#so there is still a bit to learn about its nuances on my part

[hastalavistabyebye]

I was wondering, why do we use deer iconography so often to depict cryptids and gods and monsters of the wilderness ?

Well first of, it's based on western imagination, culture and lore of course. This plays obviously a major part of it but why ? Why a deer ?

By the way, deer presence in folklore and everything is old, like very old, and common to lots of cultures. Its antlers renewal is associated with rebirth and life and death cycle. And globally deers are seen as a link with the supernatural. What I'm trying to theorise is why, and maybe why still today.

So let's start.

First, the wilderness pictured is the one of nature. The nature untouched, undomesticable by humans. The savage nature, the wild nature. And what is a wild nature in western biome ? The forest. It's the wild element of the western landscape. It's a huge part of folklore because its darkness and density is home of so many creatures and dangers. You can get lost in it, easily. You hold no power in the Forest, etc, etc. The forest is the best way to start a tale isn't it ? Anyway, that's the first point : magic and secrecy, everything cryptid and other fairies and land monsters, are linked to the Forest. 

And what do we find in a forest ? Well lots of things (and I'm only speaking about wildlife here, so not vegetation). Bears, wild boars, lots of different birds with a lot of variety, rabbits, wolfs and foxes... And of course deers.

So why deers and deer-particularities specifically are so much used and appreciated ? There is so many other animals to use ! So here is what I think, and it's really is just an idea, a simple take on the matter :

Deers are beautiful creatures. They are majestic, mighty. They're also skittish and fast. Finding a deer is hard. This two points put them in two cases of common imagination. 

They are regal : it puts them in a "king of the Forest" sort of position. Especially since their antlers are associated with royalty. It's the symbol of a good hunter and who liked to hunt ? Kings. So yeah, they're heavily associated with royalty and power, must it be as a symbol or because of their appearance and grace.

They are hard to meet and good at hiding : it put them in the "supernatural" case, the fantastic aspect of the Forest. Here and not here. Watching you but impossible to see. As if they were at two places at once. Present but never where you look. 

So that's already two aspects in their favour for being associated to a godlike creature of the Forest.

But there is also something else. Because a bear or a wolf could have similarities in a way or the other. So deers have something else.

They are dangerous but not carnivorous. They are a prey, not a danger for the Forest. Not a danger for the Forest inhabitants. A danger for us. And where does this come from ? Easy : the deer's slab. You hear them from far away, they are noisy like all hell. And it is kind of terrifying. Plus they're also fighting. And it will be dangerous if you get too close because they will attack. Not to eat. Not because they're hurt or because of their instincts specifically. It practically feels like they are angry at you (because it does sound like they are angry at something or each other or well you know anything and everything really, deer's slabs are impressive as hell). And so they can be seen as forces you should not mess with. Forces that will only attack each other or invaders of their territory, protectors.

Mighty, very hard to find, protectors living in the Forest. Oh and very easily identified thanks to their unmistakable antlers.

It's in fact no wonder why deer iconography is so used to depict the Forest (and wilderness at large) dangers, secrets and power.

[sugarcoatednightshade]

I haven’t thought of Lily Orchard in years, but she just made a video on dungeon meshi and I wanted to hear what she had to say. I couldn’t even finish it.

It’s clear she hates anime as a genre and is pissed about having to review something she didn’t want to watch, and that anger permeates the whole* review. On top of that, it’s so fucking disingenuous to review a show that’s not even halfway over and then claim it’s thematically disjointed - like 1. Of course it’ll seem that way if you’ve only seen the first quarter of a piece of work, we’re still in the setting up stage, these themes haven’t had time to fully commingle and resolve and 2. Even considering that, dungeon meshi does actually know what it is/where it’s going, and at this point it’s fairly obvious how all the themes/mixed genera’s are gonna fit together.**

*to be fair, I haven’t seen the entire review, so maybe she calms down partway through. I don’t make a habit of watching things I know will upset me, and watching someone make bad faith criticism of something I like would literally ruin my week

Post chapter 65 spoilers below:

**Granted, cookings prominence in the show, while cute*** on its own, didn’t really seem plot relevant to me until around chapter 65 when it was revealed that in order to save falin they would have to eat her dragon half. Y’all, I went fucking feral over that reveal.

***cute meaning: it’s used mostly for worldbuilding at first. That’s really cool if you’re into it, and an integral part of the story ryoko kui is telling, but not technically necessary in every story. There are plenty of storys who spend needless time expositing about the world instead of focusing on the interesting bits, and if you’re only a quarter of the way into DM, I can see how you might think that this is one of those cases.

But obviously, as time passes, the worldbuilding aspects become more important, because the entire show is about worldbuilding. Or more accurately, it’s a deconstruction of the fantasy genera. It spends time setting up familiar tropes and then examines how those tropes would actually play out in a realistic world, setting up and then questioning our expectations for the world in a really nuanced way.

My favorite example of this is how dungeon meshi treats dark/ancient magic.

1. The words ‘dark magic’ and ‘dark elf’ have negative but vague connotations in traditional fantasy. “The thing is bad because it is bad.” It’s a fact we’re primed to believe, but shallow and easy to question

2. We learn that marcille uses dark magic, but that she’s using it for good. “Actually dark magic is forbidden because the people in power were afraid of The Plebs and want to restrict the populaces access to knowledge” is also a common fantasy trope.

3. As we learn more about dungeons and how they intertwine with dark magic, we learn that it does truly have the power to end the world. Not by itself, but because the dimension it pulls power from is populated by beings who would use that bridge of power to enter our world and cause havoc. Holy shit, we think, black magic is actually dangerous and was banned for a reason. Naming it ‘black’ was part of a smear campaign intended to save the public by dissuading them from using it

4. And then we learn that the so called catastrophe scenario has never happened, no demon has ever escaped a dungeon and successfully ended the world. Is this because of the work of the Canaries and ppl like them, or are demons perhaps not as much of a threat as they are made out to be?

And it’s great because there is no one correct answer. We learn things through the characters, whose perspectives are limited and realistic and based on their own life experience. Nobody knows the whole story, and neither do we.

[bandtrees]

AAHHHH!!! AAHHHHHHHH DIALTOWN AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

okay i've had a night to sit on the evil route and put my thoughts together and holy shit dude. ALL OF IT- all of it was so good but i'm obviously (being the callum and gingi guy) going to focus on the callum and gingi stuff. spoilers ahead if you have not done the evil route gooo do it!!!!

i think looking at the worst end of the evil route is best to view through the lens of "the literal opposite of ch3" and also "knowing who milt and marla and all of them are" because - for starters - i think the approach dogman has taken, out of universe, is genius. i know milt and marla aren't ingame mostly for writing constraint reasons, but the specifics of their lives (milt's especially, being basically erased from history) not being something you ever get is really really good because history just... does not remember them!

milt committed suicide but according to dogman that's not even public knowledge, as far as anyone in-universe knows he just disappeared and all of the turmoil that took place is kind of lost to time. and i think knowledge of his name, much less what happened to him, being something you have to dig through paratext and get an easter egg of a fuckin tie-in web quiz to learn, is... probably the experience you'd more or less have in-universe. he's someone you only really know if you're really into the subject.

and to be honest i dont think i would have it any other way, because what the dlc does to you if you're one of those who know is MADDENING. it's everywhere. the hat motif. i have very strong feelings on evil route peter essentially having the exact role marla must have - the conversations gingi has with the narrator, with roger, is soooooo gooooood. it's a subtle background puzzle you get to piece together that (i reckon) also would hit hard for any player who doesn't Know(tm).

(and that also segues into a general feeling i have about the dlc, being that i am not a dsaf guy at all, i was into dialtown first and i have no interest in dsaf i'm sure its great but just not something i think i'll ever look into: for a bit before this dlc i was worried if it would be enjoyable as someone who's not into dsaf or has context for any cameo characters or references - but it was and is :D the characters all exist perfectly in dialtown and the references that exist still have merit on their own and are funny/etc on their own even without whatever added context im sure dsaf gives. which is good and i love it.)

all of that to say, i really really love what this dlc did for so many characters, but especially gingi and callum (and the narrator!) - i love how, as seems to be callum's destiny with maladjusted people, gingi only sees him as an incomplete and biased ideal to strive for. we simultaneously get so much weight and nuance to callum through seeing gingi go down a similar path, but also get so little of it because the only thing gingi cares about wrt callum is him being the "greatest salesman ever" and completely discarding the parts of him that made him anything but an industrial supervillain.

i think it wouldv been easy for it to just be "phonegingi is basically becoming (the worst parts of) callum and so, when they're working with mingus, finds some degree of kinship in the pictures etc of him" but the fact they're completely dismissive of mingus and her family history in every way, demanding the pictures of him be taken down, making a jab at him being "forgetful", staining and ruining them, etc, is even MORE telling of what they've become. much like callum was, they've found success and don't really think about how they got there or who helped them get there!

(see: mingus having marla's hat, which gingi takes from her when they execute her - you could say that hat symbolizes the genuine good that callum did despite his mixed legacy, and the love that he had for his wife and those closest to him: and that's something gingi is completely ignoring in favor of having it be another symbol of their (and callum's) power :D)

also the space ending. You're telling me gingi became wildly successful and then in an act of innovation-induced hubris, locked themself in an inescapable box, alone? Good god man. callum is INESCAPABLE in this route its so fucking good. elements of him and what happened to him and the path he went down are everywhere - even in other routes, there's roger's amnesia, there's gingi making other people suffer for their mistakes: it's so horrifying when you realize what's happening but in retrospect the signs were always there. roger's plant is literally crown mechanics. no wonder that man's juices are all over the goddamn place!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

also gingi getting a cat tail in the bad ends is genius. 10/10 design choice. really good dlc. this is not a coherent ramble but i'm hopped up on being insane about what iv witnessed this weekend and also we have like no food in the house rn. we dont even have fucking milk iv had to make pb&js with this strangely tasting strangely textured squeeze bottle jelly and not even have milk with it. roger is the only thing keeping me stable

and roger himself is like... god, i dont even know what to say about him really? i adore him so much. he's a brilliantly written character. it's to the point where i cant even like analyze anything i just kind of have to point at him really hard and hope you understand. i related to him a lot as i'm sure a lot of people did. inexperience and "stupidity" and forgetfulness are traits that often get flattened into either completely sympathetic non-flaws or completely unlikable annoyances and i think how the dlc touched upon those traits of roger's - funnily a lot of the time, yet very respectfully and sympathetically when the time came for it, while never letting you forget the genuine harm it was causing to the people around him - was reaaaaally good. you love roger but you understand why others might not - but even then, like the rest of his workers, you still care about him first and foremost, not what he can accomplish.

and i think that duality being present in the good/evil routes is really good: roger's good ending is one where he flubs the presentation and hands the reins over to someone he trusts more to fix up the place, and he acknowledges his workers love him as a friend more than they do a leader. and the evil ending is the one where he has a wildly successful, energetic presentation that people love, and he's getting praise and is saving the plant and everyone's so excited, because not only is he promoting an underhanded shitty scam, but it's not him. he IS, like gingi, becoming a HORRIBLE version of himself: the point where good intentions or even ignorance begin to matter less and less in the face of actual harm being done. again, much like callum!!!!!

i also love peter. oh my god peter. in his marla crown era

i 100% had more to say but i'm beginning to lose it. oh yeah THE FUCKING INSULIN SCAM IS CRUEL. that part had me with my hand over my mouth and my eyes just agape at how fucking grim it was. the reveal that peter's wife is also diabetic makes it go from "pretty fucked up!" to "actively devastating". truly gingi at their worst. both it and the blowout argument they have with the narrator afterwards are done excellently. taking advantage of peter's tendency to worry about roger, roger's not wanting to upset peter, peter's fucking diabetic wife, is so so cruel and i love it. really really gets into the weight of what you're doing and how fucked up scams are, we are out of the realm of silly jokes about crypto and in the realm of ruining peoples' lives. it's so good.

anyway. really good dlc. i will surely have so much more to say and create about it. it maddens me that it's only five dollars because i dont think i will ever be the same again after that to be quite honest with you!!!! literally my only gripe is the way it's kind of carried on dialtown's general problem with its non-main female characters but that's something people have talked about more and articulated better than me.

good dlc. really good dlc. cough up the five dollars because it is truly worth so much more i havent even been able to touch upon here. and if you havent played dialtown cough up the eight dollars and then cough up the five dollars. its real good.

[istadris]

do you have any theories to what the plot for brothership will be?

I do!

So first of all, we know the plot will start in the Mushroom Kingdom while the brothers are living their life (and for Luigi that means getting in trouble)

Until a portal appears from their hand holding after Mario rescues Luigi.

Now, this is pure speculation based on the preview and a split second moment of the video, but I suspect that while Nintendo clearly doesn't want to rely too much on Illumination for inspiration, the movie might have inspired a scene in which Mario and Luigi try to hold on each other while going through the warp zone portal, but are separated, with Mario taking around his surroundings.

We know that the Shipshape will play a key role in the adventure: it's very likely it serves as the main hub, going from island to island and catapulting the Bros from its canon.

Since it seems to be the place where they meet their main allies (Connie and Snoutlet), it'll probably be their tutorial area : as such, I expect Mario to be temporarily separated from Luigi at first, so the player learns to control Mario alone, before he soon finds Luigi (and the player learns to control both brothers at once).

I don't expect an extremely convoluted plot, this is a Mario game after all. However, Mario & Luigi games are RPGs, which means a lot more dialogues and exploration than the mainline games. The M&L games also like to feature some twists here and there, and a rather clever writing despite their simplish stories.

So far, the bad guys seem to be the Extension Corps guys, the Gorumbla and that skull guy in a top hat, who seems in a position of power compared to the other three. Gorumbla seems to stand out in the theme compared to the others, so I expect he's more of a "you disturbed me in my nap and I'm ANGRY" boss than a real antagonist.

I expect a "Revolution" type of story : the electric-style habitants of the island live in harmony, until a group of jerks decide their way was the only one to follow and started bullying around the locals. Mario & Luigi get roped into the conflict as most of the habitants aren't fighters (and that by virtue of fighting back against bullies, they paint a big target on their back)

I also expect a bit of Technology vs Nature conflict, with the bad guys being all about technology over everything while the good guys are more nuanced and acknowledge the importance of nature in their life.

Top Hat Guy still puzzles me. What is his goal? He doesn't look like most of the electric-themed characters, what is his common goal with them?

Peach's appearance is very intriguing to me. Recently, Nintendo has given her more proactive roles (playable in the Rabbids RPGs, SMB Wonder, the main role in Showtime, an active role in the movie...) and I hope they keep with this trend of leaving behind her damsel in distress past.

The one time we see her in the trailer, she's with several local characters (all electric-coded, like Connie, Snoutlet and the Exension Corps) and Dorrie. A thing that stands out to me is that they all wear an orange piece of clothing, including Peach. It leads me to believe they're a crew or squad, and that Peach, once sucked into this place like the Bros, decided to stick with them while Mario and Luigi stuck on the Shipshape. Or maybe they're all part of the Shipshape crew, and rescued Peach (or the opposite). In any case, I expect Peach to have her own side of the adventure until she's needed with the Bros.

Is there a link with Connie's orange symbol on her hat? Although it looks more like a seed, to tie with her theme of tree-ship and growing plants.

Bowser is a full enigma so far. His moment in the trailer only shows him shooting at something, and the text on the website is ambivalent on whether he'll be a friend or a foe. I hope for the former, the Bros and Peach teaming up with Bowser against a common foe. But while the M&L games love to give Bowser depth and moments of allyship with our heroes (BIS, SS), they also insist on how Bowser is a bad guy after his own goals (DT, PiT).

And now for the places of the game they might visit :

First Island : with the red grass area to gently ease the player into a new place, the cliff providing the first environnemental challenges, and the first boss being a big brute with easy patterns to counter.

Obligatory Fire and/or Ice Island :

Flower/Nature Island, with one of the bosses being the monster plants

I'm running out of room for picture, but I suspect there will be a High Tech Island, with the big city (and probably one of the first confrontations with the main bad guys)

I don't know how accurate my predictions will be, we still don't have much; but this is how I see things going so far!

[markrosewater]

"I talk a lot about how different players enjoy different aspects of the game. What I talk far less about is different players struggle with different aspects. Some can’t handle excessive processing; some have issues with sequencing; some don’t understand the nuances of the rules; some aren’t good with memory..." Hi Mark, I wanted to say I sincerely appreciate the thoughtful, high effort and detailed response to my question and feedback. It really means a lot and sometimes I can't believe I'm talking to the head designer of my favorite game of all time about the specific questions and issues I have with the game. You don't have to do this and it's so amazing that you do, so thank you. I think you make an interesting and probably valid point about my proclivity to value memorizing aspects of the game and mechanics and I understand other people don't have that problem or don't care about that as much. But I think overall, in summary my larger point is for more than 25 years, typically the rule of thumb when it came to Magic the Gathering cards was the adage “Reading the card explains the card” and in just the past few years, that is no longer the case because of the need to have extremely wordy mechanics that need helper/reminder cards to function. People (myself included) often can't remember how these mechanics function, but because they are so complicated, they are constantly referring to the double sided helper token in addition the the card with oracle text and this can slow down game play and feel awkward at times. I want the Magic the Gathering cards to also be the game pieces. With every new set you continue to prove this is possible in the form of brand new mechanics but Magic still insists on making more and more of these mechanics that deviate from that adage. But I acknowledge and respect that everyone doesn't agree with me on that. Part of it is about memory and mental bandwidth, but a larger part of it is about tracking and the logistics of needing game pieces that aren't Magic cards in order to play Magic. This was also a big part of my aversion to cards that require stickers, 12 sided dice, keyword counters, helper tokens, etc. I do look forward to someday seeing some more outside of the game helper token style mechanics that are more simple like Ascend or Monarch, so I will be crossing my fingers for those. Anyways, thanks again for all you do for the community and keep up the great work!

Thank you for the dialogue.

One of the interesting things about doing this job so long is that I get some perspective on larger shifts of the game.

The conversation you and I are having matches a conversation I had with another player fifteen or so years ago. Magic was starting to dip its toe much more into counters and tokens.

The player felt like the core of Magic was the cards, and that a reliance on counters and tokens was pulling away from the essence of what they thought was the core of Magic.

Cut back another fifteen or so years before that. I had just joined Wizards and I was talking to a player at a convention. They were concerned that we’d been going up in named keywords. They felt the core of the game was based on the individual cards and that leaning on named mechanics was adding an element that distracted from the pure essence of the game.

Magic, by its nature, constantly adapts. The designers are always looking for new venues to explore, but there are always players who appreciate the game for what it has been.

That’s the balance that we’re always trying to strike. How do we keep exploring and innovating while at the same time keep true to what the game means to people? It’s challenging as those two forces can pull in very different directions.

I do hear what you’re saying, and we’re always on the look for elegance and brevity where we can find it. Sometimes though that journey requires us to explore a bit into the weeds to learn things that with time and experience we can streamline.

Again, thanks for the dialogue. I enjoy having chats like this with players.

[let-us-cultivate-our-garden]

Do you think Boscha should have been explored more or given a proper characterization instead of just pushing her aside or using her as a convenient threat? I don't think TOH acknowledged her or her feelings very much. And it spreads to the fandom too - I've met some truly awful fans who wanted her to die or be expelled or lose all her friends and family. Or all three. I do not think either the show or fans gave her fair treatment. She has kind of a low-key Belos treatment - hints are shown and it's clear to people deep enough in fandom that she's more than a flat bully, but the show chooses to keep her as a flat bully and not treat her as a person who may be traumatized from Amity suddenly snubbing her out of the blue and telling her to grow up and then everything that happened in the Collector's apocalypse. She's my favourite character, and I think part of it may be because I like the idea of her escaping everything and having a future she likes somewhere else. Preferably still in contact with Amelia and Cat and not with them refusing to speak to her ever again like so many seem to want. Has the literal child not suffered enough already, especially with them being turned to puppets?? She is going to have PTSD from everything, and that is a fact. She deserves to learn and grow and not be a punching bag for fans and characters in fan works to snub and beat up because the show did not do its job fleshing her out. And after Belos was stomped on, part of me can't help but wonder if Dana would endorse Willow beating up Boscha and her losing her friends and future too.

Justice for Boscha. She deserves more than this show.

Sorry to say, anon, but I barely remember anything about Boscha. While I sympathize with wanting to see your favorite character treated with more "respect" and as a deep character, sometimes, characters just fulfill a basic narrative role and that's it. And that's okay.

Since I can't adequately answer this ask, I've decided to outsource it. The following response is from @mdhwrites a certified Boscha fan: "NO.

I fucking love Boscha but absolutely not.

Honestly, if anyone wanted to have this, it should have been Amity. Commit to her being a bully. However, Boscha is a bit character who's narrative purpose is to make the audience further want her to abandon the entirety of her whole life for Luz. To make it so that it seems like literally everything to do with who she was before Luz was pure evil. As such... She honestly should have been LESS nuanced.

Kind of like Odalia, if you ask genuinely how terrible Boscha is, the answer is not really, including in relation to Amity. She follows Amity faithfully. Amity is the only person she doesn't mock, criticize or be cruel to. She doesn't target specific people for her bully tendencies, instead just being oppurtunistic of being fun. She never decided one person had to be eternally miserable like Amity did with Willow. Yes, there's Winging it Like Witches but that episode only functions if Boscha ALREADY DIDN'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT WILLOW. She TURNED into focusing on Willow and by all signs would have stopped the intensity once Willow was no longer taking her spotlight. Yes, she's not the best person in the world but most people in Hexside, from what we can tell of her status as an outcast, would have said the same thing Boscha did about Willow: She's a failure and associating with her is social suicide.

I mean... I literally made a 300k story where Boscha became the main character because of the conflicts in the narrative intention and execution when it came to her character. I then added her as a major character to one of the longest things I have ever written, Little Miss Rich Witch kind of because they're right. Boscha has a lot of interesting elements going on with her that I can't tell if they were intended or not. They seem intended with S3 but even S3 makes her look terrible and is painful to watch as everyone discards her. The poster is just right that Boscha went through WAY fucking worse than Luz quite literally ever did. What Luz feared would happen to her if she told the truth, Boscha had happen to her following all the social rules that her best friend taught her or reinforced. What the fuck?

But again... Would that have made a better show? No. Boscha didn't actually have a place in this show besides as a punching bag. As someone to shirk blame off of from Amity, much like Odalia and hey, do you recognize that both of those characters are treated like they are somehow worse than Belos? Almost like Amity had a lot of fans projecting onto her which says TERRIBLE things about those people's unwillingness to recognize Amity's own monstrousness and willingness to just blame others? Amity is one of the most awkward elements of the show, given so much time and clear narrative direction with fucking awful execution that characters like Boscha suffer around her.

Boscha also suffers from TOH's "I'm not like other kid's shows" problem because other kid's shows would have written her more evil. Would have gone more over the top. They kept her grounded though because that's the more realistic and nuanced and 'mature' take. It's also just the worse one for your narrative."

[zombie-bait]

Omg i just realized I have something tiny to add to the whole James Somerton debacle. I'm currently watching the hbombguy vid (as you do when procrastinating assignments) and I remembered something that stood out to me in James' old videos.

So I used to be a fan of his stuff. I am also a fan of Hannibal and IWTV. He made a video covering both so naturally I was very hyped. It was called 'The Gay Appeal of Toxic Love.' The vid itself was fine (I don't remember having any super strong opinions of it besides being excited to hear ppl mention Interview cuz I had recently become obsessed) but one thing did stand out to me. In the IWTV section he mentions Nicki and, naturally, his death:

"After becoming a vampire, Nicky becomes nearly catatonic, and eventually slips away from Lestat entirely. And after centuries of dealing with depression and severe mental illness, Nicky kills himself."

(sourced from this transcript: https://github.com/TerraJRiley/James_Somerton_Transcripts/blob/main/Transcripts/The%20Gay%20Appeal%20of%20Toxic%20Love.txt)

To anyone who's read TVL, I don't think I need to explain that Nicki had not, in fact, been around for centuries. "Nicki had lived to be 30" has been rattling around in my head since I first read it.

And like, obviously I don't expect every youtube essayist to read several long-ish novels to have a full grasp of the series' deep lore, especially when the focus was largely on IWTV and Loustat rather than the entire Vampire Chronicles. Still, it makes you wonder a bit about the quality of the research being done here. You can find the proper info in like, 5 seconds by just going on the fan wiki so I'm not sure what his sources were. And that's the issue at hand, isn't it?

At the time I felt a tiny bit smug recognizing the error but in light of everything that's been revealed, it's kind of telling. I'm not saying this part was plagiarized (I haven't found anything but others on reddit have found issues with different sections of the same video) but rereading the transcript it comes off as someone who clearly doesn't know much about Interview.... It feels like he's reading through a loose summary of plot points rather than analyzing a piece of media that actually means anything to him. It's very much Interview for people who don't know Interview which, one could argue is fair. Especially beyond book one, VC is a niche series and a lot of elements that are important to certain characters or plot lines cannot be summarized quickly for an audience unfamiliar with it. A good writer, who's done a lot of research about the specific topic they have chosen to make a video on, would be able to balance this. There is a LOT to analyze about queerness in VC and its a shame to see one of the more popular queer media channels half-assing it just to churn out videos heavily made up of other people's work. In retrospect he had several videos like that, where he would discuss things like manga/manhua communities while clearly having little knowledge on the nuance of those subjects. He was an outsider who presented himself with a strange amount of authority.

This was content created with the sole intention of propping up queer stories and history, yet it's built off stolen work from queer authors and doesn't actually care that much about exploring the communities it features. Vids like the IWTV one weren't really fact checked because it's only people like me who would might give a shit or even notice anything is off in the first place. There's a bit of a similar vibe in some of his other vids where he undermines the experiences of queer women because he clearly has not taken the time to learn about the nuances of representing queer women in media. These are things that irritated me when I first started to notice them but I put those concerns in the back of my mind because I cared about the topics he was covering and was excited to see these discussions becoming more mainstream.

The revelations of this evening have been disappointing to say the least.

(also for the record I know he made other more recent vids about IWTV but I haven't seen those and even if his account was still up I don't think I would lol

BUT

I did look at the transcript for his 'Vampires and the Gays Who Love Them' video (found from the same link I included above) and this quote about the IWTV AMC show is sending me: "Daniel has never grappled with the complexities of being gay"

Shoutout to straight, uncomplicated icon Daniel Molloy. Devil's Minion was a mass hallucination, spread the word)

[lurkingshan]

Goodbye Cooking Crush

Aw man, I am so sad this wonderful little show is over. It delivered everything I needed and held up all the way through its run. Everything came together in this finale for some great final payoffs, and the characters stayed true. When we were watching the finale I said to @neuroticbookworm and @twig-tea that this show is writing porn, because all of the narrative threads build and converge in such a satisfying way. I posted a couple weeks ago that this show is exactly what you want from a good romcom, and I stand by it. Great outing for OffGun and a very rewarding show that I will surely be rewatching many times.

As expected, this week delivered a solid, nuanced ending for Ten's family conflict. I loved the way Ten sat Prem down at the family table, took the chair opposite his father at the other end of the table in a clear power move, and told him in no uncertain terms that Prem was his boyfriend and he had to accept it. And his dad did not have a sudden personality transplant; he pushed back and challenged Prem to prove his integrity. It made sense to me that Prem wanted to pay that money back; the money scam from the beginning of their relationship has been weighing on him the whole time, and he doesn't want any shred of doubt lingering over his relationship with his in-laws. My favorite part of that whole sequence was Prem's grandma finally finding out about the money and getting out her switch; this was never Prem's burden to bear alone and I'm glad he learned his lesson about not asking for help.

So Ten's dad was forced to accept Prem when he came through on his promise, and he even offered a classic Asian parent version of an apology by coming to Prem's restaurant to acknowledge him, which is more than I expected from him. My favorite thing about that final scene at the restaurant is that Ten's dad hasn't really changed and he and Ten are not suddenly getting along; their conversation was still adversarial even as he finally explained a couple things, and in the end he was left to eat at the table alone. No unearned parental 180 here. They are not suddenly a big happy family, but they've settled on a detente everyone can live with. It feels right.

And in another family drama, Fire finally found the courage to tell his mother how much she has hurt him, and after an initial rejection, she realized she didn't want to lose Fire and offered him acceptance. I would have liked a bit more breathing room in this plot because her turn felt a little too easy, but it's a side story so I get that they were time constrained. It was nice to see Fire finally stand up for her, and Dynamite begrudgingly accepted into the family. I liked that Dy's family didn't magically appear; not all families will accept their queer children, and that is the reality he has to live with. But it must have felt somewhat healing to see that happen for Fire and know he was a big part of giving Fire the courage to finally come out.

Meanwhile, the Three Must-Eat-Ers lost the cooking competition but won the hearts of many with the touching story of their final dish, and built careers bolstered by their show fandom. I was so pleased to get the flash forward to show us that Prem did get to open his chef's table restaurant, with Ten's full support (and with rings of some sort on, not sure if they're engaged or married but they are definitely committed). It was the very sweet cherry on top of the ice cream sundae of their romance. Ten and Prem, Communication Kings, are going down as one of my all-time favorite bl couples.

I am agnostic on the final Samsee/Pang reveal, given my hopes for a Samsee/Metha pairing. I'm not mad at the show for not going there--it would definitely have been pairing the spares to put Samsee and Metha together, which I generally do not go in for--and am mostly happy that Samsee found love and Metha is still part of the gang. I would have also loved to see those bullies get some comeuppance, but honestly, bullies often win, and it didn't feel like a true loss for our boys so I'm good with it. This was a solid finale for a feel good show and I will miss it dearly.

[drawnfamiliarfaces]

I was rewatching rc9gn and revisited “Dawn of the Driscoll” and I gotta say, Randy’s art of healing is crazily overpowered.

He revived someone who was reduced to nothing but bones and had been dead for who knows how long. Not only that but it was later shown that he revived various animals who had dissected and most were nothing but eyes. Not to mention he did all that from just skimming through the instructions.

Imagine the full potential that he could unlock if he studied the art of healing fully and practiced enough times!

Oh BOI YEs. It's ridiculous how overpowered Randy can come across, because the show wanted to make a funny episode (and we love that of course but still xD).

Like, how strong of a potential this boy has, if he managed to execute what must be one of the hardest techniques in the Ninja arsenal? Just imagine all the implications of that ability??? To literally save someone from a brink of death/resuscitate them? No wonder some ninjas go power crazy! I would too, if i had ability to bring back the dead!

Though I do like to think that there are more nuance to all of that, than it was shown in the series. (A bit of a me yapping on beneath, feel free to ignore it.)

One of the things that actually bothers me about this ability - is that technically, for something called the Art of Healing, we never saw actual healing performed (because its a kid's show duh but still) BUT it has been used in the show more to 'restore' inanimate objects (the bike) and bring someone "back to life" (skeleton & dissected animals) - which IMO is not 'healing' but more of a necromancy ability.

After all, Randy didn't restore Driscoll to full life (gave a fully functioning body back) and the animals/body parts are also in their post-mortem states. So, what he essentially did is reanimate remains, by (perhaps) returning their souls and binding them to what was left of mortal bodies (which probably reflected very badly on their mental state = reason why Driscoll&animals were full of anger/insanity) or sharing some of his own life energy to restore minimal physical 'aliveness' (I mean a bunch of eyeballs in a jar could hardly be called alive, but they do perform their basic function of looking/blinking). Seems like classic nercomancy to me!

Of course one could argue that the reason it happened is because Randy didn't execute the technique correctly, because he 'skimmed' through instructions, and that potentially he could have restored their bodies too....but I like to think that the ability have its limitations - and returning long-dead bodies to full life back (basically rebuilding a whole creature from a body part/single cell scenario) is one of them.

Otherwise, in my opinion, while it is impressive that Randy 'revived' someone long dead, what he has done is technically one of the easiest (and thus more dangerous) variation of Art of Healing/basically Art of of Necromancy - reanimation through spiritual energy, but not actually returning someone to full life. Another variation of Art of Healing - is Restoration of Physical Body without any sort of Spiritual Energy - aka the freaking bike. I mean, is it really healing if one just restored the original form of the object without any actual prior life in it??? Bike is not the same as a human after all, its not alive in any sense, it doesn't have a soul/life energy.

So you see, in these two occasions Randy used Art of Healing, none of them actually healed anything. Because actual healing of live things is much harder! And further proof of my headcanons is in the plants.

The original reason Randy learned Art of Healing is to restore their Botanical project - and despite hitting at first full blast before Randy lost control of 'beams' - it never actually worked on it. I mean, we basically see the plant still dead even as an already alive Driscoll pops out behind them!

So obviously healing a recently dead plant requires a much more fine touch/precise control than just full-blasting healing energy at long dead remains. And further emphasize on it we have with The Skunk Pine. The pine cone is alive and in whole condition - but the application of healing energy gave it a boost that accelerated its growth to the point that Randy implied that in few days it would be a fully functioning tree.

It kind of aligns with my understanding of how magical healing works - the healer basically shares their energy with the target to kick start and accelerate their own healing rapidly and sort of suppliment their reserves with the healer's help. But again - the pine cone was not injured/dead/damaged so it would be much easier for Randy to 'heal' it in order for it to grow rapidly - but no actual healing took place.

So the point of all this rambling recollections - is that while Randy's raw potential made something like reanimating and restoring look too easy - the things he did were already the easiest parts of Art of Healing because either option essentially requires only one aspect of either soul/body to be restored. The true Art of Healing is much more complicated. Not only it requires concentration and precise control/application in restoration of both physical and spiritual aspects, it also most likely has power requirements and repercussions to the user if they tried to overcome those limitations.

All in all, thinking about application of fantasy healing is always fun when you look deeper into its simplified canon version. ;)

[sturionic]

Yo im looking for some advice

I want to come out of my shell and start contributing more to the world around me after years of being shut down and silenced

Im not good at speaking or forming sentences in conversation or delivering my true thoughts

I want to be confident enough to speak instead of nod when peers say something to me

Its agonizing being this way. I want to do so much and i want to be a part of the community and help the people around me but that is quite difficult when i am too scared to speak or do, despite how badly i want to

I know youre just some guy but i admire your dedication and outlook. My head and heart are full of potential but something is holding me back

You dont gotta psychoanalyze me or anything but if you have anything to say id love to hear it, even if its critical

Hey anon <3

Indeed lol, I am just some guy, and I won't psychoanalyze you. But I can say one thing confidently: You being “this way” is a testament to your resourcefulness. Silence is a strategy that has worked for you at some point (and may still be useful at times in the present.) Try to see yourself this way as you read these next bits: a fundamentally resilient & resourceful person who is simply learning how to apply these tactics with more nuance.

The best analogy I’ve heard about anxiety is that it’s like driving a truck through deep snow. For whatever reason, your brain has been driving the truck down the same path over, and over, and over again. As a result, the snow on this path is compacted and very easy to drive on.

You can’t erase the path. It’s already there, and your brain knows the way well. What you can do is break a new path. It’s slow and difficult work, but eventually you can make an off-ramp from your usual highway: one that is just as smooth and wide and compacted. When you’re in a moment of profound anxiety, a split-second turn down an easy safe path is much easier than breaking new trail through dense snow.

In the context of community organizing, the way to start building off-ramps is to start very small. (Sending an ask like this is actually an incredible step to take - you made a decision to safely and deliberately seek out contact, and thank you so much for putting your trust in me there. I hope you admire yourself for it as much as I do.)

Local libraries and community centres often have low-pressure events & programs that are essentially ways to just get out and coexist with other people. Some examples I love and attend frequently: my local library’s writing sessions (sitting around a table in silence for two hours, working on whatever writing project you want) and my community centre’s ‘gardening work bees’ (same thing, but out in the garden.) Or maybe there are more activity-driven ones that will speak to your desire to help in a more tangible way: picking up litter, doing grocery runs for disabled folks, etc. The point is to get your brain to start building a path that associates other people with safety, rather than danger. Because it's fundamentally true: we're safer as part of a community.

Once you feel more up to the ‘talking’ bit of it, here’s a hot tip: start with seniors. Old people are often very lonely and have a lot of talking stored up, so socializing with seniors is easy mode: you just get to sit back and listen to a bunch of cool stories from their lives. (Little kids are exhausting but another fun socializing bet. Again: not as much talking on your end, a lot of listening, a lot of fantastic games, very safe except from small flailing limbs.)

And then you keep working your way up from there, slowly and surely building your off-ramps reinforced by safe, mutually caring, and rewarding experiences.

Let me clarify: this is critically important work, and not just as a way to build up to activities more popularly perceived as activism. Even if you’re not organizing a food drive or whatever, you are still benefitting the people around you. If you benefit from working silently next to someone at the garden, then they are also benefitting from you - just you, existing, as a quiet and unthreatening human being by their side. We all need this. This is the basis of community, and the essential building-blocks for community organizing.

I hope this helps, and my inbox is always open to you!

[quill-beetlewing]

So I've been working on a Thunderbolts fanfic lately, and since writer's block is being a bitch I thought maybe I could try breaking out by writing about some thoughts I've been having since I finished reading the series.

I'm also hoping to maybe find some Tbolts mutuals to talk with, because I just KNOW that's gonna be impossible when the MCU movie drops; and also my boyfriend who doesn't even read comics needs a break from my yapping. So, my actual thesis:

Redemption is impossible, and the Thunderbolts are a fundamentally broken concept. And also they're dead.

As of Semptember 2024, there is not a single member of the original Tbolts that has been redeemed. Or at least, if they have been, they're not alive.

Zemo, Fixer and Moonstone are villains, no nuance to it (Karla having been hit the hardest, yeeesh-).

Abe Jenkins is dead. Granted, they didn't show a body so who knows what I'm supposed to think. Still he's under ice for 7 years now so eh.

Songbird, Atlas and Jolt have just been gone since 2017. No explanation, they just don't appear in anything. And it's even weirder if you consider there's been not one but TWO whole Thunderbolts rosters since then (three if you count the one that appears in the Punisher, but they're so shallow and ooc I really wouldn't. Seriously why and how the fuck is Chen there).

The redemption was a core theme of the 1997 series, it was part of the premise, after all. I actually have a lot of thoughts about how the original series handles moral ambiguity as a narrative hook (very well, at least to me), but that's a rant for another day. But as the series went on, the idea of "redemption" just became more and more vague, so much so that nowadays I'd consider it practically non-existant.

The series never goes out of its way to define redemption. For the entirety of the og run, one has to assume that a character would be "redeemed" when they stop committing criminal acts and firmly abide by the other heroes' morals. And that never happens.

The Thunderbolts being morally ambigous has always been a massive part of the appeal of the series, but over time it just became the only appeal.

Thunderbolts 1997 is a story about redemption, and about a group of villains growing as people and learning to find their place in the world.

(This next bit references how each of the runs treats the premise set up by 1997. It has nothing to do with the quality of the work or my personal enjoyment of it, unless I downright state so, obviously.)

Avengers vs Thunderbolts. The whole point of that mini-series being that the Avengers can't bring themselves to consider the Thunderbolts actual heroes, and they're admittedly proven right when the Tbolts almost cause a cataclysm. Hawkeye tries to give them the benefit of the doubt, but by the end of the story he sides with the Avengers, which only drives the point home further. The Thunderbolts aren't trustworthy heroes.

New Thunderbolts and the Civil War period. None of the team members seems genuienly interested in the concept of redemption (the ones who come closest being Blizzard, who frankly isn't much of a character, Swordsman and maybe Radioactive Man. They all end up turning back into villains though, so I can't bring myself to cite them as good examples). The Civil War period is even worse, because here is where the Suidice-Squad-y idea of forcing villains to do good deeds surfaces, and trust me we'll be seeing a lot of that.

Secret War and Dark Reign are...fine. They are, by all means, awful Thunderbolts stories. They take the premise of the original series and spit it in the eye...but that's by design. Normal friggin Osborne took over the Thunderbolts, no wonder they're gonna be awful. The blatant disregard for the original series is, in my opinion, what makes these chapters of the Thunderbolts series so fun to read; especially because the characters themselves point out the sorry state of the Tbolts "brand".

Fear Itself (and I guess Dark Avengers, for a bit).

So Fear Itself is an interesting one. It starts out on a similar note to the previous two: the Thunderbolts are once again the Suicide Squad, except this time they're kept in check by some of the original Thunderbolts. Originally I was gonna bash this run because, from my recollection of it, I didn't think it made sense for Songbird, Mach and Fixer to be down to form a new Thunderbolts team so conceptually similar to Osborn's. But then I re-read a few parts to make the post, and it's way more complicated than that. (Don't mind the hellish visuals and try to hunt for Mel and Abe's panels. It just so happens that the one conversation I needed to quote is scattered like this, L. Although these panels do rock).

The characters are NOT okay with the way things are, and they criticise the circumstances they find themselves in . This story desperately wants to be a about redemption...but at the end of the day, it still isn't.

None of the convicts actually redeem themselves, Luke Cage drops out of the project, Fixer quite literally kills himself, and Songbird and Mach-V are saddled with a failure. This also happens to be the last time the government funds a Thunderbolts programme.

The previous two chapters were more of less about "Hey, isn't it fucked up that the Thunderbolts are like this now?", Fear Itself says the same thing, but with a somber tone. It is, by all means, a send-off to the original series, and I hate it almost as much as I love it.

On one hand, it's admittedly a finale that works. It's cynical, but it doesn't take pride in that, and it treats the old characters very respectfully.

On the other, I don't think this series should end on a cynical note. We know characters CAN be redeemed, Songbird and Mach are right there, so why should we just accept the Thunderbolts programme ending in a failure? Isn't it the original run's moral to keep fighting to better yourself even against the odds?

With all of that said, Fear Itself isn't an actual finale. Because we have....

2017 (and Pleasant Hill).

This is the Thunderbolts' Megamind 2. This run just feels like MCU pandering, and I frankly don't think it holds anything of value.

The Winter Soldier is now the leader of the Thunderbolts; none of them seem to have any thoughts about it, despite having literally never met him. The characters are brought together off-screen, the only character arc that happens, and that is admittedly tied to morality, ends with the character in question deciding to, LITERALLY, not do anything.

Abe Jenkins not beating the most boring Thunderbolt allegations I'm afraid. And I say this with love because I'm practically a stan of his. They fucked this character over in so many ways, it's so sad that it's kinda hilarious.

Back to 2017, it ends with the team fragmented. Half joins Zemo, Jolt fucks off no idea where, Mach-X literally dies and Songbird is left alone in an actually interesting cliffhanger that is never picked up again. And that's without mentioning that Pleasant Hill could have been the PERFECT setting for a Thunderbolts story, and the fact the morality of its existence wasn't explored in the slightest is just plain tragic.

How were the people under Kobik's control affected? How come Atlas and Blizzard are in there if they had their criminal records cleared? Why is Abe part of the staff? Doesn't he have any thoughts about keeping his own friends trapped like this? What about Songbird? What does she think? Is Pleasant Hill conceptually evil? Should anyone be able to hold that kind of power? How would the Thunderbolts, a team fundamentally created around the idea that villains can be redeemed, handle this situation?

We get no answers, of course. But hey, at least we get the Winter Soldier hanging out with a magical 6 year old. Yippeeeeeeee!!!

Yeah, I'm kinda salty about this run specifically. I don't know how you could tell.

After that, there are two more Thunderbolts runs, which I can't really talk about since I haven't ready any of them in full. The 2022 one I just skipped because I find modern Hawkeye to be a pain to read; might circle back to it one day, but it'll take some convincing. As for the 2023 one, I did read a few issues, I eventually dropped it because it had nothing to do with the Thunderbolts, and I also had trouble getting invested.

So, where does all of this leave us?

At this point in time, I don't think Marvel could pull off a good Thunderbolts story. The MCU inspired mindset wouldn't allow an exploration of the admittedly deep theme that is redemption, nor does it seem interested in doing so. There was this sort of "in-universe aura" that surrounded the Thunderbolts in the early 2000s; most characters were distrustful of the them, sure, but there was also some kind of underlying respect most seemed to feel, because the idea of villains becoming heroes and making up for past mistakes is definitely an incredibly noble one.

That aura is long gone, and I genuienly believe modern Marvel is way too cynical for this kind of approach.

And I'm frankly just sad about it. That a series which so much potential had to be squandered by a complete disinterest to use said potential. I still find 1997 to be, flawed as it is, an incredibly interesting story that handles grey morality in such a charming manner. And what's even sadder is seeing the remaining Thunderbolts walk around in modern comics as shells of their former selves.

With the MCU movie on the horizons, I doubt we'll get to see the original team (or themes) appear on page again. The Thunderbolts tag here on Tumblr has already been swarmed with clips from the trailers, character edits and the such (which is also why I'm planning on tagging my future posts as "Thunderbolts og" hopefully it helps), and the future is not looking bright.

But that's most of my thoughts about this matter. So, three remaining Thunderbolts fans, what do you think? Do you agree? Do you think I'm wrong? What's something you miss from the original series and that you'd love to see in its future? Or is it officially Joeover?

Any thoughts you have, I'd love to hear them. :>

[stuckasmain]

An interesting note about the movie is the way it approaches violence, there’s a bunch of interpretations already and I’m by no means the first. However, what I’ve noticed in my last few rewatches was how the film seems to take violence as a learned thing rather than an inherent human trait. (A much more common interpretation broadly).

In the book it’s much more clearly laid out but the group of man apes we follow are on the brink of dying out. They’re starved and a bit behind, the land they rely on to forage is bleak and picked through. They’re weak from starvation and overall very passive as even herbivores seem to knock them about and do better. There’s no memory, no thought really— they can’t go far even if the thought occurred to them. It is only through the monoliths influence that they begin to pick up tools, to hunt and fight and truly live instead of barely surviving. Now, violence was not introduced by the monolith - we see clearly the world around them is full of it— nor would tools be never used if not for its influence. It merely sped along the process, utilizing the time these man apes did not have. As the natural evolutionary time it would take them to realize this wouldn’t be met this group would starve before hand.

On the discovery we see a similar case of passivity, this time in the modern evolved man. This time the world surrounding them is not nearly as harsh and dangerous— in fact it’s coddling! While the nature of space travel is a incredible risk we see their world is comfortable and abundant. They have all the food, water, air, shelter they would need— in fact this world could operate very well on its own without them at all. Their position, unknown to them- or perhaps known deep down- is arbitrary. Hal is sort of like an all encompassing mother- their provider and world. They have no need for violence, though they know of it and are capable of it. In this case it is not the monolith’s influence but own instinct. This time man has the proper drive for survival and the tools to ensure that it lives.

On the discovery violence is influenced by circumstance- self preservation. Both from Hal (with additional influence of illness) and Frank and Dave. Interesting both the human and computer sides have the same goal: preservation of the mission and preservation of the self.

However evolved it shows there’s still a sense of primitive nature to the species as when a problem arises violence quickly becomes the only solution. Like with the ape men Dave and Frank must quickly abandon passivity when the land around them begins to fail (Hal, their world malfunctions. Just as the land around the apes is dead). They can no longer be a dependent. You can’t leave mother so you must kill her in this case.

To tie this back to- something- I was going somewhere initially. I think it shows a part of both the monolith’s plan but also a general lesson. To evolve past violence you must first know it.

There’s nuance to this, especially when comparing these examples of violence for survival vs. the more irrational type (war, countries fighting) examples we see later on. However I want to keep this brief so I can remain writing something coherent but the eventual idea is that humanity will evolve even past necessary violence into something like Dave becomes (again book has a whole thing on the alien theory. Strictly 2001 speaking)

[swimsauce]

Twitter is busted rn so I'm gonna just write down my earthspark s3 thoughts here. Mostly ranting who gives a shit

Uugghhh this part was better overall I think. The last 3 eps are pretty good. It's still very noticeable that the script quality has decreased, the dialogue and pacing are pretty bad. But there where fun concepts, however executed to varying degrees of success. I'll just list it off

-prowl was a fun addition but wasted potential. His arc of being an older autobot stuck in his ways is good, he must learn to warm up to the terrans and live with the fact the old Civil War is over. His development is too fast and slow. He should've learned his lesson earlier and not at the end when he has a fucking wack ass convo with bee and op about how he's stepping out of line. It should've been called out sooner and his episode with robbie and thrash would've been a more appropriate place for him to learn to "trust the students" instead of being right in front of starscream. Feels like they wanted a little bit of his tfa arc without properly humbling him and giving him good character interactions (like his connection with tfa bee and sari to ground him). Thrash was right there to be his little bond mate like how jawbreaker is to grimlock or twitch is to megs, etc. His arc shouldve been tigther. Idk his gay moment with megatron was cool tho

-the chaos terrains are revived and on neutral territory. Whatever. I hope they get development instead of just being le evil robot cuz "they where born evil" is such a stupid angle.

-the decepticons going to cybertron could be neat if the story continues. But god damn what a shattered arc they had. Starscream being comically evil is still very clearly not the arc that was planned and it shows in its poor execution. Breakdown just shafting bee for the cons when in s1 he was clearly a more neutral con like tarantulas was is such wasted potential. All nuance in the splinter decepticons has been nullified, it's literally only megs who is "on the good side". It's not that I think all the cons would adjust to peace time or that they should all be so friendly but it's so annoying how it feels their arc/theme of moving on has been completely dropped.

-the quints are evil again, ok sure. If u don't got the civil war plot it's usually the quitessons as the enemy which is fine normally. But then being a splinter species much like the terrans and having a connection with robbie and mo is so neat, but it's completely disregarded because the quints just kill all other quintus prime offspring. Such wasted potential. Maybe have a good group and bad group, or some sort of nuance to the quints finding more of their kin? Idk there was that one grunt that kept getting beat up, lost an arm and head piece, I though he could've stuck around, maybe he could've aligned with the maltos after being rejected for failure, or become a secondary bad guy. Idk just anything more than literally repeating the 86 execution scene but missing all the sauce that made it good. The twist of thr gf being a quint is fine idk. Just poorly executed again

-God damn the dialogue and script is bad. Even good concepts get butchered or clearly aren't as well executed as they should've. I already mentioned the 86 reference, but the recreation misses the og point. It repeated shots used in the movie but without their purpose. In the movie hot rod and kup spin the water to purposely trip up the quints. In this the quints spin the water to push robbie/mo down further to the bottom so they can reach the bot corpses and grab a weapon? Fucking masterful gambit. . It lacks good set up and reason as to why it was done. In the movie it was to show the cunningness of hot rod and kup, the two of them being ACTIVE in their escape. In the show it's just a reference and a poorly thought out device to get them weapons. It makes robbie and mo PASSIVE in their own escape.

The whole ep with prowl and robbie/thrash could've been so fun, but prowl is so dull. He's supposed to be sharp and quick to see details, but the writting is so poor he misses shit and acts to late. When they're trying to find the quint shapeshiter and he suspects robbies gf, it would've been cool if he acted faster, maybe restraining the quint before robbie/mo catch on, maybe causing a rift in the new team, then have him proven right when robbie sees the blood. The way he just points out the blood and doesn't even move when it's entirely clear she should be questioned is such poor pacing forcthe scene. A supposedly quick witted character wouldnt just stand around when its perfectly clear someone should act. (reminds me of the dodgy writting of him in idw where it feels like the writters wanna imply hes smart without actually writting him well enough to showcase thaf fact. Lots of telling not enough showing)

There are other scenes like this where if it just went through like one or two more rewrites it would've been a solid scene, but they get held back by stupid details that just derail good character beats. It fucking sucks to see

-fair maestro sucks bring back mandroid or a similiar character. Him modifying himself with robot parts to be more like a transformer, trying to be techno organic much like how robbie/mo are techno organic . Idk he was a good foil. Maestro could be reworked to be a human who seeks out transformers for more nefarious science shit byt instead he just does stupid shit with them. Not even like fun tfa shit just lame shit. No where near as threatening as even tfp or tfas human villians.

-terrarronus slays I love her power armor power up. She's neat

Tldr the ending of the season was an improvement over s2, but man it still sucks to see how far it's falling. And I can still see so many good ideas in the show! Bringing old g1 characters like prowl is fun. Quints are cool dudes, and relevant to the quintos prime angle. The hate plague or some sort of infection episode is always a neat idea. Terratronus is awesome, I loved her use in the climax. But god damn it's so sloppy in execution. It cleaned up some of its sloppy ideas from s2, like the chaos terrans, but the thread there is still hanging. What about other autobots like prowl, it seems there are more of them around, where are they? Tarantulas is still out there, are there other neutrals or "good" decepticons still on earth, and what's their deal? Starscreams deal is so underutilized, i hope he gets at least some closure or arc that isnt shit. The chaos terrans just being evil and bratty for the sake of it is so shallow, do something more interesting with them. Maybe if the cons come back from cybertron we could get something interesting from them. Who knows. I know it's not the staffs fault, the writers room complelty changed and the animation house is different. But if we do get another season, they better clean up the plot more, they have a long way to go to fix up what they busted from s1. It sucks to see wasted potential like this

Idk I want it to be good but man 😞 fuck hasbro

[gold-rhine]

If it's not too much trouble, could you expand on Diluc's "already incoherent characterization" you mentioned in one of your recent posts? I'm just curious cause I also feel that there's something off about him writing-wise but I can't put my finger on it.

sigh. so, at the start of the game hoyo wrote diluc as super aggressive and negative towards kaeya specifically and knights in general, and all of their interactions are very hostile. they are having bitch fights every time they are in the same room.

like, fandom likes to pretend that diluc has guilt, bc of like some anonymous message on a public board that sounds like it's diluc feeling bad, which hoyo back-wrote. but they can't gaslight me, i just recently replayed start of the game content on my new account. like first time diluc appears is in kaeya's domain after traveler and kaeya cleared it, and diluc bitches at kaeya for no fucking reason and kaeya is v passive aggressive back at him. they have bitch fight in venti's quest. diluc's entire quest is about him trying to keep kaeya from discovering he's darknight hero and he specifically makes it known that kaeya is unwelcome every time he shows up in the tavern. and he sounds negative when bringing up kaeya for any reason.

and then hoyo started to back-pedal. idk what happened, maybe the direction of the plot shifted. maybe the writer who was writing them in this conflict vein quit. maybe at the start they only had vague idea of like brothers at war with each other, and once they started to flesh it out and add nuance, they've realized that like, burning your baby brothers' eye out might be understandable in the moment of trauma and shock, but then acting like you're on high horse and treating him like garbage for YEARS after is a bit of a psycho behavior.

quick aside bc i know there are ppl who think that, um, kaeya "deserved" it and like. he was what, not older than 10 when he was left at the winery. and he was about 17 when he confessed. he was a traumatized kid who kept a secret bc his bio father told him that the fate of his entire country depends on it. get a grip. but as i said, with the same logic, diluc was also in shock and trauma, and i do not fault him the fight itself. what doesn't track is how diluc acts years LATER, when he had time to think.

so they started to drastically soften diluc AND back-writing retcons. Hidden Strife letters are all about it. They were like oh, brothers were always in contact! Diluc is not a maniac, he was polite to the knights and he told kaeya to take care :) :) :) this creates new set of problems. not only it gives diluc personality split where he was incredibly aggressive to kaeya in person, but apparently normal in the letters. But also, we have letters from Kaeya that make it obvious he knew immediately that diluc is a darknight hero and they both were chill about it. But like! diluc's entire story quest is about him trying to keep kaeya from learning that! like, come on! why then diluc did all these stupid scooby doo shenanigans with slimes and shit???

now i think they are trying to shift responsibility for reconciliation from diluc to kaeya, which is the only issue that affects kaeya's own characterization. bc they are very hard going into "all servants at winery ADORE kaeya and treat him like family and welcome him!!" and fandom like, extends it to diluc now, like diluc is welcoming kaeya too and kaeya is a silly goose who has his hang ups and refuses to visit. as if getting your eye burned off, trying to reach out first and getting "ugh, its you" treatment when you show up at your brother's tavern is just like. a lil awkward situation that kaeya himself should get over without any effort on diluc's side and he should just ~realize~ that he's still part of the family lol. and ppl justify it like "well we don't know how diluc actually feels, he probably feels guilt (anon message) and wants to reconcile". which like. so we don't know, but kaeya is supposed to figure out and reach out AGAIN, when diluc at any time could've just told him that he's welcomed.

and now in kaeya's hangout we learn more about their childhoods which tbh hurts diluc even more. like how are we gonna be pretending that diluc cares about kaeya when he returned to mond and found his baby brother, who was apparently the sweetest gentlest child in the world, his loyal shadow for entire childhood, couldn't lie, was taking punishments for diluc, and see him now becoming a high functioning alcoholic with brazenly unhealthy persona of liar and manipulator, and like NOT get worried and try to reach out. which i don't think it was hoyo's intention, they just wanted to add the tragic sweetie uwu to kaeya's characterization, but they did not think how it reflect on diluc in global context

so now diluc's characterization flip flopped in several directions, and he doesn't really has an arc or plotline going. he's kinda just there now, more of symbol than character, and hoyo just writes whatever they want for him without any regard for any previous lore

[nkjemisin]

Hi there! I wanted to hear your opinion about this specific, and common obstacle authors might face. What do you think about writing places you've never been in or barely; and by extension, writing about its people, communities you've never really met, or not often? I'd like for my story to be set in NYC, and the people there, to feel real, but I wonder how legitimate I am with only research (can't travel there atm unfortunately). Love your work and eager to read more of Great Cities. Take care!

Well, I had to deal with this in writing the Great Cities quite a bit, so I can't tell you how to do it, but I can at least tell you how I dealt with it. Never been to São Paulo, for example, or Hong Kong or Istanbul or several of the cities that I "characterized" in the story. Some of that was because I was dealing with a lot of other stuff while working on TCWB (my mom had just died, buying my first home and moving, etc.) and didn't have time for research travel like I usually do, and for TWWM I stopped traveling due to covid. So I had to wing it.

I would say that a lot depends on how much you intend to use the location you're writing about. If it's just background, then you can do a surprising amount with remote observation and research. I used a lot of Google Street View, for example. I popped into Reddit threads for those cities and asked questions -- which is always a little fraught with Reddit, but people were mostly pleased to talk about their towns. I also picked up the Not For Tourists guides for a few cities. Basic info about any city is pretty readily available all over the place.

(Writing about communities is a different story, particularly if those are marginalized communities of some flavor. I always recommend starting with Writing the Other, if you're writing outside your own identity... and even if you're writing your own. It's helpful for reducing stereotypes and replicating exploitative traditions, period.)

If you're using a setting for a whole chapter or something, though, you need to either go there, get locals to talk to you about the place, or -- ideally -- both. In my case that meant talking to friends as well as paying several "expert readers" (like, a person born and raised in Istanbul) to read segments of my writing and offer critical advice. I even needed expert readers for NYC-related stuff -- the chapter of TWWM where Brooklyn goes to court, for example. I know nothing about the city's legal system or even which court is right for which kind of proceeding (we have A LOT of courts, both in the city and the boroughs).

You also need to be okay with making minor mistakes. Recognize that it really isn't possible for any one person to know everything, or even most things, about a city with a population of millions and which effectively sprawls across three different states. I've lived in NYC on and off all my life, and I still got several things wrong when I wrote the Great Cities. I read books and went on tours and learned things about my own city that I've never heard before. While I could and did walk right out my front door and have conversations with people who've lived here all their lives, sometimes there were mistakes in stuff they told me, and only research caught some (not all) of those. I feel like I got the stuff that mattered right, however -- the attitudes, the language, the power dynamics, the way parts of NYC absolutely love to talk shit about other parts of NYC, but will square up in solidarity the instant an outsider tries the same thing.

If your story is about the city, though? Set here? You really need to not just visit but live here for a while. There's nuance you're just not going to get from research or even talking to people. For some things, there's no substitute for experience.

Anyway, hope that helps.

[sibylsleaves]

Can you expand on your thoughts on redemptions in the show? I enjoyed Hen’s mother’s and Eddie’s fathers because we saw they are genuine in their willingness to change and have an understanding how they have affected their children. They aren’t perfect but it’s taking accountability and it’s a start. The others? No. With Taylor they give her a backstory to distract from her bad actions that seemed never ending. Now with Tommy. Do you think the writers/Tim think the general audience doesn’t pick up or remember how these people’s actions deeply affected the other characters(Buckleys, Chim’s dad, Taylor and the other T) before they bring them back and force people to have sympathy for them? I try to invoke nuance and empathy because losing a child is horrific but two living children did and still suffer from the Buckley’s actions. I am glad that Buck and Maddie appear to be moving forward despite their parents unwillingness to address and accept their role in how their children are to this day but that’s got to hurt deeply. As well as Chimney’s dad. And when Taylor left after causing the chaos and hurting so many people over the years they bring in someone else that has a grimey past that is already overlooked

you sent this to me a while ago and I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to answer it. I saw it and I was like hmmm interesting topic I will ruminate on this and then of course I forgot about it.

Anyway. This IS an interesting topic to me because I feel like the concept of redemption is in many ways the raison d'etre of the show. Or at least they want it to be, given how they set up Bobby's character arc in the first season. It's definitely a theme they keep returning to with, imo, mixed results in their execution.

Part of the problem I think is just that 911 is fundamentally a basic network procedural television show, which is always going to tend more toward the schlocky and heartfelt. Which, don't get me wrong, is also one of the selling points of the show imo--we are not watching this show the way you watch prestige television that's maybe more willing to take its characters down a darker path and grapple with these questions with more complexity.

So at the end of the day it's kind of in the show's nature to want to tell feel-good stories, and to that end I think they are maybe more likely to brush off past wrongdoing in order to make the point that redemption is always possible and reconciliation is, almost always, the end-goal. There are a few storylines where they have characters who are simply painted as irredeemable monsters (Doug and Jeffrey are the main ones that come to mind) and what's interesting to me about that is they really have to heavily emphasize the monstrousness of those characters.

But fundamentally the show is just ill-suited to telling the story of like. Here's a kind of shitty guy (or woman) who isn't a complete and total monster by any means but nevertheless will not actually learn from his mistakes and seek redemption because sometimes people are just incapable or not interested in doing that. Or even: here is a kind of shitty guy or woman who did something fairly reprehensible and is trying to do better but nevertheless the people affected by their actions have every right to NOT forgive them or want them in their lives.

As a show it is overall more optimistic than realistic about the human condition--and again. I do think that's a selling point of the show and often what makes it work. Just thinking about personally some of my favorite moments of the show which are heavy on the "heartfelt/feel good": everyone coming together to lift the firetruck off Buck, the scene with the christmas lights during the black-out, the part in Defend in Place when they are all praying together in the parking lot.

But. all this to say. That does mean that sometimes their depictions of something as complex and messy as "redemption" can fall a bit flat. I do think the show has a pattern of "redeeming" characters without actually showing us that they understand what they did was wrong. They use short-hand instead--the Buckley parents sticking around after Buck was struck by lightning to show us they've changed, Tommy shaking Chim's hand after he saved his life, etc. And skip over the actual messy parts of the process of redemption. Which is also in part because these are, at the end of the day, side characters, and their internal lives are not really important except with respect to how they influence their relationships with our main characters. Which is also why I think the most nuanced take they've managed to do is with Bobby's story--at least with SOME of the Amir storyline it's clear that to Bobby this process is far from complete and the fact that Amir did not actually offer Bobby his forgiveness at the end is, in my opinion, the closest they've come so far to telling this story in an actually nuanced way. But even then they tied it up with about as neat as a bow as they could.