#so many plots feel scattered in S2 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

nfcv-saltmine · 2 days ago

Text

I have thoughts on these

There's so many things wrong with the show itself, that we don't really talk much about the seasons' covers. Well, here I am to remedy to that! Of course, what follows are just my personal opinions. I don't have a carreer in graphic design or illustration or any art-related field, so I'll have to base everything on my own sight and thoughts.

S1: The best cover in my eyes. And I'm not JUST saying this because it's the only cover that actually reference the games (it's basically just a redraw of the first Castlevania game's cover art. With the wrong Belmont, but still pretty cool), though it definitely helps. I'm saying this because the composition is great, it's clear and straight to the point, there's not a lot happening. You look at it and understand that Trevor is the protagonist, he uses a whip, and there's a big bad vampire living in a castle that he has to defeat. The artists took advantage of the fact it was one still image to really put time and effort into it, and give it a different style than the animation: this is a digital painting, not a digital drawing. This art is the most respectful piece to the games that came out of the show. It looks epic and gothic. It holds many promises... but honestly, in retrospect, it feels like a fucking lie. We did NOT get what this cover promised us.

S2: Now for this season, they completely ditched the painting style in favor of just. Drawing like they draw the animation. It literally looks like they chose one frame from the show for each character, and copy/pasted them into the art. I wouldn't be surprised if it was truly what they did. It looks lazy, and doesn't reach the charm of s1's cover because of it. The background is nice (and Lisa in the middle of a cross of fire is neat), but if you look closely at it, it looks like a 3D model, wich clashes with the characters. It's also really really red, when the first cover had a very nice balance of red and black. It genuinely looks like they just put a red filter over their background and called it a day. I can conceed that the characters are not clustered, at least. They're all scattered around the art, which allows us to "breathe", and the challenges our main characters will have to face are still pretty clear... especially Alucard's. :)

S3: This season, just like the next, decides to put all of it's characters in the center of the picture, and it honestly looks heavy to me. They're back to the painting style, so it looks less lazy than the previous season, and the background is definitely very cool with all those eyes. It gives an aura of mystery that make us want to know more. Each character also hints at what they're going to go through during this season... and that's when it starts to be a problem. At first, I thought the problem was that there was too many characters at once. But I counted, and from s2 to s4, the covers show 8 important characters each (+a little Dracula and Lisa in the 4th). Yet the cover for s2 looks way less clustered, there's more room to breathe. And I think that's because, in this season, all characters were linked together by one thing: Dracula. The main trio's goal was about Dracula, Carmilla's goal was about Dracula, Hector and Isaac served Dracula, Godbrand as well. They were all going in one direction: to Dracula. It helped that him, Carmilla, Hector, Isaac and Godbrand all were at the same place. S3, however, has Trevor and Sypha going on their own little adventure, Alucard having his own little plot, Isaac having his own adventure too, Hector and Lenore have their own story going on with Carmilla in the background, oh and Saint Germain exist. When the first two covers showed us one big plot, tied to multiple little plots in s2's case, s3 and 4 can't. Because all the characters are off having their own thing in their own corner. So of course, it was bound to make the cover suffer. It tries to tell too many things at once instead of focusing on the more important characters... which we can't even tell who it is at this point! Because they're all protagonists!

And now to end, S4: As I said previously. Very clustered, no creativity in the composition, it just remade s3's cover. Except this time, you don't even have a cool background. Booo! What is this?? Literally just shades of grey! When you zoom in, it looks like they painted a big skull on the top of the background, but it's barely noticeable. I thought it was the moon, or some random dust, or clouds. Yeah it's cool to hide a hint in the cover art about the appearance of Death in the season, but it doesn't make this background any less lazy. Also at this point, we completely lost all gothic vibes. What is this cover even telling us? Carmilla is angry, and people are sad and serious and they fight during the season? Trevor looks hopeful, at least, which is kinda nice to signify that this is the last season. Oh and there's Dracula and Lisa. There's really nothing exceptional here, characters might not be looking like screenshots from the episodes, but the painting style looks more "clean" and simple. Dracula and Lisa kinda look out of place lol, and I don't know how to feel about this very obvious wink at the games when by this point the show completely shat on them. I have to laugh at how the cover suggest the reuniting of Trevor and Sypha with Alucard, that only happens at the end of the season. Carmilla, Hector and Lenore being on the same side makes sense, since their plots are the most connected to each other's here, but Isaac and Saint Germain are just paired together because that's how the composition was made. Hm, could've said the same thing for Isaac and Alucard on the previous cover, actually... I mean at least s2's cover paid attention to the characters it paired together (when, out of the four seasons, it was the one who would have been the most justified in just putting them all together at the center of the piece). For s3 and 4, you can tell they did put a LITTLE thought into it, and paired correctly most characters... but ended up with two characters with no link to place each time, and just, forced them with the rest. I feel like the show owed it's fans more creativity for their last season.

So yeah, the more we went on, the more we lost in composition and goth. And epicness. I also chuckled when I realized Trevor has his back turned on three out of four seasons. Which is even more funnier when you realize that it's to showcase his family's Crest.... when said family has absolutely no importance here and the only times it was mentioned it was to get shit on. You can't really argue that the Belmont Hold is important, because after season 2, it becomes irrelevant. Alucard shows it to the non-twins for five seconds and then mentions it here and there afterward, and that's it. Trevor has been more defined by the fact that he drinks beer than by the fact that he's a Belmont. I'm surprised he isn't shown drinking in any of the covers, really.

TLDR; S1 is great. S2 looks boring, but is clear and makes sense. S3 looks a little better and mysterious but is too heavy. S4 looks boring and heavy and lacks any storytelling.

#anti netflixvania #i really only like s1's cover. and s3 a little bit #just because I think the eyes and colors are nice #I even like how Lenore looks but that's because she reminds me of Ayami Kojima's art the most (Alucard is so damn ugly though)#(Carmilla also keeps on getting uglier and uglier but that's not a cover art's problem.#i just always had problems with the way her hair melts into her skull)#anyway I tried to be fair here. maybe I am a little biased. but i did warn that it was MY opinions.#as in that's a subjective critique

0 notes

beastabyss666 · 2 years ago

Text

S2 episode 1 of Helluva Boss came out several days ago, but I was too tired to make a post about it. I don't think I can pick my thoughts together, so I'll just randomly scatter them.

Stolas' dad is incredibly cartoonish. He doesn't remember his son's name, leads him to the circus which is, by definition, isn't a place for rich people and then complains that there are many poor etc. It was made to show that he is "evil evil neglective father", but I felt like I'm watching old Cartoon Network shows. And yeah, I predicted that he's an asshole.

Swear words like "bitch crying" were completely unnecessary, especially for someone from toffs. But Vivienne isn't out of her cringe phase though she is an adult woman.

The arranged marriage trope was very predictable and lasy.

They made Stella a one-dimensional bitch who tells everyone that her husband is bad in bed(I'm sorry for this joke). This is very sad and looks like a typical piece of writing by a 10-years old. Not surprised, anyway.

The design of Blitzo's dad is very lazy. He just has bigger horns. That's all I can say.

Blitzo and Stolas met when they were kids....What? They are really the same age?

These inserts with black screen and text gave me a feeling that I'm watching something really cheap.

Some moments had abrupt transitions. Like between 0:48 and 0:49 or between 18:03 and 18:04.

If Stolas' dad has so many children then why his palace is always empty? Vivienne is greedy for drawing background characters?

Why did he even spawn so many children if he doesn't know how to be a good father?

Why doesn't Stella care about Stolas' adultery if she literally screamed in anger because of that few episodes ago? Vivzie thinks nobody will notice this?

That song had a lot of potential, but it's middling and it was awfully performed.

The dialogues were pretty unrealistic and bad written. This show has 3 writers now, but I don't see any difference from previous episodes.

That vulgar scene between Blitzo and Stolas was cringy af.

Stolas isn't so annoying as before though I see that Vivzie just tries to make him innocent.

Why did Stolas and Stella make a child if they don't love each other? Because his dad said so?

The visuals are pretty disappointing although they weren't wonderful before. Animation is often janky and the palette is uglier than usual.

Blitzo and Fizz as kids are pretty cute, but that's all good I can say.

Overall, 2/10. Vivzie's show never was really good, but this is just hackwork. It wasn't worth the 8 months of waiting. My jaw dropped because of the quality of everything. I also laughed because the plot was super predictable. But of course fans ate even that. This is funny as hell. Sorry for the long post.

#anti vivziepop #spindlehorse critical #vivziepop critical #anti helluva boss #helluva boss critical #helluva boss criticism #helluva boss critique #helluva boss salt

90 notes · View notes

dogbearinggifts · 4 years ago

Note

What are your thoughts on tua S2? Did you feel like the characters grew? What did you like? What did you not? I’m interested in your perspective. Your analysis are super thoughtful and interesting!

Aw, thanks, Anon!

Overall, I really enjoyed S2 and thought it was a solid follow-up to S1. I do have my quibbles about it, so I think (for ease of reference and because my thoughts are a little scattered today) I’ll list some of my personal highlights (in no particular order) before getting into what I didn’t like as much.

Big spoilers ahead.

Allison. I thought they handled her storyline especially well. Of all the siblings, I think she had the most difficult obstacles placed in her way (not only is she a Black woman landing in 1961 Dallas, but she’s a Black woman landing in 1961 Dallas who can’t even speak in her own defense for a year) and they sugarcoated exactly none of it. The writers pulled no punches when showing what civil rights protesters went through, which just made their nonviolent response all the more breathtaking. Allison’s fear and anger during those scenes were palpable even as she kept them hidden. But along with that horror, we see the kindness and warmth of the Dallas Black community, the women who take her in simply because she needs their help, and her love for Ray, perhaps heretofore THE most thoughtful husband ever portrayed on screen. I loved him, and I loved him and Allison together. While I understand and respect his choice to stay in 1963, I wish they’d gotten more time together. They both deserved it.

Vanya. We got to see how much the baggage from her past affected her by glimpsing what she might be like if it were taken away. It’s an interesting philosophical question, and it was explored well, in my opinion. She finds it easier to love and be loved, and she stands up for herself more readily—but she also doesn’t hesitate to use powers she can’t quite control and threatens Five without fully realizing how dire her threat is (or how it might dredge up traumatic memories she doesn’t know exist). The moment where Ben finds her curled up, fully convinced she’s a monster, was heartbreaking. I loved watching her find happiness with Sissy, even if that was fleeting (and dear god, Sissy deserved her happy ending with Vanya, dammit, I don’t care if it would fuck up the timeline). Her patience and sweetness with Harlan were just beautiful. And the way she used the confidence she gained during her amnesia to fully come into her own not to exact revenge on her siblings, but to save them, was fucking phenomenal.

The humor. There was a lot more humor this season, and it was awesome. So many iconic scenes—Olga Foroga, Luther babysitting two homicidal Fives, Elliot awkwardly lecturing his guests on the history of Jello, “NEW TIMELINE NEW ME,” “Your vagina needs glasses,” AJ the fish gobbling up the cigarette bubbles, Five getting to say “fuck”….this season was a lot funnier than the previous one, and I think that was one of its strengths.

Klaus’ cult. It was played for laughs, which I both expected and thought was the best way to handle it. He didn’t want to start a new religion with himself at the center; he just wanted to not get thrown out of any more diners, but Destiny’s Children had other ideas. The “I too am a fraud!” scene was hilarious and tickled the question of whether or not a religion founded on false pretenses can still help those within it find meaning.

Luther. Getting him away from his dad, his siblings, and the Academy was exactly what he needed to become the pure of heart and dumb of ass genius we always knew he was, but his first major step in that direction was heartbreaking. We all knew he’d be rejected once he got to the Academy. We all knew Reginald would rip his heart out and stomp on it in his admittedly fashionable shoes. It gets Luther out on his own and forces him to become his own person apart from his dad, but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch. He got the positive character development he needed, but the catalyst was tragic.

Diego. We see, for the first time, exactly how Reginald kept him in line—not with meds or with PTSD-inducing torture, but with words. Even when he knows Diego as little more than a stranger, Reginald is able to rip off his skin and fling it in his face with a single diatribe; and even at 30, with years away from his dad, Diego is left unable to speak, feeling as if all of his accomplishments up to that point were the work of a dumb kid who thought he was smarter and more capable than he actually was.

Luther and Diego sharing a braincell. Luther has bad ideas. Diego has bad ideas. When they put their bad ideas together, they get terrible ideas. I loved watching them work together as a team, rather than being at each others’ throats for most of the season, even if I’m left hoping Olga Foroga had a pleasant and quiet day after that phone call.

Reginald. At first glance, it may look like the writers were trying to make him likable so they could parade him around as your average abusive-parent-with-a-soft-side. But it’s more nuanced than that. Abusive parents (and abusers in general) often fly under the radar because they fool outsiders into thinking they’re good people. They’re active in their communities. They give to charity. They have friends who attest to their virtue, significant others who think they’re the greatest. And that’s what we see with Reginald. We see him as the rest of the world did: an intelligent, eccentric man with a sharp sense of humor who cared deeply about scientific advancement. That’s how he evaded suspicion—because there were stories from years past of lively parties at his mansion, of what a gentleman he was to Grace and of how he did everything he could to save little Pogo. But those stories would all have come from people he considered his equals. When he’s with people he considers his inferiors—aka, the Umbrella kids—he’s openly condescending and demeaning. We get to see how he fooled the world, and it is chilling.

Elliot. He deserved better, and you can ship him with any one of the Hargreeves kids and get the cutest thing ever.

The Swedes. They said so much while speaking very little.

Ben. He got more personality and screen time, and it was glorious. His love of his family and resentment toward Klaus practically leapt off the screen. The way he says “I’ve missed you all…so much” once they’ve all left was one of those right-in-the-feels moments; and watching him get so much of what he’s wanted for years when he possesses Klaus was beautiful.

Now, as for things I took issue with….

Ben. I understand why they ended his arc the way they did. I get that they were probably afraid the Klaus/Ben dynamic would grow stale if they didn’t change it somehow and wanted to give him a larger role in S3. His death(???) was heartbreaking and extremely well-done. But it also wasn’t foreshadowed. We never got any sense of what ghosts in the TUA ‘verse are, so the fact they can be destroyed by a ton of sound-turned-energy or by going too far into someone’s psyche or whatever happened….it’s not that it doesn’t make sense so much as there’s not enough evidence to determine whether or not it makes sense. It feels like the writers just kinda made that up so they’d have a reason to change Ben’s relationship dynamics, but if that’s the case, couldn’t they have done it another way? Couldn’t they have made it so the immense energy or psychic woo-woo or whatever gave him a power-up instead of destroying him? Vanya transferred some of her energy into Harlan and brought him back to life. Couldn’t something similar have happened with Ben? And if it tied him to Vanya as well as to Klaus, great! More fodder for angst and humor! (”Vannyyyyyyyy, stop hogging Ben!” “You got him for 17 years, Klaus, you can part with him for 20 minutes.” “Guys, don’t I get a say in this?”) I’m glad they didn’t write him out of the series entirely, but I still wish they’d kept him and all the character development he’d gotten throughout S2.

Episode 10. It looks like they tried to cram half a season’s worth of developments into 45 minutes. Twenty minutes in, I’d already said “Wait what the fuck” half a dozen times. A lot of those moments were explained later on, and I was able to make enough inferences to fill in any lingering plot holes, but…still. Too much stuff, too little time. E9 was a perfectly satisfying ending to the season. Yes, it leaves the siblings stranded in 1963, but they could’ve tied up those loose ends in the S3 premiere.

Lila. She’s an incredibly fun character, but her arc is kind of a mess. Most of that is due to E10, and I do feel that more time to let her arc breathe would’ve worked wonders, but I’m left feeling like her turn from “Handler is the best mom ever and I lurve Diego too” to “KILL DIEGO AND HIS EVIL FAMILY” to “Handler is a bad mom and Diego is right” happened too quickly.

The Commission. Okay, so, the Handler announces the entire Board has been killed, and she’s stepping in as director even though everyone appears to know she’s been demoted (and demoted pretty severely—she went from having an office bigger than some apartments to being a case management drone). There’s suspicion and lots of it. But then, La Resistance is….ten or so people in a single room? And when she calls the temps agents to her side, thousands of them show up ready and willing to fight and die? I dunno. Just seems like there should’ve been more splintering going on there. Again, I think they needed more time to tie everything up.

Aside from those complaints, I loved the season. I set aside most of a day to binge it, and I do not regret that decision at all.

1K notes · View notes

plentyelegant · 4 years ago

Text

never mind about the shape I'm in, I'll keep you safe

(alternative title: Klaus just loves his baby sister send tweet)

Summary: After getting bested by their umpteenth threat to the world's continued existence, the siblings not only get scattered across the city, but their powers scattered amongst them. After waking up without his powers, a clue which of his siblings' powers he did have, or where his siblings actually were, Klaus starts looking for them... only to see possibly the most heartbreaking sight he could have imagined: Vanya, obviously burdened with his powers of seeing and hearing the dead... in a cemetery.

Words: 3.8k

Pairings: PLATONIC Klaus & Vanya (and some platonic Klaus & Allison near the end)

Warnings: Hurt/Comfort. Sensory overload/panic attack. Discussion of seeing/hearing ghosts. Mentions of death, drugs, and Reginald's abuse (The Mausoleum). One mention of insanity (klaus being worried his powers might drive vanya insane).

A/N: This is my first tua oneshot! I've been working on it since Friday because... well... the idea wouldn't leave me alone until I got it out in a fic. I actually did it instead of finally finishing s2, so... it might be a bit ooc? But I hope you like it! Title from "S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W by MCR. Based on the second addition of this post of mine. <3

---

Well, Klaus thought, isn’t this just swell?

“Swell” was probably, by far, one of the most inaccurate ways to describe this debacle that he could come up with. Just earlier that afternoon - Oh, what a nice afternoon it had been! - he and his siblings were dealing with some threat. Maybe it was more nefariousness from the Commission, maybe they were preventing the apocalypse of the week. Who knew? Who kept track, anyway, of the fires they’d been putting out?

(Well, Five probably did. But that wasn’t the point.)

But it just so happened that this fire they’d been putting out had been able to best them and scatter them across the city. What’s more, this fire wasn’t an ordinary fire, but one like themselves, or that chameleon-esque one from the 60s. Maybe that fire had intended to erase or absorb their powers, and the act had been botched, or this was their intent all along. It didn’t matter, really; all that mattered was that this fire managed to give his and his siblings’ powers a whole switcheroo before scattering them.

(Alright, metaphors aside, it wasn’t a fire. It was a villain.)

Klaus’ only reassurance that their powers hadn’t been erased entirely (or taken by the villain for themself) was that, after they’d sent a blast out at him and all of his siblings, leaving the six positively reeling, Klaus had seen a very confused Luther start “blipping” everywhere, ala Five’s teleportation, before they’d all been scattered. Oddly enough, he’d been grateful for seeing that; if Luther had Five’s powers, it stood to reason that each of them had the power of another sibling instead of their own… right?

Well, it was what Klaus was going with.

But when he came to without any of his siblings around, a clue where they were, or that power-swapper in sight, he decided against trying to figure out which of their powers had been thrown at him. He may not have been the smartest of the bunch (that was either Five or Allison, really. Probably Allison. Yeah, it was Allison.), but even he knew it would have probably been a bad idea to see if he could control things’ directions like Diego, or rumor things into existence (or nonexistence) like Allison, or make use of Luther’s super strength.

And he could only imagine the catastrophe that might come about if he tried to use Vanya’s powers. The only one who knew how to best handle them was Vanya herself. And even she wasn’t exactly well-acquainted with them!

No, no, no. The best plan - if he could call whatever the fuck he was improvising a plan, which just didn’t seem like the right thing to do - was to find the others, figure out who had whose powers, and realize which one he had through process of elimination.

Speaking of elimination, as Klaus searched through the streets for where the other five ended up, he’d at least been content with the power-swapping ensuring that he wasn’t hounded by the dead as he attempted to round up his siblings. Silence from the ghosts was a pleasantry he’d never quite been used to, especially silence that hadn’t come along with either being as high as a kite or drunk as a skunk. At least, it made it easier to look for the others.

“Allison!” he called out as he walked the streets, “Vanya! Diego!”

Of course, sober or not, he still drew stares from passers by as he called their names. That was fine. He just had to find them as soon as he could. They couldn’t have been far!

(Well, they very well could have, but right now, Klaus took quite a liking to trying to reassure himself through falsehoods so he didn’t panic. It was fun.)

After an hour or two of searching fruitlessly for his brothers and sisters, he eventually turned into a lesser-populated street of town - a street which harbored a cemetery.

He winced at the sight of the large plot. He always hated going into graveyards; they only bombarded him with ghosts (which he’d never forgotten Reginald taking advantage of with that fucking mausoleum). Of course, the dead couldn’t do much to him now, since he’d been stripped (or relieved?) of his usual powers that afternoon, but that didn’t stop him from grimacing.

But his grimace fell when he saw someone in a patch of trees far off on the opposite side of the property from where he’d stood outside it’s gates.

“Oh no,” he mumbled to himself as he shook his head, “Oh, no, no, nononono-”

He wished he was mistaken in thinking he recognized that quivering little frame, curled up against a tree with her forehead against her knees as she kept them close to her chest; he wished he didn’t recognize her all-black outfit from earlier, or her brown hair which she’d had her hands dug into as she covered her ears.

He’d recognized that posture all too well. Not from her, but from himself; from his days locked in the dark of that mausoleum, trying to cover his ears to block everything out and make himself small, because he felt small - and he was, he was just a kid - and curling into a ball because he’d had no one there to hold him but himself.

It was Vanya.

Vanya had his powers.

...And she got dropped in a fucking cemetery.

“Oh, fuck!”

Klaus half-ran, half-stumbled into the graveyard. Thankfully, it was nearly empty, and the few people there paid no attention when he ran across the yard, dodging and hurdling over headstones when he’d needed to. He’d dodged them on instinct and reflex alone, because all he could think about was that scared little ball up against that tree. He didn’t try to call to her; not only was he almost out of breath, but he feared that trying to call her name while she didn’t see him would just add to the bombardment of voices that no doubt rang out in her head.

As he got closer, the sight just became more and more heartbreaking, but it was at its worst when he’d gotten right in front of her, and he could hear her sobs.

“Go away.” she pleaded, a little muffled with how her head had been ducked behind her knees, “Please, please just go away.”

Klaus knew she wasn’t talking to him, but the ghosts. She wasn’t even aware of his presence yet. And he couldn’t let that stand, so he dropped to his knees and put his hand on her arm.

“Vanya-”

“NO!” she jerked away from his hand with a sob. He didn’t blame her - he would have done the same, after being left alone with the ghosts for…

...Oh, fuck, it had been hours since they’d been scattered. Hours since she’d ended up here. In a cemetery. With overwhelming powers of seeing the dead. Alone.

“Vanya!” he said louder, trying to speak over the ghosts if he could have. Gently, instead of putting a hand on her arm again, he placed both his hands on her shoulders.

Finally, her head snapped up, and when he saw those big brown eyes shine with tears that hadn’t already joined the others that streamed down her face, it took all Klaus had in him not to start crying too. Instead, he just put his hands over hers. It wouldn’t do much to actually deafen the ghosts, but he hoped it at least gave her some comfort.

“It’s me, Vanny.” he said, hoping she’d hear it, or at least know what he was saying, “It’s just me.”

Her lips, which had been relaxed as they trembled from shock, contorted into a grimace.

She hugged Klaus so tightly that it almost winded him. Even with her powers being as incredible as they were, he always got surprised at how much physical force could be inside one little violinist. Still, he hugged her back, tight enough to reassure her while not making her feel restrained. No one really hugged him when the ghosts got too strong before, but if they did, this was how he would have liked it.

Klaus could feel Vanya grab fistfuls of the back of his shirt and hold them in what he aptly assumed was a white-knuckled grip. That was alright, he was just glad she hadn’t scratched him in the process.

“There’s-” she started, her head nestled against the crook of his shoulder, her voice shaking, so little, “There’s - there’s so many of them-”

Even though she couldn’t really see it, he tried to smile reassuringly.

“Ohhh,” He tried to make his voice as reassuring as the smile she couldn’t see. “Don’t pay any mind to those silly gooses, Vanny. All their snarling and shrieking’s just for show.”

Klaus could hear her sniffle against his shoulder.

“...Geese.”

Klaus twisted his neck a little to look at what was visible of Vanya’s face, “Hm?”

Vanya picked her head up a bit.

“Not gooses.” she said, her voice strained and her eyes red, both obvious byproducts of crying as she was bombarded by the spirits of the dead in a cemetery for hours, “Geese.”

Klaus rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. Of course, of all the things that helped ground her, it was correcting his grammar. Still, he took what he could get.

“Oh, so you write one bestseller, and now you know everything about grammar, don’cha?” he said, smiling and giggling when he’d finished so she’d hopefully know he’d been trying to be lighthearted.

Apparently, it worked, because a smile twitched at the corners of her lips, and she laughed a hoarse little laugh…

...until her little smile fell, and that laugh turned into more shaking breaths again, getting deeper and deeper until she gasped with every breath.

Oh, no.

Of course, it hadn’t grounded or distracted her for long; she hugged him tighter and nestled her head against his shoulder again. But this time, she screamed against his shoulder, a sound that wasn’t made one bit less heart-shattering by being muffled. As he tried to stop his own lips from trembling and his own eyes from watering, he just hugged her tighter.

“Shhhh, it’s okay, Vanny, it’s okay.” he said, his shushing more to sooth her than to actually make her be quiet, which he knew wouldn’t work the moment she shrieked again, “You’re okay. Just focus on this. Just on me.”

“I can’t.” she choked out, “I can’t - I can’t do it - I can’t-”

As hysteric as she was… Klaus knew she was right; she couldn’t withstand this. Not for much longer. Even after almost thirty years with the ghosts, he still had a hard time keeping them at bay. For years, he couldn’t. That’s why he’d started the drugs. But even his experience with the ghosts all his life, as nightmarish as it had been, was nowhere near as bad as what had been thrust upon Vanya. He, at least, had ways to withstand it, or keep it drowned out. Vanya didn’t have that.

And it was killing her.

It was killing his baby sister.

Maybe it wasn’t killing her, but without a way to quiet it, or keep it at bay, Klaus didn’t have any doubt that… that it could drive her mad. He feared it for himself, some days in his childhood, but that fear became so much more real - and so much worse - as his sister shook in his arms.

“Klaus. Please. Help me.”

But he didn’t know how.

She was in too much hysterics to walk out of here, and he wasn’t strong enough to carry her. He didn’t have any drugs on him either - even if he did, he was not going to give them to Vanya; there was no way in hell he was going to fuck her up like that. She didn’t have any of the mood regulators she used to take, either, which might have dampened the ghost-seeing powers just like they did her moon-blow-uppy powers before.

He didn’t know what to do. His little sister was in pain and terrified and he didn’t know how to make it go away.

...He had an idea.

There was one thing he could try - something he’d wished and asked fruitlessly for often when he was little. He didn’t know if it would work, but he didn’t know for sure that it wouldn’t work, either. If it could help Vanya, it was worth a shot.

“Vanny, I have an idea,” he pulled his arms away, “But you have to trust me, okay?’

He felt her head move in a frantic nod.

“I do, I do, I do, just - just do something -”

He put his hands on her arms and gently pulled them away and pushed her back a bit so she was right in front of him, and he could look into her eyes. He didn’t know if eye contact was necessary for this, but why risk messing it up if it was?

He took a deep breath and said something he wished countless times to hear as a child; something he’d probably look really, really stupid for saying if this didn’t work, and he didn’t get the power that he really, really hoped he did.

“I heard a rumor that the ghosts went away.”

…Vanya’s eyes clouded over.

Klaus didn’t think he’d ever felt so relieved in his life. Not even after he’d been brought out of the mausoleum, or when he’d needed anaesthetics to wire his jaw shut after he fell down the stairs, and he realized that drugs shut the ghosts up. No, this was more of a relief than all of that, guaranteed.

After a few seconds, Vanya’s eyes cleared up, going from milky white back to their normal brown. Immediately, she closed them as she brought her hands to the sides of her head, her little frame sagging with fatigue.

“Did it work?” he asked with a tilt of his head. Letting out a deep breath, she nodded.

“Thank you…” she mumbled, exhaustion evident in her voice as she opened her eyes, though her eyelids were heavy.

Klaus smiled again.

“Pure luck, Vanny.” he said, “That’s all that was.”

“Mhm…” she nodded a little, sleepy nod before her eyes fell shut and her head lolled to the side…

And the rest of her body followed.

Though she was still kneeling, and it wouldn’t have hurt much if she hit the ground, Klaus still caught her as she fell unconscious, keeping her back and neck supported as best he could as he gently laid her on the ground next to the tree she’d been curled up against. Of course she collapsed; he knew how exhausting this must have been for her.

So, Vanya has my powers, I have Allison’s, and…

Klaus thought back to earlier, when he’d seen Luther frantically blipping around.

...Luther has Five’s. Great.

Well, it wasn’t like he could go searching for the others and figure out where the other three powers ended up. Vanya, laying flat on her back in the shade, was already dead to the world, and would probably be for a while yet, and Klaus would never just leave her here. Also, since he didn’t exactly have Luther-like super strength (or, depending on who got it in the switch… Allison-like? Diego-like? Five-like? Oh, now that would be rich.), or as much upper body strength as he’d like, he couldn’t carry her out.

No… the best thing to do was wait here. Whether he was waiting for one of the others to find him, or for Vanya to wake up, or for someone to kick the both of them out when the graveyard closed, he wasn’t sure. But he knew he’d wait right there for one of those things… preferably any but the latter.

Resigned and relieved, he moved over to sit up against the tree, next to his sleeping sister. With his back against the bark, he let his head loll back. Until now, he hadn’t realized how exhausted he’d been in all of this, after walking the streets for hours, running to poor Vanya, and finding her as he did…

It had been a full afternoon, and he decided resting his eyes for a bit wouldn’t hurt.

---

Klaus was lured back into the realm of the conscious by the sound of voices.

“There they are!” he’d heard.

No, not the voices of the dead he usually heard. Those would be with Vanya when (if at all) that rumor wore off (and honestly, he hoped it wouldn’t).

No, it was the voices of his siblings.

“Klaus!” he heard Five’s ever-snippety tone.

“Vanya!” he heard the worry in Allison’s voice.

He opened his eyes to see the rest of his siblings coming towards them; Allison and Five, who he heard moments before, as well as Diego and Luther. He let out a sigh. Thank fuck. He’d been worried that he might get kicked out first, as that would’ve been his luck.

It didn’t take long for them to make their way over to them.

“What happened-” Luther started, a little loud due to his concern. So it didn’t wake Vanya (or disturb nearby mourners), Klaus brought a finger to his lips and shushed him.

He pointed down to Vanya, still sleeping at his side, and put up his hands - and their ouija board-esque tattoos - in a flourish, a clear gesture saying that Vanya had his powers.

They all got it immediately.

“What about you guys?” he whispered.

“Well,” Allison started, still glancing at Vanya. “After I tried seeing if I could control where things I threw went, I figured out I had Diego’s powers.”

She nodded to Diego as he stood behind her, looking over her shoulder to stare down at Vanya with a troubled gaze, which almost looked… restrained, as if he was trying to keep his emotions at bay.

“I landed by a lake, so it was easy to find out with skipping stones.” she explained. Of course, leave it to Allison to find the most practical way to deduct which power she’d gotten.

(It must have been fun holding the family’s brain cell.)

“And after a few broken streetlamps,” Five announced, hands in his pockets, “Figured it would be best if Diego here kept a cool head for a while.”

So, he’s got Vanya’s powers. Klaus figured out. Makes sense.

It didn’t, but none of this did. Nothing in their lives ever did.

“And it took a bit to find Luther when he kept blipping across the street every time he sneezed.” Allison said, eyeing a very sheepish Luther behind her.

“Sorry.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

“That means…” Five trailed off.

Klaus nodded.

“I’m all…” he brought up his hands and wiggled his fingers, “rumory.”

Allison looked between him and Vanya. “Did you use it?”

Klaus nodded again.

“Just to get the ghosts off her back.” he assured, looking down at his sister, “Ohhh, they just terrified poor Vanny. She was crying her eyes out when I found her.”

He looked back up at them.

“She alright now?” Diego asked. Either he was doing a terrible job at keeping his worry for Vanya out of his voice, or he wasn’t trying at all.

“Oh, yeah, yeah, she’s fine.” He waved his hand as nonchalantly as he could manage, as if it didn’t feel weird to talk about how “fine” his sister was after he found her crying her eyes out. “She’s just… out. She ended up passing out all on her own.” He shrugged and shook his head. “Wasn’t me, or the rumor. She was just tuckered out, poor thing.”

Five walked forward until he was right in front of Vanya, crouched down, put one arm under her back and one under her legs, and - much to Klaus’ surprise - lifted her with no trouble. Klaus’ eyes widened at the sight, and his eyebrows raised.

“Super strength.” he said, completely and utterly matter of fact.

Oh. Klaus held back a grin and stifled a giggle. Of course.

“Which means,” he grit his teeth, “it won’t be hard to throw one of these headstones at you if you let out that laugh you’re doing a shit job at holding back.”

Keeping a poker face, Klaus put up a thumbs-up.

“Come on.” Five turned around, “Let’s figure this out.”

Five started to lead the pack of power-mismatched siblings out of the cemetery, and even though he wasn’t sure where they were going, Klaus followed where Five was leading. That always took him and his siblings to the most lovely destinations, didn’t it?

He ended up falling in stride with Allison, who kept looking at the ground.

“So…” she lifted her head back up and looked at him, “You used a rumor on her?”

Even though she’d already asked that, Klaus nodded.

“If there’s one thing I know, Allie,” he started, “it’s how bad the ghosts are. Especially somewhere like…”

He gestured around them.

“...this. I felt pretty out of options, really. I didn’t even know I had it. Pure luck - that’s what we usually run on, right? Luck, I think, is the lifeblood of the Hargreeves.”

“You sure it’s not things going wrong?” she asked. Klaus shrugged.

“Hey,” he said, “the family can have two lifebloods.”

Allison seemed to agree. “God knows we need it.’

After another moment or so of walking, she laughed a little laugh - not really a laugh, but close enough to one that any other word would have been too inaccurate.

“I remember…” She let her gaze fall to the ground. “When we were kids, you’d always ask me to use it. All the time. When we’d come back from missions, when you’d have nightmares, when Dad let you out of…”

She didn’t finish that thought. Instead, she shook her head.

“...and I never did. I wanted to, but-”

“Alliiie, you don’t have to explain yourself.” He waved it off with a shrug, “I get it! Dear ol’ Dad would’ve lost his marbles. I never held that against you, and neither-” he put his hand on her shoulder, “should you.”

Allison nodded before she said…

“It might not wear off.”

Klaus gasped, putting a hand over his mouth.

“Oh, nooo! That's... the opposite of a problem!”

Allison rolled her eyes.

“Klaus...”

“Come ooon.” he said, “Seeing ghosts all the time is, surprisingly enough, not all it’s cracked up to be. Kinda spooky, actually.”

“I'm just saying,” she said, a little exasperated by her brother’s sarcasm, “It might be permanent. Even when we do get our powers switched back. Sometimes… rumors stick around for a while.”

“Well…” he winced, “I guess we’ll just burn that bridge when we get to it.”

“You mean cross that bridge?”

At that exact moment, they both heard a loud sneeze and whipped their heads forward at Luther - or at least, where he was. Much to the other four’s exasperation (Vanya didn’t respond, as she was still asleep), he’d blipped across the graveyard.

“...Nope.”

#the umbrella academy #umbrella academy #mine #tua #tua fanfic #klaus hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #my writing #allison hargreeves #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #five hargreeves

39 notes · View notes

chenoehi · 4 years ago

Text

Thoughts on Kirinmaru, Setsuna’s “death,” and Sesshomaru’s Rite of Courage and Cowardice (sp? I’m tired)

Working together:

First of all, we STILL need to know how Setsuna came to repeat those very words Sesshomaru has uttered now twice, but that lingering mystery aside,

It seems obvious to me that Kirinmaru and Sesshomaru are working together for some goal, perhaps to push the Yashahimes to their limits to see them grow. One thing that needs to be cleared up (among many things) is why Sesshomaru gave the girls pearls in the first place, especially now that Kirinmaru mentioned they had relied on them too much (relied how? how did they even work exactly?). Clearly we’re not done with the pearls storyline since they’ve been scattered gain so I’m at least hopeful we’ll eventually get some answers.

In this episode, Sesshomaru and Kirinmaru never once fight and they only seem to disagree on what to do about Zero. Kirinmaru clearly has disdain for Zero and doesn’t like what she’s doing, and it seems he doesn’t actually WANT to kill the girls. But, he does want to test their limits and he does that by bringing them to the edge. He laments that Setsuna cannot be brought back now that Tenseiga is broken and he lets the other two live. He has always been depicted to have honor, and he ends the fight by praising them (as he did the whole way through). Kirinmaru clearly acts like a teacher of sorts by explaining their powers to them and what to call them, and if we tie this back to Osamu Kirin’s role as Towa’s teacher and how he lets her off easy for being late to class, it draws a clear picture that Kirinmaru is not the actual villain of the series.

While Kirinmaru does not want his sister to die, Sesshomaru is finished with her games and is now pursuing her openly. Kirinmaru doesn’t want his sister to die supposedly so he tries to stop Sesshomaru, but otherwise they seem to be on the same page about other things. Specifically, we have the pinwheel issue which we still don’t know much about yet, and then we have this rite of courage and cowardice.

I think Sesshomaru is saying to Kirinmaru that he considers their battle to be something necessary for them to grow. We know that Tōga also wished for Sesshomaru to grow into a more powerful being but that he also wanted him to learn compassion; this was his struggle and only when he overcame it did he gain the power he sought. Sesshomaru clearly sees these events as necessary for their growth, or so it seems. Kirinmaru still does not feel like a big bad even though he axed Setsuna, and it’s really hard to tell whether she’s actually dead or just sleeping in stasis.

Setsuna’s death:

Setsuna “dying” is misleading, I believe, because we see the Dream Butterfly dissipate and give her the ability to dream back.

I think this clearly means that Setsuna had to “die” in order for the chord to be cut, meaning that she too was tied to Zero like Rin is which means that if Zero died Setsuna would be in danger too. That part could be debunked by ep.23, but, Rin didn’t actually die yet when Zero died. She was still in stasis and was only declared to be in danger. That doesn’t mean Setsuna could not also be tied as well. Only, Rin cannot be brought back with Tenseiga. We even got the callback with the line about how Tenseiga can only revive a person once. Tenseiga has never been used on Setsuna so she can still be saved. This appears to be where we are going with Season 2 and this new heavenly Yuwari sword.

So I think Setsuna had to die in order for the chord to be cut, meaning Setsuna was tied to Zero either like Rin or that she would have to die for the Dream Butterfly curse to be lifted (more likely). We still don’t know how Kirinmaru and the Dream Butterfly are connected or Zero even, but obviously it was used on Setsuna to remove her ability to dream FOR SOME REASON and we now see that when she “died” it looks like her ability to dream again was restored. So I don’t actually think she’s dead dead just like Rin isn’t dead, she’s in stasis. But, she may appear dead to others. I’m sure Rin would appear dead to others if she wasn’t secured in the tree. I’ll be curious to see if they perform a burial for Setsuna or not, I wouldn’t think so because I have no belief whatsoever that she’s gone forever and not coming back.

Her return seems to be clearly tied to Towa’s mysterious “heavenly” abilities she displayed early on, which will tie in nicely with this new sword coming into play.

This new heavenly sword:

The sword that Sesshomaru gives Towa could be the broken Tenseiga, and since Towa can wield a broken sword already using her energy maybe there’s a way she can still wield it. Or, the sword she’s being given is this new Yuwari (sp?) sword. We can speculate it’s the sword she’s holding in the Season 2 promo, but I think it’s just Tenseiga and that we haven’t seen Yuwari yet, but I could be wrong.

The Yuwari sword looks eerily similar to Kirinmaru’s sword, which btw harkens back to his comment to Sesshomaru about how the heavens and earth resound when their blades clash. This Yuwari sword is referred to as a Heavenly sword by Totosai, and of the three Yashahimes it would be the clear choice for Towa to be the wielder of that kind of sword. We’ve already seen her purify/release souls/whatever it is exactly she’s done in the past with people like Tokotsu which is similar to what Sesshomaru did for those souls in the Underworld in FA, when he sent them to heaven I believe.

It may be that Setsuna’s soul has left her body after all (dying for good to lift the curse) and by the time Tenseiga is reforged or Towa finds a way to wield it Setsuna may be unable to return. This could usher in Towa’s training with the new heavenly sword soon to be created or forged. Totosai says he is coming to see it’s birth (I can’t remember his exact words) so it seems like it could have been born from the clash between the Yashahimes and Kirinmaru or specifically from Towa’s body maybe ala Bakusaiga style.

Kirinmaru brought them to space somehow. Maybe that was necessary to bring about the conditions for the birth of this heavenly sword. We know from the past with both Tessaiga, Tenseiga, and Bakusaiga, certain conditions must be met in order for the wielders of those swords to either create them, wield them, or learn unlock new techniques. Maybe this sword had to born from a clash in the heavens sort of thing, literally.

Tdlr; if Towa learning how to wield a broken Tenseiga is one plot thread, and the other is her learning how to use her spiritual powers to wield the new Yuwari sword, then she could bring Rin back too if Rin also dies to cut the chord and lift the curse, because then it won’t matter if Tenseiga can’t bring her back. Towa won’t need it.

So many things are up in the air, but I think a few things are definite:

Zero is related to Moe, based on several things.

Towa’s Yuwari sword will allow her to get Setsuna (her soul?) back.

Sesshomaru gave Towa Tenseiga.

Towa will be able to wield a broken Tenseiga.

Kirinmaru is not the bad guy.

Sesshomaru and Kirinmaru are not and have never been enemies but have been on the same page from the start.

Sesshomaru was always trying to help Inuyasha (obviously) by whisking him away and Kirinmaru may not actually have wanted to kill him (that whole thing with Sesshomaru showing up and saying “hey you wanna kill Inuyasha” then saving him was too odd to just be what it appears to be on the surface, we never see what happens after the twins birth for a reason).

EVENTUALLY we will find out what the hell happened after the girl’s birth (and maybe before) that set this shitstorm in motion. Season 2 has got to start focusing on more of the personal drama and unraveling events than exposition and monster of the week shit. We’ve got to be past that come next season because too much is still unclear to have more fillers and BS. Which means S2 could be meatier, a good thing. Yashahime has to start giving us the goods, it’s only given us a nibble.

#yashahime #hanyou no yashahime #hanyo no yashahime #yashahime princess half demon #hny #Towa higurashi #Setsuna #sesshomaru #Kirinmaru #inuyasha #yashahime zero

42 notes · View notes

tiramisiyu · 4 years ago

Note

Hello! As you are both a MLQC and Tears of Themis player, how would you compare the two games? What parts of either game stick out after experiencing both of them?

hi! oml I had a lot of errant thoughts about this floating in my head, and this really gives me the chance to organize them.

The short version is, my favourite point about MLQC is the development of the male leads, while my favourite point for the much-younger Themis is the attention to detail.

See under the cut for the long version! (*Light spoiler content for both games)

MLQC Points

If I were to calculate the net amount of affection (if that's a good word for it) that I have for either game's 4 MLs, I would have to say that I'm more endeared to the MLQC boys, since I genuinely like all of them. Meanwhile for Themis, it's quite a massive spectrum for my feelings.

But of course, MLQC has much, much more developmental content than Themis does right now, so it's understandable that the Themis boys aren't quite as fleshed out yet for me to get attached to them (excluding XY ofc). Overall though, I think that MLQC's development of the OG 4 MLs makes for one of the strongest points of the game.

One other thing I really like is the pacing development between MLQC's MC and the MLs. The clear contrast you see at the beginning of the plot vs. the recent CNY/Valentine's karma, and all the ups and downs in between - it's pretty fascinating. (One concern I have about the Themis MC's relationship with her MLs is that... I kinda feel like things are really speeding ahead in terms of this point, and every single one of the boys are already 100% in. I mean, girl, I would not be laying my hand on my work superior's ab area at this point in the game.)

One point that I've really enjoyed about MLQC's plot is the whole idea of how things aren't always as they seem. The moral ambiguity of STF and Black Swan makes for a particularly good read, and I'm curious about S2's Gray Rhinos. (... Although, one thing I have to criticize here is that I feel like what STF/BW are aiming for is eugenics, not evolution... i.e. they should get their terminology right lmao)

MLQC music is my favourite! My favourite is probably S2 Ch.6-9's PV music, but some of the other PV music are also strong contenders.

Interface stuff, like how you can scroll between cards rather than having to go back to the whole listing of cards

Materials farming is way easier (on Themis you have to run through the whole battle, but at least you can auto it)

I've got to thank PG for giving free gacha pulls bc they don't do that in Themis :(

Themis Points

Thus far, what I really like about Themis' plot is the incredible grasp on detail (understandable and necessary, given the mystery-solving and logical-deduction nature of the game). Every questionable point is either resolved or is brought forth in the story and actively mentioned as a mystery still under investigation.

I feel like the scope of MLQC's main story is so grand that they either miss explaining details or some things are scattered in different places, so it's hard to piece things together (one thing I haven't been able to get over is how MC suddenly had a pocket watch to communicate with Victor on, in Ch.16, and I just found out recently that it actually gets explained... in Victor's R&S.)

I've got to say that Themis' MC is probably one of the best I've encountered. She's very smart, not impulsive, and her convictions on justice are very strong. The court trials at the end of each chapter are a good display of her capability, and she's shown many times that she won't rush into situations in ways that'll make things worse (see: Ch.5 when she agreed to stay back when Xia Yan infiltrated the laboratory; Ch.6 when she knew that she couldn't snap at Zhao Fei for his words to Zuo Ran). (I'm looking at you, MLQC MC in Gavin's Followup Date who rushed into a shootout situation for good film.)

Voice acting for all characters! Really helps with the immersion. 20% of the reason why I like Yang Xiao is because of his voicing. Granted, though, the setup of Themis plot is much more reliant on cast outside of the main characters than it is for MLQC.

PG opted to minimize interaction between their 4 MLs, but MHY went the opposite direction and Themis' 4 MLs are constantly interacting, which I actually quite like a lot. Of course, Themis' MLs are supposed to be working together in NXX, so it just works out like that. Regardless, it's enjoyable to see it - whether they're roasting each other, or they're doing their hyperintelligent analyses.

All the clue hunting and analysis (especially in the main plot) is really fun, and it does make you pay attention

No City Stroll-like mechanism (Istg, who was it at PG who decided that a good function was one where you have to leave your phone running for 16 hours if you're F2P??)

I could stare at Themis SSRs & SRs forever with headphones in bc of the Live2D effect + the sound effects

Big respect for the amount of work that goes into game events, especially the big events that have their own big plotline

#mlqc #mr love queen's choice #tears of themis #未定事件簿 #rambles #ask #Anonymous

25 notes · View notes

zeta-in-de-walls · 4 years ago

Text

If you’re new to Dream SMP, hit me up!

Hello! Welcome to my MCYT Blog. I’m Zeta! (she/her)

This is a Dream SMP fanblog. I’ve been watching it since Tommy first joined the server. (He’s my favourite.) I know it’s a little overwhelming for new viewers so if you have any questions please ask and I’ll do my best to answer. ❤

I make lots of youtube playlists here! Check out my archive of playlists if you’re ever in search for some good Tommy content.

For instance: Here’s a Playlist of all of Tommy’s alt streams. He doesn’t archive these on his vods channel but full uploads of all of them are available on youtube.

And Here’s a playlist I made of other streamers vods which feature Tommy in! For all those great streams where Tommy’s in a VC and is being funny even though he’s not streaming himself. It’s a real scattered collection.

Here’s a Reddit for Dream SMP fanfiction rec and discussion I made!

I wrote a A brief Dream SMP summary here and here’s part 2

And here is my recommended Playlist for new viewers of the SMP! All of Tommy’s more plot relevant videos in order! This basically covers Season 1 of the SMP, which is from when Tommy joined to Nov 16. These are edited videos, rather than his unedited VODs (you can watch the VODs which are all available on the TommyVODs channel.) Hope it helps.

Here is a playlist for S2! (Covers Nov17-Jan20) Unlike S1, these are all unedited VODs. Again this is all just Tommy’s perspective and I’ve included mostly the more plot-relevant VODs. These are uncut so there’s a lot of content and some are more on the chill side so don’t feel like you have to watch it all. And some are more important than others. Watch them at your own pace.

Here’s a playlist for S3. (Jan21-now) Again, its unedited VODs, of Tommy’s perspective. There are many other plotlines going on but I’ve limited it to Tommy’s perspective for this playlist.

My askbox is here! If you have questions, ask them there! Or you can just talk, that’s cool too.

I post rambly text posts filled with opinions and maybe a bit of fangirling. I tend to be very generous with tags - feel free to respond to them as well - I don’t mind. Please know that I’m rarely ever seriously annoyed. And I never post in anger. If I ever post or respond to something I promise its all meant in good humour and I’ll welcome any response. ❤

I don’t really engage much in discourse or anything. Sometimes I’ll discuss DSMP stuff but I avoid arguing if I can. And I’m unlikely to discuss any CC negativity, regardless of my personal thoughts.

Tags guide:

Fanart I reblog is tagged fanart

Responses to asks are tagged replies - if you’ve sent an ask it should be there. I try to respond within a day to any of them.

My longer text posts are tagged with meta or analysis

Specific youtubers will also usually be tagged. Eg: posts about Tommy are all tagged Tommyinnit, posts related to Dream are tagged Dreamwastaken

If you want to see some awesome appreciation posts, check out my Tommy appreciation tag!!!

That’s all. Feel free to interact with me/message/ send asks as I love discussions. I try to be pretty even-handed though I do apologise if I come across too harshly. This blog is all for fun.

#sticky #yeah i reblog posts with comments a lot #and i love when others do the same #as i love getting into discussions #i can't respond directly to replies as this is a sideblog #so i may occasionally reblog a reply if i want to respond to it #just say if you would prefer i didn't #i don't mind #but by default i assume everyone is happy with that interaction #fair warning #also i tag posts a lot #pretty much every single post on my blog #often with extra thoughts #if you ever did want to respond to them then feel free to screenshot them and reblog or whatever #also feel free to @me in other posts if you'd ever like me to respond to a post you make #i promise i always will #and i try to answer any asks with a day #i do share opinions and these may be controversial #i will elaborate if asked though #i try to be thorough in explanations

129 notes · View notes

seance · 4 years ago

Note

i guess i’m just worried with all these new characters but the same episode/season length , we won’t have enough time to see everyone have a fully fleshed out story arc? i can’t believe we’ve still never talked about the fact that klaus can’t die and that he time travelled in s1 .... and he was tortured i don’t think the siblings ever got that whole story at all

yes exactly! that’s what i’m talking about when i say i’m worried about the writing, they all miss HUGE chunks of what they went through in s1 especially and even if it’s certainly not a Law™ that they have to know everything about one another i think it would feel pretty disengeous to let the viewer feed on those fleeting moments when they establish that yes, they love one another and they want to be a family together, free of their father abuse but then have them once again scatter and never talk frankly and seriously about what goes on inside their heads or the things they all had to endure, especially the ones so pivotal to their development as characters. i didn’t hate s2 but some scenes didn’t make any sense in this regard.

this is true for everyone, it’s pretty difficult to manage so many characters at once without “sacrificing” anyone and even if all characters can be important to the plot, the hargreeves as we know them remain the focus so i want to believe they’ll get the respect they deserve!

#replies #text #tua negativity #again just in case #Anonymous

19 notes · View notes

aadmelioraa · 4 years ago

Note

headcanons for your aethelred/aethelflaed/aldhelm ot3 thing u got going on? it honestly intrigues me a lot! also i dare to make u choose between aethelred/aethelflaed and aethelred/aldhelm <3 since they're both fascinating dynamics

Ohhhhh you’ve unlocked the next level of my weird trash obsession here @marv-llous. I have so many (scattered and disorganized) thoughts on these three. They’re less of an ot3 and more of an oh-no-why-am-shipping-these-3-in-various-combinations (that’s a thing, right?). I have a couple WIP that explore their dynamics in various AUs (sometimes canonverse, sometimes not). Often it’s more about their interactions in pairs (Aethelred/Adlhelm, Aldhelm/Athelflaed, Aethelflaed/Aethelred) but sometimes it’s about their dynamics all together.

Any scene of the three of them is an automatic fave, such as in 3x07: ”I was briefly thinking, Lord, that you too look like a Dane” ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? The way Aethelred picks up on the shift in dynamics based on the laugh Aldhelm and Aethelflaed share KILLS ME.

I maintain that he’s unsure at this point if Aldhelm is just following his advice to get close to Aethelflaed or if they’ve developed a rapport on their own. I almost love that brief exchange better than the bit that comes next (”I’m to make you like me....shall I sing you a song?”)...almost.

The fic I’m working on most right now started as an Aethelflaed/Adlhelm fic and while that’s still the endgame and the majority of the development, I ended up delving into her relationship with Aethelred quite a bit. Basically I was rewatching the show and the way her attitude towards him changes in s3 absolutely intrigued me.

This scene in 3x05:

where she semi-confronts him about his plan to have her killed (thank you, Aldhelm) and he realizes he doesn’t have the control over her he thought he did....gahhhh I love it so much. They’re talking in thinly veiled metaphors here (”appetites,” stabbing knives into the table, etc) and while Aethelred eventually rallies (picking up his own knife) and continues to be his conniving, snarky, bullying self, she definitely took him by surprise. She’s no longer the naive girl he married (I love s2 Aethelflaed too but girl had a rough time in a rough situation). I think it’s during this scene he realises she hasn’t been that girl for a while. I would contrast this scene with the bit in the s2 finale where he watches her kill Sigefried, who at that point is very much a stand-in for Aethelred himself, and (imo) that definitely does something to him.

Another WIP that is still in the very early stages is from Aethelred’s POV (which I never in a million years thought I would be writing from) and that one is extremely entertaining to me because he starts out thinking he’s in control of his life but gradually realizes Aethelflaed and Aldhelm essentially run circles around him and don’t need him--and he might actually almost like it (he doesn’t fully realize this as much as the reader will since his narcissism prevents that, to be fair). It genuinely started out as a crack fic but I don’t think it is anymore…

I have yet another idea that’s sort of a gothic romance (loosely inspired by Crimson Peak) that I may or may not write for them, I just feel like the aesthetic and the dynamics fit so well. I am not 100% sure if I’m going to do a more straightforward take with Aethelflaed’s POV or explore a variant of the trope using Aldhelm’s POV but once I figure that out it might happen. I also have toyed with using Eardwulf and Eadith in this AU so it’s a mess conceptually right now.

Honestly I would have expected to find Aethelred just a useful plot device (the villain, the partner who doesn’t treat the heroine well, the thing standing in the way of the characters we want to get together) but he’s more fun to play with than I initially thought.

For your second question: if I had to choose, I would pick Aethelred/Aldhelm purely because I’d like to explore the backstory there, canon or AU. How did they get to where they are, who approached who first, what did they see in each other initially? Aldhelm’s s3 development is a big part of why I am intrigued by these three characters, it’s a major shift but it happens so gradually that I think it leaves a lot of room of fan works that fill in the gaps of what we see onscreen.

(soft screenshot of our bowlcut fave for good measure)

#kat replies #marv-llous #the last kingdom #aethelflaed #aethelred #aldhelm #aethelflaed x aldhelm #aethelflaed x aethelred #aethelred x aldhelm #aethelflaed x aethelred x aldhelm #ask games

21 notes · View notes

wunderlass · 5 years ago

Text

I’m feeling so deflated to be writing this post. S1 had its flaws but those could be placed at the feet of a freshman showrunner who could learn from her mistakes going into S2 and up her game. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, and S2 was a mess.

S1 had a clear central plotline: the mystery of Rosa’s death, leading to justice in the form of Noah’s death and Rosa’s resurrection. S2’s central plotline was…um. The kidnappings? Leading into the plot to blow up Crashcon? I think? But there was so much other stuff gong on it’s hard to tell.

Carina – if you happen to come stumbling into the tags for reactions – you’ve already acknowledged that you struggle to edit your scripts down for length. And it does show in the finished product. But you also struggle to edit your ideas down to fit into the episode count you have. There were too many extraneous plot threads this season, too many guest characters, and the ideas you had were shoddily and sloppily executed.

There were shining moments scattered here and there and the occasional good episode, but for the most part this season lurched from badly paced episode to badly paced episode. Stuff was crammed into each episode and yet somehow the plot also treaded water until 2x11 when it all kicked off – and this was because so much of what happened in the earlier episodes didn’t feed into the main plot. Even Max’s death, the overarching motivation for many characters at the beginning, was shoved to the side for other ideas.

And the payoffs for each of these storylines was too often underwhelming. Max can’t come back because he’ll be full of dark energy and a destructive force! Resolved in 30 seconds by him blowing up a pile of stuff. Max can’t remember Liz! Fixed in the same episode. That pattern continued with the finale feeling like it was trying to wrap up all these storylines without really having a story of its own. The various cliffhangers from Crashcon were tied up before the title card and then let’s spend the next 40 minutes treading water again.

There were good moments in the finale. Max and Isobel’s discussion, the Maneforrest kiss, Rosa and Helena’s reunion. But as for the rest? Hear me whine:

- Jesse’s death was anticlimactic. His line about “no more Manes men” makes no sense given as far as he knew Flint (and maybe Clay?) is still alive. His death should have been poetic because one of his son’s killed him but it didn’t hold the weight it should have, possibly because it came so early in the episode.

- It would have been far better if Jesse had discovered that Harlan killed Tripp and buried him beneath the shed. How awful would it have been for his entire worldview to be shaken by that revelation? How perfect would it have been if he discovered that Tripp loved Nora? If he died after learning all of that, becoming desperate and sloppy in whatever scheme he was trying to pull off (self-immolation via the bomb?), it would have been a fitting ending.

- So many characters this season were badly served. Alex, Michael, and to a lesser extent Max, had real arcs and progression. Alex especially you can see them setting up his growth for a payoff in the finale.

- Kyle was shafted, shoved to the side for the Steph storyline that didn’t feel like it was going anywhere, and I suspect we got a lot of that cut away to make room for other stories.

- Rosa’s story started off strong and then mostly got tied into rehab or helping Isobel. Them having her out and about in public in Roswell is complete nonsense.

- Max had a line for Isobel about her becoming her “entire self” this season, and that rang false to me. We’ve only seen Isobel develop her powers. Her personality has shifted each episode, fractured and inconsistent, dependant on what the writers needed her to do. She didn’t get much of a storyline of her own – the abortion was redundant, serving as a political soapbox for Carina rather than anything that served the character – and while she’s found out more about her heritage, that’s never been as important as Michael or Max finding out about theirs. She said she wanted to become more like her mother and that never went anywhere.

- I was so hopeful that Carina had listened and understood the criticisms with Maria’s handling in S1 and worked to improve it. She certainly gave her increased screentime. Except, so much of that screentime was tied into Michael, and latterly Isobel. She lacked interactions with Liz or Rosa. She was in two whole scenes in the finale and after she broke up with Michael, she disappeared from the story, and if that doesn’t say it all…

- And that break-up was contrived bullshit. I’m not saying this as a shipper. It felt like they’d planned to have them break-up in the finale and wrote it even though the motivations hadn’t been properly established. Seeds were sown but they were communicating well as a couple and resolving their issues as they went along. Suddenly those issues got un-resolved and were enough to break them up.

- The most galling part is that so much of what follows comes from Tripp’s diary, and Maria is excluded. This is her story too! Louise was her great-grandmother! Rather than sitting around her in the hospital room reading this stuff, they do it in the Crashdown.

- Which fits the pattern of what’s happened all season. Maria found out she was part alien and it was about her powers, rather than her legacy, rather than what happened to her great-grandparents.

- And it became clear that it was done so they could do the Nora/Tripp and Malex parallel.

- Which completely solidifies for me where Carina’s priorities lie. She’s been clear that Malex is her favourite ship on the show and Michael is her favourite character. But this season has shown that she’s incapable of ensuring her favouritism doesn’t screw over other characters.

- The sad thing is this really does show up in marketing. Carina always pushes and praises Vlamis and barely ever mentions Jeanine on her SM. Media outlets write about Malex as the centre of the show and they aren’t supposed to be. We have a sci-fi show with a Latina leading lady and nobody cares – not the showrunner, not the media (outside of Latinx-centric publications), not the fandom. I’m not Latina and it frustrates me so I can’t imagine how actual Latinx people feel about that.

- Maria was dragged into a love triangle that Carina never had any intention of doing justice to. Maria and Michael were always only ever meant to be a pit-stop on the way to a big Malex reunion. Sadly it’s clear the same goes for Maneforrest. Why write something if you’re only going to do it half-arsed? And it clearly was. That’s why the Maria and Michael break-up was so perfunctory and illogical.

- While I’m on the subject of Maria – last season Mimi was clearly deteriorating and didn’t recognise adult Maria anyway. Now that seems to have shifted to Mimi’s mind moving through time. It’s still unclear if this is the alien DNA or what was done to Patricia Deluca in Caulfield. I don’t understand why they introduced both elements – apart from being able to give Maria a line about unethical science which OH BOY what a contrast with Liz.

- Speaking of Liz.

- Wow.

- If the central storyline was the kidnappings and Crashcon shenanigans, she really had no involvement with that all season apart from the very end. All the investigation went to other characters. Her mother was involved, but not Liz.

- Let me repeat that.

- Our lead character was not involved the central storyline of the season.

- Alternatively, if you think Max learning about his history, and all of the reveals about 1948, and Maria’s heritage etc etc were supposed to be the main storyline…

- Doesn’t matter because Liz wasn’t involved in any of that either!

- Liz was a subplot in her own show after they brought Max back. Hell, she was a subplot even when she was working on that.

- The narrative focus really has centred on Michael, Alex, and later Max.

- I wonder what they have in common with each other.

- If you don’t believe me, check out the screentime figures for this season. Liz had the fourth largest amount of screentime in the finale, and she’s only had majority screentime in a handful of episodes all season (2x01, 2x07, 2x11).

- And then realise that the plot kept moving after Liz left Roswell. She’s just not part of it anymore.

- I watched the finale and kept asking myself where Liz was because she kept disappearing for whole chunks of time.

- She was in her own subplot about science for the back half of this season, and honestly, I’m going to have to write an entirely separate post about Liz and ethics in science because NOPE.

- Max was right. Liz deserved to follow her calling but she had options that didn’t involve risking the aliens.

- As such the Echo break-up was stupid but whatever, based on this season I guess it needed to happen.

- Did Max even care that Liz left? He loved her for twenty years and then when he had her, it didn’t matter anymore? What the fuck? Are we ever going to get answers as to why he fell so hard and loved her for so long, or is the “Malex is cosmic” story more important?

- Also the whole thing about the Genericorp lady not being interested in Liz based on meeting her at the Crashdown was stupid. You hire scientists based on the previous work they’ve done and their credentials. Diego’s word should have been enough to convince her, and then maybe an actual proper job interview to make sure she was a good fit. Not “let’s sneak into her secret lab to look at what she’s working on”.

- When Liz does leave, she only says goodbye to Rosa and Kyle. Arturo is mentioned but not seen. Which means the whole ICE sequence this season, which should have been a solid motivation for Liz to take the Genericorp job on its own, has been resolved without a proper payoff. All that stress – scenes that I know felt genuinely stressful to some viewers because of how close to home it hit – and we don’t even get to see Arturo seeing his “genius daughter” leave with his future secured.

- It’s plausible that Liz said goodbye to other characters – Maria, Isobel, Michael – off screen BUT SHE’S YOUR LEAD CHARACTER AND HER LEAVING TOWN SHOULD CARRY SOME EMOTIONAL WEIGHT FFS

- Compare Liz leaving and arriving at the ocean to Buffy Summers leaving Sunnydale in Becoming Part 2. There is no contest.

- It’s clear to me that the audience Carina writes this show for is herself. And that’s fine. Plenty of writers do that. But that means she’s writing a show for the women in fandom who like epic mlm romances with lots of angst. And the problem with that is that this show has a Latina lead who is not being done justice.

- This is not me railing against Malex. There is space in the show for both things. This is me expressing my frustration at a showrunner and creative team who are not taking care with all characters equally.

- Carina uses her platform to throw in politics and use characters as mouthpieces without considering their impact. She thinks she’s educating the straight white people in the audience without thinking about how scenes of ICE intimidation, homophobic violence, and racism will affect the people who are impacted by those things in real life.

- Am I done with the show? Probably not. I’ve got fics I want to write and while I’m not hubristic enough to think I can write better than a team of professional writers, I’m going to at least try and do some of these neglected elements of the show justice.

- Hubris. Remember when I thought that was going to be a theme of this season? Apparently not. There was no theme, unless “no editing, we die like men” counts..

#roswell new mexico #rnm spoilers

81 notes · View notes

eggydeggy · 4 years ago

Text

the unbrella academy season 2: some things I’m thinking about

-one of the most horribly dealt time travel plot. i like that they’re time traveling, but there are so many plot holes with the way they’re explaining time travel (plot holes are unavoidable with time travel, but there are WAY too many here)

-klaus’s siblings were convinced he was having seizures and no one said anything???

-klaus literally had a foreign entity in his body that wouldn’t leave when klaus wanted anyways i think that deserves some talking about

-klaus PUKING ben out was THE funniest thing ever

-allison in season 2: mother? I’m not a mother? i have No Daughter. what’s a Claire?

-luther apologizing was one of the Best things

-say what you will, carl scared me more than any other character

-vanya really just said Cottagecore lesbian huh

-glad they put in that plot about Vanya maybe being a commie. i thought they were just gonna sleep on the fact that her name is russian but they DIDNT so cool

-ben

-BEN

-this season was really Diego appreciation and I’m here for it

-but it came at the cost of Klaus being an actual character; this season Klaus felt degraded to comic relief and subjected to the usual gay tropes. legit saw none of Klaus’s horror and turmoil at his power this season and that was like his defining feature of last so...

-when reggie chopped in to Diego (verbally, not when he shanked him), i literally felt my heart break. and then Diego stuttered again and i-

-five’s mass murder scene in season one at Griddy’s with Istanbul in the back >>>> five’s mass murder scene in season two

-ELLIOT

-oga foroga

-i LOVED the sibling interaction this season. ALL of it. Luther and Diego. Five and Luther. Diego and Vanya. Vanya and Allison. Allison and Klaus. Diego and BEN. Ben and Klaus.

-i did miss some of the sibling pairings from season one (diego and klaus interacted like... twice) but I’m very thankful for the new ones (luther and diego was so so great. team zero heck yes. klaus and allison was a dream come true)

-reggie caring and showing more compassion for Pogo than he’s ever shown any one of his children ever makes me feel things

-WHAT HAPPENED TO OG GRACE

-vanya having a loving and supportive girlfriend is just... *chefs kiss*

-the ending was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too open/ambiguous. there are still so many plot lines left to be tied off that s3 is going to be more about fixing mistakes from s2. while usually that’s how seasons work and you need an open plot line to further a show into its next season, i think there are a few too many and will scatter the siblings for wayy too long at the beginning of s3

final rating: 7.9/10

2 notes · View notes

bakubabes-and-ramble · 5 years ago

Text

BakuBabes fighting system changes

Or else: Idea-package to change/fix the brawling in Bakugan: New Vestroia

Last time I ranted a bit about my overall problems with the brawling in the latter seasons, including the second season.

This time, let's see, what we could do to make the brawling feel less like 'rock-paper-scissors' and more like 'chess'.

(Massive break-down under the cut, Wall-Of-Text warning)

There are going to be new gameplay components brought in, some original ones varied or changed, and some dismissed. All of these changes are brought up with this in mind: adding extra depth to the game, giving a better space for tactics and strategy. Even with these changes, I attempt to keep the system canon-compliant, both visually and gameplay-wise. (For example sticking with one gate card per round, talking about this later)

I attempted to give a lot of examples for better comprehension.

Now, let me go through a a point-by-pont list and check the problems and solutions while doing it:

1. Imagine it like a MOBA - Team-based arena fighting

Although I personally liked the first season's brawling system and card-strategy game charactetistics, I support the idea of 'spicing up' the strictly tabletop game depiction and heading a more free-style, team-based gaming mechanics.

The closest moment to have something team fight-y was in S2 Ep27, where the Ancient Warriors of Vestroia gathered into a party to fight Farbros and Zenoheld. (It was basically a party-boss match.)

Sticking with traditional duelling in the show was justified on the basis of ‘fighting for honor’, but in times, it forced out situations from the plot, where - spite the Resistance being aware of the power of unity - a few people had to be left alone for one-one duels to work ‘plot-logically’ and run simultaneously. Well, here let’s interpret, that scattering to ‘keep the enemy busy’ is not needed and everyone is burning from the passion to free and fight for the Bakugan as much as Dan does. So they just jump into the fight without hesitation. (BakuBabes comic ; Part 6)

Part of the inspiration for the change came from the Bakugan: Defenders Of The Core console game. B:DOTC - even if it falls into the ‘hack and slash’ genre, not MOBA - is a good material to work with, considering it categorizes the monsters into several subcategories, uses an attribute-counter system and is a generally good reference for the diverse fighting styles and abilities used by the monsters. (For example: Have you known, that Brontes can turn invisible?)

The brawls turn into multiplayer games instead of the traditional few playered duels, and become much more action-reliant. (= Less standing in one place, more ‘real time strategy’ feeling) Along with this come in a bunch of new aspects, which give room for tactical thinking and honing skill:

Positioning

Ability effect and ‘cooldown’ management

Ally-enemy correspondence = hero (in this case Bakugan) synergies and enemy counters

Adaptation to different situations

Adding these extra layers of aspects gives a bigger room for both tactics and skill, and makes the brawler - Bakugan personalities shine.

2. Emphasis on: Teamwork & Synergy

Many times during double - or tripple - duels throughout the second season, there were more than one Bakugan out on the field, but they never actually interacted with one another. The game still got played out as individuals doing their stuff separately next to each other.

As more players join the fight, they form a party and the G Powers are displayed in an aggregated sum. This is important from the perspective of mentality: In a team, individual power matters less and the focus shifts to the teamworking potential and coordination of the members.

Going a more teamfight-based depiction instead individual duels will not only eliminate the problem of the inconsistent match outcomes, but corresponds well with the overall message of the show. (=Being stronger in unison with others)

Although the season takes place in New Vestroia (the monsters are innitially locked in ball form due to the dimensional controllers, but this could come in handy in later seasons), I always imagined, that the brawling up from the second season was about having the physical advantage over the opposition. Being able to summon a house-sized monster out of one's pocket gives a higher ground for individuals in both defending themselves and attacking opponents or buildings. Which means: During a Bakugan brawl the goal is to knock out - or with other words -, force the enemy Bakugan back into ball form. (This is something, which had been present in the whole show, but felt important to mention due to the mechanical Bakugan in a later point.)

So, the point of fighting is to remain in the posession of the physical upper hand and power advantage. In exchange of the physical protection of a giant monster, the human partners are empowered to activate ability cards (Talking about abilities in a later point) and to give shotcalls to their partners. This latter makes sense, for the human partners may be much smaller than the summoned Bakugan, but they are standing further away from the action, having a better overall view on the battlefield. Calling out enemy positioning or ability effects is essential to the Bakugan and their partners' synergy. Coordination is important between not only the brawlers and their partners, but among the party members as well.

3. Roles

In order to maximize team-efficiency among the party members, the brawlers have to shift into and fulfill separate roles in correspondence with their Bakugan's capabilities. We will stick with the 3 basic roles commonly used in multiplayer games:

Tank - Support - Damage dealer

I leave a relatively short description of the roles here:

Tank: Tanks mainly protect their teammates by being a ‘living wall’ between allies and enemies. Off-supports the team via 'eating' the incoming damage and physically peeling for allies (either offensively zoning or defensively getting enemies off of teammates, protecting them). Frontliner, usually melee with large healthpool and sustain.

Support: Aids the team through healing / shielding / utility provision. Can be defensive (focusing on protection and sustaining with healing, shielding or buffing allies) or offensive (helping the team getting picks and takedowns via utility means like crowdcontrolling, targetcontrolling, debuffing, ...) Usually squishy target with low healthpool, backliner, caster. (This may vary depending on monsters.)

Damage dealer (DPS): They are the main source of damage, their job is to do as much damage to the enemy as possible. Can be melee or ranged, caster or physical attacker, frontliner or backliner. The two main types of dealable damage are sustain and burst damage.

Examples mentioned in the header:

Volt & Brontes - Support

Julie & Fly Beetle - Tank

Distributing the power among different roles prevents ‘one-man army overpowerdness’ to happen (Yes, I am looking at Drago...) and incites an actual team effort.

Teamwork becomes essential, as the roles naturally rely on each other to be efficient: The tank peeling for the dps and the support, the support aiding the tank and the dps and the dps doing what they do best: damage to the enemy to end the fight quick (before the tank and support runs out of resources and energy).

Taking a note here, that roles are not as explicitely stated or solid as attributes are.

1. Role classification highly depends on the monsters’ characteristics and ability kit and usually is in a kind of correlation with the brawlers’ personalities and brawling styles.

2. There are monsters, which can ‘flex’ into other roles with limitations (e.g. bruisers, assissting dps,...).

3. The role system doesn’t mean, that Bakugan can’t have abilities from other role aspects. Roles rather show the main specialization of the Bakugan. ( For example: Drago is an offensive damage dealer, but he can keep the defensive Fire Shield ability, in a form of an activable ability card.)

4. Abilities, ability cards

There is a thing I forgot to mention on the account of ability spamming in the show: Although every ability was usable only once per round, this rule didn’t have any impact on the overall game, because starting a new round automatically unlocked every ability again to spam. This is why the game just felt so stacked with abilities and why they could use the same cards over and over again within a short period. So the goal here is to reduce the back and forth snowballing with abilities and enable different counterplays along with making them impactful enough to balance out the fewer usage.

To prevent abilities from getting spammed:

1. We have to shift power into the basic ability kit of the monsters. This means: Not every ability require ability cards to be usable. For example: Basic projectile shooting for ranged monsters (Drago spitting fire) or other abilities for other classes (Nemus shielding allies).

2. Abilities - to also have a better dynamic with the overall game - are going to have ‘cooldowns’. (Just like Nemus’s fusion ability ‘Flow Skylight’ in S2 Ep4 without the extra conditions.) The cooldown durations may vary depending on the impact of the effect. For example: Abilities affecting the whole party are on longer cooldown periods than one-target spells.

Adding to the impactfulness: Abilities might also have different ‘status modificator’ effects, such as root, stun, poisoning / damage-over-time, etc.

In this system, activating an ability should rather feel like popping an empowered spell, or a longer ‘cd’ in a game. But they are not always straight forward to use or affects enemies strictly: e.g. supports healing their teammates.

5. Gate cards

As abilities are meant to directly affect the monsters themselves, gate cards have effects on either the battleground itself (reactor cards) or on the rules of the battle (command cards). / Character cards are not brought back from S1 under the mentality of team-based games. /

The reason we’ll keep with one gate card per round is to have canon-gameplay consistency.

/There could be something with bringing back more gate cards and them being physical territorial indicators of power dominance on the field, adding an extra importance to positioning but for the sake of canon-compliance I let this go for now.../

Gate cards have the potential to change the overall tide of the battle. Therefore having the gate card down from your own team may have advantage. But important: The given advantage is not guaranteed! In themselves, gate card effects - instead of automatically affecting allies beneficial or enemies harmful - are mostly neutral from the 'game’s perspective’. Gate cards have risk to fire back upon faulty or ill-considered use. Making them less streamlined gives another tool for players to think in advance and set up a higher ground for themselves via planning.

5. Attributes

Attributes didn’t really play any role in the season, majorly due to abilities overshadowing everything. Here attributes have a kind of minor ‘statistic modificator’ influence.

To have a better overview on this, here is an already existing listing from the Bakugan Dimensions game (back from 2010):

“Pyrus – The Aggressive attribute of Fire. Pyrus Brawlers use fast attacks and attacks that ignore defense. Pyrus Bakugan also increase their fighting power throughout a battle. Subterra – The powerful attribute of Earth. Subterra Brawlers use slow, but devastating, attacks at close range. Their strong, earthen durability gives them high defense. Haos – The wise attribute of Light. Haos Brawlers know the importance of a strong defense. They lure their opponents in and strike hardest when they seem the weakest. Darkus – The hidden attribute of Darkness. Darkus brawlers use Gates to exhaust their enemy while building their own power base. Aquos – The flexible attribute of Water. Aquos brawlers shape both themselves and the environment to suit the needs of the battle. Ventus – The quick attribute of Air. Ventus brawlers are always on the move. They use their incredible speed and mobility to both avoid their enemies and attack faster. “

(Sadly, I never had the opportunity to play the game myself.)

According to this and adding some new ideas, here are the main aspects and added benefits of the attributes:

Pyrus - Strong on offense, great fire-power (better offensive capabilities)

Subterra - Enduring, extra-sustain (better defense, ‘larger Healtpool’)

Haos - Caster-based, extra power on magical spells (both offensive and defensive)

Darkus - Tricky, power in unpredictability (twisty abilities)

Aquos - Flexible, easier adaptation (flexible kit, see: attribute changing)

Ventus - Evasive, great agility (faster movement, better dodging)

1. Attributes add basic characteristics to the Bakugan, but don’t necessarily determine their roles. (The only likeliness is Subterra Bakugan usually being tanks and Haos ones supports, but these come from the extra features those attributes give them. Otherwise any role can be played by any attribute. Attributes are like ‘racial passives’.)

2. The reason the attribute-counter system is not entirely making it to the Au’s brawling structure is because the roles already give a twist to it and the game is balanced around the capabilities of the team itself. Making one attribute more powerful against another from a standby would render a lot of things (like the monsters or the entire deck of players) situational or niche to play.

/Players can change monsters between rounds, but they insist on their played attributes. As in most of the second season, brawlers mostly play with only one Bakugan, or at least not likely to switch. (Theoritically they could, Mira even gave Dan extra monsters for Drago to ‘have back-up’. Plot-wise we can justify this with ‘they already built out trust with their partner monsters so they don’t need to switch’.) Switching monsters between rounds is possible to adapt to the ally / enemy line-up, but since players play only one attribute, this wouldn’t help with fair matching./

6. Things dismissed: G power numerical values and Traps

1. The reasons of declined G power number usage are:

a. It would be way too complicated to calculate with and follow every single modificator’s effect on every single monster. (Especially as the headcount grows.)

b. Perspective-wise, individual G power levels don’t make a difference as long as we talk about teams as units. Not only in gameplay, but according to the group-mentality, individual power level matters less and has a lesser impact, than a good team-coordination.

c. The game itself revolves around the actions and their real-time effects, not the numbers. (G powers originally meant to be indicators of power difference. The accurate power level or difference weren’t actually interesting, only the state of being the upper or the lower out of the two.)

2. Traps are left out of the picture for now, because the main focus is on the Bakugan themselves and their interaction on the battlefield. Extra summoned units could jumble things a bit (both with the roles and the abilities) and they also make up for an even bigger crowd on the field, making it harder to keep track of everything again.

7. Mechanical monsters

One of the biggest deal of the second season’s plot was to bring in mechanical Bakugan into the picture. But due to the streamlined gameplay, these were not more than envisualisation of flashy overpowerdness.

This time, mechanical monsters will actually have benefits and downsides gameplay-wise.

Cybernetic monsters are immune to some effects (such as poisoning) and are generally well-equiped with an arsenal of weapons. Due artificial tuning and upgrading, they have a strong kit and their statistics are artificially set high. This makes them hard to beat and they impose an actual threat to the normal Bakugan. (They are like the Terminators of Vestroia.)

On the other hand, what cybernetic Bakugan lack is self-sufficient willpower and consciousness, thus for most part they are reliant on input and given orders by the players. For they also lack conscience and a ‘living soul’, they have no sense of fear or exhaustion. This can lead to an exaggeration on the half of the brawlers. If they are not careful enough, forcing a mechanical Bakugan back into ball form may burn them out a bit (as we have seen with Altair or Hades), pushing the monsters to their limits may even get them annihilated or entirely destroyed. (This is something, which normally doesn’t happen to a living Bakugan. It’s very rare for Bakugan to ‘die’ during brawls, because their automatic ‘fear-response’ turns on if they have a near-death experience. Both this, hitting them hard enough to retreat or falling unconscious renders the monsters back into ball form.)

8. One on one duels

The only visible downside of this system is making 1v1 brawls work. Due to the introduction of roles, the monsters are no longer balanced around their damage dealing capabilities and not all of them starts and stands with equal chances in a duel. And falling back to one monster per game per player brings back most of the problems we tried to give a resolution to previously.

/The only possibility I see is having the three Bakugan per player mechanic from S1 back and making all of them active on the field, ‘controlled’ by one player. But this would complicate things, so for now, we don’t talk about this./

But this doesn’t mean 1v1 games are impossible or against the rules. (They just don’t play out as smoothly as team fights do.)

9. For the end: About this post

I’m sure, there are things I left out, this ‘guide’ can never be complete entirely. For example: I haven’ talked about whether life gauges are going to be aggregated or (probably) not, or what’s up with universally activable abilitiy cards. This is because there are stuff I’m still thinking on or not sure about. Not every piece here is in their place yet, we’ll see, what the future brings. Until that, this is the best foundation I can work with regarding the brawling.

(Wow, this thing became ultra-detailed, I’m not even sure if the comic itself can stay true to everything I lay down here, but I’ll try...

I had to write a post about this to show: The brawling can be made interesting again, it just needs a shake-up and some game mechanic thoughts put behind it.)

#bumblispeaks #meta #bakugan #bakugan new vestroia #new vestroia #bakubabes au #mambling a lot lately #meta-talk

27 notes · View notes

ettadunham · 6 years ago

Text

A Buffy rewatch 4x15 This Year’s Girl

aka surprise bitch

Welcome to this dailyish text post series where I will rewatch an episode of Buffy and go on an impromptu rant about it for an hour. Is it about one hyperspecific thing or twenty observations? 10 or 3k words? You don’t know! I don’t know!!! In this house we don’t know things.

And today’s episode is SO GOOD. It is soo good, you guys!!!! Just as good as you remember it.

What I love about This Year’s Girl is that even some of the meh-y s4 plot elements work in it. Adam as a background invisible threat doing demon autopsies is legit chilling. Forrest is still the worst, but Riley mostly works as the guy who didn’t watch s3. And I love the running gag of the Scoobies checking him for hidden chips because foreshadowing.

The Scoobies themselves are working together and yet still scattered. Xander and Giles running into Spike and asking for his help, and him reminding them once again that he’s evil is priceless.

And of course the scene between Willow and Tara is adorable… even if it uses way too much slut-shaming language.

(To be fair though, it unfortunately isn’t a rare occurrence for the show or Willow to use that kind of language. Especially with Faith who we know she has a grudge against. You could almost say that it’s in character. I just… you know… wish it wasn’t. Not to mention that a writer chose to write it that way…)

Now that we’ve got all that, let’s talk some about the main attraction of this episode - Faith.

YOU GUYS DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW MUCH I LOVE FAITH IN THIS EPISODE, YOU GUYS!!! GUYS!!!!!!

And you know what, hands down to Eliza Dushku, because the way she’s playing Faith when she’s alone is such a wonderful and subtle performance. It feels especially powerful when contrasted with the Faith we see in a confrontation or a fight, often with Buffy. That Faith is full of posturing and manic energy, and yes, innuendos. So many innuendos.

The Faith we meet in the quiet however, is much more reflective. And sad. I love the score in the episode too, as it both underscores (heh, get it) that and fills it with an ominous atmosphere. We feel sympathy for Faith, but we’re also supposed to wonder what she’ll do next.

It doesn’t really help that the Scoobies clearly have no idea how they’d be handling a Grey Faith. Riley jokes about how he doesn’t know how to handle grey the way Buffy does, but when it comes down to it, the Scoobies’ response to the idea of Faith’s Heel-Face revolving door doesn’t really support that.

Willow and Xander are Pro Kick Her Ass, which I just realized… Is a s2 finale callback? It must be. And this time Willow is the one saying it. Oh my God. You guys… Willow did tell Buffy to kick her love interest’s ass at some point, it’s true.

(At least she didn’t lie about Xander saying it. He just straight up agreed with her in person.)

Giles does say that ‘perhaps there’s some form of rehabilitation’, but he lacks any conviction or specifics. And as much as Buffy theorizes that maybe Faith is scared, she’s still thinking in binary. Faith is either sorry and is ready and willing to be redeemed - or she’s angry and a threat that needs to be dealt with.

This isn’t an unfair assessment though, and in many ways, a necessary mindset for Buffy to have. She’s compassionate, but she also has a responsibility. If someone poses a supernatural threat, she can’t just Power of Love through it and hope for the best. She has the power to fight, and she’s often the only one with the power to stop them. She is the law.

(This theme of course will come up even more so in s6 and s7, especially in the context of Willow and Anya.).

Whatever the motive, at the end of the day, her and the gang’s attitude only works to reinforce Faith’s outlook. She can’t go back and she can’t move forward. She’s stuck with no one to fall back onto, now that the Mayor’s gone.

And the Mayor’s last message to her is both adorable (look at her little smile in the screencap) and highlights the inherent toxicity of that relationship. As much as the Mayor may have cared about Faith, it still wasn’t the kind of love that recognizes the needs of the other.

Telling someone you love that there’s nothing else in the world for them once you’re gone? That’s the work of pure evil, my friend.

In a way, I feel like Faith mostly goes along the body-switching plan because it gave her something to do. Faith is all about action - good or bad, she must keep moving.

The way she acts with Joyce especially felt like a performance. She’s playing the part of the psycho murderer more than anything - and maybe that’s just because she’s executing a plan… Or maybe it just feels that way here, because we see her in those quiet moments as well in this episode.

Faith’s dreams are another part of that puzzle. And the way Buffy is portrayed in them is especially intriguing to me.

There are three layers to this.

1) Bufy and Faith are connected as Slayers, and therefore can appear in each others dreams. This especially seems true in the first dream, where Buffy’s dream persona is the closest to her actual character.

This dream is also very similar to the one Buffy has in Graduation Part 2. I then suggested that it might actually be the same core dream, only shaped differently by the dreamer’s perspective. Even the foreshadowing and metaphorical language is in a similar vein (clean sheets that smell like Summer which Faith wouldn’t know about).

Except this dream ends with Buffy twisting the knife in Faith. Which brings me to my next points.

2) The Buffy Faith sees in her dream is also informed by how she perceives Buffy. She felt betrayed by Buffy long before she went over to the dark side. Her Slayer gal pal stabbing her to save Angel? That was the final twisting of the knife, reminding her that Buffy would always choose him over her.

I suppose Faith also sees Buffy as the person who took her last connection away from her in the form of the Mayor. Which is what we see in Faith’s second dream, but I’m more prone to interpret that as…

3) …Faith projecting herself onto dream Buffy, much like Buffy did with Drusilla in Surprise. This interpretation especially jumps out in the third dream, where Faith is running away from a Buffy that’s stalking her with the knife she stabbed her with.

But Faith can’t keep running from herself, and as she slips and falls into a grave, it gives enough time for her past to catch up with her. And as she re-emerges, accepting the killer as part of her, she wakes up.

Of course, there’s also just the trauma itself of being stabbed by Buffy that gives a much more obvious layer to these dreams. There’s a lot going on here, as is the case usually with dream sequences on this show.

On the other side of this, we’ve got Buffy. I personally feel like there’s an understanding here that she feels guilty about how things went down between them, but it’s not explicit.

In the scene where Riley is trying to get her to tell him more about what else happened with Faith, and what Faith’s done to her, I feel like the intention may have been to show that she’s keeping the Angel-related details from him… But my mind immediately went to how Buffy might be thinking about what she’s done to Faith.

The first (real) interaction between Faith and Buffy is also just super loaded, but it’s telling that neither of them are making the first move to fight… Not until the cops show up. There’s taunting and innuendo, of course, and Buffy makes a half-hearted plea to Faith.

“It doesn’t have to be like this.”

But Faith is not ready to let down, and Buffy is quick to match her pace. Maybe too quick, but remember… Murder… Also, responsibility.

Here’s one more thing I want to leave you guys with to think about though. Buffy receiving the call from the hospital means that she was Faith’s emergency contact. And sure, you can take that as Buffy leaving her information at the hospital after Faith got into her coma, to make sure that she knows if (and when) she wakes up…

…But imagining Faith listing Buffy as her emergency contact at some point in some form beforehand is much more fun, and causes much more pain to me.

You can’t stop me from making myself sad with Fuffy. It’s what I do.

#buffy rewatch 2k19 #btvs talk #btvs

10 notes · View notes