San! San!” She yelled, staring at the spot where San disappeared. Mirae glanced at Ten, who was still within the grip of Wooyoung’s shadow form. “Wooyoung, get out of the way,” She said, her eyes glowing red. 

“Project Apocalypse must go online without any interruptions,” Ino said. 

“Wooyoung,” Mirae looked over at the shadow form still wrapped around the male. “Get out of the way.” 

The shadow seemed to slither away from Ten, transforming back into Wooyoung as Mirae’s staff began to glow the same red glow from her eyes and fingertips. “If you kill me, you won’t know where Yunho and San are,” Ten pointed out. “If you join us, Project Apocalypse, you will have them back, unharmed, not possessed or crazy that’s for sure. If you refuse, let’s just say you will have lost two more people you care so much about. In such a short span of time too.” 

“Don’t join them, Mirae,” Hongjoong called out. “Yunho and San wouldn’t want you to join them either.” 

“There’s nothing but pain for you if you join them,” Wooyoung chimed in. “It’s not going to end. It’ll only get worse.”

“If you can’t command, you must obey,” Baekhyun said quietly. 

The words made Mirae look over at him and she struck her staff into the ground leading up to where he was standing, the shockwave sending the rest of them flying back in different directions. “How dare you control me,” Mirae muttered, the glow in her eyes becoming brighter than ever. 

“Mirae don’t join them!” Seonghwa called out, the green glow in his eyes and fingertips. 

She ran up to Baekhyun and before he could get away, she struck her staff in the ground again, the impact making him stumble and fall. Mirae grabbed him by the collar. “Could you really kill me, Lee Mirae?” He said. “One of the last in our group, the sentimental value of it all is enticing isn’t it? You don’t have it in you to kill me. You keep searching for a face to blame for all your grievances, when that face is staring right back at you in the mirror.” 

Baekhyun’s satisfied expression soon turned into horror when Mirae’s eyes turned black. “You really are a monster,” He said, before disappearing. 

Mirae looked back at the group where a portal had opened. “Ino.” 

“Baekhyun is part of Project Apocalypse. It is about to go online in a matter of hours,” Ino explained. “Make your choice, Mirae. If you want to see Yunho and San again, if you want to find them unharmed, you will make the right choice.” 

Mark, Taemin, Lucas, and Taeyong had entered the portal. Mirae closed her eyes. She could hear Yunho calling out to her. Somehow, she had relayed what was happening to Yunho, who was now also aware of what was going on. 

I’m here in this kind of wild west village

There’s so many crows, a murder of crows.

It’s deserted

Mirae, don’t join them, just find me, I’ll tell you where to go

San won’t want you joining them either, and Wooyoung will know what’s going to happen if you do

Don’t join them 

She kept hearing him. Mirae opened her eyes. “Keep your word and I will consider.” 

“I’ve kept my word that I took you to the place where you will find your revenge, didn’t I?” Ten replied, seeing Jongin limp inside the portal. “You can trust me.” 

“Trust, that’s a word that I haven’t heard in a while,” Mirae struck the other end of her staff on the ground towards him, making him fall inside the portal. She turned to Ino. 

“You will regret that decision,” He said. 

“And you will regret the day you allowed everything to happen,” Mirae stared at him, a wave of energy hitting the elder once more, burning his face. As Ino fell over on the ground, he disappeared.

[life-rewritten]

Gifted Graduation: The futility of Pang's idealism

Episode 8-10 of Gifted Graduation has been just filled with mind fuckery, and overflow of plot twists after plot twists. Thing is as much as everyone is complaining about this,  The Gifted has always been a show that has taken us on a journey of fear, exhilaration and worries only to then even break us further by ridiculing our hopes, dreams and idealism for a better future/better world. In this situation, we are like Pang, a boy who was shown the cruelty of close-minded and controlling adults who have no care for the children like him. These kids who are being viewed as tools and accessories because of their unique abilities.

In season 1 Pang learnt about his powers and made a decision to fight the system and defeat the adults who are controlling it. Season 1 ended with a depressing revelation; Pang was still too naive and too unprepared for taking down the adults. So he and his team hid for two years preparing for a way to defeat this system. In season 2 from Episode 10 we are shown how futile all this is, all Pang had hoped for, all he worked for, all he dreamed of was a lie, he was still being used as a tool for the downfall of all his own dreams. This is so painful to see because we are like Pang, we want a better society, a better world, a better life, and yet just as we also hoped and thought that things would improve we again fell for Supots lies and trickery. So we also were left feeling bleak and hopeless. So here is a post analysing why Season 1 finale of Gifted mirrored episode 8-10 of The gifted graduation. Is Pang's idealism really useless, how does this affect everyone, has Supot finally won, and what do we do now?

THE THEME OF THE SHOW; FUTILITY OF IDEALISM

I first noticed the clue that Season 1-Ep 10-13 was being mirrored in Gifted graduation episode 8-9 because of the certain similarities that were shown and also the return to plotlines from the past season that finally showed growth/change or showed a full-circle moment. The reason for why Gifted graduation ends up mirroring the same ideas as Season 1 is to laugh at us, and to laugh at Pang for failing yet again to realise the truth (despite thinking we were close to winning ) and again repeating the same mistakes of the past. Let me explain with the clues first:

PANG DEFEATED

In Season 1, Pang starts as a determined boy who wants to prove he's something, but slowly sees the horrors of his school system misusing and treating his peers like experiments because of their powers. Pang is determined to defeat Supot and change the gifted system. Still, by the finale, we see that even though he thought he was always a step ahead Supot always knew what he was up to, Supot manipulated him and his peers and unravelled all their plans in one go by revealing his powers and revealing his plans for the gifted. Pang is left defeated with his memories wiped and we the audience screamed in pain and frustration at our main character losing.

Season 2 Pang thinks he has the upper hand; his memories are back. He's avoiding his powers, so he doesn't end up like our villain, he has his peers back on his team. By episode 4 the goal is fulfilled; Supot is defeated and even by episode 6 despite the fact that we think the ministry is evil we still see that Supot is defeated, he's forced out of the school, and he goes in hiding. By episode 7-8 we begin to think Supot is actually a victim of this messed up system and he's just become evil because of the pressures of life, we start to trust him a bit, and we begin to think there is an immense evil at hand to defeat. Pang and we were fools. Gifted episode 10 repeats again the same copy of Pang being under Supots control, Pang being betrayed once again by his peers, and Pang also realising that everything he did was for nothing.

This time, the defeat is more painful, there's more at stake, there are lives lost and broken (Korn, Yuth, students being under a virus that causes brain damage) and the very goal Pang had wanted to defeat in Season 1, Pang was the sole cause of making it fulfilled. Its dramatic irony, it's hurtful, and it is soul-crushing to realise that all the pain he went through was for nothing. In the end, Pang is just still a tool to Supot, Pang put his peers again under Supot's control, but it's even worse time because he's putting more schools under Supots control. Pang is left with no one, nothing and no hope on his side. He's left defeated once again.

SUPOTS POWERS MORE THAN THEY SEEM

Season 1 is such an incredible story for how Supot and Pang became enemies to each other. We start of Season 1, learning about Pang's potential, to control minds with touch, we're petrified and scared about the strength of his powers since we see how it can hurt people (the first time he uses it), the only thing that's exciting and hopeful about this is that he can use it on Supot who is blissfully unaware. We expected Supot to underestimate Pang and not know what his gifts were but no. The reveal again in a painfully ironic twist is that Supot is a stronger version of Pang. His powers are so powerful he's able to get everyone to defeat Pang, he's able to convince people to lie to Pang and us, so we are blissfully unaware of what was genuinely happening the whole season. Pang is left horrified at the truth about Supot; not only does he have with the same potential as him, but he can do with without touch. This was an incredible plot twist. 

Yet season 2 manages to trick us into thinking Supot's powers are not as powerful anymore, Pang is the one who has to use his powers to become stronger and defeat the ministry. Supot had a past where he didn't want to use his powers for evil. Or that's what he told us, and that's what we fell for yet again. The realisation in episode 10 that Supot is insanely powerful, he can prevent Pang's potential from affecting him, he can convince people to kill themselves, and yes he can also convince and hurt Pang's peers if they don't do his bidding; the fact that Supot yet again manipulates Korn in this episode. This is also a repeat of season 1 because Korn was tricked into thinking his powers were gone by Supot only to realise he lied to there was no antidote. This both affected Mon and Korn just like Supots control over Korn revealed in episode10 led to Korn trying to commit suicide because he was so scared and betrayed, and Mon losing her trust in Pang because of losing Korn. Supots powers not only leads to Pang being hurt and betrayed but in season 2 we've seen they've led to death, they've led to despair, and they've led to misunderstandings and pain.  Supot from the start never was good; he tricks us into believing he was someone else when really he erased his ex-best friends identity and convinced him to kill himself whilst he had lost his hope and had learnt that his idealism for a better world was useless. Already we see that with Supot's past that the show is echoing that idealism for equality and difference is futile.

WAVE AND PANG AGAINST THE WORLD

This and Clare and Punns storyline in episode 8 are what made me know that Gifted was mirroring season 1 with this season. I couldn't see the reason at that time or sort out the theme, but now I know what it is. So Clare and Punns relationship is damaged as both have to grow, we get a repetition with Punn going evil with Void showing up threatening to hurt and kill again, Punn broken down at the end by Clare. But it shifts, we see Punn and Clare break up, they've both grown, they've both changed, and they want to work on themselves first before they return to each other.

In contrast, we get a repetition of a bond that was tested throughout season 2, Wave's trust in Pang is ruined at first because of Pang's insensitive actions when focused on his goals ( another repetition of season 1 with Pang's flaw). Still, Wave and Pang reunite to try and defeat the ministry and also help achieve their goals. Whilst everyone betrayed or wasn't on the side of Pang, Wave stays loyal and it's him and Pang against the world. 

In season 1 this also happens, more because Pang refuses to trust anyone else to help with his goals, and so he keeps it a secret; his plans to defeat Supot, Wave helps him with it but ends up betraying him because of Supot. We see in the trailer for episode 11; Wave is forced to think again about this decision because this time he's threatened with the virus. There is now something that can defeat the gifted and take away their potential. 

Wave however in season 1 pretends to side with Supot, but we see at the end he helps Pang regain his memories. So I don't believe that he'll betray Pang, I think whatever we see on the surface in the next episodes are not to be trusted, Pang and Wave will have another plan on how to defeat Supot, but it will be very hidden and secretive. But the importance of this mirror is because Pang needs Wave, so he doesn't give up on his idealism, so he still has hope in his dreams. Wave is the person who is the helper to Pang through thick and thin. Pang's idealism may be futile right now but because we have more episodes and we still have Wave who won't betray him unless, under mind control, he'll come back around.

SUPOTS PAWNS

By the end of season 1 everyone becomes a pawn in Supot chess game, he uses and manipulates everybody to do his bidding. Sometimes he keeps them hidden as final revelations, sometimes he lies to them to make them give in and change, and sometimes he uses his powers to convince people to lose. The repeated pawns ins Supots plans from season 1 obviously is the Pom and Chanon.  But before we talk about them, let's talk about the other mirror characters:

DARIN; she's a mirror character for the previous female teacher in the school. The audience thought that teacher was supportive of Supot but Pang learns that she is actually good and worried about the students without potentials. Pang also uses her with his powers to attack everyone and give them the vial that causes removal to their abilities.  Pang used her as a pawn as the last option to defeat Supot. She ended up being weak and not necessary. Darin is the same, at first we think she's right and she's out to protect the kids (just like this woman, and she probably was because she's a mirror of this woman) but she ends up being seen by Pang as manipulative and also evil siding with the ministry. Supot convinces Pang and us that the ministry is corrupt thereby we also see her as someone evil. In episode 10 its revealed she's just as weak; she's just a pawn underneath Supot and the ministry who is helpless and powerless just like the other teacher.  She and the ministry don't even come close to being the greater evil we thought they were; they're under Supots control. They're his tools for his goals. And Pang joins that. Sigh.

POM AND CHANON have a different significance; Pom was the pawn who we thought we could trust in season 1 until it was revealed he betrayed Chanon, he had the potential to erase memory and he was under Supots control by choice. Pom keeps betraying Pang despite being a father figure to him, someone who mentors and helps him with his gifts. And sigh season 2 reveals that Pom still is that pawn, he still is under Supot. His goal, to teach Pang the theme and reason for why we keep getting this copy of the plot of season 1; idealism is futile, it's useless to fight someone like Supot, and it'll just hurt worse if you try. Pom, however, ends up growing as well, he reveals he's good, and he cares about Pang and Chanon, but it's too late because he was right, idealism and trying to fight was useless. Chanon overpowers him, and he ends up being discarded as a worthless tool for Supot (though he loved him as a son), and now he's broken and damaged by the virus.

So you see Chanon who we saw as the actual symbol for Pang's idealism. He's the reason for why Pang hoped and tried to fight for freedom, he's the reason for why Pang still trusted adults, he's the reason for why Pang believed he could defeat Supot (because he predicted accurately of Pangs coming), but no he ends up being the very symbol for the futility of idealism. He ends up being the worst useless pawn under Supot; he destroys all of his old personality, his old idealism, his old positives for revenge because he's been traumatised by the past. Because of resentment for Pom, Supot manipulated and convinced Chanon to throw away his idealism and become defeated. It's painful because again these two echoes the same theme Pang's idealism is futile, Supot is always one step ahead and trying to fight him is hopeless. It hurts. We realise now that we didn't succeed at all even after season 1 taught us how to evade Supot. We still failed, instead, like fools we've repeated the same story, but this time Pang played a massive role in getting Supot what he wanted. Pang ended up being the worst painful pawn under Supot. It's so ironic, it's so severe, it's so soul-crushing, and it leaves all of us in shock. 

What do we do now? Can Supot be defeated? Will ever get to see Pang get his goals? Or is it all useless to try and change the system?

THE NEXT GENERATION; GRACE, TIME AND THIRD

For so long, I wondered why we needed these three characters, why didn't we just focus on our gifted students. But that's the point, whilst all of our other characters were repeating the same mistakes and stories of the past, seeing time and time again that idealism was useless, our three new characters were stuck, on a pause, they show up by the end of episode10 belatedly ready to try and defeat Supot. 

Supot doesn't have these three under his control yet; he does not know of Grace's potential to see the future. I also think this is already showing you a symbol that even if idealism is futile, the future is always filled with potential for change, potenial for hope and potential for a difference. Grace being able to see her self in the future suggests that the message we've been shown so far can still change, the mistakes of the past can still be erased and improved on, and we will be fine. Supot does not know how much these kids believe in Pang's idealism and in how much these kids want change and want to fight for what is right:

From the beginning, these kids are perfect for defeating Supot:

We have Time: who will do anything for the right reason, someone who wants change, someone who fights for change and fights for doing the right, justified thing. Time does not give up easily, and just like Pang, he's idealistic and hopeful about changing the world.

Grace: does not give a fuck about traditions and the system. she thinks that as long as you try and as long as you make an effort, you can get what you want. Unlike Time, Grace isn't afraid to try different ways to achieve her goals even if they seem wrong/not moral. She's someone who cares about her friends and her peers, and she doesn't care about adults.

Third: Aggressively chooses what is right, he likes to be correct, he likes to be on the side of power but because he wants to be useful. He likes doing good and ensuring that people follow the rules. This is also a negative because if he ends up believing that Supots rules are the right thing, then he can also be a villain. Still, for now, he believes that Pang and the ministry are correct, so he is going to aggressively fight for those rules to be followed, for the right thing to be done.

So with our new generation, we have determination despite seeing futility, we have lack of care for tradition, adults and the system despite how scary it seems, we have hope, and a will to fight for what is right. And we have people who want justice. Isn't it funny? Although gifted shows the failure of society, the way we are all stuck in old systems that are cruel and wrong, the way achieving change and equality is always seeming futile to us because of the people above us, the new generation still stays fighting. The new generation does not give up; they're loud, active and willing to get change no matter what. These three students are now with Pang (who has escaped) the people who still can defeat Supot. We may have had history repeat, but the new generations learn from history, knows not to give up hope, and pushes on to try and change.

So you see, using Season 1 repetition and mirroring to keep echoing that Pang's idealism for change and equality is futile, useless and ineffective, we also get one more repetition where just as Chanon said about Pang in the past showing up to prove Supot wrong and fight for change, we get Grace and her crew now taking Pang's place as our main characters ready to go fight for change and end Supot's tyranny. And you know what? I believe that we will get a successful ending because of this. I think this is beautiful, way to show that the world might be broken (especially with all that has been going in 2020: the riots in Thailand for equality and freedom, black lives matter in the US, NSARS in Nigeria and other countries that have been fighting for a change)  but we still can fight for change and equality. Having idealism may seem futile, but it isn't, it's needed and its what's going to change and break the system. So thank you for The Gifted Graduation for this message.

[agent-cupcake]

Hey AC! I love your blog and was wondering if I could get your opinion on something. I've seen some people complaining that Ingrid and Hilda are treated by the fandom, with Ingrid stans saying that Hilda is also racist towards Almyrans (which, granted, she is) but doesn't get nearly as much hate about it as Ingrid does. But personally I feel like their attitudes and the way they react towards Dedue/Cyril are wildly different and Hilda generally seems less hateful/irrational about it. Thoughts?

This is... kind of a touchy topic... I like it though! It’s worth discussing, especially since I feel like it’s broke criticism to simply deflect blame onto a character in order to prop up another.  Full and obvious disclosure: I very much dislike Ingrid and very much love Hilda. That said, I don’t think it’s fair to compare them for the sake of which is worse. I fall into the trap of character criticism through comparison far too often and it's not really valid unless you can fully explore each character in their own right beforehand. Which is why, while writing this, I came to the conclusion that the ways these two characters are interpreted and the reason people view their racist tendencies differently has far more to do with the characters themselves than their actual beliefs.

From first impressions to subsequent playthroughs, this is pretty much how I feel about Ingrid: she brings up her hatred of the Duscur people and Dedue unprompted and uncontested several times at the very beginning of the game, putting it front and center to her character. This is important, it sets a foundational component for how I could come to view her. According to her introduction, she is honorable and respectful, a model lady knight trope. But, as mentioned, she's really racist. Literally standing around thinking about how awful it is that Dimitri would trust a man of Duscur because they are all bad people. Yikes. And nobody calls her on it. Again, this is very important for perception. People judge Sylvain for his bad behavior in a much more harsh way than they do Ingrid for her vitriolic loathing for another classmate who we have seen as nothing but respectful. It's weird. And then, despite the fact that her close friend Sylvain was able to reason out that it’s not possible for the Duscur people to be at fault for the Tragedy, despite the fact that the prince of the country she supposedly hopes to serve with unwavering respect and loyalty has made it clear that he does not believe that Dedue or Duscar are responsible for the Tragedy, and despite the fact that Dimitri, her close friend and the one most affected by the Tragedy (seriously, she lost a guy she might have married and he lost his best friend, mother, and watched his father be killed in front of his eyes) continuously insists that neither Dedue nor Duscur are at fault, she loudly and openly believes that the ensuing massacre of Duscur was deserved and Dedue is inherently culpable simply because of his race. Her motivations for this hatred feel even more cheap considering her dogged hero worship for Glenn was born out of the fact that she was promised to him, making the fact that she’d use his death as reason enough for the destruction of countless innocent lives even more unsympathetic in my eyes. I mean, seriously, she was around 13 and he was older than her, how close could they have truly been? Dimitri says they were in love, but she was a child. Abandoning my modern sensibilities about age of consent or whatever, kids at that age don't have the emotional or mental capability. Maybe this is just nitpicking, but I have a very hard time caring about that relationship. But, if her actual justification is because of what happened to Faerghus as a result of the Tragedy and feels duty-bound as a knight to find justice through the systematic destruction of the Duscur people, then it just circles back to confusion considering the future leader of said country doesn't hold Duscur or Dedue responsible. The importance of perception comes in because despite these paper thin excuses and her seemingly willfully ignorant hatred, she is never challenged on her racist beliefs. The reason she seems to change her mind about Dedue and consider that maybe excusing a genocide is wrong stems from guilt that Dedue continuously comes to her aid in battle at the potential cost of his own life. I can understand, to a certain extent, why she might feel the way she does. But, again, I have such a hard time with any justification when nobody that she's close to is even nearly as hateful as her, there is plenty of evidence (evidence that the people close to her have found!) to provide a very reasonable counterclaim to Duscur's guilt, and that none of that even matters when it would require her to openly contradict the prince of her country to make the claim that Dedue was in any way complicit in the Tragedy. Which would be fine if she wasn't established as the model Lady Knight archetype, which also brings us into Ingrid's moral high horse. Admittedly, I hate the Lady Knight trope. I have a significant bias against these types of characters. However, I really do think that this moral crusade is where she lost me completely. Without even a shred of empathy or self awareness, she lectures Sylvain about his shitty behavior even though their circumstances are at least somewhat similar and he has his reasons (bad ones, maybe, but ones worth understanding if she actually cares about him), she lectures Felix about not being interested in knightly endeavors (an aspect of his character that is born of the trauma she has appropriated), and she lectures Claude about behavior that is befitting of a man in his position. Not because she cares about the girls Sylvain is hurting, not because she thinks there are any grave stakes from Felix choosing to do his own thing, and not because she knows that Claude's behavior affects his ability to lead, but because she doesn't like these behaviors and thinks they should be fixed. Yet, at the same time, she believes Dedue deserved to lose his family, country, and culture based on his birth and nobody ever does anything to morally correct her, it is something she eventually is forced to acknowledge on her own. It's frustrating, infuriating even, that the game lets her get away with being so grossly hypocritical. And, all the while, she is being painted as sympathetic. Again, I have a hard time feeling sympathy for her about Glenn, and I certainty don't feel sympathetic towards her issues about marriage because there's never any actual tension there. Of course she won't be forced to marry, she's a Lady Knight. Beyond being unsympathetic, I also find her massively unlikable. Awful design, poor voice direction, food-loving-as-a-personality-trait, the fact that she's written as one of those stock "feminist" characters who hate makeup and girly things until it benefits them, and constantly butting in on other characters to give her opinion without taking any criticism herself are all aspects that I just personally dislike. Ultimately, Ingrid being racist is only a symptom of the many reasons her character is one of my least favorites. Most of these points can be countered by someone who doesn't take issue with the things that annoy me and to point out that Ingrid DOES get over her racist beliefs. It's not fair to say that she doesn't change but, for me, the damage was already done by the time she became tolerable so I still have a hard time appreciating her. My assumption would be that there are a lot of other people who feel similarly to me regarding their dislike of Ingrid so they focus on one easy character flaw, her being racist at the beginning of the game, as a reason to validate their dislike of her overall.

On the other hand, Hilda's racism isn't a main trait of her character. It's related to her overarching character flaws, but she doesn't bring it up unprompted and can actually be pretty much missed without the Cyrill supports. Like you said, Hilda does seem less hateful and irrational, it doesn't take willful malice and an active rejection of reason for Hilda to dislike the Almyrans, they pose a genuine and provable threat to her family and territory, seemingly senselessly testing the borders and throwing away lives for the sake of conquest. To be clear, her "you're not like those OTHER Almyrans" schtick is legitimately nasty. Her behavior is gross and condescending and it really underscores the fact that Hilda is ignorant, lazy, inconsiderate, and incredibly comfortable in her privilege. She accepts what she's been told at face value because she's too lazy to look into it further. Cyrill does tell her she's stupid to think that way, though. Which is satisfying because Hilda in those supports is insufferable, it really highlights the worst aspects of her character, dismissive, manipulative, and very selfish. However, for me, she's also very likeable. I'm not interested in going over my opinions on her like I did with Ingrid as I don’t feel it’s as important to my point but a few reasons I really like her is because I think Hilda has a fantastic design, cute supports, amazing voice work, and is secretly sweet in a way that absolutely tickles my fancy. I am sure many people do not agree with me, which is fine. Additionally, just as Ingrid grows out of her racist beliefs, so does Hilda. They both end the game as more tolerant and caring people. Still, for the same reason a person could argue that Ingrid is actually great and I'm being unfair, they could argue that Hilda is terrible and I'm too biased. That's fair and true..... but I think the fact that Hilda is more generally appealing in conjunction with the less obvious nature of her racist attitude makes people less likely to dismiss her as a racist in the same way they do Ingrid. Unless they dislike Hilda, in which case, it’s all fair game.

Anyyyways, a main takeaway from this is that I highly doubt people are truly arguing on the individual basis of who's more racist, but that they're engaging in the age old waifu war. As with many characters in this game, it's easier to argue moral superiority when you can't quite articulate what you like or don't like about a character. Or, even worse, when you're arguing opinion. Even now, as is clear by reading this, I am arguing my opinion of why I don't like Ingrid. Not because she's racist, but because of the character traits and writing choices that make her unlikable to me. I like Hilda because, flaws and all, I find her to be compelling and enjoyable. From the people that I know, at least, that is basically how the Ingrid stans v Hilda racism argument is structured, even if they dress it up in different language.

By the by Hilda never talks about how the Almyrans deserve to be wiped out. I think that probably sours a lot of people's opinions of Ingrid no matter what happened afterward but that’s fine we can just pretend that didn’t happen

[o-w-quinlan]

Digimon Adventure: (2020) Final Thoughts

Considering I stopped reviewing this series episode by episode months ago, they’re more positive thoughts than you’d expect, though still not all that positive.

To summarize, this is an entertaining series with plenty of individual good aspects and great episodes that nevertheless leaves me cold as a whole. Much as I enjoyed following it week to week, I can’t say I recommend this series to anyone but hardcore Digimon fans, or hardcore fans of the wider “monster” genre.

Action

It felt appropriate to start with this, considering a focus on action was what the initial interviews promised, and they delivered in spades. It wasn’t perfect or too consistent, there were several times when the Digimon not evolving when they could just broke any tension the fights had, but this series had some of the best fights in any Digimon anime. Anything in the first 3 episodes, Greymon/MetalGreymon vs MetalTyranomon, SkullKnightmon vs Greymon and Garurumon, Mugendramon vs DoneDevimon, Mugendramon vs WarGreymon, Millenniumon vs the dragons, Omegamon vs Abbadomon Core… all of them among the best things the franchise has to offer in terms of action scenes, which after so many series where fights were solved by having a protagonist Digimon evolve and one-shotting the enemy, comes as a breath of fresh air (to be fair, this series also had a lot of that, but it had actual great fights to compensate).

Worldbuilding

Another thing promised in interviews was the use of Digimon from all over the franchise, and not only did they deliver, but they also included plenty of references to the “null canon” to enrich the experience for the most hardcore fans. The series made sure to constantly emphasize the savage nature of the Digital World, bringing back the Tamers worldbuilding of Digimon consuming weaker Digimon in hopes of achieving evolution. Along the way we saw a lot of allies fighting back against this status-quo, from things as overt as Leomon organizing a resistance or Petaldramon protecting weaker Digimon from the all-consuming Entmon, to less dramatic stuff like weak Digimon settling down to live together, or the mere presence of a restaurant where everyone can rest for a while of the hardships of their world.

The biggest flaw here was in how the series handled its antagonists. With very few exceptions, every single enemy Digimon in the series lacked dialog, whereas nearly every single ally Digimon could speak normally, and this disparity cheapened the whole thing, because instead of coming across as “this mentality is normal for this world”, it came across as just your normal “everyone lived together in harmony until the villains attacked”, which is very much not what the series was telling us.

Characterization

That brings us to the next point: the lack of personality for most villains. I joked elsewhere that Minotaurmon from episode 19 was the most compelling villain of the series, and that’s not completely a joke. Almost every single villain of the week was flat, plenty of the “main” villains were lacking in dialog (Algomon in the first few episodes, Nidhoggmon, Millenniumon) or turned mindless halfway through (Devimon, DarkKnightmon). Negamon/Abbadomon in the final episodes managed to benefit from this by being the embodiment of an “instinct”, but in general this meant a mook-of-the-week like Minotaurmon managed to be a highlight among the villains simply by having dialog and non-trivial desires.

But what of the protagonists? The popular opinion is that everyone is far blander than they were in the original series, and I agree. But rather than comparing it with the first series, let’s look at what it had to offer to us. Where in other Digimon series, the backstories and issues of the protagonists and their reactions to what’s going on around them make for most of the drama, in this series the drama comes from the villains trying to destroy everything, and for the most part that means the protagonists only need to be distinct and charming on their own, no necessity to create conflict between them. There is an overall character arc for all of them, though: accepting and interiorizing their new duties towards the world they had ended up stranded on, getting to know and love the Digital World. Was this well done? Not really.

Taichi and Takeru, for example, were so much the embodiment of the stock shonen hero that accepting their place in this new world didn’t really reveal anything about them we hadn’t already seen from their first few appearances.

Jou got stuck as an unfunny punchline 90% of the time, to the point of damaging his few “serious” moments in some of his focus episodes. His development of becoming assertive was compelling in theory, but it got muddled with so many unfunny and uncomfortable hotsprings jokes that the impact was lost.

Hikari started as an even more blatant plot-device “mysterious character” than she was in the original series, before unconvincingly changing to cheerful little girl afterwards (the whiplash between her in episode 33 and her in episode 34 was something else), and only really managing to settle into a compelling character in her last focus episode (58, defending the Digitamas from the Bakemon and SkullBaluchimon, which to be fair is a great episode and probably the best showcase for Hikari as a character in any product or continuity).

Koushiro was mostly fine, although we all remember the several times the series seemed to promise it might do something with him (his uneasiness when his family was mentioned, or that line about having to “face the darkness of his past” in the HerakleKabuterimon episode) that ended up being nothing.

Mimi is the fan-favorite, being charming in nearly all her appearances and having some of the best focus episodes, and it’s mostly deserved. If there’s anything I criticize from her, it’s that her focus episodes don’t really add up to anything.

Yamato was fine, started out as a stock shonen rival before becoming the single most chill “lone wolf” in any Digimon series, probably because of what I said before of the conflict between the protagonists no longer being the source of drama. He gets a slow development of caring only for his brother to starting to care for other Digimon for the sake of Sora and Gabumon to caring about the Digital World just as much as everyone else.

Sora was made fun of by a certain section of the fandom for having the worst focus episodes early on, and I agreed, but having finished the series I can’t get rid of the impression that her focus episodes, while perhaps not that good on their own, when taken as a whole explore her character the best of any other. Yeah, this mostly means exploring her compassion (these are not very multi-dimensional characters), but they deepen and deepen both her impact on the Digimon she saves and how she is impacted in turn by them, moving her away from saving others through her combat prowess to saving others by empathizing with the grief of another caring soul, and by the end I honestly ended up considering her my favorite character (despite none of her episodes making it to my list of favorites).

As for the Digimon… it’s following in the footsteps of other Digimon Adventure products by not really having much of interest for the Digimon themselves except for Tailmon.

Overall, for the most part the main characters were decent, but besides Mimi and ultimately also Sora, I don’t think they’re very memorable. All of them start out promising, but never really improved from that promising start (again, except for Sora).

Pacing

And now we get to the biggest problem of the series: Pacing. I’ve seen it stated elsewhere that this series was more episodic than most (any?) other Digimon series before it, and part of the backlash it got was from not being as serialized as fans expected it to be. This isn’t exactly true. From episode 16 (Eyesmon) to episode 24 (DoneDevimon), this series was as serialized as any other Digimon series has ever been, with nonstop escalation that demanded you keep watching it week after week. Then, from 25 to 35 (Angewomon) or 36 (BlitzGreymon), it pulled slightly back from that never-ending escalation, but was still pretty serialized. It was only afterwards that it became heavily episodic, and by that point it wasn’t expectations set up by previous series that hurt it in the eyes of the fandom, it was expectations set by this series itself in its first half.

Not that the episodes themselves were bad. Honestly, I found myself significantly more entertained by the episodic later half of the series than the serialized first half. Maybe it was because they didn’t feel the need to convince me they were the most exciting, tense thing I had ever seen when they were clearly not (hello, Mamemon episode), or maybe it was that there were more than just endless fights to them, but I normally ended up those episodes entertained and satisfied, whereas with a lot of episodes from Eyesmon to BlitzGreymon, I mostly just felt frustrated after watching them. I agree with the criticism that, when seen as a whole, breaking momentum so hard for so long after months of never-ending escalation wasn’t the right choice, but when seen week after week, I can’t see this change of approach as that bad of a thing.

Conclusion

I think that sums up the series for me. On a weekly basis, it’s pretty entertaining. It’s when seen as a whole that the problems really become clear. There’s been some speculation in the past few weeks of how much the current situation in the world might have impacted the series, but ultimately, I have to judge what actually happened, and I can’t help the impression that this series ultimately left me with nothing of substance after it was all said and done. Like, I enjoyed this more than, say, Appli Monsters, but Appli Monsters have things that stick with you after it’s over. Not so much here, unless you’re a hardcore fan that loves the Omegamon lore this added (which I am, btw; love that Omegamon lore). I don’t think I can recommend this series to anyone who isn’t a hardcore Digimon fan, or at least a hardcore fan of the wider “monster” genre.

One thing I’m grateful to this series for, though, it’s the commercial boost it has given the rest of the franchise. I’m not going to credit it for all the successes it currently has, after all the Card Game would have fell off by now if it wasn’t genuinely well-done and the Vital Bracelet happened because of years of the virtual pet division progressively building up its audience after it had nearly died off, but it’s undeniable they wouldn’t have sold as well without this anime advertising the franchise week after week. Next week, we’ll have the first episode of Digimon Ghost Game, the first time since 2001 that we have a Digimon series being immediately succeeded by another. If that isn’t a sign of how well the franchise is doing right now, I don’t know what is.

Favorite Episodes: 1 (Tokyo Digital Crisis), 6 (The Targeted Kingdom), 12 (Lilimon Blooms), 20 (The Seventh One Awakens), 32 (Soaring Hope), 42 (King of Inventors, Gerbemon), 49 (The God of Evil Descends, Millenniummon), 56 (The Gold Wolf of the Crescent Moon), 58 (Hikari, New Life)

[the-lightning-strikes-again]

Lotor seems to have a lot in common with Chloe Bourgeois from Miraculous Ladybug since they both seem to have great potential of getting redeemed, but the writers decided to screw them over and make them all the sudden villan for no reason even though both shows main protagonists have done far more questionable things than them, heck both shows even romantasize the protagonists creepy stalking behavior

Hi, anon. Thanks for the note! I’ve never watched Miraculous Ladybug, so I’m afraid I don’t know too much about a Lotor vs. Chloe comparison? I’m sorry, though, if that show triggered some unhappy memories about VLD!

In terms of protagonists being worse than the villains, I personally struggle with that statement for Voltron? VLD is complicated because the show starts by treating war/battle as a fantasy violence video game. Like, the Galrans are mostly robots or one-dimensional soldiers who are torturing, killing and conquering. So our protagonists are already light-years ahead of that incredibly low baseline. And it’s easy to cheer Team Voltron on when you know they’re just blowing up robots or a pure-evil villain. It’s that whole fantasy violence thing without accountability. Then, the show gets increasingly more complex in terms of the politics, and the costs of war (with Ulaz’s death, for example), and the humanization of the enemy. But in this environment, our protagonists are still a bunch of ill-prepared teenagers running with scissors. Like, the original paladins of Voltron were leaders and rulers with a history of navigating wars and alliances. These paladins? They grew some over the show, yes, but they still had to go from playing a video game and screwing up flight simulators (or living a royal life in peace-time), to handling actual death and collateral damage in an active combat theater. I doubt Galaxy Garrison had training in their curriculum for how 17-year-olds should handle that. And all of the other older authority figures around Team Voltron and Lotor just totally and utterly failed them.

So I think my frustration with Team Voltron has cooled a lot over the years. From an in-show perspective, they were surrounded by supposedly competent advisors and intelligence officers who should have been able to at least question certain decisions or behaviors. But they did nothing constructive to prepare the paladins for war besides training them to kill.

And in the case of s5-s6, all of these experts and allied civilizations gave Team Voltron the green light on an official alliance with an empire they had seen brutally torture/experiment, enslave, and colonize. Actual weeks had passed between s5-s6. And yet, we never saw Kolivan warning the team that this was a really bad compromise for the Voltron Coalition to make; we never saw the paladins having to handle upset questions from their vast allies, who no doubt had recent memories of trauma at the hands of Galran military officers. But the instant Lotor is revealed to have also been a quintessence vampire in some way, like every other Galran officer with a body count they’d allied with, that’s the uncrossable line for Krolia, Coran, Kolivan watching this all go down—? Like?

When Shiro linked the Voltron Coalition to Galran military intelligence, what the heck did they think all of these soldier reports included? Military commanders happily sipping cocktails with locals on a beach? So I don’t think it quite hit the paladins yet that they weren’t working with uwu morally unproblematic people with easily forgivable pasts or a clear record of trying to make up for that past. And Team Voltron had zero guidance for how to navigate pursuing justice/reparations while also not leading to another war or worse outcome. Ultimately, even all of these concerned authority figures forgot about the show’s most plot-important victims that they were fine with dissolving the alliance over.

(RIP Patrulius in the harvesting pod, did you ever get out??).

The incompetency of elder authority figures also feeds into my frustration about Lance’s character, and how it was once again Coran in s8 who pushed him into this weird 1950s dating construct where Allura isn’t an agent over her own body. Like, Lance is still pretty young here, mimicking all the toxic masculinity he’s picked up on, and Coran’s behavior is supposed to be…better. Like, even Lance himself was uncomfortable in that scene, and that was wild to watch.)

And speaking of the ongoing failures of authority in the story, I still can’t believe that Coran didn’t cut in on Lotor in season 5, even, to warn him that exposure to the rift was known to make people lose control over their darkest thoughts. I could plausibly believe Allura didn’t think to question this because she was doe-eyed over Lotor and desperate for anything that could secure peace. But it’s not like Coran, who is supposed to be a king’s advisor, didn’t see this happen with Zarkon and Honerva. He could have questioned Lotor’s plans, and that actually would have been fascinating. Because if Coran, being a king’s advisor, had employed that kind of logical foresight, we might have seen something unsettling in Lotor that could more clearly foreshadow a fatal flaw he wasn’t working on (you know, like that classic Icarus Syndrome). But this show just didn’t question itself or self-reflect, lol.

So I don’t think anything Team Voltron did was them necessarily intending to be cruel where they wanted trillions to die in the name of justice, but their ignorance and the blatant inaction/silence or questionable guidance from anyone with higher credentials or experience resulted in some very uneasy outcomes.

But those outcomes were what this show wanted to keep the drama rolling.

I can’t speak for Chloe’s arc and the reason for why she misses the mark, but Lotor’s fall resulted in another several episodes of big robot battles and extended drama to meet a predetermined 78-episode directive. And given that the production team complained about having no breaks at all through the development of this show, I doubt they had time to weigh the cost of every decision they made to keep drama going. (I mean, we saw several other haphazard, concerning things happen since the beginning of the show; the colony twist wasn’t an isolated incident of plot over-complication and questionable handling of topics a;sdjfasf.)

I do think it’s easy to stay bitter about things and to let that poison everything, including even other shows. And I don’t think that’s a mentally healthy place for me to be—even though, clearly, I do still have frustrations with the art of story construction, lol. So I guess... canon is someone else’s story, but I do have control over how I respond and how I might try to tackle hard topics in my own works. And I’ve got to work with that.

I hope for what it’s worth that you can still find things worth enjoying in your other show, and that you can explore the characters and the stories in ways that are meaningful and feel right to you. It might help as well to look for shows and media that explicitly do have redemption arcs for a main antagonist or villain, or that handle traumatized or abused characters well.

[kitkatopinions]

While thinking about the flaws of the main four protagonists in RWBY, I realized something. You can pretty clearly trace the flaws of three of the four main characters back to their early roots, whether or not the show addresses them as flaws currently. But with Blake, you can’t really do that.

TL;DR at the bottom

Ruby started the show being over-confident and reckless. She was a combat school student with only two years of learning under her belt when she took on Torchwick (although she may not have known who he was.) She easily assumes her team can handle Torchwick and the White Fang, wanders off alone in Mountain Glenn, charges after Torchwick again in the Fall of Beacon, travels to Haven to fight against Cinder without understanding any of the particulars and seemingly with no plan, and unnecessarily leads her team into stealing an Atlas plane while literally telling Qrow that she doesn’t care what he thinks and basically tells him to go along with it or leave. Any of those events could’ve resulted in her death, and it was often - not always, but often - due to outside forces that she survived (Glynda rescuing her, Oobleck realizing about the underground city, tons of fellow Beacon students + Atlas military taking out Grimm after the train crash, a Grimm eating Torchwick, Qrow taking out Grimm on the path to Haven, Qrow saving them from Tyrian, Cordovin aiding them after their unnecessary actions result in a massive Grimm attack.) So when she refuses to accept a no-win situation, traps a city in the direct line of Salem’s fire, sends out a message to everyone that might cause mass panic directly condemning Ironwood for trying to save as many as he can, and then doesn’t have a plan to actually save anyone in Mantle or Atlas, it’s very frustrating, but it’s not surprising or hugely out of character. It’s easy to track this. Ruby’s over-confidence, recklessness, and stubbornness started small and with her only striving to be a hero whether she was ready or not. And left unchecked, it just continued to grow. Weiss started the show being judgmental, rude, and prone to pettiness. Although she seemed to open up quickly to her team and these flaws seemed to die down considerably in volumes 4-5, it’s not exactly out of left field for her to act the way she does towards Whitley in volumes 7 and 8. In V1 Weiss judged Ruby as a child who didn’t know what she was talking about that had taken something from Weiss (the leader role,) and therefore Weiss acted like Ruby was a nuisance and treated her coldly and aggressively. She was hugely judgmental towards Sun, and Blake as well the minute she learned Blake was a Faunus and a former White Fang member, and even after she decided Blake was fine anyway (so badly handled) she made it clear that she wasn’t accepting Sun just yet. Despite any growth she might’ve had with her team, we never see her change outside of that. It becomes clear it’s still a problem, when Weiss is confronted by her considerably younger brother in volumes 7 and 8. Weiss judged him as a child who didn’t know what he was talking about that had taken something from her (her position as CEO of the company) and therefore, Weiss acted like he was a nuisance and treated him coldly and aggressively. Weiss showed no sympathy to him despite knowing his home life. It’s easy to track this. Her pettiness, judgmental tendencies, and aggressiveness never went away, they just stopped being directed at Ruby, Jaune, or the rest of her friends. Yang’s flaws are always easily tracked. She’s got a big temper, charges into things without thinking, and she’s pushy. We see this from the start as she pushes Ruby to make friends despite her clear discomfort and explodes at Grimm for damaging her hair. This continues on pretty clearly in the first couple of seasons, including Yang refusing to give Blake space, and yelling at her with red eyes and pushing her when she wasn’t listening. The funny thing about Yang is that most of this gets addressed and started getting worked through. Yang charging into battle and over-relying on her semblance are combat driven problems that are pointed out to her by her father and worked on to overcome. Yang is much calmer and patient than she had to be with Raven, continues to be patient and understanding with Qrow and Oz when she finds out they’ve been keeping things from the group in volume five, she listens to and accepts Weiss’s advice, and doesn’t lash out at Blake at all when she returns. Although she was still clearly the same person, she was also clearly working on her flaws and trying to be better. However, this seems to backslide in the latest three seasons, with her acting aggressive and not even trying to understand Oz, acting aggressive and not even trying to understand the Ace Ops, pushing Ren to talk about his feelings and then getting angry at him for expressing ones she doesn’t think he should feel, launching into battle without thinking repeatedly and seeming to not really take the situation seriously sometimes. This is frustrating to me, but it’s easy to track, too. Yang was working on her flaws, but has recently backslid into old habits.

But Blake? Blake’s early flaws were things like taking too much responsibility on her shoulders, being unable to let things go, running from her trauma, and lashing out at her friends. Many of her stronger traits were connected to her flaws, and were things like standing up for herself and others, having a strong moral code, and being responsible. (NOTE: Her arc and the allegories to real world racism were absolutely mishandled, making things like her strong moral code - like ‘stealing is always wrong’ - problematic in context. However, for the sake of this argument, I’m referring to her strong moral code as a strong trait as in it was something distinct about her character that we were meant to see as a good trait.) Blake had firm standards, like ‘stealing is wrong,’ and ‘I can’t wait for others to handle things for me, I have to handle it myself.’ During the course of seasons 4 and 5, her character arc was centered around learning to embrace her strong traits without falling into her bad ones. Like Yang, many of her flaws were directly addressed during these seasons, Sun and her parents helping her see that she can rely on and trust others, Blake expressing herself without lashing out, Blake confronting her past head-on in the forms of Adam and Ilia rather than running from it, and finally letting go of much of her own guilt and self-deprecation at the same time. The funny thing about Blake now is that she’s still showing flaws, they just aren’t the flaws she used to have that all pretty much got tied up in a bow, pun unintended. Instead, many of the flaws Blake seems to be showing now are in direct contrast to her former strong traits. She doesn’t stand up for herself, leaving it to Weiss or Yang to speak up for her. She doesn’t take responsibility, putting it on Ruby’s shoulder and begging her to help her in fights. She doesn’t have the extreme moral code, being one hundred percent fine with stealing, beating up law enforcement officers, fighting against the government, etc. Like, not to say that those things are always bad, just that Blake thought they were always bad, not that long ago. This is why, out of all the main characters, Blake is the most upsetting to me. I can hate what Ruby, Yang, or Weiss do, but Blake doesn’t even feel like the same character anymore. Adding onto that, she doesn’t seem like a powerful or interesting fighter anymore either when she used to be very good and very interesting to watch. This makes her just... Feel like a chess piece that CRWBY has say things every now and again to sound good. She feels like another weapon that Yang can just use sometimes. It’s honestly hard to see, because Blake could’ve been a really great character, and now she doesn’t feel like a character at all.

TL;DR It’s easy to track the flaws of Ruby, Yang, and Weiss all throughout the show, but Blake’s recently displayed flaws directly go against her early characteristics. This makes it feel like her whole character is different.

[sujiescraps]

This will be a post about personal opinion and ranting. It will end on a positive note though UvU

Recently I’ve come back to Sonic stuff. Been thinking about it for awhile now which is focused on one character (and the famous ship involved with that character) : Amy Rose.

Like the ship SonAmy, I’ve had an up and down history with her. However, by now it’s safe and secure to say that I stan her.

The undeserving hatedom she gets, at least from the western side, is overwhelming compared to many other characters in the franchise(Sonic, Shadow, Tails, Knuckles, Rouge, Blaze, Silver, even Cream) to the point that it’s ridiculous.

As somebody who’s from the west and grew up during the 2000s, there were some of the worst portrayals of Amy, and the Archie comics(liked by many of my peers back then) with Sally(who didn’t just leech from Amy but also Tails; two major SEGA characters and as Sonic’s love interest), and just how they negatively twisted Amy and other canon characters were downplayed so that SaTAM/comic exclusive characters can look better, fed my frustration. Seriously, the majority of it felt like a fanfic full of OCs. It’s fine in the realm of fan made, but Archie comics are an official professional company where that stuff shouldn’t have happened. The reboot was better but it felt like it was too late and the damage was already done.

I’ll admit even the games could’ve done better handling Amy, but for sure, did way better than the comics. One game (I know there’s more) that I’ll rant about is Sonic Mania. I like the classic trio(they’re my favorite out of all the teams) but even I’ll admit there’s negativity that comes with it(one of them is alienating Amy), but that comes with everything I like. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Amy should’ve deserved to be a playable character because she is a core character of the franchise itself, and that it felt unfair especially since they added Mighty and Ray(two more distant characters) to the roster.

Two games I definitely feel should get credit for what to like about Amy is in SA1 and Sonic heroes. In both games it shown her leadership, support, kindness, optimism, determination, and even independence.

IMHO, SA2 could’ve done better when it came to Amy, but it did feature one of her top moments. I’d dare to say it’s legendary. She was genuinely able to convince Shadow to give humanity a chance even with their flaws, which made Shadow do the moral thing. Technically, it was her who made the tides turn.

One of my favorite things about Amy is that the little things, that every person can do, matter.

Then again, when having a favorite character in any series, of course you’d have strong opinions and want to see more of them, but we should keep in mind that a company (like SEGA) will go with what’s desired on the market. It sucks, especially when it’s something you didn’t want, but that’s how it works.

About the classic trio being “in the way” of Amy I don’t think she’s any threat of them as some think , aren’t all the teams (Dark, Babylon, even Rose) in trios? It’s not just the classic. I think another thing which has been done before, that while Amy isn’t on Team Sonic, she’s the leader of her own team. There’s times I think that’s better because 1) proves her independence 2) proves she’s capable of leadership 3) Amy has been on team sonic BUT just about every time, she’s been outshined by the other three guys(SA2, Riders, Zero gravity); this doesn’t just apply to Amy, throughout many most series, a lot of female characters even the main female lead don’t get the credit as their male companions. I know, Amy doesn’t need to be flashy, and her moments regardless who her companions are depending on the game are good. Given that it’s a video game series and the main focus should be the gameplay, I think that being her own playable character(SA1) or being on her own team(Heroes) has shown the best of her. Ofc having her teamed up with Team Sonic is great too; with that direction she’d take her rightful role as the main female lead. Like she should! (Note: I don’t know every Sonic game or all of its plots, so I’m just taking what I’ve seen weather it was playing the games or watching YT videos of the same thing)

IMO saying that SonAmy is toxic or Amy being an ill, crazy fan girl who’s a yandere and stalker is superficial. A lot of detractors of this ship generally blame Amy for how bad it is, when in reality, some of it is on Sonic’s part too; He has been proven to be reckless. I’ll definitely say that SonAmy is not the ideal ship in my POV, but there’s enough of this ship that’s unique and interesting between the two, which makes me like the dynamic or be invested.

The Japanese(the source and real canon) side already confirmed that Amy is Sonic’s romantic interest. In fact, her concept and creation from day one was to make a girlfriend for Sonic. Even how she’s portrayed in general is far better. Despite cultural reasons and values, the core idea for the series, especially the characters, should be solid to viewers everywhere. Or else a noticeable chunk of the fandom will get the wrong interpretation.

While the years of misinterpretations and poor portrays are irreversible, now for a couple years Amy has been put in a better light, the Archie comics out of the way, the promising hopes of her focus in Frontiers, the fans who already appreciate her and new Sonic fans for the years to come, perhaps they’ll be a new era that will give what Amy truly deserves.

[sepublic]

King’s Progress

           In all honesty, I feel like King is amongst Luz and Amity as having the most clear-cut, sense of progression and development amongst the cast in Season 1?

           Thinking back on Really Small Problems, I really love its portrayal of King here… And, well, ALL of the episodes centering on King, really! Some might say that it’s repetitive to keep having episodes where he makes a mistake and apologizes, and while I can see that… Personally, I’m not too bothered because said episodes are always entertaining, I always love King content, but also…

           There’s a very clear sense of progression amongst King’s mistakes, as the season goes along? If RSP were Episode 11, King would’ve likely chosen to spray Willow and Gus with ‘Obivioso’s potion and then reaped what he sowed afterwards. But he doesn’t, and King genuinely surprised me with how mature he was in that episode… He was still immature ultimately, but you could tell he was still approaching things in a much more mature fashion than in prior episodes. King actively chooses not to make Willow and Gus disappear, but he DOES still hold onto the potion… And while it was an accident for them to ‘disappear’, King nevertheless takes advantage of the situation now that it’s happened. It’s not entirely his fault, but he still could’ve made amends any time and fixed what happened- Again, even if it wasn’t totally his fault here.

           I guess you could say it’s a lesson on how even if one doesn’t necessarily cause an unfortunate situation… It’s still one’s responsibility to help someone out of it, and/or fix that situation- Even if you benefit from it! Because again, even if you weren’t exactly responsible for what happened, it’s still a little unethical to choose to keep benefitting from that incident. I suppose it hearkens back to that ‘With great power comes great responsibility’ quote from Spiderman… How in some versions of the story, Peter chose to look the other way because the robber offered him something for his silence. Peter wasn’t the one who robbed anyone, he’s just a bystander- But he still chooses to passively benefit from the incident instead of doing the right thing, and calling the cops. And as we infamously know, Peter suffers the consequences when the problem directly affects him, too, and kills Uncle Ben.

           King’s dilemma in Really Small Problems is a similar situation. He didn’t make the potion, he didn’t take it from Obvioso, and he didn’t willingly use it- But there was still something he could’ve easily done about the situation, but he chose not to because he benefitted otherwise. And as a result, King still shoulders blame and accountability… Which again, ties back into how circumstances may encourage people to do bad decisions (like Obivioso handing over the potion), but it’s still up to an individual to act on those choices in the end… And King acknowledges this, in another surprising act of genuine maturity!

           And, I like that- As I said, it’s a sense of progression. A few episodes earlier, and King would’ve willingly caused the mess, instead of just knowingly benefitting from it, when otherwise he could end the whole thing right then and there (or at least THOUGHT he could). This gets me onto Sense and Insensitivity, and it’s an interesting parallel to The Intruder… Both are King-centric episodes, that focus and expand upon the seemingly inconsequential B-plot of the previous episode! In Episode 3, King competes with Eda on who’s the better teacher… And then in the next episode, we see that he’s actually serious about wanting to mentor Luz, or at least feel listened by someone! His motives are given more depth!

           Similarly, Escape of the Palisman has King take advantage of Eda’s mental state for his own gain, only to get her into trouble… Then we have Sense and Insensitivity, which focuses on a similar mistake. However, it’s different… Because in the previous episode, King still put Eda into physical danger by taking her outside. Whereas in SaI… Again, what King does IS cold and harsh towards Luz. But in the end, it’s only emotional damage- He’s not jeopardizing Luz herself by getting her into potential trouble with the authorities or anything. I mean, Luz DOES end up getting kidnapped by Piniet and thrown into his Writer’s Block, but that was never part of the agreement King made with Piniet… At least not knowingly. The possibility for this could’ve been in fine print, but in this scenario I feel it’s less the result of King apathetically disregarding others, and more him just being a general dum-dum, so I’m willing to overlook it.

           What’s interesting is that King is upfront about how he hurt Luz, to her face. In the previous episode, he took advantage of Eda’s physical prowess. Here, he takes advantage of Luz’s creative prowess… In the previous episode, King learns not to make others do things for him, nor violate their personal autonomy. In SaI, King then builds upon this lesson, by recognizing that even if he isn’t going to make Luz write for him or anything… He’s still being cold and insensitive and hurting her emotionally. Each time King makes a mistake, it’s still a new lesson in its own way, built upon past lessons… Each mistake of his is less and less egregious, and more understandable and mature. He’s a repeatedly-flawed character and certainly not perfect… But what’s interesting about seeing him continue to make mistakes, is that you can still clearly see how King is at least managing to do better than last time! His mistakes become more and more understandable, with each one he makes.

           Progress isn’t always smooth. It can be messy, and fraught with constant mistakes. But it’s worth noting that while King doesn’t retain the ENTIRE lesson with each mistake… He still clearly learns something in the end, and applies it. King doesn’t perfectly apply what he’s learned and not to its fullest extent, but you get the sense that he’s trying, and that each lesson teaches him that while he technically didn’t make the same mistake as LAST time, King himself is still liable to certain other mistakes. He’s learning, more and more, how to be more responsible and less selfish. Going from outright using someone physically, to using their ideas… To not knowingly causing a mess, but still choosing to benefit from it when King thinks he has the power to end it otherwise.

           Like Lilith, King isn’t perfect. He tries to learn the lesson in a way that’s most convenient to him- Like that time he took advantage of Eda’s cursed state, and when Eda asks him what happened, King denies his guilt! Like Lilith he definitely learned his lesson somewhat and won’t make the same mistake, but he’s going to otherwise pretend he’s innocent to others. King willingly ignores that it’s not just enough that he learned not to cause a mess, but that he needs to also actively improve upon things when he has the power to do so- Ironic, given King’s frustrations with a lack of agency! He tries to retain the lesson in a way where he minimizes the amount of mistakes he made… But even so, King still manages to learn something. He still recognizes that he had to have made a mistake, and so there had to have been something that was learned… And while King can make it easier for himself by trying to minimize the extent of his lesson (and thus the realization of how far his mistakes went), it still says a lot that he keeps on trying and improving, each time.

           Speaking of which, I have to wonder if part of the reason why people don’t really notice King’s development is… Well, aside from OTHER things distracting from his progress (like Eda and Lilith’s relationship or the entirety of Understanding Willow, understandably), in hilariously meta sense? King is lowkey dismissed in real life as just being the fluffy, animal sidekick trope… A lot of people don’t stop to consider that hey, he does have legitimate flaws that he does work upon, that King has a clear sense of progression throughout the season, and in many ways he parallels Lilith, of all people! It’s just like how in-universe, King is overlooked and dismissed as JUST a cute and fluffy pet… In real life, a lot of people do the same and don’t bother considering his potential depth!

           It’s kind of the reverse of Infinity Train’s Book 2… How a lot of people noted at the beginning that Lake was clearly a narrative reflection of Jesse. But then near the end, one of our main antagonists ends up acknowledging this fact, in-universe, in the worst way possible- By noting how the Infinity Train possibly set Lake up to function as a ‘reflection’ of Jesse in the metaphorical sense, there by transplanting what was acknowledged in real life, and bringing it up in-universe! In this scenario, King brings up how he’s often overlooked and dismissed as just the fluffy, cute sidekick… And lo in behold in real life, a lot of people overlook King and see him as JUST that trope, instead of at least that trope and more!

           (Not to cast stones at anyone or imply that someone is less of a fan, or meaner, for not considering King’s potential depth as a character. There’s a LOT this show has to offer, so it’s understandable that some things are missed out upon, because one’s mind can only take in and process so much. I just think it’s an amusing coincidence is all, and I don’t think anyone is actively to blame, or at least not malicious nor terrible for it!)

[movienotesbyzawmer]

August 30: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

(previous notes: Mission: Impossible III)

I bet the powers that be at the Mission: Impossible movie factory didn't lose any sleep over the stupid colon in the title that screws everything up. I mean, just look at that up there with the colon after my date, then the colon in the middle of the OG title, and then it's like, well, you can do whatever you want with punctuation but we're adding a subtitle after it now and you just have to deal with it. On posters and stuff it's just "Mission: Impossible" and then underneath those words they put "Ghost Protocol" so they don't have to deal with it. What a mess. I tell you it is a damn mess is what it is.

Anyway, we have arrived at the M:I movie that, more than any of the others, just really hit the spot for me when I saw it upon its original release. I saw it at the end of a frustrating and tiring work day and it was exactly what the doctor ordered. At some point in the middle I realized that I was enjoying it thoroughly without having to tolerate the kinds of flaws that were apparently part and parcel of this kind of movie. Maybe there were flaws that I just wasn't registering. We'll soon see.

Continuing the tradition of making very hip choices for the directing duties, here we have the live-action directorial debut of Brad Bird, who started off directing episodes of The Simpsons before moving on to no less than The Iron Giant and The Incredibles. Dude had two Oscars on his mantle by the time he showed up for this. Press play already!

Um Sweet Christ those opening shots look gook in 4K like HOO boy

Whoa, neat opening where Sawyer from Lost is chased off the top of a building in Budapest but his jacket deploys an air mattress right as he almost-hits, but then he's shot by Lea Seydoux in an alley, rat-a-tat-tat with the action here, like what is up

Simon Pegg is back, and he's being tricksy with the tech in a prison! He's opening cell doors and the prisoners are surprised and delighted with that twist! He plays them a jazz standard on the intercom and Ethan Hunt suavely emerges from one of the cells. Fun silly things ensue involving Ethan's rebellious and confident independent strategy and a small riot that seems kind of like a bar fight.

He has made a pal in the joint and he's breaking him out. Some kind of cool tech creates a really sweet vortex-y hole in the floor and they are swooped up by their helpers, it's fun.

We're introduced to Paula Patton who is a new team member, and then the credits roll, and they are spirited in a way that recalls the first movie, also showing real scenes from later in the movie.

Flashback to the thing that was happening with Sawyer shows how that botched operation, something about a file and a courier, got Sawyer killed because lots of bad guys were all over the place there. AR contact lens technology figures prominently, and that is a good idea (plus we totally might have those soon, right?).

0:18:16 - Once again we begin the movie without the leading lady from the previous one, but we're starting to get an explanation here. Or just a tease of one I guess.

And quickly we get a sneaky-style self-destructing message that sets up that Ethan has to disguise himself as a specific Russian and sneak into the actual Kremlin. This movie 100% gets what a Mission: Impossible movie is supposed to be.

This time, they aren't using fancy masks or voice shifter things, just costumes and a fake mustache. They comment about that in the dialogue but don't explain why.

0:24:52 - Dialogue mixed SO QUIET here I have no idea what SP just said. It seems like you're supposed to have heard it.

But that is quickly forgotten when they use the coolest spy gadget of them all - a screen that is placed in a corridor that makes the guy at the other end of the corridor think it’s the corridor, but it's a screen and SP & Ethan are hiding behind it and it is super super neato I love it

Then just when it's cool that that is going well, it's suddenly cool how NOT well it's going because someone is spying on their spycraft! The thing they were going to heist isn't there, and someone deliberately makes their comms thing be heard by the bad guys!

And THEN we see something we really didn't think we'd see and it is kind of mind blowing - Ethan escapes from the Kremlin with a very smooth quick-change of his disguise that we see him do in all one shot… but then the Kremlin totally explodes and it explodes all over Ethan as he's running away! It looks amazing!

Right after that there is some fun with subtitles - Ethan is in the hospital all damaged and concussed and stuff, and the news is talking about the obvious big story, and the subtitles are in Russian. At first I was like, "hey is my home theater tech busted?" but no, the subtitles become gradually more in English as Ethan starts to come out of it. Then we see with subtitles that Ethan is reading lips about the police people that want to be bad guys to Ethan.

After Ethan escapes, we shift to a wholesome-looking Russian family we haven't seen before. The scene is a nice little piece of drama about how the dad sees the Kremlin news and wants to get the family out of there, and very quickly that goes south and thugs have them all at gunpoint, it's nicely done

Ethan is being extracted by two new characters played by accomplished, Oscar-nominated actors Tom Wilkinson and Jeremy Renner… the conversation is dire and I don't want to type during it gahhh gah gah gah I am watching because holy shit this goes south too! TW informs Ethan that the DoD is going to frame him for blowing up the Kremlin and his only choice is to escape. He's telling him HOW to escape in a funny way, but they are attacked and it's visually very interesting and TW is headshot and they are in the water and it is such bad news for Ethan and his new colleague played by Mr. Renner, I probably typoed a lot during that because it was so hard to look away.

So Ethan is on the hook for the terrorist attack of the century and he's being chased by a little battalion of thugs who just shot that important spy boss, and he's in Russia. It is very not good for Ethan.

He's with JR and JR is playing a different character for him. He's a bookish analyst guy who feels very out of place in action-land.

We're learning about the main bad guy, Hendricks, who was the guy that screwed everything up in the Kremlin. He's a super-smart theoretical physicist or something who has big, well-thought-out ideas about destroying the world with nukes, and he took nuke codes from the Kremlin. So things are just really really hairy and it's effective storytelling is what I'm saying.

Also effective is that they met up with SP and PP on a neat secret train car thing that is well appointed with spy gear

And VERY VERY EFFECTIVE is what happens next, which is a series of establishing shots of Dubai which KILL ON MY TV. I am glad I have a 4K panel, kids. This begins what I recall as being an extended sequence of sweet-ass suspense. Ethan has to break into a server room by climbing the outside of the 130th floor of the Burj Khalifa using glove-gadget tech that will hopefully work. There is at least some actual Tom Cruise clinging to the side of that building. It's so cool looking. And to make matters worse, a dust storm approaches! Or should I say "to make matters even cooler looking". Yes I should. Please read that part.

Paula Patton's character seems underdeveloped so far, especially compared to her teammates Simon Pegg and Jeremy Renner.

Jeez you guys, if you like suspenseful action scenes about barely surviving climbing a skyscraper this movie is for you.

1:05:34 - In the middle of a tense conversation we see that they were using the maskmaker but it wasn't working. They just don't want us to have mask fun in this movie. They hate mask fun. Why does Brad Bird hate mask fun.

Oh then this scene which is neat - bad guys are meeting with LS… but Ethan and JR are taking their place, and PP is taking LS's place for the real bad guys one floor down. The movie explains it better than me, but it is pretty exciting, the two meetings happening at the same time with opposite trickery.

Hah, SP does a sweet fake-hand trick to get the diamonds from the bad guys so he can get them to Ethan and JN, and JN is doing the thing where he uses the contact lens tech… gosh why are you even reading this, just watch the movie. I really like the tricksy espionage.

It all falls apart because LS spots the contact lens in JR's eye. The plot is moving along in a way that, I'm once again noticing, would normally require more half-assed-ness. It's just a solid spy plot. Which probably makes these notes more boring. Poor you.

LS dies by getting kicked out of the open window of the Burj Khalifa with a brewing sandstorm in the background! Neat looking!

And then a thing where Ethan is in a thick dust cloud and he's tracking the important paper thing with his tracker device, and it starts moving quickly at him and we realize just as it's too late that it's in a car that's gonna run him over! Then that mechanic gets used in a car chase in a dust storm, which we don't see very often outside a Mad Max movie, and that climaxes in a really cool looking collision, followed by the reveal that one of the nuclear code bad guys was Hendricks in a supermask. So we DO like mask fun after all! Except why do we care that it was Hendricks?

A scene where JR is confronted for maybe being a double-crosser has a beautifully choreographed gun-get-grabbity-grab thing that was probably super fun for the actors.

1:27:05 - JR tells a story that at first we think is that family we saw briefly almost scramming, but no, he's talking about Ethan, and what seems to be a story about Ethan's wife (Julia from the last movie) getting killed in Croatia, and Ethan killing six Serbians for revenge, and that's why he was in prison in the beginning? It's still a little mysterious and kind of complicated. It doesn't quite fit with what we think we know.

Dubai imagery is pretty. I have been to Dubai. I am standing by for your marriage proposals now.

I didn't really follow how we got to this point, but Ethan went for a walk and met with some underworld Dubai person and made a deal the ended up with a huge cache of spy gear and a private plane to India. I went to India like right after Dubai. I have my own car and a job kind of so you might need to calm your hormones at this point.

A probing exchange with PP establishes that indeed Ethan's story is that he killed the men who killed his wife. Doesn't really seem legit, though. There's more to the story, clearly.

One of the tech things they play with on the plane is the most magic-seeming one. It is a suit that looks like tight chain-mail, and it floats over a cart, like a magic carpet that you wear.

We're introduced to Brij Nath, whose name I had to look up so I could tell you how it is spelled. He has an access code that they need, which seems like they just kind of simplified the situation, and he's one of those only-kinda-bad bad guys that's really just a pawn, for our heroes as well as for these storytellers.

The wearable magic carpet gadget is fun and funny! SP has to remote control JR wearing the floaty-suit and JR is trying not to freak out too badly, and maybe on purpose it recalls the scene from the first movie where Tom Cruise hovers parallel to the floor.

Hendricks is now in a secret room in the place where they all are, and he has a bad-guy briefcase computer and orders some subordinates to do something with a virus, and I don't actually understand what's really happening but am I to believe that Ethan et al are thwarting literal nuclear terrorism here in Mumbai? Right here at this pleasant party at the palace of an only kinda-bad bad guy?

1:48:30 - Ha, the climax of the wearable magic carpet thing involves JR barely surviving by doing an acrobatic stunt that seems oddly intuitive and satisfying. You'll just have to watch the movie to know what I mean.

The spy-tech car they have is rad.

They fail to prevent the launch of a nuclear missile! We see it come out of the sub and start missiling toward its destination which we have learned is California! Hendricks mutters things about how that should get the ball rolling making world powers hate each other and nuke each other and may there be peace on Earth, he also, yes, says that.

A chase on foot has Ethan and Hendricks suddenly brawling on an exotically elegant robotic parking ramp. Platforms move around mechanically and transfer unmanned cars to different areas, and it is against that video gamey backdrop that Ethan and Hendricks struggle to get that sinister suitcase which is all bouncing around that environment. Unexpectedly, Ethan's hope of grabbing it is thwarted by Hendricks suicide-jumping down several stories! We see it! He definitely does that! Ethan drives a car off a thing to follow him, plummeting down hood-first, and the airbag saves him! He gets the briefcase and barely saves the day in time!

Again a denouement making it very clear that everything is really shockingly okay and tidied up. Even the thing with Ethan revenge-killing Serbians and the thing with his wife is cleaned way up, but with an elegance and sweetness that elevates this movie above the others. She's not dead after all, just fake-dead for her protection. And they're only where they are in Seattle so he can glimpse her lovingly across a marina.

So! I feel strongly that this is the best Mission: Impossible movie! It is an extraordinarily deftly-constructed spy thriller! It's got all the funnest types of things that are in the other movies, and other fun spy thrillers, but with so much less garbage! They did a great job and they should be proud.

[bill-beauxquais]

Blogging my Bravely Default II Playthrough - Chapter 2

Here we are for a new chapter!

As usual, spoilers for up to chapter 3′s title card below the cut (so all of chapter 2, none of chapter 3), you have been warned.

Overall opinion: The game is still fun to play and while I sometimes laments being so slow, I like that I can play a lot without feeling like I’m goind too fast. On a story standpoint, I’m a bit bummed that this chapter didn’t really make any real progress in its main thematics, but on a gameplay level, it was fun.

Gameplay: I talked about there being more strategy in battle already, but I realise I didn’t mention why. Compared to previous games, it seems like enemies use brave and default a lot more, and they actually go into negative. It happened in previous game, but if my memory serve, it was only certain enemies who had this quirk baked into them. Also, nearly all of them have counters and immunity, preventing you from just braving 4 times and calling it a day (albeit it still works reasonably often).

However, I did notice a flaw as well in the balancing. Some sidequests (most notably, the mushrooms sidequest) only opened to me after I finished the chapter’s story, but they took place in a dungeon where every enemy was WAY underpowered. I’m still getting underdog bonuses in the story, so I’m not overleveled. I don’t know what exactly unlocked the sidequest, but I checked everytime I set food in Wisward. On the other hand, the sidequest boss actually took me some planning, while I basically Yolo’d all the asterisks of the chapter. Weird. In the end, the whole dungeon was simply a long corridor (every enemy fleeing from me), with one tough boss at the end. Jarring.

Speaking of dungeon, this chapter really made them a lot longer than anything the serie had until now. On one hand, they can get a little boring and frustrating after a while, but on the other, I do like that they allow you to really train your new asterisks by putting more time between each of them, so overall I’d say it’s a positive.

Speaking of which, I finally looked into what you get from the boat, and I need to mention the inclusion of JP orbs, to give you JP experience on the go. It makes it easier to level up jobs without having to grind with ill matched teams, which is a good idea, since ill matched teams are sometimes really unforgiving because of the immunities and counters mentioned earlier. You still end up having to train jobs the old fashioned way, but any shortcut is good.

Speaking of grinding, I was surprised that I didn’t need to grind even once, for now. I wouldn’t qualify the asterisk battles of underwhelming, they took me half an hour on average and demanded strategy and quick thinking or risk taking, but I went into most of them with in-training teams full of ill matched underleveled and redundant jobs and still won. For me, that’s just the right difficulty to be interesting without getting frustrating.

My favorite asterisk of this chapter probably was the Shieldbearer for more Gloria Tankness (I also noticed it pairs well with White mage for a tanky healer)  , but Ranger is good as well (but I’m biaised from the previous games. Always liked hunter). I appreciate that they changed red mage to be less of a watered down mix of Black and White, but I’m not sure I’m using it very efficiently. It just doesn’t seems to deal a lot of damage, and I prefered the old one’s design. This one looks a lot more boring. As for Artist, I’m not really using it very well for now either. I feel like there’s already tons of debuffing skills in other classes.

I didn’t really get the point of Wayward Wood, since you know where the correct exit is, there’s not much point in making a looping/”lost wood” kinda dungeon, because it’s not like you will get lost (unless you’re doing it willingly the first time just to see what happens). Maybe it’ll open other paths later, who knows.

Writing: Still good, albeit I think i prefered Savalon. I suppose I expected to see more of Elvis’s backstory and family, why did he come study magic, how did Lady Emma pass away... But nothing of the sort. I don’t think like it really helped see Elvis any more in depth, sure he is a good friend, but that’s something we already could infer. I would’ve liked to see his character broken down more.

I’m always happy to see dead kids stories (don’t get me wrong, I love kids, but I also roll my eyes quite a lot when writers chicken out on having anything bad happen to a kid in their stories) but I don’t know if this was strong enough to be the focus of the entire chapter. I don’t think it had any connection to Musa’s downfall or the crystals. But I could see Wiswald coming back later in the story to tie back into these themes, and maybe that was just the Wiswald introduction chapter.

With the dead kids, crazy people, greenery, hunter & red mage asterisks, and those darn Mushrooms and flower enemies, it’s also hard to shake the feeling of this being Florem.02, and Florem will always be extra special to me.

Writing - Theories: Definitely called it for Edna’s veiled ass, although introducing that silver haired lady just before almost threw me for a loop. I’m assuming she’s the traveler handing out asterisks like candies, and Adelle probably knows (or at least she knows her sister is related to asterisks in some way)

I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I had a theory back when playing Default for the first time, that asterisk made people crazy or at least, more extreme, and that’s why they all made the perfect little mascot for theirs each time. And also why Ringabel *and* Artemia in the anthology lost their memories when they lost their asterisk: it plays into their brain and personalities. So, nice to see theory confirmed by the sequel.

As expected of its unredeemable bosses, Folie kicked the bucket, which begs the question: I fully expect them to have another gauntlet like the previous games. So is a timeloop/universe hopping all but confirmed at this point, or will this be something else? Will the characters’ deaths be retconed or explained away? I feel like some of these characters could be redeemed in a timeloop, and stopped an saved before they do much damage. The asterisk are pretty much the ones to blame in nearly every case for the sudden change of heart of their holders.

I’ve got that flimsy theory that Shirley is Emma’s kid, based on a similar hairstyle, the fact the gambler asterisk pairs well with black mage, and that Shirley mentioned her mother leaving her father. Who knows. I liked Shirley.

Adelle is definitely crushing hard on Elvis, but I think he’s pretty much ace. Interesting to see how this develops.

Graphics: Gonna hand it to them, i was impressed that they actually made a unique model for Mona, all to use it for one cutscene. Long gone are the days in which they just reused Yew and Magnolia’s models for Altair and Vega, two majors characters. This is the kind of attention to detail we like to see here. No cutting corners. They even made a model for the paintings, too.

The fog effect was pretty rad as well, and definitely got me running a few laps like a giddy kid. You like to see it.

Elvis’ head looked pretty big compared to his friends, noticeably so. But I suppose Bravely Default 1 and second weren’t that much better, and even worse. The main 4 were DEFINITELY chibised compared to other characters (which made Alternis look like a baby in the Eternian team)

Performance: I noticed a bit less lag, but I also made the battle speed slower, this is probably related. Else, it’s the same things.

Music: Elvis’ theme is pretty good. I remember listening to the first drafts that were datamined from the first demo back in the day, and it was already my favorite.

However, I wasn’t a fan of Wiswald’s overworld theme, and the city’s was forgettable.