#reviews make a difference

[deimosatellite]

[stealingyourbones]

Never will I stop with the steadfast notion that folks in the DPXDC fandom should interact with at least some form of canon DC media.

There are comics, tv shows, radio dramas both old and new, podcasts, movies, magazines, so much shit that intentionally avoiding the media is simply preventing yourself from spawning new ideas and gaining a new appreciation for a fandom that you’re already in.

The Superman Radio Show has episodes 11 minutes long. A lot of the TV shows don’t have episodes that surpass 30 minutes and most are nearly fully clipped on the official DC YouTube channel. The amount of fan made motion comics is astounding. The amount of fanmade animations is equally as incredible.

[aroaceleovaldez]

they girlbossed Sally Jackson

[raayllum]

me watching s4's ranking on RT go from 40% to 56% in just one day bc of my review fic-athon exchange

[destinywillowleaf]

one of a kind living in a world gone plastic

baby you're so classic

@most-tragic-character-tournament

(all my thoughts in the tags)

[captainbuzzard]

realized i never posted this one. the gamma4 partycrabs.

in the gamma4 universe, a group of baltimore highschoolers attempted to kill the olde one. the final blow of the battle did not kill her, and for the following decades, she lay dying in the bay. she was due to die during the short circuits, and an awful and awkward high school reunion of sorts took place to witness her death and steer her subsequent rebirth.

[ID: a grid of 20 squares, with each corner square containing a drawing of a crab with an eye in its center, with a smaller crab with a party hat in the eye's iris. the remaining 16 squares each show an uncolored digitally drawn portrait of one of the gamma 4 baltimore crabs team. name, stats, and position are shown above each portrait. End ID]

[alongtidesoflight]

so here's my honest thoughts on dragon age: the veilguard, after ~40 hours of playing. i finished the main quest after having finished all companion quests and major faction quests. just to clear up what content i saw, i played as an elven transmasc rook who is a member of the lords of fortune. he romanced lucanis (although after finishing the game i'm now leaning towards taash). i don't know what's happening in playthroughs that have a different race, gender identity, romance or faction going on.

full spoilers ahead, i mean it. don't read further if you want to avoid them. i don't want complaining about it in my asks.

oh and also, if you're worried because of a few negative reviews online i can comfort you by saying don't give a fuck about a certain big name youtuber who is very much tied to bethesda franchises giving this a negative review. i'll explain why.

i'm starting off with the things i liked

the game looks really pretty. i was worried it wouldn't feel like thedas anymore (with them trying to "focus on northern thedas only" i thought they'd make a clear cut in environmental design. they do and they don't. it's complicated. i'll elaborate on it when talking about the negative stuff). anyway it does. minrathous feels like kirkwall. treviso enchanted me like the winter palace did. the hossberg wetlands reminded me of the hinterlands and a couple other inquisition maps. arlathan looked like... arlathan. the crossroads were different, but familiar. overall i like the way it looks and feels. it's thedas, with a twist. it's a good one, and gives everything a solid but unique feel.

combat is top tier. if you're a hardcore dragon age player you WILL miss the tactical aspect of it for a bit, but i promise you, once you're used to the way the combat works, you will be lapping that shit up. and once you get to ability combos you'll mourn the control you used to have over your companions in battle a bit less

the MAIN quest and its story. i expected worse, way worse. and for a while the game even had me tricked (harr harr you'll get it in a second) it is Really That Much Worse. but holy shit was it good. i walked away satisfied ngl.

your choices have SOLID weight. there's consequences, good AND bad. i got minrathous blighted, ruled over by venatori, and the leader of the shadow dragons ultimately died because of my decisions. i made those at the beginning and throughout the game. he died at the end. DAVRIN died because i didn't expect what i was saying to have that much weight. i thought i was in the clear. he had hero status. well turns out, your choices can still get your companions killed even if you do everything right. i fucking love him. he shouldn't have made that sacrifice just because i told him to do everything it takes once.

the inquisitor, morrigan and dorian being there, surprisingly. there's also negatives to this though, see below.

speaking of companions dying and the inquisitor playing a bigger role: the final quest feels like me2's suicide mission. i was blown away by it and the fact that i got to see the results of all my efforts playing out in front of me.

bioware are NOT trying to redeem solas. they love him as a character yes, but i wasn't forced to see any good in him. he betrays you. he fucked my rook over twice. he fucked him over right back, for good this time (the veil wasn't torn down, i anchored it by binding him to it, he's doomed to uphold it). but solas really lives up to his name as the trickster elven god. rip to all the people who grew really attached to him over the years.

varric died. if you like him that's probably as hard reading it as it was watching it. varric died and the game lies about it until the very end. when the realisation hits, it hurts. but in the very best way.

the amount of care they put into gender expression and trans identities this time around. (i'll add onto this with negative points as well too).

rook feels very much ingrained in the world of thedas. he doesn't ask questions that expose the player to lore through dialogue as if he's stepped foot into thedas for the first time. those conversations feel very solid and good. i hope other faction players got as much joy out of this as i did.

and the things i didn't like and boy there's a lot unfortunately

the music. let's just get that out of the way holy shit. it doesn't feel like it belongs in this universe. it gets so incredibly sci-fi-y at times you'd think it's taken straight from mass effect andromeda. there's not a single song unique to veilguard that i really enjoyed. it broke my immersion, real bad. hearing a busker play the tavern songs from inquisition on a lute right after i killed some venatori with wobbly bass songs playing in the background is just odd. weird tonal shift. don't like it. it's made for people who like flashy light-weight cinema.

tevinter nights is required reading. the podcasts are required listening exercises. the game is so fast paced, especially at the start, that there's no time to introduce you to characters and how much weight their names carry in-game. i would not have known who half these people are if i hadn't skimmed over tevinter nights. i'd care even less about them than i already did. there is no time to get properly attached to them. people will act as if you're talking to a legend personified and you'll be thinking man goddamn which chapter of tevinter night were they in again and what did they do???

there's a weird mismatch with the animations. you'll have beautifully fluid ones, like emmrich casting spells. and then you'll have rook's face animating in the most unnatural manner that's sorta reminiscent of mass effect andromeda's "my face is tired" addison, when their emotions SHOULD be landing with the player rn instead.

i'm not vibing with the art style. sometimes it works. most of the time it doesn't. at points i felt like i was watching tangled.

that also brings me to some of the dialogue. same issue. i am watching frozen. i am watching tangled. someone on the writer's team really likes the adorkable trope. bellara is its victim.

for all the talk about identity, bioware sure doesn't like theirs. the grey warden armor got a redesign again and it just makes them look like a generic army. i hate it lol

in general, i don't like the armor design. the wardrobe/appearances system is fine, but it's just not helping if all the armors are just... kinda bland or downight bad looking? and don't get me started on the lords of fortune armor. that is orientalism personified.

the world states should have been carried over, full stop. i know they said they didn't because they want to separate what happens in the north from what happens in the south, which... i could have lived with that. but the inquisitor sends you letters that keep you up to date on... the south of thedas. you learn that there's a blight again, that people are standing strong but it's difficult, denerim's fallen, the rulers are taking care of it, orlais is fighting and they're successful for a while, etc etc. what's good bioware. i thought we don't care about the south this time around. why are you feeding me so much boring generic information. if you're not gonna show any of it and just write letters, then carrying the world state over should not have been an issue. i have a game dev background. those few lines of code would not have broken your budget or pushed your engine's limits. fuck right off.

this gripe of mine carries over to all the cameos. as a lord of fortune you have to deal with isabela a lot. it's fun. i missed her. you get to go drinking with her and taash and bellara! also my hawke romanced her. she's not mentioned once. they had the opportunity to put a sentence or two about her in there with not a lot of effort, trust me.

when varric dies, all she has is a single line about it. for gold, for fortune, for varric. she only says it if you interact with her on your way to the final push. that's not mandatory.

morrigan is there. kieran isn't. the old god soul that mythal and then solas absorbed? who cares at this point, the gods are dead now and solas is locked away for eternity. i suppose? why is morrigan there. she feels unneeded. i wish they'd just left her down south, at least that way i wouldn't have had to witness her god awful redesign.

dorian at least feels as if he belongs in this story. the shadow dragons are a crucial part to protecting minrathous. he's also weirdly underutilised. isabela and morrigan had more lines than him in my playthrough.

on the topic of romance: bro that was underwhelming. no, genuinely. you know when romance picked up a bit? after the point of no return. i heard maybe two lines of companion banter about it before that. maybe i missed something which i honestly doubt, but romance did not play much of a role in lucanis's storyline. i saved his grandmother as he wished me to (and if you read tevinter nights you know she was rather abusive and their relationship not the healthiest) and told him to focus on his family. a reunified family my rook wasn't even introduced to as a partner at the end of all that.

really, do not buy this game if you're only in it for the romances. others might be better, lucanis's basically gave me nothing. except for an outing (the second coffee date i had with him, it was getting repetitive) all of it played out once i committed to the final quest. the sex scene was a fade to black. annoyingly right after davrin died. if you're looking for well paced and good spice, pick up something else. the sweet talk and the final goodbye were nice though.

for all the good the ever-presence of gender identity does, it is brought up in such a disruptive manner too. it doesn't even play out naturally if you CHOOSE the lines that are meant to be said. hearing the words trans and non-binary in this setting doesn't feel right, and i'm saying this as a trans guy. i think it could have been handled more gracefully. the amount of times my rook went "i'm a MAN" as if he's about to start drumming on his chest and roaring any second now got super nerve-grating. "i'm so glad you're into me... the me who is trans. remember?" just. tell me one trans person who'd talk like that to a person they've grown close with and are trying to romance. this game doesn't handle sexuality well, so all this hey my body might not look like the way you're expecting it to look talk amounts to nothing anyway. i feel about this the way i feel about krem: this is partial exposition to trans experiences... packaged up for cis consumption. the ONLY exception to that is interacting with taash. holy shit was all of that heartwarming and bro did it feel good and natural to talk to them about theirs and rook's gender.

rivain and nevarra are new locations added by veilguard. they're also incredibly underwhelming, small and constricted maps. rivain is a coastline with a few ruins. the hall of valor is a partial ruin nestled into a cave on a beach, with a fighting pit. isabela is there in her skimpy outfit commentating your pit fights. that's it. i'm sorry if you were looking for a bustling pirate cove or whatever. you're not gonna get it. the nevarran crypts btw are a long ass dungeon crawl. that's it.

speaking of maps. i thought people were being dramatic when they said you're gonna be fighting the same enemies on them again and again. i thought they were figure of speeching it. they're not. you WILL fight the same amount of enemies. in the same spot. every time you reload the map. best to stay on a map and clear out the enemies and do as much questing on that map as you can before leaving, because you WILL have to do it all over again once you return.

the three choices i made for my inquisitor didn't matter lol she didn't have to face solas and therefore couldn't stop him at any cost as she had sworn (maybe because my rook tricked solas into binding himself to the veil, there was also an option to fight him. would she have stepped in? who knows). blackwall wasn't mentioned. and either her using a small amount of her forces in the final fight was the reason the civilians of minrathous fared so well..... or it just didn't matter. ultimately i think she had very little impact on anything

[megamindfandombookclub]

[solradguy]

I thought the early 2000s "strong yet naked/mostly naked woman kept in her place by stronger, bigger, beast/monster or gang of racist caricatures" trope* was known by basically everyone but I mentioned it as a criticism of this older art book I'd flipped through recently to a friend and it turns out it isn't lol Maybe I've just read too many Heavy Metal issues... It used to be HORRIBLY inescapable in any sort of mature art scene back in the day lmao

*This trope is different from the pre-2000s one because the women usually look like they COULD fight back for at least a little bit whereas the previous trope had them be completely helpless damsels in distress

[happypeachsludgeflower]

Gotta say, of all the protagonists in mxtx books, shen yuan is the most relatable. Why? I too would read an absolutely god awful trash terrible webnovel for the sole person of bitching about it.

[lanadel-heyyy]

this movie was legitimately terrible for multiple real reasons, but i will suffer anything for this man

letterboxd reviews of 57 seconds

[frobby]

my feelings about Yukio and his relationship with rin are that I feel like he so desperately wants to communicate with rin, to reconnect with him but he doesn't know how. They live together, they've lived together for years but slowly they've been drifting apart mentally and it's getting harder and harder to communicate. Yukio understands the idea of his brother. His reckless brother who loves him that he wants to protect because he's spent his whole life protecting him. But doesnt actually know that much about his brother personally and neither does rin for Yukio. Years apon years of keeping eachother at arms length it's hard to go back to when they were inseparable as kids and things were easier. At the beginning of the show they're both grieving but Yukio can't confide in rin. He just can't because he's the authority figure, he's the one in charge, he's the one with his life together and if that slips then he's really nobody just like when he was a kid and having his brother protect him but that backfires on him cuz he still after years and years even now when his secret double life as an exorcist has been revealed. He still can't figure out how to communicate with his brother.

[arson-09]

its very interesting to me how Tamlin is the character and High Lord that is heavily vilified (I would almost say even more than Beron strangely) when he is the only High Lord to have talked about d how he has gone about removing slavery within his court, protecting lower fae in general, and his court was open to immigration from other courts (i cant remember if its mentioned again in acomaf but in acotar fae from other courts are free to move to the spring court. example, Alis) and how overall he is a great leader. Especially when you compare him and Rhysand as High Lords.

The Court of Nightmares is well, a nightmare. Its existence is extremely strange and makes Rhysand look very odd. as well as its unclear how Rhysand gets his wealth. Velaris was a hidden city until acomaf-ish, which means it was locked (so no immigration or emigration which isn't bad per-say but does bring up how it works economically) and Rhysands inability or unwillingness to protect his citizens (not enforcing the wing clipping ban and allowing people to be abused in the CoN. and before anyone starts about him not being able to control the illyrians, why did he make it a law in the first place? It just makes him look bad) makes him look like a shitty ruler. His supposed "feminism" and friendship with the people of velaris doesnt answer these very important questions or justify the strange shit he does. Versus Tamlin, which you can refer to my opening statement for the comparison. Also to note, his rule only came into question and stability after Feyre broke into people minds (which I do feel is extremely gross and a huge violation of ones autonomy and privacy) and had to sabotage him. I won't comment how I feel about this in this post, but it says a lot that she had to go through such lengths to break him down. Especially after it was revealed he was in fact a double agent and never actually siding with Hybern.

The only time Tamlin is an arguably bad high lord is in acofas and acosf where he is in a severe mental crisis and not in a position to properly rule. But even then, it's not clear if this is actually causing harm to the land and people. It's probably not good because they don't have a proper leader but I can't believe it's a severe issue.

Its definitely a strange choice, isn't it? Cause I think anyone in their right mind would choose the anti-tyranny, anti-slavery leader who does his best for his people... and its somehow not our supposed 'hero'

"I once told you I would fight against tyranny, against that sort of evil. Did you think you were enough to turn me from that?"

Acowar, chapter 44

[danieyells]

How Much Is An SSR Worth?

Summary: Ren gets Taiga's help. SFW.

----

The Sinostra students looked up at the approaching stranger. Their looks were clearly unfriendly, untrustworthy, and some of them even reached in their blazers as if for weapons(were they allowed to walk around campus armed!?) Ren froze and grit his teeth, looking at the little group of gangsters and at the blood red mop of hair of their leader who didn't even turn around to acknowledge him. He was starting to regret thinking this could work--there was no way this was worth it.

Before he could start to back away, the Captain of the Sinsotra house tipped his head further back, directing a pair of bright yellow eyes at him from where they'd been staring emptily into the ceiling. Ren froze. The slow blink he received reminded him of a cat video he'd seen online, albeit significantly less cute and even less likely to be a sign of affection.

". . .who're you?"

Ren briefly felt like he'd been transported into a mafia movie. It was the gravel in his voice, or maybe the cold look in his eyes.

He floundered for a bit, trying to come up with a way to bring up why he came over that didn't sound ludicrous to a normie. Just looking at this guy, he wouldn't know a thing about what he was talking about or needed--but he knew he might be his only hope right now. Maybe Taiga caught on to that hopelessness, or maybe he was amused by the fumbling, because his dull expression became a curious and interested one.

"Oh. Ain't you one of Harry's kids?" Harry? Did Haru know this guy!? Somehow that made it worse. Taiga spun around in his seat to look at Ren properly, his excited expression showing off his shark-like teeth. Those might be cool, if not for that he followed this question up with, "you here to bring me my lunch?"

"Your lunch?"

"Yeah. One of my guys promised me he'd get me something to eat." Taiga gave a sideways nod to the Sinostra students who were sitting with him. "And Harry's place is full of all that fresh meat, ain't it? You ain't here to deliver anything for me?"

"Fresh--" He wanted to eat the anomalies? Was anybody in this place normal? "N-no, I'm not here to bring you anything!"

"Oh." Taiga deflated and pouted. "So, who the fuck are you then? You got a debt to pay? Lulu doesn't like me doing business outside the casino without him around, but I can still handle that."

This was definitely starting to feel like Ren was in over his head.

"I just. I heard some things."

"Oooh." Taiga, once again, thinks he's got it and smiles. "You need a loan? You want some illicit goods? You want somebody to turn up in Tokyo Bay?"

"What!? No!! Are you seriously saying all that shit in broad daylight!?"

"Maybe I'm not serious about it at all!" Taiga laughed, seeming amused by Ren's increasing discomfort.

"I don't need things from Sinostra! I heard some things about you! I need something from you!"

Taiga was quiet for a moment, head tilted and eyes wide like he wasn't expecting personal business. Then he pouted again, looking off to the side. "Is Lulu trying to. . .nah, he wouldn't do that. Not without tellin' me. . .selling someone's organs would be a lot more lucrative than whoring me out anyway." He muttered to himself for a moment, while Ren fished his phone out of his pocket and thrust it towards him.

He immediately jumped back as the Sinostra students drew weapons to point at him. Taiga held up a hand to stop them from gunning someone down in the cafeteria and stared dully into the screen.

". . .the fuck is this?"

"I don't have a lot of resources and I don't have a lot of time--and I heard your luck is incredible, and I just need you to press this button here."

Ren pointed at a confirmation button on the screen, careful not to tap it. Taiga stared at it as if it weren't two sentences worth of text and it was taking a long time to read.

He reached forward and tapped the screen, then snatched Ren's wrist when he tried to pull away and protest being taken out of it. A few colorful characters appeared from behind the darkened screen of the confirmation popup. The link advertising rates immediately caught Taiga's eye, and he tapped at the screen, scrolling through the numbers with increasing interest.

The rates for the most artful of characters were insanely low, and a quick tap of the gems in the top of the screen said they cost a pretty penny. He idly committed the prices and numbers to memory(where they were lost as soon as he moved away from the screen) to calculate the value of.

"What're you doing!? I just--you just have to do the pull! You don't need to look at anything else!"

"This is gambling!" Taiga said cheerfully. "Some real shit odds at that! What, you're going for that one? It looks kinda like you, kid!"

He pointed at a character near the top of the rate screen. "No, I pulled that one already, somehow. . .it's the topmost one I'm after. Everybody says it's completely overpowered and all of the new meta's based on this unit, not to mention the art--"

Taiga nodded along, the gacha having had drawn some of his interest as a gambler. Way less fun than a game with anything of interest on the line, but it still seemed interesting. Not the characters or units or anything of that sort, but the act of pulling for things of value. . .he supposed it was named after gachapon machines. But the virtual nature of it meant less limited potential. . .so the artificial scarcity was formed by limited time features like this.

Quite the business tactic. Romeo might like it.

"So you just need me to press this button here, yeah?" Taiga navigated back to the gacha as though he'd been playing the game since release. He was almost invested now. "And you want me to get you this thing or whatever."

"Yes!! If you can!!" Taiga sneered and popped open the confirmation menu.

"Kid, I don't lose bets--"

Once again guns were pointed at Ren as he grabbed Taiga's finger before he could do the pull. Not appreciating the contact, Taiga smacked his hand away, and he winced at the feeling of his rings colliding with his palm.

"You--" he swallowed, trying to ignore the threats. The look on Taiga's face almost made him want to call it quits again. This was already way more effort than it was worth. . .to a normal person, anyway, but this pull could be the true beginning or the end of his playing this game. "You need to hold down on the screen, after you press the button. It doesn't seem like it does anything, but I swear I've gotten better pulls that way--"

"I don't need your superstitions, brat."

With that, Taiga tapped the button without even looking at the screen, glaring uncomfortably into Ren's face. At first, he was frozen, before the audio cue prompted him to spin the phone screen to face himself. "Wait, you did a single pull!? You were supposed to do a ten, the rate is higher that way!"

"Don't need it."

"But if I don't get it that's a waste of my--!!!"

Ren's jaw dropped as the screen flashed a multitude of colors. The gacha music faded out, and a new track began to play, a popular voice actress' recorded line playing accompanying the subtitled dialogue being spelt out across the screen. His eyes went wide as the SSR's unique animation played, and he watched on as his desperately desired pull came through on a single, effortless shot from a stranger.

"Holy shit you got it." Taiga grinned, looking over Ren's shoulder at the new unit, completely unaware of what it meant. At most, the art was kind of nice. Ren looked like he was holding in tears--or maybe a scream. "You actually. . .in a single pull!?"

"Gyahahaha! Told you I don't lose, kid!" He threw an overly friendly arm around Ren's shoulders. Ren looked at Taiga like he was a hero. Of course he did, until Taiga said, "hey. . .you ever heard the expression 'there's no such thing as a free lunch?'"

For a moment, Ren remembered all of the things Taiga mentioned before. Debts. Deaths. Illicit substances. His face fell, and Taiga gave him a squeeze and a friendly shake and a smile that was more sinister than sincere. For a moment, Ren wondered if he'd gotten himself into something he couldn't get out of. Did this single gacha pull just pull him into a life of crime? Was he about to be some sort of drug runner for the local organized crime house? Did he need to kill somebody? Could he kill somebody?

". . .What do I owe you?" It was just a gacha pull! Why did he go to the guys who look like the mob for a gacha pull!? What a stupid idea, just because he overheard that the captain of Sinostra had some unbelievable luck. The triumphant music playing from his phone and the animated character on the screen offered him no comfort and Taiga bore his sharp teeth in a grin.

"I'm glad you asked! Lulu throws a little bitchfit whenever I do somebody a favor without a price, even if it's a personal favor and not a Sinostra one." He leaned his cheek against Ren, tapping painted nails against his chest. "And I'd guess you'd ordinarily need to do a lot more than just one pull to get what you wanted, yeah? Maybe ten, maybe even a hundred?"

Ren nodded stiffly. The rates for this game were abysmal. But it was addictive.

"So the value. . .it's way more than just one, isn't it." He couldn't remember the numbers he'd seen earlier exactly, but he could do some calculations in his head. If he bothered to. But he knew enough people with gambling addictions to know how Ren's mind worked. This service was nigh invaluable to him. "And I saved you money. That's practically worth interest."

"W-wait a second!" Ren pulled away--or, perhaps Taiga let Ren pull away. "This didn't cost you anything but a few seconds, maybe a couple minutes! The gems you spent on the pull, they weren't even 1,000 yen in total! I could pay you that out of pocket and--"

"Y'know what? You're right. It didn't cost me a thing, what'm I even saying!" He laughed and smiled in a friendly way. Ren didn't trust the sudden change in attitude in the slightest. He'd let his guard down. But it couldn't stay down. "Hell, it was even kinda fun. All the flashy lights and pretty sounds--and you got your little drawing out of it, right? Not to mention, you're one of Harry's kids, aren't'cha!"

"Eugh. I am not his. . . ." Ren stopped himself, then grit his teeth. This could save him. Haru could be of use for once. "Y-yeah, I uh. . .he's a great. . .father. . .? Anyway, if you had fun and I got what I wanted, then we're even, right?"

"Sure, sure!" Taiga clapped Ren on the shoulder. "Hey, you got more of those things you want? It was pretty fun, I wouldn't mind helping you out again if you ever want more!"

This appealed too heavily to Ren's sensitivities for him to stay on guard like he wanted. ". . .really? If you don't get results, I'm not asking you again."

"Yeah, really! I'm waiting on my lunch anyway, what else've you got?"

". . .and I don't have to pay?"

"Nah, no cash. No crazy favors. Don't even worry about it."

That specific wording should have tipped him off that he wasn't entirely off scott free, but the idea of more free SSRs in his account catalogue enticed him too much. Taiga looked at his phone screen and tapped through to the gacha again.

". . .well. . .the unit gets stronger if you manage to pull it a second time--or, up to five times. So we could try pulling for it again. And there's another unit I wanted to get--oh, and in a different game--"

Taiga went along with Ren's increasing excitement, tapping away at the screen. Ten-pulls glimmered with high rarity units and supports even as games were switched. A few times Ren even asked Taiga to perform actions in the game for him, cheering quietly when he got him through difficult story missions that had been keeping him stuck in place for weeks.

All the while, Taiga insisted there was no charge.

But he didn't say anything about no debt.

And he may have said that Ren didn't have to pay, but that didn't mean he wouldn't extract value from him in other ways. In a few weeks Ren would be staring into the pen for some anomalous animal, wondering how he would get it all the way to Sinsotra without arousing suspicion, and trying not to think of the way he saw Taiga eat raw meat and bone that day, complaining to the student who'd brought it for him that it wasn't fresh enough but it'd do.

He refused to blame himself for all of this though. It's not his fault the guy with improbable luck was a mafia boss. It's not his fault the mafia boss was an underhanded carnivore. And it sure as hell wasn't his fault he was assigned to the house full of animals!

And it wasn't his fault that the gacha rates were so low he went this route either. It's capitalism's fault! It's the fault of companies preying on gambling addictions! He's not to blame for this! He refused to be!

[goldensunset]

everyone told me she was terrifying but they didn’t tell me she was so cool and nice

[lunanoc]

Tibetan Sea Flower (藏海花) Drama Review or Why I Think It’s a Laundry List of Crimes Actually

Because somebody had to do it

So the Tibetan Sea Flower (or 藏海花, or Adventure Behind The Bronze Door) drama, meant to be adapting the Tibetan Sea Flower novel, first sequel following the main eight volumes of Daomu Biji, has been out for a while now, and I finally got around to actually finishing it. And I have Many Things to say about it

That I can tell, a lot of people in the English-speaking part of the fandom have praised it for various reasons, and while I’m glad there are people who enjoyed it, I’m not one of those people, so for the sake of variety of opinion I thought I’d share my thoughts about it. I could honestly write an essay because that’s how many crimes this drama committed in my opinion, but no one wants to read All That so this is going to be an attempt at a highlight reel

TLDR; Tibetan Sea Flower is firmly at the bottom of my list of DMBJ adaptations with Lost Tomb 2.5. It’s only slightly above that because unlike Lost Tomb 2.5, Tibetan Sea Flower has a few redeeming qualities at least

First off, some things I did enjoy, or if not enjoy, that I can appreciate in a “there was a vision” sense

My favorite part of this drama was the first 4 or 5 episodes, and the choice to start with the tail end of volume 8 of the main story was a smart decision in that it gave a lot more emotional impact leading into ZHH proper. The start of the drama is fast-paced without feeling rushed, and while my opinion on the ZHH drama isn’t entirely based off of doing a one-to-one comparison with the book (mostly because adaptations inevitably change things to adapt to a new medium so they can’t and shouldn’t be one-to-one copies), the fact it followed the book to a T was a touch I appreciated. The cinematography, directing, and music for the most part are also a strong point this drama has going for it. I can also appreciate that the PingXie married vibes were off the charts to the point where every single time someone said “you’re the patriarch’s chosen one/friend” they might as well have been calling Wu Xie ‘Zhang furen’ it would have been the same thing. The addition of Ten Years Later (and the Fishing King extra which isn’t really an extra anymore since it’s been published as part of Ten Years Later) is also a decision I can appreciate in theory, and from a storytelling perspective makes for a fulfilling and thematically relevant ending. Chen Minghao as Pangzi also almost single-handedly carried the entire drama, iconic, thank you for your service king

Now that that’s out of the way, I can get into the meat and entire point of this post, that is some of the multiple crimes the ZHH drama committed because trust there are Many

I think the fact it started out so strong to me is what makes the rest of it worse. I’m not even sure if I can actually coherently explain the extent of the psychic damage this drama gave me by the time I finished it. There are sometimes significant differences between the drama and the book, which is something I expected because it’s an adaptation, and departures from the source material aren’t necessarily a bad thing. So it’s not that it’s different from the book that’s fundamentally a problem for me. What is a problem, however, is when an adaptation decides to make choices that fundamentally compromise the integrity of both the characters and the overarching plot. I don’t tend to expect anything from DMBJ adaptations, mostly because in general their quality varies, and they’re the main source of the misconception that DMBJ canon is a mess of inconsistencies and lack of cohesion when the original source material is by opposition generally both consistent and cohesive. The ZHH drama is one of those drama adaptations that decided to take the equivalent of a sledgehammer to everything from characterization and lore to any hope of cohesion between it and either the other drama adaptations or the books

The Zhang family lore takes the biggest hit. The casual obliteration of it is probably my biggest beef with this drama, and I can already hear people saying “but it’s not obliterated if it’s thematically adjacent, it doesn’t have to copy the book!. Now listen. It can be thematically relevant and not need to copy the book without creating completely unnecessary plot contradictions with the rest of the story, and as far as the Zhang family lore reworks are concerned, some of them aren’t even thematically appropriate, and sometimes are done in a way that’s?? Honestly baffling to me. Zhang Nian’s entire arc and existence is one of those, because he manages to make himself and the entire subplot that stems from him completely irrelevant by episode 20 where the drama just goes “...so anyway!”

There’s also the choice of having the tianshou (or the heavenly gift) be some sort of bug poison/disease that’s implied to be the only thing holding the Zhang family back from being “free” and living a normal life, and so from the moment Xiaoge decides to take on the mantle of Zhang Qiling for his own personal reasons (which is another issue I have), he alone bears the weight of the heavenly gift, and the rest of the family either disperses into living perfectly normal lives, or is at a bit of a loss as to what to do, which while this last bit is true to some extent for the overseas branch in the books, it stems from circumstances forcing them rather than a goal they wanted to achieve. I’m going to be very generous in blaming this change on censorship, but this alone, surface level as it is, is already contradicting the Zhang family’s most important thematic relevance in the story beyond the lore itself: the fact that they’re meant to be a family led astray by their own hubris and isolationist elitism, eventually switching gears from re: Queen’s Banquet an ancient people likely cursed by primordial entities beyond human understanding into becoming Other and seeking a cure for that, to a widespread and powerful clan pulling the strings of an entire empire for centuries upon centuries seeking a way to achieve true immortality

In the books, the Zhang family’s downfall is their own hubris that blinds them to their own failings to the point that eventually they lead themselves to being wiped out entirely by the Wang family, at least as far as the main branch is concerned. In the ZHH drama, their downfall isn’t even a downfall so much as it’s like they decided to retire and are having post-retirement depression. Zhang Nian is a pawn for the Wang clan, and in that sense he’s “relevant”, but his story is long-winded at best and undermines the impact and importance of the Wang family itself that ends up becoming a barely relevant footnote much like Sand Sea itself

The only thing I’m willing to believe is that Xiaoge either suffers from a more powerful version of the tianshou or is the only Zhang family member at present that suffers from it, mostly because we have no other living members of the main family alive to know if the tianshou ever became a burden Zhang Qiling alone carried for the rest of the clan. I’d be here forever if I started getting into how the ZHH drama somehow managed to lowkey retcon the Zhang family lore that was hinted at at the end of Queen’s Banquet, but it’s impressive how it managed to do even that. By the time it reached this point in episode 31 I was honestly just head in hands

Characterization issues in this drama also exist, and the three characters who suffer from it the most are probably Zhang Haike, and to a certain extent both Xiaoge and Wu Xie. Zhang Haike’s character is changed to the extent he might as well be a different character altogether so I won’t bother going into detail or I’ll be here for a while (TLDR; more or less erasing the fact he wears Wu Xie’s face permanently erases the somewhat antagonistic and overall complicated relationship he has with Wu Xie), but Xiaoge and Wu Xie have smaller changes that create contradictions down the line

Despite the drama mostly (but not entirely) disproving that Xiaoge specifically chose Wu Xie to carry on the task of tending to the tibetan sea flowers, it doesn’t discard the possibility entirely, which creates a number of problems, namely the fact that Xiaoge’s entire reasoning for going behind the bronze door in Wu Xie’s place and pushing him away the whole way up Changbai Mountain was to try and push Wu Xie out of tomb robbing and conspiracies altogether. Xiaoge sets up contingencies to help Wu Xie if he reaches specific points of no return, but going behind the bronze door is essentially Xiaoge doing the exact opposite of choosing Wu Xie to do a task, he’s aggressively unchoosing him. He also doesn’t ever relegate his duties as Zhang Qiling to other people

The same goes for the reasoning behind Xiaoge becoming Zhang Qiling being a deliberate move to help him find out who his parents are. This I can’t entirely discredit simply because the Three Days of Silence extra (the story of Xiaoge meeting Baima) gives no specific timeline or indication of his reason for going to the Jila temple besides that he was looking for a woman but he didn’t know who she was, and ZHH the book itself never talks about the circumstances behind Xiaoge becoming Zhang Qiling. The early main books place emphasis on Xiaoge’s driving force being discovering his identity and by extension his place in the world, so it’s not impossible to consider that might have been the case when he was a child as well. This is mostly vibes and not so objective, but the vibes are different, and to me Xiaoge becoming Zhang Qiling carries something more akin to a lamb offered as a sacrifice that accepts the role it’s been given, coupled with stepping up to a duty the Zhang family had essentially abandoned by that point, as opposed to doing it for strictly personal reasons. The same goes for the entire reasoning behind the tianshou wanting to kill Zhang Haike’s wife and taking control of Xiaoge to do so, because there’s irony in making Xiaoge, historically the least traditionalist Zhang alive outside of his actual duties as Zhang Qiling, Zhang family traditionalist number one via tianshou as if tianshou ever cared about the Zhang family’s isolationist politics or other earthly forms of power or symbols

Wu Xie is more complicated in that part of the problem for me is that I don’t particularly like Zhang Luyi as Wu Xie. Or in general as an actor. I’m aware this is a personal preference, but a lot of the more emotional moments were lost on me because to me he simply wasn’t conveying whatever emotion was meant to be conveyed convincingly. The biggest issue I have with Wu Xie’s portrayal outside of that is the subtle erasure of his character development. Reducing the Wang family’s relevance and impact cheapens their importance in the overarching story, which in turn cheapens the Sand Sea plan and its extreme difficulty, and the heavy personal cost of it for Wu Xie, which takes shape in the changes to the origin of his self-harm scars. Again, changing things from the book is fine, but when it alters what I consider to be a fundamental element in a character, it becomes a problem

The ZHH drama makes a point of showing that the first two scars that Wu Xie gives himself stem from what’s basically survivor’s guilt. He failed to protect the Zhang family, like he failed to prevent a situation that forced the Yinshaluo (I’m not sure that’s the name of the tribe considering all the place names in this drama are fake) warrior to sacrifice himself to stop the storm. Wu Xie punishes himself because he feels he failed, because he felt like he could have and should have done better. There are elements of that in the reasoning behind his scars in the Sand Sea book where their origin is explained, but the fundamental difference is that ZHH drama Wu Xie’s actions and reasoning come from a place where survivor’s guilt aside, he’s not objectively to blame for situations beyond his control, and in that sense, he’s “morally good”. Sand Sea book Wu Xie’s actions and reasoning come from the perspective of a man who deliberately orchestrated events in which he manipulated various people into becoming his pawns on a very high risk chessboard. Each scar represents a bad choice of move of the pawn that resulted in the death of his chosen sacrifice, so the element of failure is there, but the difference lies in the fact that contrary to the ZHH drama where he fails to save people, in the book, the people behind the scars are his victims that he willingly led to their deaths. He punishes himself because it’s his way of tolerating the intolerable from himself. Wu Xie’s amorality for the greater good in Sand Sea is such an important facet of his character, and by shifting the origin of those scars, it takes away from that element that the ZHH drama doesn’t hint at at all, or barely

There’s so many more things I could get into about this drama, like how paralleling Wu Xie and Xiaoge as being similar feels like a fundamental misunderstanding of their characters because them being different is the entire point. It’s doubly ironic when NPSS said recently that the entire point is that they’re entirely different people who only after the ten years have passed meet in the middle where their trajectories truly parallel each other: one of a man who went from a god to a man, and one of a man who went from man to god. I could talk about how Mama Bear Pangzi is a carry-over from the Reboot drama that doesn’t accurately reflect either what Pangzi is like in the books or how his dynamic with Wu Xie functions in them. I could talk about how despite there being good intentions in adding those scenes, shoving in as many impactful moments from the main story and Ten Years Later + Fishing King as they possibly could ended up feeling like boxes were being ticked off a list and it took away from their impact to the point some of those moments felt off or bland. It didn’t help that whether it was a directing issue or a filming issue (not an acting issue because Zhang Kangle was overall a good interpretation of Xiaoge), Xiaoge had practically no actual chemistry with either Wu Xie or Pangzi. I could talk about this drama’s pacing issues where it yo-yoed between going fast then excruciatingly slow. I could talk about the irony of an adaptation managing to both take a sledgehammer to the source material in a way that’s honestly criminal, yet ironically also being one the least newcomer friendly DMBJ adaptations

It’s safe to say I won’t be watching the ZHH drama again. This post exists mostly for the purpose of expounding on why I didn’t like this drama despite its strong start instead of just saying “it was bad”