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succubusdaydream · 11 months ago

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By The Grace of The Moon || Astarion x Werewolf!Selunite!Reader

Masterlist || Words: 2865

Started on 10/14/23- Finished on 1/6/24

AN: Dialogue later on may seem a bit ooc, as well as characters themselves. I had to look up and go back through dialogue to get lines right. I am also trying to keep the reader gender neutral and I will be referring to them as Tav later on. Enjoy my second writing and my first BG3 fic, more is defiantly on it's way. This is also only the FIRST part. I wrote more than I thought I would so I've decided to split them into parts. I'm writing more onto the second part so I'll try to have it up soon <3

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Why would your goddess do this to you? Had you done something to anger your Silver Lady? No. You worshipped her beneath every beautiful moon she would raise. The twinkling of her stars were music to your ears. So why. Why did your heart stop when you met his piercing red eyes? Why did you get so scared when he would get injured? And why did you seek and crave his presence? A vampire. Your natural enemy.

You had been cursed with Lycanthropy from a young age. Your parents had gone to any cleric or healer they could find. But none could help you condition. So they turned to Selune. Goddess of the moon. The very thing you would stare at every night. Waiting. Waiting to turn into a beast once its full beauty would light up the village you lived in. They started praying to her, crying out for help. And help she did.

Your goddess sent down a light. It helped control you condition, keeping your beast from rampaging every month. You still had your enhanced abilities. Sight, smell, hearing, agility. And with research, your parents helped you though your young years with the continued worship of Selune.

With that research, came a longing. Every young child dreams of love. And with your sickness, your Goddess promised you a love. A soulmate. One every Lycan is blessed with. You would dream of them every night as a child. How much they would love you, and you them. How you wedding would be like that of a fairytale read to little ones before bed. A large white dress, a beautiful train and the most hypnotizing of melodies playing as you danced the night away.

But those dreams were halted that night. The night the Illithids appeared over your village. And you were forced to wake up. The tadpole that now squirmed in your head made you powers unpredictable. You feared how following nights would be.

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You had awoken on a beach, surrounded by the crashed ship that once held you prisoner. You couldn’t recall everything that happened, but you do remember fighting devils and imps with a Githyanki. ‘Lae’zel’, you recalled. You didn’t see her around anywhere, but also no body. ‘Hopefully she’s alive, she was strong so I doubt she got taken out by anything close by.’

Not too far in front of you lied a woman. Long dark hair held by chains, a dark circlet decorating her forehead. Slowly approaching, you could both hear her breath and see her chest heaving. In her hand was an oddly shaped…thing. Choosing to ignore is in favor of her wellbeing, you reached forward. Grasping her shoulders and shaking her awake.

“Wha- I’m alive? You’re alive.” Helping her to her feet, she looked around at the wreck that surrounded you. “How is this possible.”

“I’m not sure. Are you hurt? I don’t remember seeing you on the ship.” The Githyanki was the only person you came across. You had assumed there were others, but with the ship crashing and buring, you were in a bit of a rush to escape.

“Not that I know of. I remember being stuck in that pod. I think I saw you running away with another person. And then the ship crashed.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t even think to check for others. I wouldn’t have tried to help you.” You wrung your fingers together and looked down the beach, examining the path that stretched on. “What now?”

“I suppose we find a healer. What ever those monsters put into out heads can’t be good.”

After making sure neither of you were injured and making proper introductions, learning her name was Shadowheart, you set forward and came across three of the brain creatures you had seen wandering the ship. They weren’t too tough to handle, but after getting rid of them your hearing picked up a static to your right.

It was coming from a rune. An out of control looking rune, it’s magic swirling violently. As you reach out to touch the rune, a hand suddenly emerge from it and a voice immediately follows. “A hand? Anyone?” It was a male’s voice. Your senses hadn’t alerted you to any danger, so you reach to intertwine your hand with his, you other hand on his wrist.

And with a strong pull, a body dawned in purple robes flew out from it. You stood and brushed your clothes off as he spoke his thanks. “Hello. I’m Gale, of Waterdeep.” He reaches forward to shake your hand. “Apologies, I’m normally better at these sorts of things.”

“At introductions?” You shook is hand in return, a smirk passing your lips as you tried to lightly joke with him. It seemed to work, as he let out a small chuckle.

“At magic. Say, but I know you, don’t I? I saw you, upon the nautilloid.” Gods, just how many people did you run past? With all the chaos happening you suppose your senses couldn’t keep up. But you didn’t realize just how many people were stuck in pods on the same ship.

“I was, I guess I missed more people than I thought, had I seen you I assure you I would have done my best to help.” You looked him over for injuries but didn’t catch any scents of blood.

“No worries. But I suppose it’s safe to say you were a victim too. On the receiving end of a rather unwelcome insertion in the ocular region?” He tapped the side of his head, right next to his eye no doubt referring to the worm that now infected your brain.

“I suppose that’s one way to put it. Not the most pleasant experience I’ve dealt with in my life.” You crossed your arms and tilted your head, able to tell he wasn’t done talking yet.

“Yes well, no use sugar coating it. This parasite we carry, are you aware that after a few days of extrusion gestation, it will turn us into mindflayers?” His pitched was raised in a slight panic. Understandable, you had a worm in your brain that’s going to turn you into tentacle monsters within a certain number of very painful days. “You don’t happen to be a cleric by any chance, do you?”

It was at this point that Shadowheart spoke up from behind you. “It seems you know enough about out condition to know that this is far beyond a cleric’s skill.”

“Most, but I hope to be in the presence of the few who are able to help. You don’t happen to be one of them?” He eyed between you two.

“No, I can treat most injuries and sicknesses, but I am no cleric.” You weren’t wrong. While you worshipped Selune and did almost everything in her name, you were not a cleric. More of a hunter who was able to make remedies and teas with herbs that you would scavenge for.

“Well then, we’re most going to need a healer, and quite soon too. How about we lend each other a helping hand once more and look for one together?” He gestures between himself and you, raising a brow in anticipation. And with a shrug, Gale of Waterdeep was following your two man, now three man, party as you turned back to the direction you came from.

Although, as you turned, a strong gust of wind brought you a wonderful smell. That of Rosemary, bergamot, and…brandy? Either way, it made you heart flutter and your feet move faster. You swiftly walked passed the creatures you had taken out, you thoughts running as the scent got stronger.

‘Is this it? This sweet scent, my aching and racing heart all point to it. My mate. They smell amazing. Nothing has smelt like this to me before. Selune, my lady of silver, if you have blessed with my mate after this tragedy I thank you.’

Rounding over a small hill, you saw the source of the scent. A white-haired elf dressed in elegant purple clothing. Your body froze at the sight of him. It looked as if the heavens shown behind him as he turned to beckon you closer. And when he spoke, he sounded like an angel singing praise. “Hurry! I’ve cornered one of those brain things. You can kill it, can’t you? Like you killed the others?”

Snapping back to reality, you cleared your throat and nearly jumped at the chance to protect him. “Easily, step back.” You stepped forward, a slight pungent smell hit your nose. A boar shot out of the bushes as you jumped, the noise startling you. And from the corner of you eye, you noticed a glint. Spinning around you came face to face with your mate, holding a knife up at you in a defensive position.

“I saw you on the ship, strutting about while I was trapped in that pod!” His knife raised higher as you shuffled away, holding your hands up in defense. “What did you and those tentacled freaks do to me?” His voice was low as his red eyes glared into yours.

“No! I was taken to! I had nothing to do with them.”

“I’m not an idiot! I saw-agh!” He cried out as your minds merged. You were looking through his eyes and out to dark street. Lurking as people passed. But before you could look further, the image faded. “What was that? What’s going on?”

You breath heaved as you looked deeper into his eyes, a small smile appearing as his knife lowered. “I-I don’t know, but something connected us.” Something other than my goddess.

“It’s those monsters. Whatever they did you us caused that link. They took you too. I saw it.” He sighed and put away his weapon. “Ands to think I was ready to decorate the ground with your innards. Apologies.” His voice truly was like music.

“Apology accepted. I might have done the same if the roles were reversed.” I wouldn’t.

“Ah~ A kindred spirit. My name’s Astarion. I was in Baldur’s Gate when those beasts snatched me.” Astarion? Even his name is angelic. No wonder it’s taken so long for you to meet him. Your village was located a few days away from the big city. You never made trips there, only your father and hunting parties would make the travel. Selling crops, clothing and any other good your village made.

“From the city? I lived quite a ways away. I was taken while hunting. I’m not sure how long it’s been.” It wasn’t entirely wrong. You were hunting but not the type people would assume. It was late when you were snatched. A beautiful moon guided your path as you ran after a deer, your paws silently hitting the ground as your muzzle snapped for its tail.

“Oh? A hunter? That could be useful. So, do you know anything about these worms?” He placed his hands on his hips and raised a brow.

“Yes. Unfortunately, they’ll turn us into mind flayers.” As if I couldn’t become more of a beast. Your thoughts though were swiftly cut by his scoff of disbelief.

“Turn us into-ha…haha! Of course it’ll turn me into a monster. What else did I expect?” His words trailed off as he looked to the dirt road beneath you. “Although…it hasn’t happened yet. If we find an expert, someone that can control these things- there still might be time.” He raised his hand to his chin in thought.

If we find someone? He wanted to travel together? With you? “Y-you could come along with us. Our odds are better if we travel together.” Gods, do I sound desperate? Please take my offer.

His eyes met yours again as a smirk formed on his face. “You know, I was ready to go this alone, but…maybe sticking with you isn’t such a bad idea.” Yes! A perfect idea. “You seem like a useful person to know.” His words seemed like they held something behind them, but you didn’t much care. As long as your mate followed. “Alright! I accept, lead on.”

You could barely suppress the smile that tried to cross your face. “Ahem, alright. Let’s move then.” You cleared your throat and finally broke eye contact, looking further down the road and heading that direction. “I hear something ahead, we’ll start there.” As you walked passed him, his scent filled your nose once more. He truly did smell heavenly. I’ll keep him safe.

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Further down the trail, you had encountered a group of refugees begging at a gate. At the top were tieflings, refusing to open until their supposed leader showed up, demanding the gates be open as a pack of goblins appeared to attack. It didn’t take long for you to help defeat them and you quickly slipped through the gate with everyone, making sure your group was okay and mostly uninjured.

You found yourselves in a Druid’s Grove. Although with their issues, you weren’t sure how long you were going to last. It was to be closed off soon and everyone but the druids themselves were to be kicked out. After communing with the leader of the tieflings, you had decided your day had been busy enough and had led your group to a clear spot deeper into the grove.

You had all set up tents around a fire and laid out bedrolls for when you were all ready to sleep. As you finished setting out supplies and changing out of you day clothes, your gaze drifted over to your silver haired mate. He sat outside his tent, a thick book in his hands and his eyes lazily drifting over its contents. You quickly took a deep breath, muttering a quick ‘you got this’ before making your way over to his figure.

Hearing your approach, he glanced up. “Yes?” Ouch, not the greeting I was hoping for. Did he not feel the connection you goddess had blessed you with? Even non-Lycans were rumored to feel something.

You let out an embarrassing laugh and cleared your throat. “I uh- I was just wanting to check on you. What do you think about our journey so far?” You could tell me anything and I’d listen, please just talk to me.

“Well, not much has happened. We’re in a grove that’s close to impending doom and we have worms in our brain. Pretty shit journey so far, wouldn’t you say.” Ok, so he’s not having a very good time right now, but who would? Defiantly not you.

“That’s true. I’m sure we can find a healer here, they’re druids after all. Perhaps we’ll be rewarded if we help out with their little issue.” You let out a short chuckle but quickly closed you lips as a sneer appeared on his.

“Help out? It’s not our issue. I say we find a healer and move on. No need to get caught up in fights that aren’t ours.” Okay, a little self-centered but it’s not the first time I’ve dealt with someone like him. And he’s pretty, so it’s ok.

“You don’t think we, should help out? Even for a reward?” He shook his head, and stood, setting his book down to give you his full attention.

“The reward better be big if we stick around to help a little war. Either way, I still don’t like it.” His eyes met yours. “Was there anything else?” Let’s turn to other matters.

“Uuuhh, tell me a bit about yourself. It’s good to get to know each other if we’ll be traveling closely. What did you use to do in the city? I’ve never been so I want to know all about it.” I want to know all about you.

He scoffed. “Oh what’s to tell? I’m a magistrate back in the city, it’s all rather tedious.” A magistrate? I should have guessed he was in a position of high power; his clothes look like it.

“A magistrate? That sounds cool. What’s the city like?” Don’t stop talking. I still want to know more about you.

You couldn’t quite tell, but his eyes seemed to hold that of annoyance. You’re lucky that your ears and tails weren’t visible unless you were shifted. If they were, your laid-back ears and tucked tail would give away your worry to this. That’s possibly the last thing that you want right now, to upset your mate and annoy him.

“Depends on the area I suppose. The main upper city is quite busy. Especially at night, people out and about, drinking and…well the whole city is busy. I don’t normally get out much though.” His sentence trailed off, a smirk crossing his face before it quickly vanished. “Now was there something else you wanted to talk about.”

“Oh, umm, no. No I suppose that’s really it. Goodnight, Astarion, sleep well. I’ll be keeping watch so, you don’t have to worry about anything attacking.” I would gladly give up any sleep to make sure you’re protected.

“Why thank you, Darling. I’ll surely sleep better knowing you’re watching.” And with his words, you would spend the night walking the perimeter of your camp with your heart racing and thoughts spinning out of control.

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Masterlist || Part 2

#baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #bg3 x reader #baldurs gate 3 x reader #astarion ancunin #astarion #astarion x reader #astarion ancunin x reader #astarion x tav #bg3 x tav #tav reader

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calcifiedunderland · 9 months ago

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Pride and Prejudice: A TWSTed AU

The Keeper of the Underworld: I. Shroud

Introduction, or Pick another route!

Idia x GN Reader (they/them)

Warnings: P&P-level angst and miscommunication, some cringe dialogue, parties, possibly ooc Idia, I wrote this before playing Book 6 so I apologize if there’s any inconsistencies

Notes: The level of overthinking I put into these fics is unreal 💀 First and foremost, thank you all for your patience!! Idia was hard to write, but I hope you enjoy, shrimpies~

———

Well this is certainly something, you thought. Of all the things you’d witnessed at NRC, (even overblots), you didn’t think you’d ever see Idia Shroud at one of Kalim’s parties.

You sipped on your drink when a shock of bright blue flames came in the corner of your eye, contrasting the orange-red of Scarabia. Kalim lead Idia into the dorm, bright and sunny, compared to the look on Idia’s face. Poor guy couldn’t even escape, because Cater and Rook ambled in behind him, chatting happily.

It was like the beginning of a joke: A sultan, a card soldier, a huntsman, and a blue flame-headed gamer walk into a room.

Kalim spotted you and grinned, grabbing Idia’s hoodie sleeve and dragging him over too. “Hey (name)! I’m glad you could make it!”

You smiled at the Scarabia Housewarden, “Thanks Kalim! I-“ At that moment, Jamil reached him to drag him away, mumbling exasperatedly to Kalim about being careful. Kalim laughed Jamil off, “sorry (name)! I’ll see you later, okay?” “Alright then…” you trailed off and turned to Idia, who looked like a deer in headlights.

“So…” you rocked on your heels. To be honest, you didn’t know how to approach him sometimes. Sure, you’d gamed with him a few times (with heavy insistence from Ortho) and you weren’t on his ‘avoid at all costs’ ranking list, but Idia did have his odd moments. Some days, you two would get along like a house on fire. Other times, it was like Idia hated you - avoiding you even in tablet-mode, and ghosting your chats.

You’d like to think that your more friendly moments were the ones that Idia counted, but sometimes it was hard to get a read on the guy.

“I didn’t know that you’d be at Kalim’s party today. I thought Ortho said there was an event in… um…?” You finished, cringing at your vagueness. You might not have known much about the game he played, even though he’d made you play it when you came over to Ignihyde, but you knew he probably didn’t want to be here of all places.

Idia’s hair flared a bit, and he looked resigned and moody. He pulled out his tablet. Ya, the event dropped today but I got mobbed by kalim + the extroverts. “That sucks,” you said, “I got dragged here by Ace. Still, it’s nice to see you.” In the oil lamp lighting, you could’ve sworn Idia’s hair turned a bit pink.

You were both silent, and you opened your mouth to speak when Lilia yelled out from the front, “let’s get this party started!” Kalim started drumming wildly, and then electric guitar swelled. Lilia began screaming heavy-metal-style into the mic. Around you, everyone started dancing, and even you found yourself moving to the rhythm.

You glanced at Idia every now and again, but he looked vaguely annoyed and tired despite the liveliness. He looks so over it, you thought. Probably since Kalim maybe dragged him here. You looked around, biting your lip when you noticed your friends having a grand old time on the dance floor, and kind of wanted to go too. Still, it wasn’t every day you saw Idia, and you wanted to do something with him. Especially since he was… well, here.

“So, Idia…” Idia’s eyes snapped to yours, dull. You rocked back on your feet, “do you dance?” Idia rolled his eyes, and you felt your heart sink, for some reason. Obvi not, id probs distract everyone anyway. And also id just rather not if I can help it. Your smile wavered, “c’mon Idia, anyone can dance, even if it’s not good!” Idia typed rapidly into the tablet, i mean ur not wrong. Like literally anyone can dance but ppl only do it bc its wat normies do.

You opened your mouth, then squared your shoulders, words failing you. Idia shoved a hand into his pockets and opened an app on the tablet, scrolling. You swayed for a bit, feeling awkward while Idia kept his eyes glued to the screen, a frown creasing his brows. Finally you shrugged your shoulders, trying to shake that sinking-feeling off.

You stepped into the crowd of dancing people, swaying to the music and trying not to look over at the blue flames swaying in the corner. Unknowing to you, Idia glanced up from his tablet every few minutes, trying to catch a glimpse of you, before trudging back to the cold chrome of Ignihyde, back to his dorm.

———

Ugh, could this get any worse?

Idia flopped onto his bed, shoving his headphones on and opening the mobile game on his phone. Not only did he get a late start on the game event, but he flubbed a chance to talk to you. Even if you did want to dance like all the other non-introverts at Scarabia. Thank Sevens Ortho didn’t know he missed his chance, otherwise the little robot would’ve torn Idia apart.

Idia shut his eyes and went over the details. Doing this IRL was trash-tier. Why couldn’t this just be a good-old-fashioned otome game, or romance anime? First you meet the love interest, then you find things they’re into, then you talk to them more. Then finally you confess, and cue the outro. He’d watched countless shojo and romance anime’s, and that was the basic outline. Eventually, the ethereal, gorgeous, smart, kind protagonist (aka you) would fall in love with their love interest (aka him) and it would all work out. Boom. Happily ever after.

Ah, yes. He could see it now.

Cherry blossom petals rained around both of you. Where are they coming from, this campus doesn’t grow cherry blossoms? Whatever, don’t question it. Anyway, the petals fluttered past your beautiful, sparkling eyes as you stared up at Idia with adoration and love. Idia stared down at you with full-rizz, kabedoning you against the wall.

“Oh, Idia-senpai!” You’d cry, eyes turning into hearts as sparkles and pink flower petals surround you both. “You’re so cool and not cringe at all! I could never want one of those normies! You’re the only one for me! Please date me!” And then Ortho would set off the heart-shaped fireworks and you two would finally kiss-kiss-fall-in-love, just like the popular anime Our High School Has A Host Club And The Leader Falls In Love With Me?!

“Whee hee hee…” Idia stared off into the distance, giggling ominously to himself and hair turning pink at the ends. His character on the screen went into idle mode, and he didn’t even hear when Ortho floated into the room. “Big brother?” Ortho gently tapped him on the shoulder, yanking him from his shojo daydream. Idia jumped, hair flaring. “AAAIIIIEEEE-“ Ortho jumped back, eyes wide but not detecting any signs of injury on Idia.

Idia breathed heavily, wide-eyed. “Ortho! Wh-when did-? I wasn’t-!” Ortho analyzed his heart beat, noting that Idia had traces of blush on his cheeks and his erratic behavior pointed to- “Were you thinking about (name) (last name)?” Ortho asked innocently, his theory proven when Idia flushed and went pinker. The younger boy suddenly got an idea.

“You know, (Name)’s heart rate goes up when they interact with you,” Ortho watched his brother’s eyes widen, “even when you’re not there, when you’re mentioned, their heart rate increases by 45% and they are more likely to be in a positive mood. 82% of the time, they regard you in a positive way.” His eyes lit up happily with realization, “If my calculations are correct, they have feelings for you!”

Idia sat there, thinking. What were the odds you would like him back? Sure, you made him happy, and more importantly made Ortho happy. And it was actually nice talking to you. And he never felt exhausted after interacting with you. And maybe you did enjoy the artificial light of Ignihyde to the spring sun above, and maybe you would like being with dreary, nerdy him.

Ortho could see his brother lost in thought, noting that Idia’s heart rate spiked when he mentioned you. “I also overheard them telling Grim about finding a partner,” he said casually, omitting that you’d been wanting a partner in Alchemy, and not necessarily a romantic partner.

That seemed to fire Idia up. Ortho could see the metaphorical cogs in Idia’s brain turning, an entire blueprint of a plan being made in his mind. At last, a wide cunning grin spread on his face, and he opened his arms, “well, who else but a genius could be partners with the MC?” He said arrogantly, “it’s not like just anybody can woo the protagonist!”

Ortho beamed, cheering, “all you need to do now is confess!” Idia immediately began sweating, freezing up. “H-huh?!”

——

You frowned at your textbook, rubbing your temples as you read through the alchemy procedure. Ugh, this couldn’t get any more confusing.

As you turned to begin writing, the door burst open. You flinched and immediately locked eyes with a frazzled Idia. His golden eyes were wide, and he was panting - he even looked sweaty. Somehow his blue fire hair seemed just as frazzled as him, looking pale-blue in shock. Could flames somehow look poofy?

“Prefect!” He squeaked. “Idia?” You questioned, what’s he doing here? It was odd that he’d be out of his room at six in the afternoon, not to mention he looked afraid of you. It wasn’t like you were a stranger, even though as of late, he treated you like one.

He stared at you from the door for an uncomfortable amount of time, then sped-walked to stand in front of you. You looked up at him from your seat, tapping your fingers. You awkwardly asked “do you wanna sit down?” He shook his head quickly, the ends of his hair were turning pink. You frowned, “…dude, are you okay?”

Idia flinched. He pivoted on his heel, “no, no, can’t do it, not today-“ he scuttled out of the room and slammed the door, screeching to himself and pulling his hood over his head. You stared at the door, vaguely hearing Idia freaking out to… was that Ortho? You heard the little robot boy’s voice through the door, probably calming Idia down, along with an odd spraying sound.

It went quiet and you assumed they’d left. Whatever, weirder things have happened at NRC. As you went back to writing, the door slammed open again. You jumped, heart beating wildly. Idia stormed over to you, hair blazing a trail behind him. He slammed his hands down on the desk, and your eyes watered with the scent of overpowering cologne bodyspray.

“Prefect! I need to tell you something!” Idia’s eyes steeled in determination, and he looked you dead in the eye. He was breathing heavily, and his flamed hair blazed and curled more than usual, turning deep pinkish-red near the ends. The last time you saw his hair similar to that, was when he was rage-playing during one of your gaming sessions. How pissed is he? You felt your heart leap into your throat.

“Idia,” you began, freaked out, “I think you should sit down-“ Idia blazed on, “this is honestly a horrible decision for you and definitely for me. I don’t even want to think about what Mother and Father would say, not to mention how this’d affect Styx.” He was tunnel visioning now. “Plus you don’t even have magic and this might not even work out anyway ‘cause I don’t see us working out TBH…” Slowly his hair began fizzling out, voice getting quieter and quieter as he mumbled to himself.

This was a terrible idea, Idia realized. After everything that had happened with Styx, not to mention everything you had to deal with personally, it wouldn’t be good to get involved with him. You could be in danger, especially as a non-magic user. No, it would be selfish of him to ask you to be with him. Why would you, anyway? There were other guys at NRC, not to mention the entire Sage’s Island, who would be a better fit for not. Especially ones who didn’t kidnap your friends and Grim. Especially someone like Idia.

No, he concluded. He shouldn’t have come.

You frowned deeply. “Idia, what…?” Your alchemy work definitely wasn’t done yet and Idia was making zero sense. He sighed, as if tired all of a sudden. “Nope, no… this isn’t going to work.” He stood abruptly and sped-walked out the door, brushing past Ortho. You overheard the boy try to get his brother to come back, but Idia didn’t stop. You could feel your heartbeat in your ears. So that’s what this is about? Idia didn’t want to be friends with you anymore? All because you weren’t… what? A tech whiz? Good at gaming? Magical? Your heart dropped. Because you were just too different from him? So you weren’t good enough to be even friends with him?

Your eyes stung at the thought. Fine. If Idia wanted to be that way, then fine. You shoved your books into you bag and headed back to Ramshackle. You doubted you’d be able to focus, anyway.

———

Poor Ortho was confused.

After running simulation after simulation, scouring the Internet for any clues, and piecing together what Idia said after running out of the classroom, he just couldn’t understand what happened. That was a first, considering it was Ortho.

Idia had ran out of the room in a hurry, mumbling incoherently. “Brother! What’s happening?” Ortho flew to him, scanning his vitals. Idia seemed to be ok, but his brother seemed… strangely melancholic. “Ortho, it won’t work out,” he said dejectedly, not wanting to talk about it.

Ortho called after him, trailing behind “What did (name) (last name) say? There was a high probability they’d accept your-” Idia sighed in exasperation, shaking his head. “It won’t work. I should’ve never left the dorm…” As Idia trudged back to Ignihyde, Ortho was left with more questions.

He hovered for a moment, before heading back to the alchemy room for you, only to not find you there. Ortho thought hard, thinking back to what Idia said. ‘It won’t work out,’ was what he said - not a flat-out rejection from you. So that meant…

He began floating back to Ignihyde, determined. I can still save this!

———

You were taking overthinking to a new level.

You bit your lip, staring at the game’s chatbox in front of you. Idia was online, and probably didn’t realize you were too. You leaned against the Heartslabyul common room couch (curse Ramshackle’s lack of internet!), and hit send.

Hey is everything ok??

You watched Idia’s game icon immediately switch to “online less than 1 minute ago,” and groaned.

Cater exited the kitchens, leaning over the couch back. “Hey~ what’s got my fave frosh so worked up?” He chirped, looking at your phone. “Ohh, isn’t that the popular game that’s been trending? Wait, didn’t you say Idia got you into it?” Cater immediately had his phone in hand, “that’s supes adorable, playing with friends is so fun-“

You cut him off, throwing your hands up, “that’s it! Idia just doesn’t want to talk to me! He- he just-!” You grabbed a throw pillow and smashed your face into it, groaning. Cater patted your shoulder sympathetically, “well, we’re playing at another one of Kalim’s parties tonight, you want in?” You sniffed dramatically, thinking. “Well, I guess. Sure, why not?”

Later that evening, you stepped into the Scarabia mirror. You and Cater made your way to the food table. As you both munched on Jamil’s cooking (damn, the guy made a good curry), you watched everyone dancing. “Y’know, it was weird seeing Idia at a party,” you commented, while Cater nodded. “Yeah! We decided to bring him along that day, it was fun seeing him.”

You sighed, “yeah, it was, but… it’s not really often that we can hang out in person. I kinda wanted to dance with him last time, but he sort of… blew me off? I guess maybe it wasn’t the best idea.” You winced, while Cater’s eyebrows rose. “You didn’t tell me that. So, he did that and also told you he didn’t want to be friends?” You nodded, frustration flooding back, “Yeah! And I just don’t understand how he can be so conceited about him being so high and smart, and not like me because I don’t-“

“Prefect,” Cater cleared his throat. You looked up mid-rant, meeting Ortho’s eyes, and jumped. He just snuck up on you both like it was nothing. Did he hear you? Hopefully he wouldn’t be mad. In your mind, Idia started it.

“Hello (name) (last name)!” Ortho said pleasantly, so you assumed he hadn’t heard you. Great. “I didn’t know you’d be here! What a coincidence!” That was a lie, Ortho overheard you and Cater talking about the party when you were walking to Scarabia. He absolutely knew. And he dragged Idia here because of it.

“Yep,” you smiled at Ortho, “it’s nice to see you.” Ortho mentally readied himself and remembered every bit of acting advice Vil gave him. “I almost forgot!” His eyes widened, while your eyes narrowed. Ortho was a robot. He didn’t forget shit. “Big brother is here, and he wanted to ask you to dance!” What? Your neck snapped around, looking for Idia’s bright blue hair. Cater elbowed you, bringing you back to reality.

“I-well, I- had not-“ you stammered, fumbling for an excuse. Ortho’s eyes shone at you like puppy eyes, and your anger at Idia cracked. “…yeah, sure,” you watched Ortho rise a bit in the air happily, “Yippee! I’ll go get him!” He zipped off, and you rubbed your temples. Cater twisted a strand of his hair, eyes wide. “Yikes…” “tell me about it,” you groaned.

A few minutes later, you both looked up when Kalim tapped the mic. You didn’t miss Ortho hovering a ways behind Kalim. “Hey everyone! Thanks for coming!” When the cheering died down, Kalim continued, “We’re gonna try something different! Everyone, find a partner and join the dance floor!”

Cater glanced at you, mischievous. “Welp, I can’t leave them hanging~ TTYL, Prefect!” And he left faster than you could say ‘Magicam.’ Sweet.

You hesitantly stepped to the dance floor, half expecting Ortho to float up to you and sheepishly tell you Idia left. Your mind drifted back to that day in the alchemy room. I guess it wouldn’t work, anyway.

To your surprise, a finger tapped your shoulder. You turned, seeing Idia with a with a flushed expression, wearing a casual-but-chic blazer. His hair looked a bit tamer than normal, and cascaded down his back in a low ponytail, bangs flickering over his forehead. Undoubtedly, this was the work of Ortho, who definitely got pointers from Vil.

You both stared at each other, unmoving, until slow music began playing. You averted your eyes. Idia gulped, eyes widening until waving caught his eye. Ortho was flying upwards a little ways away from the slowly-crowding dance floor, gesturing wildly at you. As if that wasn’t enough, he projected words above his head: DANCE WITH THEM!

Idia was lucky that everyone else was more interested in dancing with their partner than Ortho. His eyes snapped back to you, “s-so I guess you wanna-“ he swallowed thickly, eyes shifting to the dance floor. You shrugged, feigning nonchalance and looked ahead. Idia looked back at Ortho, who was pointing wildly at the words. He thought to himself, this is fine. It’s just the mandatory side quest. It’s not fighting the boss. It’s…

It’s charming the love interest. It’s solidifying your route!

Idia steeled himself and forced your hand into his. Your eyes shot to his in surprise, and he walked stiffly to the dance floor. Your hand clasped his, and you both swayed gently to the soft rock from the stage. Your brows furrowed, but Idia locked his gaze onto you, focusing only on you.

Yes, he thought. This is just the player’s pov on the screen, and he was only focusing on the love interest. The other waltzers didn’t exist. The party didn’t exist. It was just you and him.

Meanwhile, you were at a loss for words. While Idia seemed taciturn, you glanced up at the stage. Cater, Kalim, and Lilia were in their own little bubble jamming out, so that wasn’t a lifeline. After a little while of swaying with Idia, you hummed, “I haven’t seen you in a while. Since that day.” Idia’s hands felt clammy, and in the dimmed lights you saw a small pink dusting Idia’s cheeks. You saw him swallow heavily, but he didn’t say a word.

The tension grew between you two, and despite feeling hurt, you felt a little bad. Still, you wanted some answers out of Idia, after the incident in the alchemy room. “Y’know, you never used to be this… odd around me.” Was it the crowd that made him quiet, or… You felt a lump in your throat. Was it you?

Idia’s eyebrows shot up, thinking fast on what to say. Why can't conversations irl have ready-made dialogue?! “I… we c-can talk about wh-whatever you want? I guess?” He tried, kicking himself internally for leaving his tablet with Ortho. You bit the inside of your cheek as you stepped with him, that’ll do for now. “Scarabia parties are a little much, but they’re more pleasant than the Pomefiore mock balls,” you tried “wouldn’t you say?” After an uncomfortable pause, expecting a reply, you mumbled to yourself, “I guess we can stop talking now.”

“...is it like a rule for normies to chat while dancing? Isn’t the act of moving enough?” Idia mumbled in exasperation, hand tightening a little on your own. You bit your lip, your eyes burning. “No, I prefer to not talk to my friends at all and tell them we can’t be friends. It’s so much fun, right?” Idia’s eyes widened, and he scrambled for words, “I- I didn’t mean…” You stopped swaying abruptly, both of your clasped hands in the air. “Why are you here, Idia?”

A chill went through Idia. “T-To be honest, I didn’t even want to come to this stupid IRL dance,” he rushed out, “TBH Ortho had to make me come ‘cause he told me you’d be here-“ “You didn’t want…?” You cut Idia off, heart dropping. The other dancing couples swirled around you, but all the commotion around you felt like nothing more than idle chatter. Hurt flashed in your eyes, and Idia seemed shocked, which made you angry.

“I guess you wouldn’t want to be friends with someone who’s magicless, especially since you have STYX right?”

Idia’s eyes were wider than the Heartslabyul tea saucers. For once, he didn’t have a smart-ass reply. “Um, what? Obvi, I’m kind of stuck with STYX-” You let go of his hand and took a step back, almost bumping into a waltzing couple. “Yeah, wouldn’t want me to mess things up. Make any bad decisions and all that, right?” You felt your eyes water, despite yourself.

Furiously balling a fist and wiping your eyes, “Since you said we wouldnt work out n’stuff.” Idia suddenly remembered everything he’d muttered to himself, from the moment he’d stormed into the room to when he’d left dejectedly. When he’d made his choice and left before you could even get your word in.

Like a coward.

Idia’s heart pounded but shakingly, he reached a hand out to you. “P-prefect, I-I-!” You dodged the crowd, and ran out of Scarabia. You didn’t look back until you crashed through Ramshackle’s door, raced up the stairs, and fell onto your bed, Grim yelping in surprise as you tried your darndest to forget everything that just happened.

Back in Scarabia, Idia somehow stumbled off the dance floor, staggering to a table and breathing heavily. Mentally he replayed everything that just happened. Ortho floated over to him, “Brother? I don’t understand, why would (name) (last name) not accept your feelings?” Ortho went over the footage when he was observing you both dancing, and frowned.

“My senses indicate that based on their body language, they were upset with you. What happened?” Idia swallowed heavily, “I-I said it wouldn’t work out between us c-cuz they don’t have magic,” he stammered, eyes wide, “a-and STYX and-...” Ortho’s eyes widened, then narrowed, “That shouldn’t be a problem! You know that!”

“I meant for them, Ortho.” Idia sighed heavily, sinking into the chair. “I don’t want them to get hurt. Not when…” his mind wandered to Ortho, before NRC. He fell into deep thought. “In the end, I couldn’t even tell them...” He frowned deeply.

Ortho fell quiet, computing. Idia stared at the table, dejected, until Ortho spoke. “You know (Name) (lastname) doesn’t back down easily from a challenge.” That’s true. From playing games with Idia to taking down overblots, you weren’t someone who ran away when it mattered. Maybe that’s why Idia liked you - you were like the protagonists in animes, who found a way to make the world their own.

“You shouldn’t make (name) (last name)’s decision for them.” Idia looked up at his brother. Ortho continued, head angling to the side, Idia shook his head dejectedly, “it won’t work-”

“Your lil’ bro is right, y’know,” Cater walked over, shaking his hair out with his guitar slung over his shoulder. “Sry, I overheard you two,” Cater could piece together what happened. He did see you blow up at Idia (although he couldn’t hear you), and after spamming your phone with no reply after you ran out, now he had an idea of what was going on. “Y’know, if you didn’t tell them how you felt, then how could you know you were making the right choice?”

Idia looked down. Ortho piped up, “Cater Diamond is right.” Idia shut his eyes, then stood up, hands tightening into fists. Cater jumped back as Idia’s hair flared up bright blue, and the Ignihyde housewarden headed straight to the exit. Ortho called out, “thank you, Cater Diamond!” and floated after Idia, “Brother! Wait!”

“Lets go, Ortho,” Idia’s golden eyes steeled in determination, “I can fix this.”

—----

A knock on the door jolted you from your reading of Prejudice and Pride.

It was early morning. Somehow, even though it was the weekend and you’d stayed up all night, you still woke up at an ungodly early hour. After being unable to fall asleep (totally not because of Grim’s snoring and sleep-munching) you decided to go to your living room and read. You were sure that you didn’t have a guest coming, so why would…?

You got up and opened the door, expecting Ace or Deuce or something. The annoyed look on your face turned to shock when you saw Idia standing on your porch. In one hand, he held a bouquet of pomegranate-red roses and some flowers you recognized to be asphodel.

You both stared at each other, unwilling to move. “Idia,” you breathed, “why are you here?” Idia shuffled awkwardly, “I wanted to see you.” You crossed your arms, looking around. “Where’s Ortho?” You were sure the little robot boy made his brother come. Otherwise, why would Idia be here? Idia rubbed the back of his neck, “Ortho isn’t here. I… I wanted to see you,” he repeated.

Wordlessly, he thrust the flowers into your arms, and you wrapped your arm around it instinctively. “I- um,” you looked everywhere but Idia, who was staring at the Ramshackle doorway. “Idia,” you cleared your throat, “about what happened-” “Prefect, I… I wanted to apologize.” Your eyes widened, but Idia continued.

“I… I didn’t mean what I said that day.” Idia looked bashful, face turning pink and the ends of his hair turning a deep blush. He kept talking, rambling on and fighting he urge to grab his tablet and let the device speak for him. “I… really like being friends with you.” The words came out quietly from him, and even though he looked like he wanted to sink into his hoodie, Idia didn’t shirk away.

A lump rose in your throat as you didn’t make eye contact with him, instead playing with the flower bouquet, “I like being friends with you too,” you bit your lip, rubbing an asphodel petal, “I like you, Idia.”

Idia’s eyes widened and went rigid. Both his face and his hair went deep pink. Your own eyes widened at the color, and you felt your face grow hot. So that’s what it meant…? Not anger…?Wordlessly, without thinking, you dropped the bouquet. Your body moved on its own, and you flung yourself at Idia, wrapping your arms around his shoulders and squeezing your eyes shut.

Idia staggered back from the momentum with a squeak, but wrapped his arms around your torso with an iron grip. You gripped his hoodie tightly, finally understanding what had gone on for so long. Your cheek was pressed against his, and despite the early morning chill, you both felt warm.

High above, Ortho hovered in the distance over the tree canopies from afar. He zoomed in on you and Idia, and behind his face mask, he beamed. In midair, he did a heart-shaped loop-de-loop in happiness, and hovered back to Ignihyde.

After a few minutes, you leaned back in Idia’s arms, the both of you chuckling in happy disbelief. You looked up and saw a little blue streak leaving a smoke trail of a heart, and laughed to yourself. Idia turned around, seeing his brother above, a soft reminiscent look on his face.

“…guess Ortho was right.”

~END

——-

Fun fact: the beginning is inspired by idia’s school uniform vignette!!!

Me, while writing this: wow Idia and Cater’s dialogue are unique, they’d be hard to write

Also me: *puts both of them in this fic and suffers*

Writing Idia was SO HARD but I hope I managed to get him right-ish. Trying to balance his reactions with the dialogue was hard 😭

anyway thanks for reading~ please leave a comment/reblog!! <3

Taglist: @cerisescherries, @eclecticprincecollector, @ars-tral, @thehollowwriter, @twst-eeps, @casperandcats, @ttokkisbee, @mitsuriswaifu, @parad-ice-lostandfound, @sad-sie, @moyo5653

(If your user is in bold, I wasn’t able to tag you properly)

#twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland x reader #twst x reader #idia shroud x reader #twst idia #idia shroud #ortho shroud #twst idia shroud #idia x reader #twst Pride and Prejudice AU #ignihyde #calcified writing

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badblondebisexualboy · 1 year ago

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Brother

Platonic!Winchester!Brothers x Teen!Male!Reader (Supernatural)

Abbreviations:

Y/N: Your Name

'Thoughts'

Actions

Warnings: mean Dean?, OOC characters?, fear of abandonment, misunderstandings, probable misinformation, messed up timeline? Hmu if I missed anything.

Dialogue Prompt: “You’re fine. (We’re) I’m taking you home”

Requested by: no one

A/N: this feels rushed. The ending is bad, the apology is shitty, and overall I feel I could do better. Give me some ideas and constructive criticism.

Song Suggestion

3rd Person POV

Y/N: Come on guys... you can't keep me here forever just because I’m your little brother. Please let me out. I wanna go on adventures with my big bros too...

Dean: No it's dangerous.

Sam: You could get hurt, and we don't want dad up our ass about it.

Dean: stern Sam... Anyways, Y/N, I feel like you'll just be a burden on us during the hunts. you don't know how to handle yourself, you don't know how to fight, you've never taken a hit, nor did you ever care to listen to dad's instructions when he was telling you why this is dangerous. so no. you won't be coming with us. And Sam, we have to go.

Sam: That was harsh dean.

Dean: he wouldn't listen otherwise

they walk out, leaving Y/N alone in the trailer Y/N: speechless

Y/N: g-guys but I-

The door was shut

Y/N: sigh so this is what he thinks of me… a burden…

half hearted chuckle Y/N just goes to the kitchen, prepares food for the boys, and goes to sleep. After the hunt, sounds of things falling to the floor Y/N jolts awake

Y/N: w-who's there??

Sam: it's us. Don’t worry.

Y/N runs downstairs to check up on them

Y/N: holy sh- guys, sit down I'll get the first aid

Y/N first patches up Sam and then goes to Dean

Y/N: Sam, your food is in the fridge, eat it.

Y/N sits in front of dean, and starts cleaning his cuts

Dean: Ow careful!

Y/N: flinch sorry… finishes with aiding your food is also in the fridge.

Dean: ……

Y/N: do you hear me Dean? make sure you eat ok?

Dean just nods

Y/N: 'so now he won't even answer me... great' sighs and goes back to his room.

Author POV

For the first time in a long time, Y/N cried himself to sleep. He thought he found a family, but maybe his mother was right… maybe she was just a fling to John Winchester, and maybe Y/N was just an unwanted kid… and maybe that’s the reason Dean hated him, because his father cheated on his mother with Y/N’s… maybe Sam was just sympathizing with him… maybe Sam hated him too… he slipped into sleep with these thoughts in mind. But it didn’t take long for him to wake up because he heard thump. A grave mistake he did was to peek out the door. He saw some kind of a creature dragging Sam down the stairs. And with the new found courage, he ran and jumped on its back. The creature picked him up, and knocked him out. Before blacking out though, he had the energy to yell out his eldest brother’s name, “DEAANNN!!”

Y/N POV

The next thing I remember was waking up in a dimly lit room

Chuckle.

Startled by the chuckle, he yelled out into the darkness, “W-who’s there??” an equally startled Sam replied, “Y/N!!? what are you doing here??” “S-Sam! Are you okay??” Sam hesitantly replied, “yes… how did you end up here?” “I saw that thing taking you and jumped it… maybe it took me too” a new voice jumped into the conversation, “well well… if it isn’t for the younger Winchester and that rat of a brother” I knew who they were referring to, but chose to keep quiet. The stranger continued, “heard your mom died before sending you to her cheater husband, Y/N?” that made my blood boil, but it was the truth nonetheless. “Fine, if I don’t get any reply, I shall get started, separate them.” Someone came and took Sam somewhere. I was scared, I didn’t know what they were gonna do to both of us. My train of thought was cut short when they blindfolded me… oh shit. Here we go. “Don’t worry kid, we won’t touch you. You were an unexpected catch. We plan on talking.” That gave me a false sense of security. Upon not hearing anything from me, the stranger continued, “the hunter community heard a lot about you, kid. The outcome of a fling of John Winchester and Amanda Collins, was it?” my mom’s name piqued my interest. “M-my mom… how do you know her?.” Feeling accomplished with himself on making me talk, he just chuckled, “most of the hunter community knows, the word spreads quick around here kid. And how is it going with your brothers? Heard your old man passed recently, my condolences by the way” he knew way too much about everything going on… it put me on edge. “how do you know about all of this, are you a hunter too? If so why did you take Sam? What did they do to you??” “Okay okay kid, you’re talking too much. Let me…” he gags me!! I mumble incoherent words. “now kiddo, just listen to me. You are just a side quest in this for us. You weren’t even supposed to be here, but now that you are, we have to figure out what we’ll do with you. So shut the fuck up and stay where you are.” and he left. For what felt like hours, I stayed there. in the dimly lit, quiet, creepy room.

Timeskip, few hours

It felt agonizing. I had all sorts of thoughts running through my mind. It physically exhausted me. I felt hopeless… was Dean ever gonna come for me..? did he take Sam and leave already?? Does he know I’m here? Does he care? I mean he did call me a burden.. maybe it is better if he leaves me here. I wouldn’t have to be-

SLAM

The door slammed open, I could hear hurried footsteps, and soon my gag and blindfold was off. “You’re fine. We’re taking you home” and before I could process anything, I blacked out…

Time skip back home

My eyes fluttered open, and I was back in my bedroom. Was it all a dream? After a while of just laying in my bed, I walked out to the kitchen. I could hear… arguing?

Sam: “he only went to save me Dean! You can’t scold him for that. Come on man… he’s still a kid…”

Dean: “there are other ways to save someone Sam. Not recklessly going after an unknown entity. We already have enough stuff to deal with. We don’t need him becoming one. And you have to stop being on his side. This will only make him more irresponsible. Now go back to your room and let me go talk to that brat.”

Sam: “But-”

Dean: “no more of that Sam! Get back to your room.”

My breath quickened as I realized Dean was going to check for me in my room. I didn’t wanna get onto his bad side than I already was, so I ran back to my bed and faked sleeping.

Dean: “Y/N, get up. We need to talk.” I was scared, but got up nonetheless.

Y/N: “y-yes dean?”

Dean: “We need to talk about why the hell you did what you did.”

Y/N: “I… I also want to talk to you Dean.” Dean: “sure you go ahead first then”

Y/N: “What is your problem with me?”

Dean: “Sorry?"

Y/N: “why do you hate me? what did I do to you??”

Dean: “I do not hate you. And you did nothing to me. where’s this coming from?”

Y/N: “all those times you pushed me aside, talked to me like I was a rag, all those times you did not consider my feelings… even today in the morning and just a few minutes ago…”

Dean: “…I”

Y/N: “do you hate me because I’m not your own brother? Or do you hate me because dad… cheated on your mom with mine”

Dean: “that’s enough! I do not.. hate you. Yes, I had a strong dislike towards you… but now I don’t even have that. I’m worried. I never took care of a 16 year old… Sam left for college when he was 16… and I never knew how to do it. You just got left with us… and then dad… sigh I’m sorry if I gave you the impression that I hate you. I do not. I… I see a younger Sam in you… that’s why I’m scared. Whatever happens to you is my responsibility.”

Y/N: “…You do not have to do it alone. I and Sam are always with you. You don’t always have to know what to do.”

Dean: “I’m sorry… can you forgive me?”

Y/N: “it will take time, but I’m sure I will. For now, let’s go eat something… together…”

Sam: “I already ordered take out, let’s watch something?.”

Y/N: “race me to the TV?”

We sprinted out of the room, laughing and trying to trip each other. This felt like home… it felt nice.

~ X THE-END X ~

#dean winchester #sam winchester #winchester brothers #male reader angst #angst to fluff #supernatural x male reader angst #platonic #angst #angst with a happy ending #angst to comfort male reader #winchester male reader

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riddlerosehearts · 7 months ago

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all right so, some more thoughts on act 2 of baldur's gate 3 now that i finally replaced my hard drive and have been able to play again! this is basically all about like the very end of act 2 because i enjoyed it but just didn't really write things down for most of it.

so first of all i actually kind of love ketheric thorm and the tragedy of his character. i love villains who are willing to destroy themselves and the world for the sake of their family 💖

however i wish that if you talked to him about his wife and passed the checks to try persuading him to repent you could actually change the outcome of things. like what if you could save him and recruit him.... i honestly really think my tav would've felt a bit of empathy toward his situation and wanted to save him if they could, and also personally i just find him more interesting than halsin or even jaheira asdkjfghsdf

i'm sure jaheira is a lot cooler to people who know her from previous baldur's gate games but having 2 druids feels a bit redundant when there are so many other classes and she and halsin both become recruitable a little too late imo, especially given that halsin kind of has nothing to do after he finally joins you. ketheric would be an even later addition but sorry i just think he's so cool and that making one of the villains redeemable + recruitable would've been neat!

ANYWAY i also love the fact that even though i was spoiled on a lot of random bits and pieces about the different companions' personal stories before i started, i was not really spoiled at all on the actual main plot of this game lol. it just makes it that much more exciting getting to see how it all unfolds.

i also wasn't spoiled on the details of wyll's pact and now that he's finally talked about it, i love his character even more!! he's literally like if a disney prince loved his home and its people so much that he sold his soul to save them. i wish we could've had a full flashback when he agreed to show us what happened like the ones we get when we see into shadowheart's past.

i also wish he got more appreciation from fans and had a more complete romance but we all know why he doesn't 😔

i think this is literally the first "stereotypical horny bard" dialogue i've come across omg 😭 didn't actually pick this because it would've been ooc for elenion to say but i will say i think it would've been really funny if there was like. romance-specific dialogue here because you have such insane first meetings with every companion. i'm just imagining elenion going "love at first sight? i suppose so, although for me it was more like love at first hand" and leaving isobel wondering wtf that's supposed to mean

all of this confusion and going back and forth about whether to trust the dream guardian... and they were a mind flayer the whole time!! tbh that actually does not make elenion automatically stop trusting them because we've met omeluum and he didn't seem bad, but what does kind of make them lose trust in the emperor is the whole "encouraging you to turn into a mind flayer" thing... yeah, not doing that.

actually though i found out a while ago that something was up with the dream guardian but like. i was expecting them to turn out to just be fully evil and wanting to try and manipulate us more directly after the reveal, not for them to be acting like a nice friendly heroic mind flayer, so that does come as a surprise!

i wish i had thought to take lae'zel with me to the astral plane in case she would've had anything to say about orpheus while we were there... but oh well, i didn't really have her on my team during act 2 and she wasn't relevant to basically any of its story so i missed her a lot and i am so proud of her now for how she told off vlaakith.

??? halsin just tried to confess his love to elenion and said he thinks they feel the same way and i mean... at least he was very kind and understanding when they rejected him but i am baffled because i haven't really had him in the party at all and. like. when he asked them to tell him a secret they even said they didn't feel like there was anything to tell because they didn't wanna open up to him too deeply (well, and also because for some reason the only other option is to say you're afraid of krakens), but now he thinks they're in love with him? 😭 i've heard that it used to be extremely easy to accidentally romance gale but i do not understand how this happened with halsin. oh well.

oh yeah also i got this dialogue from wyll and i wish there was an option to say that you're anxious about being back or something. because elenion has been sort of avoiding visiting home and only going back very infrequently for a very long time and he and wyll are close so i imagine that wyll knows why that is. but i ended up just picking the first option and imagining that wyll is too polite to question it.

anyway, i've stepped into rivington and am ready to start exploring it but i'm going to end this post here for now!

#star plays bg3

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mcflymemes · 2 years ago

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👋 hi, i'm CHUCKLES (she/her), and this is my sideblog for roleplay and dialogue prompts. i've been in the tumblr rp community since late 2012, and i love memes!! feel free to reblog as many posts as you'd like and send in requests for anything in particular you'd like to see... in the future ⚡️

please do not repost my memes or add anything to them. this blog does NOT use any form of AI to create or edit its prompt lists; this blog is aggressively anti-ai.

MEME REQUESTS ARE: CLOSED, INBOX IS CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

more in depth headcanon questions

#dni #dnr #pinned

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ihatedean · 6 months ago

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Is jojo's bizarre adventure a good first anime? I've only watched Sailor Moon as a kid and maybe Dragon Ball but the art is so gorgeous I'm kinda curious!

people who aren't fans appreciating the art style give me life omg<33 i agree it's stunning ! ! just look at this ! wow ! !

EDIT: WOW OH MY GOD WE'VE ENTERED YAPPING STATE. SORRY. SHORT ANSWER YES IF YOU LIKE MULTIGENERATIONAL FAMILY SAGAS AND THEMES OF FATE AND BLOOD BUT IT'LL TAKE SOME GETTING USED TO. JOJO IS A WEIRD SHOW. ITS WIDELY KNOWN AS THE GAY ANIME FOR A REASON.

but to answer your question,, i'd say it's 50-50? i know a lot of people that aren't anime fans that LOVE jojo. it's a very unique show that doesn't follow the classic formula that other shonen anime follow like DB does, for example- this is either a huge bonus or it completely ruins the experience, because a lot of people compare it to other shows they're already familiar with. there's no better word for it, it's a BIZARRE series. everything is weird, the dialogue, the characters, the setting, the art. the author's writing style is something everyone sort of had to get used to and we love him for making us go through that.

i actually avoided the anime for years because i thought the characters looked gross and the lack of female characters was kind of an issue for me back then (it gets better it gets a lot better you just have to see it through). but it was my boyfriend's first shonen and he begged me for months to watch it together so i said fuck it- i think i made him watch twilight or play danganronpa in exchange.

.....it might not grip you from the start. part 1 is not a lot of people's favorite part. it wasn't mine- after like four or five episodes (of nine ! it's very short !) of being weirded out by it, i realized that i had to stop seeing it as a shonen anime, and instead began to see it as,,, a play,, of sorts. if you watch the first two parts you'll know what i'm talking about. it's drama. once i changed my perspective on it, i completely fell in love ! ! from part 3 onwards it's a lot more like the usual shonen, and i know it's a lot more enjoyable for the average fan, but the first two parts are charming in their own weird little way :)

looking back on it after watching twin peaks, there are a lot of similarities, with the quirky characters and the themes. i only started twin peaks because of a jjba fic inspired by it. if you like twin peaks, i'm certain you'll like jojo.

but this is my spn blog and i assume you like supernatural so. i'll say: don't expect the same focus on relationships that spn puts on the characters, but know that its present in every interaction. where sam and dean hold each other tenderly and talk about how they're the only thing that matters, in jjba you'll have one character looking at the other in a way that's just drawn differently and the fandom will go insane. the supernatural characters are built very very carefully and have a lot of details that fans memorized- jjba characters are just as good but have a lot more space to play with if you want, regarding headcanons and storylines. their lives and thoughts aren't as well documented as sam and dean's is what i'm trying to say lol you'll know what brand of underwear a character likes most but you won't know his birthday. it happens. yes a lot of the fanfic is ooc because there's barely any character to remain inside of.

last but not least. this is a wincest blog. the first six parts of jojo follow six different generations of the same family. this is not minor. there will be daddy and mommy issues, there will be strange family dynamics. the family tree is FUCKED up and when you learn why you'll either drop the show or become sickeningly obsessed with a certain little guy called DIO. yes like THAT dio. there are a lot of musical references. unlike some characters i know, he's canonically bisexual.

anyways WOW do i like this anime. idk what else to say if you need more convincing this is the opening i guess

youtube

#anon if you don't wanna read all that i won't judge you. i don't know what happened i guess you touched the infodump button sorry.#jjba #if you're into soulmate stuff there are some parts i think you'll enjoy as well #my otp has this one dude naming the manifestation of his uncle's soul that essentially mirrors his. it's cute (:

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gothsuguru · 9 months ago

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hi hi! you can ignore this but i was really curious about your writing process?? you just write so well and i’m curious to see how your work starts from an idea all the way to the finished product!!!

the way my jaw DROPPED rn like omfg are you talking to ME??? I’M SHOOK PLEASE YOU ARE WAY TOO KIND AND SO GENEROUS 😭 my writing sucks ASS but thank you SO much you’re so sweet <333 i can try & let you know my process but tbh baby i do NOT have one 😭 but i’ll try to think of something 😭 also i’ll try to be as thorough/concise as possible but i’m sorry if i tangent! ALSO this’ll be long bc i’m a yapper so forgive me <3

1) everyone is different but in my case i have a tendency to ALWAYS think of new ideas for writing (at least for geto!) find a character that you can consistently think of ideas for bc they’ll serve as practice! also i JUST started writing a month or two ago so i, myself, am STILL practicing with every fic & i am always willing to learn!

most importantly, i write based off my whim! whatever idea has me in its clutches is the idea i’m writing for, even if that means i’m leaving other fic ideas in the dust at the moment! i recommend creating a list of fic ideas and save it as a draft (can be a wip list or literally just a random list depending on how many ideas you have!) — for those i tend to jot down random dialogue, vibes i wanna express, plot points i really wanna show, the personality of geto or reader, & whatever randomly comes to mind pertaining to that fic! i write it all down!

2) it honestly changes between fic to fic but i recommend asking for requests in the beginning — even writing just ONE thing will give you practice/an idea! so here are some examples of what i’ve written so far:

- the first thing i wrote was a request for suguru being obsessed w satoru’s girlfriend. the way i started that fic was thinking of the feeling that suguru would ultimately feel which was “guilt, shame, & desire.” and then i… personified? each thing! at first i personified guilt as an arachnid crawling in suguru’s throat but it didn’t work as well for me… and then i thought, “how about a serpent?” and it flowed much better -> slithering down his throat, embedding his fangs into his flesh leaving it raw, mangled, & bloody -> roaming across his heart/ribcage. and for that, and this may sound silly but i SWEAR by it, look up SYNONYMS for words on google! “dances along his bones -> pirouetting across his bones” i think little nods like that can help you not sound too similar all the time or like you’re constantly repeating yourself! shame was expressed in alcohol (amber whiskey ties into his amber eyes as well) & desire was expressed within the flicker of a lighter reader gave him which he holds in his hands (he imagines the cold metal as reader’s hands, which he ends up holding in his warm ones at the end)

- second fic “black is the color of my true love’s hair” was my first time writing a fic and that was because i wanted to write something for v-day & i really love this song! music can be a great inspiration — same w song lyrics! but for that one i had a few ideas i KNEW i wanted to use (knuckle kisses, stargazing, depressive suguru who reader gives a bath to/has a heart to heart with, and reader making a scrapbook for suguru!) he may be ooc but also i’m not afraid of making suguru be soft and quirky, i think that makes him fun! have FUN w different facets of your favorite characters personalities! also personally, i hate when readers don’t have personality/are always too shy/can’t banter/are too serious so i try to make my readers have a personality that align w the fic!

now for the knuckle kisses i knew what i wanted to do and i think that part came pretty easy! just a bit of revising as i was writing so i could be more descriptive in certain areas, change my wording around so it’d be less clunky in others! stargazing idea was incredibly hard & so was the scrapbook… so here’s advice i have for you that SAVED my ass. now. if you just wrote random writing in your drafts, whether it was just stream of consciousness that has nothing to do with the fic or was just a random piece of dialogue you jotted down — DO NOT DELETE IT. two parts of my fics were from RANDOM writing i wrote that had NOTHING to do w a romance fic and with a BIT of tweaking it gave so many ideas/serviced my story perfectly!

ex: i had zero idea of how to start the stargazing part so i just wrote the part i knew i wanted, which would’ve been in the middle of the story! aka reader buying the star for suguru and him being Shook To The Core. i was wondering how the hell i think of the events leading up to that, and one day i randomly just wrote “you zig-zag around the counter like a bumbling fawn” bc i was brainstorming ideas for the fic but was like… this has no place in my story BUT i didn’t delete it i just kept the draft. THEN i was like… wait this can work… so i used it as my beginning to the stargazing section and it flowed wonderfully! same w the scrapbook section! i wrote a series of dialogue that i ACTUALLY intended to use in an angst where reader despises suguru in their relationship, but with a bit of tweaking and deleting parts of reader being apathetic and suguru being toxic, it ended up being a great series of showing suguru’s overthinking nature/his genuine love for reader!

also maybe i do this unintentionally but i usually have a focus into suguru’s thought processes more in my fics… maybe bc i’m just curious abt him more than anything LMAO so that can be useful i think! if you’re like wow i have no idea how to write for my reader, write for suguru!

- third story was a request (shoutout bestie rem 🤝🤭) who gave such a cool idea of twisted suguru watching reader grieve him for leaving. now it wasn’t an actual haunting bc reader & geto are both alive, but i still used words of that nature to express them haunting e/o’s thoughts (mourning, ghost, corporeal phantom, living rigor-mortis etc…) the first thing i wrote for this fic was “prostrate yourself” — a tie-in to cult leader geto & also his confusing feelings about/towards reader. i also wanted to show bleakness so i mentioned suguru likening himself to a plague & a calamity. also don’t be afraid to show the ugly parts of a character — suguru is a bit callous in this but he’s still human and has a push & pull w/in himself! this fic i really tried my hardest to do a “show not tell” for certain paragraphs (bc i personally have trouble with that/dialogue/imagery/descriptions/engaging writing) — so i would constantly go into my “writing tips” tag and try and heed the advice they give!

sorry i don’t think i was of much help bc honestly i do NOT have a process 😭 even when writing my current fic about curator!geto — i just outlined OOOOOH WAIT OKAY HOLD ON YUP MIDTHOUGHT AND NOW I’M JUST PROPERLY ANSWERING YOUR QUESTION 😭

BITCHXHXHBXBX I FORGOT. OUTLINE!!!!!!! THAT’S WHAT YOU WERE LOOKING FOR THIS WHOLE TIME AND I WAS JUST YAPPING AWAY FOR NO REASON I’M SOOOOOOOOOO SORRY OMFGGGGGGG OKAY SO 😭

curator!geto is the FIRST time i’m PROPERLY outlining a fic (so actually i didn’t do anything wrong pleek don’t beat my ass for yapping 😪) so basically since this is the first time i’m outlining i made sure to write the premise of the fic, characters & their jobs, their personalities, their place of work/interactions/relationships there and then also how they would meet! so i wrote how i wanted suguru & reader to meet, a few pieces of random dialogue, and then i also wrote about how they would later on be more romantic (in what way). i’m currently trying to think of a conflict and just now thought of an idea that i may or may not use but i wrote it down anyways! and this is the first fic where i’m properly paying attention to “show not tell” and trying to describe words/paragraphs with more imagery! (esp since it’s an artsy/visual fic!) tbh the “writing tips” tag on my blog will help you more than anything i can say 😭

also! i recommend looking up writing tips and also reading a bunch of fics that you like! my mutuals have some of the BEST fics i have EVER read and reading them is honestly a masterclass in itself of amazing writing/prose/how to flow a story wonderfully! i’m just a beginner so i have lots to learn still about fic-writing BUT just think of each fic as a stepping stone to getting better! write, post, but don’t overwhelm yourself/force yourself to finish a fic you have no ideas for. it’s okay if it takes time but also remember that it won’t ever be perfect so don’t let “perfectionism” stop you from posting your fics! someone will always read it — whether they rb, like, comment, or are a silent reader — someone will take the time out of their day to read your fic! and honestly don’t get caught up on numbers! i’m soooooo thankful that people read my fics & leave tags even if i think my writing sucks! it’s all in good fun at the end of the day! enjoy it however you can and i’m sure you yourself are an amazing writer! good luck bestie! <3

#asks #anon #but yeah so BASICALLY. idea -> random tidbits -> outline -> rawdog -> revise -> writing tips -> edit -> post #sorry if this was of no help omfg i hope i didn’t forget anything 😭#tbh i have no process and just rawdog every fic 😭#i listen to music — write suguru all sexily — and then call it a DAY!#tbh making your fic look cute could maybe help you too! have fun w font colors & choosing a fic pic!#lil things like that can help service your story too!#i just like to play w personalities & random prose and HOPE it sticks LMFAOOOOOO #tbh i rec looking up writing tips / i have my own tag & so do other people! look through those they’ll help out WAY more!#i recommend asking seasoned writers tbh 😭 i just started recently but thank you for liking my fics!#and if you like someone’s fic — take note of what you like and why you like it! maybe that can help you too!#if you have any more questions PLEASE feel free to ask! i don’t think i was of any help BUT you were very kind 2 ask me anyways jdndndndnd #anyways. GOOD LUCK! i’m sure you’ll kill it <3 #writing tips

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tucosalamancaofficial · 2 years ago

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EXCUSE ME??? NIGHTCORE???? IM A RAP DISS TRACK. IM A BADASS ACDC SONG. IM A METALLICA SONG NOT FUCKING. NIGHTCORE I DONT HAVE BLUE FUCKING PIGTAILS ON MY HEAD??????!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?

I. AM. CHOP SUEY BY SYSTEM OF A DOWN

I HAVE A SAD GUITAR SOLO IN THE MIDDLE LIKE THE BRIDGE PART

THERE ARE SOUND EFFECTS OF ROARING LIONS IN THE BACKGROUND! THE SPOTLIGHT IS ON ME! I AM!!!! GUY

-----OOC-------I HAVE THOUGHTS. I AM SORRY BUT I DO.‐------------------

also i feel like gus would just be a single piano note every time he gets upset. just one. like only one "dun".

the rest of the time he is pure silence

Walter tries to duet with him, and he refuses to sing his part. just a long silence, a single piano note, and more silence. walt doesn't understand why.

when he is with people he trusts, like mike or smt, he sings, but with no pazazz. its almost monotone. his voice is still chesty and borad and clear, but he doesnt really have a tone per say. just sings the correct notes in order.

with max, its a beautiful piano ballad!! they sing together!!!!!??!?!!??!!?!**!*!*!*! max has fun with singing, adds little adlibs and vibratos, and uses his falsetto voice a lot, and you can see gus smiling at him when he sings.

Don eladio is like the most tacky dancy despacito-y music you can think of. and he has a terrible voice. and i imagine like in s4 when gus brings jesse to mexico, he gives him earplugs. there is a small silence before he speaks where every character on gus' side puts on earplugs right before his number

jesse doesnt get it at first but as soon as he hears his voice he fumbles to quickly put them on because now it makes sense

Don hector sings acapella during important moments, and at most has a classical guitar accompanying him, but its very minimal. his voice should be powerful and broad and deep, and he doesnt embellish his voice much, no vibrato, no runs, just pure clear voice, like gus.

after he's paralyzed, while there is no singing the guitar accurately conveys what he feels or wants to say

jesse i feel like doesnt go to classical music, but rather his hip hop/rap song is always the same, with one element of the instrumental being taken away after each loss he lives through, until the end where its just accapella, and he gives up on singing (or rapping) nd leaves the stage in the middle of a lyric anyway. i feel like that would happen when he dreams about the woodworking shop thing in s6. he'd start talking about it, and just stop in his tracks. after he leaves the stage, we're left in the dark, and you hear todd's voice calling him from afar.

btw for Walter classical music is pretty diverse, so i'd say it starts off with just a clavecin in his humble beginnings, and the more heisenberg he acts, the more romantic and epic his soundtrack gets? i also feel like at the end of his number jesse would say like "what the fuck was that? you got like opera training or smt?" and walt would just rant for a while and jesse leaves to avoid him but walt follows "where do you think you're going. i'm not done! i dont want to hear you misclassify music ever! if you received a proper education you would know that-"

badger, combo and pete would try to rap or rock and they'd never be in sync, or one of them would forget the lyrics, one of them would be out of rythm and get called out, etc. and then they start arguing and just. stop playing until their voices fade and jesse's part starts or they go back to normal dialogue.

also. RANDOM ONE LINERS. jesse is like on the verge of tears talking about jane and one them just says church out of the blue. it doesnt happen often enough to ruin every dramatic moment, but it sometimes does lighten the mood.

i didnt organize my thoughts at all, hope its at least understandable!! and this is just my opnion btw!!!!!!!!

breaking bad/better call saul musical solo genres/sounds

this is a joke im taking seriously, i cant explain it any better than that. im vehemently against breakingbadmusical but HYPOTHETICALLY, this is what i would do if i was writing it. i would give each character a different genre for their motif. each character in the shows is doing their own thing, and ends up clashing with another character, hence literally every bit of conflict ever. it would make sense if you had different genres for different characters, the conflict would also reflect in the music itself.

ANYWAYS

walter: i keep coming back to classical music. at first its humble, but it can become pretentious and annoying SO quickly.

jesse: he's walter's foil, so it would make sense to make it early 2000's hip hop/rap but it has no knowledge whatsoever of the roots of the genre. it would be cool if it transitioned from hip hop/rap to something a like classical, like walter, except it actually sounds good and its very euphonous and stuff. yknow what im getting at?

skyler: hannah montana type beat. that's all i gotta say i think it says enough. also like Groove is in the Heart by Deee-Lite.

hank: heavy metal, but with the depth of a crime show that's been running for 17 seasons and does not give two shits about the realism of how the police and/or forensics world works.

marie: Getting Married Today from Company. All of her music is at LEAST 150bpm and would perfectly echo the mind of a high-strung, concerned nurse who's working in a very rich medical facility.

saul: new york in the 50s jazz style. really big and really loud. he's the bitch who gets the tap number and its at least ten minutes long. the clarinet is at the heart of it all though, because there has to be something to represent jimmy, but its buried under layers and layers of flashy meaningless noise

kim: leaning more towards the musical theatre genre than anyone else. very instrumental, i think the saxophone might really fit her, i think it would be cool if the music reflected her emotions more than she did herself, because kim doesnt really wear her heart on her sleeve, so you have to consult the music to gain more insight.

howard: jazz too, but its MUCH more refined and smoother than saul. like the really complicated music theory-y jazz that you hear in bars and restaurants at like 11pm on a saturday night.

mike: ok ok ok. hear me out. but i think if you had like. a lone flute, it would work. like i know it doesnt initially fit, but i feel like it does, because at the center, mike is just upset about everything, he longs for the past, i think, and i think if you wrote something in like the mid-range of the flute, or if you used a bass flute, it would sound really good.

lalo: ok so like saul and mike, lalo puts up a front. i think that front sounds like really loud miriachi music (think al compas de mi caballo). but the center is something brassy, and personally i'd lean towards trombone. trombone can go very low, sound very intimidating, but they can also go pretty high, and sound noble and kind of adventurous.

gus: ahh ok so gus is kind of this god who has a LOT of power. his center is max. so if max isnt there, there wouldn't be a center. i think gus would have like a full ass orchestra. heavy on the bass to reinforce that he's powerful. i think he'd have almost a movie soundtrack genre. if that makes sense. here's the catch. there's very little flute, no piccolo. max is the piccolo.

nacho: guitar. lot of fingerpicking. nacho doesnt get any of the band instruments because he's not really on either side? he kind of just got wrapped up in the mess and now he can't really get out. probably a lot of high notes because he's continuously yearning for a world he can't really get. also its kind of got that humbleness his family background has.

kaylee: just tap. no instruments. just a 5 year old tap dancing SO loudly for SO long.

tuco: nightcore.

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h50europe · 3 years ago

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Why the myth about Steve's PTSD doesn't add up and other inconsistencies

In the last few episodes of H50, PL tried to sell us a mentally broken Steve suffering from PTSD. Only the whole thing came a bit too late. The clip you see is from season 4 and ended up - no, not in the series - but somewhere on the floor of PL's editing room. And why? after Kurtzman and Orci departed, along with their writers, PL took the helm and started turning Steve into a super-soldier. He stylized him into something that wasn't meant to be. Instead of developing the characters, PL began to incorporate more and more hair-raising action sequences into the series and then let Steve fight on the front lines. There was no mention of Steve's mental state, and a lot was explained by PL with: it just happened "offscreen." Yeah, sure. PL can't create a decent character. He can only produce stereotypes and one-dimensional beings. Like Adam. What potential would that character have had had he been turned into Five-0's antagonist? But no. So his role remained diffuse and monotonous. Sometimes even tragicomical.

Back to Steve. When SEAL Team started on CBS, PL also lapsed into SEAL mania. If someone who writes fanfiction were to produce as much garbage as this man did, he would be chased away from every writers' platform in disgrace. PL's Super SEAL also had to rescue his team members from a blazing inferno. Not man by man, no, he flew a helicopter right into the danger zone and lifted a whole cabin out of the burning jungle. If lunacy had a name, it would be PL. While the action became more and more exaggerated and unrealistic, the same happened to the protagonists. After the departure of Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park, PL completely lost his mind. And please, don't blame the writers for the nonsense that was thrown at you. A series stands and falls with the showrunner. He dictates what he wants and passes it on to his staff.

And so, lovable Steve became a soulless robot who only showed feelings here and there. Danny diminished more and more into a sidekick. McDanno became a ship that drifted anchorless through a stormy sea and threatened to capsize again and again. From season 8, it became a reboot of the reboot. PL tried an ensemble show and failed more than miserably. Often the actors just stood around bored. At least that was the impression. The only highlight was episode 8.10. A feast for all McDanno fans. But even here, the outcome of "who shot Danny" was more than insubstantial.

Wait, there was something about SEALs... Oh, yes. Junior appeared on the scene and became Steve's lapdog. I really wondered when there was going to be an episode where he would fetch sticks for Steve. Luckily we had Eddie for that. And because he thought he was so clever, PL invented the episode speed dating. How many subplots can you squeeze into one episode at the same time? In some episodes, you couldn't even take a look at the bag of potato chips without losing the thread.

The case of the week became the yawn of the week. There were so many loose ends that PL then came up with something called retconning. That's what you do when you're no longer satisfied with what was once established in the series years ago, or it no longer fits. But PL went one step further and did the same with the characters. The more the series was dragged out, the more the characters deteriorated and became OOC. It means, often, they were not recognizable at all. And that's where we come to Steve. Because PL, in his desperation, didn't know what else he could do to Steve, and so he killed Joe White. He did it in such a cheesy way with a fake sunset that it made you sick.

Of course, one episode later, there had to be another gig of PL's favorite Barbie. He stuck a fake beard on poor Steve/Alex, so he couldn't even hug Danny/Scott properly. The episode also raised more questions than it answered any. And Steve? He still didn't suffer from PTSD, even though he had now lost Joe White and a fellow SEAL. Everyone is dropping like flies, except for Steve, who is standing like a rock. No matter what. He doesn't need in-depth talks with Danny, nor psychological care, nor any sleeping pills. No, he's doing great. He also opens a restaurant with Danny because apparently, the carguments are already getting on PL's nerves. Unfortunately, this plot device leads into nirvana. The idea was nice, but nobody thought it through to the end. And the merry-go-round continues. Until we get to season 10, where it gets even more absurd. Now PL is almost bombarding us with McDanno episodes, or at least it should seem that way. Oh well, he's already planning for season 11, so a new character has to come on board quickly. While in the beginning, Steve's mother, Doris, dies.

Alex was allowed to take on the subject. Of course, only under the strict eyes of PL. He then nullifies Alex's idea that Steve kills his mother. Because a good soldier and Super SEAL won't do that. Little does PL know. THAT could have been the opening of a PTSD scenario for Steve. However, apart from that, this episode would have had any potential for a multi-arc. Just imagine Steve chasing his mother across multiple episodes. Again, PL stepped in and butchered Alex's episode. You can really feel sorry for the guy. PL at his best or worse? He just can't help it. And then, on the very last meters of the series, he brings someone new, who is allowed to cruise around with Steve most of the time. Because Danny was kidnapped by Wo Fat's widow, PL also invented quite late to have some villain at his disposal. This wannabe mastermind must really have been living under a rock somewhere if she wasn't even mentioned by her husband or appeared earlier.

Because towards the end, PL obviously ran out not only of steam but also of ideas, everything culminated in a wildly illogical scenario. Steve has to live through a dramatic day with Eddie, who stands as a metaphor for Steve (as I said, PTSD was never a thing for Super SEAL), Danny bangs his brains out in a ladies' room with a complete stranger, who dies shortly after that in an accident with Danny's rental car. Apparently, there was no budget to turn the Camaro into scrap metal. Danny then also goes home alone, ignoring the incoming emergency vehicles. Everything remains open at the end of the episode. While Steve expresses his gratitude to Tani and Quinn and says, he would be just as lost as poor Eddie without the dog and all of them. The strange thing is that you never notice anything until that sentence. A few forced dialogues are supposed to make the drama visible, but they all happen way too late or are so poorly written that you miss them.

PL had decided early on to make Steve a Teflon hero. That also means he didn't need to put much substance into the character. Which you can clearly see if you compare the first three seasons to the rest of the series. But towards the end, PL wanted to turn the tide and forcefully rewrote Steve's past. There is a huge difference if you compare Steve from seasons 1 to 3 with Steve from season 10. It is only a sparse remnant of what made this character so great. This change in Steve's personality also affects his relationship with Danny. The witty, affectionate banter degenerates into a snappy, humorless bitch-fest that takes all the joy out of it.

The final two episodes could have been written for any other crime show. As mentioned, we have Cole, who even gets a book'em Cole from Steve, which can only be described as out of line. And it begs the question, was that what Lenkov originally had in mind? Danny out of the show and Cole in? Was the last episode, which mainly featured McCole, something of a test run? Did all the McDanno moments happen only to tear the two apart eventually? Was the real final scene the one where Steve and Catherine take Danny's coffin back to Jersey? Was Danny not supposed to survive? Was that the real reason Steve wanted to get out of Hawaii because he wanted to pay his respects to Danny? And would he really have returned to Hawaii later? Or would he have turned his back on Hawaii? To me, this ending is more plausible than what PL served us. Then, Steve handed over his credentials to Cole instead of Danny, his second in command. Honestly, you can't make the end of a series any more sloppy and dumber than that. And I won't even lose a word about the last 1:30 minutes because I think everything has already been said.

No PL, mission absolutely not accomplished. You created Teflon-Steve. You never wanted him to show any weakness. You turned him into a superhuman who can survive anything. Only to pull the rug out from under him on the last few meters to the finish line and spit on his legacy. How can you dismantle such a great series and its characters like you did? How much do you have to hate something to do that? In the final interviews, the showrunner didn't exactly cover himself in glory either. Everyone who grew up with the series from day one knows that its end was wrong on all the possible levels and that the showrunner is solely to blame for that. It takes a fair amount of egoism and carelessness to drive 10 years at full throttle against the wall. Not many people can do that. Whether you can be proud of that, however, I doubt.

My respect if you have made it this far. Each of you gets 10 extra brownie points for it.

#McDanno #steve mcgarrett #danny williams #scott caan #alex o'loughlin #H50 the final chapter #H50 series finale #Lenkov #Eddie #Junior #seal team

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luna-rainbow · 3 years ago

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First off I wanted to thank you for feeding us with all of the tfatws critiques lately, and I hope we're not annoying you with all the asks you've been getting about it recently. It's been really great to know that I'm not the only one with issues with the show and your posts are always super insightful to read.

The entire way that the writers handled Zemo in the show makes me want to punch myself in the face. It’s so OOC for Bucky to release him under any circumstance. The writers really expected me to buy into rebranding him as a likable anti hero when he tore the Avengers apart, retraumatized Bucky, and ruined Team Caps lives. They literally cared more about trying to make Zemo likable than they did addressing the trauma that he inflicted on Bucky. He violated Bucky in the same way that HYDRA did and shows now remorse for it. It’s hardly even mentioned and they put more weight on Zemo forgiving Bucky (“I hold no grudges against you for what you thought you had to do” which, what? I don’t even understand what he’s forgiving Bucky for or even talking about here) than Bucky forgiving Zemo--which by the way, Bucky is under zero obligation to do and frankly I wouldn’t even want him to. We need to stop telling people that they need to forgive their abusers in order to move on. Yes, for some people it works. But for others it doesn’t and both are valid forms of healing.

Bucky should have shot him in the face.

Sorry this is so long lol, I’m just really mad.

Thanks for the ask! I have to say I'm getting really amazing asks these days so it's all you guys inspiring me with interesting thoughts!

I have a feeling this is going to get long because this is something that I have Strong Feelings about, so I'm going to tackle it in two parts.

Zemo

I really want to talk about this guy because I think everyone's fallen for his new nonchalant charms, and while yes, it's got its moments but this manipulative sardonic rich white man trope where have we seen it before OH RIGHT TONY.

CACW Zemo was actually one of my favourite MCU villains. He had heart, he had intelligence, he had resolve. The only thing he didn't have was superpowers, but he plenty made up for it. He knew what he was doing was wrong, but he was driven to do it anyway, because the Avengers had ripped a void in his life and revenge was the only thing that could fill it. He had nothing left, so he had nothing to lose, and he was ready to go to any length to destroy the happiness that the Avengers had - that they had taken from him. And that felt real to me, yanno, more so than the 20 other villains who wanted to rule the universe. But he was still squarely a villain.

TFATWS Zemo is...just a mess of a caricature, honestly. His goal had been the Avengers because they were idolised beyond reproach - his entire arc was because Sokovia was destroyed but these American larrikins went on with their merry lives. There were some clunky dialogue about supremacy, but none of it really congealed. CACW Zemo would have agreed with the Flag Smashers’ fight against an organisation that was beyond accountability, TFATWS made him a baron who wanted to maintain the status quo, and then tried to tell us this guy is now an anti-hero…and I honestly have no comment about what we should be reading into that.

Bucky

The “I hold no grudge for what you thought you had to do” is top on my list of TFATWS lines that prove the scriptwriter believes Bucky is in the wrong for everything. I cannot find an adequate interpretation of this line that does not paint Bucky as the villain in their relationship, when it’s Zemo who did every. Damn. Hurtful. Thing to Bucky.

Bucky did nothing to Zemo. He did nothing to Zemo’s family. He was not involved in Sokovia. And he did not have agency when he was in Hydra. ZEMO KNOWS THIS BETTER THAN ANYONE BECAUSE HE HYPNOTISED BUCKY.

Zemo framed Bucky. Put his name and face on every damn newspaper in the world. Got him nearly killed by a SWAT team and a very angry T’Challa. He then hypnotised Bucky, made him relive what he was trying to run away from, demonstrated that he was still under his handler’s whim no matter how hard he fought, then set him onto Steve and the rest of the Avengers. He used Bucky to create the rift between Steve and Tony, and broke up the Avengers. Not only that, throughout TFATWS he continually stirs Bucky up, and tries to drive a wedge between Sam and Bucky by mocking his fighting abilities as a love for violence and talking incessantly about the untrustworthiness of super soldiers.

And yet, the script lets Zemo tell Bucky that he holds no grudge WTAF is that. I honestly hope whoever wrote that line gets bullied to shreds only to have the bully tell him “I won’t hold it against you”, because that’s what happened here.

I’m proud of Bucky not shooting him, because he didn’t play into Zemo’s hand, but I ain’t interpreting that as forgiveness.

#bucky barnes #helmut zemo #tfatws critical #asks

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bardicious · 3 years ago

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Loki S1E4 Spoilers

This is my most negative review so far, so if you really liked this episode, please dont read for your own benefit. No seriously, I drag this show in every possible way. Give no receipts, all bitching.

If you dont want to see your fav show dragged, please look away.

LMAO. It's official, this is one of the stupidest shows I've ever seen. Jfc.

Things I didn't appreciate about this episode:

1. Sylvie being a Variant because she was born a woman? Are you literally fucking kidding me? Jfc. I HATE this, for so many reasons. One because her being born a girl suggests that Loki cannot change his sex at will. This has always been a headcanon of mind, and you know what, since Loki does it in the comics, I feel its a valid one. Fucking hate this.

2. Loki's whole bullshit sequence with Sif. Not funny, annoying, and cruel. Much like Sif herself.

3. Mobius and Loki being friends??? Listen, I am a bit fond of the Lokius ship, sure. But they were never ever on those terms, what a fucking joke.

4. Sylvie and Loki's romantic relationship??? Really??? Really?? Just wow.

5. Loki and Mobius dying? Really, now just go fuck yourselves writers. Well, we know Loki is alive, we dont know what happened to Mobius. I'm wondering what those death sticks really do then. Still didn't appreciate the disrespect on both characters.

6. The Time Keepers being robots, all the ridiculous theatrics of it? It's so lame. Who the fuck decided Loki was going to be a comedy again? Yeah, thanks for nothing.

And these are just the points that made me angriest.

The series continues to be poorly written. Mostly in dialogue, reactions, and reasoning on the TVA's part. I dont get the impression that the TVA has ever been a threat and I'm surprised they lasted this long. Excuse me, but if little Sylvie could escape so easy, what the fuck was Loki doing?

On the discourse of this whole show, because I see it everywhere. Yeah, sorry, but Loki is hella ooc. And thats the tea on that. What I will say is, there's no way the show writers are doing it on purpose. They aren't actively trying to make Loki look this stupid. I'm pretty sure Loki has just been labeled as the "hero" at this point. So Loki doesn't get interesting characterization. No, I believe he's getting the Thor treatment of the first few movies.

They are banking on all their decent writing on Sylvie because she's the anti-villain? Because obviously they do not want an anti-villain as their main focus. Yeah, it's pure coincidence. That said, I dont know what this means for Sylvie at the end of the series. It's possible she'll just become a fan favorite. I already like her (and as far as I'm concerned, I'm sticking with my headcanon)

That said, I thought Sylvie's capture was so sad. Poor child. That did give brownie points for her being a Loki, but not enough where I'd change my headcanon, because this show has way too many things I dislike.

Loki continues to be useless. He literally just has stuff happen to him and doesn't move the plot forward much at all. I guess the writers didn't have a chance to learn that your protagonist is supposed to be proactive for them to be interesting? Weird, for something as high budget as Marvel, you would think they would care about their writers having some proper experience.

The Lokis are freaking ugly. What the fuck is up with this low budget ass show? This isn't the first time I've hated the costuming in a Marvel show, see: Falcon. The only decent one so far was Wanda's.

I thought this whole episode was a joke and I was waiting for the punch line the entire time.

Lastly, because I dont want to be unfair. These are all the points I liked:

1. Hunter B-15. So happy she's on the Lokis side. I love her. I've finally come around to loving her completely. She was one of the good points of this episode.

2. It was nice to see Asgard again, and little Sylvie was adorable. She was so happy. I'm glad to get another glimpse at Loki's life. And this makes sense of why she's so vague about everything. She doesn't have a life in Asgard.

3. Loki's hair in one scene was particularly gorgeous. I'll be going back in to screenshot it. 👀

4. Loki and Sylvie fighting, both of them fighting equally just as well.

5. I still like the idea of all the Lokis.

....and yeah, that's it. Most of these are just little details, like, visually speaking most of the production is nice (Except for the Time Keepers, the Loki's costumes)

This wasn't a great one, folks. And I imagine the rest of the series will be the same. Because this is a comedy after all. And once again, I feel thats where we go wrong. Because Loki was never supposed to be a comedy, nor was Thor. Yet recently they've made comedies of both of them.

That said, wow, I am okay now, yeah, this series is just bad, hard to even extrapolate anything, but now I realize they're not doing this maliciously. imo, they just have very bad takes. I maintain that if Tom was completely in charge, Loki would be as we remembered him, but frankly, I think it has more to do with this series being a comedy than anything. Let's hope Doctor Strange isn't a comedy, shall we?

PS. This show is really making me come to terms with throwing away canon, every single episode. So that's definitely a plus.

#The Adventures of Loki and the Other Ones

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mc-critical · 4 years ago

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Valide: "You once asked me what's the difference between you and Hürrem. I'll tell you the most important one - Hürrem acts with her own mind, but you act with other people's minds."

I'm sorry, guys, I know it's a badass scene, I know it's an epic smackdown, I can only guess how much people have been waiting for this one moment perhaps since the beginning, but narratively, the whole thing grinds my gears.

Now, I'm not saying that what Valide says here is entirely wrong: in fact, I think given which portion of the series this is in, she hit the nail on the head. Seeking help from people in need is one of the core traits of Mahidevran's character in S01/2. When she feels she's losing, when she's powerless against the circumstances, going to Valide, Ibrahim or Hatice is her first (and often only) resort. Because she has to face the loss of something so remarkable and so important in her life, someone she thought loved her, someone who she's spent so much of her time with. It's hard, and it took her very long to completely burn the bridge. And in this struggle, she sought help, she thought she couldn't do it alone. And for the core of the statement, there indeed have been times where Mahidevran used the influence of others to achieve her own goal (telling Valide for Hürrem's crown, telling Hatice to marry Nigar to Matrakçi etc.) and it is a fitting statement for this part of her S02B arc: she has gotten her utmost, here even overbearing confidence from Mustafa (E46: "When I left, I thought everything was over, that I was defeated. But now when I came back with Mustafa, I feel like I was reborn."; her behavior the entire episode; E50: "I won't do anything that endangers Mustafa's future.") and she is more than willing to use the power she gets from being his mother (E48: "I'll destroy you with the power I get from my prince!"), now that he's already grown, she's willing to destroy them all, to finally get what she deserves, be where she belongs.

However, this scene, or rather the content of it, lacks the narrative and thematic context necessary for it to be serviceable and it only looks like forced fanservice as a result.

- There is no scene in the entire show where Mahidevran ever asks what's the difference between her and Hürrem. It takes away from the impact, because if they put a scene like this, in say, E45 (but honestly, any other episode will work.), despite of the complaint I'll make in a while, they would get the golden chance to call it back and make a decent connection between the two scenes. But unfortunately, this isn't the case and they have nothing to call back to, which is why it makes all this look like something the writers pulled out of their sleeves all of the sudden, out of absolutely nowhere.

- It is totally OOC for Mahidevran to ask something like this in the first place. She knows very well what's different with Hürrem, she herself makes a difference between both of them from the very beggining to the very end. She considers herself superior to her (E08: "Who are you? I'm a Haseki. Haseki Sultana. You'll show me respect.", E10: "How dare you compare an upstart concubine with a Sultana?", E11: "How do you even call yourself a Sultana? Know your place!", E44: "Who do you think you're kicking out?", E55: "I would be careful of my words if I were you. Because your fate is now in my hands."- by memory), taking her a long while to even admit she was a Sultana (she started doing so by.. S02B? and began to openly call her such only by S03); better than her (constantly calling her a snake, a devil, E53: "This woman is a devil! What things get into her head?" or something like that), and most importantly, acknowledges very well how she breaks the tradition and treats it as unprecedented and rogue. (E40 when Hü said she was freed: "How can that be?"; E45: "How dare she speak to me about tradition?") Even if she could've wondered what was so special to her in the beginning of the show, no, she didn't, she asked Hatice how can that be in E02, but not how Hürrem got into his heart exactly, it was rather how could Süleiman do this when Mahidevran loved only him. She was sad he was replacing her with "a russian slave". She from the beginning and Valide by E45 were even sure that Hürrem had bewitched Süleiman. Mahi, not even once, began to wonder what is it about Hürrem. She had a clear answer on her mind from day one and she always considered her imprudent and fierce and later, an active danger for her son. So, Mahidevran asking such a question in any point of the series, even offscreen, is.. not like her.

- Valide had no reason to bring the "you act with other people's minds" up in the context of the episode. Valide was mad at Mahidevran for her declaring herself a Valide Sultana and being ready kill Hürrem's kids. Her blaming Aybige for her affair with Bali Bey was only the last straw, not the entire reason. And what Mahidevran did in the episode, wasn't dictated by someone else. She didn't even use anyone else to say and do it, either. These words were all hers, the actions were all hers. She proposed to Mustafa, as well as Ibrahim to be with her in that path, but none of them agreed. The only one who wanted to move on was her. She was alone here. She detached herself from everyone else. So that whole quote falls flat. And even if Valide meant to say this to Mahidevran because of her blaming Aybige, she saw and witnessed by herself Aybige's conversation with Bali Bey and she had enough evidence to drive the conclusion that there is something between them. And yes, she had the right to interrogate her, because she is Mustafa's mother and has to know what is going on. As both Valide and Mahidevran (and even Süleiman) have said: The suspicion only is venomous.

- It loses all weight in retrospect, due to biased narrative voice. (warning: SPOILERS!) I've talked about how I dislike Valide's flanderization in S02 a lot, but what I dislike even more, is how they de-flanderized her. This scene strives to be presented as this huge and important realization of Valide Sultan's character, but it is only the voice of the narrative, also thanks to all the problems I listed above. Look at this scene's composition for starters: when Valide arrives, the atmosphere suddenly changes, the triumphant music, which sets us up for something epic and badass, but we still don't know what exactly, until these lines of dialogue are uttered, almost like a plot twist. It only looks like a moment of triumph and a character realization, it looks much more like the narrative directly calling out Mahidevran. That Valide was wrong for ever supporting her. The themes break their impartial point of view and deliver something out of absolutely nowhere to prove a point. (ironically, the scene in E56 where Valide says that Mahidevran deserved everything she endured, does a much better job in somewhat being a character realization moment, because it fit the context, wasn't put there just for.. reasons and you could actually believe the character would say that.) The worst thing is that, despite of it all, nothing mattered in the end. The post-E55 truce between Hürrem and Valide is conveniently forgotten by the themes of the next arc, due to having the power of tradition "fight" with its last forces (Valide falling ill, Mahidevran and Gülfem ruling the harem) and Hürrem having to forever burn the bridges that stand between them and her. This is reflected best in Hürrem's last encounter with Valide Sultan.

#this turned out.. fine I guess #but gosh it definetly felt good #I wanted to rant about this scene for SO long #sorry everyone #magnificent century #ayse hafsa sultan #hurrem sultan #mahidevran sultan

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olivemeister · 3 years ago

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OKAY NEO THOUGHTS NOW THAT I’VE BEATEN IT AND HAD TIME TO MARINATE. no spoilers for another day bc i haven’t finished it yet, but i did go “no, why shan’t i? i have the internet” and watched the secret endings on youtube so those and the secret reports will be discussed. yeah. so here’s some thoughts. i’m going to talk a lot about the more contentious things, i think. and again i haven’t finished another day so nothing to do with that, but of course major ending spoilers for the main scenario.

these are my opinions both as a writer and a media consumer, so there’s kinda two levels here. it is very freeform “as i think of it” structurally so my sincerest apologies if it’s all over the place. i am trying to keep specific topics confined rather than splattering the same plot point/whatever all through the post, but it’s not like i’m posting a peer-revied academic essay here. it’s also fucking enormous and i would say sorry but that would be a lie.

the majority of the game, i actually really enjoyed. the localization was excellent and i can’t praise it enough. i know people threw fits over the “horrible overstep” of... teenagers using slang. but did you know, in real life, teenagers use slang? even in japan, there’s slang? wild but true! the dialogue was great, and while i can’t say much re: the jp cast since i played in english, the newcomers for the english cast were spectacular. i actually think the newcomers were, in some cases, stronger than the returning cast. even in characters where i didn’t like the voice (nagi had to grow on me, i admit it), they were a fantastic match for the character’s personality.

the emotional beats re: character deaths, typically, landed the way i think the writers wanted; kanon’s death in week 3 had me devastated even though i could see it coming a mile away. i think that’s a testament to the best parts of the writing; as soon as i understood how the current game was being run, i knew it was fairly inevitable that every other team would eventually lose. odds would be that, barring something like someone changing teams or a team merger, the majority of the other teams would be completely wiped out. i knew far in advance that kanon would likely not make it to the end of the story, but it still fucked me up when it finally happened not just because i cared about kanon, but also because of how much the other characters cared about her. some character deaths affected me far less, of course. i think kanon was the epitome of “this hit exactly as hard as the writers wanted it to”, but i do feel they fell short with others. ayano’s lack of development really hurt my ability to be saddened by her death, especially when it was so clear that she set up her own possession as a trap for shoka. it undermined things for shoka in general, because while she was devastated to lose ayano, the game did a poor job at making their relationship tangible and meaningful. i felt worse (not necessarily sadder, just worse) about motoi’s death, and i didn’t like motoi. speaking of him...

the biggest issue i have with the game is a chronic square enix issue. kubo is the Man Pulling The Strings, whatever, this is fine. the problem is that he, minamimoto, motoi, and arguably susukichi are the only characters in the game with dark skin. they are all morally grey at best. i don’t think i need to elaborate on why this is an issue. we’re not going to pretend that racism and colorism don’t exist in japan. i’m just going to say that all of the dark-skinned characters are either totally evil, excessively violent, and/or morally dubious. this is my biggest qualm, but i don’t feel it needs more elaboration. yes, i know motoi turns it around in the end. yes, i know susukichi ultimately changes sides as well, and he’s ultimately portrayed as sympathetic. minamimoto is........ his own beast. but the fact remains that we don’t get a single major character who’s darker and unambiguously heroic.

second big issue is that while i understand the decision to keep shiki off camera until the very end for emotional impact, i feel like this was to the detriment of the story and to the detriment of said impact. she was mentioned, sure, and she was briefly seen from the shoulders down in a cutscene long before her introduction, but i feel that this was ultimately for the worse. her absence in the plot made her a borderline non-entity that can easily leave the audience going “why should i care about this?” on what’s supposed to be a huge emotional cathartic moment. yes, people should know this is a sequel and neku and shiki’s friendship was a crucial part of the original game, and much of the endgame of neo makes no sense if you’re unfamiliar with the original, but their interactions in the ending felt incredibly shallow. and i think this is because of how little shiki appears and how isolated she is from her other friends. eri is unseen and unmentioned. she doesn’t interact with rhyme. she hardly interacts with beat, using him as a translator at best. her other relationships are just... stagnant at best, ignored at worst, and despite having had just as vital of a role in the first game as beat did, she does nothing of import onscreen. her only narrative actions are “fix mr mew (mentioned but not seen)” and “be sad about neku”. so, functionally...

for some reason (we know why) the story decided that the only thing that was important to shiki was seeing neku. but by holding off on this reveal of her, we lost the impact that their meeting could have had. because the game refused to show her it didn’t show how much his absence was affecting her, which leaves their reunion feeling incredibly hollow. shiki was gone for upwards of 90% of the game. if not for the first game, this reunion would mean nothing; the narrative does a terrible job of reminding the audience that neku and shiki have a strong relationship and i don’t know if it’s that they expected the first game to have done the heavy lifting, or they thought that what neo gave us was good rather than “good enough”. imo this was an enormous failure and i wish we had gotten more for her both as part of the plot and as a character.

this was an issue present with rhyme as well imo, though to a lesser degree. i think they should have given up the ghost much sooner on confirming that the shadowed figure was rhyme; it was obvious by the time they showed us her silhouette, so i don’t know why the narrative held off on showing her. they didn’t have to introduce her to rindo (or give her the name splash screen) yet, but people who played the first game and are paying attention know it’s rhyme, so why bother hiding her? most of what rhyme accomplishes in this game is off-camera as well, but she has double the screen time that shiki gets.

the shiki thing is another symptom of a common squeenix problem these days, which is poorly-handled implied romantic interests. and i think that was also present with how the end of the game treated shoka. rindo and shoka as an implied romance in general did not bother me; more than a lot of squeenix protags, and perhaps primarily because of the excellent job the english cast did, i actually was unbothered by the suggestion of budding romantic feelings because it felt genuine. they actually felt like a pair of teenagers who were starting to be interested in each other, trying to play it cool and prioritize. this, and shoka’s characterization in general, is really helped by the reveal of swallow’s identity; it retroactively heightens her closeness to rindo specifically and offers enormous insight into her decision to help the team covertly. however, i think this budding implied romance was severely undermined by having other characters comment on it, especially because it felt so out of place timing-wise whenever someone commented. it was never warranted; there are times where they seem to be... not flirting, but not doing a good job of pretending there isn’t an interest. this is not when comments come. the comments come when they are having a totally normal interaction that does not suggest any non-platonic feelings whatsoever.

up until the final day, i had fairly ambivalent feelings about the idea of them as the designated hetero pairing. i felt it was a vast improvement from recent shoehorned romances in squeenix properties. the ending made things much more contentious to me, specifically how shoka is vanished by joshua. the audience should at least have the suspicion that he’s reviving her, but the circumstances surrounding it are the problem more than joshua being a deus ex machina. it’s not the first time joshua was a troll re: reviving someone, but the context of why shoka’s revival is necessary is, well... unnecessary.

they barely foreshadow the shinjuku rules re: reapers, and i will freely admit it’s not remotely ooc for shoka to hide something like that until she can’t any more. but they seem to be just a contrived excuse for shoka to be taken away... and from the framing of it, not from the player, but from rindo. which, i don’t know that i need elaborate on why i wasn’t fond of that. and i won’t lie - i know everybody beefed it in those cutscenes, including beat and neku. but when the dissonance noise grabbed shoka it gave me the exact same vibe as the demon tide grabbing kairi in kh3, and i don’t think i need to elaborate more on why that would put a bad taste in my mouth and make me fearful for shoka’s future treatment in the game. i was worried that the narrative was going to yank her away from rindo like a prize being snatched from him, and it did! while i do also think it’s ic for joshua to fuck around the way he did when reviving her, it also seems contrived and brings up a major question.

if shoka is still playing by shinjuku rules, why does shibuya’s composer have the ability to overturn her erasure? yes, i know, shinjuku is gone, but its composer is still active. surely joshua having the authority to do what he did indicates that on a cosmic bureaucracy level, shoka is a shibuya reaper. the secret reports offer a potential that joshua exploited a loophole by waiting until the second after the shinjuku rules resulted in shoka’s soul being dissolved in order to snatch it up, so perhaps the explanation is that her erasure meant she was technically no longer a shinjuku reaper and no longer beholden to its rules. but that doesn’t answer a different question that honestly bothers me more than the admittedly sorta insignificant question of whether or not joshua overstepped in reviving shoka.

shinjuku’s game has ended because shinjuku has ended; why are its rules still in play for former shinjuku reapers? i am aware that shiba is the conductor “legally” and he has made changes to shibuya’s game, but they’re careful to specify that the “ex-reapers are erased at the end of the game” rules are from shinjuku and do not apply to shibuya reapers. is she considered by the higher plane to be joshua’s underling and not hazuki’s? the secret reports confirm that the transfer of personnel from the destroyed shinjuku to shibuya was authorized by the acting conductor (uzuki) and this is standard procedure, everything was done properly. so “legally” the formerly-shinjuku reapers are shibuya reapers, right? hanekoma notes in particular that it’s a culture clash leading to the shinjuku reapers being designated as such and that they’re only nominally shinjuku reapers. why are a defunct game’s rules still active?

the biggest issue is that shoka’s threat of erasure was unnecessary from a narrative perspective, especially given how quickly it’s introduced and resolved. what was the point of putting this in the story if five minutes later the issue is just dealt with, no effort, minimal tension, by a (narratively speaking, don’t come after me joshua fans) minor character who doesn’t even appear until after the plot is resolved? i honestly wonder if it was just the writers deciding joshua needed to do something so that his appearance in the ending wasn’t just shallow fanservice for people who wanted to see the original gang. joshua’s lack of action is also presumably going to be contentious with fans; i’ve read the secret reports, and i don’t feel that they sufficiently justify why he doesn’t make any moves to protect his city despite being positioned both in his own dialogue and the secret reports as someone opposing shibuya’s purification. i will talk about this a little later re: kubo’s motivations though.

i also think it’s kind of stupid that joshua sets up “find her and you win” and then... rindo doesn’t do anything in that regard. he just bumps into her in the scramble. i know i already said i hate the idea of her being a prize to be won in a game but if they’re going to set it up, why make it pointless in that regard? it feels so unnecessary. joshua portrays shoka’s revival/return as something to be earned, and unlike the ending of twewy there’s no recognition that he was actually just fucking with them.

this is similar to my mixed feelings about kubo’s defeat. on one hand, i wanted to smash his face in personally, i have hated him the entire game. on the other hand, having him jesus beamed and rewritten out of existence without any warning or chance to resist was fucking hilarious and i actually laughed out loud. my speculation as to why he didn’t get a boss fight is that developers worried about people having trouble suspending disbelief over the party being able to defeat an angel. ultimately i think the only way this could have been done was to have it be a boss battle where your victory doesn’t matter, like the week 1 fight with susukichi, and have hazuki curbstomp kubo in the post-battle cutscenes. ultimately, i feel like this was a lesser of two evils; i don’t think the “you lose in the cutscene” approach would have necessarily been significantly better than what we got, i recognize that “the battle didn’t matter and you lose in the cutscene after” is a contentious game trope. and i would understand people struggling to accept the cast defeating a being from a higher plane without intervention from said higher plane. the only benefit would be the catharsis of getting to slap kubo around, which admittedly i kind of miss. having him as a secret boss was an option i guess but i think it would bring more questions than it was worth.

kubo’s motivation is also just bizarre; i understand that it’s given as him getting overzealous after carrying out his orders to purify shinjuku, but why? i feel like this could have easily been fixed/rationalized by “shinjuku’s surviving reapers fled to shibuya, leading kubo to consider shibuya to be an extension of shinjuku”, but that’s solely speculation. i do not know why kubo decided to also start an inversion in shibuya. they didn’t give me enough information. his conflict with joshua is inexplicable and almost entirely offscreen via the secret reports. i do not feel like i have a grasp on why the plot of the game even happened. hazuki’s involvement is iffy; i can’t say whether he initially approved of kubo’s overstep and changed his mind, or if he just took his time collecting his errant underling. the secret reports suggest the former, and hanekoma noting that the contentious nature of the previous game’s events gives a speculative explanation for why no action was taken if hazuki was actually making moves against shibuya rather than kubo being out of line. hazuki could damn well have been lying, there’s a precedent for composers being full of shit and telling bold-faced lies to protagonists, though in the previous game these lies were all eventually uncovered. this leaves me to believe that ultimately, hazuki’s statements regarding kubo acting outside of his given authority were mostly honest. but what i don’t understand is why joshua took such a hands-off approach.

yes, he says he figured the main cast had it under control and would have stepped in had things gotten worse, but this appearance and statement comes long after rindo fails and shibuya is destroyed in multiple timelines. why did he not step in in the first timeline? i can speculate, but the game and secret reports do not do a great job in explaining why the proxy vs. proxy game even happened in the first place. kubo is hazuki’s underling, which makes joshua higher in the pecking order than kubo. if hazuki was capable of exorcising kubo instantaneously, why didn’t joshua just flick him off the board like a flea before he even got started trying to cause an inversion in shibuya? in the epilogue of a new day joshua is seen in conversation with hanekoma, who’s taking shinjuku’s inversion seriously, which seems at odds with how easily his fellow composer ends the problem.

retroactively, i guess i could rationalize this as him realizing that either shinjuku’s composer must be responsible for said inversion or that potentially shinjuku’s composer has been compromised in some way. and i can rationalize him failing to immediately jesus beam kubo as well - it’s possible that, as kubo was initially acting under the orders of another composer (assuming hazuki is still technically “legally” one/at the bureaucratic level of one), joshua’s hands were somewhat tied re: what actions he could take without potential consequences. it could be that joshua would get in big trouble if he took disciplinary action against another composer’s underling, but 1. the legal transfer of personnel should mean kubo is joshua’s underling, not hazuki’s, see the shoka problem 2. hazuki’s status as a composer is questionable given that his territory is now purified and its game is defunct 3. given that kubo was acting outside of his original composer’s turf and outside of his initial orders (purify shinjuku) at this point i feel like that isn’t likely. it could be that he was trying to avoid a conflict with hazuki himself. it may be that he considered it hazuki’s responsibility to retrieve kubo, but that’s at odds with him choosing a proxy to combat kubo’s and his claims that he totally would have done something, really, he swears. they don’t give us much info at all as to why joshua entered a game with kubo in the first place. i have reason to believe that something’s fishy in the secret reports, and i would like to see the japanese text, which i’ll mention again in a few paragraphs.

i know the absence of shibuya’s composer is partially, and perhaps primarily, “there wouldn’t be a plot if joshua fixed it”. but it really feels like they just kinda tucked joshua in the corner and hoped fans wouldn’t be like “hey where is shibuya’s composer and why is no one mentioning them?” that part is probably for the same reason we don’t see shiki until the very ending, teasing the audience by holding off on revealing him until the last second, but it’s jarring to me that shiki is mentioned but neither neku, beat, nor any of the reapers (!) think “we should contact the composer”. even if just to say “we can’t contact the composer, he is unreachable”! i guess it’s to avoid people remembering how significant joshua is and thinking too hard about it, because joshua is simply too powerful of a character to be running around freely. the plot falls apart when you have a character who’s so strong and, in his own words, kind of omnipotent, who could trivialize the conflict in an instant if he took action.

i feel like they surely could have given a more explicit reason for him to not be involved in the story, even if it’s a reason like “he’s in trouble with the higher plane”. which could have easily been set up! hanekoma is clear in his reports that shibuya’s impurification is highly contentious in the higher plane; people are big mad about it, potentially people higher in the chain of command than a composer. this could have been easily utilized as an explanation for why joshua is hands-off; he’s on a shit list and needs to step carefully as a result. but it’s just not addressed. hanekoma is unreachable according to his reports, and he notes that people are trying to contact him for help. are we just to assume that people have looked for joshua to ask for help in the past but it was so long ago that it isn’t even worth mentioning now to the newcomers? according to other reports, the higher ups are pissed with joshua about his game with kitaniji and are turning a blind eye to what’s happening with kubo in shibuya as a result. but this doesn’t explain why the members of the shibuya UG never discuss the composer. hanekoma’s reports have him confused as to joshua’s lack of action as well; he knows the context of what’s going on in shibuya but doesn’t understand why joshua is staying silent.

that said! the fact that hazuki’s motive for the destruction of shinjuku is never stated does not bother me too much. he’s placed in a position very parallel to joshua in the first game, and he even says he felt like he was following in josh’s footsteps. when you add his seemingly-genuine inability to understand why people care about shibuya, i feel there’s enough evidence to... not dismiss, but nudge this aside as “He Too is a misanthropic bastard”; shinjuku’s destruction is a parallel to the intended destruction of shibuya in the first game. hazuki just carried on where joshua had a change of heart. the secret reports complicate this; it might be that someone fucked up in transcribing, but the reports i read online state that shibuya’s composer, i.e. joshua, was responsible for the destruction of shinjuku due to a game with kubo. this does not make sense given everything else, including hazuki’s own statements and later reports, so i’m setting that aside for the moment as either an uncaught mistake either in translation or transcription online (most likely) or hanekoma not knowing the actual truth until receiving the post-purification shinjuku reports. hanekoma also suggests that hazuki’s goal was also the purification of shibuya, but as he’s not shibuya’s composer this is certainly not his jurisdiction so i’m curious as to what exactly happened there.

EDIT: i’ve been informed by a helpful anon that this is not a mistranslation, the japanese secret reports do state that it was a game involving joshua that resulted in shinjuku’s inversion. with that in mind, i have figured out how to rationalize this and it solves a lot of problems: if it was a proxy game between joshua and kubo, then joshua must have been the opposition to shinjuku’s inversion. though you could argue that joshua is responsible for the end result, he didn’t destroy shinjuku; his proxy lost, probably because kubo’s had the support of shinjuku’s composer. kubo’s overconfidence in running rampant in shibuya is now explicable and he may have been trying to rub it in that joshua lost.

if hazuki was still backing kubo post-shinjuku, this could explain why hazuki felt he could make decisions about shibuya’s fate and wander around it; joshua had already overstepped onto his turf to meddle in purification, so he was returning the favor. at this point in time, i figure that joshua’s proxy was either tsugumi’s brother (shinjuku’s conductor) or coco (she’s noted to have inexplicable powers for a rank-and-file reaper, but joshua’s opposition to her killing of neku throws this into question), and if we truly had a scrapped “shinjuku’s final game” plot then joshua’s proxy could also have been neku. kubo’s proxy was presumably shiba. this actually answers a few questions that i couldn’t rationalize when i assumed joshua was uninvolved (why would shinjuku’s composer be running a game against kubo when they wanted the same thing?), so i’m gonna chalk it up as an absolute win.

i think hishima as a character was... sort of nothing. he was just there. yeah, it was kinda funny how he dressed shiba down, but i don’t know that the plot needed him. his role in the endgame could have easily been given to tsugumi without much fuss, and i feel tsugumi deserved a much bigger part in the narrative given how much she was hyped up by solo and final remix. she was so prominent and anticipated that the fans called her hype-chan for years before we had a name for her. this could also be folded into the problem with hiding shiki until the very end; it feels like we missed a whole sequence with both of these characters simply because the narrative refused to show us shiki. instead, we’re told that shiki showed up and fixed mr. mew, and somehow this freed tsugumi. i think the fact that they don’t even give a flashback of this crucial event after shiki’s proper introduction is just a questionable decision. the story tells us that tsugumi’s release from the plushie is of the utmost importance and shiba can’t be swayed without her, setting it up as a vital event, but it happens offscreen with no real interaction with the main cast. it also only happens after multiple failed loops, even though rindo’s interference is what prevents the meeting between coco and shiki to repair the plushie. i don’t understand this from a logistical standpoint; if coco isn’t pulled to escort rhyme, she must have met with shiki and released tsugumi in timely manner, but tsugumi does not appear until after you replay to get coco back to her original schedule. you could wave it off as “she didn’t get there fast enough”, but i can’t accept that as a reason given the circumstances; it’s not like she would have to look hard to find shiba. this one’s flawed writing; i know in a meta sense why she didn’t appear, it was to build tension etc etc, but in-universe it’s a plot hole.

coco being so absent from the plot is also somewhat conspicuous. i wonder what reception of her was like in japan and if that influenced her lack of presence in the story. i honestly don’t even know if she was received well by the english audience, all i know is that i did not like her at all in final remix. not from an “i don’t like the villain because they’re doing bad things” perspective, from an “i don’t find this character compelling and i think they’re annoying” perspective. also curious as to whether or not her speech patterns changed in the japanese dialogue since final remix; i found her far less jarring and obnoxious in neo and i think it’s enormously because she stopped talking verbally in internet shorthand. overall, coco’s retool was imo a change for the better, but she’s barely there for me to appreciate how much of an improvement she was. it feels like there’s an entire narrative we were set up for by a new day, yet it’s almost completely missing. the ending of a new day laid out this framework for neku and minamimoto to be forced allies in an unseen future game. i had mixed feelings about this conceptually, but the narrative setup was fairly transparent. not only does this not happen, coco’s motivation in a new day and what ultimately happened were so lacking to me.

i feel like something got lost and we were originally going to actually see and perhaps play the shinjuku game that ended in disaster instead of just getting a summation and brief flashbacks of the survivors fleeing. this kinda ties in with my complaints about how hyped tsugumi was by solo and final remix, and then she turned out to have a very small (albeit crucial, via her trailer ability) and mostly unseen role in neo’s story. retroactively we learn that rindo’s visions are from tsugumi, but this is something she does entirely off-screen. all of coco’s scheming was for nothing, because joshua was a deus ex machina and whisked neku away the second he died. this feels to me like cut content or rewrites; there’s a whole game’s worth of story that just happened off-camera and we got to hear a little bit about it. it wasn’t enough, imo. i think doing it as a midquel is still possible, but it’s a hard sell to create a video game with a downer ending and we know shinjuku’s fate is already set in stone... even though a new day ended on the tragic cliffhanger of neku’s death, it’s a little different since it’s coming as an optional postgame sequel hook after victory rather than the entire narrative you fought through ending in failure. i suppose it could be done with a Distant Epilogue now that we know shiba and most of his surviving reapers will return to rebuild shinjuku. ultimately i really think that if not for the concern about neku overshadowing the new cast, shinjuku’s purification could and should have been the prologue to neo. it would be a tough balancing act, but i do think it could have been done right and it would have done a lot for narrative tension with his absence if we had a prologue following him that ends in a cliffhanger re: shinjuku’s purification. neku’s role in the story was done decently i think re: how big said role was, but a lot of circumstances surrounding his absence, legendary status, and reappearance leave much to be desired.

frankly, i just don’t like how much they glossed over neku’s three year absence. we’re given a vague explanation of what he was doing, but it isn’t actually an explanation. definitely again feels like a plot rewrite situation; there’s this huge blank space of neku doing nothing because there used to be a story that we were going to play through and it got scrapped for whatever reason. overall i feel neku’s characterization was very odd and perhaps a little inconsistent in this game; he didn’t have much of a personality at all, which i struggle to reconcile with the original game. we don’t see how he reconciled with coco, it’s just dismissed entirely as “no we’re good now”. how are we good? why did you forgive her for playing murder games instead of just explaining shit? i know he forgave joshua for his gatekeep gaslight girlboss behavior in the first game, but we had context as to why he made that decision. also what the fuck was keeping him from coming back to shibuya, i don’t feel like that was sufficiently explained either? for someone who was so hyped up by the narrative, i was a little let down by how insignificant neku ended up being to the plot as a whole. and again, his personality seemed very watered down and neutral despite the seriousness of the situation. why was he so mellow? the circumstances of his return i did really like, because... well, we’ll talk about character relationships i guess.

i already summed up my feelings on rindo and shoka and i think i’ll leave them on the note of “unnecessary elements dampened my potential for overt enthusiasm, but overall i feel neutral-positive about the suggestion of romantic interest” which is a lot more than i can say about a lot of (semi-)official pairings. on a broader and more platonic scale? generally i have positive feelings about the new cast and their interactions; i feel like their development is more understated than neku’s in the first game, his character arc is very in your face and the neo cast is not nearly as overt, but you can see the difference in how the team interacts across the three weeks. rindo and fret’s established friendship, not to be dismissive of it, does exactly what it needs to. i mean this in a completely positive way. it’s an established friendship, they feel like friends, and they serve initially as anchors to one another in the beginning of the game as a “you’re the only person i know in this chaos” setup. this contrasts neku in the first game in an excellent way because of how it highlights their biggest character flaws, which i’ll talk about later; it’s important to rindo’s fatal flaw that he has someone to fall back and rely on in the beginning of the game in the same way that it’s crucial for neku’s development that he’s surrounded by strangers who he must learn to trust and rely on in order to survive. rindo and fret can lean on each other in the beginning of the game, and as people who have known each other for some time, are able to recognize and appreciate each others’ positive changes.

i do love the development of nagi’s friendship with fret, particularly how it’s sometimes but not always remarked on when she shelves her initial aloof attitude with him. i prefer when a narrative is more subtle on that kind of thing; pointing it out every once in a while is okay, but i don’t want it shoved down my throat via dialogue that characters are developing an emotional bond. we can see that nagi is slowly becoming more receptive to fret and less likely to dismiss or disparage him. it seems like their initial relationship is that of two people who have opposite struggles; nagi is notably closed off in the beginning, but fret immediately approaches her with an unearned and offputting level of familiarity. their slow and understated (more noticeable with nagi than fret) development towards accepting each other as friends is mutually beneficial to them even outside of the context of their personal relationship; nagi opens up a little with everyone, not just fret. placing two people with very different perspectives on how to interact with new people in close proximity helped both of them grow. i’m sure other people have different perspectives, but i do not feel like they were being teased as a pairing which i enormously appreciate, i am tired of “pair the spares” shit. (minor note: i also appreciate how while fret’s crush on kanon was very overt and strong, she was also fairly clear that she considered him a kid and his feelings were never going to be reciprocated because of that age gap. i know, the bar is low, but thank god.)

i love how, despite nagi now having been confirmed as older than beat, as soon as beat joins the narrative he takes this hard stance of “i’m the one who’s already been in this hellscape so it’s my responsibility to help the newbies”. he really embodies the big brother role so well in this game; he knows a little more about what’s going on, this isn’t his first rodeo even if it’s not exactly the same, so he considers himself to have an obligation to protect the others. he serves as sort of a physical and emotional rock for the team from the second he joins, becoming an excellent support for them both as a combatant and an older brother figure. he has experience in being both of these things, and i think beat’s writing is some of the best in the game.

despite his position as a former player who’s back in the UG, he meshes with the newbies perfectly. he doesn’t overshadow the rest of the team despite having more lived (ha) experience in the reaper’s game, he doesn’t feel like he’s on a different level from them or anything like that. he fits in while serving an important unique role that he can only fill because of his prior time in the UG. it’s completely understandable and reasonable why rindo remains the team leader despite beat’s presence. he’s had a three year gap since his last game and doesn’t even understand how he returned to the UG. he’s not a fish out of water, he knows the UG and the game. but he’s really truly gotta shake the dust off, and he’s trying to figure out what happened to him in the first place because he knows he shouldn’t be in the UG at all. he didn’t have a huge bump in intelligence since the first game, but it’s hard to dismiss him as a complete idiot. he has both large and small perceptive moments where another narrative might have chosen to keep him as the dumb muscle. in fact, his firm convictions serve an important role for the others - beat knows he didn’t die and can’t be convinced otherwise, and his confidence that he’s a living player is part of how rindo and gang realize they also aren’t dead. he’s clearly not simply a comic relief character. another story might have positioned him as more of a mentor figure, but he plays to his strengths and serves to ground the team instead. beat is honestly a highlight of this ensemble cast to me. i’m unsure as to how much of that is simply because he was one of my favorites from the first game, but i really truly love beat in this game.

shoka and neku’s late introductions to the team mean they have far less “we are now firmly allies and friends” interactions with the rest of the ensemble for unavoidable reasons. i will say that the excellent casting and localization for the english version, particularly shoka, has done a lot to mitigate that issue; yes, the plot doesn’t develop her relationships with the team as a whole as thoroughly as some of the others, but the combat interactions with her are so genuine that i found myself shocked when writing this because, well, those combat lines did so much legwork making her role in the party seem earned and cohesive. i had such a strong sense of her place in the team that just isn’t reflected in the cutscenes, and i find that very interesting but i’m unsure as to whether it’s good or bad; i think it’s incredible that the combat dialogue did such a good job fostering this air of “we are a unit” for these characters and it really is a testament to the skill of these actors, but i do wish it was more prevalent in the cutscenes itself. beat’s established relationship with neku and their relaxed nature with one another does a lot to ease neku’s entry into the group; he has an “in” with a firmly established member and a well-written dynamic with him that helps him out here.

as a nekubeat appreciator i feel very fed and i hope there’s an uptick in interest for the pairing following neo. i love how beat, who throughout the game is constantly forgetting who people from 3 years ago are (doesn’t recognize his former superior bc she’s wearing a suit now and can’t even remember her name), immediately recognizes coco despite her changing her entire aesthetic specifically because he’s so angry with her for killing neku. he’s ready to throw down the second he sees her, which gives this feeling of “he’s been waiting for this moment for 3 years”. because the narrative never addresses beat’s change in style, particularly that he wears his hair like neku now, i choose to believe it’s because the last time he saw neku was immediately after coco shot and killed him. it could be that this shit’s been haunting him ever since neku died. my city now, if you don’t talk about it in the game i make shit up. both their cutscene interactions and combat quotes do an excellent job of maintaining the sense that these two have been close friends for a long time and distance hasn’t changed that. they fall right back into old ways with one another immediately.

even outside of the context of me being a nekubeat shipper, their relationship and continued partnership (UG game context partnership) feels very genuine. neku and joshua call each other partner, but it rings hollow. i’m sure it’s partially the lack of screentime that makes it so they don’t feel like partners any more than neku and shiki do, but the game doesn’t even try to push closeness the way it does for shiki - more on that in a minute. beat is the only one of neku’s partners that seems to have retained the same strength in their bond with him despite the three years; shiki and joshua are super absent in the plot, which really undermines their relationships with neku. i’ve already talked about my problems with shiki’s lack of focus and how i feel it harms her relationship with neku, but as for neku’s relationship with joshua, i think neo has taken an interesting approach that i feel will have a mixed reception.

it actually feels like neku and joshua ended this game on worse terms than the first one even though joshua was a far more benevolent figure this time around. neku is very clear about wanting to return to the RG despite this meaning he will have no access to the UG (outside of potentially text-based communication since rhyme paved the way for RG residents to bust into the RNS and... however it was that shoka’s fanGO account worked, since she and rindo were fanGO friends long before his entry to the UG) and doesn’t show any hesitation or reluctance in stating this desire. he seems quite content with not having joshua be a part of his life, as opposed to the first game’s ending where he extends an open offer to joshua to join his friend group. i understand how this would (and will) let a lot of people down, but i actually think it’s for the best. i have no real opinion on neku’s capacity for forgiving joshua after the first game, good or bad, but i think putting distance between them in this game is the correct move.

i take this viewpoint especially given that after the first game, joshua did in fact choose this distance - neku invited him in, and he did not take the offer. it was his decision to not join neku’s group in the first game’s ending and he continued to remain separate from it in the three year gap; he may have masqueraded as a fellow player and peer in age, but joshua is not and has never been an actual peer to neku, shiki, and beat. his life experiences are so different from theirs that i would struggle to suspend disbelief that they have enough in common to maintain a close friendship. he intervened when neku was killed by coco and placed him in a safe area and gave moral support in the ending, and i think this is the most we should expect of a reforming (not reformed but in-progress) misanthrope like joshua. he’s an enigmatic figure sure and largely benevolent if inactive in this game, but he isn’t a good person and he clearly considers himself to be on a different level from neku and his peers. hanekoma notes that joshua’s somewhat reluctant to continue to remain separate from neku’s group, but i think the narrative places him both objectively and in his own mind as someone who is just... from a different world. joshua chose distance, he chose to cut contact, and this is the consequence of that decision. i think that’s a good lesson to teach; it may not be a given, but it’s natural that sometimes a friendship you ignore will fade. it doesn’t necessarily mean the time you spent didn’t matter, but you shouldn’t be shocked if a plant you don’t water wilts away.

i feel like that wasn’t the intended takeaway, that it was just questionable writing that i’m reading too deep into, but that’s how i feel about the situation.

i’m also incredibly grateful that hazuki was introduced as an age-appropriate option for joshua and i hope they’ll draw attention as a bastard boyfriends ship, both because i think it’s very funny and because i have opinions about shipping joshua with the teens. i know it’s contentious and i’m not going too deep into it, so what i’m going to say is this. the secret reports state in plain objective text that joshua downtuning his vibes aged him down and his true appearance is older. neither the narrative nor supplementary info state anything about how old josh was when he died or how long he’s been a reaper/the composer (reapers ageing is ??? as well, we don’t know if it’s not a thing or if it’s optional or what). however, it is firmly canon that he is older than 15. if that canon upsets you then that’s your problem to either work through or ignore indefinitely. suffice to say, joshua and hazuki do not have the schrodinger’s pedophile issue and i wholly support and strongly encourage that over the alternative for this reason and again because i find it funny and think they deserve each other. i hate to say hazuki is a healthy choice for joshua because i think both of them are just walking messes, but they are actual peers on the same tier of the higher plane pecking order and more importantly the disaster they could be as a couple has infinite potential.

on the girls side of things, i am still mad about eri’s absence not just because it’s a relationship shiki had that just got ignored. i know the story wants us to believe that neku and shiki have something but shiki and eri had more. i’m sorry writers you made a more compelling f/f ship by accident in the first game and i am not invested in the one you weakly suggested between neku and shiki here. if you made shiki have more of a role in neo maybe i’d feel differently, or maybe you would have screwed it up worse. we’ll never know. i think it’s a shame that they couldn’t make me care about neku and shiki as a pairing, but it is what it is.

i was briefly worried that the game would try to suggest something between kaie and rhyme because sometimes people lose their minds when a boy and girl stand next to each other, but i was quickly set at ease with that one. they felt like two people who are starting to straddle that line of acquaintance/friend in a believable way despite how little interaction between them we see, and i appreciate that. i was also briefly worried that fret would develop a crush on rhyme based on his initial reaction at being introduced to her, but again quickly dismissed. can you tell i’m a little gun shy about strangled “him boy her girl” romances in fiction these days? yeah. i’ve been let down too much recently by bad writing.

i think all of the party members could have benefited from more development with one another outside of combat lines - i would like to see more interaction between nagi and shoka, or neku and fret, etc - but that would come at the expense of the narrative’s pacing. i think it could have been done by tweaking certain details, but ultimately i can accept this as a sacrifice made in the interest of keeping the narrative from getting bloated.

i wanna talk briefly about the new main cast a little.

rindo’s ups and downs re: development are much more subtle than neku’s were, but with the secret reports in mind i feel his arc is actually pretty excellent. i think we could have done with a little less of fret pointing out rindo’s increased confidence and how he becomes more assertive, i think the audience is smart enough to notice that on their own. but i’m a huge fan of how the narrative quietly places rindo in this position of a leader who fears that responsibility, but nonetheless has to grow and accept it. hanekoma’s reports may spell it out in plain text postgame, but the narrative already told us in our own way that rindo’s development stalled when someone else entered the cast who could take over for him and this is demonstrative of a(n understandable) lack of maturity and failure to grow. neku’s fatal flaw was his rejection of others, and so he was forced by the narrative into a position where he had to learn to trust them; rindo’s is that he relies too much on them and the narrative forces him to stand on his own.

while i think this is a little muddled (he was right in some instances to not make hard solo decisions; thinking specifically of ayano, it was absolutely the right call to ease shoka into this inevitable loss rather than forcing her into the situation unilaterally) and i wish we saw more consequences of his initial waffling behavior, rindo’s indecisiveness is an actual flaw that i think a lot of people can relate to and i think it contrasts him wonderfully with neku without being heavy-handed. rindo working through it from “relying on others to make choices for him -> still valuing the input of others but not wholly dependent on them -> capable of making difficult calls without anyone else to support him” was subdued and while it had realistic hitches in the form of other characters who he could consider authority figures, it was steady and imo very good. he’s a teenager coming into his own, stepping out of this world where others in his life - motoi as an0ther, shoka as swallow, presumably his parents, teachers, etc - have made the big, scary decisions for him or guided him through them, and into a place where there aren’t these people to guide him. he’s surrounded by people who either don’t know anything more than he does, or don’t care about his best interests; he’s clashing and changing and it forces him to grasp and accept his own autonomy rather than falling back and relying on someone else to fix things when it’s too frightening or difficult.

we can talk cultural differences re: the level of autonomy and responsibility that’s right for teenagers but i’m not really interested in drawing hard lines there. this is a coming of age story; as he approaches maturity, rindo is learning how to be an adult. i think that’s a classic and important narrative concept and it’s done well here.

fret, interestingly, is imo a case where the subtlety didn’t work out. to me, there wasn’t a huge distinction between flippant “telling you what i think you want to hear” fret and “genuine” fret. his initial interactions with kanon don’t seem different from their last conversation; maybe he comes off as less initally honest in the jp version, or maybe this one was a writing fumble. maybe it’s just me, and other people don’t feel the same way! he seems to be a far more static character in a strange way; the narrative tells us that he’s developing via other characters’ dialogue, but it doesn’t seem to support that. to me it’s a failure of “show, don’t tell” - i don’t take a hard stance on “show, don’t tell” as some kind of holy rule of writing, there are plenty of situations in a narrative where telling is perfectly acceptable and i think rigid adherence to showing and not telling can result in a bloated narrative, but in this case i feel like that’s where the narrative failed. it failed to support fret’s development outside of other people telling him he’s changed. i like fret, but i feel like in this ensemble cast fret and nagi kinda serve more as nominal protagonists and are more strong supporting characters than true leads.

as for nagi, i love how, despite it being low-hanging fruit, not only are there no real digs at nagi for being a vocal fangirl of a visual novel dating sim, it actually ties perfectly into her character as someone who understands people. dating sims are about people and relationships. how people interact, the importance of conveying your feelings, the consequences of bad communication; that’s what nagi is obsessed with. and rather than this being a detriment and making her avoid others, it ends up priming her to have healthy friendships because her gaming taught her to value knowing other people. it takes her time to actually open up, but rather than the video games closing her off to others they actually set her up to be an excellent friend. elestra in general could have been a subject of enormous mockery, but instead it’s viewed in a very neutral way and is given the implication of universal appeal by fret picking it up in the epilogue. nagi’s not in the spotlight for most of the game, but the payoff of her monologue to fret about being human was immense and was one of the best bits of dialogue in the entire game to me. it’s not going to be as iconic as hanekoma’s “open up your world” and “enjoy the moment”, but i truly think it’s one of the only parts of neo’s dialogue that approaches its level.

shoka is a character that i think is better on the replay, and i say this as someone who was very fond of shoka the first time around. i thought she had a lot of personality in her mannerisms alone, and i firmly appreciate how she wasn’t a one-note tsundere character. she had some of those minor elements, but subdued and with a reasonable context - she’s hot and cold with rindo and his team because she’s supposed to be working this rigged game to erase them, but she’s already rindo’s friend in a different context and is struggling to reconcile these two parts of her life. knowing her motivation as swallow gives so much retroactive depth to her actions; she was circumventing the game itself not just because she was exhausted by it or unease with shiba like some of the other turncoat reapers, but because rindo was her friend from before the story even began.

i will say that i didn’t actually fully call swallow being shoka simply because at first i had the impression that it would be rhyme (before rhyme’s role in the story became clearer), and admittedly by the time the climax hit the mystery of who swallow was had kind of dropped out of my mind completely, but i think it does a lot to develop shoka. whether this development being retroactive is strictly good or bad as an issue is subjective; neo is a game that has a built-in chapter select, so replaying the game and rewatching the cutscenes with the full narrative context is incredibly easy. however, for a lot of players, if you’re replaying the game it’s with a specific goal of getting something you missed earlier in-game, so you’re rushing through those cutscenes trying to get to that completionist bit. i think a line could have been walked re: giving more of a hint that shoka was swallow before the very end without fully giving it away, but i definitely think the rewatch value is more subjective and based on how you specifically play the game. if you’re here looking to watch all the cutscenes again now that you know everything, shoka being swallow is a huge treat regarding changing the context of her behavior - if you’re fast-forwarding trying to find a pig, it’s totally wasted.

i would have liked to see more of shoka’s backstory and interaction with the other shinjuku reapers for sure, and i wonder if this is another thing along the lines of “we were supposed to see more of shinjuku’s final game than we did”; if we’d gotten more of shinjuku, we certainly would have seen more of its reapers. i talked briefly about how i feel like ayano’s death didn’t hit the way i think it was intended to, but if the game had let us see more of her as a shinjuku reaper i feel like the entire plot would have benefited. it would have benefited shiba as well honestly; they tried to have him as a repentant “now i shall fix what i destroyed” character at the very end, but i don’t feel like they did a good enough job portraying that he had changed and he was brainwashed so it fell flat. if we’d seen more of shiba as the compassionate leader who deserved the loyalty of his reapers that they say he was, the contrast would have done a lot to help define the tragedy of his backstory. overall i think this is another “we lost a chunk of the plot in rewrites or something” issue, which i admit is not based in anything like interviews. it’s just my speculation because it feels like something that was supposed to be here got left behind - i can’t say if i’m right, or why it happened if so. it just feels to me like the shinjuku reapers besides shoka went fairly undeveloped not because of writing/lack of screentime alone but because we lost big pieces of shinjuku content entirely. it’s insane that we only learn in the secret reports how tsugumi became trapped in the mr. mew plush to begin with; to me, this screams “we had to cut something”, and the more i think about it the more convinced i am that we were originally meant to see more of shinjuku’s inversion. hell, the secret reports just flippantly inform us that tsugumi’s brother was shinjuku’s conductor and he’s why she survived - but he goes unnamed and unseen, mentioned only in a piece of postgame content that many players may never unlock.

shinjuku’s final game is just left as this incredible story that was never told, with a cast who we barely see. again, it doesn’t bother me that they never explained to us why hazuki purified shinjuku. but i do wish we could have connected with its reapers to see how they reacted to its impending fate; who was on kubo’s side, who was trying to protect shinjuku? who knew what was happening, and who was just swept up in the chaos? how did the purification affect them emotionally after their escape to shibuya? just from the secret reports we see that tsugumi’s brother is this tragic hero of another story, the conductor opposing the executor and fighting to save his city before ultimately sacrificing himself to keep his sister alive. this is enough content that it could have easily been a standalone, but it wasn’t. i think that’s a damn shame. i’m sure there are people who are already chomping at the bit to write about shinjuku’s tragic final game and it’ll make a stunning fanfic in the right hands, but this is a big gap for fanfiction authors to be filling in.

this was mostly a narrative thoughts dump, but i wanna say just a couple of things about the combat: overall i liked it! i was significantly overleveled for the vast majority of the game partially because i was having fun with the combat, i feel gameplay was very intrinsically motivating. because of how the food system worked, being overleveled didn’t mean too much since it only affects HP, but i also was eating constantly so i was in fact just OP for much of the game. so i suppose, take my gameplay commentary with a grain of salt because i was busted quickly. if i hadn’t been such a powerhouse from early on, i expect my gameplay experience would have been much different.

my biggest complaint: there were some significant issues in enemy design related to battles being timed and the timer having consequences. some enemies were a reasonable/intuitive pain, say, elephants being bullet sponges and chameleons having an invisibility mechanic. these things made them challenging, but in a sensible way. like, of course a big honkin’ elephant has a ton of HP. i think that chameleons in particular could have been tweaked; you have to be very close to them when they’re invisible in order to lock on, and i think this could distance could have been extended a bit to minimize frustration. likewise, it felt like party members that get grabbed by a t.rex were trapped for ages; i feel this could have been tweaked as well. i know a lot of people had issues with wolves for this same reason, but their comparative frailty and my pin choices meant that i quickly overcame wolves and they became a minor nuisance at best until endgame introduced a beefier wolf. even then, i found t.rex noise to be much more of an issue because of their sturdier nature and higher damage output. these are minor gripes; i didn’t like seeing these enemies, but i didn’t hate seeing them. no, here’s what i hate: rhinos and pufferfish.

to me, these are the most annoying enemies in the entire game outside of maybe a handful of bosses. i feel they were poorly thought out in general. the tendency for rhinos to put themselves against the arena walls and the delay on pufferfish exploding after their HP hits zero do not mesh well with that battle timer. i find myself very frustrated by these enemies because it feels like i’m being punished not for a lack of skill or bad decisions choosing weak pins, but simply bad luck. very few pins can circumvent the rhino’s front guard and the hitbox for their guard feels enormous, so i can’t imagine i’m the only player having difficulty herding them out of corners to actually damage them or get beat drops. there’s a postgame dive with a big noise rhino, and it was my worst experience with the entire game because it just kept backing into a corner. i quit that dive multiple times because of how much time i wasted with the rhino; i changed my pins like crazy trying to take advantage of elemental weaknesses or use pins that could circumvent the guard. but it wasn’t about what pins i was using, it was just bad luck with hitboxes. when i finally got the gold rank on that dive it wasn’t that i did anything significantly different, the rhino just didn’t park its ass in the corner that time.

as far as i know, and i hope i’m missing something that someone can enlighten me on, there is no way to prevent pufferfish from inflating and exploding outside of a killer remix. i have not discovered any way to make them explode faster. the amount of time it takes for them to blow up seems to vary not by species but by individual, i’m not sure if it’s being triggered by proximity to a party member or what but i know sometimes one of those little shits will inflate and chase me across the entire arena before finally exploding. in a chain battle, that wasted time adds up. the pufferfish issue could have been severely mitigated, if not entirely fixed, if the gap between HP hitting zero and explosion was just the time it took for them to inflate. that would have basically eliminated my needless frustration with them. but instead i just... don’t know how to make them pop faster.

in normal combat, your post-battle score is primarily just bragging rights/making yourself feel good to have gotten a good grade. but when it comes to dives, where the timer directly decides how many of the finite friendship points you get, the appearance of a rhino or pufferfish specifically is something i approached with dread and disappointment. i already mentioned the postgame dive giant rhino specifically being a nightmare, but this was a reoccurring element for me through the entire game with just normal rhinos. i know rhinos are a returning enemy and kept their front-guard schtick, but the shift to a 3D environment has made them a much more (imo needlessly) difficult opponent.

regarding the pin system itself, i was enormously disappointed to learn how the multi-pin input worked. it turns out that you can only have multiple pins using a single input no matter how many multi-pin wields you unlock; gone were my dreams of having 2 Y-input pins and two ZL input pins (i played on switch). the inability to multi-pin wield uber pins regardless of how many uber slots you have filled is also a huge bummer. i feel like in the postgame i should be able to be an absolute god of destruction, but this didn’t pan out.

this seems to be a switch issue, but autosave was the MVP of the game because i had a few cutscenes crash or freeze (the one with kubo’s reveal seems to be a common source of a crash on the switch version as it fails to load the 3D cutscene); this was annoying and needs fixing, but it was slightly mitigated by autosave kicking in immediately after boss battles. i was crushed thinking i was gonna have to go through the shiba fight again after kubo crashed my game, so the relief i felt upon loading up again and going right into the cutscene was immense. don’t get me wrong: cutscene freezes and particularly crashes are a big problem that a game like this shouldn’t have launched with, but at the very least i didn’t lose my progress on that crash. related, i appreciate the ability to speed through cutscenes you’ve already seen, but i do wish we had the option to skip them entirely because that would have saved me from the freezes that i had to manually close the game and lose progress for.

a more minor complaint that i admittedly am unsure as to how to fix (maybe utilizing the d-pad instead of having it be camera/target select alongside the right stick?) is that i do not seem to have much control over which character my camera centers on in combat. typically selecting the pin that’s equipped to them will focus the camera to them, but every once in a while i’ll be locked to someone whose pin is rebooting while my other party members are actively attacking on the complete opposite end of the arena. i have no idea why this happens. if i’m missing something please let me know. the static nature of the overworld camera took some adjusting to, at first i was offput but i got used to it quickly. if camera was fixed position in combat it would have been a nightmare, but it being fixed in the overworld isn’t the same beast.

this has gotten obscenely long, so props and condolences to everyone who has made it this far. i wanna end on a high note because i want to reiterate something: i have so many criticisms here and that’s actually praise. i enjoyed so much of this game that i’m critical of where it fell short specifically because it’s such a strong contrast to how much i felt it did right. the main story was pretty strong in general, though some character interactions were lacking. the plot itself i didn’t talk a lot about because i thought it was good. there wasn’t much to say, they did a good job! the dissonance noise being created from deleted timelines was great, i loved that. i don’t feel like predictability makes a narrative bad, so it’s not like i was upset when it turned out replay was (gasp) part of a dastardly scheme. for me, foreshadowing is an excellent thing even if sometimes i wish it was handled a little differently.

i vastly prefer this game’s vague sequel hook with minamimoto over how final remix ended a new day; that sequel hook i hated and it had me so worried about neo. thankfully a lot of my fears didn’t come true, and i am very happy overall with the game we got. if another game is greenlit, i would hope it progresses with a mostly new cast; as long as we stay in shibuya some supporting characters can and should be staples imo, like kariya and uzuki, and i hope to see more of what’s being set up with minamimoto even if not necessarily with him as a protagonist. but overall i think twewy’s worldbuilding lends itself much more to a rotating cast if it develops into a full franchise; that’s just the nature of the UG, and i would like to see further installments taking advantage of that and allowing characters to have a complete arc and then retire from the narrative naturally.

i’ve got some pigs to erase and some bosses to slap the pins out of, which i’m sure will take me some time. another day certainly has a secret boss and/or time trial boss rush, so i’ll take a look at that sucker soon as well. i’m looking forward to continuing my playthrough, and i expect to sink quite a few more hours into this game. i really truly enjoyed neo despite my qualms, and i’m leaving the main storyline behind for postgame stuff with almost entirely positive feelings and a hopeful stance on the potential future of the series. i know this was a long-ass post, which is why it’s beneath a readmore, but to anyone who cared enough about my thoughts to keep reading the whole thing... thanks for the time you spent, hope you got something positive out of it!

#neo twewy #neo twewy spoilers #this turned into a behemoth. im so sorry #I CHECKED AND IT'S OVER 11K WORDS #I'M SO FUCKING SORRY

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sweetescapeartist · 4 years ago

Text

MY DBS MANGA CHAPTER 72 REVIEW... 😒

Hey there... Here comes the review.

Imma start like this and use language some ppl may find offensive. Goku, Vegeta, & Granolah are retarded. Now that that's out of the way, time to dissect this "Dragon Ball Super coloring book."

Goku & Vegeta land on the planet & its peaceful. How are they not immediately suspicious? They see that the planet isn't in danger & no death. Its obvious they need to ask a question to figure out what lies they've been told.

I was gonna say its dumb for Granolah to be able to supress his ki because it seems only Earthling have that kind of spiritual understanding. But Namekians have that spiritual understanding too so maybe Monaito taught Granolah how to suppress his ki.

I lost interest in the Heeters' past. You can only tease me so long until I stop caring. At least mention something like Freeza almost killed Gas on planet Cereal so now that's why Gas keeps trying to get stronger. There's so little info about "important" stuff that's supposed to be important. Give readers a tease, hint, a different hint, some valuable info, then another hint, then a reaveal (or something similar!) Instead its tease, hint, tease, tease, hint, tease...

In all honesty, the chapter didn't even need that page with Gas & Elec. When Maki said Gas & Elec are coming, that was all we needed to know. Then we anticipate their arrival in the next chapter. Showing them is a waste of time & they add no real purpose to the chapter. That was just a waste of ink.

Also I'm bored of Gas now. He only looks interesting but does nothing. 👎

Granolah shoots at Goku & Vegeta. Base Goku closes his eyes to use UI (UI Omen?) while Vegeta goes SS. Base Goku dodges easier than Vegeta. Goku is leagues beyond Vegeta.

A better way to have Goku & Vegeta encounter Granolah would be for him to snipe at them right when they get off the ship. Granolah wanted to kill them so bad so why wait for them?

Somehow they go towards Granolah but he's too fast for them & they lose him. They can't sense him firing ki for some reason. Idk why Goku didn't use Instant Transmission when Granolah shot ki at them?

I don't get why Goku closes his eyes either. Its as if Goku can't use UI now unless his eyes are closed but that wasn't the case before. Eyes were opend when using UI Omen & Mastered UI. Toyo could have conveyed that better but instead he's making Goku close his eyes like how Roshi covered his eyes when fighting those prisoner women because their beauty distracted him. Is Goku distracted by Granolah's beauty or something?

Wait a sec... I gotta backtrack real quick. Goku used the Ultra Instinct technique in his base & didn't go into Ultra Instinct Omen? But thats him using it in base right? Oh boy... This is about to get dumb...

Ultra Idiot Goku & Super Stupid Vegeta are surprised that the guy having the title of "strongest in the universe" is capable of moving faster than them when they aren't at full power. Such genius writing.

Goku gets shot in the neck... & it knocks him out... Ok. But later Granolah comments on how Goku's body moves on it's own before Goku can even process an attacks. Not to mention Goku & Whis have said the same thing. Goku should be untouchable at this point, but for some reason he is not.

So, Vegeta takes a senzu bean from his "training bra" and gives it to Goku. For some reason they decided to only take 2 senzu when knowing they would fight a guy possibly stronger than them. Stupid monkeys.🐒 (I'm starting to sound like Freeza now)

How did unconscious Goku eat a senzu? Yaoi fans would had loved it if Vegeta chewed the senzu up for Goku and fed it to him. Sorry, it just reminded me of Trunks spitting senzu mush into Mai's mouth since she was unconscious.

Then we have this dialogue from "sensei" Vegeta, The Ultra Instinct Expert...

"You rely on Ultra Instinct too much! If you haven't perfected it yet, then dodge using your mind!" - Vegeta

"Yeah, you're right..." - Goku

"WTF Toyotaro!" - DB Meta

... I'm unsure who is the stupid one in this situation. Is it Goku or Vegeta? It could be Vegeta because UI is the ultimate technique that allows you to move without thinking. But Vegeta says that because Goku hasn't perfected Ultra Inst-...

...

Sorry, I had to restart my brain...

Didn't... didn't Goku master Ultra Instinct? Silver hair? Silver eyes? MASTERED/PERFECTED ULTRA INSTINCT? Before that, Goku perfected Ultra Instinct Omen & could go in it at will... So, Goku is listening to Vegeta tell him he hasn't mastered UI? But both know that Goku did master UI? What does Vegeta know? Vegeta can't even use UI.

I almost stopped reading the rest of the colouring book when I got to that dialogue.

Also, Granolah wants to kill Saiyans, so why is he holding back and not hitting them with deadly attacks. He only needs one alive anyways. He said so himself.

At least there was a good pose Goku was in. The art looked nice there.

Now here's another place I almost quit reading. Granolah apparently has all the abilities of Goku & Vegeta. Hack writing. Sounds like a Moro, 7-3, & Cell copy cat. Toyo just cant leave the Cell saga alone.

Granolah is bumping his gums & rattling his tongue (old slang for "talking a lot") but when Vegeta asks if Granolah holds a grudge against Saiyans, Granolah suddenly says that's enough talking. He responded to them 3 times & spoke like 5 sentences to them. If you're gonna chat then chat. If you hate Saiyans then don't say anything to them & try to kill them. Dummy.

Granolah uses Hakai. But aparently he's not using Hakai or Instant Transmission. Its just "similar." Sure. Confirms that he has been using something similar to UI in previous chapters too.

Granolah says they're stronger than expected because they escaped into the air. Escape doesn't equal strenght. Mai escaped Goku Black, doesn't mean she's extremely strong.

But seriously, Vegeta saying he's gonna prove his training is better than Goku is stupid. He wants to prove he is better than Goku yet he tells Goku to fight first (that's beta). It's as if he isn't confident & wants Goku to wear Granolah out first, so he can come in and look impressive. Kinda like in RoF after Freeza was tired from fighting Goku & Vegeta wasn't tired at all & he easily beat Freeza up. Looked cool, but actually wasn't too impressive.

Granolah saying that he's gonna shoot them if they don't fight him is ridiculous. Why is he showing mercy to the tribe that didn't show his ppl mercy? Why give chances to the ppl you wanted revenge on for years? Realistically he would just start blasting at them.

Unecessary dialogue from Vegeta talking to himself about how he needs to learn who Granolah is. Show don't tell Toyo.

Why is Granolah waiting for the Oozaru form? Maybe he wants to kill them in that form? What about revenge? Just kill them.

Goku screamed to power up from SS to SSG. That's possibly dumb, but I gotta let at least 1 thing slide this chapter.

Why did Granolah let them power up? So unlike what we've been shown what Granolah is like. Why would he want to give "murderers" of his entire race a fair chance to fight him?

Next, Goku doesn't try to explain he isn't savage like other Saiyans when Granolah accuses his kind of being so. Instead Goku just agrees & says "Oh... Yeah." I guess he really just wants to fight. I can't tell if this is OOC or just magnifying a Saiyan flaw of Goku just to push the story along. Idk. I'm losing brain cells reading this chapter.

Granolah's fighting stance is cool. Hey, look. I said a nice thing. (But why is he doing close combat when being a sniper us his specialty?)

So, Goku uses UI in SSG form... Bruh, is Ultra Instinct a technique, a state of mind, or a transformation? I'll tell you what it is. ULTRA INSTINCT IS A PLOT DEVICE! It does whatever Toyotaro decides at the moment. So freaking inconsistent... 😓😒

Ultra Instinct becomes more accurate when in conjunction with a SS form?! How tho? I thought it was just a goldy technique that needed a clear mind and control or whatever. Or is UI a transformation like Toyo stated many times in previous chapters, while also calling UI a technique? How can mixing a godly "technique" with a SS form enhance it better than Goku simply using UI Omen? It doesnt! Vegeta, you can just shut up! Every time you talk about UI, you've been wrong! It should be illegal impersonating an UI Expert.

Goku is using the Ultra Instinct technique in base form against Granolah.

UI Omen is Goku using the Ultra Instinct technique in base form.

Goku uses Ultra Instinct technique in the Super Saiyan God transformation.

Mastered UI is Goku mastering the technique or maybe using the technique as a transformation? (Toyo is confusing.)

So why isn't Goku going into UI Omen when using UI in base? Why does Vegeta say "Ultra Instinct... becomes more accurate when used in conjunction with a Super Saiyan form"? Does that mean Mastered UI is a Saiyan form in conjunction with the Ultra Instinct technique? So, there's an unknown silver haired Saiyan transformation that Goku was utilizing in conjunction with Ultra Instinct? I guess this confirms that "Super Saiyan Blanco" is real y'all.

I suppose that if UI in base isn't the same as UI Omen, then by that logic, there is also an unknown "Super Saiyan Noir" form we haven't seen yet.

I'm done with Ultra Instinct in the manga. Toytaro doesn't know if UI is a technique or a transformation. I could explain it better than him, but I'm not tye one writing official material. Why should I make sense of his bad writing when he will change things later? HE should explain it clearly to US. He is extremely inconsistent with his explanations and will change them when he feels like it.

I dont care what Geekdom101 says about UI being both technique & transformation, because Ultra Instinct IS NOT a transformation nor a technique anymore. ULTRA INSTINCT IS JUST A PLOT DEVICE. 😑

[You can skip this little section. I'm talking about inconsistencies from the Moro arc]

I remember when I talked about how Moro's life draining powers were retconned multiple times.

Moro can absorb life energy from a planet while he is in outer space, then he is nerfed to only being able to take life energy by directly touching you, later Vegeta says they need to get off the ground because now Moro (who is stronger and fused with the planet) can only steal your life enrgy while making contact with you. He could absorb life energy from entire planets from space, but has to make contact with somebody once he got stronger?

Let's not forget it's said Moro drains life energy, but can't drain 17 & 18 because they say they don't have life energy. I guess that means Krillin had a daughter with a dead woman? No. Multiple times, 17 & 18 contributed to the Genki Dama (a collection of life energy). Goku gathers energy from trees, animals, ppl, everything living. This means 17 & 18 do have life energy because they are living beings. But the energy they fight with is unlimited artificial energy.

So if 17 & 18 can give life energy to Goku for a Genki Dama, then Moro should be able to take their life energy just like anyone else. What he can't take is their energy they use for battle because itsunlimited & artificial. Toyotaro does not understand this important detail nor does he understand many other details about these iconic character. So why is the the writer if he is getting so much wrong? Why is he not soley the artist?

Goku uses UI in SSG form to dodge a barrage of attacks from Granolah that are aimed at the planet. They must be weak attacks because the explosions are tiny. Is Granolah really trying to kill them?

Goku using UI in SSG but somehow gets caught off gaurd. Did UI just get nerfed so that Vegeta can look like he is on the same level as Goku in a later chapter? I think it did...

Granolah took Goku down a second time... Wow Goku, you kinda suck. In DBS CH 65 on page 11, after Moro broke his arm on UI Goku's chest, Whis said "When Ultra Instinct is honed to this extent, the body will automatically grow sturdier as necessary." Why is Goku holding back against the strongest in the universe? Oh yeah, that's right... UI is getting nerfed.

Vegeta, what do you mean "How is he learning Kakarot's weaknesses so quickly?" Everybody has similar vital spots in DB. Thats not learning, thats just knowing. Are you just a dummy, Vegeta? Do you not know where vital spots are?

Granolah can tell Goku's body is moving before his brain tells him to react. Granolah the UI "expert" can see all with his eye. You know who else can see with their eye? Tien. Speaking of Tien, I wanna go back to Earth now. What's Piccolo doing? I bet everyone on Earth is chilling or at work. Is it bad I'd rather watch Gohan at a conference than watch Goku, Vegeta, & Granolah be dummies? I'd rather watch Chi-Chi cooking with vegetables instead of watching vegetable puns fight a cereal pun. I'm sorry, the dialogue is just so bad...

How does Granolah's right eye being able to observe blood flow & muscle movements let you know where to strike? Dude, vital spots are where your organs are, & pressure points, & your head area, & you arteries, & so on. Ya ain't gotta observe blood flow to know that. Granolah just making stuff up now to sound cool. News flash, you failed. If he was sniping and able to track them based on blood flow and muscle movement, then that would had been smarter writing.

Granolah: "This right eye of mine is the sharpest in all the universe. It sees all."

Your eye sees all Granolah? Can you see past the Heeters feeding you bullcrap too?

Yo, where did Granolah's barely existing personality go? He wss once driven by revenge, and now the opportunity for revenge is right here in front of him & he's acting like he doesn't want it. If revenge is his only noticeable personality trait, what happens when you take it away? You get bland and dry Granolah.

So then Veget- hold on! Thats it! Granolah's name pun is granola because he is meant to be a bland character! I get it now! So all his moves must be cereal puns!

I never realized how genius this character is!

Detective Vegeta: "A tribe driven to extinction, known for their evolved right eyes... This is starting to sound familiar..." 🕵

Tien?! Oh wait... he said right, not 3rd eye. Jiren?! Oh wait, that's both his eyes... Jaco!? That's both eyes too... I give up.

Granolah's eye can tell that Goku is not using his full power, yet he can't tell he is being fooled by the Heeters. I think he needs new glasses or at least clean the revenge smear off of his monocle.

Granolah casually chats with a Saiyan who is one of the ppl he wants to kill. He would be better if he barely talked and just acted. Granolah should be like Iron Man in "Captain America: Civil War." Not trying to talk, just trying to kill because he is angry and wants revenge.

Goku: "Granolah, we don't work for Freeza & the two of us didn't attack your planet."

Granolah: "I dont care... Your people killed my family."

Boom! Gimme an award!

Back to the chapter 72 colouring book...

Granolah: "Hurry and get on with it. I have no duty to wait for your sake."

Yet you've been waiting all this time for them to arrive, fight them, chat with them, & even waiting for him to transform right now. You got time. You got 3 yrs to waste. You can chat for 10 minutes or so.

Granolah tells Goku that he doesn't have time to wait, then says "It's no skin off my nose to kill you where you stand." Then he waits for Goku to transform... Just kill Goku and be done with it already. Its not like Vegeta can win if Goku can't.

Granolah: "I dont have time for talk."

Goku: "Ok lets fight!"

Granolah: "Ok but, let me tell you about what my eye can do. I'm really proud of it. Mind if I talk a bit? So I sacrificed my life to defeat Freeza, the guy you're working for."

Goku: "What? You don't like Freeza? You're not a bad guy?"

Granolah: "Shut up Saiyan! You'll pay! Fight me!"

Granolah doesn't want to talk about Freeza all of the sudden when Goku implies they both have been tricked. Granolah becomes stupid just so the fight continues. There's a better way to keep them fighting. SHUT UP, GRANOLAH! If he talked less then convoluted stuff like this wouldn't happen.

Granolah yells "Take this!" He powers up instead of doing an attack... Why yell "take this" then power up if you aren't gonna attack right away? You even knocked Goku out of SSG, so now is the perfect time to finish him.

Blah blah blah, Goku goes SSB and they fight, blah blah blah.

Hey look! In my last review I said something about the planet should shake or be in danger from the battle. Looks like Toyo made the planet shake from the battle. Good job. I like this detail. Will it matter later on? Probably not.

Also, ya notice how god ki and god transformations are limited in this chapter? It seem they got too powerful for there to be any stakes. So we see Vegeta in base & SS. Then we see Goku in base, SS, SSG, base, & SSB so that false tension can build. Its smart but the dialogue doesn't compliment this smart tactic.

Aparently Vegeta doesn't care about the fight. Detective mode activate! (🕵) Vegeta standing in that Oozaru footprint looks like he's in Jurassic Park lol. But why did Detective Vegeta have to touch the footprint? He could had just looked at everything when he was high up and had a bird's eye view. Did Detective Vegeta taste the soil & gain knowledge by tasting the past?

Detective Vegeta: "I think I know who he is."

The Heeters said his name is Granolah, dummy. Shouldn't you say "I think I know what happened here." or something like that? Gimmie your detective hat, your trench coat, your bubble pipe, & you magnifying glass! You give detectives a bad name! I'll give this to somebody more deserving, like Jaco, Videl, Krillin, or Hit.

Did ya notice that Vegeta didn't get hit once but Goku who is using UI gets hit multiple times? Vegeta tells Goku to think instead of use UI? Oh yeah, this chapter was to pander to Vegeta fans. Toyo is poorly trying to convey he is equal or above Goku somehow. Like Vegeta mastered his training but Goku hasn't despite having mastered UI as a transformation thingy.

In conclusion, I was right. Freeza still hasn't been seen yet. Show a pic of him in somebody's thought bubble at the very least. This is all happening because if his influence y'all. Still no visual of Freeza yet... Whateva.

This chapter was wack. Too much unintelligent & unreasonable & unrealistic & unnecessary dialogue, plot went nowhere, Goku is being handicapped so the fight can continue, everyone are stupid idiots, Vegeta is being built up to lose his battle or get lucky & win. No image of Freeza still... This was just a very, very boring chapter.

I expect the next chapter to be boring too. Probably won't see Freeza either.

Prediction

Goku got knocked down twice by Granolah, Vegeta decided to fight second, Granolah said he doesn't need to keep Goku alive, & Vegeta told Goku he should stop relying on UI... Sounds like UI is getting nerfed & Goku is gonna need to be saved by Vegeta so that Vegeta can show off his Hakai training in comparison to UI.

#dbs manga #dbs #review #wtf toyotaro

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