#not their fault but overall very unsatisfying LMAO

[bipolarmoss]

so THAT’S what it’s like venting to neurotypicals

[long-suffering-little-spoon]

I JUST REALIZED THAT YOU WATCHED THE OFMD FINALE

H-

How are you feeling 🥲🥲🥲

Pahaha not swimmingly, I'll just say. First I have been doing a bit of the ol' menstruating which means everything is immediately more extreme lol. I've been very conflicted and I'm still not 100% sure how I feel about *THE THING* especially, but this is where I stand right here right now at like 11PM lmao

Under the cut cos this ended up being exponentially longer than I thought it could ever be sorry

Overall I've loved season 2!! It has been so much fun to interact with the community and convert everyone to the Izzy hands cult engage with the fandom week by week. We've had some incredibly beautiful high moments and some lovely refreshing queer joy. I adore the new characters and the developments of our existing ones. I know my negative thoughts here are much more substantial than my positives but this doesn't mean I didn't like it!! I just don't feel the need to describe the positives because I feel like they're pretty obvious and universally recognised, agreed upon and beloved, y'know? (if you want a purely positive thoughts autistic happy flappy hands rant™, i can oblige dw)

Izzy's death is not the only reason I have mixed feelings on the finale. Obviously the episode cuts were a result of HBO'S meddling and isn't the fault of the crew, but the pacing still felt off and everything that happened just kinda washed over me like white noise (haha will wo-). The loose ends were tied up in wholesome ways and if we don't get a season 3 this would be a mostly decent way to end our characters' journeys, if a bit rushed. But then...

Izzy's death. A lot of people feel very very betrayed and hurt by Izzy being killed off, some people don't feel the comfort they used to from this show because of it and no longer want to engage. I don't wanna discount these people's views, more power to them; I cannot stop them from feeling what they feel and doing what they choose. I haven't given up hope on this show but Izzy's death just felt pretty unsatisfying to me?? Putting my bias towards him aside, I get the "killing off mentor at end of second act" trope but I just feel and wish way more could've been done with Izzy. I wanted to see more of him being happy and secure in himself and his found family and his queerness and his disability!! But now I don't get that and it very much stings. I think I could've come to terms more with his death if there had been more time to dwell on it all and get to see the individual characters mourn, but again episode cuts, thanks HBO!! /s. And I know they had the funeral but it still feels like we didn't really get a chance to mourn or treat Izzy's death with the weight it warranted. And I am far too tired especially right now to engage in "is this/is this not bury your gays/disabled character" but I will say I've seen pretty compelling arguments on both sides. As an able-bodied disabled person I don't feel it's fully my place to dictate, but I am upset Izzy was killed right after some big moments in his healing process and being a disabled person and in general just enjoying his life.

Personally I'm not giving up on the show as a whole because the finale left a sour taste in my mouth. I still very much like this show and I'm willing to stick around for a potential season 3 and on future rewatches I'll be able to see the stuff I loved separate from the stuff I didn't. But since looking back now, the latter is most recent, it kind of casts an unpleasant shadow on a very enjoyable season of television.

RIP Izzy Hands you deserved better sweetie, you would've loved Drag Race. And also shoutout to Con O'Neill for a fucking phenomenal performance last season, but especially this one. Izzy was absolutely iconic and a fan favourite for a very good reason, even if imo the writers did him dirty. He was hilarious and a petty little bitch man but then deeply broken and compelling and a genuinely beautiful character with a beautiful journey despite an unfortunate and unjust end?? He slayed.

Wow this was a lot!! Sorry if you were expecting silly goofiness lmfao I got very analysi-ish and a bit melancholic. Thank you so much for the ask JJ, it was a good opportunity to try and express all my thoughts and squish them into something cohesive for both you and me. (And thanks to my friend who I was discussing this with earlier; they helped me get a new perspective by sharing some of his thoughts. Dude, if you're reading this you know who you are, thanks a bunch!!!!)

[oflgtfol]

actually thinking about the razia's shadow characters now i think the main reason pallis is surprisingly popular despite having like, literally only two appearances, is that he was the only character in act 2 to have any character arc, despite being a background character

i find ahrima from act 1 so compelling because he has such an interesting character arc in such a short amount of time and it's so fun to dissect and think about... and then act 2 happens and like. hm.

adakias as the central protagonist of act 2 is just nowhere near as compelling as ahrima as the central protagonist of act 1 because adakias does not undergo any sort of change. his character does not improve, nor does he even DECAY like ahrima did he's just the same little boy he was at the very beginning. the biggest change he experiences is that he dies in the end. LMAO

which is like. annoying! because MAN adakias has the same flaws that ahrima had, they just manifest less destructively. he's self centered and he completely does not account for the way his actions may hurt other people just like ahrima did. but ahrima paid the ultimate price for that. and i mean okay i guess adakias dies in the end but he doesn't die to pay the price, he dies in a way that proves himself right in the end, so it's not any sort of like, ~reaping the consequences of your actions~ type of thing. he just died because well uwu his self centeredness was right, in the end!! he was in fact the rando who was prophesied to save the world. yay <3 /s

so he faces zero challenges despite the way he actively harmed anhura due to said self-centeredness and selfishness. he knew he was making her sick and he knew how to fix it - by going away - but instead he sent her on a wild goose chase to some weirdo fucking doctor who would enslave her as soon as he cured her just because adakias didn't want to break up with her and acknowledge that it was his fault or whatever the hell. and he's never challenged for this!!!

so adakias is just an annoying guy who exhibits the same flaws as ahrima but is never challenged for them nor does he face any consequences for them like ahrima did. despite his flaws, he stays the exact same character throughout the entirety of act 2 which is just so . unsatisfying

PALLIS HOWEVER. is a background character. he is not the central protagonist of act 2. in fact he's probably the closest thing act 2 has to an antagonist. pallis exhibits much more blatant flaws than adakias in that he's like, the willing servant of the ~evillll~ kingdom (whose evilness is only developed by them being like, mean to adakias LMAOO) and also down for murder at the end of the play.

but pallis also mirrors ahrima, interestingly enough!! not so much in the flaws themselves but in the overall character arc. he does something impulsively without thinking of the consequences, and then reaps the consequences of it. he has that delicious "WHAT HAVE I DONE?!?!?!" moment (not quite as dramatic as ahrima's </3 but still) and all that. so by impulsively trying to kill anhura, he accidentally kills adakias his brother instead, and thats what wakes him up to how wrong he was. and he changes in the end!!! he realizes he was wrong and then works to fix it by working with anhura to bring the light and dark back together again (another interesting parallel, or perpendicular? with ahrima, where ahrima caused the light/dark split with his mistake, and pallis helped SOLVE the split with his mistake. likewise, ahrima undergoes a character decay arc, and pallis undergoes a character... improvement arc? wont quite say redemption but he goes from EVILLLL to "good" in the end so)

so ultimately pallis is the one who undergoes an actual change in character over act 2 despite only having literally two appearances (but man were they bangers!) which instantly makes him a much more compelling character than adakias was. imo to me at least

[tantawans]

why did you not like the finale :( i thought it was good closure :(

there were some things about it that i liked don't get me wrong but overall it just left me very unsatisfied! 

boom and tor's storyline has to be the most disappointing for me. i think every other character had a decent amount of growth and development except for them. they spent the whole season fighting and getting married so quickly after they had literally just made up felt too rushed so it just didn't really make sense to me. 

 i'm glad boyo said she wants to focus on herself for a while (i think boom honestly should have done the same lmao) but i was really rooting for her and good to get back together! i liked their conversation but then it didnt really make sense to me that music and good were together? i'm not sure if they're together romantically or not but the scene of like music reading her messages with locker and good looking at photos of him and boyo before cuddling each other idk that was just a bit weird to me lmao 

and of course my biggest disappointment.... studearth. i'm glad earth broke up with sam i just can't believe it took this long to get to that point. and the scene at the end with them cuddling just annoyed me. also i hated the conversation between stud and earth at the wedding because i think it had potential to be such a good confession scene but instead we just got earth saying they would never work and crying and them agreeing to be friends and i know that's better than nothing but i just can't see stud/ta working out long term. it really felt like all of s1 and most of this season were building up towards studearth so it just felt like a bit of a slap in the face in the end like i think they know it's what most of us want but they just didn't want to give it to us lmao. 

the only part of the show that has been consistently good for me was cris and amm like i really can't fault their storyline at all i genuinely love them so much! they were probably the best part of the whole season for me.

[pigletsbigmovie]

endgame spoilers i watched it a couple weeks ago here are my complaints lol

nebula and gamora...... were done so dirty lmao....... i am not surprised, i knew this was gonna happen but still.

i mean i really liked nebula in endgame! i love seeing how far she’s come since gotg! she played a larger role in this film than i was expecting and that was nice!

i just disliked the fact that she ends up killing her past self?? it’s such an example of the problem with these big ensemble films... other characters’ arcs take precedence over other characters and so like while killing her past self makes sense for the overall narrative... it doesnt make sense for nebula’s character arc....

or like how since this the last film in which we’ll be seeing all original avengers together, of course it’s them that are prioritized over other characters which means Of Course it’s tony that ultimately defeats thanos even tho really it makes more sense for thanos to be defeated by nebula and gamora and that would’ve been a rly big development in their arcs but guess not! i guess! no can do!

they tried to make the tony vs thanos conflict this Big Dramatic Thing but in reality it is sooooo impersonal....... which makes the conflict and the resolution of that conflict just not very interesting to me...

like imagine if the gotg films were it’s own franchise. no other marvel movies exist, it’s not connected to anything else, it is it’s own thing. then that would mean the gotg franchise has thanos for itself and those films would be leading up to the defeat of thanos which can be fulfilled by nebula and gamora because theyre protagonists of these films. imagine how satisfying that wouldve been!! like gotg has always focused on themes of family! that franchise ending with nebula and gamora defeating their abusive adoptive father with the help of their new found family wouldve been so emotionally impactful and satisfying!

but nnnoooo instead we get tony vs thanos. they don’t even know each other. they’re just that one guy that got in the way of their desires. just an obstacle. that connection is not deep enough to be interesting

ok i went off on a tangent there but back to nebula killing her past self.... Why. we know that given time, the nebula that we see can change for the better! we know bc we see that nebula right there! our nebula! but nooope instead of getting a powerful scene about nebula literally staring her trauma right in the face and how she feels about that now that she’s grown so much...... she just kills her? i mean she tries to appeal to her? but this past nebula isnt given the time she needs to grow! she’s just killed off with 0 compassion......... and it’s such... a sad and unsatisfying development... like there’s a difference between “letting the past die” and killing your past traumatized self.... like if her past self deserves to die and isnt worthy of compassion then that just goes against our nebula’s entire existence? she is the person she is in the present bc she was shown compassion and was allowed to grow! why is this nebula not deserving of that? it’s literally just bc it’s inconvenient to everyone else... thats awful.

then there’s gamora...... like she finds out about this future in which thanos succeeds in his plan and........... she fucking WAITS???? SHE WAITS TO STOP HIM??? IM SORRY BUT WHHHAAAAT THE FUCK??????

like!!! this is literally around the time in our timeline when gamora enacts her plan to ditch thanos and steal the power stone for herself as soon as she finds out that he’s found it’s location in order to stop it from getting into his hands. you’re telling me that gamora waits A LONG SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF TIME after thanos gets all the information he needs to get not just the power stone but ALL THE OTHER INFINITY STONES before attempting to stop him?? YOURE ASKING ME TO BELIEVE THAT?? THAT SHE WOULDNT IMMEDIATELY OR AT LEAST AS SOON AS POSSIBLE TRY TO STOP HIM?

like if i remember correctly, by the time she teams up with future nebula to try to stop thanos, he’s already made significant progress in formulating/enacting his plan to get all the infinity stones..... like she doesnt try to sabotage/steal the information re:time travel in order to keep thanos away from the stones??? it doesnt make sense. it does not make sense that she would wait i cant get over it what the fuck alsooo...... while im glad that gamora isn’t just Dead now and that there’s an alive gamora out and about.... it Upsets me deeply that this isnt our gamora lmao. and this isnt just me being unnecessarily sentimental. it just sucks storytelling wise. gamora underwent so much development from the 1st gotg up to infinity war...... and now all of that is all Gone bc new gamora didn’t experience ANY of that! like saying her development was retconned maybe isn’t exactly true bc all of that development still happened and is Canon but... it’s basically all irrelevant now bc! again! this gamora didnt go through any of it! when peter and gamora reunite in infinity war and peter is emotional and gamora is like What the Fuck? like ha ha yeah funny but...... peter and gamora are very important to each other. theyve been through a lot together. whether or not you like their romance is whatever but them telling each other “i love you” in infinity war was such a HUGH DEAL considering everything they went through as individuals..... and now that development is Gone. and it sucks.

rly i felt all the female characters in endgame got the short end of the stick in this movie :/ like sure theres that One Group Shot... and sure it made whiny men cry so that’s great... it’s cool but like it felt so shallow to me! the bare minimum! very few of the women in that scene actually significantly contributed to the plot of endgame.... like it’s So Easy to put all these women in one shot but it’s a whole other thing entirely to give those women actual Roles in the plot. they even fridged another women in the Literal Exact Same Way they did in infinity war! the exact same way! like the 1st time they did it was unnecessary and unjustifiable to me and then they really went and did it again exactly the same! ALRIGHT! COOL I GUESS!

also captain marvel was so hyped up as being the Key to defeating thanos but the film comes out and i dont think she’s even in it for like 5 minutes total screentime. i mean i wont lie. seeing her fight thanos no problem was really really cool and i loved it but then it lasted what? 10 seconds? 

idk it’s just. rly rly easy to give superficial nods to the strength of these women and while, yes, it bothers whiny man babies and isnt harmful... it’s still superficial <:/ like these are just tiny itty bitty baby steps. it’s 2019 please allow female characters to play larger more significant roles in stories..... alluding to their strength is not the same thing as that. hire female writers.

overall i didnt have a Bad Time watching this movie? i actually laughed plenty. all the scenes with scott are wonderful. but overall the movie was just... fine... and left me feeling empty and indifferent like a lot of other mcu films leave me feeling <:) despite it’s faults i enjoyed iw a lot better and so endgame felt anticlimactic to me which is yknow. bad. considering it’s supposed to be a big finale.

sorry to be a big ol No Fun Allowed boy but i mean. the thing that i find so attractive about these films is Character! like ive only rly enjoyed a handful of mcu films but the reason i keep coming to watch the new ones is bc the idea of these characters is so attractive to me! this expansive superhero universe gives a big opportunity to explore a whole bunch of different characters and a whole bunch of different character dynamics. and while for the most part the mcu is good at producing distinct, conceptually interesting characters.... theyre generally not very good at utilizing them and building them up... which is why they leave me feeling empty

[millennialdemon]

So, it’s pretty rare when I find something that just isn’t palatable to me - like how I can’t get invested in JJBA or Ghibli movies despite them not being decidedly bad. Not hugely offensive, not terribly written (for the most part, I think), and beloved by many, many people. Something about them just doesn’t click with me and that’s fine and I don’t fault those things. 

Perhaps the only other thing I can’t invest in or I in fact, find fucking unbearably annoying/insufferable to watch that has more to do with my personal taste than anything else is a certain type of character - the trickster. Pulling strings and acting none the wiser and devising self-serving plots and is never punished. Always succeeding because of unexplained prowess and skills that appear in the moment when you think they might have (finally) been outmatched. 

This is (part of) why I couldn’t watch more than 4 episodes of Magic Kaito, and almost dropped JJBA: Battle Tendency at various points - the protagonists annoyed the fuck out of me. I’m a miserable harpy but even I don’t like watching things and wishing heroes would lose and die. 

Now, I’m bringing this up because Bungou Stray Dogs is to me, the show equivalent of that character type I can’t stand. Other people somehow enjoy the exact same aspects I hate, and in the same way I can’t get into JJBA or Ghibli, I can’t necessarily fault them for it. Even if I’d argue that this show is still technically flawed and shallow and cheap, it’s not that different from a lot of contrived light novel adaptations I’ve seen, so... but anyway. I’ve suffered through 4 episodes so far and each one was plagued with the same problems as the first, and then some. It’s this tonal whiplash “””crime””” show with absolutely no story or character driven stakes with awful humor, offensive gags, and some of the cheapest, most poorly executed character drama I’ve ever seen. I hate, so far, literally everything about it. 

It’s a uniquely awful experience for me, because I very rarely vehemently dislike something to this level unless it’s severely problematic, which this show, while it definitely has it’s fucking issues lmao, isn’t too bad overall. It’s just the most grating, unsatisfying show possibly ever, to me. I haven’t watched it in almost a month because I was so fucking disappointed the horrible Inc*st Gag siblings didn’t die, plus episode 4 was kind of the nail in the coffin for me re: Accepting nothing interesting or dire will ever happen in this clusterfuck show and all the insufferable characters will never face a challenge severe enough to amount to anything compelling for them because lol problems aren’t problems for us because we’re so clever and strong! Die already.

Anyway! I’m picking it up again because... well. I don’t know. I don’t expect it to get better to be honest, and will likely never decide what it wants to be and continue doing the same obstructive, unfunny humor segments to bookend violence that amounts to nothing significant because everything can be handwaved, etc. So without further ado let’s start episode 5 and have a bad, bad time!