#mostly i think her arc is static through the majority of the story

[oaxleaf]

The whole thing about Georgie is that her arc was fully completed long before the story began. She lost something/someone significant, she learned her lesson, she started living again. While the others have extensive knowledge of the Powers' terminology, she enters the story with a deep understanding of loss, entropy and fear that the others are yet to learn. She is never exactly unattended on screen. The tapes can't follow her and are hardly there for her so so does the narrative.

sorry this took me a couple days to answer. i was sick and my brain felt like the titan submersible moments before exploding to the pressure.

anyways. people aren't ever really finished though, you know? you have periods of your life when you are changing less or more, but you'll never reach a point where you will remain as such for the rest of your life. so whilst an arc can be fully completed in the sense of a certain, contained segment of a characters development, be it for better or worse, can reach a satisfying conclusion. and some stories tie it up there and let things lie, and that's fine, but others - especially those tragic or bittersweet endings - leave a lot to be developed on, or potential new themes to be explored.

georgie enters the story from a different position than the other characters, sure, but honestly i wouldn't claim that what marks her out is her being particulary good at dealing with loss, rather just that she does it differently. she is most definitely the best at letting go of things or setting boundaries where most of the other characters struggle to let go enough of their pain, curiosity, or emotional investment to do so. since she is not a part of the institute and as such not stuck there it makes good contrast to other characters, in particular to jon who, even before his life was dependent on the statements to stay alive, was unable to let obviously harmful situations be. it's also why georgie and melanie make such a good match - melanie is (along with tim) one of the few that really do want out.

and yeah, i guess you could call that an arc already completed by the time she's introduced. or you could just call it characterization or backstory. you're right about her not being interesting to the purpose of the tapes, and she is relatively sure of herself and is typically better at handling the horrors than others, but also don't feel like that's the point? she acts as a contrast, but not as, like, a mentor figure or something like that, and it's less important that she has overcome this stuff and more important that jon, in comparison, has not. so yes, georgie is relatively static in her development during most of the show. not at all a bad thing when placed next to characters experiencing such drastic changes.

but what i aim at when i talk about her arc just starts at the end of the show if the doubts she starts expressing about this position she has held in the narrative around the last ten episodes of the show. she clearly feels guilt about the state of the world, about not being there enough for jon, about being too passive and not intervening enough - which is why it's pretty characteristic for her to be the only one even considering not actually doing anything about the change in mag 199 - and she struggles with the idea that maybe she is partially responsible for it all too, simply because she was too good about handling the horrors when others very much were not. all these things that put her in a position of safety, sanity, and relative comfort, are now things she doubts because she worries that it makes her an accomplice through means of complicity

really it's just a seed. it only appears very late in the story, but i found it very potent. what makes me call it the start of an arc, though, are the very obvious opportunities for this all being exacerbated after the fall of the panopticon. there is so much potential for struggle and guilt there, and i just find the whole idea fascinating. to me, there isn't a world where georgie doesn't eventually have a breakdown over it all, but that's stuff that can only really be kicked into full gear after the absolutely chatastrophic personal loss and failure that was mag 200. that in combination with melanie's clear wish to just be rid of it all... all i'm saying is that there's some good potential in this

[waywardsalt]

:3

[nixotinix]

4, 13, and 20 from the MH list thing...

ok boos im gonna start with 13/20 because i have some THOUGHTS on 4.

13: How do you feel about the live action movies?

-they're giving old disney channel movies. they arent GOOD by any means, theyre actually really really bad. but for what its worth i liked sitting through the first one just because i could point out certain things and go "that's bad". the second one was mindnumbingly boring though.-

20: Random character headcanon!

-Ahem. Frankie makes tiny dolls of their friends and sews them tiny clothes. They have all of the dolls on their desk. Draculaura has nails with red bottoms. Clawdeen teaches the boo crew about different human holidays and they all celebrate in their own little monster ways. Lagoona is CRACKED at pumpkin carving. oh and deuce is bisexual. -

4: Are there any aspects of G3 that you dislike?

-Hoo BOY this is about to get long. You can opt out now if you don't wanna read my super long winded thoughts. But if you do, keep reading.

I have 2 major grievances with G3. First is the overall sanitization of EVERYTHING. (I'm mostly talking about the cartoon here, the movies do this surprisingly well.) One of the reasons I liked G1 so much is that it actually tackled real-world problems. Bullying, racism, sexism, unhealthy family dynamics. And it had actual villains like Valentine, Nefera, Whisp, etc etc. G3 has a horrendous lack of both.

So far in the G3 cartoon, the biggest conflict we've had is Draculaura coming clean about witchcraft, which is an allegory for coming out of the closet. And that is a super important issue and coming out of the closet is a huge deal to a lot of people. But the conflict with Dracula is resolved in exactly one episode, and the only other person who isn't cool with it is Toralei. But A: Toralei doesn't count as a villain because none of her actions have genuine lasting consequences and she isn't an actual threat + she gets a mini redemption arc and B: she also comes to accept the witchcraft in that same episode.

Another aspect of this, and who I believe are the biggest offenders of the sanitization of MH G3, is the recharacterization of Nefera and Manny. Sure, seeing Nef be nice to Cleo is great. Seeing Manny as this shy nerd kid is great. But I liked the dynamic a lot better in G1. Most of Cleo's problems and character development came from her troubles with her father and sister, and both of those are absent in G3, which leads to Cleo being a very static character with no real character progression outside of her romance with Frankie. Same with Manny. The only real "bully" character is Toralei, and like I said, she got a mini-redemption. There's no Gory Fangtell, no mean girl Toralei Stripe who actively goes out of her way to sabotage the ghouls in actually meaningful ways, and there's no Manny Taur. I liked Manny being somewhat of a bully in G1 since it introduced people to that idea. Monster High is all about being unique, but there's still bad eggs in the mix. I still like G3, but I feel like it needs to incorporate more story beats from G1. The show execs could definitely do a better job at introducing these things like bad parents, bad siblings, and bullies to prep kids for the real world, because things like that and worse exist. And shielding kids from it does more harm than good in my opinion.

Now for my second issue, which is what I've dubbed the Dracudollar effect. It's no secret that Draculaura is a wildly popular character, and arguably the most recognizable from the franchise. And this isn't all Mattel's fault, but they do share partial blame. In Generation 3, outside of single doll releases, Draculaura has been in every. single. doll line. I don't think this needs to be the case. I would love to see more Cleo, or Deuce, or Lagoona. But they've all been sidelined in favor of Draculaura. And Draculaura's dolls tend to be more expensive, too. Again, not entirely Mattel's fault. But I just think it's ridiculous when she goes for 5, 10, even 50 dollars more than other dolls (in the case of VH Draculaura vs SIS frankie, not g3 but worth mentioning).

Anyways. There are my grievances with MHG3. I really like g3 overall!! but there's definitely a few things that id prefer a different way

[waywardsalt]

Oooooh Phantom Hourglass, my favorite Zelda game, where to start...

Yeah no Linebeck is the highlight of this game, and easily one of the best characters in the series. He's usually the thing I see people play phantom hourglass for, and I'll admit I picked up the game because I was curious about him, too. ever since i played the game for the first time, Linebeck's been my favorite character in anything.

But Phantom Hourglass is my favorite game in general, and it's not just because of Linebeck; it's genuinely a really charming game, and while the control scheme tends to turn some people off, I really love how well this game utilizes the DS, even if it's clear that in some situations they were just testing the limits of the console. the microphone is used- but only a handful of times early in the game. The shoulder buttons are good for item usage (and makes items really easy to use), the touch controls are pretty simple if they can be hard to get a hang of, and the game makes great use of both screen- the top screen is an important part of just about every boss fight. It's honestly really endearing how the entire DS is used in the game, including that great little puzzle relying on you closing the DS. Not to mention being able to draw whatever you like on the maps, and you're given plenty of reasons to draw paths or make notes on the maps.

The story itself is fairly simple- most of the cutscenes are in the first half of the game, but it's not like the second half isn't important- but the characters are really what carry it, and they're really this game's biggest strength. Phantom Hourglass isn't a particularly long game, but it handles its main characters and their development really well. of course, Linebeck is easily one of the best characters in the series in how he's generally written and how his development carries out through major story even and just in overworld dialogue, but Ciela and Oshus are decently strong characters on their own, and a few of the side characters are pretty interesting.

Ciela’s character development is simple, mostly revolving around her recovering her memories, and Oshus is more or less static while you discover more about him, so Linebeck is really the standout cast member for this game- and for good reason.

His character arc is… really my favorite in the whole series because it’s really a bit smaller in scale and generally more personal; it is just him developing and changing as a person, his role in the story and the world does not change, but he does. I don't feel like you see that a lot in loz, so Linebeck's arc is just really neat to see, and I think it's pulled off really well and honestly feels really natural if you pay attention to his overworld dialogue as the story progresses. I get the feeling that a good bit of care was put into him, and even though you don't actually learn a lot of concrete information about Linebeck's backstory or even... what he's actually like, he's very fascinating to look into. Phantom Hourglass remains my favorite partially because of how vague some of the information given is.

And then while Linebeck is my favorite character in anything, I am frequently gently holding Bellum in my mind. He's my favorite villain. he's a nothing villain, but he's my nothing villain. He's a silly squid thing that just got kicked to the curb with basically no preamble or extra information and then he had one of the coolest boss fight sequences and cemented himself in my mind as a neat little guy with no dialogue who's surprisingly fun to speculate way to deeply about.

Linebeck and Bellum are definitely some of the best parts of this game, and most of the music associated with them is also great; Phantom Hourglass's soundtrack is definitely lacking in a few departments, but character themes, boss themes, and certain cutscene themes do really stand out.

But yeah, good game, good characters, worth a try in my mind! Definitely one of my favorite games for several reasons.

Obligatory plug: i've written a small handful of Phantom Hourglass fics so far, all of which can be found on ao3 and are collected into a series:

Right now it's just three works, but I intend to add more fics in the future.

Phantom Hourglass is a DS only game that may be hard to find in hard copy. Secondhand or emulator may be the easier solution to play it yourself. A written walkthrough is here at ZeldaDungeon.net. The video walkthrough I liked was this one but you can search for others with no commentary as well.

Reblog and add what you love about the game, things you would like to see, or other resources for those who would like to learn more about it! Here are some suggestions to get you started:

Links to existing fanworks

Most underrated characters

Your favorite gameplay mechanics, story moments, etc

Analysis of story themes, character arcs, and so on

Favorite game items

Best music moments

That art idea you don't think you'll ever get around to drawing

Story tropes that are perfect but no one seems to include

(Don't know what's going on? Check out this post!)

[itsclydebitches]

If I remember correctly during the V7 commentary, the reason why Weiss didn't get any upgrades for her weapon was because she had her Summoning and "was already perfect" which I think is very telling of what these writers think character development is: Weiss isn't racist/ mean to people anymore and is now in a comfortable place in her life so she doesn't need to grown anymore. Anything new she might need to learn is just combed aside like her perfect, Whitley-esque bangs.

You know how we're often joking about how RWBY tends to give us what we've asked for, just in the worst way possible? Such commentary would fall under that umbrella for me. I approve of not giving Weiss any major upgrades, simply because she's already got too many powerful abilities, to the point where the show has had to drop a couple to try and keep things balanced (time dilation, any dust that's not ice, relies mostly on just summoning now), but she shouldn't lack that because she's "perfect." Giving her so many OP abilities was a mistake on the writers' part, a mistake they needed to manage in Volume 7, preferably with some sort of explanation as to why the Atlas born, Schnee heiress didn't a cool upgrade in her hometown alongside many teammates, which we obviously didn't see. It's not a time to try and use that lack as some sort of proof of perfection, since such perfection obviously doesn't exist. And I don't say that as a criticism of Weiss as a person in this story (there's plenty of that elsewhere on the blog lol), but rather as an acknowledgement of her function as a character. If your character is "perfect" - if the story honestly believes they have nowhere else to go, not the character working under the false belief that they have no flaws - then... why are you writing a story? Why are you writing a story that, as far as we know, will continue on for at least a few more years? People don't turn to storytelling to watch the characters remain static and never develop. Weiss has to be flawed if RWBY wants to keep her as an engaging character we're interested in following. She has to go somewhere and not just in the literal sense of Kingdom hopping.

And, of course, she is flawed. She is struggling. She does have a wealth of things to work through... the show just doesn't seem to realize that. I've occasionally seen complaints that our Atlas arc had Penny as the focus rather than Weiss and honestly, I don't think we've discussed that enough; how huge a mistake that was (and not just because Penny was killed at the end of it all). I think your own phrasing is significant in terms of framing the writers' (presumed) perspective: Weiss "is now in a comfortable place in her life..." Sure, Weiss is more comfortable with her place and herself than she was at the start of the series - growth! - but that's really only in regards to her place on the team and her abilities as a huntress. Her family and status as a Schnee remain a treasure trove of difficulties she's barely touched. Prior to the Atlas arc, Weiss' setup included:

Being kidnapped by her father and separated from said team

Losing her inheritance to the company/family name, the one she claims to be interested in rehabilitating

Kidnapped by bandits and rescued by a teammate she's had incredibly little interaction with

Learning she has to return to Atlas, the place the just ran away from

Arriving to find her Kingdom in a state of lockdown, suffering from systematic problems and a war she's one of the few who knows about

Hearing that two teammates killed a faunus in self-defense who bore the SDC logo

That's a lot. So Weiss grapples with all of this during the arc taking place in her home, with her family, her leader, and populated by the minority her family has exploited, right? Of course not! She never has to deal with her father, her disinheritance, the faunus, her new connection with Yang... Weiss' "growth" occurs in random, confusing bursts that are meaningless given how convoluted the story has become. Oh, we're humorously arresting Jacques now. Oh, she no longer cares about Winter and is happy to leave her behind. Oh, she's suddenly announced to Marrow that she's patriotic for the place she keeps running away from. Oh, she's saved Whitley's life after ignoring and threatening him, so I guess they're loving siblings now? Weiss is as much of a mess as the rest of the cast at this point, made even worse by Volume 8's ending. The Kingdom of Atlas is destroyed. The unclear nature of Weiss' feelings aside, the entirety of her home wasn't merely attacked, but completely obliterated. The girl who should be dealing with complicated feelings regarding her family and home has just lost the ability to ever return to that home! And that loss was on her own leader's orders. And her sister is now a Maiden. And the father she apparently wanted to rescue got blown up by Ironwood. Even though Weiss hasn't had the chance to delve into the latter two yet - she doesn't know about Jacques, barely spotted Winter as a Maiden before she fell - surely she'll have something to say about her Kingdom falling, that core part of her identity destroyed through one, thoughtless wish?

Nah, the one line about that goes to Robyn 🤦‍♀️

[mc-critical]

Glad to see you’re back to taking asks!❤️ I hope all is well for you!

A bit of a simpler one this time around, I felt like Gülfem closer to the end of season 4 started to come off a bit..ingenuine to me? If that’s the right word? I mean she spent previous seasons partaking in plots against Hürrem and what seemed like hating her or at the very least expressing open disapproval of her actions and what she stood for to..consoling Hürrem’s restless conscience after Hürrem was diagnosed with a terminal illness? I just remember her saying things like she should be proud of the life she lived, that she wasn’t a bad person, that she shouldn’t think of her illness as a punishment etc etc. I suppose we could give Gülfem the benefit of the doubt and say that she saw no point in openly opposing Hürrem anymore (like Fatma or Mahidevran felt towards the end) but why not just leave the palace as they did? Perhaps they kept her around for the sake of the story but I feel like they didn’t do much with her arc past that point, they just did a time jump then revealed to us in a flashback she died? I think I’m just more confused than anything. Why not keep Gülfem’s feelings towards Hürrem at least somewhat consistent like Mahi/Fatma?

I'm fine, thank you! ❤❤ I closed my ask box mostly due to school work, the end of the year exams can be intense heh

I definetly get your sentiments since that sure seems to be an inconsistency to Gülfem's character at first glance. It may indeed turn out as a contrast to the remainder of what we have seen.

It isn't such a big problem for me, however, because we have to take two things into consideration:

Gülfem's stance of Hürrem plays a part in reflecting the tone of the final episodes of S04. The whole last chunk of the show before Hürrem's death did its best in recognizing her alleged legacy in ways it hadn't before. It suddenly began acknowledging her power, showing SS prove considerably more affection than ever before (that makes the most narrative sense out of everything, but still), folk praising her for the first time ever and most notably, various characters in the show, with positive, ambiguous and negative relationship with her alike, either praising her or consoling her. Gülfem is one of the more neutral characters in the castle and the most nurturing one, the one most able to empathize and console. It is only fitting to give her such a role to fit the message the writers want to deliver. Acknowledging Hürrem's legacy just now and like this is truly as much of a copout as it is fanservice, but at least it's not completely out of nowhere (especially the acknowledgment of her fondations) and they do give us some consistency with what Gülfem does along with everyone else in this whole ordeal.

S04 extends on Gülfem's role as a conscience character-wise, besides utilizing it in favor of the narrative voice. In these last episodes in particular, she seems to be the conscience of everyone in the castle, given her nature and that she's the last person left there who could do that. That includes Süleiman, as well as it includes Hürrem.

These things aren't presented in the best way, writing-wise, and could be sometimes more subtle than necessary. Gülfem herself could be a little underdeveloped as a character and has comparatively lesser screentime than the rest of the main and secondary cast. Her conscience is her clear role in the narrative, but her relationships, with the exception of Hatice (and the other sisters of SS to an extent), aren't as well defined. Look at her relationship with Mahidevran, for example: we got hints of their supposed past rivalry, we got hints of resentment, but these hints only turned into an inconsistent mess. There were much more scenes where they were in good terms with each other and anything else was so few and far in between, it only appeared to be a contrast. We got no true perspective of their past in Manisa and Gülfem's more personal opinion on Mahidevran, leaving it only as a static, but pretty good relationship. (which is why I'm grateful that S03 removed this set-up of their relationship, rendering it still not that well fleshed out, but more consistent.)

In a similar fashion, we never got a proper exploration of how exactly she felt about Hürrem, too. What I think I can say with confidence though is that certainly didn't hate her - Gülfem is a very patient and just woman, which I can only admire her for. She is a voice of reason, trying her best to be unbiased in her outlooks and stand for what is right. She has happened to knock Hürrem down a peg, but not because she disliked her, but because she thought she was crossing the line or offending the people she cares about. The closest we got to a look into a tiny resentment of Gülfem's of Hürrem was when Hürrem used her to make Mahidevran lose her rulership of the harem. It's normal that Gülfem would harbor such feelings, knowing that she didn't do anything to Hürrem before that and only supported her about Mahidevran wanting Valide's chambers. Being used in an intrigue like that clearly hurt her and her willing to stand even more against Hürrem was hinted at a little, but once again, that was a very short conflict. It would be a decent transition if the writers wanted that for Gülfem, but they didn't. It would run against Gülfem's forgiving nature at this point to hate Hürrem. Gülfem just is notorious in putting the past behind her. {hence on a thematic note, her backstory and origins not only didn't get revealed to us except for a few scenes, similarly to Mahidevran (Mahidevran got flashbacks, at least), but she, in contrast to both Mahidevran and Hürrem, has already adapted to her present, knowing that she cannot bring back what she has lost. And her adaption has already happened, it's not made out to be a character arc within the series.} Her feelings for Hürrem aren't kept consistent, because there isn't much to be kept consistent. Mahidevran and Fatma both have pivotal dynamics with Hürrem that play a major role in the narrative as they both play a more major part of the story. Gülfem and Hürrem's relationship as a whole seemed to have both its good and bad moments (as Hürrem herself recalled in E133) and the good moments were usually when both consoled someone and Gülfem consoling Hürrem now doesn't seem this strange anymore.

Gülfem also seems to put her own feelings behind her in favor of those of the others, probably in result of her huge loss. She always comforts the others, is there for them and shows her moral support. She seems to identify herself in their own struggles. That, I feel, gives her the ability to sympathize even with those she presumably doesn't like, because she's very open and honest overall. I don't think it's ingenuine, because Gülfem never showed signs of hypocrisy. Not to mention that every hypocrisy there is in the franchise, we know of: either through previously fully established dynamics, direction or character motive. (or at least that's a pattern I have noticed) I don't think they would put Gülfem, out of everyone, in such position. This consolation of Hürrem may have been moulded a bit, but it's certainly not ingenuine and runs in line with who she is. Besides, she did say she forgives Hürrem for every possible offense in E133. I think that clears the whole thing up.

I wouldn't say that Gülfem had no arc at all in S04, as well. [I wouldn't see them leaving her just for the story, either, because aside from E59-63, Gülfem usually didn't move the story in any significant way. They probably left her because she was the moral compass of the palace and she was one of the first characters after all, for her to stay as much as she can.] She doesn't have too much in the way of development or arc in the rest of the show, probably because she didn't have much to develop on her own and the writers didn't want to really flesh her out. The only thing she could develop is her relationships and most of them also didn't leave room for development (not even Hürrem, because she didn't do that much against her, except for the S02 finale, correct me if I'm wrong?), except for one: her relationship with Süleiman. Gülfem wants to preserve justice and Süleiman began to act completely counter of that. It's not a built-up arc, but it's only by S04 where SS's shadiest actions began to reach their peak, so only then would it begin to happen. Because she valued Süleiman before then.

She valued him to the point she dismissed his faults in the strife between his women and asked him the comfort question of whether he is happy with them when he called her to talk in E15. Their joint scenes had their continuation only by S04 where she similarly acted as his conscience after Hürrem's death. For she was the one close enough to him for him to confide in. Many people confided in Gülfem through the series, but Süleiman is one of the people that did it the most and it was as if this consoling went beyond the sheer usual support for her.

And what happens afterwards? The table begins to turn after Bayezid's execution. That angle is looked upon only after the time skip and during the flashback in E139, but it shows by its own merit alone a change, an evolution of Gülfem's opinion of SS and a reverse approach of her role as a conscience: Gülfem is so patient and understanding, but she has finally snapped. She has finally met her limit. In her words to SS in the scene we see how his actions have put themselves in a conflict far beyond what she can bear. She can no longer excuse him, she can no longer justify him.

That scene showed us her realization that he has the biggest part of the blame in the misfortunes in the palace. ("Even leaf cannot fall without your approval!") And she wanted to end him for that. I know it looks like this happened almost overnight, maybe looked a little too edgy and may feel like a contrived attempt to make an exit for her character, but it works well enough with me. Because after all, she has truly went through a lot and that suffering didn't even begin from Topkapı. It's only natural she would try to kill the root of the suffering for good. And here, for once, she stands up for herself, too, along with calling out all the unfortunate and devastating events.

[educated-ella]

Stardust Crusaders review

(Image courtesy of Shueshia)

Finally, my favorite part! Even though objectively it has a lot of problems.

Stardust Crusaders stars Jotaro Kujo, the aloof teenage grandson of Joseph Joestar. The story opens up on him in prison, but with one catch; the guards are begging him to leave his cell, and end up calling his mother in to force him to go home. Jotaro refuses to leave because he believes that he’s been possesed by an evil spirit. To demonstrate what he means, this “evil spirit” steals the gun from one of the cops and gives it to Jotaro, who then shoots himself. He doesn’t die though; the same “evil spirit” from before grabbed the bullet before it could reach his head. His mother calls in Joseph, hoping he’ll be able to help his grandson. With the help of his friend Avdol, Joseph informs Jotaro that this “evil spirit” is actually his Stand, a manifestation of soul. After “convincing” Jotaro to leave his cell (see: forcing him to attack Avdol so he doesn’t burn him to death), Joseph explains that the entire Joestar bloodline has been cursed through Dio’s return, having been pulled from the depths of the ocean and attached his head to Jonathan’s body. The exact mechanics as to how this activated Stands in all the Joestars is explained in future parts. While Jotaro and Joseph can control their Stands just fine (even if the former’s is too powerful for his own good), Jotaro’s mother Holly cannot, and hers ends up being activated against her will and starts to slowly kill her. The group eventually figures out that Dio is hiding out in Egypt and set out to destroy the vampire once and for all before Holly dies. The group is eventually joined by Kakyoin, a classmate of Jotaro’s, and Polnareff, a Frenchman looking to avenge his dead sister, both of them Stand users as well. Intercepting their journey are a host of Stand-wielding assassins hired by Dio himself to pick off the Joestars while his “neck wound” recovers.

This part introduces Stands, a concept now synonymous with the series as a whole. Unlike the Ripple, which requires years of training to use, and is only particularly effective against the undead, Stands can be used by just about anyone. Hell, one of the enemy Stand users that the group fights is a baby. A god damn baby. And it’s easily one of the best fights in the part. That’s part of the fun of Stardust Crusaders; one day the group will be fighting against a zombie summoning old lady, the next a sentient sword, the next a coldblooded rapist and murderer, the next a shy little boy who can see the future through a comic book, and the next a cowboy whose Stand is literally just a gun. Many of these characters don’t get a ton of depth (except for the cowboy, he’s one of my favorites), but the sheer variety of them is a lot of fun. This pairs well with the road trip feeling of Stardust Crusaders, just as the locations consistently change and feel distinct from the last, so do the enemies the group fights. Stands are also unique to any given user. For example, Avdol’s Stand gives him the power of pyrokinesis while Kakyoin’s gives him the ability to possess others. These abilities are exclusive to them; no two Stands are exactly alike (except for The Big Symbolism™ at the end) and you have to work with what you’ve got. This restriction means that the fights themselves end up being much more interesting than the Ripple asspulls of before...for the most part. You can certainly tell that Araki, the author of the series, was still learning how to write these types of encounters early on, so sometimes he resorts to good old fashioned asspulls after writing himself into a corner. Some of these are worse than others, but only one of them really bothers me. Luckily, it’s followed up by the second best beatdown in the entire series, so it cancels out.

While Jotaro himself is a perfectly fine protagonist, sometimes he’s too stoic for his own good. He reacts the same to almost every situation he’s in (usually to tip his hat and mutter “yare yare daze/good grief”), and while he’s great at playing off of his much more eccentric opponents and contrasts against his grandfather very well, he remains mostly static throughout Stardust Crusaders. This is all a part of his character and it’s done well (he shows many signs of high-functioning autism, though this was almost certainly a coincidence), but it’s not as engaging as it could be. Rather, the real star of the part is Polnareff, whether most JoJo fans want to admit it or not. He’s a much more emotive character, gets almost as many fights as Jotaro himself, and the majority of the part is dedicated to his character arc. Since many of the earlier fights aren’t as well developed as they could be and the “get to Egypt” plot remains static throughout, Polnareff’s emotional journey of learning to cope with his survivor’s guilt is the main hook for the audience for a good chunk of the part’s run. That being said, he is a character you either love or hate, and that’s going to color your perception of Stardust Crusaders as a whole. I love him, but I know there are people who think he’s annoying and steals the spotlight from characters who needed a little more focus, including but not limited to the “main protagonist.” In that regard, your mileage may vary.

That being said, this is my favorite part because I love the group dynamic between the heroes and the road trip aesthetic as a whole. With every real-life place the group went to, I feel like I learned something about that place as well. It’s not perfect, but it has all those little touches that make it my favorite.

[our-happygirl500-fan]

I think about the Young Justice comic that DC had plans for a lot because even just looking at the team and the cover I can already tell what the dynamics and maybe a few storylines would have been and it would have been so good!

There would have been three 'squads' within the team: First there would be Kara and Steph (Steph and Kara had become quite close before the reboot Kara helping out Steph multiple times in her Batgirl run and they even hung out in their civilian identities Steph showing Kara around her college campus, taking her to the movies and the two of them having pillow fights telling each other that they were each others BFF Kara for a brief time was Steph's super the same way that Clark is Bruce's or Kon is Tim's or Jon is Damian's).

Kara was stated that she would be the team leader most likely because she is the most respected of the heroes there having the 'S' and the immediate respect being a Super inspires. However in Kara and Steph's team ups Steph was often shown more tactical minded than Kara often coming up with the plans or what they needed to defeat whoever they were fighting while Kara had the abilities to actually do what Steph asked.

Typical Bat Super dynamic really.

So with Kara as the leader of the team Steph most likely would have been the teams strategist often giving advice and helping direct the team.

However I believe the major arc for Steph would have been actually ending up as team leader herself, (similar to how in the YJ cartoon Aqualad was leader before Robin took over), Steph is just as skilled as any Bat having trained with Babs, Bruce, Black Canary, Cass, Catwoman ect but the main obstacle for most of her hero career is that no one gave her respect, Steph has been a hero since she was 14 but she was a teen hero without a mentor or powers which was the reason for other heroes brushing her off. As Batgirl she was only just starting to get recognition for her skills and on this team I think Steph would have really established herself in the hero world especially since she rarely worked outside of Gotham.

Then there would be Miss Martian, Static, and Blue Beetle.

Miss Martian and Blue Beetle were both on the Teen Titans together so they have a pre existing dynamic and friendship (before MM left the Teen Titans after the fallout of the Titans of Tomorrow arc)

Static rarely left his own city yet teamed up with the Teen Titans a few times during which Miss Martian and him showed romantic interest with each other so if this comic had been made they would have probably ended up in a relationship together.

Blue Beetle and Static as the only 'guys' on the team the same age would have probably ended up in a close friendship.

Then there would be Damian and Irey as the two 'kids' of the team who would probably be forced together quite a bit.

  I have a feeling that Kara got Steph to join her team and when Dick heard that Steph was joining a team he made her take Damian along to teach him teamwork something he tried before by having Damian work with the Teen Titans but that generation of Teen Titans had a lot of a 'club' mentality and wouldn't accept any Robin who wasn't Tim Drake.

Irey might have ended up on the team similarly with Dick convincing Wally because he wants Damian to have friends closer to his age.

Irey and Damian's dynamic would have been mostly bickering (I am convinced that Damian would pull Irey’s pigtails at least once) but it would be really interesting to see them eventually move past that and become close friends. Especially considering Dick and Wally’s own friendship.

Especially when you consider that Damian didn't have much of a childhood due to the way he was raised and though Irey and Jai had parents who tried to give them as much of a childhood as possible they aged through most of their life until Irey stabilised the speedforce by breaking Jai's connection to it but Irey didn't 'grow up' in a normal sense that differentiates her from other kids which would have been really interesting to explore with Damian's own loss of childhood.

You could have also explored a bit on how Irey took the speed powers for herself leaving her brother powerless and while she did it to save his life maybe we could explore Jai missing his speed or Irey feeling guilty about it sometimes or maybe even Irey feeling jealous of Jai wishing she had the chance to be normal instead.

Lots of fun things to explore here.

There's also the fact that Steph would be closer with Damian and Irey than the rest of the team because 1. she's protective of Damian (and kids in general) and is trying to show Damian what a normal childhood is but 2. As mentioned before she's only started getting respect as a hero so while most heroes from her generation have been respected for years Steph has been fighting for just a chance to stand on that stage and only just got on around the same time Damian and Irey's generation have so she's sort of making a name for herself the same time they are making her more likely to respect them and treat them nicely than the rest of the team.

Steph as a super hero baby sitter is my biggest headcanon due to this as she's the one that respects the kids most. Steph and Static would also be the sort of level headed ones on the team since they rarely acted outside their own cities so they'd notice how bonkers things can get more than Kara or Jaime or Meg'an do.

Steph has also teamed up with Miss Martian before along with several other female heroes thanks to Kara's help and she also helped train Tracy 13 (Jaime's girlfriend) in hand to hand when Tim and Jaime brought them both to Titans Tower.

There's a lot of good story arcs and personal dynamics just waiting to happen by looking at this team and it's a huge shame that we never got to see them in action.

In conclusion:

[quirkwizard]

Class 1-A: Tiered by Panel Time and Character Development

Tiers lists are still cool right? 

High Tier: Main character -Izuku: I mean he is the Main Character. He kind of gets this one by default.

Mid-High Tier: Noteworthy characters that make a serious impact on the story. -Bakugou: Went from a pompous, self important loud mouth to a self aware pompous, self important loud mouth. -Shoto: Learned to be himself, grow beyond his past, and embrace his true roll as Hand Damage Man.

Low-High Tier: High presence in the series, has made notable changes as it has gone on. Goes through some arc. -Iida: Learned to put civilians before himself and to break the rules. Even if almost killed him to learn both of those. -Uraraka: Became tougher, more self-reliant, and the world’s most underestimated Judo girl.  -Momo: Smartest girl in class learns to have faith in herself by beating up the teacher.

High-Mid Tier: Plenty of panel time, a few moments to be important. -Kirishima: A large amount of panel dedicated to him, both as Bakugou’s friend and on his own, becoming more confident in his abilities. Very solid. -Tsuyu: Has had enough moments to really stick with the audience. -Tokoyami: Nothing major, just enough consistently to develop in small ways and get out of his own shadow.

Mid: Some stuff revealed about their personalities, multiple moments to shine. -Aoyama: Mostly the same throughout the series, but his small moments of heroism and backstory help him shine. -Mina: A fun loving girl turned out to have some genuine heart to her.

Low-Mid: Little growth and a single moment to shine. -Mineta: Has a decent amount of panel time and some noteworthy moments. Whether we like it or not. -Denki: Mostly in this position by virtue of being around Bakugou so much, but he has had his small moments to shine, like in the Hero Licence Exam.

Low-High: Static characters with small moments. -Shoji: Does have his solid moments, like helping Midoriya and his time in the Joint Training, but they are few and far between. -Koda: Had his one moment with saving Jiro and not much else, but has been subtly getting better. -Jiro: Doesn’t do much in the series outside of support Koda and be snarky, but has grown out of her shell a bit.

Low-Mid: Static characters with no real defining moments -Hagakure: Literally invisible, but has her charm. Invisibility won’t count as her not appearing on panel. -Ojiro: His entire character is how boring he is, but is strangely endearing, still keeps him stuck at the tail end. -Sero: I legitimately struggle to think of anything important he did.

Low: You forgot they existed. -Sato: I forgot he existed. He doesn’t have much beyond being a cook and being strong.

[itsclydebitches]

I’ve had a bit of time to sit with the Doctor Who: Flux finale and despite technically getting all those plot threads wrapped up, despite it all (mostly) making sense, despite some wonderful, individual moments that I’ll be re-watching on YouTube… I’m overall feeling underwhelmed with the miniseries. And I think a lot of that has to do with how the companions were treated.

First, I’m not going to pretend that I wasn’t disappointed at Yaz and the Doctor not getting a six-episode adventure together; them and only them. Still, I really enjoy Dan and was eager to see how he fit into the Doctor and Yaz’s long-standing dynamic. Problem is, we kind of didn’t get to see that. Dan is introduced through the museum, his maybe-romance with Diane, the food bank, and his empty home. When he’s whisked off on an adventure, it’s through the actions of Karvanista, not the Doctor, and I was immediately invested in their banter-heavy relationship. Meaning, I wasn’t necessarily eager for the Doctor to ‘save’ him and end those interactions. But Yaz arrives and they have a very short get-to-know-you scene. Dan’s introduction to the Doctor is even shorter as they have a classic, “Run for your life!” moment. Then Dan is almost immediately separated and spends the majority of the next episode with his parents (who we never see again) before hanging in the background while the temple stuff happens. He gets a lot of character work in his flashbacks and a little in the angel village, but little of that explores how he fits in with the Doctor and Yaz. One of the three is always separated from the others, or bonding with Yaz is happening off screen, or Dan isn’t even himself in the Doctor’s memories. We were four episodes into a six episode story and I was still waiting for the new TARDIS team to sync up, to get something more than brief interactions where Dan feels like the awkward third wheel.

And then “Survivors of the Flux” happened.

Three years pass. Honestly, it felt like a cop-out. Yes, we have some moments of the trio interacting, but none of it felt substantial to me. Then, suddenly, it’s three years later for Yaz and Dan. Doctor Who is known for having characters suffer through long periods of separation when timelines diverge, but that’s not usually used as a way of skipping over companion development. Rather than Dan and Yaz really getting to know one another through (non-interrupted) adventures, we jump straight to three years later when they’re all but family. Rather than Dan getting used to the Doctor’s particular brand of craziness, we jump to him, presumably, already used to it thanks to this three year mission on the Doctor’s orders. Arguably the most important part of his introduction—seeing those initial adventures where everyone in the TARDIS survives together—was lost. Pieces of it exist, but it’s overshadowed by an overly complex plot.

Yaz doesn’t fair much better. Don’t get me wrong, I love her interaction with the Doctor’s hologram and their moment in the finale (the Doctor’s apology was particularly important to me), but it felt like Yaz had little to do other than continually try to get back to the Doctor, which is an arc we already saw during the Doctor’s imprisonment. Did we learn anything about Yaz this season? Did she grow? Find new motivations? Discover new goals? Did these episodes provide any insight into her character that we haven’t gotten before? Yaz felt static to me, as competent and devoted as she was in Season 12, and the few moments where the focus is on her? It’s for weird lines like how no one calls these video games anymore. (Of course they do…)

Part of this is down to character bloat. There was too much going on in Flux for the series to satisfyingly cover it all, let alone give these monumental events some decent reflection. Characters, while wonderfully embodied by their actors, become fairly inconsequential in how quickly they come and go. The Professor becomes a brief, surprise companion before he’s killed off. We have two villains given very little exploration because there’s suddenly another antagonist in the form of Tecteun. But before we can grapple with her contradictory motivations, she’s killed off too. Diane is seemingly captured just so she can very briefly help Vinder. Vinder is there because… he just is. Which means that Bel is involved in all this only because she’s looking for him. And Claire, while much more significant to the main plot, felt like she was there primarily to act as a sounding board for the Doctor’s techno-babble. As much as I enjoyed them all individually—Bel, Karvanista, and the Professor in particular—you could strip them from the larger story with few complications and their involvement means there was less and less time to develop Yaz, or to develop Dan with his new team.I kept thinking to myself, “Why can’t this task/line/revelation/etc. go to one of them?”

It’s not just down to character bloat though. Flux suffers from one of my least favorite trends in Doctor Who lately: making it all about the Doctor. Admittedly, that sounds a bit ridiculous and I’ve frequently come across posts laughing at any fans who say as much. It’s Doctor Who, after all. What do you expect? And yeah, the Doctor is obviously our central character, but I don’t think that’s the same thing as making the show about her. It should be about the companions, the characters who we, the audience, identify with and get to vicariously experience adventure through. This is a big claim that needs its own essay, I know, but suffice to say New Who used to characterize the Doctor as a nobody alien who stole a TARDIS and devoted herself to a lifetime of excitement. Just a madman with a box. And yeah, we know the Doctor is amazing and talented and brilliant and every other complimentary descriptor we could throw out, but whenever the show started to sink too deep into reveling in that, it would pull back through the Doctor’s amazement at humanity. A shop girl looks into the heart of the TARDIS to save the man she loves. Temps can find hope even in the fiery destruction of Pompeii. A different kind of doctor becomes The Woman Who Walked The Earth. These stories used to be about how average people discovery how extraordinary they are by traveling with the Doctor. They’re all nobodies exploring the universe together, but the whole point is that no one in the universe is actually a nobody. “You know that in nine hundred years of time and space I've never met anybody who wasn't important before.” Everybody is special and therefore no one is special-special. Definitely not the Doctor.

The Moffat era lost me in its depiction of the Doctor as not just entertainingly confident—frequently crossing over into arrogant—but actually The Best Person Ever, with companions now starting out, or having always been, special or mysterious in some way, rather than them discovering that their current, “boring” self was amazing all along. Though I’ve enjoyed the Chibnall era more than Moffat’s, Flux specifically suffers from this. Building off of the Timeless Child arc, it’s not a story about the companions, but rather about how insanely important the Doctor is. She’s not just a Time Lord anymore, already a member of one of the most powerful and revered species, she’s an oh so mysterious entity from some far-off universe. She’s not just someone with mysterious origins, she’s the original carrier of regeneration. Her existence made the Time Lords everything they are, giving them the tool that most defines their success and sense of superiority. As the Master seethes, they’re all here and living these lives in part because of her. As if that’s not enough, we push aside the established Flux villains to instead focus on how the Doctor’s mother is the real villain here. Who runs the all important Division? The Doctor’s mom. What does the Division do? Apparently, anything and everything it pleases. This isn’t a shady organization with a specific goal, it’s a badly developed super-enemy that has a finger in all the universe’s pies. The most important evil organization of all important evil organizations. And just as you’re getting your head around all that, we learn that the universe-ending threat is only here because of the Doctor. She was the singular target that sparked the Flux.

To be frank, I can’t connect with that. It’s too much specialness packed into one person; too much insistence that the Doctor is naturally overflowing with mystery and power and significance, rather than her choosing to make her mark on the universe through acts of good will. I can easily buy all the major villains having a personal beef with the Doctor because we’ve spent literal decades showing the viewer all the ways in which she’s thwarted their plans. That’s a part of her mark. But Flux doesn’t even give us a satisfactory answer for why the Ravagers are hell-bent on torturing her. That answer is locked behind missing memories that the Doctor has now dropped down into the TARDIS.

And when you’re spending your whole story exploring how special the Doctor is and how much trauma that’s dumped on her, you don’t have much time left to explore the people she wanted to take on adventures. Dan and Yaz felt like afterthoughts to me, there because the story has to have companions, not because Chibnall actually wanted to explore their impact on the tale. Oh, they helped. 100%. We could make a solid case that, as always, the day never would have been saved if not for humanity’s (and the Lupar’s) involvement. But the heart of this tale just wasn’t about them. From the Doctor lying to Yaz as she conducts her obsessive memory search, to the revelation that the Flux was made for her, this entire tale is about the Doctor, leaving everyone else to just tag along. Personally, I want to watch crazy sci-fi stories about those shop girls discovering their own worth, growing and helping people along the way, not the already special Doctor learning she’s even more special than anyone imagined. Especially when the plot is so jam-packed there’s almost no time to grapple with what that means for her character, let alone what it means for those traveling with her. A three year absence after we last saw Yaz falling down a self-destructive hole when the Doctor was gone a few months? A quick hug will fix that.

Doctor Who has always had an up-and-down quality to it and I by no means hated Flux, but it didn’t feel as much like Doctor Who as it could have. I’m looking forward to RTD’s return and I’m hoping that he’ll spark some of those old feelings in me. Not through cheaply reusing his characters—I definitely don’t want that—but rather through leaning into the importance of the companions and the more relatable aspects of the Doctor. I don’t need anyone in the cast to be The Most Special Person Ever. Media is already filled with protagonists like that. I want stories about average people—people like me, my family, my friends—who discover their strengths and, in the process, obliterate that gap between “Nobody human” and “Amazing space alien with a magical box,” showing that it never really existed in the first place. As a character, the Doctor always uplifts others and humbles herself (even when she’s talking up how good she is), but lately it feels like the stories surrounding her have forgotten that.

[hervoice-1x9voirseriesenlig-blog]

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Drame, Science fiction, Thriller

De Christian Ditter

Avec Luna Wedler, Jessica Schwarz, Thomas Prenn

Nationalité Allemagne

Chaîne d'origine Netflix

SYNOPSIS & INFO : Mia est étudiante en médecine. Elle découvre l'utilisation de la technologie de pointe du bio-piratage au sein de son université. Lorsqu'une découverte révolutionnaire tombe entre de mauvaises mains, Mia doit décider de quel côté elle souhaite être...

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Film is a Work of art in the form of a series of live images that are rotated to produce an illusion of moving images that are presented as a form of entertainment. The illusion of a series of images produces continuous motion in the form of video. The film is often referred to as a movie or moving picture. Film is a modern and popular art form created for business and entertainment purposes. Film making has now become a popular industry throughout the world, where feature films are always awaited by cinemas. Films are made in two main ways. The first is through shooting and recording techniques through film cameras. This method is done by photographing images or objects. The second uses traditional animation techniques. This method is done through computer graphic animation or CGI techniques. Both can also be combined with other techniques and visual effects. Filming usually takes a relatively long time. It also requires a job desk each, starting from the director, producer, editor, wardrobe, visual effects and others.

Definition and Definition of Film / Movie

While the players who play a role in the film are referred to as actors (men) or actresses (women). There is also the term extras that are used as supporting characters with few roles in the film. This is different from the main actors who have bigger and more roles. Being an actor and an actress must be demanded to have good acting talent, which is in accordance with the theme of the film he is starring in. In certain scenes, the actor’s role can be replaced by a stuntman or a stuntman. The existence of a stuntman is important to replace the actors doing scenes that are difficult and extreme, which are usually found in action action films. Films can also be used to convey certain messages from the filmmaker. Some industries also use film to convey and represent their symbols and culture. Filmmaking is also a form of expression, thoughts, ideas, concepts, feelings and moods of a human being visualized in film. The film itself is mostly a fiction, although some are based on fact true stories or based on a true story.

There are also documentaries with original and real pictures, or biographical films that tell the story of a character. There are many other popular genre films, ranging from action films, horror films, comedy films, romantic films, fantasy films, thriller films, drama films, science fiction films, crime films, documentaries and others.

That’s a little information about the definition of film or movie. The information was quoted from various sources and references. Hope it can be useful.

❍❍❍ Formats and Genres ❍❍❍

See also: List of genres § Film and television formats and genres Television shows are more varied than most other forms of media due to the wide variety of formats and genres that can be presented. A show may be fictional (as in comedies and dramas), or non-fictional (as in documentary, news, and reality television). It may be topical (as in the case of a local newscast and some made-for-television films), or historical (as in the case of many documentaries and fictional MOVIE). They could be primarily instructional or educational, or entertaining as is the case in situation comedy and game shows.[citation needed]

A drama program usually features a set of actors playing characters in a historical or contemporary setting. The program follows their lives and adventures. Before the 1980s, shows (except for soap opera-type serials) typically remained static without story arcs, and the main characters and premise changed little.[citation needed] If some change happened to the characters’ lives during the episode, it was usually undone by the end. Because of this, the episodes could be broadcast in any order.[citation needed] Since the 1980s, many MOVIE feature progressive change in the plot, the characters, or both. For instance, Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere were two of the first American prime time drama television MOVIE to have this kind of dramatic structure,[4][better source needed] while the later MOVIE Babylon 5 further exemplifies such structure in that it had a predetermined story running over its intended five-season run.[citation needed] In “DC1&”, it was reported that television was growing into a larger component of major media companies’ revenues than film.[5] Some also noted the increase in quality of some television programs. In “DC1&”, Academy-Award-winning film director Steven Soderbergh, commenting on ambiguity and complexity of character and narrative, stated: “I think those qualities are now being seen on television and that people who want to see stories that have those kinds of qualities are watching television.

❍❍❍ Thank’s For All And Happy Watching❍❍❍

Find all the movies that you can stream online, including those that were screened this week. If you are wondering what you can watch on this website, then you should know that it covers genres that include crime, Science, Fi-Fi, action, romance, thriller, Comedy, drama and Anime Movie. Thank you very much. We tell everyone who is happy to receive us as news or information about this year’s film schedule and how you watch your favorite films. Hopefully we can become the best partner for you in finding recommendations for your favorite movies. That’s all from us, greetings!

Thanks for watching The Video Today. I hope you enjoy the videos that I share. Give a thumbs up, like, or share if you enjoy what we’ve shared so that we more excited.

Sprinkle cheerful smile so that the world back in a variety of colors.

[crystalelemental]

Voting is complete.  Now to wait a week for results that will be utterly predictable, in which no major shifts in popularity occur at all, and not a single one of the new characters, who all seem really cool, will break top 20 because god forbid the fandom collectively stops sucking EoSD’s dick for one year.

Anyway, my picks for everything’s under the cut.

Characters:

Okina.  I really love Okina.  I don’t get how she’s so (relatively) unpopular.  Like I really don’t.  She’s so much fun!  Like, every time she’s in the spotlight, you’re constantly caught between what she’s telling you and what you think her hidden motivations are.  And oftentimes, I think both are true.  I also just like how she operates.  She’s drawn to ambition and willpower.  It’s why she likes Marisa so much and is determined to get Marisa to work for her, and why she’s so insistent that Aya take pride in beating her, even when she was holding back.  It’s why she helps Sumireko in Violet Detector despite having nothing to gain from it.  She love ambitious, strong-willed people, and seems to motivate those qualities in others.  She wants to see people overcome hardship on their own merits, which, after the reveal in Visionary Fairies that she is disabled and sometimes needs a wheelchair to get around, adds a great new layer of context to this aspect of her character.  Okina is a fantastic character, and my only wish for future works is to see her play a bigger role.

Keiki.  Surprisingly, I adore Keiki too, despite not having played WBaWC.  Keiki just...hits right, you know?  You have this world where everything’s fucked, and humans are used more as resources than as people by the powerful beast youkai in charge.  Keiki’s spawned into existence by their desperation, but all she can think to do is fulfill her role and turn everything static.  I honestly enjoy how she’s super well-intentioned, but her actions are questionable over whether they’re effective or the right thing to do.  Plus she was adorable in the Komachi manga.

Kanako.  Look, we all know I’m a Mountain of Faith person at heart, and especially love the Moriya Shrine, so I’m not gonna waste too much time here.  Kanako’s awesome, she’s the lowest ranked of the three, this had to happen.

Mamizou.  How a character who’s so routinely important to the stories and plays her role this well is so low ranked is beyond me.  Mamizou is such an interesting character.  She’s like this sweet old grandmotherly figure up until she reveals her master plan and desire for power.  She’s like an active version of Yukari and Okina, out in the open and pulling off her grand schemes, and it’s a ton of fun to watch.

Doremy.  My blood pact to vote for her aside, Doremy does sustain as one of my favorites.  She’s just...I don’t know how else to describe it but “unique.”  She’s different from a lot of the cast, in that she’s overall just really nice.  Like she genuinely seems to care about people, and her dream people especially.  She’s got her job to do and will carry it out, but mostly stays out of the way otherwise.  She’s a bit mischievous, but this is Touhou.

Junko.  I like Junko.  Vengeance mom who won over a part of Hell by swearing to bring chaos to the Lunarians.  I don’t have a ton to say, because unfortunately she doesn’t get much play.  I wish she did.  Maybe in the next Fairy-focused manga.  Everyone goes for a sleepover at Clownpiece’s mom’s place, and has to travel into hell and Junko’s just around.  That’s all I really need.

Sumireko.  While Sumireko’s fallen a bit as a favorite, and is almost certainly going to continue falling, I do like the kid.  She’s a bit of an obnoxious dingus at times, but I find her antics funny.  The way she sometimes just goes off on a ranting tangent that’s spot-on is just...it’s very in line for a super smart teen who’s just disillusioned with everything.  I dunno, I just enjoy her a lot.

Music:

Concealed Four Seasons.  Turns out, Okina’s not just a great character, but has a kickass theme song.  I love this battle theme, I think it’s my favorite.  It’s got such a good energy to it.

Desire Drive.  Best stage theme in the series.  It’s so catchy.

Lullaby of Deserted Hell.  I love this one entirely because it’s this soft, gentle music that plays as you’re traveling through hell.  And I mean that in the literal sense of it was once physically hell, and also this stage is a fucking disaster and I love it.  It’s like why the sixth stratum theme from Etrian Odyssey 2 is good.  Nightmare land with the most calming theme imaginable.

Heartfelt Fancy.  Listen, SA did good music.  I actually like the stage theme more than Satori’s boss theme.

Lost Emotion.  Kokoro’s theme is great, and one of exactly two themes I remember from the fighting games (the other is the Yorigami sisters’).  Fight game music tends to not be very good, in my opinion, but Lost Emotion hits all the right notes with me.

Shining Needle Castle.  Fun fact!  I don’t like DDC.  At all.  I think the cast is pretty boring, especially in the second half.  I don’t like the collection system.  The only cool thing visually, for me, was fighting music-themed enemies in a thunderstorm, which is cool as shit.  But goddamn this song is good.  It’s one of the few highlights of the game for me.

Dream Palace of the Great Mausoleum.  I really like just how grand it sounds.  Like it sounds awe-inspiring, and fits the area you’re in well.  I like the track on its own, but I really like when a track syncs up with the atmosphere of a place.

Fires of Hokkai.  Speaking of, good god this song.  This is probably the single best establishment of atmosphere in the series.  After everything else in the game, and all the craziness of the last stage, you hit the final destination and it starts out with a quiet heartbeat sound.  Then it just builds and builds into this powerful, driving theme that loops perfectly back to near silence as you encounter Byakuren herself.  Stage 6 is so fucking good, shame I suck at this game too much to ever get there.

Beast Metropolis.  This is purely off sound, since I haven’t played the game.  But you may notice that, thematically, it fits in with a lot of my favorite tracks.  Softer vibe, stage theme setting the mood of an area that you’d expect to be crazy but turns out to be eerily...not that.

Faith is for the Transient People.  This was a toss-up, with a lot of options I was considering, but Sanae’s theme won out.  I do like it a lot, and I didn’t vote for Sanae in characters despite her being one of my long-standing favorites, so she got this one.

Works:

Hidden Star in Four Seasons.  Okay listen.  I get that this game is not popular among fans.  I do not get why.  Are you seriously going to look me in the eye and tell me this game wasn’t a relief to play?  After the last four games had bullshit collection systems for resources, having a game that just played lives based off score again isn’t a good thing?  Yes, it was easier.  Good.  Did you miss how bullshit LoLK was?  Sometimes you gotta backpedal, right into the range of things I can actually play.  I know some people don’t like the cast at all, some nonsense about “Why are they so familiar with characters if I’ve never seen them” or something.  But the cast is spectacular.  Eternity Larva’s a fun new fairy to add to the group, and her short-lived stint in VFiS was great, proving that she’s the only fairy who has her own reserve of braincells.  Aunn is precious and wonderful.  Okina.  OKINA.  This was easily my favorite cast since Subterranean Animism, and that was a strong cast.  I just do not get the dislike of this game at all.

Mountain of Faith.  Hey, look at that, I like the games that are simple and fun for me to play.  What a surprise.  MoF was the first game I beat, because Suwako was the first character I encountered and I had to one day git gud enough to beat her.  So I did.  After like three weeks.  That was an adventure.  Anyway, I think MoF holds as one of the best in the series.  Aside from simple gameplay that’s actually fun instead of painful, it had a great cast of characters, and honestly the best environments.  Like, this game just looks good.  Maybe that’s personal bias because autumn theme and autumn is the best season, but I loved the backgrounds in this game.

Forbidden Scrollery.  Hey, it’s the thing that got me into the written works!  Yeah, I really like Forbidden Scrollery.  It’s a fun exploration of things from within the human village, from the perspective of a human who lives there.  Plus we got some of the more interesting lore bits for the series from this work, which is valuable.  And of course...human disguise Mamizou.  10/10.

Visionary Fairies in Shrine.  While there are many fairy-focused manga, this one’s my personal favorite.  Because it’s got Clownpiece.  No really, that’s it.  I like the general fairy shenanigans that the trio gets in to, but I really enjoyed how this one almost focused on Clownpiece’s integration into Gensokyo.  I think it’s a lot more compelling to have that sort of arc for the character, and it really endeared Clownpiece to me as a whole.  My only complaint with it is that Eternity Larva didn’t stick around too.  I know she had less to contribute and that Clownpiece is the central focus of this one, but it would’ve been nice to have Larva stick around and get a bit of development herself.  Maybe next manga, eh?

Subterranean Animism.   I debated this and Cage in Lunatic Runagate.  I actually regret my choice.  Subterranean Animism won out based on my enjoyment of the music and characters in the game, and (if you can believe it) my enjoyment of the gameplay.  Yeah, it turns out when the game rewards just surviving, even if resources are more scarce, I do like 10x better than when resources are only obtained through flying headlong into a storm of bullshit like the next four games demanded.  FUCKING IMAGINE THAT.  Anyway, CiLR was a serious contender that, again, I kinda regret not picking.  Bougetsushou in general was a strong compilation, but CiLR is the one that made it really stand out.  SSiB was a fun silly story, and Inaba was hilarious, but CiLR was by far the most serious and poignant of the works.  It focused really strongly on the characters, something Touhou...hadn’t really done at the time, and still doesn’t always do, and expanded them beautifully.  We get a lot more insight into Kaguya and what her life is like, we get the backstory for the new Reisen, we get background on the Watatsuki sisters, we get the Mokou chapter, arguably the best character development in the entire series.  So it really comes down to a game that I like because I can play it, or a written work that also did a lot for the characters in it.  Both excellent but I locked myself into one or the other.

[mst3kproject]

511: Gunslinger

I’ve probably given the impression that I hate Westerns, which is not quite true – I’m mostly just bored with the entire concept after having been force-fed it since childhood.  If a Western wants me, it’s gonna have to give me aliens or dinosaurs or vampires or something as a ‘hook’.  Gunslinger is just a straight-up tale of law and order in the old west, and as such it doesn’t interest me much at all.  Yet when I watch it, I have to give it a surprising number of props, especially for being something that wound up on the Satellite of Love.

Gunslinger does not waste time.  In the opening scene we see the Marshall of Oracle, Texas, gunned down in his own office, and his wife Rose vow to take her revenge on the killers. Until the new guy can arrive from San Antonio, Rose decides she’s going to do the Marshalling herself!  She starts small, trying to make the local Red Dog Saloon comply with the laws about not being open late.  This brings her into conflict with the Saloon’s owner Erica, who decides that Rose has to go.  While Rose makes freely with the police brutality, Erica hires her outlaw ex-boyfriend Caine as an assassin.  This being a movie, Caine and Rose immediately fall in love instead. Her husband’s been dead about a week at this point.

The biggest strength of the movie is that the writing and acting, while not stellar, are certainly good enough.  We know who all these people are, we can tell them apart, and we know what they want and why they’re in conflict with each other. Rose and Erica have never liked one another, and now their jobs have put them in a position to do something about it. Erica uses people’s image of her as a floozy to bilk them out of money.  Jake is in love with Erica and tired of being spurned.  Mayor Polk dwells on his war stories because they’re more exciting than his lackluster present life.  Caine is still shaken by PTSD and doesn’t understand that killing Polk won’t make it better.  The funeral scene introduces us to most of these characters, and their relationships are sketched out in ways that aren’t boring and don’t interfere with the flow of the story.

Gunslinger’s ‘gimmick’ is that it takes a pretty standard Western plot – local Sheriff versus land-grabbing tycoon – and places women in the main roles.  This could have been an absolute disaster depending on what the writers thought of women, but Charles B. Griffith and Mark Hanna handled it very well.  It never treats either Rose or Erica as a joke, or thinks they’re ‘cute’ for being a law enforcer or a businesswoman.  Both of them are portrayed as people, slightly larger-than-life in the way genre characters always are, but written and played with complete sincerity.  The fact that they’re women allows the introduction of the love triangle with Caine, but the only person who lets that get in the way of what anybody’s trying to accomplish is Caine himself!  Even the very minor character of Mayor Polk’s wife Felicity is an active rather than reactive character, who actually protects her husband when she thinks he’s in danger rather than just standing around fretting.  Likewise with the can-can dancers, who take action to try to avoid losing their livelihoods.

Rose in particular could have driven the whole thing into the ground if her heart had overcome her head, but while she does have a weakness for Caine she knows it’s a weakness, and uses it to her advantage when she can. She meets him knowing he plans to try to seduce her, but keeps her head and questions him.  She firmly tells him that she can’t let emotion interfere with the unpleasant job that needs doing, and at the end, even though it visibly upsets her, she does her duty and kills him.  Even the fact that he just shot Erica to protect her doesn’t sway her decision!  The way Erica and Rose keep their heads while Caine loses his heart suggests to me that this inversion of the male and female roles is entirely intentional.  Gunslinger is predicated on the idea that men and women are equally capable of being rational and emotional, giving and greedy, and generally human, and on that basis it seems to be an earnest attempt at a feminist movie.

So as far as that goes, Gunslinger works all right.  The plot is, as Kevin noted in The Amazing Colossal Episode Guide, a series of wild west clichés, with only the gender swap to really give them any flavour.  Details of Erica’s land scheme are pretty muddy and the movie studiously avoids any actual action or suspense, but we’re interested enough to see it through to the end. It’s not really that bad. Unfortunately, it’s not that good, either.

The primary reason why is because the movie is desperately cheap.  The streets of Oracle often look all but abandoned, as they couldn’t afford extras and therefore saved them for the most important scenes.  The buildings appear to be made out of cardboard and the jail cells in the Marshall’s office look like they would have trouble holding a large dog, never mind an armed human being.  Characters ride horses along dirt roads with visible tyre tracks.  Most of the film takes place at night, but you can’t tell because they shot it in the daytime and didn’t even use a very dark filter – witness the hilarious bit where Caine points out the constellation Ursa Major while there is blue sky visible behind him.

Another reason is the direction, which is at best boring.  Far too many wide shots call attention to the empty streets, while all the gunplay takes place at very close quarters to disguise the fact that none of the actors can even pretend to aim.  The fight scene between Caine and the Deputy is downright tragic, with punches that obviously miss by several inches.  The worst moment of this is Caine’s story about why he hates Polk.  I understand and respect that they couldn’t afford an actual flashback, but all we see for this entire narrative is Caine’s talking head in a single, static shot. Surely there was something more interesting they could have done here.  I should not watch this and find myself thinking about how ugly that wallpaper is.

The thing I spent most of Gunslinger thinking about, though, is Rose’s approach to law enforcement, which is inconsistent to say the least.  We have a few quick scenes in which she upholds the law in Oracle by shooting people – what these men did we’re never told.  Later she shoots at Caine, having mistaken him for somebody else. What if she’d hit and killed him? Yet only minutes later, she’s telling Caine she wants this man alive and tells him off for shooting the guy before he could be questioned.  So how exactly was Rose planning on questioning a dead man?  Later, when Erica’s little toady Jake tells Rose that Caine is planning to kill her and Mayor Polk, she says she cannot arrest him for something they have no evidence of.  Really?  She seemed perfectly happy to shoot a guy whose face she couldn’t see earlier in the film.

Maybe this is supposed to be Rose’s character arc.  She goes from cold-bloodedly shooting one of her husband’s assassins at the funeral to realizing that the law is more complex and due process is necessary.  Maybe realizing she’d almost killed the wrong man was her turning point.  The script actually does kind of hint at this.  At the end Rose leaves Oracle and all its bad memories behind when her official replacement arrives, wanting nothing more to do with this town or with law enforcement, and she and Caine do discuss the violence associated with the job.  Men who are outlaws in one state become lawmen in another, and then go back to a life of crime – either way you get the rush of killing (and a lawman can do so legally!), but crime pays better.  Caine thinks of himself as better than other professional murderers, because he’s in it for the money rather than the blood.

That’s not how the movie uses these moments, though.  Rose’s killing spree is apparently supposed to convince us she’s the most effective law enforcement this town has had in a long time, and her almost shooting Caine merely provides a ‘meet cute’ scene of sorts.  Their conversation about killing and police work just gives them something in common to bond over, and her leaving at the end has to do with being forced to kill the man she’s fallen in love with (just days after her husband died!  Couldn’t they have made her the first Marshall’s sister or something?).

Gunslinger is one of those movies where just a little extra effort would have made the whole thing a lot better.  A few more extras would have made all the difference to a lot of shots.  Better lighting would have improved the night scenes immeasurably.  Anything would have been better than a talking head and bad wallpaper for Caine’s war story.  These are such tiny details, and yet just a little more money in the right places could have done so much to help the audience focus on what’s there instead of what’s missing.

Sadly, this is a Roger Corman production, so making a good movie was never really the goal.  Rather, the union rules were about to change so that actors could only work five days a week, so Corman shit out Gunslinger as fast as he could to get it done before he would have to let anyone have a weekend.  Explains a lot, doesn’t it?

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

2010s Art: Music, Games, and TV

So I love all forms of art. It may not seem like it since I tend to stick mainly to movies, with the odd cartoon or video game thrown in, but that’s really because movies are more my thing due to not being massive time investments. Like, don’t get me wrong, I gamed, I watched TV, I listened to music, but it was a lot more casual than my deep dive into becoming a major cinephile.

With games and TV, it was mostly issues of money and time respectively. I have a few consoles, mostly Nintendo and Sony ones, and my wife helped me experience Xbox games, but I just don’t have the money needed to experience every good game that comes out. With TV, the time investment is the biggest roadblock, especially when all the best shows have hour-long episodes these days. With movies, I just have to spend 90 minutes to two hours on average; for TV, it’s countless hours I could be watching movies. As for music… well, I listened to a lot, I just don’t feel totally qualified to properly rank and list songs and albums.

So instead of the big decade-spanning list for movies that I’m doing, I’m going to go over some things I enjoyed from the past decade and maybe a few things I didn’t in music, TV, and video games. Here’s a little guide so you know what stuff is something I consider one of my absolute favorites in any given medium - if it’s from this decade, it will be in bold, and if it’s from a previous decade but I experienced it this decade, it will be underlined.

Television

I figured I’d get this out of the way first since it’s the medium I have the least experience with. Let me put it this way: I have seen only one season of Game of Thrones, the first one (and by all accounts I dodged a bullet by dropping that show). I also had the misfortune of jumping in to The Walking Dead right as it was gearing up for its abysmal second season, which turned me off that and led to me only watching an episode here or there. 

I had better luck watching live action shows on streaming. I managed to get through almost all of Pretty Little Liars on Netflix, which was a chore in and of itself; it’s a good show, but boy could it ever get arbitrary and frustrating. Speaking of Netflix, I think it goes without saying that Stranger Things is their best effort; from the likable cast of kids to the awesome soundtrack, even though it never really surpasses season one the show always has something cool going on in one of its plots. My other favorite from Netflix would probably be their take on A Series if Unfortunate Events, which is how you do adaptation expansion right; everything they add feels like it’s in service of fleshing out Lemony Snicket’s dismal world, as well as giving Patrick Warburton an incredible dramatic role as the Lemony narrator himself.

Amazon managed to score two hits in my book. The first is the unbelievably fun and charming Good Omens, a miniseries that somehow got me to love David Tennant and Michael Sheen more than I already did. The second was the gory joyride that is The Boys which while not the smartest or most original superhero satire is definitely the most fun.

While I didn’t watch the whole show and would not consider it one of my favorites, I do want to give props to Hannibal for introducing me to Mads Mikkelsen. As far as I’m concerned, he’s the only person aside from Hopkins worthy of playing everyone’s favorite cannibal. Another show I DO consider a favorite despite slacking on keeping up with it is Ash vs. Evil Dead; I only needed to see a single season of Bruce back with the boomstick to know this show was a masterpiece.

On the animated side I have much more to talk about. Not since the 90s have we been spoiled with so many genuinely great and varied cartoons. We got Adventure Time, Regular Show, Steven Universe… really, Cartoon Network raised the bar this decade and made up for an awful 2000s. They even finally gave Samurai Jack a conclusion, which despite the mixed results, was still a real exciting phenomenon to experience.

Of course, my favorite CN show came from Adult Swim. I am of course referring to Rick & Morty, a fun sci-fi adventure comedy that attracted the most obnoxious fanbase possible in record time. While certainly not a show you need a high IQ to understand and having an atrocious third season, it still manages to be funny and thought provoking in equal amounts. Seriously though. Fuck season 3.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is another great show that I sadly fell off the wagon of around the fifth or sixth season. It never got bad of course but it never really engaged me like the older episodes, though what I’ve heard of the last season makes me wish I’d kept up with it. It was a great show with a lot of heart and character, and I’m not sure we’ll ever see a show like it again.

Netflix did not slack in the animation department; I didn’t catch their most famous show (it’s the one about a certain Horseman) but I did catch their fantastic take on Castlevania, which as a huge fan of the series was a real treat. Where the fuck is Grant though?

My two favorite shows of the decade, however, are what I see as the pinnacle of East and West: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and Gravity Falls. 

JJBA is a series I had vague passing knowledge of, only knowing its existence due to seeing Stone Ocean referenced on the Wikipedia page for air rods when I was younger and, of course, the memes that spawned from Heritage for the Future, which were inescapable back in the day. As soon as I got into the series, it became one of my biggest inspirations, teaching me you can be deep, complex, and filled with great character interactions while also being so batshit insane that every new and absurd power is incredibly easy to buy (looking forward to the rainbows that turn people into snails, animators). They managed to get through the first four parts and start up the fifth over the decade; so far my favorite part is four, mainly due to the magnificent bastard that is Yoshikage Kira (played time perfection by D.C. Douglas) and in spite of serial creep Vic Mangina playing the otherwise lovable asshole Rohan Kishibe.

Gravity Falls on the other hand is just a fun and engaging mystery show that manages to excel at being episodic and story-driven all at once. There’s only one or two “bad” episodes across two seasons, and it lasted just as long as it needed to, wrapping things up with a satisfactory ending that still gave fans a few mysteries to chew on. It also gave us Grunkle Stan, perhaps the greatest character in all of animation, the pinnacle of “jerk with a heart of gold” characters who is hilarious, badass, and complex all at once. This is my favorite western animated show…

...but then the last year of the decade threw a curveball and, if I’m being honest, is on par with Gravity Falls: Green Eggs and Ham. Netflix really wanted us to know 2D animation is back in 2019; between this show and Klaus, the future is looking bright for the medium. It’s a fun, funny roadtrip comedy that knows when to be emotional and when to be funny, and it’s all filtered through the wubbulous world of Dr. Seuss. It’s just a wonderfully delightful show.

And on the subject of JoJo, I had a kind of love-hate relationship with anime this decade. The attitudes of anime fans turned me off from anime for a long while. Sure, I checked out stuff like Attack on Titan and Sword Art Online, but neither series really clicked with me. The main anime I loved this decade were ones that started in the 2000s and ended in the 2010s, like Dragon Ball Z Kai and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I suppose I did enjoy My Hero Academia, which is a really fun show with an awesome and varied cast and great voice acting. Love Froppy, best girl for sure.

One of the most unfortunate things about this decade was how many great shows got screwed over by their networks. Sym-Bionic Titan, Thundercats, and The Legend of Korra were all great shows in their own right but were treated like shit by their respective networks. It really makes me upset that stuff like that not only happened, but continues to happen to this day.

But let’s not end on a bad note; let’s talk about the astounding returns old shows got. Invader Zim got a movie as did Hey Arnold, with the latter in particular finally wrapping up the dangling plot threads, but those are actual TV movies so they don’t really fit here; what DOES fit is Static Cling, the triumphant return of Rocko’s Modern Life. A forty minute special, it follows Rocko and his friends as they navigate the modern age, trying to bring back Rocko’s favorite cartoon. Rachel Bighead’s arc in this in particular is pretty groundbreaking and awesome. 

Also awesome was the first few episodes of Samurai Jack’s return, though it did end up petering out halfway through the season and ended on an anticlimactic note. Still, Tom Kenny’s Scaramouche, the sheer amount of continuity, and the awesome final curbstomp battle against Aku are worth giving this a watch. And if nothing else, stuff like this gives me hope for future revivals. What will we see next? Gargoyles comeback? Batman Beyond continuation? KENNY AND THE CHIMP REVIVAL?! Chimpers rise up!

Music

Much like everyone, I listened to a lot of music this decade. There was a lot of shit, and I definitely used to be one of those “wow no one makes good music anymore” morons, but I grew out of that and learned to look in the right places.

Let’s start with the albums I loved the most. Continuing her meteoric rise from the 2000s, Lady Gaga drooped her magnum opus, Born This Way, an album that successfully showcases her skills as she takes on numerous pop styles. No two songs sound the same, and with a couple of exceptions every song slaps. While we’re on the subject of pop stars, Gaga’s contemporary and lesser Katy Perry managed to hit a home run with the fun bit of pop fluff that was Teenage Dream.

Weird Al was sorely missed for most of the decade, but what albums he did drop featured some of his best work. While Alpocalypse doesn’t hold up quite so well, it’s still solid, but even then it is blown out of the water by Mandatory Fun, an album that just refuses to stop being funny from start to finish. And that’s not the only funny albums this decade; aside from artists I’ll get more into later, George Miller AKA Filthy Frank released Pink Season as one of his last great acts as his character of Pink Guy. The album is as raunchy and filthy as you’d expect. And then for unintentional comedy, Corey Feldman dropped Angelic 2 The Core, an album so musically inept that it ends up becoming endearing; it’s The Room of music.

As I gamed a lot this decade I got to experience a lot of great video game soundtracks, but the two I found to be the absolute best were Undertale and Metal Gear Rising’s. I couldn’t tell you which soundtrack is better, and I’ve actually made a playlist on my iPod containing my favorite tracks from both games. Pokemon had solid soundtracks all decade, but they definitely were better in single tracks such as Ultra Necrozma’s theme from USUM and Zinnia’s theme from ORAS.

And speaking of individual songs, there were a lot I really loved. The disco revival in the easel ide half of the decade lead to gems like “Get Lucky,” “Uptown Funk,” and… uh, “Blurred Lines.” The controversy to that one might be overblown, but it sure isn’t anything I really want to revisit.

Corey Feldman may be the king of unintentional comedy, but this decade was seriously ripe with so bad it’s good music. The crown jewel is without a doubt the giddy, goofy “Friday,” but I think the equally stupid but also endlessly more relatable Ark Music production “Chinese Food” is worth some ironic enjoyment as well. 

Meme songs in general were pretty enjoyable, though it came at a price. Remember when everyone tried to be funny by ripping off “Gangnam Style?” Remember when people took that Ylvis song at face value? Irony and satire were lost on the masses. I think the best mene song of the decade, though, is “Crab Rave,” a bouncy instrumental dance track with a fun music video and an absurd yet hilarious meme tacked to it. And then we have “The Internet is for Music,” a gargantuan 30 minute mashup featuring every YTMND, 4chan, Newgrounds, and YouTube meme you could think of (at the time of its release anyway),

Then we get into artists. Comedy music was great this decade, with Steel Panther and The Lonely Island putting out great work all decade, but by far my favorite funny band is Ninja Sex Party. Dan “Danny Sexbang” Avidan and Brian “Ninja Brian” Wecht are pretty much my favorite entertainers at this point, with them easily being able to go from doing goofy yet epic songs where they fuck or party to doing serious and awesome cover albums where Dan flexes his impressive vocals. A big plus is how all of their albums are easily some of my favorites ever, with not a single bad CD, and that’s not even getting into their side project Starbomb. These guys are a treasure.

Then we have Ghost, a Swedish metal band who play up the Satanic panic for all it’s worth. These guys captured my interest when I heard the beautiful “Cirice” on the radio, and despite that song rocking the fuck out, Imagine my surprise when it ended up being only middle of the road awesome for this band! With killer original songs like “Rats,” “Mary in the Cross,” and “Square Hammer” to a awesome covers like “Missionary Man” and “I’m a Marionette,” it’s almost enough to get a guy to hail Satan. I think they appeal to me mainly because they have a style very in line with the 80s, most evident on tracks like “Rats.” 

While I’d hesitate to call him one of my favorite musicians yet (he is really good so far though), one of my favorite people in entertainment is Lil Nas X. From his short but sweet songs that crush genre boundaries to his hilarious Twitter feed, this guy is going places and I can’t wait to see what those places are.

And finally, the guy I think may be one of the greatest creative geniuses alive and who has nearly singlehandedly shaped Internet culture with everything he does… Neil Cicierega. While it’s not like I only discovered him in the 2010s - the guy has been an omnipresent force in my life since Potter Pupper Pals debuted - he definitely became the guy I would unflinchingly call the greatest artist of our time over that period.   Whether he’s releasing the songs under his own name or as Lemon Demon, you can always be sure that the songs are going to burrow into your brain. His Lemon Demon album Spirit Phone, which features songs about urban legends and the horrors of capitalism, is easily my pick for album of the decade. And then under his own name he released three mashup mixtapes: Mouth Sounds, Mouth Silence, and Mouth Moods. All three are stellar albums, but only Mouth Moods has “Wow Wow,” the bouncing track about homoerotic bee-loving Will Smith and outtakes so good they deserve to be on the next album.

Video Games 

Having a PC this decade was great because it let me experience a lot of games I probably wouldn’t have otherwise, like Half-Life, BioShock, Earthnound, Mother 3, and Final Fantasy VI and VII. All of these and more are among my favorite games of all time now, but we’re here to talk about the stuff from this decade I consider great.

It’s hard to talk about this decade in gaming without mentioning Skyrim. Yes, it has flaws and the main storyline is a bit undercooked, but there’s so much fun to be had dicking about in the wilderness it’s hard to be too mad. And if you have mods, there are endless opportunities to expand the game. The same is true for the other game I have sunk countless hours into, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. Not only is there a thriving modding community, but it has been supported and encouraged by the creators and some mods have even made the leap into becoming fully canon! It’s always a blast to revisit and see how far I can break the game with item combos.

Surprisingly, Batman managed to get not one, not two, but THREE awesome licensed games this decade! Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, and the unfairly maligned Arkham Origins all kick as much ass as the Dark Knight himself. The former two reunite Mark Hamill and Kevin McConroy as Joker and Batman while the latter features numerous stellar boss battles. The combat in these games is so graceful and fluid, you WILL feel like Batman at some point, be it after flawlessly clobbering two dozen mooks or silently eliminating a room of thugs before they even realize you’re there.

Pokémon had a bit of a rocky decade; it started out strong with the fifth generation, the best games in the series with a great story, region, and sidequests and then just went downhill from there. Not incredibly so, of course - the games were always fun at least - but gens VI through VIII were not the most graceful steps into 3D. Still, every gen managed to produce some of my all-time favorite Pokémon. Gen V had Volcarona, Chandelure,  and Meloetta; Gen VI gave us Hoopa, Klefki, the Fairy type in general, and a gorgeous mega evolution for my favorite Pokémon, Absol; Gen VII had the Ultra Beasts and Ultra Necrozma, some of the coolest concepts in the series, as well as Pyukumuku; and Gen VIII gave us Cinderace, Dracovish, Dracozolt, Polteageist, Hatterene, Snom, and Zacian. And those are just samplings mind you, these gens are full of hits.

Bringing back old franchises yielded amazing results. Look no further than the triumphant return of Doom in 2016, which had you ripping and tearing through the forces of Hell with guns, chainsaws, and your bear fucking hands. This game is HARDCORE. Less bloody and gory but no less awesome was the return of not just Crash Bandicoot, but Spyro as well in remakes that are easily the definitive ways to experience the games. And don’t even get me started on the remastered DuckTales!

Platinum games did not fuck around this decade, delivering Bayonetta 2 and Metal Gear Rising. The former is a balls-to-the-wall sequel to the amazing original Bayonetta that, while lacking in bosses quite as impressive as the first game’s, is more polished and has a fun story and a better haircut for Bayonetta; the latter is an action game so insane it makes the rest of the Metal Gear franchise look tame in comparison. The latter in particular is in my top ten games ever, with every boss battle feeling epic, all the music kicking ass, and Raiden truly coming into his own as a badass.

Speaking of Metal Gear, the divisive The Phantom Pain easily earns its place here. While much fuss has been made about the game being “unfinished,” it still has a complete and satisfying ending even if it doesn’t totally wrap up the dangling plot threads the young Liquid Snake leaves behind. The overarching themes as well as Venom and his relationship with characters like Kaz, Paz, and ESPECIALLY Quiet make this game, with his and Quiet’s being particularly beautiful and tragic. The Paz quest, Quiet’s exit, and the mission where Snake has to put down his men after they get infested with parasites are all some of the most heartbreaking moments in the franchise. But it’s not all tears; there’s plenty of fun to be had harassing Russians in Afghanistan while blaring 80s synth pop from your Walkman. Oh yeah, and fuck Huey.

The Ace Attorney series also thrived, with both Spirit of Justice and Dual Destinies transitioning the series into 3D a lot more graceful than some other franchises while still maintaining the with and charm the series is known for. And if that wasn’t enough for my point-and-cluck adventure needs, Telltale had me covered with The Wolf Among Us and the first season of The Walking Dead. The stories and characters of those games are so good, it’s enough to make you sad they never got a timely sequel or sequels that weren’t shit respectively.

This decade is when I really got into fighting game, though I’m not particularly good. I supported Skullgirls (and am even in the credits!), and got into Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle (and I also got into its spiritual predecessor, Heritage for the Future). But by and large my favorite fighting game of the decade and the one I’m actually pretty good at is Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the most ridiculously ambitious crossover in video game history. The fact that the game is STILL getting more characters added is a testament of how insanely great the game is because instead of being mad that there’s so much DLC, people are going rabid waiting for news of more. It’s such an awesome, complete game out the door that the DLC feels earned rather than half a game being held hostage. Other devs, take note!

A lot of franchises put their best foot forward for sequels. God of War III was an awesomely bloody finale to the original journey of Kratos, with more epic bosses than ever; now he’s off fighting Norse gods, and I hear that game is even better! Portal 2 is just an absolute blast, and easily surpasses the first game on the merit of having Cave Johnson alone; the fact we get Wheatley and the malfunctioning personality cores honestly feels like overkill. Then we have BioShock… 2. While it’s certainly not as good as the first game, I think it was a lot of fun, and it got way too much flak.

 I think it definitely aged better than Infinite which, while still a good game in its own right (it’s hard to hate a game with a character as endearing as Elizabeth), definitely was not warranting the levels of acclaim it got with such a muddled narrative. “Overrated” and “overhyped” are not words I keep in my vocabulary and I certainly would not describe Infinite as such, but I do feel like people got swept up in the gorgeous visuals and the story bits and characters that are effective and so weren’t nearly as critical of its flaws. It’s still a good, fun game with an interesting world, but it pales in comparison to the other two BioShocks. I feel like The Last of Us is in a similar boat. That being said, I couldn’t tell you why; it has a great story, good characters, plenty of replayability, and fascinating enemy design. But despite all that, I appreciate this game more than love it. It’s the Citizen Kane of video game sin that regard at least.

I’d be remiss to not mention the big indie successes of the decade. Shovel Knight is easily one is the greatest platform era ever made, taking everything great about the platformers on the NES and SNES, removing the bullshit, and delivering numerous bonus campaigns with unique playstyles. Then there was Abobo’s Big Adventure, a marvelous mashup of all sorts of games starring the beloved Double Dragon mook as he goes on a bloody quest to save his son. It’s a blast and there is tons of variety but some sections are definitely as hair-pullingly difficult as the games that inspired them. And then there is Doki Doki Literature Club, the free visual novel that brutally subverts your expectations. Sadly, I do feel the game loses some impact on subsequent playthroughs, but it’s still a great, effective story that skillfully utilizes meta elements.

Still, the greatest indie success of them all is Toby Fox’s masterpiece, Undertale. Charming, funny, emotional, and populated by a cast of some of the most fun and lovable characters ever conceived, this game was an instant smash and is still talked about to this day. Sure, things like Sans have been memed to death, but it’s hard to not just love and cherish the beautiful world Toby Fox managed to create. This game may not be the greatest game of all time, but for what it is I wouldn’t hesitate to name it the game of the decade.

There was a lot of great art in the 2010s, and while I couldn’t get around to all of it, I’m so happy with what I got to experience. Here’s hoping that the 2020s can be just as amazing!

[remnantoforario]

Ok then...

So a little while ago I did a post about my thoughts on the newest RWBY manga. It was mostly a bunch of scattered ramblings, but essentially i broke down why I believe it was better than the show (at least starting out). 

I originally wanted to do all the chapters up to now in that post, but since I spent so much time on the first chapter alone, I thought it best to just do a post for each chapter as I reread them. You guys seemed to like my thoughts on the first one, so here we go with chapter two.

Heads Up: This will not be a review of the chapter itself per se, it will be a comparison between the manga and original source material. As such I will be spending most of the time going over the character interactions, slight world-building changes, and anything else I see different. Cool? Let’s get started then...

So chapter 2 of the starts out just as chapter 4 of the show did, though with a noticeable change in Ruby’s attitude. 

In the original she was practically bouncing off the walls, excited by the prospect of fighting monsters. Here she is much more somber, reflecting on what happened the previous day, as well as expressing apprehension with teaming up with what are essentially a bunch of strangers. 

I like this change very much honestly. It makes Ruby a much more relatable and realized character, which is something the show didn’t readily do until way later. She’s in a completely new environment (one she still feels she doesn’t fully belong in), and her first interactions with people that aren’t her sister have been less than positive. It makes sense that she would be worried. 

I think Yang also comes off a bit better in these scenes. Before she was kind of treating Ruby as a bit of a pest. Sure she wants her to be more sociable, but there it seemed more like out of a desire to not have her little sister “cramp her style” while here she’s doing her best to encourage her. So good job there.

Next we get a better look at Jaune (who briefly appeared in chapter one) and are formally introduced to Pyrrha. Not much to say here since the scene is pretty much the same, but I will point out that Jaune speaking french was a nice little touch given his character origin. 

Ruby’s face is also great here. Really makes her feel like an outsider looking in.

I also wanted to highlight this little nugget:

The fact that anyone is jealous of Jaune about anything is hilarious.

The next crucial scene is when Weiss and Ruby meet in the Emerald Forest. Now the way this happens in canon is fine for what it is, but how this plays out in the manga speaks more to the characters. 

Weiss (like in the original) walks away, but instead of chasing her, Ruby simply lets her go; and is relieved to have done it, telling herself that they didn’t see one another. Remember, so far established in the story these two DO NOT like each other. To Weiss, Ruby is nothing more than a child that lucked her way into Beacon, and to Ruby, Weiss is a stuck-up, rich jerk. It makes sense that they would not want to pair with one another. They just can’t get along. It’s the same as in the series, but the manga does it much better in my opinion because of one thing: consistent character arcs.

Ok this is going to get a little long (too late). When Ruby is first introduced into the series, she had a Flat Character Arc (at least from what I perceived). For those who don’t know, a Flat Character arc is one in which said character does NOT change for better or worse; they are well...flat. They have come to terms with themselves and thus have been fully realized before the story even starts. So if they will not change, the world instead changes around them in an attempt to challenge or reinforce those beliefs. Examples of this are Son Goku and Saitama from One Punch Man.

The main crux of the flat arc is “The truth that the character believes”. It is a truth that they know to be real and will not waiver from, no matter what the plot throws at them.

Goku’s truth for example, is that he can always be better than he was yesterday. That no matter how strong he gets, there will always be someone stronger to fight. That is why he trains and how he overcomes his problems, through this truth to be better and force of will. 

Ruby’s truth was that no matter what she would be a hero. She would protect people and become a Huntress like in her stories. 

Which would have worked fine...if the show kept to that ideal. 

In the beginning, Ruby was flat. She never really experienced any setbacks, she was never in the wrong, and she was never really challenged by anyone. Her team pretty much went along with everything she did without question and she never really had a problem in any fight she was put in. She was essentially...a mary sue (even chibi pointed that out). She didn’t have to learn how to overcome her prejudices like Weiss, face her past like Blake, or even shoulder the familial burdens that Yang had to (who was also kind of flat but thats another discussion). Ruby pretty much had nothing to worry about, until V3.

Volume 3 is where the story shifts. Our characters are met with an action that provides lasting consequences: The deaths of Penny, Pyrrha, and Ozpin, the destruction of the school, Yang losing her arm, Blake confronting Adam and running away to Menagerie, Weiss going home, etc. 

In a flat character arc, Ruby would learn from these experiences and acquire a new skill (silver eyes) in which to reinforce her beliefs and defeat the Lie of the world (Salem’s forces)...but she doesn’t. Ruby waivers and does nothing while the Lie continues to spread, this is where her character begins to fail. 

Her teammates (as well as everyone else around her) are experiencing their own arcs whether they be positive (Yang, Blake, Weiss, Jaune, Ren, Nora, etc.) or Negative (Emerald, Adam, Raven, and Salem). Ruby remains static, but not in a way that is compelling. She doesn’t change the world, she’s just in it. As such she remains stagnant. 

Miles and Kerry wrote her arc in reverse. They started flat, but then tried to go positive. That doesn’t work because it challenges everything that came before it and in turn makes Ruby worse. Looking back, her progression from Volumes 4-6 was a (somewhat) good example of a positive character arc. She saw problems that changed her and allowed her to overcome (Tyrian, Battle of Haven, Brunswick Farm, Cordovin, and the Leviathan). The problem was that volumes 1-3 were spent with her being completely flat. The dichotomy only made things frustrating to watch from an audience perspective because the flat arc was not presented in the right way for the story to build on it. 

Switching back to the manga (finally): Kinami instead switches things around and gives Ruby a positive character arc. This arc is all about “the Lie the character believes” as opposed to the Truth of the Flat Arc. In the manga, the lie Ruby tells herself is: “I don’t belong.”

She skipped two grades, was forced into a place she doesn’t know, and is constantly told by others that her dream is childish and she should go home. This is what leads to her more dour and self-deprecating personality (as well as her already socially awkward behavior). She is constantly challenged and thus continues to doubt herself, which strengthens the lie.

Weiss is not exempt from this either: 

Upon leaving Ruby she tries to find a partner, leading her to Jaune (hanging from a tree as in the show) who she also refuses. In the show, she goes back to Ruby in another humorous moment, but in the manga she doesn’t. The Lie Weiss believes is that she must be perfect, and thus only the perfect partner (notably Pyrrha or someone similar) will aid in that Lie and let her achieve her impossible goals. Without perfection, she is nothing.

The conviction in the belief of this lie nearly leads to her death when she is ambushed by Grimm. 

This leads to the most climactic moment of the chapter.

Ruby saves Weiss, but she still isn’t friendly with her. She tells her that she didn’t want to be her partner, but letting her die would not be right and she wouldn’t be the Huntress she wanted to be if she let that happen. That new resolve all stemmed from this moment earlier in the chapter:

Like Weiss, Ruby thought to leave and find her sister, but it was Yang’s words that made her rethink her action: “Remember what you’re here for. This is to become the Huntress you dream of being right?”

This is the first step towards Ruby’s positive character change. Again it turns a comedic scene serious, but its all in service of the characters and makes them better. She goes back to defend and team with someone she decidedly does not like, because it furthers her goal. It helps dissolve the Lie, and forces them to work together. 

 Chapter 2 is just as good, if not better than chapter 1. We get a much better look at the characters, but we also start to encounter the manga’s one major flaw; but we’ll get into that in the next part.

[neven-ebrez]

Supernatural's Narrative Structure Throughout the Years (Read More edition)

Supernatural has seen four showrunners (with one consistent one throughout, Robert Singer), which are: Eric Kripke, Sera Gamble, Jeremy Carver and now, Andrew Dabb.  At the beginning, the show focused on a more simplistic method of storytelling; the protagonists Sam and Dean Winchester went up against urban legends while looking for their elusive father.  Thirteen seasons later and this pilot season marks the only true exception to the show’s narrative structure. Starting in season 2 the show adopts a method of storytelling known as the A/B/C structure.  There is a “A” plot (known as the show’s “mytharc”), its “B” plot (its character development arc, usually shown through the lens of Dean Winchester, but the show frequently, especially in its later years, shows this through others), and then finally, its “C” plot, which exists in the form of “filler episodes” referred to as “Monsters of the Week”, or MOTW for the purposes of the meta writing community.  And it is through this mirrored structure that the complete story of Supernatural is told.

Dean Winchester is the show’s lens of righteousness (earlier on, but this shifts from time to time) and it is through him that the adopted structure of the show reveals both its strength and weakness.  Dean has learned not to talk about his hard life and frequently when he is begged to share his feelings, they are dismissed (unfortunately by Sam, Bobby, and Cas at various points) in favor of the show’s enforcement of toxic masculinity (oh, drama!) to maintain such structure needed to support a static two lead format.  Instead of Dean talking about his feelings, they are told through the show’s MOTW characters and situations.  This process is referred to as “the ‘C’ plot mirrors the 'B’ plot”, discussed further in length here and here.  Because of the various degrees of repression carried by our main characters, the show uses other characters to tell their stories with words.  The show often also creates whole characters to represent ideas, both simple (Bela Talbot, S3) and complex (Amara, S11). Almost every character that is not Sam and Dean, especially in the  seasons, is created and crafted to tell the story of them.  This creates situations where the show is frequently problematic in its social message/image because it’s using a multitude of diverse often under represented characters to tell the story of two white textually straight male leads, and then later, its two most often recurring regulars.  Because these things are not socially equal, the show endures quite a lot of justified criticism as a result.

Bela Talbot is the first structural case of simple mirroring being done (although her character was requested at the behest of the network, true, the manner in which they utilized her is entirely significant).  I think it’s first important, however, to talk about how Kripke crafted the show using the structure.  He talked about how in the end he wanted good Dean versus bad Sam.  This, of course, focuses the early structure of the show to align Sam with darkness and damning decisions. All of season two pushes Sam onto a dark path exploring his cursed demon blood powers while Dean tries desperately to stop this.  Season 3 introduces Bela, a narrative mirror for Dean to show what would happen to Dean if Sam wasn’t in his life.  She IS DEAN, but WITHOUT a Sam in her life.  And for her, this spells doom as she desperately tries to avoid the fate of her deal with a Crossroads Demon (a deal she made to avoid child sex abuse, a stand in comparison to Dean’s robbed childhood which the show would later revisit heavily in season 11).  The structure of the season 3 is relatively simple.  Bela was supposed to die while Dean is saved from his deal’s fate by Sam, effectively showing that while Sam is doing some dark things, that they are justified through the means to save Dean (a common moral stance Supernatural would come to depict over and over again).  This, of course, doesn’t get to happen.  The writers strike of 2007-08  forces Kripke to abandon this structure in favor of simply sending Dean to Hell.  Our first attempt at a predictive narrative structure thus fails.  It is not discarded, however, and our first successful implementation of it is in season 4.

In season 4 the writers are met with the tough task of getting Dean quickly out of Hell and so Angels are introduced.  This would prove to be a major turning point in the show’s success and its ultimate current structure some 9 seasons later. The introduction of Angels, while initially desired to be temporary was fully embrace with the introduction of Castiel as portrayed by Misha Collins.  This mythology introduction gave Kripke the perfect way to have good Dean versus bad Sam  in the form of Michael versus Lucifer, and old tell of rebellious siblings confronting one another in an ultimate fight.  Here, the show begins its ultimate structure towards this alignment, with the demon Ruby pulling Sam towards Lucifer and Castiel pulling Dean towards Michael (or, well, stopping Sam, as pulling Dean towards Michael is actually a goal of Zachariah in Season 5 instead of it being a goal of Castiel).

In season 4, all the characters (even Sam and Dean) and episodes (frequently showing the release of “seals” which bind Lucifer) are being used as functions towards a single goal, the release of Lucifer.  It was a simple and clean straight forward structure that allowed flow into a cohesive storyline, which remains the best of Supernatural’s structure and storytelling even to this day imo, It also allowed individuality (and the exploration of what it means to have humanity) to blossom within the addition of Castiel (originally only slated to be a 3 episode character), though the character could still be simplified into Dean with Sam’s bad choices.  Castiel would not start becoming his own character (instead of a character mirror or narrative concept) until much later in the series, though he would still be often regaled to simply serving the “B” plot of Dean, eventually getting a permanent “B” plot with him, thus cementing his importance in Dean’s life and within the show’s newer, complex structure.  

Season 5 saw the end of Kripke’s vision, but with one problem.  The show was getting a renewal.  We can see through season 5’s structure that Kripke intended Sam and Dean to die together in the Devil’s hole, unable to kill one another due to their love.  Against renewal and in an effort to salvage the sacrifice structure, we are instead introduced to Adam, a half brother who would instead receive Dean’s fate.  The season builds and compounds a sense of hopeless in our characters, both desperate to not play a part in Heaven’s games. Our mytharc and MOTW episodes in season 5 exist to drive this sense of compounding inevitability.  It is a structure not as clean as season 4’s but mainly because it has the same problem as season 3’s: the ending had to be changed. But meanwhile the show had another problem: “Where do you go after the Apocalypse?” It would not be a problem tackled by Kripke, but instead long time writer Sera Gamble, as Supernatural experienced its first showrunner change.  

With the departure of Kripke came the beginning of structural chaos and uncertainty.  Season 6 is driven by questions that seemingly have no answer against a plot that had just been done.  The Apocalypse was being put back on the rails and Castiel was dealing with it mostly offscreen, unlike Sam and Dean who, as leads, got to deal with it visibly in every episode in season 5.  This caused the audience to not experience the sense of urgency and desperation that Castiel is going through and it proves to be a structural weakness throughout the whole season as Sam and Dean deal with the fallout of Castiel’s righteousness in the form of Sam’s hell damage from his damaged soul in the cage and Crowley’s experiments on monsters, which is seemingly without purpose until the end of the season draws near and we finally see the importance the monsters hold.  Banished of Lucifer, the recurring addition of Crowley provides the show with a central point in which Hell things will now operate going forward.  This is the season in which Castiel begins the pattern making the mistakes of Sam.  And it is from this point that the show’s mirrored storytelling reaches new heights, most of which are predictable, unfortunately. Just as Sam and Dean release Lucifer, Cas releases the Leviathan into the world and thus we are shuttled into season 7, Apocalypse 2.0, monster edition (instead of angels/demons).  

Season 7 saw the ultimate weakness of the two lead structure, while the show headed down an already trotted path against massively failing ratings.  It is here that Gamble killed off both Bobby and Castiel while dumping a massive amount of emotional baggage onto Sam and Dean from which the show (and characters) seemed unlikely to recover from, buried in the Friday Night death slot.  Here, the season introduced a true structured  “B” plot for Dean and Cas, but it remained in the mirrored structure only, seeing as how Cas was effectively DEAD.  It is given in the form of grief and suffering, as per Gamble’s favored depiction of the show.  Not only were things hopeless, but everyone Sam and Dean cared about were dead (oh look, it’s season 13′s premise as well!).  The structures of Gamble era were driven primarily with a focus towards sorrow and suffering and while it’s true that the Leviathans (as compared to the totally delightful, but utterly senseless wanderings of season 6) were an interesting metaphor for corporate America’s greed and monstrosity, this did little to enrich and progress Sam and Dean as characters who were headed for anywhere except death.  And it is here we enter Carver era.

Replacing Gamble as showrunner was another long time writer for the show, Jeremy Carver.  Helming and writing with fresh eyes from having been away for a while, Carver era saw the dawn of a new light in the show.  It is often called a reboot of the show.  Castiel was back, Netflix produced a new influx of viewership, and the show had more or less cemented itself into the CW fold, renewed late and against all hope from grave of Friday night.  Conventions and streaming media provided a life line that gave way to a new form of structure on the show: precised mirrored storytelling in the form of a (possible, likely) three act structure.  In Carver era, (unlike its predecessors) things became driven by a repetitive thematic means and the genre of the show was shifted to something with an adventurous tone.  The Winchesters were going to close the Gates of Hell! Instead of reactive, our characters were thrust into being proactive.  This shifted the structure onto choice… and consequence.  Every detail fed into this: pop culture references, color coding within the visual framework, characters created that represented specific emotional struggles for our characters to interact with and conquer (or die through).  Season 8 is easily compared to Star Wars episode IV in terms of its place in Carver Era.  While Star Wars episode IV could function as a stand alone (seeing as the show didn’t realize the introduction of its lifeline yet), it was made to function as part of a beginning of a much longer and detailed story.  

Once again in season 8 Sam and Cas began to take on the role of pushing the mytharc along, with Sam completing the Hell trials to close the Gates and Cas breaking Heaven’s control over him to close the Gates of Heaven.  The role of Castiel (while visually is reduced from seasons 4, 5 and 6), in relation to his relationship with Dean, becomes significant.  A vast number of narrative structural mirrors are put into place to frame the relationship a certain way, and they are decidedly romantic in nature. The Dean/Cas relationship then begins to be told exclusively through interspecies romantic relationships, with a significant amount needing to break some kind of hold over a supernatural being, reflecting Naomi’s reprogramming of Castiel to kill Dean (8x11-8x17). The text and subtext of this season is further queer coded to a significant degree, evident very early on by reference to such works as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (8x03), among many others.  Carver was taking the Dean/Cas relationship very seriously and it was a showrunning decision that would drive the storyline in structure just as much as the Dean/Sam one going forward, even after his departure.  Cas, meanwhile, is given a lot of structural baggage to explain away his absence as a regular instead of a lead. Not that he wasn’t crafted this way before, but soon a structural decision would come that tied both the Dean/Cas storyline and the Dean/Sam one together in a way that would prove inseparable. The choices made in the season 8 finale (with both Cas and Sam trying to leave Dean alone) are the consequences that would fester and bleed into the new season and the rest of Carver era.  

Consequences.  Choice. “I did what I had to…”

Under higher ratings than the show had had in YEARS, season 9 began, along with my structural meta series, The Divine Reviews, where I sought to document the show’s new structure (mostly how serious it was taking the newly active Destiel “B” plot from its former place as a grief standalone storyline).  9x01-9x03 represents a tying of the storylines for Sam/Dean and Dean/Cas in a way that makes it impossible to talk about one without the other, structurally speaking. Dean can deal with Cas leaving him, but only if Sam is alive.  And when push comes to shove, Dean will sacrifice Cas’ safety and position at his side if it means the survival of Sam.  The weight of this realization falls heavily on Dean and is the structural source of grief that saturates a season full of rape metaphors as Dean tricks Sam into not dying through the angel Gadreel’s possession of Sam.  For the first time, the show makes it uncomfortable to side with Dean (unless you like the fact that Dean will force his will on Sam to keep him alive) and Dean starts down a dark path of self hatred the likes of which the show has never delved into to such a striking degree.  This self hatred structurally manifests itself as the Mark of Cain and Dean’s decision to take it on without warning of consequence represents a significant turning point in the show’s ongoing structure.  Dean begins to carry the mytharc and the metaphor within, with significant structure weight put into the fact that Dean can’t bother to feel guilt for his actions, understandable as they are.  Dean and Cas thus begin a new romantic structure, one where lovers are torn apart by family duty (this is, perhaps, most laughably shown in 9x20 in the failed Bloodlines pilot episode that gives us heterosexual interspecies couple Violet/David who even mirror Destiel dialogue into their relationship of star crossed lovers separated by things beyond their control).  

Post midseason finale in season 9, narrative mirrors begin in earnest that take the foreshadowing for Dean to die into high gear.  These are vague and non-specific, however, with the decision to turn Dean into a demon through the Mark of Cain being made late into the season.  The death of Abaddon (and the possibility that she would simply possess him) seals Dean’s structural fate, as he is killed by what it narratively represents, the block to his character development. It is here that the show hits a structural sag with season 10 and the Mark of Cain being structurally translated into a variety of narrative woes: a disease that infects Dean’s heart, a catalyst which amplifies Dean’s already weary and repressed soul, a force from which there is no destruction and no relief.  

Season 10 on the whole represents a failure to find a solid avenue to character development in Dean.  Supernatural didn’t know how to solve it’s own created problem.  And while Dean’s death was given several avenues in season 9 from which to walk down, the same meandering does not look all together acceptable as it was before.  For the first time Crowley is woven into the structural storytelling, carrying Dean away, just as Hannah does to Cas, leaving Sam alone to solve the problem “of Dean”, who is given the structural foreboding task of avoiding Cain’s fate, which saw him kill his wife and brother, Cas and Sam respectively in our structure.  The season, rather than focusing on the underlining cause of Dean taking the Mark of Cain, focuses instead on Dean trying desperately to avoid dealing with the consequences of his actions.  This culminates in Dean beating Cas nearly to death just as Cain kills his wife.  Cas avoids such a fate, however, and begins a more passive stance in the narrative, supporting Sam, instead, who must now fill the role of Abel in our structure. By Death, Dean is ordered to kill Sam to avoid further complications from the Mark of Cain, which is revealed to be an age old lock to something ambiguously called “the Darkness”. Dean is, of course, unable to kill Sam, and kills Death instead and then we are given our final structural form of the decision to take the Mark of Cain in the form of Amara, God’s sister.  Still, we are dealing with consequences of Dean’s choices, but not the underlying cause.

At this point, the Dean/Cas storyline has been given lover/wife mirrors for going on 3 seasons now.  Cas is continuously coded as Dean’s “wife” by all structural elements within SPN’s mirrored storytelling.  Their relationship has been given much structural depiction and weight, which continues on into season 11 against the false lover, Amara.  I talk extensively about the child abuse and sex abuse mirrors involving Amara and how they relate to Dean’s stolen childhood here.  It is here, after 2 seasons of the same storyline, that the Mark of Cain Dean character developmental structure has been given its final form, but sadly, would not see its end.  

We see Dean’s helplessness towards his past in the form of Amara’s control over him.  And with Amara comes our third sibling vs sibling mirror in the form of God versus Amara (the previous being Michael versus Lucifer and Cain versus Abel), Supernatural’s go to depiction for Sam and Dean’s histories and averted futures.  The season’s structure builds towards the inevitable appearance of God to stop Amara, who has justifiable reasons to be angry as Hell.  Supernatural has, at this point, painted itself into a bad corner. There’s no bigger storyline it can go to as it is faced with the monumental task of resolving not only God and Amara, but everything that their struggle represents, Dean’s stolen life at the hands of his father.  For it’s conclusion, Supernatural would now face a different structural problem, however.  

The network would not allow them to kill God.  And while I have no absolute certainty from which to draw on here, I can only guess that either Amara was going to die also, most possibly to restore balance to the universe as Chuck’s death would cause everything to be destroyed or she was going to bring him back shortly after killing him.  We never get to know the truth of the structure as Chuck is effectively only injured, not killed.  And Amara makes the choice to heal him and forgive him instead of them possibly sharing oblivion together.  Amara then gives Dean back the thing she determines he needs most: his mother.  And it is here that Dabb era officially begins, Dabb having shadowed the running of the show at the end of the season following the mid season silent departure of Carver.  

Season 12. With a character development arc for Dean already 3 seasons in the making, Dabb is given the monumental showrunning task of “where do you go after God leaving?”  A smaller scale mytharc is given in place of the sweeping epic of Carver era.  The British Men of Letters are introduced as a way of shaping Sam into being a leader among the American hunters, readdressing the question of what Sam can do to stay in the life and find his place outside of Dean. Dean, however, continues on the structural development path of confronting the thing that prevents him from feeling he only deserves to go down swinging.  Mary is fleshed out as a person though she and Castiel continue to suffer from the show’s inability to switch to an ensemble cast, which is, at this point, a point of long regarded contention among many fans.  

Mary and Cas begin to mirror each other (as we contemplate their significance to Dean) and drive the story, each wishing to make amends and give Sam and Dean a world they feel is best without either of them asking how Sam and Dean feel about their actions. This sees Mary siding with the British Men of Letters and Cas pursuing Lucifer in an attempt to cage him once more, having let him out to deal with Amara last season in another attempt to save Dean from action (Cas’ need to die for his family because he sees himself as expendable is a plot line that’s long overdue for resolution). We see Mary being made to earn her place as family through her realizing why Cas already has.  It is the most passive Sam and Dean have ever been in the structure, with everything mostly driven by Mary and Cas along with the overall theme of what it means to truly love and sacrifice to earn the label of “family”. For this, Cas is given a structural death sentence.  And Supernatural delivers, painfully.  A portal to another world is opened up courtesy of Jack, the nephilim of Lucifer and it is here that Dabb era ultimately takes us: a new world of possibilities.   The same can not, however, be said of the show’s narrative structure, which seems to be on a one way road and has been for a long, albeit slow, time.  

Dean has forgiven Mary for setting him on the path to have a robbed childhood, effectively wrapping up the long drawn out Mark of Cain storyline.  Forgiveness. Love. Family. New beginnings. These are the themes that run through Dabb era. Dean is finally given everything and then within the space of one episode it has been taken away.  The nephilim introduces the show to once again ask the age old question: “nature or nuture?”, as Sam and Dean are forced to deal with an unprecedented force thrust upon them in their moments of grief.  Like Carver before him, Dabb era looks to be using a three act structure, with Carver’s final act serving also as Dabb’s beginning.  This would place season 13 quickly through the realms of Star Wars V-VI.  Things are bleak, hope has quickly been lost, the lover has been taken and the family has been torn apart.  A dark empire looms.  And it is here that Dabb era continues.

Season 13 functions structurally as a reworking of season 12, with much the same values as Dabb’s first season, but with Sam and Dean’s desires driving the structure instead of Cas and Mary’s. A course of hope is set, one where the Winchesters can finally find a way to try and live a life that actually includes LIVING while hunting, all the while trying to hang it up for good, but realizing this may simply be an unattainable dream.

Dabb era has firmly made its bed as “Family Don’t End in Blood” and has laid in it. Mirrors for Dean and Cas continue to be a familial/romantic blend, reflective of how Dean and Cas’ confusion and fear over addressing the unquantifiable love between one another continues to bleed into the entire narrative, the show continuing to use missions as a buffer to having the characters finally have a “feelings” talk to one another. It is a conversation they both continue to fear: when Dean stops lumping Sam into his feelings, and Cas stops deflecting to a more pressing mission as a means to avoid the fear of heartache that comes with Dean simply calling him “family” or “brother” one more time. NEED over WANT.

Sam’s development into leader, however, is put onto the back burner in favor of the season’s elaborate structural examination of trauma. Sam can no longer do anything as long as Lucifer continues to linger. Like with season 12, season 13 gives the Winchesters back everything, then threatens to take it all away again. Mary’s desire to help the AU world over returning home hits the Winchesters very hard. The mission to protect people is given full focus to Sam. If Sam wants a relationship with his mom, then helping reshape the life of the hunters living in the hunting world is how he does that. This is essential. And while season 14 will drive this idea, the Mary/Sam angle is something temporarily set aside.

Trauma (from hunting, from Mary, from John, from Heaven and angels), building a family through bonds, and hope for the future all culminate as the thematic lifeblood that runs through Dabb era. I discuss season 13 further at length here.  Like the two seasons before it, the theme of trauma and how to move forward from it continues into season 14 with Michael structurally translating as the trauma of bad parenting/leading upon Dean Winchester specifically. Season 13 and season 14, in many ways, will (seemingly) function as two sides to the same coin, a narrative structured to examine how the trauma of the past informs (and stagnates) the fear and hope of the future. I’ve called season 14 an accordion arc, and it is, but it’s also one that is far more natural than season 10 due to more careful planning. Seasons 13 and 14 within Dabb era function and do the same as seasons 9 and 10 within Carver era: carrying the driving conflict/mytharc (the MOC for Carver era, Michael for Dabb era) across two seasons, but to Dabb’s credit over Carver, Dabb seems to have planned for it a lot better ahead of time.

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This post was originally crafted here.  It was requested under a READ MORE so I reworked it into a single new post as presented above.  It will be updated when season 14 is complete.