#like the storyline of heroes is actually so tragic and sad and yet

[remnant-emblemeer]

taking a step back and looking at the Heroes setup as a genuine Fire Emblem plot structure is actually fucking wild. imagine being Alfonse or Sharena, desperately trying to amass an army to protect your kingdom, and then your mysterious hoodie-wearing friend fires their glock at a stone shrine before screaming expletives because the hero that appeared from thin air wasn't sexy enough

[bearpillowmonster]

Hawkeye

I actually started this and it was cheesy and by the book in that opening with young Kate so I turned it off. I ended up coming back at some point and really, that's not all it is. Sometimes, it is like a Disney Channel show and it can be shot weird, very static in a kinetic type of show but then it cuts to Clint and really, it makes you feel what it's supposed to. It starts with him at a musical based around the events of the Avengers, you know, this event that was really tragic for a lot of people and the amount of stress it put on the heroes to stop it and seeing all your friends that you lost the last go around singing and dancing. It's sad. Then he leaves, goes to the bathroom and some guy wants to take a selfie and he's bugged because of it. After witnessing that, you don't feel like a hero, after being Ronin, after your family getting dusted, losing friends and you read 'Thanos was right' on the urinal. These people just can't leave you alone, you want out of the game and live with the family you fought to save, you don't need special treatment.

But you also understand the opposite side because if you reappear one day, your life won't be the same. Your wife might've left you, your job might not exist anymore, they foreclosed your house and someone else moved in, your money is distributed to next in line, insurance sure as heck wasn't going to pay out and now for the other people, their lives are being invaded by ghosts essentially, maybe they had a position and then re-instate who was there before.

I've only been a very lowkey fan of Hawkeye because really, all his content was in other people's movies, I can quote the beginning of Endgame because of how much I loved it and felt the connection, and this show only builds on it and instantly makes the family dynamic actually enjoyable. Just can't say the same for Kate, they make the mom introducing her new fiance, it's kind of cliche. She can talk a lot more than needed sometimes, but occasionally she'll say something that was heard earlier in the episode like the selfie guy but with an autograph and it'll be viewed in a different context. I like Hailee Steinfeld and I don't hate Kate, I kind of like how they use her to show that she has a different approach to things than he does-

-but a lot of what I didn't like stemmed from her and I like literally every other Hailee Steinfeld role I've seen more aside from maybe an unrelated few. Then I'm about to say something that you won't like. It introduces a bunch of characters for other storylines in other media. Yelena for example makes an appearance. Echo makes her first appearance, spinning off into her own show. We get Hawkeye passing the torch to Kate. We have Kingpin for Daredevil's return. There's a lot going on and for 6 nearly 40 minute episodes, that's a lot to pack in there but...it does it, like, I can't even complain, it's not bad, I don't feel overstuffed, it all felt natural.

With Echo, they play off of Clint having his hearing aid and Maya's deafness. Hit. With Yelena, she was hunting him from the end of Black Widow and plays on his trauma of losing Natasha. Hit. Kingpin plays into it because it centers around all the gangs he fought as Ronin so it makes sense for him to be at the top. And Kate, I've already talked about. None have powers btw.

I think part of it is a lesson that can be learned and that's how spending too much time outside of your main characters can be harmful to those around them when they aren't involved in the main plot. With all the characters I mentioned, you rarely see them outside of Clint and Kate's plot, they are a part of it without being the side-chick with their own separate B-plot or simple cameo. Yet they don't feel overshadowed because they complement the character and fit in the story rather than only being there for fanservice. It makes it so that I knew most of these characters were there but it made it satisfying to see how they were introduced. Like I knew Kingpin was in the last episode but I had no idea it was going to be introduced at the end of episode 5 like that and I was just as surprised.

With all this, I do have one complaint though and it actually might be my Book Of Boba Fett background but, we only had two scenes with him as Ronin, one in Endgame and one here in a flashback to discuss why Maya wants him dead. So it's kind of hard to fully grasp how much bad he's done and we don't know what he was like before Thor so...you just telling me he was bad is leaving a gap, I can line the pieces up enough but it's there nonetheless.

All in all, a good series that was worth the finish. I do wish it would've had the mask (which was thought of and concepted but scrapped?) and maybe a little nod to his Marvel vs Capcom theme remix. In terms of MCU tv shows that I've seen, maybe I'll rank it later.

[finitefall]

What I found really curious about the Stansa crowd - to absolutely no one's surprise - transitioning to an (despite the muddled acrobatics by the HotD writers to re-imagine the character as tragic victim or secret hero or whatever) openly misogynistic, traditionalist character like Alicent was that there actually WAS a minor segment of Stansas in the wake of the Hotd launch that tried to argue the comparison to Alicent was off and Sansa couldn't in any way be related to her. 1)

But what actually became obvious instead was how irrelevant these voices remain among them. All they really did by trying to Not-All-Stansa their subfandom was further underline how natural that transition was for the majority of the rest of their group. Tbh it was clear for anyone outside what the prevailing mindset and point of their subfandom really boils down to. 2)

And what their fav ended up to stand for after GoT was done with her - yet they celebrated the storyline that actually destroyed her, just like every other major character. Maybe these poor sods still trapped inside there that were deluded about that have a chance to start to realize now. But otoh, there never was a bad idea that was once brought up among them they were ever able to give up again. They'll never change lol. 3)

No one was surprised, indeed. I think many of them argued at first because they didn’t like being so obvious. I saw some Alicent stans being upset at people who (rightfully) assumed they were also Sansa and start to rant about how people were always jumping to conclusions without knowing etc... that was a little funny, actually. Alicent and Sansa are different characters, but for them they represent the same thing, and those who don’t like her are misogynists who blame those two women for decisions and choices made by men.

D&D screwed up with every character, but as long as Sansa ended up QITN, they could celebrate, yes. It’s sad, really. And no, fans of Sansa and show!Alicent aren’t gonna have a sudden realization and give up, they’re literally making more and more posts and theories about both characters lol.

[kurt-wagner-official]

Post #60: NM issues 26-28

After 2 years of foreshadowing, we're finally getting our introduction to Xavier's son, David Haller, in the Legion story arc. It opens on Muir Island with Tom and Sharon, the people that Demon Bear enslaved and then turned into Native Americans. Again, this is a very strange storyline and really would not fly today, but at the very least I'm eternally thankful that the transformation didn't change their personalities to be obsessed with tribe honor or something, which has been a very frequent issue with Claremont's Native Americans. They're discussing how their lives have changed; Sharon is still mourning her old life, but Tom is excited by the borderline superhuman physiques that the Demon Bear also gave them. They see a strange astral projection of a young man and then an alarm sounds and there's a telekinetic storm. They find the source is in David's room. He's flailing around screaming for help, apparently completely out of control, until he starts grinning and laughing in a completely different voice. Cut to the next morning, where the Blackbird arrives with Sean, Xavier, Dani, Rahne, Doug, and Warlock. Moira is overjoyed to see Sean alive again after the events of the last Uncanny storyline. When Rahne sees her greet him first, she begins to cry, assuming her mother has abandoned her, but Moira comes up and hugs her. It's sad to see Rahne hate herself so much that she assumes her own mother would forget about her, and I'm glad Moira is being supportive and loving. We really don't see a lot of their relationship, but whenever we do it's a lovely side of Moira and a great moment for Rahne. Meanwhile, Dani and Doug watch in astonishment as Warlock attempts to flirt with the Blackbird. Doug tells Dani how excited he is to be a New Mutant and live in the world of superheroes. Doug hasn't really been strongly defined as a person yet, but we're starting to get an idea of him as an outgoing people person who can also be a bit of an awkward nerd. Unlike the rest of the team, he's always had a stable life and has yet to develop any sort of tragic backstory, and the brutal realities of life as a superhero haven't sunken in yet. Moira finally gets to the reason she called- an explosion occured last night that leveled a building and apparently wiped the minds of Tom and Sharon, leaving them as vegetables. Xavier is shocked to see Gaby Haller, his old therapy patient/lover (in case you forgot he's kinda a creep) who's now an Israeli ambassador. She tells him that her son, David, is schizophrenic (he actually has DID, but at the time people, including Claremont, referred to having multiple personalities as schizophrenia) and withdrew from reality when he was ten, but she doesn't tell him that he's Xavier's son. Meanwhile, at the Massachusetts Academy, Emma yells at Empath for how he treated Firestar and telepathically turns off his powers as punishment. Emma is still kinda a conundrum. Under Claremont's pen, she's basically completely evil, and the Hellions are tools she uses in her grand plans. But at the same time, it sometimes seems like she truly cares about to kids under her care. With a few exceptions, most notably Magneto, Claremont prefers to make his villains reflections of the worst parts of his heroes rather than morally complex people in their own right, so he would probably say she doesn't care about them. She's one of the characters who I think gets noticably more interesting when Claremont leaves and she starts her redemption arc, but that redemption is built on the idea that she always cared for her children on some level. When you read these old stories in retrospect, keeping in mind where she ends up adds a interesting new dimension to Emma's character, even if Claremont didn't have that in mind. I also have a lot more thoughts on Empath, but I'll save those for later. Back to our main cast: while Xavier talks to Gaby, the kids go to the nearby town to hang out. Warlock eats a bird, and Dani is upset with him for risking their cover in public. Warlock's another character who hasn't gotten much panel time yet, although he's more defined than Doug. He's naive like Doug, but he's also been through as much horror as any of them. Usually with a tragic backstory like Warlock's, the character end up distrustful of everyone they meet. But when Warlock met the New Mutants and the my weren't like his father, he assumed they must be the exact opposite and trusts them completely. His main challenges as a person will be learning about the shades of grey that exist between happiness and torment. The idea of an alien with the mutant ability to feel compassion is such an interesting one for the book to tackle. The New Mutants run into Reverend Craig, the man who raised Rahne and then tried to kill her. She's legally under Moira's protection, so he can't attack her but heells at her for being the spawn of Satan and she doesn't fight back, just bows her head and leaves, asking her friends to let it go. Back on the island, Xavier tries to enter David's mind and help him the way he did Gaby 20 years ago. Like his mother, David has a wall around his psyche, but unlike his mother, an astral form comes out to meet Xavier. It doesn't look like David, but a young Arabic man, the same one Tom and Sharon saw, who seems to be about to communicate Suddenly Xavier hears laughing and is blasted out of the room, both psychically and physically. Thousands of miles away, Lee wakes up to find Magneto having a nightmare and shaking the island. She wakes him up before he hurts himself and he thanks her and they start kissing. Back on the island, Xavier talks to Gaby, and says he was wrong to start a relationship with her all those years ago. He's absolutely right and I'm glad that at the very least he recognizes it. She begins to tell him about the trauma that sent David into his shell, but we don't get to see that because we cut away to Rahne. Seeing Craig again has just made her self doubt and hatred even worse, and she goes to Moria to ask for guidance. She begins to offer it when the astral form of the mysterious man appears and tells them to flee just before an explosion decimates the building.

Xavier finds Rahne and Moira in the same state as Tom and Sharon- physically fine but with no psyche, similar to people who Anna uses her powers on. Notably, Rahne is still in werewolf form, even though knocking her out usually makes her revert to human. Xavier realizes that David had several powers and each seems to be linked to a different personality. He believes that the catatonic people may have had their psyches absorbed, so Dani volunteers to try to follow her mindlink with Rahne. Xavier accompanies her astral form, but it's a trap, and both of their minds, along with Gaby's and Doug's, are pulled into David's head. Warlock is spared because his alien brain works differently, but without his friends he quickly falls into a pit of despair. Xavier, still weakened from his mugging, is struggling to defend himself and his friends from the battle he's fighting inside David's mind. Although David's wall wraps around threatens to crush them, Xavier finds the strength to tear a hole in. Through it, the heroes see a whole city in David's mind, and Dani senses Rahne's presence in it. David appears and cries out for Xavier to help him. He's ready Gaby's thoughts and calls Xavier father, which shocks him and makes him lose his grip on Doug and Gaby, who are pulled into the psychic storm. Xavier sees three giant heads in the sky. One of them is a man who says the dilemma can't be helped and introduced them as Legion. The second is the guy who's been astral projecting, who tries to warn Xavier he's in danger. The third is a younger girl who says he should give up, and it'll be nice to have new personalities stuck in the mind. Off to the side, he sees the true David, a tiny child begging his father to save him. Xavier could flee and save himself and Dani, but he can't abandon the son he just discovered, so he flies into the storm towards the city. It's a combination of Paris and Beirut, filled with war and people screaming in agony. It seems to be a combination of David's childhood in Paris and the memories of the one helpful alternate personality, with both of their worst experiences magnified into a hellscape. Horrified at the thought of David growing up in this mental reality, he tries to figure out where to start searching. First, he mindscans for all his friends and students that were pulled into this city. Dani, Doug, and Gaby are together, and so are Rahne and Moira. Both groups are fighting for their lives against the monstrous tanks and planes that are attacking the city. Dani tells him they'll find each other and Tom and Sharon while Xavier goes to put an end to the chaos. He sees the guy who's been astral projecting, who runs off as Xavier is hit by a strafing plane. He's saved by the telekinetic personality, a charming adventurer named Jack Wayne. He says that the other guy is the telepathic personality, and he's imprisoned David in a giant done and is feeding him these nightmares to make them a reality. The telepath isn't a natural personality, he's an invader into the mind, and Jack and Xavier set off to take him down. Elsewhere, the telepath approaches Dani, Doug, and Gaby, who tries to attack him, saying he's a terrorist who killed David's godfather and tried to kill him. Rahne and Moira find Cyndi, the pyrokinetic personality, who helps them save the others from a group of demonic soldiers. Gaby and Moira figure out the truth, which Cyndi confirms: when the terrorist tried to kill David as a child, David's powers manifested and killed him, bringing his consciousness into his own mind. The invading personality ended up in control of David's natural telepathy. Jack tells Xavier the only way to save David is to kill the other personality, and Xavier takes the knife Jack offers and prepares to enter the dome and end things.

The team catches up with the duo as they try to climb the mountain to the dome at the top, where they'll find David. Although Xavier loves Jack, who reminds him of his own fantasies as a child, Dani and Rahne don't trust him. Across the ocean, Lee and Magneto have been living together on the island for a few weeks now, but she can't stop thinking of all the things he's done in the past. She tells him she can't forgive or trust him, and that their relationship is over. Magneto is reminded of his first wife Magda, who ran in terror when he uses his powers for the first time and never saw him again. He tells Lee he's changing as a person, and he needs her help, but she refuses to take his hand and he walks away, heartbroken. Back in the brain, our heroes are approaching the peak of the mountain. Cyndi has been flirting with Doug the whole journey, which is creepy but also kinda funny. When they reach the peak, they find the invading personality, who we finally learn is named Jemail Karami. They attack him, and the whole mountain disappears, revealed to be an illusion all along. Jemail flees into the wall of the dome of darkness, but that's also an illusion, and the group follows him in. They find a room full of floating crystals with images of memories, and Xavier says this is David's soul. Each crystal represents a memory or another small part of what adds together to form David the person. Some of the crystals are shattered, which Jack says is Jemail's doing. But Xavier says that these bits were shattered during David's original trauma, and some of them have been repaired by Jemail. Suddenly, another cluster of crystals comes flying out of the darkness with Jemail flailing at it's center and crashes into everyone, wounding Cyndi. As memories fly everywhere, Gaby finds herself face to face with the day David's godfather Daniel was murdered and David merged minds with all the terrorists and then killed them. The trauma was what sent David back into his own mind, accidentally pulling one of his victims in with him. Gaby tries to kill Jemail, but Xavier has a change of heart and stops her, saying nobody else dies. Jack chooses that moment to reveal his treachery and attack. Before Xavier can react, he's hit with an external psychic wave that puts him into a coma within his coma. For some reason, the book cuts away from the climax for half a page to give a scene of Empath. He tells a mysterious woman who represents "the Gladiators" that the New Mutants would be perfect combatants for her arena. Back at the soul battle, Dani summons Jack's greatest fear, a healthy young David living with Xavier as a loving father. It sends Jack catatonic, and Dani then moves over to Jemail. He was knocked unconscious, but she wakes him up by nudging the good memories in his head. He wakes up and reads Doug's mind, finally giving himself the ability to speak English and communicate with Dani. He explains the story: when he was first pulled into David's mind, he hated the boy, but when he read his mind, he saw what a gentle and kind soul he was. It was an epiphany that led him to decide to undo the damage he did and fix David's broken psyche. The task became increasingly difficult as Jack and Cyndi manifested and began to fight him, knowing that if he succeeded they would cease to exist. He had almost finished with the repairs when Jack smashed the two crystal clusters together, undoing all his work. He says that now that David's powers have manifested in the real world, he has no time to start over, and must take permanent control to avoid collateral damage, but Dani has another plan. She wakes up Jack and, by threatening him with another taste of her powers, coerces him to help Jemail. When Xavier wakes up two weeks later, he hears this whole story. He commends Dani on her heroism and leadership in saving everyone, including Tom and Sharon, who Jemail had been taking care of. Xavier goes to see David. To his surprise, David switches rapidly between the angry voices of Jack and Cyndi and Jemail, who apologizes tells him that Jack manipulated the process so that they would all share control with David.  When control reverts to David, Xavier hugs him and swears he'll never leave again. He tells Gaby that David may never be fully healed, but he'll never stop trying to help him. Privately, he wonders if it's worth it, because the weird external psychic blast he felt earlier was the return of the Beyonder.

I've always loved David, but I haven't read much stuff with him. This was my first time reading his origin story, and it did not disappoint. This might be X-Men art at its peak, with Sienkiewicz going absolutely insane on the hellscape of David's mind. It's perfectly paced, except for the weird thing at the end where it cut to Empath for like four panels, the mysteries and twists are all masterfully set up, and instead of fading into the background during the climax, Dani gets to be the MVP of the ending for the first time in a while. As for David himself, he's one of the best characters this book has introduced since the initial roster. His main personality doesn't show up much, but through Jack and Cyndi we get insight into his subconscious. Jack is the man he wanted to grow up to be, a swaggering adventurer who can defend himself from any attack. But beneath the surface, he's actually the asshole David could have become if he'd grown up with all his power but no moral guidance. He wants control, and is willing to sacrifice anyone to get it. Cyndi has less panel time, but I think is even more interesting. She's David's most cynical side, a child who lashes out with fire to destroy things that threaten her. She's the part of David that feels abandoned by his parents and can't trust anyone. I might be reading into this part too much, but I think her crush on Doug reflects how she really just wants to be understood. This is probably even more reading too far in, but I think Jemail kinda parallels Magneto. He attacked David for being Israeli, but when he failed to kill him he was forced to confront David's innocence and the monster that he had become, kinda similar to Magneto and Kitty in issue 150, although with some of the motivations different. Jemail decides redeem himself by helping David grow and keep his other selves in check, and Magneto will soon find redemption in teaching the New Mutants. David's dominant personality doesn't really appear until the very end, but he'll return in future stories and get a lot of development himself. I don't know if I'd rate this story or Demon Bear higher, but this is definitely in the top two that the series has had so far, and is overall one of my favorite stories in the X-canon.

[prbni]

My controversial Kdrama opinions

1. Ko Moon Young was just a psychologically messed up girl. She isn't the 'girlpower' or 'badass' that the Kdrama fandom likes to dub her into.

2. In 'Hotel del Luna', they could've just chucked the entire character of Gu Chansung out of the window and gave Chang Myung a rebirth/rebirths,make him go through various trials and tribulations to repent and earn Man Wol's forgiveness. Didn't have to make it unnecessarily tragic.

3. Unnecessarily tragic reminds me, the 'realistic' ending of 2521 was a JOKE. There was NO point of developing such a power couple if they were to break up for such a mundane reason.

4. Romance genre isn't Song Kang's 'thing'. He shines better as an actor in non-romance genres.

5. Had they focused on developing Ju Kyung as an individual character who finally learns how to completely take a stand for herself instead of dangling her between Suho and Seojun, 'True Beauty' would've become a more popular and appreciated drama.

6. The love line between Hwang InYeop and Seo Hyun Jin's character in 'Why her: Oh Soo Jae' was absolutely unnecessary and awkward.

7. Jo Bo Ah and Ahn Bo Hyun and an amazing chemistry in 'Military Prosecutor: Do Bae Man'. However, they could've developed a slowburn romance between them instead of abruptly putting a kiss sequence in the last episode out of nowhere.

8. In 'Snowdrop', Eun Young Ro forgiving Soo Ho later on didn't make sense. Their kiss sequence was purely fan service,nothing else.

9. Individual acting aside,Kim Hye Yoon had more chemistry with Lee Jae Wook(2nd lead) than Rowoon(main lead) in 'Extraordinary You'.

10. Writers are overusing 'Let's kill off the main character and make the show tragically memorable' trope wayyy too much.

11. As much as it physically hurts me given the chemistry of the actors,Choi Do Il and Oh In Joo not having any proper romantic sequence till the end of 'Little Women' makes sense to the storyline(the shipper me might've wanted a hug though).

12. Also the writers should stop doing the 'lets make the second lead better than the main lead'. Its annoying to see one person actually making sincere effort for the girl but the girl ends up totally ignoring their effort and like the ML. Not in just Kdramas but in all sorts of dramas. I actually saw a Chinese drama where the second lead finally turned into a villain. I LITERALLY commented 'good for him' lmao.

13. Sunho in 'Cheer Up' is problematic. Neither his sad backstory nor his sincere feelings for Haeyi changes that fact.

14. The Heirs(2013) drama wasted an opportunity to pair Young Do(Kim Woobin) with Yoo Rachel(Kim Jiwon). No, they didn't need to be 'siblings'. I'd have chosen the two heartbroken yet sassy and tough people romance over the sappy romance of the main couple in a heartbeat. And the actors would've NAILED it.

15. Jojo not ending up with Sunho in 'Love Alarm' finally broke the 'Cinderella and Prince Charming' fairytale trope of Kdramas. That girl was too messed up in the head . She didn't need the rich,fierce and impulsive lover, but the quite,patient and thoughtful one. So don't go ahead and say the ending sucked. Maybe they could've made things more coherent, but no the ending didn't suck.

16. Moon Dong Eun should have remained single, with the last episode ending with him crossing paths with Do Yeong, with Yeonjin & gang & all the revenge agenda gone, she could hv offered him a smile and a game of Go, keeping an open ending for them. Lee Do Hyun was fabulous in playing Yeojeong and their chemistry was amazing. But they could hv just been partners in crime with their teamwork without the romantic plot between them.

17. No. Ryu Shi Oh doesn't give second lead syndrome. Byun Woo Seok is a very good actor but he plays the villain in 'Strong Woman Kang Nam Soon' and not anti-hero. Lee Yoo Mi and him should be paired opposite to e/o in some other project in the future but Shi Oh and Nam Soon ain't the 'enemies to lovers' you think it is.

18. After Byun Woo Seok's popularity skyrocketed with 'Lovely Runner', many people dug up his previous works & lamented over not noticing him earlier. People even felt sad that he got his recognition late. But honestly, he wasn't very noticeable as an actor in his earlier stages imo. He kept working hard on his acting skills to get to where he is now. What I applaud about him is not giving up & putting the efforts in all right places but he didn't start from a 100.

19. I'm actually glad they brought back the fresh romcoms in 2024. Got tired of consistently watching crime thrillers,school violence,zombie apocalypse and stuff. I mean, of course they're good. But the key ingredient for Kdramas will always be those cringey classic slightly over-the-top romcoms.

20. Cha Eunwoo's acting in 'My ID is Gangnam Beauty' isn't as bad as people try to make it. His character actually demanded those stank cold expressions that he delivered. In fact, I'd say his character Do Kyeong Seok was one of the first Kdrama male leads that actually understood and empathised with the FL's situation and protected her in his own way without going over-the-top cliche "she is my yeoja and only I can bother her" about it.

21. In the 'No Gain, No Love' Kdrama, the romantic pairing of Ja Yeon and Gyu Hyun felt very forced to me. I was actually hoping for Hajun to shine instead of reducing him into just a 'former crush'. I'd rather have Hajun regretting looking down on an erotica novelist and leaving mean comment, sort things up with Ja Yeon and actually catch feelings for her respecting her as a person than this mishmash of 'Richman poor woman plus marrying my antifan' trope. The actors individually were great with their parts but I see them as in laws of the main couple ending on good terms rather than a romantic pairing itself. Ironically, this is the only second lead pairing that gets their own spinoff as leads.

[mk-wizard]

Solid Snake: What NOT to do to your main character

I have a confession to make; when I was a teenager, I didn’t like Solid Snake because I found him lewd, macho and very rude, but in my adult life, I see now that this is all a facade. Underneath it all, Solid has my compassion to the fullest extent. This guy is a lonely, sad man who just wants his life to be own hence why he turns to lashing out and a plethora of addictions to gloss over his agony. With that said, while I now fully appreciate his character, I really, really, really HATE his end. And not just because he deserved better. I get that lots of heroes have tragic endings like Lee from Telltale Walking Dead, Galuf from Final Fantasy V, Anikan Skywalker from Star Wars and so on, but this is my argument as to why Solid’s end was a waste: he IS the reason for the Metal Gear franchise and it felt like the writers wanted to end his story somehow in such a way that there was no going back, but the path they chose... for a series that was so well written, having Solid become physically 80 at 42 and hint that he’s only got three months left feels like an excuse to end his story. Not a true ending. In other words, not only did Solid Snake deserve better, but the writers could also do better and deserved to showcase better of themselves than this.

The one takeaway I could get from how this iconic hero was ended was how NOT to end a series. It is one thing to kill your darlings and another to randomly kill them either for sensationalism or because you did not know what else to do. Sometimes, an open ending is better. In other words, have Solid age normally and get the chance to live free as a normal healthy man with the audience being left to wonder where he goes because now, he can do everything and anything. It is not a shut tight ending, but it is not super saccharine either. Not to mention that keeping your main character alive in an open ending leaves the possibility to pick up new ideas that are genuinely fresh. And no, I don’t mean prequels or side quest stuff that happened in between the beginning and end though that type of stuff can be great too. I am talking about true sequels in the main storyline. Metal Gear NEEDS Solid Snake. Sure, the new characters are great and interesting, but they don’t hold a candle to the face of Metal Gear. I mean, the lack of Donkey Kong is why the Donkey Kong Country sequels did not do well.

With that all said, I see no rhyme or reason why you cannot continue Solid’s story well after he is 42. After all, life does not end when you are in your forties. My husband can confirm this. And as Big Boss showed, sometimes, that is when it begins! Why not have a future Metal Gear game where Solid is living a normal happy life possibly married with a step/adoptive child and he gets pulled into action? Personally, I think that would be amusing and badass to see that civilian life did not make the guy go soft dad bod and all. Plus, what is wrong with seeing him be happy? It does not change anything that matters. Characters don’t have to miserable all of the time in order to be interesting. If anything, doing that can actually become pretty dull and kind of annoying at one point if not a bit creepy.

Normally, I am against retconning because I believe it is cheating most of the time, but for cases where a decision was clearly a mistake, I actually encourage it. I say let the Snake survive happy and healthy so that maybe he can fight another day. And even if he never does, at least the story ended with dignity. Don’t create drama or suffering for the sake of it and if you don’t know how to end a story yet, then in my experience, don’t. Be patient. Let it a proper one come to you naturally.

At least, this is my opinion. I want to know what yours is. Thank you for reading and as always, take care.

-Mary

PS: On behalf of people who got married and are raising kids (like me), please stop portraying our way of life as boring and holding us back. It isn’t. For some of us, it was thanks to this lifestyle that the best was able to come. Thank you.

[immeya]

Most Interesting Harry Potter Character Storylines (in my opinion)

Some of them might not be amongst my personal favorites but they do have complexity and I’d like to give them a shoutout.

Albus Dumbledore: Yes, this is Dumbledore salt. The man liked to act like a chess player and while he was actively trying to stop the bad side he actually didn’t mind sacrificing people (including himself and Harry) I personally think he was going for the glory (like Voldemort pretty much) but in a more grounded and mortal kind of way. His whole story is basically using people to achieve goals and while I don’t personally like him he makes one of the most interesting HP characters. A true slythendor if you ask me. Brave and bold enough to fight for the “right” side but cunning and ambitious enough to get something out of it. He’s a good guy with bad guy traits. So… shout-out.

Severus Snape: Let me make this clear, I DON’T LIKE SNAPE. At all, he’s one of the most overrated characters in my opinion but I do have to give him the “morally gray complex character” card, he’s a genuine bad person and I feel like guilt and regret over unintentionally killing a person he supposedly loved was his main motive to fight for the good side. I think he’s a complex character because he’s actively hurting people and yet he’s not really fighting on the bad side. It makes sense for him to be bitter and overall an asshole his whole life. Changing sides on a war doesn’t make you a good person. Was he brave?, yes. Was he the one bravest men Harry ever knew?… probably not. But the series was written by a bigot who romanticizes toxic and abusive behavior so.

Harry Potter: Harry IS complex. He’s the hero, we know this. But I feel like analyzing Harry is more difficult than that. He has a very tragic backstory. From being orphaned at a very young age and having to live in an abusive household for 10 years and 5 summers (I think there was 5) essentially without love to being manipulated to become a hero of the wizarding world at 17. Wow. He’s got this hero complex because he was told he was a hero at a very young age and he’s put under a lot of pressure his whole time at hogwarts. He lives trauma after trauma and he remains unaffected in the surface, we know this child is just used to losing things and that’s so sad. He still grows to be a very decent person for what’s worth and he’s a very good character, so…

Sirius Black: Sirius, my beloved. The only Gryffindor in the noble and most ancient house of Black. He was probably raised and taught to be prejudiced and hateful which to be completely honest.. he sorta was, just not towards the people his family wanted him to be. He’s the rebel child of the house of Black, probably lived in an abusive household without love and I’m sure being sorted into Gryffindor was a breaking point in his family dynamic, being surrounded by his roommates and friends he probably realized that he could find love outside family and tradition. His relationship with James was probably one of the most loyal friendships out there, kinda like Harry and Ron, but it ended up so badly because of the same thing I praise him about trust and loyalty to his friends. Poor Sirius was blamed for killing the people he cared the most about and sentenced, and even the. He managed to come back to Harry (and seek revenge and kill wormtail because I’m sure tration was the worst thing you could do in Sirius’ eyes) and help Harry and protect him just like he failed to do with James.

Remus Lupin: Remus, my beloved. He’s got one of the most tragic backstories in the series too. He was biten at the age of five and became a werewolf in a prejudiced cruel world who thought his kind were nothing but monsters. Sill after having no friends, he was accepted into Hogwarts and provided help for his condition where he managed to make friends and have more love and acceptance than he ever thought he’d ever have. And yet once he graduated he literally lost it all in a blink of an eye without even knowing. He was under the impression that he lost three of his best friends and the murderer was his other best friend. And he was left alone for twelve years having nothing, until finally he discovered the truth and fought with the order once more despite having lost everything the first time, because that’s just who he is… and yet he remains broken the whole time, pushing away people because he’s just lost too much already in the first war. He’s kind of an asshole for trying to leave a pregnant Tonks but that’s also who he is, he probably doesn’t like to have close relationships anymore because of the trauma of the first war and his werewolf self.

Lord Voldemort: Voldy is not really that complex tbh but the Gaunt storyline is really interesting nevertheless. His mother, oh so in love with this muggle boy dies because of her own mistakes. And he’s left, without being able to feel love (opposite to Harry, obviously) and a hatred for muggles thanks to his dad. What k find interesting about Tom is that he spent his youth PLANNING to become the most powerful dark wizard in silence. Pretending to be a good guy. A prefect, a very respectful and polite young man. That’s some good shit tbh.

Neville Longbottom: Neville doesn’t get the recognition he deserves. He’s a very brave man from the beginning, he’s had to go through life with the trauma of what happened to his parents… watching their suffering. And then he’s got to put up with Snape’s and the mean Slytherin’s bullshit in his Hogwarts years. To finally grow up to be the hero he’s supposed to be. He’s very overlooked because of his nervous sweet nature but Neville is fierce.

Dobby: If Dobby we’re a hogwarts student he’d be a Hufflepuff, no doubt. Hardworking, Brave and a very nice elf. He was a slave for most of his life, having to put up with basically torture by the Malfoy family. And yet he was always there for Harry no matter what out of gratitude and loyalty, but also because he thought that was the best for his kind. He’s got such a good heart, the winky storyline always gets me. Dobby was good despite being surrounded by the worst people, remained optimistic till his death and helped a lot, The golden trio wouldn’t have made it without him.

REGULUS BLACK: FORGOTTEN SLYTHERIN HERO. we don’t have much context about Regulus and we know he was raised in the same context as Sirius, but with the influences of the house of Slytherin where most blood purists were sorted (I don’t think that bs that ALL Slytherin’s are bad but let’s go with canon) si he became a Death Eater, an important one. But after discovering the Horcrux thing he unexpectedly and secretly turned against Voldemort. I suspect Regulus was never actually an evil person, I think he saw what Sirius had to go trough and was afraid to lose everything too. But we certainly don’t know anything about him except he was kind to Kreacher, he was the ‘good’ son and he died trying to defeat Lord Voldemort on his own… without telling a soul, without seeking glory for it. He died a forgotten and selfless hero.

[hamliet]

The Crows Summon the Sun

Or, Hamliet’s review of Shadow & Bone, which gets a 4.5/5 for enjoyment and a 3.5/5 in terms of writing.

The true heroes of this story and the saviors of the show are the Crows. However, the problem is that the show then has an uneven feel, because the strength of the Crows plotline highlights the weaknesses of the trilogy storyline. But imo, overall, the strengths overshadow (#punintended) the weaknesses. 

I’ll divide the review into the narrative and the technical (show stuff, social commentary), starting with narrative.

Narrative: The Good 

It’s What The Crows Deserve

I went into the show watching it for the Crows; however, knowing that their storyline was intended to be a prequel, I wasn’t terribly optimistic. And while it is a prequel, the characters have complete and full arcs that perfectly set them up for the further development they will have in the books (which I think should be the next season?). Instead of retreading the arcs they’d have in the books, which is how prequels usually go, they had perfect set up for these arcs. It’s really excellent. 

Jesper, Inej, and Kaz are all allowed to be flawed, to have serious conflicts with one another, and yet to love each other. They feel like a found family in the best of ways. Kaz is the perfect selfish rogue; he’s a much more successfully executed Byronic hero than the Darkling, actually. Inej is heroic and her faith is not mocked, yet she too is flawed and her choices are not always entirely justified, but instead left to the audience to ponder (like killing the girl), which is a more mature writing choice that I appreciated. 

Jesper is charming, has a heart of gold despite being a murderer and on the surface fairly greedy, and MILO THE EMOTIONAL SUPPORT GOAT WAS THE BEST THING EVER. I also liked Jesper’s fling with Dima but I felt it could be better used rather than merely establishing his sexuality, like if Jesper and Dima had seen each other one more time or something had come of their tryst for the plot/themes/development of Jesper. 

Nina and Matthias’s backstory being in the first season, instead of in flashbacks, really works because it automatically erases any discomfort of the implications of Nina having falsely accused Matthias that the books start with. We know Nina, we know Matthias, we know their motivations, backgrounds, and why they feel the way we do. It’ll be easy for the audience to root for them without a lot of unnecessary hate springing from misunderstanding Nina (since she’s my favorite). Matthias’s arc was also really strongly executed and satisfyingly tragic. Their plotline was a bit unfortunately disconnected from the rest of the story, but Danielle Gallagan and Callahan Skogman have absolutely sizzling chemistry so I found myself looking forward to their scenes instead of feeling distracted. Also? It’s nice seeing a woman with Nina’s body type as a romantic and powerful character. 

Hamliet Likes Malina Now

Insofar as the trilogy storyline goes, the best change the show made was Mal. He still is the same character from the books, but much more likable. The pining was... a lot (too much in episode 4, I felt) but Malina is a ship I actually enjoyed in the show while I NOTP’d it in the books. Mal has complexity and layers to his motivations (somewhat) and a likable if awkward charm. Archie Renaux was fantastic. 

Ben Barnes is the perfect Aleksandr Kirigan, and 15 year old me, who had the biggest of big crushes on Ben Barnes (first celebrity crush over a decade ago lol), was pretty damn happy lol. He’s magnificantly acted--sympathetic and terrifying, sincerely caring and yet villainous in moments. Story-wise, I think it was smart to reveal his name earlier on than in the books, because it helps with the humanization especially in a visual medium like film. Luda was a fitting (if heartbreaking) backstory, but it is also hard for me to stomach knowing what the endgame of his character is. Like... I get the X-men fallacy thing, but I hope the show gives more kindness to his character than the books did, yet I’m afraid to hold my breath. Just saying that if you employ save the cat, if you directly say you added this part (Luda) to make the character more likable (as the director did) please do not punish the audience for feeling what you intended. 

I also liked the change that made Alina half-Shu. It adds well to her arc and fits with her character, actually giving her motivations (she kinda just wants to be ordinary in a lot of ways) a much more interesting foundation than in the books. Also it’s nice not to have another knock-off Daenerys (looking to you Celaena and book!Alina). Jessie Mei Li does a good job playing Alina’s insecurities and emotions, but... 

Narrative: The Ehhhhhhh

Alina the Lamp

Sigh. Here we go. Alina has little consistent characterization. She’s almost always passive when we see her, yet she apparently punches an officer for calling her a name and this seems to be normal for her, but it doesn’t fit at all with what we know about her thus far. Contradictions are a part of humanity, but it’s never given any focus, so it comes across as inconsistent instead of a flaw or repression. 

I have no idea what Alina wants, beside that she wants to be with Mal, which is fine except I have no idea what the basis of their bond is. Even with like, other childhood friends to lovers like Ren/Nora in RWBY or Eren/Mikasa in SnK, there’s an inciting moment, a reason, that we learn very early on in their story to show us what draws them together. Alina and Mal just don’t have that. There’s the meadow/running away thing, but they were already so close, and why?  Why, exactly? What brought them together? The term “bullies” is thrown around but it isn’t ever explored and it needed to be this season. If I have to deal with intense pining for so many episodes at least give me a foundation for their devotion. You need to put this in the beginning, in the first season. You just do.

A “lamp” character is a common metaphor to describe a bad character: essentially, you could replace the character with a lamp and nothing changes. Considering Alina’s gift is light, it’s a funnily apt metaphor, but it really does apply. Her choices just don’t... matter. She could be a special lamp everyone is fighting over and almost nothing would change. The ironic thing is that everyone treating her like a fancy lamp is exactly the conflict, but it’s never delved into. We’re never shown that Alina is more than a lamp. She never has to struggle because her choices are made for her and information is gifted to her when she needs it. Not making choices protects Alina from consequences and the story gives her little incentive to change that; in fact, things tend to turn out better when she doesn’t make choices (magic stags will arrive). 

Like... let’s look at a few occasions when Alina almost or does make choices. For example, she chooses to (it seems) sleep with Kirigan, but then there’s a convenient knock at the door and Bhagra arrives with key information that changes Alina’s mind instantly despite the fact that Bhagra’s been pretty terrible to her. If you want to write a woman realizing she’s been duped by a cruel man, show her discovering it instead of having the man’s abusive mother tell her when she had absolutely no such suspicions beforehand. There’s no emotional weight there because Alina doesn’t struggle. 

When she is actually allowed to carry out a bad choice, the consequences are handwaved away instead of built into a challenge for her. Like... Alina got her friends killed. More than once. I’m not saying she’s entirely to blame for these but could we show her reacting to it? Feeling any sort of grief? She never mentions Raisa or Alexei after they’re gone, just Mal, and I’m... okay. They were there because of you. Aren’t you feeling anything? Aren’t you sad? The only time Alina brings up her friends’ deaths is to tell Kirigan he killed her friends when they were only there because she burned the maps. She yells at Kirigan for “never” giving her a choice, but she almost never makes any, so why would he? Alina has the gall to lecture Genya about choices, but she herself almost never has to make any. 

Which brings me to another complaint in general: Alina’s lack of care for everyone around her when they’re not Mal, even if they care for her. Marie dies because of her (absolutely not her fault of course) but as far as we know she never even learns about Marie. She certainly doesn’t ever ask about her or Nadia. Alina seems apathetic at best to people, certainly not compassionate or kind. 

The frustrating thing is that there is potential here. Like, it actually makes a lot of psychological sense for an orphan who has grown up losing to be reluctant to care for people outside of her orbit and that she would struggle to believe she can have any say in her destiny (ie make choices). It’s also interesting that a girl who feels like an outsider views others outside her. But the show never offers examines Alina’s psychology with any depth; it simply tells us she’s compassionate when she is demonstrably not, it tells us she makes decisions when it takes magical intervention to do so. It’s a missed opportunity. This does not change between episodes 1 and 8, despite the episodes’ parallel structures and scenes, which unintentionally reinforces that Alina had little real development. 

Inej and ironically Jesper and Kaz embody the concept of “mercy” far better and with far more complexity than Alina does. The Crows have reactions to the loss of people who even betray them (Arken, etc), learn, and course-correct (or don’t) when they are even loosely involved in having strangers die. They’re good characters because they change and learn and have their choices matter. When they kill we see them wrestle with it and what this means even if they are accustomed to doing so. Jesper can’t kill in front of a child. Kaz wonders what his killings do to Inej’s idea of him.

Narrative: The Mixed Bag

Tropes, Themes, Telling vs. Showing

So the show’s themes in the Alina storyline are a mess, as they are in the trilogy too. Tropes are a very valuable way to show your audience what you’re trying to say. They’re utilized worldwide because they resonate with people and we know what to expect from them. The Crows' storyline shows us what it wants us to learn.

Preaching tells, and unfortunately, the trilogy relies on telling/preaching against fornicationBad Boys. It’s your right to write any trope or trample any trope you want--your story--but you should at least understand what/why you are doing so. The author clearly knows enough about Jungian shadows and dark/light yin/yang symbolism to use it in the story, but then just handwaves it away as “I don’t like this” but never does so in a narratively effective way: addressing the appeal in the first place. If you really wanna deconstruct a trope, you gotta empathize with the core of the reason these tropes appeal to people (it allays deep fears that we are ourselves unlovable, through loving another person despite how beastly they can be), and address this instead of ignoring it. Show us a better way through the Fold of your story. Don’t just go around it and ignore the issue.

The trilogy offers highly simplistic themes at best--bad boy bad and good boy good, which is fine-ish for kid lit but less fine for adult complexity, which the show (more so than the books) seems to try to push despite not actually having much of it.

Alina and Mal are intended to be good, we’re told they are, but I’m not sure why beyond just that we’re told so. Alina claims the stag chose her, but in the show it’s never explained why at all. Unlike with Kaz, Inej, Jesper, and hell even Matthias and Nina, we don’t see Alina or Mal’s complex choices and internal wrestling. 

Like, Inej’s half-episode where she almost killed the guy they needed was far more character exploration than Alina has the entire show, to say nothing of Inej’s later killing which not only makes her leaps and bounds more interesting, but ironically cements her as a far more compelling and yes, likable, heroine than Alina. We see Inej’s emotional and moral conflict. We can relate to her. We see Kaz struggling with his selfishness and regrets, with his understanding of himself through his interactions with and observations of Inej, Alina, the Darkling, Arken, and Jesper.

We don’t explore what makes Mal or Alina good and what makes them bad. We don’t know what Alina discovers about herself, what her power means for her. We are told they are good, we are told she knows her power is hers, but never shown what this means or what this costs them/her. Their opportunities to be good are handed to them (the stag, Bhagra) instead of given to them as a challenge in which they risk things, in which doing good or making a merciful choice costs them. Alina gets to preach about choices without ever making any; Inej risks going back to the Menagerie to trust Kaz. Her choices risk. They cost. They matter and direct her storyline and her arc, and those of the people around her.

Production Stuff:

The Good: 

The production overall is quite excellent. The costumes, pacing, acting, and cinematography (for example, one of the earliest scenes between the Darkling and Alina has Alina with her back to the light, face covered in his shadow, while the Darkling’s face is light up by her light even if he stands in the shadows) are top-notch. The soundtrack as well is incredible and emphasizes the scenes playing. The actors have great chemistry together, friend chemistry and romantic when necessary (Mal and Alina, the Darkling and Alina, Kaz and Inej, Nina and Matthias, David and Genya, etc.) All are perfectly cast. 

The Uncomfortable Technicalities Hamliet Wants to Bitch About:

The only characters from fantasy!Europe having any trace of an accent reminiscent of said fantasy country's real-world equivalent are antagonists like Druskelle (Scandinavia) and Pekka (Ireland). When the heroes mostly have British accents despite being from fantasy Russia and Holland, it is certainly A Choice to have the Irish accent emphasized. The actor is British by the way, so I presume he purposely put on an Irish accent. I'm sure no one even considered the potential implications of this but it is A Look nonetheless.

The Anachronisms Hamliet Has a Pet Peeve About: 

The worldbuilding is compelling, but the only blight on the worldbuilding within the story itself (ignoring context) was that there are some anachronisms that took me out of the story, particularly in the first episode where “would you like to share with the class” and “saved by the horn” are both used. Both are modern-day idioms in English that just don’t fit, especially the latter. The last episode uses “the friends we made along the way.” There are other modern idioms as well.

IT’S STARKOVA and Other Pet Peeves Around the Russian Portrayal 

Russian names are not hard, and Russian naming systems are very, very easy to learn. I could have waved “Starkov” not being “Starkova,” “Nazyalensky” not being “Nazyalenskaya,”  and “Safin” not being “Safina” as an American interpretation (since in America, the names do not femininize). However, “Mozorova” as a man is unfathomable and suggests to me the author just doesn’t understand how names work, which is a bit... uh okay considering a simple google search gets you to understand Russian names. They aren’t hard. I cannot understand why the show did not fix this. It is so simple to fix and would be a major way to help the story’s overall... caricature of Russia. 

Speaking of that... Ravka is supposedly Russian-based, but it is more accurately based on the stereotypes of what Americans think of Russia. Amerussia? Russica? Not great. 

The royals are exactly what Americans think of the Romanovs, right down to the “greasy” “spiritual advisor” who is clearly Rasputin and which ignores the Romanov history, very real tragedy, and the reason Rasputin was present in the court. The religion with all its saints is a vapid reflection of Russian Orthodoxy. The military portrayal with its lotteries and brutality and war is how the US views the Russian military. The emphasis on orphans, constant starvation, classification, and children being ripped from their homes to serve the government is a classic US understanding of USSR communism right down to the USSR having weapons of destruction the rest of the world fears (Grisha). Not trying to defend the Soviet Union here at all, but it is simplistic and reductive and probably done unconsciously but still ehhhh. 

However, I’m not Russian. I just studied Russian literature. I’ve seen very little by way of discussion of this topic online, but what I do see from Russian people has been mixed--some mind, some don’t. The reality is that I actually don’t really mind this because it’s fantasy, though I see why some do. I'm not like CANCEL THIS. So why am I talking about this beyond just having a pet peeve?

Well, because it is a valid critique, and because it doesn’t occur in a vacuum. The Grishaverse is heralded as an almost paragon for woke Young Adult literature, which underlines itself what so frustrates me about how literary circles discuss issues of diversity and culture. Such praise, while ignoring its quasi-caricature of Russia, reflects a very ethnocentric (specifically American) understanding of culture, appropriation, and representation. All stories are products of their culture to various extents, but it bothers me on principle what the lit community reacts (and overreacts sometimes?) to and what people give a pass to. The answer to what the community reacts to and what it gives a pass always pivots on how palatable the appropriation is to American understandings and sensibilities. There’s nuance here as well, though. 

I'm not cancelling the story or thinking it should be harshly attacked for this, but it is something that can be discussed and imo should be far more often--but with the nuance it begs, instead of black/white. But that’s a tall ask. 

[garthofshayeris]

I've seen you've talk about how rebirth Garth is not real Garth and I believe you obviously mean personally I am still annoyed over Roy's clone from n52 that everyone keeps acting like is Roy is still a thing, but how is he different?

I’m so glad you asked! It sounds obvious, but typically people like a character for their personality or their story arcs or their character development. Like, why else would you like a character, right? So when there are huge changes to the things that make you like the character, uh…there’s not much left.

So, obviously with reboots some things are going to be changed. Maybe someone’s appearance is altered. some of their backstory is switched up, some personality traits get dropped or added. What sucks about Rebirth Garth is they changed everything about his character, none of it for the better. And for a character who, until now, has had a major part to play in Aquaman and other dc comics for about half a century, it’s honestly pretty insulting. So many creators poured their hearts into shaping him into a character before the reboot. There was so much love put into his stories, that the comparison to rebirth is so, so noticeable. Like…if Dick Grayson was rebooted with a completely different backstory and personality and was only vaguely related to the Batfamily, I think fans would be rightfully upset. I feel the same about Garth.

His personality, or whatever attempt they made at one, is bland and boring. He’s a brute who likes fighting and….that’s it. Compared to preboot Garth who is consistently sweet and sensitive and emotional and good. He’s just a good guy who thinks of fighting as a last resort, because he would rather use his words than his fists. It was such a lovely, refreshing take on a male character (and one who is in big name comics like Aquaman and Titans and JLA) that to lose one of his key elements is terrible sad and disappointing.

Garth’s story is, ultimately, completely tied to Arthur’s. They bring out the best and worst in each other. Garth is Arthur’s foil, from the start he is there to complement Arthur as a hero and they’re part of each other’s arcs. And his backstory heavily influences how Garth acts and what he does. His story is one of grief and loss and identity and overcoming stigma, prejudice, and taking control of your destiny. His story is about healing. Or it was.

Because Rebirth Garth doesn’t have any of that. He is, essentially, a completely different character who happens to be named Garth. Sure, he mentioned offhandedly that when he was in Magic College he had a girlfriend who Died Tragically and then they never mentioned that again. It’s a cheap imitation of his Tula storyline, told in like 2 panels, because Tula is also a completely different character now. They’ve spoken in canon once. Two characters who have been so closely joined together for 50 years barely know each other now. This is the same for every other character who still exists in Aquaman canon (they’ve written out a ton). He’s never even spoken to his other love interest in preboot, Dolphin, at all.

Let’s get back to Magic College though. Garth’s powers (or the few he retained from his original power set, though honestly he just like glows now? They’ve never really explained what he can do) are there because he went to underwater Hogwarts and I guess you can just do that and become magic. In comparison, preboot Garth has magic because he’s an abandoned prince from a long line of powerful sorcerer-kings. But power corrupts and his father is murdered and his mother flees, and although she abandons Garth as birth he is so haunted by their deaths that they plague his nightmares. His powers are earned through an incredibly moving journey that includes (among other things) closure from grief and the literal act of taking ones destiny into their own hands. Garth earns his powers because he is pure of heart, because he is brave, and because he loves so, so much and because others loved him. And when he uses those powers in other comics, you remember the meaning behind them. So Rebirth Garth being magic “just because” is so reductive, so boring, so uninspired. I’d rather him be an average atlantean.

But Garth has absolutely no history with the Aquafamily. Giving us an emotional story with him now would be meaningless because he has no part in the comics or the Aquafam. Sure, they mentioned once that Arthur “raised” Garth but…there’s no evidence of that. They don’t speak to each other in Rebirth. There’s actually no way Arthur could have done that in the canon timeline, but it doesn’t matter because they make no attempt to show he’s even part of the family. Garth has been to exactly zero life events for Arthur. He’s never met Arthur’s daughter. He’s never shown just hanging with the others, and they hang out with assholes who tried to kill them before. He is never there. But we are told, once, that he and Arthur like each other. This character means nothing. You can write him out of the few issues he appears in and nothing changes. He’s completely worthless as a character.

So his personality is gone, his backstory is gone, his character themes and growth are gone…surely he still looks the same?

Wrong. He’a ugly. I’m sorry, he is. Everyone is always posting pictures of him saying he’s so pretty (and comparing him to his look on TT:YO as if those aren’t completely different continuities?) but he looks like every other black haired character in DC right now. He looks like Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson and Time Drake and every other fucking guy it’s boring and it’s stupid. He has ugly straight hair (a far cry from Garth’s usual big, curly locks) in a boring ponytail because apparently YJ and TT are the only source the artists ever used to draw him. And his eyes. He has blue eyes. BLUE. When his character has had purple eyes for his entire existence, when his purple eyes have been a major plot point for his entire existence, when his purple eyes were his one defining trait for his entire existence. Insulting.

And he has eye tattoos. Sure, you say, because we all know Garth got his eye scars while training with Atlan (also now a completely different character) when claiming his birthright (written out of canon) to gain his powers (written out of canon) so yeah, maybe they’re just tattoos now. Except some dumbass at DC couldn’t be bothered to put them on the right side of his face. Yet another defining character trait completely fucked up because nobody at DC cared about making this character. He exists to tick off a box, to say “hey, look, we brought back a character you guys wanted. Buy our comics.”

So, when I say Rebirth Garth isn’t the “real” Garth, this is what I mean. The characters are different in every way that makes characters matter. He’s a character who shares a name and nothing else. And I hate him.

[the-side-charactersloveinterest]

Scott Pilgrim

Okay, I think anyone who has read the Scott Pilgrim books knows what I'm saying when I say the movie is absolutely horrible. they keep a lot of the comic references but are we not gonna talk about all we missed? A bit of backstory on why I haven't posted about this stupid book yet. My Ex has had my 3 books in her sister's closet for 4 months and I just now got them back. Anyway back to what I was saying.

For starters we can talk about Kim. in the Movie she really just feels like a side charter you don't get much of her backstory all we really know is that she is a band drummer. Now Kim is actually really relevant in the books and she ties in with a lot of Scott's past. we learn more about Scott and what is going on with his shitty past relationships. We actually find out they dated in the books and theirs an entire story behind that. The back story clears up a lot when it comes to a charter that is not actually in the movies. Lisa, ALSO it's so sad that I didn't see her when I was looking at the charter list on the wiki. She has an entire storyline in the books and it was just thrown away for the sake of time probably. In the books, Scott and Ramona also had a house together and he got locked out of the hose for a really long time and was couch surfing for a hot second. the band recorded a CD and posted an entire album. ext... a lot of things happened in the book that would have improved the movie.

The movie was sucky and cheap but at least the acting was okay... it was honestly not the best but that's okay now time for the actual topic of this post.

SCOTT IS NOT OKAY YALL

He dated a 17-year old that doesn't just make him a pedo but altogether a creep. he has some serious mental illness in the book, and I know the dark Scott is supposed to be everything that he repressed from altogether being a bad person. He was dealing with his inner self actually his inner self was one of the longest battles he faced in the book. Kim even had to remind him of what happened in the past in the real light. from Scott's point of view, you get this epic story of saving Kim in a bad situation with a guy, and from Kim, you get the real story not covered by Scott's hero view on things. It is actually kind of interesting how Scott represses his memories the entire book up until the end. in the book you get a really good realization arc. he has some really good development and only when he forgives himself for everything that he has done in the past can he move on. Remona completely leaves him for a good year in the books because he has this thing where she just up and leaves people. She does it all the time its really bad but we aren't talking about how toxic she is. Scott is not a good person and to be honest, if you look at the book as a whole you could see him as the tragic hero he just doesn't die.

My favorite example of a tragic hero is John Proctor from "The Crusabil" The play is about the Salem witch trials and he is pretty much the main charter. now, why am I applying this to Scott Pilgrim? Because I need a tragic hero and John is the only one that I can think of okay? In the play, it was all his fault that the trials actually happened. He had a romantic affair with a housemaid (She was 17) when his wife was ill. When Liz his wife was no longer ill she let Abby go and Abby hoping that she could kill Liz tried to curse her. A lot more happens but what I really want to bring up is the fact that Scott and John have a lot in common! They are both pedos! hate to say it but it's true. The difference is that Abby tried to kill Liz..... jk Knives wanted to battel Ramona. In the books, I'm pretty sure if you lose a battle you die? But dont @ me on that I know in the books you can get a extra life and stuff and thats pretty cool. I cant seem to remember if they added that detail in the movie or not.

To be honest commpaing Scott to a trajic hero is kinda funny to me i will not lie he is probmatic as hell but like that is what makes a good MC. I guess what im saying is the movie sucked.

Read the books..... Or The Crusabil. Both are so much better then the Scott Pigrim movie.

[littencloud9]

a (long) rant on why i love promare

warning: contains spoilers

| the animation/art style

BROOO THE ANIMATION IS FREAKING FIRE I’M NOT EVEN KIDDING. ik it’s an action movie, but everytime a fighting scene comes on it just,, blows my mind. there’s so many things going on but somehow you know where and what to focus on and i think that’s really cool. also the colours?? the vibrancy and everything. i love love LOVE how the fire looks, or when there’s a sad scene and everything turns white and black and grey, or even the fact that everyone has colourful hair XD. even those scenes where the burnish are being used for fuel or when they’re dying/turning to ash/whatever you wanna call it, it all feels so magical. there’s a really special vibe in this movie which is amazing imo

| the storyline

as if this wasn’t obvious, but the storyline!! the plot!!! the characters!!!! everything is PERFECT. the part where galo realised that kray isn’t the hero he always thought he was, or when galo watches the lives of the burnish and realised through lio how terrible their fate is (ik lio said it’s a blessing but it’s kinda sad?? to just be burned up by the fire within yourself), or when aina learns about what heris is really working for.... gosh. this also brings me to my next point

| aina and heris’s relationship

okay i’m a SUCKER for interesting sibling relationships and promare DEFINITELY delivered. even though aina feels like she’s living in the shadow of her sister, she still loves her and it makes me 🥺. also, everything heris does, even if she knows it’s wrong, is all for protecting her sister. you can really see her conflict bc she knows what she’s doing is terrible but it gives aina a chance to be one of the 10,000 people to be on the spaceship, and she struggles between her morals and her sister’s safety. there’s also that badass scene where heris jumps off the building and reappears with aina in the helicopter like ???? okay queens??? go off LMAO. but yes their relationship was wonderfully shown and it’s fantastic

| kray’s character

honestly, kray reminds me of lysandre from pokémon xyz lol. he has this mentality that if someone doesn’t do something, the earth is gonna explode or whatever and everyone will die and he takes it upon himself to do it. ig he kinda sees himself as the hero?? (which we al know is wrong but whatever). and when he was revealed to be a burnish and he tries getting lio to join him by saying how he understands the feeling of wanting to burn the world down? or that he only saved galo as an excuse to build up his reputation? and then sent galo to be a firefighter bc it had the highest mortality rate?? he’s a terrible guy BUT he makes for a perfect villain and i’m here for it

| the soundtrack

OKAY COME ON I COULDN’T NOT INCLUDE THIS. THE SOUNDTRACK FREAKING  S L A P S. also you can’t listen to the lyrics of inferno and tell me that it isn’t just a romance song for lio and galo LOL

| the characters

okay tbh i really wish we could’ve gotten more of the burning rescue team. esp lucia!! she’s probably one of my favourites out of the team, alongside varys. she’s got this crazy science kid vibe and vinny (the lil mouse that’s always with her) makes it twenty times better. but anyway, i love how each of the characters have their own quirks and personalities and i really wish we could’ve gotten more of them

| the burnish 

as tragic as their lives were, i think it’s super cool how they all lent their power to make the core explode LOL that’s probably one of my favourite scenes in the movie. also lio’s generals? when they held back the ice just to send lio to the volcano in an attempt to protect him... 🥺 and the line ‘forget about us! the burnish's flame won't fade as long as you live!’ oh my GOD. RIGHT IN THE FEELS

| the humour

when lio captures galo and galo witnesses the life of the burnish and galo’s like ‘y’all eat???’ i have never laughed harder. lio’s FACE omg. or anytime someone jabs and insults the other,,, lio’s just like ‘you’re an idiot’ half the time and galo’s like ‘:((‘ LMAO. or the names of all the inventions and robots? it’s so silly but it really gives a breath of fresh air to the movie!! even if you don’t like romance/action, i’d 100% recommend it simply for the comedy

| galo and lio’s relationship 

alright, saving the best for last XD. there’s just,, so much i love about them? pushing the romance aside first, the way they work together is FANTASTIC. they’re both kinda reckless, but their fighting styles complement each other so much!! and when galo stuck their names together LMAO he’s so silly and lio knows it. they’ve got the same beliefs despite being on opposite sides (at first) and oh my god even the fist bump at the end was so CUTE what a bunch of dorks. 

romance wise, you’re lying if you say you don’t ship these two even just a little bit. throughout the WHOLE movie, even their first interaction where they’re just heavily glaring at each other,, the TENSION these two have omfg. lio figures out that galo really doesn’t know anything about kray and so he’s just like ‘i’m about to ruin your life sorry bro’ and galo is SHOOK but straight after that he’s like ‘the burnish. aren’t bad people?’ he’s seen the tragedy of them, even when lio attempts the burnish cpr thing and it fails and he just watched while the ash... fades. AND THEN HE DOES IT TO LIO AHAHAHAHA. but also, the way they work together is fan-freaking-tastic i said it already but i’ll say it again they COMPLEMENT each other so WELL. 

there’s also the part where lio’s flames protected galo and MY HEART... i think i uwued on the spot. to put in simple terms:

kray: attempts to kill galo

galo: doesn’t die

galo: lol actually my boyfriend gave me his flames to protect me so i won’t scorch to death and he’s also being burned from the inside so brb while i eat the flame he gave me and give it back to him through cpr kissing. yeah bye

KSHSKDHSLSJS

lio wakes up/resurrects/whatever you call it, RIPS OFF HIS SHIRT, JOINS GALO IN THE ROBOT HALF NAKED. this is especially funny to me bc lio at first dissed galo for being naked and now he joined??? LMAO THAT’S GAY YOU CAN’T CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE. and then the robot flew off and THE SMOKE THING TOOK THE SHAPE OF A HEART DHSKDHSK I SCREAMED. CAN THEY GET ANY MORE OBVIOUS???? 😭😭😭😭😭

i haven’t talked much about it yet but the kiss. the KISS. say what you want about it being cpr but that scene SCREAMED ‘ily pls wake up i will kiss you like there’s no tomorrow bc this is my last chance WAKE UP’ to me. and when lio wakes up he’s like ‘...galo? you saved me?’ MY HEART PLEASE 😭😭😭. these two DORKS. and the little fist bump at the end oh god. it’s okay y'all can kiss we all know you want to. the smirks/smiles they send to each other.......... 

AND AND AND NOT TO MENTION THEIR DYNAMIC. listen lio can call galo an idiot however many times he wants BUT we all know lio admires galo and is totally willing to go on with his plans. ‘what’s your strategy?’ ‘grinning and bearing it!’ PLEASE that’s such a galo thing to do and lio’s like: are you serious i have to work with YOU 

and even at the end he’s like ‘you really are an idiot’ LMAO I COULDN’T HELP MYSELF I LITERALLY BLURTED OUT ‘but he’s your idiot’ AND ALMOST STARTED CRYING RIGHT THERE AND THEN

um this is WAY longer than i intended it to be but yeah here. this is me screeching over promare :)

[palmett-hoes]

Hi, I really loved your post with the monsters as Birds of Prey! Was wondering if you had any thoughts on the Foxes as Marvel or Mcu characters? I feel like I could see Dan as Carol Danvers and Andrew for sure is Jessica Jones, idk about the rest.

oh wow old post!!

haha unfortunately i’m not really a comics person so i don’t feel like i can really give the best analysis possible, but i have seen most of the mcu movies and bits and pieces of the netflix show so i’ll try my best. also im using dc characters too bc i want to

1. Dan: I think your instinct with Dan as Captain Marvel is spot-on (at least uhhh,, based on the movie lol sorry comics ppl). Her direct, forceful powers and fighting style are definitely reminiscent of dan’s no-nonsense leadership approach. similarly the themes of overcoming sexism and acceling in a male-dominated industry in the captain marvel movie is pretty much the same as dan’s story establishing herself as the first female exy captain (tho sports is way more valid than the military). plus there’s a lot of emphasis on love and friendship between women that dan is ALL about. also lashana lynch would be a god tier dan wilds fc. Dan could also def have that lawful good Okoye from Black Panther energy. Loyal, disciplined, no-nonsense leader. no powers except discipline. no hair. also danai gurira in 2012 with the dreads and the sword and the cape on TWD was definitely part of my middle school sexual awakening

2. Kevin: Aquaman. this is based pretty much exclusively on the fact that jason momoa is my #1 kevin fc and also that Pasifika kevin is phenomenal and mandatory, actually. otherwise i think he has a decent amount of stick-up-the-ass cyclops energy. or dick grayson nightwing energy but i don’t have any evidence for why. kinda looks like him tho

3. Andrew: andrew gets the most characters bc he’s my favorite. i think ur jessica jones instincts are absolutely correct, both in her storyline (i only watched the first season) and her powers. i’ve seen some powers au and the tendency seems to be giving andrew like,, psychic powers or the like, and i don’t really agree. andrew is a very direct character. he’s pragmatic, he confronts problems head on, and he doesn’t muck about in details. to me this really translates best into physical powers like super strength that help u big punch straight thru all ur problems. also i def think andrew would be not just a solo hero but a mercenary (or a detective) because he’s not altruistic enough to be a standard vigilante. he doesn’t care enough about other people to hang out on rooftops all night waiting for Crime to occur. there’s a price for that.  which brings us to the NEXT andrew hero: deadpool. maybe in personality more of a drugged andrew but the superpowered mercenary is really a perfect fit for andrew. also, healing powers have a decidedly tragic poetry to them on andrew. already he’s self-destructive, if he had a healing factor his concern for his own well-being would be so beyond rock bottom it’d be in the earth’s core. even worse when you remember that with a healing factor, as opposed to indestructibility, you still feel all the pain. which brings us to Wolverine and X-23, who have the same thematic points as deadpool but are much more of a personality match and they have knife hands, which i really think andrew would appreciate. ending that sadness train and onto another tho, andrew’s aesthetic and Vibes fit the Winter Soldier just SO well (just that movie tho, not really civil war or anything past that) and a reinterpretation of the captain america story using the twinyards would be incredibly interesting. and finally, one last hero that would work really well for andrew: rogue, only remove the angst around not being able to touch people, andrew would love that. one touch and their comatose? baller. don't fucking touch him.

4. Matt: Shazam. I didn’t see the shazam movie but my dad and brother did and they said it was very funny and all the trailors looked like it had a lot of fun himbo energy and i really think that fits. in terms of matching himbo disaster energy i think i’ve heard good things about comics hawkeye (not mcu). thor?

5. Aaron: Mr. Fantastic. now this might be a stretch but aaron is a character who uses a skin-deep veneer of anger to cover the fact that he’s actually quite pliant and bends to other people’s wills. and he’s a doctor or w/e. he could alse be like,, antman. he’s smart right? hank pym not paul rudd. katelyn can be wasp

6. Seth: Arm Fall Off Boy. no i will not elaborate.             ..... ugh fine, but i'm using my favorite piece of superhero media of all time: x-men evolution, the one where they're all teenagers in public high school. seth can be lance alvers/avalanche who’s a bit of a jerk and has a lot of issues with authority and has a rivalry with cyclops very reminiscent of seth with kevin, but still there’s the recurring theme that he’s lashing out because of low self-esteem and a bad situation and he’s a surprisingly sympathetic character who i’m very fond of. his power is earthquakes but i think the name makes that pretty self-explanatory

7. Allison: Iron Man. cocky, bitchy, and rich rich rich. sounds like allison to me. then to elevate it a level higher: emma frost, rich bitch extraordinaire. also if allison had telepathic powers she would be unstoppable. plus one more bitchy, morally-gray blonde (but chaotic this time): Harley Quinn

8. Nicky: Okay so I do wanna give a quick shout-out to Northstar, the first openly gay comicbook superhero, who’s a speedster which I’d actually say fits Nicky pretty well. However, if i had to choose a superhero to represent nicky in presence and powers it would have to be Jubilee from x-men (... from what i’ve heard lol. i’ve never actually consumed any of her Media hahaha anyway) she’s a joyful, energetic presence and her powers are setting off fireworks which i think is a good balance of nicky being a supportive cousin-parent AND a chaotic train wreck garbage trash man. also gonna throw in johnny storm for a cheap 'flaming' joke

9. Renee: Thunder/Blackbird from Black Lightning bc she’s a fufkin lesbian lol. (i don’t watch the show but i do follow nafessa williams’s tag). now the fr ones i’m gonna do together because to me they have the same Vibes so i chose them for the same reasons. Wonder Woman and Storm who to me have the same  reserved, impartial, regal energy. honestly ethereal and somewhat otherwordly, and quite literally goddesses. also op as hell.  black widow and her “red in my leger” looking for redemption story also fits thematically.

10. Neil: okay lazy answer first: the flash or quicksilver. get it? because they run fast? and neil run too? yea i like to think i've proven myself to be better than such a surface level interpretation but worth the mention ig. so for srs now, mystique and her shape changing powers would be an interesting interpretation of neil's identity issues, but i wanna push it a step further. nightcrawler would actually be possibly the MOST interesting hero to apply to neil 1. because powers still very movement go fast place to place 2. because of the thematic focus on neil's unusual looks and the lengths he goes to hide them, very much in line with the way nightcrawler will use a hologram-projector in order to look human, yet in both cases it's only a surface-level illusion, and 3. his parentage. here, mary would be mystique, which i also think works very well considering mary seemed to be the far more effective chameleon on the run than neil, and also fits with her place as a morally grey character, as mystique herself is often a villain or an antagonist, with her own agenda and shadowy motives. then nathan matches well with nightcrawler's father: azazel, a literal demon, and also where kurt gets his appearance. it's a shockingly coherent narrative between the three of them. then, to also give neil some powers that aren't contingent on his fucked up geneology and rather on his own merit and abilities, Black Canary and her sonic voice parallel the way that neil began to anchor his identity and take ownership over himself through his voice and his sick roasts

and 1 extra, wymack: batman, on account of his altruism, his dedication to second chances, and his many, many adopted children

---

anon, ik it's been a sec since you sent this, so i hope it gets back to you. i had a fun time with it and it prompted like,,, 7 different au s that i'll never write

[johannesviii]

So I guess I’m hyperfixating on Death Stranding at the moment

And since I’ve finally finished the story after playing it for like 100 hours over the course of seven months or so I guess I have Opinions(tm) about things I didn’t like in the game

They’re eating at my brain so I’m gonna put them all in a single post to get them out of my system once and for all so I can enjoy the rest in peace

Spoilers, obviously

Hi welcome back to ‘Johannes is obsessing over yet another video game with horror elements in it’! I guess!!

Our latest entry in that category was Until Dawn but since UD can be played in like 6/7 hours and I spent 100 hours of my life on DS, as you can guess we’re talking about a full-blown hyperfixation, the kind that physically hurts because I can’t focus on anything else even after having finished the storyline

But it was super gradual. Again, seven months. I barely made any progress from December to May because I was only doing side-deliveries at the beginning of Chapter 3 instead of... you know... advancing the plot. It became an honest-to-god special interest about two months ago, then 6 days ago while playing chapter 10 it reached hyperfixation levels and now I am in PAIN

I hate my brain

Anyhow

At first I wanted to list the good and the bad hings in it but there’s too many good things to list them all in full, excruciatingly long details, so

Very Quick And Very Incomplete List Of Good Things That I Love

It’s a post-apo game based on travel, logistics, and good will, and it straight up goes AGAINST the whole ‘survival of the fittest’ trope that SO MANY post-apo things try to push!! YES

I insist but it’s built on helping each other and keeping everyone alive, seriously that is my shit right there!

The online community is wholesome?? People leave stuff everywhere, you never see anyone but people put little helpful signs and send you likes, and in my game we almost managed to repair all the roads together

There’s so many new & strange allergies and disabilities and phobias in this post-apo world and? nobody is trying to ““fix”“ anyone?? Like Heartman with his padded floor and his little box that brings him back to life constantly. He’s just... living like that. Nobody’s going “hey maybe you should get another heart operation buddy”

The hero and his phobia of being touched. I. Loved. That. The quiet scenes when he was just talking with Fragile, sitting next to her. In any other context this would just be two people sitting next to each other and talking but it always feels so soft and intimate everytime he allows another human being to just. be next to him. I love it. I love them

Everyone crying constantly because of chiral allergy!!

I loved all the important characters bar one (Bridget/Amelie)!

Why is this walking simulator so enjoyable why am I enjoying the fact that holding L2 + R2 while walking feels like holding your backpack and that you have to relax at times just like you’d have to if you were actually holding a backpack

Seriously. Why

The atmosphere was so great, the music was fantastic and the visuals were on point. A E S T H E T I C

The ghosts!! The giant Beached Things!!! Chiral crystals look! like! creepy hands reaching for the SKY!!

THE RAIN DESTROYS THINGS AND KILLS PEOPLE BY ACCELERATING TIME THIS IS SO COOL SHUT UP

Everytime the game got surreal it was electrifying

THE SURREAL WAR SCENES ON CLIFF’S BEACH

Everyone is using emojis

There’s guys addicted to delivering packages in that game and they’re trying to steal our stuff and we’re like “haha they’re dumb” but we’re basically addicted to delivering packages as the player. So yeah that was pretty fun

Terrorists thinking humanity isn’t going extinct fast enough and wanting to just rip the bandaid and speed things up. Simple but effective concept

People ask for SUPER VITAL ITEMS right next to completely trivial stuff and I’m LIVING for it. “Please fetch my toy dinosaur”. I feel you dude

The most isolated characters are like "LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THIS THING I LIKE" in your emails because they haven't had contact with other humans in years, it's super relatable

There’s a farm where people use the fact that Timefall rain accelerates time to grow food super quickly in one (1) Timefall and harvest everything just before it starts to die and I LOVE that detail of worldbuilding so much

YOU’RE FIGHTING BEACHED THINGS WITH YOUR OWN BODILY FLUIDS IT’S SO STUPID BUT ALSO SO COOL?? I love yeet-ing my own blood at eldritch entities

THE T W I S T S

All the fanservice (bar one detail that I’m gonna complain about later) is on dudes. This game reeeeeeally likes to show dudes naked or somewhat naked. Mostly the main character but this mocap also L O V E S Mads Mikkelsen and there’s a shit ton of homoerotic shots in there

I love Sam the antisocial papa wolf delivery man and if someone touches him or his baby again, I will cry

LOU. LOU LOU LOU PRECIOUS BABY I’D DIE FOR YOU. Wait I did

I love Fragile and how brave she is and how she keeps helping people even if most of them wrongly think she’s a terrorist and yes I will eat this cryptobiote thank you

I love soft science boi Heartman who keeps dying again and again and is a bit too much interested in bodily fluids

I love garbage man Higgs and how complex, funny and still somewhat tragic this memelord actually turned out to be in the end

Seriously I want to stop fixating on this character but you can’t give me YET ANOTHER character who wants to die but at the hands of someone else, that is unfair to do that right after my fixation on the new Doctor Who Master

So yeah Higgs is yet another character who makes me want to grab him by the lapels and shake him and yell WHY! ARE! YOU! LIKE! THIS! STOP! BEING! LIKE! THIS!!

Cliff broke all three of my feelings beautifully and in excruciatingly well-acted scenes that transcended the sometimes lackluster dialogue

John made me cry during That Scene

Mama your background was tragic and terrifying and you didn’t deserve any of this shit and I love you

Deadman was more funny than anything, really, but I still liked him even if he had no sense of personal space whatsoever and it clashed horribly with Sam’s phobias

The ending had some sad parts but was mostly positive, thank goodness

Now I’m gonna explain things I dislike and this looks long but it’s actually only 5 main things so I bolded them to avoid confusion

Things I really disliked (and could have been handled wayyyy better)

We all know it but Kojima isn’t a master of subtlety and some parts of the dialogue kept repeating the same informations again and again AND AGAIN and I was like “ok ok I get it”

The dialogue can be so bad at times seriously

Kojima is a bad writer there I said it

It was particularly annoying with Amelie/Bridget and the fact she’s a horrible person trying (and failing) to justify her actions wasn’t helping

Bridges protocols are incredibly intrusive. All of them. I know it’s framed as bad and Sam hates being spied on all the time and in the end he destroys the device that does that, but I wish someone else would openly criticise it in-game

I guess Deadman sort of did but still

Also I know the whole BB technology was Bridget’s idea, and since she’s the actual villain it’s framed as a twisted, evil thing during the ending, but I wish that had been framed like that much earlier ; a lot of Bridges employees just... seem to accept the idea that their employer is using premature babies and their dead mothers as useful, if disturbing, devices. They seem to justify it by “uh we stole that technology from terrorists” to try to cope with the idea but... yeah.

I mean, one of the points being made very early on is that Sam sees his BB as his child who must be protected at all costs instead of a detection device, but I really wish he wasn’t the only one to object to that thing

Again, the game DOES frame "using babies and their dead mothers as tools” as evil and twisted, I just wish it was given a lot more weight and way sooner

Now let’s talk about the Token Straight(tm) in this game

In any other kind of context it would be a joke! But Death Stranding literally has a Token Straight Guy!

I mean, there IS a few hetero couples among the Preppers. Not a lot, mind you. Like, there’s the Montaineer and his wife for instance. But they’re just there and it’s not what their side plot is about

No I’m talking about this piece of shit right there

This f█cking Junk Dealer guy complains the girl he loves is dead because of Bridges and emotionally blackmails us by sending us old holograms of her before her supposed death (somewhat disturbing holograms too because she looks... pretty young in them), then he sends us on what’s essentially a suicide mission in a BT infested zone, THEN when we give him proof she’s still alive and living in another bunker nearby, he won’t go there himself to check??

But SHE’s like “ok, bring me to him, then!”

He doesn’t deserve you, girl

I’ve already seen several people pointing out that carrying a woman as cargo on your back is... debatable at best and sexist at worst, but that part didn’t really bother me to be honest? She asked to be carried to him and it’s her choice. She was talking to us the entire way too, so that made things a lot less awkward. Also Sam has this phobia of being touched by other people so I bet carrying another human being on his back isn’t fun for him. It was also super stressful to do, to be honest.

And then there’s this EXTREMELY AWKWARD scene when they’re reunited and decide to get married, and thankfully Sam finds it just as awkward as we do because he’s standing super far away from the bunker in a “can’t they talk about this later - I’m right there” way. And I’m under the impression it was intended as cringy, in a “yeppp young people in love are Like That” sort of way, so I can accept that, to be honest. If you don’t take that scene seriously, it’s pretty fun in, again, a cringy sort of way

BUT

Then you receive more emails later and this piece of shit guy complains about her and he’s like “ugh WOMEN” or “marriage is the worst” and they end up divorced in record time and she goes back to her bunker

Which isn’t my problem with this subplot either, I promise I’m gonna explain myself eventually but this context is important. It’s okay to have characters who are pieces of shit like this guy who reeks of incel cologne. It’s alright. Not every character has to be a role-model. It’s good to have characters you can hate.

BUT THEN they get back together later to try to patch things up and you learn he was part of a gang who murdered her parents even though he protected her against the rest of the gang and that’s what I hated about that storyline. I guess if you squint it can be read as “this woman is making REALLY BAD life choices” but I read it as “he saved her so she owes him something, he can’t be entirely bad” and y i k e s this left such a bad taste in my mouth, good lord.

But yeah miss Chiral Artist you’re making really bad life choices please get away from this dude as soon as you can, thank you

Also don’t do this ‘sending Likes’ pose ever again, it was hilarious but also you made me use the word “cringy” several times in this paragraph even though I absolutely hate cringe culture, look what you made me do

Now I have to talk about a scene that was intentionally disturbing as hell but ONE (1) detail in it was disturbing for the wrong reasons

To be honest, I really don’t like the Metal Gear Solid games and one of the reasons is the rampant sexism in them so I... was kind of bracing myself for Death Stranding and expecting it to have at least SOME really bad fanservice with a woman at one point or another but to my surprise?? There was none? All the fanservice is on dudes??? Hello? I really liked that (well at some point Fragile takes a shower in our room but we see literally nothing except her shoulder and then Sam looks away)?? What a refreshing change

THAT BEING SAID

And if you played the game you know exactly what I’m about to talk about

Yep this is the part where Johannes complains about how the bomb flashback was shot

Ok so I guess I should also give some context in case someone is reading this but hasn’t played the game, but the deal with this scene is that our friend Fragile was betrayed by her colleague Higgs who used to be a porter but became a terrorist after meeting the “main“ villain of the game. First he secretly put a thermonuclear bomb in one of her deliveries so she’d nuke an entire city without even knowing it, and everyone after that thought she was a terrorist. And then he tried to do that shit A SECOND TIME, but she noticed and decided to toss the second nuke into a bottomless lake of tar. But he caught her just before she reached the lake and he decided to give her a sadistic choice, which was “teleport away and the bomb stays there and nukes the city, or carry it to the lake but only in your underwear under this rain that speeds up time and it will do enormous damage to your health and your body”

And of course being the hero she is, she decides to take the second option

And it’s an incredibly disturbing scene and it’s genuinely hard to watch

But it’s also the ONLY time a woman is in her underwear in this entire game and there’s A COUPLE of shots that were male-gaze-y at the beginning before she started to run and the really horrific part started.

So in a way I guess it could have been worse? way worse, even

But it still tarnishes an otherwise disturbing (and harrowing at times ; seriously I know I’m oversensitive but it was physically painful to watch) scene with unnecessary shots

We know Fragile had a young body before this happened, this isn’t the point of this scene, guys

Whoever decided to keep these shots (probably Kojima let’s face it), that is bad and you should feel bad

Idk how to do a visual transition for that next one because I do not want to screen that memo

So here’s a screenshot with a nice landscape instead

tw: acephobia

Now I have to talk about something I like the GENERAL IDEA of, but not how the IN-GAME MATERIAL ABOUT IT was written

Because I have to talk about that “asexual world” memo

First I have to say that I absolutely love the fact that a mainstream game openly says in-game “this future is full of asexual people" and?? it’s just that, it’s a part of this world. That’s just how things are. It’s normalised. I love it. For crying out loud this memo has the word demisexual in it. I can’t think of any other mainstream game that had this word in it so far.

It should have stopped there and let me enjoy that in peace but it didn’t

THE MEMO ITSELF WAS CLEARLY WRITTEN BY SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO HANDLE THESE CONCEPTS and there’s some really bad stuff there. I’d say it’s accidental acephobia but it’s still there. I’m not the best person to talk about this because I’m bi, but it still rubbed me the wrong way

The words this memo uses near the beginning are “"sexless lifestyle” among young people” and yikes, my dude. “Lifestyle”, uh? Really?

And then it goes on about how these new labels were already more and more common “among young people before the Death Stranding” and it also rubs me the wrong way, in a “wow young people and their weird labels lol” sort of queerphobic way?

However I’ve seen a post pointing out that the line “One theory posits that the Stranding accelerated the proliferation of these sexualities” was maybe a way of saying ‘yo asexuals are causing the end of the world’ but... I don’t see it, tbh? In the context of the game, society is extremely divided and a lot of people live in complete isolation and social norms have heavily shifted and it’s kind of normal that there’s queer people visible everywhere now, aces included obviously, because nobody’s bothering to hide it anymore. It’s a post-apocalyptic world! People are just being themselves! A lot of characters also seem to be bi/pan! They’re just vibing ok

At least that’s how I read that part, I can understand if someone had a problem with that bit but I didn’t

BUT! THAT’S NOT ALL because the memo concludes (I’m paraphrasing) “the birth rate has dropped, which might be a problem, but harassment and assault have also dropped, which is good, so idk it’s 50/50″ and. like. I get the intention. But it’s clumsy as hell and very bad. Please don’t confuse abuse of power and attraction. They don’t go hand in hand. Don’t do that. Please. And you know that aces can have kids if they want to, right. Come on. It’s 2020 my dude. This shit is harmful

Also. Like. It’s the end of the world in this game. People don’t want kids. It... has nothing to do with aces. Reality itself is crashing down. People are reluctant to have kids because reality.exe might f█cking crash down at any given moment!

Or a Beached Thing could VoidOut their city!

Or someone might send them a nuke, not naming names!!

Anyway!!!

It’s really badly written and whoever wrote it should educate themselves and maybe get an ace to re-read their stuff next time??

Again I’m not the right person to talk about acephobia and I bet an actual ace would have plenty more to say about this

Thankfully it’s a memo written in-game by a random Bridges councellor and NOT by any important character that we actually know

"I must preempt myself by admitting that I do not have any empirical data" yeah so, f█ck off maybe

So I’m just gonna call that guy “another piece of shit character” but it still doesn’t excuse the fact that the memo was written by someone who thought it was a good idea to put it in the game

Just let me enjoy my super queer post-apo world in peace and don’t write shit like that in your game thank you and goodbye

Minor stuff I also disliked but it wasn’t as awful

I get that Sam is upset at the end because Lou is dying but the way he said goodbye to Fragile broke my heart. It was abrupt and you KNOW he’s upset and wants to have nothing to do with Bridges anymore and that’s very understandable but it isn’t her fault

Seriously I want them to be friends again

I’m gonna pretend they’re friends again after Lou is saved and that Sam is a freelance porter again and sometimes their paths cross and they just talk together in the middle of nowhere and share cryptobiotes

The pacing is weird, there’s this deluge of plot in the beginning and the end but not much in the middle?

The BT boss fights could have been these epic Shadow of the Colossus showdowns but no, they were relatively standard boss fights. Wasted opportunity

The running on the Beach scene sdfghjhgfdsdfghjhgf that was... dumb

A lot of preppers are interesting in one way or another but some are just boring. Also I wish the design of their bunkers was more varied

Amelie/Bridget’s motivations are all over the place, both creating Bridges AND the Demens is... a lot? I know she both WANTS and DOESN’T want the actual, final end of the world to happen but that is a lot to take in and it’s all very confusing

Who the hell cares about ‘rebuilding America’ I just want to build a network where people can help each other

The ‘likes’ are fun but don’t make much sense

In conclusion

Death Stranding Good

Some stuff Bad

Some stuff Very Bad (but it’s just one memo out of 100+ memos, thank god)

I’m still hyperfixating

Send help

[bombshellsandbluebells]

let’s imagine a darker KH3 for a minute

The more I think about it, the more I really wish that Kingdom Hearts 3 was about Sora gradually giving up pieces of himself to save Roxas, Xion, Ventus, and Namine (and Vanitas? I’m honestly not quite sure how he’s connected to Sora) and that it fully dove into the depressing, dark potential that storyline has.

The pieces for that story are there - a lot of the main drive of the game is bringing those characters back and all of them are basically a part of Sora, whether he knows it or not. Sora’s exactly the self-sacrificing hero to give up parts of himself if it means restoring those characters to life. The game deals with the concept of Sora DYING in the past, losing his heart, losing pieces of himself, and a kind of afterlife world of sorts. The game is already willing to end with Sora pulling the sacrifice move and not getting the happy ending that everyone else gets and letting that lead into the next part of the story that is about restoring Sora.

One of the big things that KH3 missed the mark on for me was emotion. Like yes I always accept that these games are pretty corny and the dialogue is cheesy and silly and a lot of it is just ridiculous, but it’s always been pretty darn good at hitting you right in the gut. It’s never been afraid to have a sad ending or let a character’s journey not end in success - in fact, MOST of the games end with one if not all of the heroes failing, dying, getting lost to darkness, being forgotten, ceasing to exist, ETC. 

And yet for some reason (mostly pacing) KH3 never really managed to hit the emotional beats that it could have. It did at times, but moments like Kairi’s death and Sora’s sacrifice were so quickly skipped over, those moments felt like let downs after such great moments from previous games. My takeaway at the end was that I wanted it to focus MORE on Sora’s sacrifice, because everyone else getting the happy ending but him should have really had more of a gut punch to it than it did.

So now I’m imagining an alternative version of the story, where restoring Roxas, Xion, Ventus, and Namine actually has real weight. It actually COSTS something. It costs Sora, our hero, who gets to keep surviving and living happily when these characters don’t.

Imagine Sora actually feels a difference after Ventus’s heart leaves him. Maybe he gets weaker from that point on (adding even more to Sora’s “all my strength comes from them” breakdown) because part of his strength wielding the keyblade came from having TWO bright hearts inside of him, one made of entirely light.

It’s played as a triumphant moment because Ven is back! He and Sora get to meet! He and Aqua are reunited! But we start getting the hints that it’s affected Sora more than we realized.

And then maybe he learns that that he needs to give up parts of his own heart to help restore Roxas and Xion (and Namine?) and he does it, one after the other, always giving freely, always the self-sacrificing hero.

A game that starts off super fun and bright as you explore the worlds gradually becomes darker as Sora gives away pieces of himself to restore the others. The other characters we love get their happy endings. We get to see them again. But we watch the toll that it has on Sora.

And maybe INSTEAD of just killing off Kairi and making her the damsel in distress that has to be rescued AGAIN, that final sacrifice at the end could be for one of the people Sora wants to restore. And maybe someone - maybe Chirithy in the Final World - tells him that he can’t give up another piece of himself and survive. He’ll be without his heart completely.

And just like in KH1, Sora doesn’t hesitate. He makes the choice to sacrifice his own heart for someone else.

And the game ends the same way. Everyone else has their happy ending, but Sora disappears, seemingly lost, seemingly in pieces, possibly in the Final World unable to return. And we get that same bittersweet ending, but with more of a punch because we actually see Sora falling apart over the game and actively choosing to keep sacrificing.

I’d love to play a version of this where at some point, it just dawns on me that the closer Sora gets to the goal of returning all those that have been lost, the more he’s going to pay for it, and actually watching there be a cost and a struggle and an awful choice involved in bringing those people back. The horror that I would have felt when I realized that to get Roxas and Xion back it might mean losing Sora would have hit me a lot harder than a sudden Kairi death that nearly gets glossed over in the finale and about five minutes spent on Sora’s dramatic sacrifice.

And I know these are supposed to be kids games, but honestly, KH has never shied away from the tragic ending, and Remind could have still been about Riku (and maybe Kairi too! let her do things!) finding a way to save Sora and restore him without negating his sacrifice.

Just saying. This could have been a great storyline.

[sineala]

Hey! Since you're one of the sources of comic knowledge, I have to ask. Has Marvel ever permanently killed a superhero? Also what are the chances that Marvel would be willing to kill Tony or Steve? Bc your fics among others made me curious about reading the comics but I don't wanna get into that if Marvel is just gonna end up killing my fav character (I've heard a lot abt the current Tony being not real??). I have had enough of that from mcu

Hi there! I am glad you are curious about comics (and sorry to hear about your MCU-related sadness), and I'm sitting here trying to think of a good way to answer your question, because I think you're presuming something about comics that isn't really true. It's not really like other fandoms.

Basically, the deal in comics is that you should never, ever expect anyone to die permanently. But the corollary to this is that comics have been around for so long that it may take a while for someone to get brought back, but eventually it's probably going to occur to someone at Marvel that their story would be a lot more fun if only So-and-So Man were in it, and then they contrive a way to get him back. Take Bucky as an example. The saying used to be that "nobody in comics stays dead except Bucky, Jason Todd, and Uncle Ben," and, well, two-thirds of those people came back. No one thought Bucky was ever coming back, until Ed Brubaker started writing Captain America, and he'd apparently wanted to bring Bucky back since he was a kid, and well... that's what he did. (And then he killed Steve, but I'm pretty sure no one thought Steve was going to stay dead.)

Even heroes whose death has been given a lot of weight still get to come back. Take Mar-Vell. He got an entire Death of Captain Marvel graphic novel, very tragic, very moving -- and yet, they've still brought him back at least twice. He's currently dead now, but I'm sure if they wanted him alive, they could bring him back again.

So when you ask if they've ever permanently killed a superhero -- I mean, sure, there are characters who have died who haven't come back yet, but given how the comics universe works, there's nothing saying Marvel can't eventually come up with a way. I think non-powered characters are more likely to stay dead; for example, Happy Hogan's been dead since Civil War, and there are no signs he's coming back any time soon, but Marvel can always surprise me.

Both Steve and Tony have died more than once each, but they are popular enough -- they've both had an ongoing presence and their own solo (and/or shared with each other) comic since the 60s, enough that I think it's really, really extremely unlikely that Marvel will kill either of them off permanently. They've been in comics for decades and I don't see why they'd stop now. I am pretty sure there's going to keep being Captain America and Iron Man comics, because they keep selling. (You can contrast this with a character like, say, Doctor Strange, who has gone long periods of time without a solo book or even any book.)

However, the other thing you should know about comics is that sometimes... there will just be a lot of comics you don't like. And that's okay! It is the case now that most of Steve/Tony fandom, as far as I can tell, is generally not enjoying much about Avengers, Captain America, or Iron Man. But there are always old comics to read and write about (don't worry, no one expects anyone else to have read them all), and I suspect Marvel is going to end up totally ignoring or writing around "Tony Stark isn't real" after Slott leaves the book (because, seriously, it makes no sense) and the promo art for the Empyre event shows what is probably him on the team as Iron Man anyway.

Being into comics is about learning to pick and choose the parts of canon that you like and ignoring the rest, because honestly there's a lot of it and it all contradicts each other. You can generally expect to see continuity within one writer's run on one comic; if you are very lucky, the people writing the comics at the same time will talk to each other and make sure everything lines up, but unless an event is happening, mostly they do not. This is why (1) Steve and Tony are both current active Avengers, (2) Steve is currently on the run and hiding from the law because he broke out of prison, and (3) Tony is currently on the run and leading the robot revolution. Somehow all of these things are true. Comics are a mess. Don't let it bother you. But if any storylines sound fun, feel free to hop on board and try reading some. There are actually plenty of fun comics out there!

[reachexceedinggrasp]

What are the conspiracy theories about their motives?

Ted and Marshall are their self-inserts (that’s not speculation, that’s something they’ve talked about), they made a lot of kinda excessive comments about falling in love with Cobie Smulders during the first season, and their original vision of Barney was as a ‘Jack Black type’ much older than the rest of the cast who is purely gross and pathetic.

So the fandom speculated that a) going back on the entire point of Robin and the foundational twist from the pilot (aka that she is not the girl) was unplanned and possibly in large part because they (mainly Bays) wanted to vicariously date her. When I watched the show (after it had finished, so I knew about the finale already), I immediately noticed that the first two or three episodes very much suggest Ted and Robin were never intended to date seriously. There’s a very abrupt track change and some clumsy retcons to create the thread which will eventually lead to them having a relationship. Which makes sense, because narratively this big Ted/Robin build up is largely pointless, redundant, and unappealing and we already know it won’t work out- no one is going to ship that. They were created to be incompatible and they are.

b) Bays and Thomas (especially Bays) really, really resented that the audience latched on to Barney and not only made him the face of the show but loved him best and wanted to root for him. They were angry that Ted wasn’t anyone’s fav but theirs and that as far as the audience was concerned Barney/Robin was the big will-they-won’t-they couple, overshadowing Ted’s quest for The One.

Bays ‘blames’ Neil Patrick Harris for this and their writing for the character in the context of their interviews makes it not totally implausible to believe there was an aspect of punishing him for being everyone’s favourite. And that’s really the main conspiracy theory I’m referring to and the one I joked about in my post comparing HIMYM with tros- that you treat a character you created so badly it feels like you have a vendetta against the actor for making the part more rich than you imagined.

Because it feels very clear to me that part of the problem with the writing is that the showrunners, unlike the rest of the writers and the audience, never saw Barney in any other way than their original idea of a creepy, unattractive joke with no depth. They never, ever intended him to be seen as a romantic option for anyone and never anticipated the audience wanting to root for him as a romantic lead.

If you imagine Jack Black doing schtick instead of NPH, his whole concept reads differently; that Barney would have been a sad clown, just a buffoon. He thinks he's awesome but is definitively a loser, and no one is too mad at him or too sorry for him because no one takes him that seriously. He's irredeemably gross, totally not threatening, and any pathos he might have is tongue in cheek. The plays are pathetic but harmless, he isn't actually successful but he's so determined everything be awesome that in hindsight it sort of is (the early episode Sweet Taste of Liberty is totally like this), just because it makes for a funny story for Hero Ted to tell about his wacky friend. And that idea lingers throughout the show even after the direct remnants have gone (remnants like: there’s an early episode where everyone acts incredulous with Barney’s plan to dance with girls at a club- because who would want to lol?? Barney, who is NPH in a fitted dress shirt), because sometimes both the writers and the other characters treat Barney like he's a cartoon even in the more dramatic storylines- they don't take him seriously as a character, his motivations and feelings aren't important. There are moments when everyone is legit awful to him in a non-comedy way but it doesn't matter, he doesn't hold it against them and the audience isn't expected to either.  And there’s things like his total absence from Robin's fertility drama when just logically, just from momentum he should be a huge part of it. It becomes confusing when they suddenly take his silly actions seriously and dramatically condemn him for being terrible when the story never treated his worst behaviour as having any basis in reality and yet have given weight to his sympathetic moments before then ignoring them. And this is where it makes sense that Bays 'blames' NPH; it is fundamentally his casting which changed how the writing played and thus changed the way they wrote the character. He is too good-looking and obviously adroit to play the standard harmlessly sleazy, delusional wannabe-womaniser that they imagined, the audience won't react the same way. This instantly complicates the character: Why would a fit, rich, sociable guy capable of being actually charming need elaborate pick up strategies? If he's just a shallow douche why would he latch on to someone like Ted instead of hanging out with other douches? He wouldn't. So why is he like this? His abject loserness becomes interesting instead of self-explanatory and that makes all his glimpses of depth read less 'pitiful clown' and more 'tragic character who can be redeemed'.

We were always supposed to like him- exactly the way Ted likes him in S1, as a sort of spectator sport which we don't for a second approve of and who you only sort of root for because he's so pathetic that any success he has is all part of the comedy. But then they cast someone who is too believable, people root for him unironically, and the show gets sort of weird about How We Feel About Barney and whether he's cool or not. The characters never stop thinking he's disgusting, but they also still encourage him even as he becomes more and more actually successful until his personal mythology is barely a delusion. Him being a successful womaniser who genuinely IS most of the things he claims to be throws his sadness and dissatisfaction with his life into a completely different light, now his pathos is real. After that, seeing his dorkiness and his many esoteric skills is less 'haha embarrassing for the lame wannabe' and more endearing.

Basically they accidentally a really compelling arc and were mad the audience was more interested in this incredibly dynamic, charismatic character who had tonnes of room to grow and change instead of the Dogged Good Guy protagonist who is obligated to be fairly static.