#not that bw and sw were that much better

[silk-and-web]

Remember when Scarlet Witch x Black Widow was the premiere MCU lesbian ship and it was entirely because there were literally no other female heroes?

[themarysuep]

i think it'll be good if we have our first look of dr doom in F4, then maybe if we get the YA movie children's crusade arc he'll appear again and then bring him into secret wars. tbh i think they cld hv recasted kang and used him if someone died in quantamanium, he would hv felt more like an avengers level threat than an antman villain. now w kang out, i do not know any villain to put in for the next avengers movie but i sure hope they make one team-up movie before secret wars. or perhaps an Avengers Disassembled story arc which will lead into the YA movie and then sam picking up the pieces into gg secret war and battleworld

I think the fact that F4 was moved forward means that the mcu can now use Doom in the Avengers films so their options aren't limited. They should totally use Beyonder. That would tie in nicely with SW and BW. I think YA needs to be before SW or it's going to low-key be too late. It wouldn't make much sense doing it after 5 plus years.

I'm sure they'll still do one more movie. I would have honestly thought Kang and Secret Wars were part 1 and part 2. So maybe they can just expand the SW storyline over two movies. There's so many characters that would actually be better. We aren't looking at only 6 Avengers anymore.

[smallersocksx]

Pokémon Character Analysis: Iris

With Iris set to return to the anime in next week’s episode of Journeys. I decided to take the time to analyse her character as I’ll be honest, Iris isn’t one of my favourite travelling companions. However, now that I’m older and I’ve taken the time to analyse her character. I realise, that a lot of the hate Iris receives is slightly over the top.

As with all my reviews/analyses, I’ll keep them under the cut. So, if you want to keep reading, that’s great!

Introduction:

As many people that have read my previous reviews and know me, may know I am a huge fan of the Diamond and Pearl games and anime series. I will be the first to say, I know Diamond and Pearl wasn’t a perfect series, honestly, there is no such thing as a perfect series. But as a follow-up to DP, Black and White was definitely a let-down for a lot of fans, either because of completely resetting Ash’s knowledge which was honestly an insult to his DP incarnation, his travelling companions or the fact that he lost to Cameron of all people in the Vertress Conference. BW in some aspects left a lot to be desired.

Nevertheless, this post is focusing on Iris, a companion similar to Goh, a lot of fans love to hate particularly because of her infamous catchphrase “You’re such a kid.” Looking back, this was one of the things that did make me drop the series, keep in mind I was 11 when BW started airing. So, hearing a character that is meant to be the same age or younger than you say "You’re such a kid!” Over and over again, got annoying quite quickly.

However, looking back the usage of that infamous catchphrase was probably exaggerated. Whilst, working past that I still didn’t come to love Iris. Considering, Iris is meant to be one of the main character and similar to Goh, they are meant to be written in a way that makes us want to see them grow, cheer them on and be happy when they succeed. Nonetheless, when you look at the way they are written and their development it just makes it abundantly clear that Iris and Goh are the victims of poor writing.

Iris’ Initial Characterisation:

The aspect that made me drop the series was Iris’ initial characterisation particularly the infamous phrase “You’re such a kid” which as I mentioned in the introduction, which with the benefit of hindsight I can see the usage of it has been exaggerated. Nevertheless, it doesn’t change the fact that it was annoying. Especially, given when Ash meets Iris, he had defeated legendaries by this point, acquired 36 badges (that’s including the Orange Archipelago badges) and defeated the Battle Frontier. Whereas Iris may have had good battling prowess and at one point had a 99-battle winning streak, but, her Axew was a newborn with hardly any battling experience and her Excadrill was refusing to listen to her.

Many people use the defence that Misty called Ash a kid yet she doesn’t nearly receive as much hate. To be fair, when Misty met Ash, he was a rookie trainer and Misty was a gym leader, so Misty at least had the position and knowledge to back her up. However, this was only an issue at the beginning of the series and the insults tend to die down, but, that initial characterisation is what stopped me from watching the series since my 11-year-old self did not have the patience for that.

Iris’ Goal:

Iris’ goal is to become a Dragon Master, however, by the end of Black and White, Iris opts to travel to Johto to battle Clair and following the conclusion of that battle she opts to follow the direction she saw Rayquaza flying. When I look at this conclusion, I’m honestly confused, I have no sense of whether or not Iris is any closer to achieving her goal. Or even throughout the series, we get no sense of how anyone who wants to master any Pokémon typing reaches their goal, a majority of type specialists typically end up in the position of Gym Leader or Elite Four. But Iris never once expressed a desire to be a Gym Leader or any higher-ranking position. Which, makes Drayden decision to choose Iris as his successor, all the more unusual to me. I suppose in one way it gives Iris a position/goal to work towards but given Iris’ free-spirited personality, having someone choose her path rather than choosing it herself feels unnatural.

Additionally, an obvious method to becoming a type specialist is catching Pokémon of the same type you want to specialize in and little more than half of Iris’ team actually consist of Dragon-types. I understand Gym Leaders having at least one alternative type to give their team diversity and cover their weaknesses. As shown by Candice owning a Medicham and Piers having a Toxtricity in his party later in the SW/SH games. But, Excadrill fits the bill more than Emolga as Excadrill is part of Steel-type which covers Iris’ team’s weaknesses to Ice and the newly introduced Fairy-types. That is not to say that I dislike Emolga or anything but it felt like she was an unusual catch.

I am aware Clemont only had one Electric-type on hand when travelling with Ash, to be fair, the remainder of his Electric-types were at the Lumiose Gym and before catching his Bunnelby he displayed apprehension at handling other types of Pokémon.

Axew:

I like to think of the characters’ first Pokémon or their partner Pokémon as a mirror reflecting their growth. Take May and Blaziken, they mirror one another’s development perfectly as when Blaziken was a Torchic much like May, he was inexperienced and unsure of himself. When Torchic evolved to Combusken, at this point May had won two Contest Ribbons and began to feel confident in her Coordinating skills. Once, Torchic evolved into Combusken he developed that same level of confidence, he didn’t feel the need to compete for May’s attention and wasn’t bullied or intimidated by other Pokémon like Ash’s Corphish. Then Combusken evolves to Blaziken in the penultimate episode, once May has decided to leave the group, travel through Johto on her own and find her own battling style. At this point, May has chosen to become independent and this reflects in Combusken, her first Pokémon evolving into his final stage. My point being I like to think every travelling companions’ ace reflects their character growth and I don’t get that same feeling with Iris and Axew.

Now it is clear that Iris and Axew care for one another and there is also the twist that Axew wasn’t Iris’ first Pokémon. However, for a majority of the series, Axew was Iris’ only Dragon-type and in the sixth episode, he has a dream of evolving into his final stage. After that, the idea of Axew evolving is hardly addressed. As I’ve mentioned, evolving or choosing not to evolve are one method of allowing Pokémon to develop, considering, Axew has expressed a desire to evolve, I think he should have at least evolved into Fraxure before the BW series concluded. As aside from him learning Dragon-type moves and developing as a battler, once, Dragonite’s introduced he’s kind of pushed to the sidelines and doesn’t develop any further.

Many fans are hoping by Iris’ appearance in Journeys, Axew has evolved into Haxorus. However, if Axew had evolved into Fraxure by the end of the series, then his evolution into Haxorus would feel more natural to me.

Dragonite:

I will be honest; I am not a huge fan of Iris’ Dragonite. It felt as though, the writers forgot to give her an additional Dragon-type and just rewarded her with this random Dragonite. Also, there is the fact, that Dragonite was disobedient towards Iris despite the fact he joined her team willingly. This display of disobedience reflects poorly on Iris as a trainer, especially after Excadrill’s arc. Moreover, Iris has had some of her best moments throughout the series with the other Unovan Dragon-types such as Druddigon and Deino both of which would have been great captures for her particularly Deino as she has a Hydreigon in the games.

Also, HE. SHOULD. HAVE. LOST. TO. DAWN’S. MAMOSWINE!!!! (and I’m not just saying that because I love Dawn and her Mamoswine)

If the writers absolutely felt that they had to give Iris a Dragonite, they could have at least done it whilst she was in Johto since Dragonite’s pre-evolutions can be found in Dragon’s Den and Route 45. It honestly would have made more sense than giving her a Gible which isn’t even native to Johto and we haven’t even been given a hint on whether or not Gible is appearing in the next episode.

Conclusion:

I think posting my thoughts, always, manages to clear my head. Now whilst, Iris wasn’t my favourite travelling companion of Ash’s. I feel as though some of the hate towards her is exaggerated as she has had some great moments and development throughout BW. One of my favourite arcs in BW, was Iris restoring her relationship with Excadrill which was one of the most poignant moments of the series.

I think if the writers did a better job as well at establishing Iris’ goals – we understand she wants to be a Dragon Master, but does she want to become a gym leader? A caretaker of Dragon-types (similar to Liza of Charicific Valley)? If they had established this from the beginning, we would have had a better understanding of the direction they wanted to take with Iris’ development.

As well, in the games, Iris has a better relationship with Drayden as she affectionately refers to him as “Grandpa”, I think if they transferred that relationship into the anime, it would have made Drayden’s choice of selecting Iris as his successor feel a lot more natural.

All in all, I feel as though Iris was the victim of some arguably poor and weird writing choices and she isn’t the only character to experience this throughout the series. After writing this, I am looking forward to Ash vs Iris next week, but you have to hope they don’t pull the same stunt as they did with Korrina and diminish all of Iris’ efforts and training during her absence. At least we’ll finally get to see Dracovish in action as well!

[mass-convergence]

I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I want to compare the Girl Power(TM) moments of Infinity War vs Endgame and explore why I felt one was better than the other. (Typing this on my phone so I’m gonna be using a few acronyms here to depict hero names)

Aka: dear marvel, putting more women in a shot does nothing if there’s no organic reason for them to suddenly be buddy buddy or even suddenly end up on the same spot of an incredibly chaotic battlefield at the same time. I get that this is a comic book movie with purple aliens and glowing stones of destiny but still, the scene felt forced.

In Infinity War there was a moment when Scarlet Witch entered the battle and Proxima Midnight (who I kept mistaking her voice for ScarJo’s but that’s another story) was all like “Kay I’m gonna kill you now you’re all alone” then from off screen we hear ��she’s not alone” and cut to Black Widow and Okoye standing there about to fuck a bitch up. Enter a rather intimate (in terms of it being mostly hand-to-hand close quarters, nothing much was distracting them as they were isolated from the rest of the battle being in a trench) fight scene and a “that was gross” quip from BW covered in blue alien blood after the battle. It felt like a good scene. BW and Okoye have interacted before, BW and SW are both Avengers and I’m guessing friends because of that. They know each other, they have rapport. Most importantly, they had a reason to interact and it would make sense that they could have met up on the battle field, the battle was concentrated around that one shield wall Black Panther ordered down. They were women being there for each other and it made sense in the context of the battle. They were already spatially close enough to each other to notice if one was in trouble and be able to assist.

And then came Endgame. The battle was chaotic with essentially two armies duking it out on a large scale in the crater of the Avengers compound. Portals everywhere, lasers flying around, explosions, chitauri and whatever those other alien monsters were are like killing and being killed in droves. I have no idea where anyone is. Captain America is swinging around Mjolnir, Iron Man and Pepper Pots/RESCUE are like being the ultimate battle couple, Ant Man and Wasp were doing something idk I’ve only seen this movie once, but you get the point - This battle was HUGE, spread out, and very chaotic.

Oh and they were playing Keep Away with the infinity gauntlet. Enter Captain Marvel who destroys the ship, has a brief moment of levity with Peter Parker, and That Moment comes. “I don’t know how you’re going to get past all that” “she’s got help”. No idea who said it, only seen this movie once so i forgot. Suddenly all the women of the battle had converged on this one point like moths to a light (I mean Carol DOES glow). Decided to just look at each other like “yeah we got a job to do” and off they went kicking ass or something. Parker completely drops out, none of the other hundreds of people on that battle field come to help. Lasted maybe a few minutes before Grape Man came back to center stage and that moment felt so forced. They didn’t really accomplish anything. Like legit, take that scene out and just have Captain Marvel actual Running Back for the Avengers Football Team taking that gauntlet by herself in all her glowing glory and like, nothing would have changed? The scene was forced in there to make a Girl Power moment and for me, while in the movie I was caught up in the moment and was like “fuck yeah” I still felt bothered by it because it felt so forced. I know it meant a lot to people and honestly it meant something to me too. I want to see these women team up more, i want them to be friends, I want them to save the day and not be in a throw away scene, i want an A-Force movie. I want enough women representation in the MCU that a) all the named female characters don’t fit into one shot and b) it doesn’t feel like some kind of “hey we’re progressive” token scene. I loved and hated that scene. The feeling is very much ambivalent

To very VERY loosely paraphrase Lindsay Ellis in her video about Pocahontas vs Moana: Am I going to say that we should sacrifice some little girl seeing this scene of powerful women working together and feeling empowered by it? Not really. But that’s why we need more positive respresentation and not just throw away scenes like this.

In conclusion: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ don’t get me started on Black Widow in this movie (though tbh, I think the death was okay for her arc, I’m just not happy with how the MCU’s treated her character in the past). Gamora’s death in IW was stupider.

[fabelyn]

(1) Sorry for the following rant, I hope it makes enough sense. I find it so annoying how a chunk of the player base disregards Hop as a bland and annoying character (and I get it, he kinda is when you first meet him) but I was so happy to finally see a rival with an actual characterisation and personal growth after suffering from the likes of the X&Y's rivals and a one-dimensional Hau from S&M. Sure, he is not that amazing but he is a vast improvement overall.

(3) So, let's find faults in the game where they actually are. It was clearly a rushed game, rushed to meet the release date (why did they not postpone it? something is going on behind the scenes) and it shows in how good some things are and how bad others are. Performance and graphical wise? A disaster. We are on the switch, a better console than the 3ds, but S&M looked and felt so much better! In the end, I still see people having fun with SW&SH and I believe that's important.

(4) But still, it seems that people seem to like to shit on the games just because they want to shit on something. The only thing that I want for the future is: for the love of everything nice, GF and TPC, please! please! take your time making future games! Just stop releasing every few years if it's taxing just take the time to make the game good! AND POLISH IT!!

SWSH anon here, I was pretty much ranting yesterday, my 2 cents. And thanks Tumblr, never change buddy. I think in the missing 2nd part I was talking about the plot? About how I saw a few saying it shows up only at the end while in reality there were pieces from the start? I liked the whole "Ehy the legend/truth of the legendaries was lost/hidden, it was new and interesting. And it's pokemon, the games never shined for the story (for me the only exception is BW). In the end SWSH is a 7.5 at best

I didnt play SM so I cant really say what Hop is compared to the companion there, though i still stand by that he’s annoying af, sorry.

First because of how constant and forced on you he was at the beginning. he got better when he got depressed but by then I was so annoyed that the narrative being like “oh wow, Hop is so down” just made me angrier. Doesnt help that the plot shits on Bede for acting high and mighty...and Hop is the same. Secondly at the end of the game they keep acting like this brat who failed to so much as kill one pokemon of mine is somehow my rival. Are other rivals just as bad? If they are, that doesnt make Hop less annoying to me. Bede had a better set up.

Other than that, i fully agree with the rest. It is rushed. They should have done a Breath of the Wild and held off release for a few years to give us something big and game changing as opposed to...the same game as always. Which isnt bad, I enjoy playing. But its nothing wowing

The plot isnt strong, but pokemon games never had plot as a forte. The shenanigans right before the finals felt full of plotholes and somehow I was rooting for the “villain” but I didnt really focus on it because Im not playing for that. Back to zelda, I find the plot of breath of the wild shit but 10/10 recc the game

[dispensemiracles]

(( Strike Witches is probably like the only time or one of the few where I've seen a series actually improve because of getting an assload of money. I'm not just talking animation quality either (still jarring though to go from 1080p 60fps drop dead gorgeous Brave Witches to a bag of potato chips in S1) but like, when Gonzo took the contract to do S1 in 2007, they were pretty much desperate and nearly bankrupt so they focused on a lot more ass, titty, and panty shots to keep people's attention and have it sell fast. When S2 happened Gonzo didn't exist, so it went to AIC. That season they tried doing what Gonzo did and well I guess you couldn't pull the same trick twice though it still got enough money for a movie, which AIC also did. That movie was the first time the serious themes in SW overtook the fanservice, for which it got a cultural award. Finally there came the three OVAs and now Brave Witches done all by Sliver Link. Now not only does the animation not look like potatoes, the emphasis on the story has pretty much entirely overtaken that need to show fanservice. If you watch ep1 of S1 and ep1 of BW back to back or side by side the difference is HUGE. I'd like to attribute this to how well it sold over time the further they distanced themselves from only appealing to the most base denominator, so yeah, I guess an overflow of cash sometimes CAN make you a better studio))