#season 1 fight scene feels

[lemongogo]

they should get to kill each other at least twice .i think

[honeycreammilkshake]

we know that fighting is sukuna's canonical "love language"....

so what is this???

the level of physicality and closeness in all their fights is making me rabid. sukuna really gives yuuji such special treatment .... not only does he spare yuuji's life so many times when he could have killed him, he also keeps fighting yuuji in close combat when he literally has a cursed technique that can slice people apart from a distance.

this is a choice he's making to get so skin-to-skin with the enemy he's supposed to hate.

also, the way he was (unnecessarily) cradling yuuji's neck almost gently as he literally beats into him, how he's grabbing onto yuuji and just manhandling him — i'm no going to lie, it's almost carnal. how is so much intimacy in all of their fights compared to everyone else sukuna clashes with?

and the way sukuna is so expressive and uncharacteristically emotional whenever he gets to face yuuji. that brat just works him up so bad—

it's especially interesting when sukuna looks almost proud or excited to see what yuuji can do.

also.... sukuna, why do you look so excited for yuuji to come beat you up? is this like a date to you???

i mean, to be fair, sukuna probably considers violent brawling a love confession so no wonder why he's always ready to take on yuuji.

even in the official art he's so obviously into it.

the way he's smirking down at yuuji, holding onto his wrist, it's like he can't stop touching him. probably misses the closeness they used to have back when the brat was his vessel tbh.

i especially love that one scene where he literally sat on yuuji

he didn't have to do that. he just wanted to pin his brat down <3

"you're mine, you're not going anywhere without my permission" kind of thing really. like a bully with a crush would do.

in conclusion, sukuna gets off on throwing his boy around and feeling him up. it's just fact.

and yuuji is more than likely into it, too....

this means they share the same kinks traits to me tbh. if sukuna really did survive, i would like to believe that they would go on fighting hard with each other, even over the stupidest things. domestic cursed husbands to me <3

[puppppppppy]

I just skimmed through the art part of your blog and holy bajeebus your LMK art is so beautiful and the headcanon ideas you come up with are so good I wanna steal em-

Kinda wanna see like a part 2 of the little angst you did between MK and Macaque a while ago. It's so interesting and I wanna see Macaque's reaction in your art style. (You don't have to of course, it's just a suggestion [idk if i spelled that right])

Thanks for reading and hope you have a good day/night!

Hope this is to your liking ^^

Part one here

[a-shade-of-green]

yeah so that scene where mike kicks down the fort in his basement in s1 is definitely supposed to be paralleled by will taking down castle byers in s3. just if anyone cares about when mike turned his back on being a kid.

[ink-going-insane]

update on my mcd rewatching journey! i finished all of it!! here have another out of context note from season 2 lol

i loved the series and it was great but i also feel like a lot of the characters were really messed up near the end and bits of the lore was kinda inconsistent so it bothered me a bit, but i was mostly upset about how a lot of characters end up being ooc at a lot of points (at least in my opinion). i would say more but uh. i don't wanna ramble too long...but i'll put some stuff in the tags cuz why not

i will say personally my least favorite season is probably season 3 because of both the time skip and a lot of other factors that personally bothered me. i still wish it was actually finished though :(

anyway time for me to now rewatch mystreet -w-

[mochasucculent]

SOLID video, highly recommend

[navree]

ik you haven't been watching season 2 but i think they gave tb some actually intresting conflicts! baela having a messy relationship with her dad, rhaena being sent of to care for kids at 17-19? and rhaenyra being constantly undeminded by her council (not couting the strong boys i think the writers forget they exist)

Baela absolutely should have a messy relationship with her dad, given the behavior we've seen from Daemon as a father specifically (ignoring Rhaena for not having a dragon, sending Baela to live on Driftmark for ten years so he can prioritize his full-blooded Targaryen children, completely disregarding both of his daughters after the death of their mother and being utterly unsupportive and rushing to marry someone else who he had sex with the day of Laena's funeral). So that's something I hope they'd do more with, though I doubt it considering that Daemon is at Harrenhal now and is gonna spend the rest of the season being tortured by Alys, hell yeah. I'm leery on Rhaena's arc because, as I've mentioned before, it seems like they're gearing up to just give her Nettles's storyline, which is such an atrocious writing decision that it beggars belief, but there is something interesting in her feeling underappreciated.

And one thing I've found interesting, if they're doing it intentionally, is something I've seen other people talk about, which is a certain selfish disregard Rhaenyra has when it comes to her stepdaughters. She doesn't want Jace patrolling on Vermax because of what happened to Luke and wanting to protect him, but she has no problem having Baela patrol on Moondancer, and there is Something to the fact that she orders this after she learns that Daemon has done something that's significantly weakened her position and had a big fight with him about it. She can't entirely punish him, so she's taking it out on his daughter instead. Rhaenyra wants her sons to be safe, so she sends them to safety and then kinda tacks on Rhaena at the end to essentially just play nursemaid, separated from her remaining family (and the seat she or her sister should be entitled to inherit but can't because Rhaenyra propped up obvious non-Velaryon bastards as the rightful inheritors and essentially stole it from them) and literally told to mother these three very young kids. That's kind of a shitty thing to do, and speaks further to a disregard Rhaenyra has for Rhaena and Baela. It might not be intentional on her part, but it's there, and I think it's an interesting tract for both her character and for their's as well.

Rhaenyra being undermined by her council and consistently questioned is part of a larger trend we've seen in her writing since season 1, so I'm not surprised it's still there. Even after she was made heir, she still wasn't taken seriously as a political player, as seen when she tries to make a suggestion during council in 1x02 but almost everyone ignores her and Viserys still wants her to be his fucking cupbearer as if she's not going to be the sovereign of the Seven Kingdoms after him and might need to learn how to participate in the political process. And with the show's insistence on attempting to portray the insidiousness of the patriarchy and misogyny within political systems, especially as it surrounds female leaders, it makes sense to carry that on in Rhaenyra's queenship. She's the queen, yeah, but she's still a woman, so lesser qualified men of lower rank still think they can talk over her and be the ultimate authority. It's what we see with Daemon in 1x10, he ignores Rhaenyra during her miscarriage to plot a war council as if he's the deciding voice here, and when Rhaenyra defies his wishes, he puts his hands on her, because she's his wife and he doesn't think she should be able to do that, ignoring that she's the monarch and is not only allowed to disagree with a subject, but by the rules of her world could literally have him killed for physically attacking her. Do I think it's a message the show is writing particularly well? No, not really, but that's because this show just has a lot of writing failures that are becoming glaringly obvious as it goes on, but it is consistent theming from them.

Meanwhile Jace I think is just there to look pretty, and honestly can someone tell me if Corlys has a plotline at all? Is he doing anything?

[existentialcrisis-9-5]

Was randomly suggested a miraculous season 6 criticism and I have been plagued for hours now with visions of a rewrite. I’m going insane please help.

[fortune-maiden]

While I am still enjoying Link Click Season 2, dear god the pacing is a mess

[drindrak]

cannot believe i have to wait for the next act in the age of bingeable tv

[galaxyspark-6e16]

i didn't say anything last it felt a little weak but damn season 5 really surpassed my expecation

and now im scared.

[ashtnketchup]

that new castlevania netflix show is uh.......it sure is somethin

[stromblessed]

Mizu, femininity, and fallen sparrows

In my last post about Mizu and Akemi, I feel like I came across as overly critical of Mizu given that Mizu is a woman who - in her own words - has to live as a man in order to go down the path of revenge.

If she is ever discovered to be female by the wrong person, she will not only be unable to complete her quest, but there's a good chance that she'll be arrested or killed.

So it makes complete sense for Mizu to distance herself as much as possible from any behavior that she feels like would make someone question her sex.

I felt so indignant toward Mizu on my first couple watchthroughs for this moment. Why couldn't Mizu bribe the woman and her child's way into the city too? If Mizu is presenting as a man, couldn't she claim to be the woman's escort?

However, this moment makes things pretty clear. Mizu knows all too well the plight of women in her society. She knows it so well that she cannot risk ever finding herself back in their position again. She helps in what little way she can - without drawing attention to herself.

Mizu is not a hero and she is not one to make of herself a martyr - she will not set herself on fire to keep others warm. There's room to argue that Mizu shouldn't prioritize her quest over people's lives, but given the collateral damage Mizu can live with in almost every episode of season 1, Mizu is simply not operating under that kind of morality at this point. ("You don't know what I've done to reach you," Mizu tells Fowler.)

And while I still feel like Mizu has an obvious and established blind spot when it comes to Akemi because of their differences in station, such that Mizu's judgment of Akemi and actions in episode 5 are the result of prejudice rather than the result of Mizu's caution, I also want to establish that Mizu is just as caged as Akemi is, despite her technically having more freedom while living as a man.

Mizu can hide her mixed race identity some of the time, and she can hide her sex almost all of the time, but being able to operate outside of her society's strict rules for women does not mean she cannot see their plight.

It does not mean she doesn't hurt for them.

Back to Mizu and collateral damage, remember that sparrow?

While Mizu is breaking into Boss Hamata's manse, she gets startled by a bird and kills it on reflex. She then cradles it in her hands - much more tenderly than we've seen Mizu treat almost anything up to this point in the season:

She then puts it in its nest, with its unhatched eggs. Almost like she's trying to make the death look natural. Or like an accident.

You see where I'm going with this.

When Mizu kills Kinuyo, Mizu lingers in the moment, holding the body tenderly:

And btw a lot of stuff about this show hit me hard, but this remains the biggest gut punch of them all for me, Mizu holding that poor girl's body close, GOD

When Mizu arranges the "scene of the crime," Kinuyo's body is delicate, birdlike. And Mizu is so shaken afterward that she gets sloppy. She's horrified at this kill to the point that she can't bring herself to take another innocent life - the boy who rats her out.

MIZU'S ONE MOMENT OF SOFTNESS AND MERCY, COMING ON THE HEELS OF HER NEEDING TO KILL A GIRL TO SPARE HER THE WORST FATE THAT THIS RIGID SOCIETY HAS TO OFFER WOMEN, AND TO SPARE A BROTHEL FULL OF INNOCENT WOMEN WHO ARE THE CASTOFFS OF SOCIETY, NEARLY RESULTS IN ALL OF THEIR DEATHS

No wonder Mizu is as stoic and cold as she is.

And no wonder Mizu has no patience for Akemi whatsoever right before the terrible reveal and the fight breaks out:

Speaking of Akemi - guess who else is compared to a bird!

The plumage is more colorful, a bit flashier. But a bird is a bird.

And, uh

Yeah.

I like to think that Mizu killing the sparrow is not only foreshadowing for what she must do to Kinuyo, but is also a representation of the choice she makes on Akemi's behalf. She decides to cage the bird because she believes the bird is "better off." Better off caged than... dead.

But because Mizu doesn't know Akemi or her situation, she of course doesn't realize that the bird is fated to die if it is caged and sent back home.

Mizu is clearly not happy, or pleased, or satisfied by allowing Akemi to be dragged back to her father:

But softness and mercy haven't gotten Mizu anywhere good, recently.

There is so much tragedy layered into Mizu's character, and it includes the things she has to witness and the choices she makes - or believes she has to make - involving women, when she herself can skirt around a lot of what her society throws at women. Although, I do believe that it comes at the cost of a part of Mizu's soul.

After all, I'm gonna be haunted for the rest of this show by Mizu's very first prayer in episode 1:

"LET" her die. Because as Ringo points out, she doesn't "know how" to die.

Kind of like another bird in this show:

[space-blue]

Disappointed in the Vander backstory

I fully expected that it was coming, but I'm disappointed in the timeline all the same.

The "Vander got upset because a fight against Piltover Silco instigated killed the woman he loved" was literally my first draft for my longfic Fathers and Daughters, and I ended up scrapping it because I felt it was too cheap and wouldn't justify the violence of his actions against Silco.

"When she died I lost my head" he says in the letter.

But when she died you actually dropped your gauntlets and picked up the girls and everyone has been assuming this was the moment you swore off violence...

The fact she goes on to let Vander name her kid, and seems to be thick as thieves with them, and ALSO tells them of the pregnancy before she builds up the courage to tell her partner... Tells me that surely... SURELY by the time Vi is 10-11, whatever she is on the bridge in season 1, she would KNOW SILCO as her mom's bestie, no??? Not just Vander.

It feels like this entire angle is pulled under the rug to simplify the conflict in act 1.

I do appreciate being right on the money with Silco knowing and being friends with the mom, and having known Vi as a baby. I think it makes sense, especially if he was an important community leader.

I just hate her death being the catalyst of Vander's actions against Silco. It means that the timeline actually like this:

Mom-Silco-Vander are best friends. Silco is "Bozo 1" and has been leading the transformation of the Lanes with Vander's help. He's already planning his nation of Zaun. His notebook is literally saying "NZ" for Nation of Zaun.

At an ONGOING confrontation with enforcers, Silco throws a molotov cocktails that doesn't seem to even kill an enforcer (Powder and her innefectual bombs parallel? The entire scene is intercut with the monkey bomb clapping so... The scene leading to a friend's death also parallels the events of Jinx's birth.)

As the smoke clears/the POV looks down, we have the reveal that the girls' Mom is dead.

Vander admits the blood was on his hands as well, meaning he either started this confrontation with Silco, or fought just as badly/increased the violence (and we see him murder enforcers later on). Anyway he admits to carrying the blame, and apologized in person to Silco for the dubbed "betrayal".

Then he went home, shaved, dragged Silco into the Pilt, and tried to drown him *because their common friend died at the failed uprising*.

He's then haunted, seemingly, by visions of Silco being dead:

To me it's sort of weaker and sadder, as it establishes Vander as someone more flawed and less ruthless. It's not that he wanted the Lanes, it's not that Silco was getting in the way of what he wanted.

Vander was out there happy with everything they were dishing out, right until their actions cost the life of a friend, and he broke, emotionally, and BLAMED it on Silco, going so far as to kill him (or try).

He surrendered his gauntlets, picked the children up, tucked them in at home, shaved (I cannot stress this enough), then took Silco into the fucking river and brutally attempted to murder him.

Then he massively regretted it and left little breadcrumbs of apologies in case Silco found them and returned to him.

So, canon couple, first off lol

Fellas, is it gay to hang your jackets inside each other's in your secret hideout? Is it gay that all your core hidden memories begin with your mate smiling at you?

Yes, yes it is. Zaundad is canon and I'm not taking commentary.

Secondly, that means Vander was an emotional ticking time bomb who wasn't ready for the price to sacrifice in order to gain their freedom. I really wonder what the alternative reality would have been like, were Silco the one dying on that bridge.

Anyway, it brings some twisted sadness to the situation, because the mom wanted Zaun "no matter what" for Vi's sake, her child's future. But Vander decided that lives weren't worth spilling over that dream and tried to kill Silco over it, before teaming up with Grayson to continue enforcing a status quo.

So that means that Silco, even as he raises Jinx, is continuing her mother's dream, of building Zaun, a country that's safe for her children, "no matter what".

But very sadly the show also acts like Silco doesn't know the kids, and like the kids don't know him. Powder, sure, but Vi not knowing Silco is just downright stupid. Not even knowing him by name? When her mom was out fighting alongside him??? The mom is ALSO a miner, very clearly working with Silco and Vander, alongside the nameless poor husband.

I feel like this doesn't really solve the issues that were already raised when we speculated about act 1. It just clarifies that Vander was truly, willfully a force of oppression inside the fissures, working against the revolution necessary for Zaun becoming possible.

But it implies Silco didn't recognise Powder and Vi, and that Vi didn't recognise him or understand how he knew Vander. It's a disservice to the story, because that tie, that old bond, could really have worked to dramatize the sacrifices Silco is ready to make, as well as the depth of Vi's hatred for him.

But the show acts like they're strangers and that Vander's death is the core beef between them until Jinx enters the picture.

And then there's the Benzo scene, when Vander holds his wound from Silco's knife, and says "we both know there's worse than enforcers out there" WHO ARE YOU FUCKING TALKING ABOUT??? Yourself? You seem to be the worst thing around here! It seems clear he knew Silco was alive but had nothing to blame him for by then.

I'm left with holes that take the shape of "shock value" and "plot twist".

"Ooooh Silco knew the mom, twiiiist, but please don't think about the implications, because we wrote season 1 without taking this in consideration."

Feels like another job for fic writers, but IDK if I have the strength for it. I just like my own version better.

At least now we know that Silco did not IN FACT DO anything to "deserve" what he got. I'm sorry, but throwing a molotov at enforcers when fighting for your freedom is based and Vander was dishing death right there next to him.

The base violence necessary for change, eh? Vander just delayed the price being paid for Zaun's creation.

[listentomerant]

just a character analysis about xo kitty, specifically how kitty falls in love:

it is very obvious that kitty needs a deep emotional bond to fall in love - its why she is very in love with dae when she first comes to KISS in season 1. dae lying to her makes them grow apart, because she can't trust him as much as she's used to, so she can't come to him with her problems. in addition, kitty needs her partner to be open and honest with her, but he doesn't give her that chance by not telling her about the fake relationship until it's too late. that is a large reason why they don't work anymore, and why she's already moved on mentally.

then you have yuri - kitty develops feelings for her as their emotional bond grows (they discover their mom's friendship, she helps with juliana, etc) . it's clear that she's still not over her when they get back. however, kitty does start to move on after yuri stops talking to her as they're fighting. i believe a key moment in this process is when kitty is trying to tell her something about her parents in the storage closet, and yuri just brushes her off. there's definitely some distance after that moment, which is cemented in ep 6, where kitty kind of confirms how much that hurt her and stops having k-drama moments with her.

this character analysis is not meant to throw either dae or yuri under the bus. they're both teenagers, dealing with a lot of outside issues that influence the way they act. dae couldn't be open with kitty in the way that she needed, and yuri is definitely self-centered (which she acknowledges, and tries to work on). kitty fell for both of them because they had that emotional connection, but when that connection falls apart, so do her romantic feelings.

the reason minho is the best partner for her (at the moment, at least) is that he's open with her, while also being consistently there for her (like in the hot tub scene). she doesn't see him as an option (even in the heist scene, he's not her first choice) until after her feelings for yuri have kind of gone away. then, she can see that minho gives her balance - unlike how dae never came to her, minho asks for her help with his fight with dae, showing that he can be open with her. unlike yuri, he helps her with her family stuff even when they were fighting, prioritizing kitty over residual anger he might have because he knows how much this means to her.

relationships are a give and take, and kitty needs that to form the emotional connection she needs to fall in love. over season 2, minho grows into the perfect person for her for all the reasons mentioned above. i hope season 3 will cement that relationship, because there was honestly so much development for these two and i love them so much.

[speedprofessor]

I love how this finale just underlines how dogshit Eric Wallce is at concepting fight scenes

Every fight scene is either just people throwing lightnings at one another or just random force pushes