#my genuine initial thoughts on this ep

[dullahandyke]

didnt even touch on the sandra lynn stuff int he tags of the last post bcos if i talk about her im liable to explode. get behind me, middle-aged divorced woman proficient in archery

[fluffs-n-stuffs]

Pokémon Horizons Episode 24 spoilers under the cut!

HEY AMETHIO BESTIE WHAT DOES THAT MEAN . WHAT DOES THAT MEAN

[raziiyah]

tbh when i first watched monsters at work season 2 i was sad when johnny ended up being evil, bc i liked to think johnny put his rivalry with mike behind him and became a better person. like, i don't mind him being an antagonist, that was a given, but even though johnny was mean, idk he had standards? (other than the fact he was going to donate the funds from selling merch of OK's humiliation to charity like at least its for a good cause LOL) for instance, you can tell that ror values genuine skill, hard work and education, like when they reconsider sulley's placement in ror because of his dismissive attitude about his low grades, despite him being the image of a top scarer and being the son of a famous scarer

from this you can assume johnny also spent a lot of time studying and working fair and square to get good grades instead of trying to sail by, and that he wouldn't resort to cheating and got to his level through hard work and not solely his family name, unlike mu sulley initially

my point is that even though johnny did some bad things, he never did anything necessarily unfair to achieve his goals or win. even though johnny being an antagonist in maw wasn't a big surprise, i never saw him being randall boggs level of villainy. i will say he did a good job at being charismatic because even though he was an obvious antagonist and i knew it, i was still hoping he was a good person and became disappointed when his big plan was revealed

also this is really minor but i figured to just mention that there's a scene in s2 ep 10 where he gets carter's name wrong and calls him kenny, and when carter corrects him, johnny acts dissmissive and calls him carl, saying it wrong again and hardly acknowledging him. like he's shown to be charismatic and actually knowledgeable on knowing and caring about everyone's names beforehand, like he knows every employee he talks to at fear co, but now he's randomly being indifferent because, it was revealed he was a bad guy to just the audience and tylor? it's small but idk i thought i'd bring it up

what i found interesting about johnny sabotaging monsters inc and resorting to stealing laugh energy and claming it as fear co's is that to me, it didn't seem like something johnny (at least mu johnny) would do. however, it does seem like something mi randall would do

we already know that ror was a primary force into shaping randall's mindset and behavior in monsters university. and with johnny being the leader of ror and like the most popular guy on campus, i think it's fair to say johnny had a huge influence on randall during his uni years, which would cultivate into the personality he's known for in monsters inc

bringing it back to maw, perhaps johnny would first try to think of ideas to rival laugh power through improving scream, but randall would come up with ideas that would involve playing dirty and flat out sabotaging mi. this would've been great for johnny, to damage the reputation of laugh energy and improve the views on fear co., and would've doubled as giving randall an opportunity to get back at mike and sulley. i mean of course he would go the vengeful route

with randall constructing the scream extractor in mi, we know he's not shy to the idea of getting what he wants by unsavory means and at the detriment of others, and he could've pushed this mindset on johnny. maybe johnny's morals would've made him refuse at first; i like to think that he truly didn't want to go through with it wanting to do what he's ways done at the company and get things the honest way, but randall would've taunted him and pushed him to follow through with it, tempting him by saying that by doing this, he'd be protecting scaring, scream energy, and his family's legacy. despite what his conscience was saying, he had to for the sake of the company, a mindset similar to waternoose. with randall influencing his judgment to get what he wants, i think johnny would've been pressured to make the decision to follow through with this plan in order to save face

my point being: johnny influenced randall, and in return, randall influenced johnny

and they both suffered the consequences

[ennn]

Initial Agatha All Along Ep 5 Meta Thoughts

Holy FUCK. This episode did not go where I expected it to. Spoiler-y thoughts and theories below:

The Lies We Tell Ourselves

Now I know so many folks are gonna be arguing how awful or evil or deplorable Agatha is for killing Alice. Did she do it on purpose? Or was she not aware or have control as she claims?

On a rewatch (ow my heart) and I guess in Billy’s defense it does seem textually ambiguous. Enough time passes and Agatha seems aware enough of what was happening that you see her lean into the power siphoning — euphoria evident on her face.

And on rewatch, it’s also ambiguous if she had the ability to snap out of it when her son was mentioned or whether it stopped because Alice was fully drained in that moment.

Agatha being possessed means she didn’t initiate this exchange — but something happened in the moment. Was Agatha operating on pure instinct? Like an addict trying to come clean but just had their drug shot into their system? Did she even see Alice or just the power going into her? Did the hunger and euphoria just override her thoughts?

We simply don’t know enough about how Agatha’s ability works. What we do see is Agatha looking distraught after she snaps out of it. She looks taken aback by what she’s done.

Now we know Agatha lies. She lies even to herself sometimes. Agatha lies to survive, for power and to protect herself. She puts on a show when she’s afraid, as Rio points out (more on that in a bit).

Why I think Agatha did not want to kill Alice comes from the scene after, where you see Agatha alone. She’s shaken. She’s not happy about what she’s done and here there’s no audience to put on a mask for.

She definitely reads as sincere trying to defend herself to Billy, although there is the possibility that she is genuinely lying to herself as well, in that she could have chosen on some level to give in to that incredible rush of power, everything else — including herself — be damned. Definitely not the first time we’ve seen the “magic as a drug” analogy.

My Shipper Heart

Okay so we got some delicious food this ep. Agatha and Rio giving each other their brooms all too easily, despite the awkward looks. Agatha flying free and looking at Rio like she’s her North Star, like she’s the one she wants to share this with.

And yes while Rio may seem eager to slit Agatha’s throat (who knows how their no-killing rule works!), she’s also the one who truly understands Agatha at this point.

I’ve mentioned this before but Rio’s arguably the most truthful one of this group. She’s mercurial but she’s honest about who she is and what she wants. And she’s been with Agatha enough to shed light on her truth.

Rio’s the one pointing out whose trial this is, who sees Agatha doing dumb shit as her hiding her very real fear.

And notably we see Rio toss aside her casual detachment and raise her voice for the first time on the show. No. No way!

Power, Grief and Darkness

Look, Billy is going to be a Young Avenger or something so we know he’s gonna go on an arc for the remaining eps but what a juicy one it’ll be, because at least Agatha will be there with him. I’ve suspected he placed the sigil on himself for a while now but I have no idea how aware he is of everything that’s happening.

What’s interesting is how Agatha puts the villainous mask on right after Billy claims to be morally superior. Agatha’s bullshit detector pinged and she digs into that indignation, that anger for strength. Agatha doesn’t like being on the backfoot, certainly not when it comes to feelings like regret.

I see Billy as needing to confront and understand his own darkness, and in doing so understand Agatha’s darkness. Things aren’t so black and white when you’re in pain, and angry at the world, and have the power to lash out.

Agatha is set up to be a mentor to Billy here in a way she couldn’t for Wanda, although the potential was clearly there.

It’s definitely going to be an interesting Road with them going forward, given how dark this ep got.

[kithmet]

the problem, i think, is that i actually really deeply love storylines that have to do with grief, so maybe i went into this too hopeful.

and this is my opinion and you’re wholly allowed to disagree with it too. but buffy the vampire slayer, for example, is one of those shows which imprinted on me from a young age and the acting on the episode ‘the body’ changed me as a human being forever. i will never forget it. i know i shouldn’t use this as my bar, especially next to a network procedural, but i will admit that it is my bar, probably unfairly and irrationally so. and everything will pale comparatively to it and it’s what most of my disappointment in that episode stems from: the fact that i genuinely do love grief arcs and i felt this initial beginning to one was kind of lacklustre. this is partially my issue with killing off bobby to begin with — i just have never thought 9-1-1 is the kind of show equipped to deal with this (nor is it’s natural tone more serious compared to silly). some of angela and kenny’s acting was fantastic but the overall episode did feel off in parts. the final five minutes of the funeral were beautiful (although i’m iffy on the decision to bury him in minnesota but i do get what they were trying to do there). i just felt like the pacing of the episode was off and it allocated time to things that it did not need to. but again those are just my thoughts and i’m keeping an open mind to the last two episodes of the season to see if it’ll wow me 🤞 but grief is so hard to get right so it also doesn’t surprise me that this ep didn’t move me a ton.

[storm-and-starlight]

just watched the latest Doctor Who episode (The Well) and my initial thoughts are:

1.) That was good! Like genuinely, very good horror standalone Who ep, definitely in my top 5 Fifteen episodes, cool concept, neat execution, really enjoyed it.

2.) The Midnight references fucking WORKED, Ncuti doing the direct callback to Ten's visuals and dialogue was absolutely fucking PHENOMENAL, what an impact.

2.) That did not need to be a Midnight sequel. It didn't feel like it actually had a strong connection to either the themes or the tone of the original Midnight, and the concept was absolutely strong enough for it to be a standalone and be good.

(What I think they should have done was left it significantly more ambiguous, like... have Fifteen reference Midnight as a sort of "I've seen this before, we cannot let this monster turn us against one another"- type callback, and then make a comment about the planet being similar to the Midnight planet - "surface used to be covered in diamond", "extonic sun", etc. - before doing the direct vocal and visual callback to the Midnight creature, and then they should have LEFT IT AT THAT and the fandom would have gone fucking crazy. But, y'know. Marketing.)

[chocolatepot]

Saw a post about how you need to read original fiction and not just fic to write books, and I had some thoughts but they're not so much a direct response so I figured I'd make my own post ...

You do need to be conversant with original fiction to write it, but also - that doesn't mean that your fiction diet as you write needs to be primarily original fiction. If you want to write a book, you've probably spent a lot of your life reading original fiction even if you're in fandom now. That all counts. (Assuming what you want to write bears at least some resemblance to what you've read.)

Fanfiction really doesn't teach you to develop characters and settings on your own, it's true. It particularly lets you be lazy about not describing them physically, and not having to do any work for walk-on characters who exist in canon. You also can get used to writing romantic short stories that would be completely unmarketable if they were not fic.

However, fanfiction still can teach you a lot of transferable skills, if you want it to. You can write novels to stretch your ability to plot a longform story and follow through on 60k+ words. You can consciously work to improve your prose, your pacing, and/or your physical/emotional descriptions no matter what your subject matter. You can write a story that focuses on how a character changes and develops, and you can focus on a minor character from canon and do the work to make them three-dimensional. If you're into AUs, you can also work on worldbuilding or writing a believable historical setting. Literally the only thing you don't really have the opportunity to do is create your own main characters from scratch.

And I feel like that's actually the easiest part of writing. Sitting down and writing a story that lasts over 80k words or so, is compelling all the way through, has defined character arcs, etc. is way harder than making up the initial concept. If you're in fandom, you clearly Do Stories whether they're on the paper or onscreen, and so you probably have a lot of character types in your head already to start messing around with.

There was also a point in the post about how if you don't read you're not going to understand where your story fits genre-wise, and you're probably going to think that it's new and genre-breaking when it isn't - and that leads me to two thoughts. One is that not feeling able to place your own story if it crosses genres might be more common to writers than you think: it just came up in a Bestseller Experiment podcast ep I listened to the other day as a normal thing due to the writer being too close to their story. I have good comps for my novel (there's a T. Kingfisher that is incredibly similar in concept and key characters) and I still feel like "oooh ... is it more fantasy or more historical ..."

The other is that fic makes it so you're more likely to actually write something that genuinely doesn't quite fit in the boxes. That's something I've been thinking about since Winter's Orbit. That book, if you don't know, was originally written on fail_fandomanon's spinoff writing meme and posted on AO3. It was always original fiction, but it has a fic-like sensibility: there's a strong political intrigue plot alongside a strong queer romance plot between a playboy who's not really a playboy and a smol bean with trauma. If you read the GoodReads reviews from when it was published, you can find many sf fans complaining that the romance takes up too much space and romance fans complaining that there's too much plot outside the romance. I think now with the rise of "romantasy" there's more tolerance for that, but that label feels like it's getting less useful as it broadens to mean "fiction written by a woman that includes a romance" (and it feels very m/f to me but we don't have time for that now). Because so much of ficwriting fandom focuses on stories that heavily foreground romance but don't hit the traditional romance beats and also writing the characters figuring out who's committing industrial espionage or whatever. In a romance novel, the romance is absolutely the A plot and the whatever is very much B plot (if not somehow C). In sf/f and thrillers, the whatever is the A plot and the romance is around the edges. Fic teaches us to do them both equally, because the point of the story is to see the characters getting together (often not like canon, when it comes to m/m and f/f) while having a plot to deal with (like they have in canon). Also, in a lot of cases of genre-mixing, determining which one it "counts as" is really determining which one it will sell better under, and that's not something a person outside of the industry can generally tell, regardless of what they're reading on their own.

[bedlamsbard]

You can, uh, very much tell in the pilot that Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man started off as MCU and then went "wait...maybe not..." for whatever reason. genuinely split over they kept the MCU fingerprints because they're gearing up to do some multiverse crossover or whether they'd already done so much of the work on that episode that they didn't want to scrap it when they changed gears. I guess the third and most generous option is that the MCU aspects are now more visibly associated with Spider-Man than some of the non-MCU traditional parts (that, for example, ITSV and the Raimi and Webb films all used), so they stuck with them.

either that or I'm just terminally MCU-brained, I'll take that one too.

vague spoilers under the break

also they skipped? the origin story? AGAIN? I know we have had five million Spider-Man origin stories in the past twenty-five years but the one character who hasn't had one, which this show was originally supposed to be before they went to "not actually MCU," is MCU SPIDER-MAN.

the spider is there, it is apparently an alternate universe spider -- ATSV, are you calling -- but they kind of like. skipped over. the whole "I should be a vigilante" thought process. which I keep arguing is the big critical difference between MCU Spidey and literally every other film take because the MCU is fundamentally not a vigilante supers 'verse until pretty late. but obvs this is not MCU. actually in the pilot it's not clear unless you already know it's not MCU that it's not MCU given that like. Avengers Tower (AoU edition) is there and this Peter is not unsubtly based on Holland Peter. it is clearer in the second ep that it's not MCU but from the first ep you can REALLY tell that it was initially supposed to lead straight into CACW.

(I should add in my overuse of parentheses that I'm not really a Spider-Man fan -- there's never been a version of Spider-Man that doesn't set off my embarrassment squick pretty badly. though I maintain that Garfield Peter is the millennial representation we all deserve; even though there are only a few years between the Garfield and Holland films it feels like there's an entire generation gap between TASM and MCU Spidey.)

[yuseirra]

Onk Chapter 159 review~

(a small comic for starters :) either way, Ai will still kick his butt)

yes, I had been spoiled; yes, and I actually like it, as much as it leaves at a cliffhanger and leaves you in confusion(why is this comic always like this) The way it ends is indeed, quite shocking, isn't it? But I think I understand where it's coming from.

I honestly won't have a clue on just what this story is going to be unless it's not going to be like what I write here; If that's so, then I'll just sit back and just.. let the story run along after this~ I'm pretty confident, for now though!!

The development in this current episode aligns with the interpretation I initially had back when I hopped onto the series, right after 153-154. It feels like I've been reset XD

It's pretty good, right? It's entertaining and well done. There is no need to fuss whether "Kamiki is evil!!" or "He's the final boss!", at least not right now, that'd be determined in the following eps. but for now, I think I have an idea of what it's trying to convey.

He DOES look super evil in that last panel (I keep staring at it for how ridiculous he looks)but let's look into the things that are being discussed for now-

Judging by the reaction he has, Kamiki never stopped loving Ai. The reaction in chapter 154 and the current one can coexist as emotional responses.

But it seems that after Ai died, Kamiki did a lot.

It actually matches really well with the interpretation I made after reading chapter 154 for the first time! I mean this comic I drew. I thought I might have went a bit overboard with it for awhile, for Kamiki's actions after that chapter felt milder than that, but now that 159 is out, it... seems pretty similar.

Sometimes, the first answer you pick on a test is the correct one, right? I laughed...perhaps I should trust my initial feelings about things more...they may tend to be the most accurate.

He has this, "I'm already beyond hope now, I can't be saved" vibe to him. And I saw this coming all along, I kept wondering just what is it that he'd have done. It's been pretty vague except for that case with Yura, right? (To be honest, the one death that bothers me a lot is Gorou's. Did Nino and Ryosuke kill him?? Why did Gorou die?? I really hope Kamiki wasn't involved with that case because that leads to really weird sorts of conclusions... killing the doc that helped deliver his own children;;; I hope it's just Ryosuke and Nino that's played a part there)

Judging by how he reacts to Aqua, he does have paternal love, and Kamiki’s attitude towards his children is consistently kind and gentle. His way of speech is...I've been sent the leaks in another language right..; I can tell. He speaks in a really.. kind and gentle way. Even in that last panel as well. He's so tender with his way of speaking when he talks towards his kids, so much like the lyrics of Mephisto (how the song is like as it ends) I feel like he is, or at least used to be, a sweet person. Talking to his fully grown son like that.

It seems like he genuinely wants to watch his daughter's performance. I feel Kamiki cherishes and cares for Aqua and Ruby. As for whether he would go so far as to harm the children to save Ai... I think the chances of that are low. Ai’s judgment seems correct, and if Kamiki had married Ai and lived with her, he would have been a kind and gentle father to their children.

At the same time, though, he thinks it's too late to save himself now. The attitude he has feels like self-mockery or despair. He's a bit out of vigor, in my opinion(aside from that last panel).

The key is figuring out what exactly the "lies" he told was.

Judging by Aqua's reaction, Kamiki’s involvement in Ai’s death should be minimal. If it weren’t, there should be some anger connected to the mention of Ai’s name as Aqua brought it up. For example, "Ai trusted you until the end, she wanted you to help you, but you made her die!" Because it's very natural, right? If Kamiki killed the very person who wanted to help him, it's natural to bring that up as you mention the "help".

But that’s not the case. Instead, Aqua's reaction is something like, "I’m supposed to help you, as Ai said, but you’ve been telling this 'ugly lie for your own sake' so I can’t."

I think that, to evoke this kind of response, Kamiki must have done a lot after Ai’s death, thinking he was doing it for her, but deep down, he knew it was a lie he told himself all along, and Aqua is calling him out on it.

It doesn’t seem like Kamiki killed someone with the thought that "no one can outshine Ai" (that would be really stupid;;), but rather, that he made sacrifices because he wanted to save Ai or bring her back to life. In that case, what Aqua is saying here translates to: "Hey, would Ai have wanted that? That was a crazy thing you did for your own sake and pleasure, thinking 'Ai would want to live' or 'Ai would want to reunite with the kids in any way possible.' You know that's NOT what she has ever wanted, but you lied to yourself convincing it would all be okay as long as it came true. That makes you an ugly liar."

If Kamiki did kill someone, Aqua really should report him to the police instead of meeting one-on-one. Report him, for crying out loud! Why doesn't he do that in 155 and why doesn't he try to do it now, either? He just walks up to him and starts a conversation. Didn't he figure things out with Akane earlier? Can't they just turn those pieces of evidence they found to the police if they have them?

So... that's why I’m not sure if what Kamiki did actually involved killing someone... Maybe Aqua didn’t report it or he can't because there wasn’t enough evidence? Yura is dead, that's a fact, but well, we know now for sure that Kamiki did not play a part in Ryosuke's death(who cares about him but yeah), and if he isn't the one who's killed Gorou (the one who did it is Ryosuke and Nino is his acquaintance so I think there's low chance?;) Maybe he didn't kill Yura either. He says it's his fault but at this point, I don't think he's the one that's responsible for Ai's death. There is a reason I'm saying this, stay with me for a while, okay? But he's still done something that Aqua deems as a "selfish lie".. I just don't know how severe this guy can get and what he's done but I guess he's done some terrible things...

Moving on, I don't think this character would hurt Ruby or Aqua or anyone else at this point. (Although... who knows; if he feels like he has nothing to lose, he might...) It seems like he intended to end his life to offer as the final tribute, and Aqua came to stop him. (Like, Aqua came to him to "save him" on Ai''s behalf. He didn't say he's come to "punish him" for his misdeeds... so I think it's safe to say Aqua's come to save his butt) It might tie into the supernatural elements that pop up occasionally, like when Kamiki mentioned the "gods" in chapter 147 or talked about no longer needing to offer "sacrifices." There were many intriguing and important things mentioned in that chapter.

It seems like Kamiki thinks he’s done wrong, but he can’t stop himself from continuing on the path he was, so he wants his children to kill him or get revenge on him.

Nino is truly crazy... It's unhealthy to be fixated like that on just one single person... I don’t want to think too deeply about it because it’s not something I want to empathize with. I don’t wish to feel any pity. If I were to analyze it deeply, I could, but this is the kind of dark human psyche I don’t want to delve into because it takes energy and I don't feel it's that worth it. It's already been displayed so well in this chapter, and it's creepy and perfect as it is so I don't think it needs further explanation, she's just as I pictured her to be and even.. damp and scarier in eerily realistic ways.

If I were Ai, I’d grab Nino by the collar and ask, "Nino-chan, Why are you doing this to me? Why are you like this? What did I ever do to deserve this?" what the heck...poor Ai. it's too much. She's scary.

Ryosuke is out of his mind, and what has Ichigo been doing all this time if he knew something?... Perhaps he needed solid evidence and wished to catch her when she took action? But...; I really wish Ichigo did better when Ai was still alive if he knew what was going about with Nino and Ryosuke and Ai......

So, was Kamiki the one who made Ryosuke and Nino "that way"...(as in, hopelessly insane about Ai)?

No, that's not how it's going to go.

Looking at his past, there’s no big reason or motive for Kamiki to have done something like that and I don't think he could have coerced them to feel that way about Ai, they brought it upon themselves; (Honestly, I'm curious, what’s the connection between him and Nino and Ryosuke? At this point, I feel like they did not have any particular connection before Ai's death, at this point)

Kamiki clearly recognizes that Ai is just a normal girl who has cruel and selfish sides (this is a strong difference from Nino and Ryosuke). I'm not sure when he formed that idea, but he is at least aware of that, as he's doing whatever he's been doing.

That means, if Kamiki decided to take some extreme actions "for Ai", it wouldn’t have been because of some superficial motive like wanting Ai to be perfect or the best idol(Ryosuke and Nino's actions fall here) . Instead, it would have stemmed from a more practical desire, like wanting Ai to come back or get closer to her. For Kamiki, Ai isn’t a fantasy; she’s real. She’s a person he loves. That’s why the song Mephisto and Fatal suits him. Kamiki doesn’t need Ai to be an invincible idol; he just wants the person he loves to be alive.

So, tying it into the theme of this manga, I come to the conclusion that:

It wasn’t a single person like Kamiki who made Ryosuke and Nino the way they are, but rather, the public’s expectations of Ai.

This connects to the story explored in the movie arc, where people expected Ai to be the invincible idol, leading her to lie and conceal her weak self completely.

If my interpretation is correct... this is where the story is heading.

From the start, there was no such thing as an evil mastermind or anything like that. What happened to Ai was always the result of a fan’s twisted desire for their idol to be flawless, and the public's expectation of idols reinforcing such a behavior.

In reality, it’s Ryousuke and Nino who are insane, but the culture or fervor that creates such crazy people isn’t entirely absent in this world. That seems to be the point being made.

I mentioned this in a previous post: (it's paraphrased and condensed)

"But more than that, I think the main focus of this work and the message it's trying to give is: "Even celebrities are just people in the end"... Ultimately, that's it."

This is... probably it.

If you look at it that way, Kamiki is someone who was separated from the person he loved due to such malice (if Ai and Kamiki weren’t celebrities, they would have stayed together after having the kids and lived happily... What made Kamiki’s life miserable, and brought Ai to believe it'd hurt him less if she broke up with him was the dark side of the entertainment industry. After all, the pain he went through in his entertainment career was too much, and even afterward, they couldn’t reunite despite their feelings for each other because Ai was too successful as an idol. I think that’s why they couldn’t be together). In that sense, Kamiki is almost like the biggest victim of the entertainment industry in the story because not only did he suffer from it all his life, he ultimately lost the very person he loved because of it. Ai was an idol, so there was social pressure and expectations that she shouldn’t have kids or a boyfriend. That’s why they couldn’t stay together...

Kamiki, having his life destroyed by the dark side of the entertainment industry, and upon he lost the one person he loved, Ai, ended up doing a lot of things in desperation to bring her back and see her again. That’s what's going on about in the songs Fatal and Mephisto.

We haven’t seen exactly what he's been doing in the story, but I think the songs fill that narrative. "The gathering of light"... "finding things to fill in what's missing"...

Kamiki just wants to see Ai again. He wants to see her, but he doesn’t think Ai would love him or want to meet him, so he wished for her to come back to life, and when that didn’t work, he tried to get closer to her himself.

His true feelings were that he loved Ai sincerely and only had eyes for her.

But if what he did involve needing someone else’s life to achieve that goal (and the songs do suggest that...), that’s terrifying. Lol

Ai wanted Kamiki to be saved... If there really is a sliver of chance of such things to be a possibility, what he's done should not be that extreme. Kamiki does seem to think he's beyond saving, though.

I made an analysis earlier that he may be lying to appear as evil as he can be to persuade Aqua into believing he should just die there, and that he isn't worth saving... this was before I saw the actual images, but that could be the case too. if he's really planning to give himself away as a sacrifice of some sort or die to bring Ai back/reach her, then I guess it'd make sense for him to appear as menacing and horrible as possible so that his boy wouldn't have to care about him. He IS a liar and he IS a genius actor. He wants to do something for Ai, and I think that still stands. He said he'd do it in 155 - if that means it takes his life to do so, he'd still, definitely go through with it.

We’ll probably find out what he did all along within the next 10 chapters. I also think that the manga now needs to address the stars and the gods;; The idea that Ai became a star was mentioned directly, and Tsukuyomi was also brought up. The stars were beautifully shining during the B-Komachi concert, right? It feels like Ai is giving her blessing. If my guesses about this series is correct, Kamiki should mention stuff along the lines of the supernatural when talking about his motives. I think Kamiki tried to bring Ai back to life. If he hadn’t had that hope, I feel he would have followed Ai long ago. He doesn’t seem particularly attached to his own life. That means there must have been something that gave him that sort of hope. The songs imply something like it. It's made Kamiki believe Ai could come back to life...

I wonder if Kamiki can be saved. The fact that Aqua even brought the idea of helping the guy may mean there still might be a chance. Otherwise, Aqua would just throw him in jail; there’d be no point in talking to him like this, even if it's Ai's wish. Impossible things are still impossible.

But it’s true that Kamiki really fell apart after Ai died. Whether he’s just a pitiful guy or a victim who became a perpetrator (the latter seems more likely...sadly), we’ll have to wait and see.

To be continued, I guess.

That character’s life was truly miserable, but if he ruined other people’s lives, then he should still be punished for that.

Still, In the end, it seems like everything will turn out as Ai wanted, so I’m looking forward to seeing how much Aqua can fulfill Ai’s wishes.

It was a good chapter! :)

Come to think of it, in my analysis of Ai (this was written wayy back in June, when ch 152 was fresh) , I wrote something like this:

Ai didn't want to get back together with her ex because she wanted to continue being an idol. She couldn't have a public relationship. But I think she wanted to show her kids to him because she gained a little bit of courage while raising them. That she could show her real self. When you look at a Ai, you can infer she has a lot welled up. They had always hidden themselves, and now they have "secrets" that are not just their own, living, that grow with time. She's always had vicious circle that led to self-hatred from all the lies she'd been creating, which led to anger and stress��and it was this close to being let out through the movie. Maybe that's why Aqua believes making movies is for her. It's to fulfill her desire to be freed from the lies.

This might have hit the mark. The reason it has to be a movie is because of this… if it was only Kamiki, he could have just been shown the video Ai left, but-

Aqua’s “revenge” has to be fulfilled through a movie because Ai’s situation was caused by the public’s perception of her.

If people had accepted the real Ai as a person, twisted individuals like Ryosuke wouldn’t have appeared, and Ai wouldn’t have had to lie to the person she so dearly wanted to love. If… If only Ai had survived, I think Kamiki could have reunited with her after the movie was released. Because people would have understood and accepted their circumstances. Ai would never have had to die because she had children - for being imperfect and human, as she is.

This is not a story about a psychopathic murderer getting back at his ex-girlfriend or just one crazy fan attacking their idol, it's tackling a much bigger theme than that.

So no, this isn't going to be about Kamiki being the crazy mastermind, quite the contrary. He's the one who's lost his beloved due to a societal belief that idols have to be perfect and flawless. He's the one who desperately wants to get her back after having lost her.

When I think about it, it’s really heartbreaking. Ai and Kamiki could have been happy, for sure. They really could have had it weren't it for this, I feel.

The public isn’t always so cold, so I think Ai might have wanted to take that risk…

++ Oh, wow… Aqua showed up wearing the exact outfit from the Mephisto video!

Then, if my thoughts are correct, the next chapter, or at least within a few chapters, should reveal more about the Fatal/Mephisto storyline in the series. Those songs aren’t Aqua’s, they’re Kamiki’s.

+++ Didn't mention but Kamiki looks even younger than Aqua in that last panel, he looks kinda adorable in a very freaky way. Ai didn't mention his looks for nothing.. he still has it over the age of thirty...

yeah, I'll believe in him for just a little longer. I really hope the next chapter continues where it left off and just TELL US what he's been up to for once. This chapter is 159 so I guess it'd be the last ep of a volume, Yeah, that'd definitely make people wish to buy the next copy

but I really want answers at this point, stop the taunts.

If Mephisto and Fatal ain't the story of this guy then tbh, nothing would make sense to me about this guy nor the story. Aside from the fact that it matches his characteristics and lores in a perfect sense, it's just a really strong hunch I get. The moment I first heard Fatal, I knew it had to be it. I can't explain how it happens but I just know what it's supposed to imply. So there!

Till next week!

[casually-slips-into-coma]

spoilers for iwtv s2e5!!!

initial thoughts throughout:

dubai armand in this ep specifically seems a lot happier than normal. very smiley and kind of excited? like more energy than usual. mans was ready to eat

this fucking turtleneck

loumand library dates

hypnotized security as one does

i like that armand likes to hunt his kills. thought it was a cool detail

made me think of when armand tells daniel to run in the book

daniel was there for gay sex the drugs were just a bonus

he barely registered the coffin. he was like ok ig

the zodiac killer lol

daniel struggling to get the tape out of the plastic lmao

some coke for the gums just in case

you were lonely louis (gagged him)

the extreme change in vibe from daniel shitting himself about louis being a vampire to him laughing along while louis complains about his ex

book quotes!!

daniel validating louis complaining about lestat. theyre just gossiping at this point

BIG time asshole

daniel making A Point and then going sorry and louis saying no,,,,,that🫵was astute🗣🗣

“can u do the fang thing again? i love that, man” hes just like me fr

dangerously unstable psyche ((clocked))

im kinda with her get off that bench brother😭 [about claudia leaving]

jacob the actor you are

ok this whole argument between louis and armand was insane and i replayed it like a million times

kinda love louis coked tf out

being called boring fucking hurts thats a wild argument

he called you a soft beige pillow suffocating him girl u gotta stand up

armand really locked on to the word fascinating

louis said lick my boots😝

gremlin sighting👀

“chop my hands off”👀👀👀👀

picking LINT❓❓off the sofa⁉️ ⁉️

armand mocking him “oh its so hard to be me, its so hard to kill humans, i can feel her feelings as i drain her, louis de point du lac, everyone i know wronged me!”

imitating each others accents

my vampire daddy groomed me into a little bitch holy fuck when they go low i go lower

THE NAME!! the name!! unuttered in our home for 23 years said over and over again until it was pounding in my brain like a hammer!!!!

assad deserves every award my man was actiiiinnggg

she didnt love you/i know

louis :(((

“can u hear her? shes calling me…” ok what if i kms

and then louis runs into the sunlight🙃

hello loml: practical effects

sidestep the big picture get the story straight first daniel said lets lock the fuck in rn we gotta focus

“you said the worst things youve ever said to me” hes just a sopping wet cat

hes fine youre fine this is fine youre all fine

finally seeing unhinged armand ive prayed for times like these

i stand by my cancelled wife btw

small detail of different memories: in louis’ version he apologizes to armand and armand says “meaningless word” and then moves on to talk about the slanted floor. in daniel’s version he remembers the dead guy and the same scene plays out except armand explains he killed the neighbor in between “meaningless word” and how the floor is slanted

vibrating eyes

LOVING how this episode is shot. all the different angles and the camerawork and the fucking MUSIC

canon that louis fucks guys and then kills them fic writers get to it

“128 boys hes brought here—“ “he said it was 5🥺”

daniel basically saying look man ill suck ur dick if u let me go

and then armand making him kneel

armand so unnerving <3

i know its kinda dumb to point out but i love small details of vamp power. specifically how armand picked up that table like it weighed nothing and when he picked up louis

love the idea of louis being like ok just put your feet in the rocks itll help

sopping wet cat armand!!!

but also he really let louis suffer for days instead of just giving him blood to ease the pain😬

lestats voice caught me off guard genuinely

interesting that armand knows where lestat is. i wonder how the show is gonna go about it. is he in the ground??

and refusing to pass along the i love you message……….theres layers here

u left me for death :((

have i atoned for my part of paris👀👀

the armand daniel bite was very do u know what it means to be loved by death

itty bitty armand fangs

need him alive as a testament to our companionship wtf are we even talking about anymore

arun/maitre😵‍💫

the fucking sunglasses im pissing😭😭

he got that shit on tho

welcome back trinity from the matrix

also just the fact that armand came back like yum i had so much fun on that hunt😁 anyway what are you two up to😇☺️

and louis and daniel just had a harrowing 2 hours trying to recover lost memories and coming to the realization that theyve been mega gaslit for decades

armand saying exactly what louis told daniel word for word

a hunch🫢

i love this show

im so excited for next weeks episode this story is unfolding so beautifully. im even more curious now about why and how this second interview is happening. ((also am very confused/curious about what looks like a protest in the promo??))

[deb-ava]

my initial gripes with tlou after watching ep 2 are that every scene w abby and the salt lake crew is horribly written and gives needless exposition without actually giving you anything to make you invested in any of their characters or their relationship dynamics and two — that in a very clear effort to protect kaitlyn dever and combat a repeat of the absolutely unacceptable vitriol laura bailey received for playing abby they inadvertently compromised abby's character and misrepresented her core character motivation in a way that i feel massively weakens the narrative.

i can genuinely put 95% of my criticism down to poor execution, poorly written dialogue, dumbing things down for a mainstream tv audience etc. still frustrating but not character or story breaking and i accept i'm also holding it to a very very high bar because i love it dearly, i am so protective of it — this is my favourite game and one of my favourite stories of all time but issac's whole "code"??? that has massive ramifications for the story if we take it at face value. it is at complete odds with how the wlf are represented in the game and in my opinion it's just not how game abby ever justified her choices to herself.

i always saw the mercy they showed ellie and tommy in the game as a reflection of their upbringing as fireflies, especially in light of the utter disregard issac and by extension the wlf has for human life. the reason they all break rank for each other at one point or another throughout the game, at least the core members we are seeing in the adaptation (abby, owen, manny, mel and nora) is because despite their best efforts they still value their shared identity as fireflies above their allegiance to the wlf. that's not an endorsement of the fireflies it's just that ultimately the ideals of the fireflies, as naive as they might be, were ingrained in them. plus, the fact it was a research facility. abby was raised by a doctor. mel was training to be one. nora is also medical adjacent from what we can tell. that matters. that shaped their worldview and their moral compass. issac doesn't have that. he is literally genocidal in the game.

and i'm not saying abby isn't indoctrinated to the wlf in the games, she is. she does fucking horrible things in it's name but it always served the purpose of helping her reach her goal and that mattered more than anything. it gave her relative security, resources and skills she would not have otherwise had that made it possible for her to find joel when the time came. but her loyalty was fickle and once she had achieved her goal it wasn't even a difficult choice for her to go against them. first when she breaks rank for owen and then ultimately when she meets lev and yara. it works. it makes it believable to us the player that abby would have such a swift change of heart. it's what always annoyed me about mel's disbelief and fundamental misunderstanding of her but it should be obvious to the player if they're paying attention. it doesn't excuse her past but for abby, being the good soldier was merely a means to an end.

in the game the whole salt lake crew thought joel deserved it, even mel — even if they weren't willing to go to the lengths abby went to they believed it was justified. in theory. because he killed their friends. he destroyed their home. and that was an easy way for abby to make them fall in line and it was always personal. not for a second did she want to kill joel for any reason other than the fact he killed her dad. just like joel didn't hesitate to kill every single person standing between him and ellie. just like ellie won't hesitate to hunt down every single one of them. they are, all three of them, consumed by GRIEF and they are bound to make the same choices in that grief, that's what makes it a tragedy.

until it's not. until they make a different choice. (and they do. and that's why i love this game. it's why it fills me with HOPE and not dread).

[lisa-grdjc]

how should i even start…

im sorry in advance if some things don’t make sense, im still feeling like a mess that ep really did a number on me;-;

i think what really got me was that so far we have never seen someone as kind as takaaki getting that upset before, to the point where he became physically violent.

and that goes for hiro as well.

two young men who let their emotions get the best of them after months of running away from their problems and calling each other out on it, when they weren’t in the right headspace and both battling with their own inner struggles. hypocrisy, to put it bluntly…

we have takaaki, who i assume has been dealing with guilt of some sort (making assumptions for now since we don’t have the full story yet, it seems), guilt over running away from his family after his kid brother’s death, over not going to visit his grave for reasons we’ve yet to know, and so on… what i can confidently say is that, it’s complicated.

meanwhile, hiro is scared. he’s scared of dying, so much that he’d rather look away and pretend everything is fine (which is understandable…).

he keeps putting off his hospital appointment, because if he goes, and the doctor tells him the same thing he did six months ago and this time takaaki is with him to hear it, there’s no running away from that anymore—funny thing is, it didn’t matter that much to him back then, but that was before knowing how fun fishing is and how warm and fuzzy dinners at the back of Everymart and a friend’s kindness feel. that might be what he is afraid of losing, along with his life.

and maybe, just maybe… thinking that takaaki might care and worry about him only out of guilt for the little brother he couldn’t save hurts way more than hiro can admit but i wouldn’t be too sure. takaaki’s always been super kind from the start, before finding out about hiro’s disease. (btw i still can’t think of a reasonable explanation for why he offered to take care of his debt and live at his home without asking for much in return, so that hiro, who he barely knew at the time, could get a fresh start…)

whoops im kinda straying from what i initially wanted to talk about and went off on a tangent but im not even really sorry these two lads and their relationship mean so much to me—

anyways. back to their fight… hopefully i still have a few somewhat coherent thoughts left in me but that would be overestimating my cognitive abilities…

cuz now all i can think about is how darn attractive takaaki looked during the whole scene—

and how when i said i wanted to see him pin hiro against the wall this isn’t exactly the context i had in mind…:(

genuinely wondering how come fictional men get ten times hotter the more miserable they feel… that’s crazy…

okay enough.

i want them to talk it out in the next ep. have a real, calm heart to heart. and a fucking hug

boy i need them to hug like their lives depend on it im so serious.

also huge props to hiro’s voice actor because holy shit these cries were gut wrenching i felt them in my soul—

[bfdsideblog]

Coiny and pin thoughts. And predictions. Under the cut.

First things first: love it. I love it . It's perfect. I'm miserable. It's perfect. There's nothing I hate more than boring relationships and this is anything but boring. I want to give this an honest read here without shipper goggles, though to me it genuinely makes the most sense to read it as they both like each other romantically because I think a lot of bad choices people make are easier to shrug off when you care less about them. Platonic feelings can be powerful as well, just as much so, absolutely, but Coiny is the kind of person who after beefing with Firey for an entire season just hugged and made up with him & became his homie without a word. He's a fast talker who doesn't hold grudges against most people. For a lot of people, when you're attached to someone in a romantic way it can be much harder to overlook slights you otherwise would. But PUTTING THAT ENTIRELY ASIDE the read still makes sense with a platonic life partner. I just find it personally more compelling/reasonable with the romantic element. I'll do my best to give this a platonic analysis hahahaha

Coiny is deeply in denial about needing Pin's affirmation. He simultaneously imitates her - finds her apathy, snarkiness, and determination cool - and also resents those parts of her. (When you're close to someone the things that initially drew you to them are the same things that annoy you later on!) I think he genuinely WANTS to not be angry at her & is still, even, at the end of Ep 20, pretend he was doing it for the game. He's arguing calmly why his decision was logical when it was ABSOLUTELY a decision made of deep deep resentment. The crazy thing is, he was NEVER really resentful before of how much effort he was spending on Pin! He was happy to do it- because he was operating under the assumption that she would do the same for him. If you're in an equal relationship with someone, your love doesn't need to be justified for you to freely give it. But when you're faced with evidence to the contrary, suddenly everything you've done up to this point - things you've done without expecting to be repaid - suddenly those things were being done for someone who wasn't even appreciative of it. (Never mind that Pin constantly thanked and praised Coiny for his help at every turn!)

But here's the thing: Pin DOES appreciate and love Coiny. She adores him and was MORE openly upset about being broken away from him beginning of ep 18 than HE was. But that's because she is looking at the game more objectively than he is. She is seeing the reality of WHOA Bunch's dissolution-- they no longer will be able to assist each other. Coiny didn't take it seriously ("May the best player win! *raspberry*") because he took for granted that he and Pin would be partners forever regardless. Pin didn't, because Pin was STILL only thinking about revenge. Pin's appreciation for Coiny was THERE all season but it took a backseat to her rapidly growing rage and frustration at being treated like a joke constantly (which she was). She was treated like a problem right from the start of the season. Everybody was against her and everybody was a threat - all except Coiny, who would stand beside her and support her no matter what. He was reliable, so she stopped thinking about him. She took him for granted because she knew he would be safe due to being so well liked! She left him without a word to fall off that tower because she knew he'd be fine - but she was already playing the villain. Everyone already hated her, so she didn't consider it to even be a decision to make. There was zero hesitation on her face!! And she didn't even consider it to be a betrayal because she is too busy being self-centered. Pin is making bad decision after bad decision because she's in fight mode constantly, especially after being broken off from her teammate & knowing she's on her own. It isn't GOOD - but it makes perfect sense. And here's the kicker: if Coiny had expressed anger at her decision instead of brushing it off and going silly guy extreme competition mode, I genuinely think she would've felt defensive, done her best to explain herself, rethought her mentality, and then apologized to him.

Now for predictions. Keeping in mind BFB is after this, I think there has to be something to give them SOME kind of conclusion - or at least the beginnings of one. In BFB, Pin talks about how hard it is to earn the trust back of someone you've hurt, but that it's important to try. Coiny gives Pin a huge friendship ("") speech about how they're the perfect team DESPITE THESE EVENTS!!

Either Coiny or Pin is going. Most likely it's going to be Pin, obviously. But there is a CHANCE it might be Coiny. (If someone else has tallied the votes, don't tell me!)

Here's about what I think will play out.

Pin will be eliminated. She will be upset and at first express anger at Coiny. BUT. The one BIG thing Coin & Pin have on Firey & Leafy (& their absolute trainwreck of a friendship) is they are both way more openly able to get pissed and communicate their negative feelings. Coiny less so, but he will complain his ass off if given the chance.

They already got their arguing out. They didn't listen to each other but they already argued. Maybe Pin is going to try something to stay. (I doubt it'd work, but I do think there's something in the works with Metal Leafy.. I have a LOT of admiration on how these eps are written, with so many potential plot threads to pick up depending on how the voting goes.) I think Pin will be eliminated and do something unexpected - i truly think she's going to thank Coiny for the things he did for her and take the elimination. (Her real beef was with Freesmart and it's literally dead with Pencil.) I think she's going to end up being gracious about it and then get catapulted away before he has the chance to respond to her.

Main reason i think she will go this direction is because of Coiny's reaction. Her yelling at him at the end of ep 20 didn't get to him, but I think being apologized to will finally make Coiny openly upset. He hasn't been emotional (publicly) about her betrayal but her having the gall to take it with grace would set him off I think. (Either that or it becomes a bit that he forgives her quickly. I don't think they'd do that but. Who knows with BFDI lol). In the very least I think he's going to be angry that she's out and he's now by himself & either be all mopey the next episode or SUPER motivated to win for both of them. Either way I want him to have an extreme emotional reaction of some kind after the bottling and bottling and BOTTLING that's been going on this season. A smaller option is he's still pretending to be proud of himself after knocking the biggest competition out of the game, in which case everyone is going to be steering clear of HIS crashout & Metal Leafy is going to get on his case again. She is a whole other sack of cats and she's obviously hilariously protecting her own failed friendship with Firey onto Coiny and Pin, seeing Coiny as herself (or, tbh, as a better version of Firey, one who it infuriates her that he exists at all, because if he can forgive Pin over and over and over then why couldn't she be forgiven) and Pin as Firey who deserves to be taught a lesson. By actively knocking Pin out of the competition, Coiny is no better than Leafy was when she stole Dream Island in season 1 as a result of being betrayed!) I think Coiny is going to get a lot of sympathy points depending on how he reacts to Pin going out. If he's nasty about it , it doesn't matter how well he's done keeping peoples' affection the audience isn't going to like it because we're going to see Pin feeling remorseful & that does a LOT to sway them. But ultimately I think it's more likely Coiny takes it with resounding energy and locks in again to have fun, because BFDIA was fun for him.

There is a tiny chance Coiny goes out but I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think Coiny going out like this would make him have a positive impression of the season as a whole at ALL. He would be deeply deeply unhappy and frustrated, right? But if he does go out, he goes out after being apologized to by Pin & regaining the affection he so obviously needs from her. Maybe he gets the chance to tell her he didn't do any of that for her to repay him, he just did it because they were friends. I think Pin making a comedically fast turnaround from her villain arc and then getting eliminated next anyway would be hilarious & the only possible way to deal with her staying in the game.

Coiny and Pin have been a primary conflict in this story. IMO they've been the most compelling one. When one of them goes, their absence will have to be felt. Who's left? We have Book, whose entire gimmick has been she's just not very good at playing & would rather team up with folks/overthink every challenge. Needle, whose conflict is centered around her wanting independence & letting go of needing others' affirmation (lol). And we have Tennis Ball, who fucking KILLED GB and has been on an independence arc of his own from her even though he clearly prefers being a sidekick to having one lmao. No hate but TB is not very good at being a villain himself, rule of comedy says he has to end up being the butt of the joke or he ends up feeling really annoying.

Anyway, if once one of these two goes, their absence being felt by the other doesn't end up being a whole Thing, it'll be a missed opportunity imo.

Anyway all of this is to be taken with a grain of salt because at the end of the day, genre rules all & it has to end up being ultimately funny. And maybe that funny is in the anticlimax of these two making up easily. Maybe they make up offscreen and none of this applies. I can't wait for the next episode to prove me an idiot here.

[a-door-to-somewhere]

Watching skeleton crew, here's a bunch of my unorganized thoughts and theories for ep 1-5, spoilers below!!!

- first off i genuinely like this show. It knows what it is and owns its allusions to Goonies and other pirate media. It really nails the campy/cheesy feel in earnest- it doesn't feel cheap. I'm also glad that it's rather small stake-wise (in the scheme of things). I think it was a good decision in general to have a nice self contained story here

- I'm really glad Neel looks so good. Seriously, we haven't had an alien quite this non-humanoid have such a prominent speaking role in a WHILE. like, ahsoka, jecki, and the various wookies were all make up or costume based. Neel is not acted using a human face and yet his expressions feel so readable and he's not stiff or uncanny. It's like what jar jar could have been

- I love jack/jod/silvo/dash/whatever he's so cringe fail. I genuinely don't know if he is tied to actual jedis or if he's force sensitive or if he's faking it somehow. The framing around his use of the force is so clever it's making me second guess things: initially when he levitates the key over, the force theme plays and he's even wearing a little cloak. However he's only shown using levitation to summon thing, and not mind tricks, force pushes, or even a general ability to have "bad feelings" about things. Also, that one line in ep5 about forgetting his parents because they're 'attachments?' If he isn't associated with jedi, that's some really funny lampshading, star wars

- I love kb. No further notes here

- yes I see it. You're telling me jod tied that pirate robot down. What freaks. Gay af

- it occurs to me that if at attin was completely sheltered from the war and effectively still in old republic era (they didn't know about alderaan 💀) then they might not even be aware of the Purge. They might not even be aware of the propaganda spread by the empire of the jedi becoming traitors. Clearly jedi are still rare, but they might not understand how rare jedi actually are and why. Poor Wim nobody tell him about order 66

- I love how the parents are dealing with andor-esque dystopian surveillance nightmares but because it's a b plot in a kids show it's mostly used for comedy. I actually love the Utopian with a secret trope, at attin totally reminds me of the City of Embers with the Great Work and the test and all that

- I'll put more as I think of it :D

[dragon-flies-72]

I've seen a lot of theories on who the murderer is in TAoM (CHECK IT OUT IF YOU HAVENT ITS ONLY AN EP LONG BUT ITS SOO GOOD) but I've not seen one on Winn yet which surprises me because she was the first one I thought of.

1. First of I find it real strange that she didn't notice OC was missing when she woke up? I get that she was startled by being covered in water but her page is right next to OCs, you're telling me when she woke up she didn't even register the ripped page?? This is probably my biggest reason, the page being ripped seems to be a really big deal to all the characters so surely Winn would've made a big deal of it once she woke up.

2. Also, I hate to be that person but she was the first one to start pointing fingers. Instead of assuming something else she accused Albie seemingly out of nowhere? (Ive watched the episode a few times and i dont know why she immediately accused Albie? I get she was first to agree with Giogno but they all did so it cant be that)

3. Then there's the conversation we first here when they wake up

"So you're saying you just woke up like that?"

"Yeah what the fluff is this wet stuff"

From this conversation alone I think it's safe to say Winn woke up first (or second), if Albie did I think she would've seen Winn wake up and therefore wouldn't have asked that initial question. (For the record this is assuming she saw Winn wake up). From the sounds of this conversation anyone would assume Albie was either second or last to wake up, I'm betting on last because it makes the most sense that Winn wakes up first, then Souske and finally Albie. It also seems like Winn is typically the first to wake up as she awoke at 12:01 the first night so safe to assume she's usually first or second awake.

4. I haven't seen many people address this but there's also the possibility they didn't wake up dirty, we can see that they move around the room whilst Pip is asleep so it's plausible that the murderer could've woken up ripped the page out and whilst disposing of it they got covered in dirt or water, the dirt option seem less plausible because that would mean they left the room (its mud sooo) leaving Winn as the only option

Anyways thats just one of my many theories, i think it could genuinely been any of them (might start making cases for all of them lol been a while since ive gotten back into murder mystery) or Pip ripping it out, bullies ect (those just seem a bit too predictable to me). There no way of telling at this point all the characters are a bit too sus so we're just gonna have to keep speculating whilst waiting for the next sketchbook!

[velvet-vox]

Notes of my final Murder Drones rewatch before ep 8

(These thoughts are uncollected and unrevised, proceed with lowered expectations)

Originally, I was about to make a three-part long post before episode eight comes out.

In the first part I would have analysed Cyn's character and showcased her possible depth and ties to N's character arc.

Then in the second part I compared the Doll, Cyn and J trio to Uzi, N and V, showing the parallels between each member of their respective squad, which would then lead to the final part.

Part 3 is my defacto theory on how certain elements of episode 8 would have played out, with J as a main focus in it, due to her being the V parallel, but then, as the day passed, I realised something:

I'm an analyst, not a theorist, and while it could be fun to make a theory on episode 8 to see how right and wrong I was in retrospect, it's not an activity that I'm particularly fond of, plus, while my opinions on Cyn have changed with time (I'm going to get there), the reason why I kind of like her now completely hinges upon head canons that hopefully are going to be confirmed, because otherwise, my opinion on the character could get even worse than what it once was.

One of the main reasons as to why I wanted to realise this project was to see if I could get invested into Cyn in the same way I got more invested into Rebecca with the analysis I've made on her, but why bother doing that when I'm sure episode 8 is (hopefully) going to fill me in on her character?

I'm not finding the time nor willpower that I wished that I had to complete any projects lately, and due to my constant need for perfectionism (need that it's being deliberately ignored in the writing of this post), I just keep shooting myself in the feet.

Anyway, let's just skip the intro and directly segway to the important stuff:

Uzi:

Uzi is a complicated character for me. She was my favourite character in the Pilot and dropped down massively after that, and I never understood why: I came up with a bunch of explanations for myself, such as "her development isn't engaging" and "she doesn't get challenged in interesting ways that isn't just plain torture" and "she's the most enigmatic character in the show, her actions don't make any sense to me", and I was particularly sure of that last one, not in the sense that Uzi was evil all along, but in the sense that Uzi was being written as a twist villain in the same way Goultard from Wakfu had been coded as such before the third season of that series revealed us why;

But this last rewatch finally made me understand what my problem with her was.

Aside from the rushed development, which is something the entire series struggles with, I've realised that there's an extremely subtle layer of complexity to pilot Uzi that her show's self lacks: see, despite Uzi acting like a gremlin at various points in the pilot, one thing that really surprised me about how Uzi was initially characterised is that, aside from her moments of emotional impulsivity, Uzi... is actually relatively chill?

The best way I could describe it is that serie's Uzi to me is a child to take care of; I would act nice, kind, patient to ep 1 through 7 Uzi just to get on her good side so that she wouldn't bother me as much as she bothers her peers, hopefully helping her grow up as an individual and stop acting so horribly, and help her find someone else who appreciates her for who she is, so that I wouldn't have to deal with her any longer, while pilot Uzi is someone I would genuinely like to spend time with as she's secretly a pretty chill gal, even if I would still be afraid of her, just like the rest of her classmates.

The pilot makes it extremely clear that Uzi's angsty teen persona is just that: a facade. It's not the real her. This added a layer of intrigue to Uzi in the pilot, where it felt like there was so much more to her than what we were shown at first;

But nope. The rest of the show comes out and Uzi is just that: a wild, emotionally unstable teenage gremlin-girl, who isn't even at the centre of the story despite all of the screen time that she has.

I always thought that Liam didn't want me to sympathise with Uzi, as I thought his modus operandi was "Make the character interesting, don't make them sympathetic" but as the show went along and it fell down even further into a classical good versus evil plotline (something that requires is own post), it kind of became harder to shrug off how genuinely unlikable she is to me. I like N a lot, and I kinda like V whenever her fans are nowhere to be seen, but I don't really sympathise with either of them, I just find them to be engaging.

I like the Murder Drones cast because they are interesting characters, not because they are good people. Yet, from the way Uzi is written, it feels like I'm supposed to consider her the hero, when in reality, she feels more like an unwilling plumber forced to take out the clog (Absolute Solver) unwillingly.

(Also Doll is a much better foil to Pilot Uzi than she is to canon show Uzi, but that's a discussion for another time)

But that's enough of that. Let's talk about the episodes:

Episode 1 through 3:

I plan to do an in-depth ranking of all 8 episodes of Murder Drones once the ending comes out, so consider these my rapid fire opinions on each and every single one of them.

The pilot is the best aged episode of Murder Drones to me even if a lot of its elements have been decanonised, and it could as well end up becoming my favourite episode of the show when it's all said and done.

Episode 2 is as weak as ever, but one thing that always bothered me about this episode is the ending where Uzi just decides to go back into the colony with Khan.

Now, it's no secret that Murder Drone's everything is extremely rushed, but for most of its runtime, this episode gave me the impression that Murder Drones was going to be a slow burn, long running mystery series, only for the ending to come along and leave me dumbfounded by what the pacing of the show was going to turn into.

Heartbeat is also the only episode where my opinion hasn't changed since first watching it. I thought it was mid at first, and I still consider it to be so.

My thoughts on it are a little bit more complicated than that, but I'm reserving them for the future.

You can slice it however you want, but episode 3 has aged HORRIBLY, it's not even in my top 5 best episodes anymore, and yes, it's exactly because of the focus character of this episode turning out the way she did in episode 7.

Say whatever you want, but to me, the third episode is not an Uzi episode, it's not an N episode, it's barely a V and Lizzy episode and partially a Nuzi episode, and it's certainly not a Khan episode.

For the most part, The Promening is a Doll episode; she's the character the episode is wasting most of its runtime on, introducing her, her parents, making her a mysterious threat; in comparison, the Nuzi and V stuff is mostly secondary, and could have definitely been developed further if the episode didn't have someone else as it's main focus.

Doll:

I never wanted Doll to survive the season; I never wanted her to live, I never wanted her to die, I never wanted her to be redeemed, nor did I want her to stay evil till the end; all I ever wanted, was for Doll to be well-written, and as it stands, I don't think Doll does enough or is explored sufficiently as a character to justify her relevance or existence, especially since a lot of other characters could benefit from some extra screen time, and while a lot of people might think that just bringing her back to life would fix some of her problems, I don't think they really understand all of the underlying issues that come with such a choice:

If Doll were ever to come back, she for sure would get a redemption arc, because what else is there to do? She lost all of her screen presence, she's no longer even remotely threatening, her story is so divorced from our current one to be straight up disposable, a lot of people see her as just a joke after the seventh episode, and in general, she's no longer a credible villain to see on screen.

And yet, I don't think a redemption arc would work for Doll at this point. Her character wasn't built up enough aside from being mysterious for the sake of it, I don't think a redemption arc would work, because it would require too much time for it to work, and time is the one thing Murder Drones always lacked, what makes you think a second season, let alone one episode would even fix?

I'm pretty pessimistic about episode 8, unless it's all one giant ruse and there is, in fact, a second season. The math just doesn't add up, episode 8 can't possibly be a satisfying conclusion or an unsatisfying conclusion done right, I fear it will be one giant clusterf##k.

Cabin Fever, Intermission, and Home:

Episode 4 is about as good as I remember it to be, and aside from noticing a couple of new details useful for my analyses, I don't have much to say about it.

I got the chance to watch @ghoulinfuschia 's Murder Drones Intermission together with the other episodes this time around, so now I finally have the chance to praise it a little bit.

Murder Drones Intermission is a fan made episode of Murder Drones set between episode four and five, made entirely by a crew of fans.

It's an amazing product for what it's worth and by how it was made, and while it's not perfect and I consider it far from possibly being canon, it does fill in nicely into the show's timeline, and improves a lot on some of the weakest story beats of the series. It was definitely a nice break from me while rewatching all of the episodes, and I recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who wants to check it out.

It's pretty ironic how episode 7 retroactively managed to worsen episode 3 and improve episode 5, but that's genuinely how I feel about Home now:

I'm about to be real with you, Tessa being dead all along was the only tid bit of major character's death that wasn't wasted, as now that I know why Tessa's wasn't the episode's protagonist, I'm much more accepting of the way in which episode 5 played out; it's clear that Liam never wanted us to get attached to Tessa beyond any simple "she's a nice, abused, teenage girl that treats N nicely" type of feeling, also the tradeoff for her death and humanity apparent extinction was well worth it in my opinion, which is something I can't say for V or... her.

But now it's finally time to talk about the actual main character of this episode:

Cyn:

I'm about to say something that I've never thought I would end up saying for real:

Did you know, that Cyn, is an actually interesting character in her own right?

I never did.

Quite frankly, I kind of heavily hated Cyn up until some time ago.

To me, at the start, Cyn was just a cool visual threat that would have hopefully been fleshed out in the future, but then, not only is she still remaining just a one note villain at this point of the show's runtime (aka the "finale"), but she also ended up killing a far more nuanced and slightly more fleshed out antagonist, while also not really doing anything to fulfill the compelling character void left by the aforementioned character.

Hot take: the fandom's portrayal of Cyn as this unbelievably silly creature of pure autism ruined her character, as well as the general discourse surrounding her.

To me, mass murderers should only be blorbified once their first major focus arc in a story has been concluded. It's why I'm fine with the blorbification of characters such as Qilby and William Afton, and I'm not with Cyn.

The thing about blorbifying is that, you are actively distorting canon for your weird fantasies, which is something that I'm fine with, but only once said characters have received their narrative catharsis.

I don't really view Cyn as a serious or heinous threat at this point in time, and that's all due to how much the fanbase ended up babyfying her to no end, giving her the Jax treatment with the main difference being that Jax has had is funny blorbo illusion already shattered, while Cyn still has it at this point in the show's runtime where she should be at her most evil and intimidating yet.

But that's enough of that; as I've already stated, now that we know that adult Tessa was Cyn all along... Cyn has just become such an interesting character to me, not for the mystery and creepiness surrounding her, but for the ways in which she could end up paralleling N.

... If that's actually what's going to happen.

It all hinges upon Cyn actually being worth the hype and the rushed developments, because otherwise, she could go from being my third favourite character to my absolute least favourite.

Episode 6 and 7:

I appreciate the Jurassic Park section of this episode for being a break from everything going on and for setting up the plot twist in the following episode.

Although her section bores me a little bit, I'm just gonna come out and say it: Alice is in my opinion the best humanoid antagonist in the entirety of Murder Drones, and unless that changes in episode 8 (which I doubt, sorry Cyn but I don't have a lot of faith in you), I'll make an entire post dedicated to her detailing why that's the case.

As for who or what I think is the overall best antagonist of the show...

It's the Sentinels, and it's not even close.

I'm still as emotionless as ever when it comes to V's demise. I believe it was stupid, but there are more passionate V fans to talk about it.

And last but not least, I can finally agree with what everyone else has said: Mass Destruction is the best episode of Murder Drones, and for me, it's all due to how genuinely funny it is.

I've become pretty apathetic to Murder Drone's horror elements due to how excessively prevalent and misused they are throughout the course of the series, so now the comedy actually hits harder, and this episode is extremely funny and comedic, even Doll's death is now hilarious to me, even if for other reasons, and the pacing finally feels appropriate now that the show has completely given up being a mystery adventure and fully embraced the end of the world battle shenanigans.

The episode did feel too fast paced when I first saw it at release, but it was mostly because of how slow the previous episodes were, now after a while the pacing finally feels normal, even if the episode is just bombarding me with lore left and right.

Ah.

.

.....

We're doomed.