#the episodic story idea was pretty smart but it fell flat since most of the episodes were snoozefest

[misterbaritone]

God I hope that new DMC anime is good because that first one was such dogshit

[blackjack-15]

Secrets and Killing — Thoughts on: Secrets Can Kill/Secrets Can Kill Remastered (SCK/SCK2)

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be. 

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it. If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with links to previous metas. 

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: SCK, SCK2, episode 1X14 of The Mentalist.

The Intro:

We’re beginning with Secrets Can Kill/Remastered, not only because it’s first, but also because it’s one of the easier games to analyze. The plot isn’t anything especially complicated, the suspects are caricatures, the locations are pretty barren — and all of this is true in both versions. It’s a short, unsatisfying game, which spawned a short, unsatisfying remake that fixed some things and ruined others.

The Title:

The title itself sounds like the murder occurred because Jake was keeping secrets (not because he was blackmailing people with them) — and it’s also incredibly vague — so as a title, I wouldn’t say it’s incredibly effective. The word “kill” is evocative, to be sure, but I think that’s the strongest part of the title by leagues.

The Mystery:

Nancy’s Aunt Eloise is a school librarian whose school finds a student murdered — so her first instinct is to call her plucky 18-year-old niece to come solve it.

The murdered student, Jake Rogers, has left cryptic messages in the school and the nearby diner, pointing towards not only what caused his murder, but also how to solve the crime and catch his murderer. There’s actually a really chilling clue that Jake tells us “will seal [his] murderer’s fate” — meaning that in the course of leaving these clues, Jake knew he’d be murdered.

Perhaps that’s a justification for the actual mystery being so /easy/ — the game can be beaten in under 45 minutes without too much trouble, sadly enough (obviously discounting the time spent in the original version switching discs).

The identity of the murderer/bad guy(s) is…honestly pathetic in both versions as well, with the biggest difference being screen time rather than complexity or plausibility. The remastered version nerfs the ending where Nancy stands for Truth, Justice, and Guns, and instead employs a rather ridiculous ending that’s meant to test you on your recall from the beginning of the game…but fails, because the beginning of the game was under an hour ago.

The Suspects:

Hal Tanaka (whose name in Japanese I’m guessing is actually Tanaka Haru or something longer but similar, since “l” isn’t a phoneme in Japanese, and no word can end in any consonant other than “n”) is a student at Paseo Del Mar who focuses very hard on getting the best grades he can possibly get —through both honest and dishonest means. 

As a suspect, he’s pretty pathetic; there’s not a single minute where he’s even remotely plausible as Jake’s murderer, and he’s really just there to make sure that there’s “enough” suspects to seem more complex (and to pad out the run time of the game). 

He also never pays for his plagiarism? Like the kid is a senior going into college and he just straight up copies the Big Essay? And it’s not really well written — if you’re gonna cheat, cheat well, Hal. It really bothers me that Nancy’s like “and he got his scholarship! Huzzah!” when the dude is a Stone-Cold Cheater. 

Jake’s blackmailing him because of the aforementioned plagiarism, which…like, blackmailing is Not Right, but am I supposed to feel like Hal is the Victim here because he’s planning on taking a scholarship that he doesn’t deserve with his plagiarized paper away from another kid who does deserve it because they have the smarts and effort to write their own? Is that what this game is telling me to think? Because the game is wrong. 

If Hal has the smarts to do Jake’s homework for the rest of the year, dude has the smarts to write his own essay. He’s a lazy coward, and I’d blackmail him too.

Connie Watson is the official tattletale (sorry, “hall monitor”) of Paseo Del Mar, and spends the game in the “student lounge” (what kind of bougie high school is this?) doing…nothing at all, honestly. I get that it’s the end of the year, Connie, but…go home. There’s no way school is in session, a murder just happened there. 

She parades her Judo trophy-necklace around like she’s not being blackmailed for it and that, in 1998 or 2010, no one would recognize it? I mean we definitely know that Connie’s not getting a scholarship, girl is flat out dumb. She comes off better in the 1998 version where she at least gets to use those Mad Judo Skills, but she’s not an important character in either version, to be quite honest. 

Connie’s being blackmailed because she won a men’s Judo competition…by wearing…a ski mask…yeah, there’s no defense for this, not in ’98 and not in ’10. Anyway, Jake is blackmailing her into going to the dance with him because he saw her taking off her mask (which she definitely should have done in a more secret location if she wanted it to be a secret?) but like…girlfriend is Flaunting her little neck-trophy, so I honestly don’t see what sway he has over her. It’s Very Wrong of him to do so, yes, yes…but he’s got no power here, and Connie’s an idiot if she thinks so. 

She’s an idiot anyway, and once again is never even a consideration for Jake’s killer. What an interesting choice, to have two separate characters as the “dumb muscle” stereotype. And this one’s a girl! #feminism

Daryl Gray is the SBP of Paseo Del Mar, along with basically the manager (from what we see) of Maxine’s Diner, creepy escort, police contact…you name it, Daryl’s your bleach-blond guy. 

He’s also super shifty; in the original game, he’s involved in drug trafficking, and in the remastered version, he’s selling his father’s company’s secrets. He also hits on Nancy a lot, but since Nancy never tells him to knock it off, that’s a Mild offense at best. 

Daryl is being blackmailed in the original game because of the drug trafficking, and in the remastered version because of the whole leaking company secrets thing. Daryl 100% deserves to be blackmailed for that, as both of those things are Very Illegal, and he’s being Very Stupid about them. Yes, I understand that blackmail is illegal as well.

Hulk Sanchez is a character with as much subtlety as his name would imply, and is the star football player for Paseo Del Mar. Injured on the field and yet still looking to play college (and eventually pro) football, Hulk steals steroids and takes them, putting the “muscle” in “dumb muscle”. 

Hulk is, true to his one-note character, being blackmailed for the whole “stealing drugs” thing (which seems to be his only character trait), as Jake wants him to deliver messages for him. Hulk by far got off the easiest, and if I were him and could be busted for both theft and drug use, would be thrilled that I was getting off this easy. Having no sense of perspective, Hulk instead rants to everyone about how Jake Rogers was a “punk” and how it’s a good thing that he’s dead.

Mitch Dillon, the school’s janitor, is the original baddie in the 1998 game, and is Unseen throughout the ENTIRE game, appearing only at the end to wave a gun around and punch Connie before being apprehended. 

In the 1998 game, he’s buying drugs off of Daryl, whereas in the 2010 remake, he’s buying company/government secrets off of Daryl and selling them to Detective Beech. In both cases, Jake tries to blackmail him for his crimes, and he kills him. Both games see him arrested, but neither one actually treats him like a character, and he is, ultimately, a plot device that weakens the games.

Lastly, the remake introduces the character of “Detective Beech” (real name unknown), who also goes by “Uncle Steve” in his guise as Nancy’s police contact. 

He is, of course, nothing of the sort, and has lost his journal with Gray Enterprises’ dirty little secrets that Mitch sold to him, and “hires” Nancy to find it under the guise of searching for Jake’s killer. Cartoonish and so obviously the Bad Guy that you’ll lose your voice yelling at Nancy to stop telling him things, he tries to kill Nancy when she finds out the truth and ends up trapped in Aunt Eloise’s kinky sex cage intruder cage thanks to Nancy telling him (repeatedly) the wrong combination to the safe. Yeah. 

“Detective Beech” in-universe is a TV show mentioned in passing in STFD, VEN, and TOT, which makes the fact that Nancy fell for this disguise even sadder. That’d be like some criminal posing as an officer being like “call me Detective Columbo” and you being like “that sounds Plausible, yes”. Honestly.

It’s interesting that this game sets up a story where most of the suspects are “cheating” in some way or the other — Hal’s plagiarism, Connie’s joining of the competition, Hulk’s steroids, etc. I’m not sure this was purposeful, and I’m even less sure that it really means anything, but it’s interesting to note, regardless.

The Favorites:

There’s not much about this game that I like, to be quite honest. I enjoy Jake (more on him below), and Ned’s cheesiness as a phone contact, and the fact that it’s Mercifully Short. 

Also Hulk is SUCH an enormous douche that it’s almost funny. And Aunt Eloise’s kinky sex cage intruder cage. 

If I have to choose a favorite puzzle, it’s reading all of the signs Jake hid around the school/Maxine’s diner. 

Or the ladle for the sheer stupidity.

The Un-favorites:

Everything else about the game. 

The visuals are “blah” (except Remastered!Daryl, who is the stuff of effing nightmares), the characters are cardboard cutouts with a combined IQ of 7, and Nancy comes off weak and stupid as a result. 

The villain(s) are one-note and boring, and the attempt to improve the game by remastering it made it easier to play (no disc-switching, faster loading, etc.) and had some campy yet cute easter eggs, but on the whole introduced new problems to the plot and took away Nancy Using an Effing Gun. Boo. 

I have no favorite puzzles, as they’re all horrible or horribly easy. Nothing in this game stands out.

Well…maybe one thing stands out, but it’s not to the game’s credit.

The Fix:

The first (and biggest) thing I’d do to fix SCK is to set it in or near River Heights. 

Yeah, there’s a throwaway line about this not being Nancy’s first case, but it doesn’t have to be her first case to make more sense in River Heights. It could happen in an adjacent suburb to River Heights as well, I’m not picky – it just should be local. 

Now, that takes away Nancy being “undercover”, but honestly that’s not a big part of the game to lose, and setting it in a town next to River Heights pretty much solves the question of why would these kids talk to her if they knew who she was (though I don’t think that’s a problem; high schoolers, especially high school senior, are pretty apathetic about other peoples’ reputations and wouldn’t really care if a small-time amateur detective well-known in her own town but not nationally was there to ask them questions).

This fixes a few things, not the least of which being how Nancy is even allowed to be there in the first place. It’s ridiculous, no matter the time period, to think that Aunt Eloise would be notified of a student’s death, turn around to the police and the principal and be like “Hey, I have a niece! She sure has found some missing dogs!” and the authorities being like “Some lost dogs? A niece? Gee whiz! You got her number handy?”. 

It’s a nonsensical way to get Nancy into the game that sticks out because there were sensical ways to ensure she could investigate.

Have Eloise working in a school a town over (and having previously lived in New York, to set up STFD), encounter the murder, think of Nancy, get the River Heights police chief to put in a good word for her with the other town’s police, and you’ve got a logical process of getting Nancy involved. 

Make SCK Nancy’s first big case outside of River Heights (even if it’s just by a handful of miles) working with a different police force/school/etc., and suddenly there’s a justification for starting with this case.

The other big change I’d make is in the whole premise of the game. 

Nancy Drew doesn’t tackle another murder until DED, and honestly it’s a good thing they waited for a good concept and a competent writer, because the one thing that stands out in the game is the premise: a person is murdered, and no one cares.

It’s one thing to have some of the characters not care, or be actively hostile to Jake Rogers while he’s alive, etc. etc. After he’s dead, no one’s shaken; sure, Jake has been blackmailing all of them, but the characters either intensely don’t care, or (in the case of Hulk, for example) are glad he’s dead, and have no qualms about telling you so. 

Outside of your suspect pool, no one cares either; the most the teachers say is a line in an email noting that they’ll have to replace him for bulletin board duties. A student is murdered — a student that these teachers all knew, as he worked administratively for the bulletins at least — and they don’t care. Heck, Nancy doesn’t even care — she’s just there to poke her nose in and say some horrifically cheesy lines.

And honestly? I’m not okay with it.

Jake Rogers wasn’t a people person, and he was a jerk. His dream was to get enough money to go to an island and live a life of solitary luxury. He blackmailed people who broke the law (Connie is the weakest link here, but technically competing in the competition is Fraud because of the monetary prize, even if I don’t condemn her for it) for his own gain, but he was the definition of a temporary problem. 

And an adult saw this kid as a temporary problem and used a permanent solution to fix it.

There’s the great episode in the first season of The Mentalist, 1X14 “Crimson Casanova”, where a woman having an affair in a hotel with a pick-up artist is shot to death. 

At the end of the episode, it’s revealed that this woman, who cheated on and stole from her husband, was not the target at all — that a hotel employee who was in love with the pick-up artist’s ex-girlfriend tried to kill the pick-up artist in revenge for his treatment of the ex-girlfriend. 

The following dialogue takes place between Patrick Jane (the titular Mentalist) and the murderer:

Murderer: “I’m not sorry. He’s dirt. The way he carried on with those other women, rubbing Katie’s nose in it? …I wish I hadkilled him.”

Jane: “But you killed Claire Wolcott instead.”

M: “I never meant to do that…but she shouldn’t have been doing what she was doing, should she? I mean, it’s not like anybody cares. Her husband was going —”

J: “I care! I care about Claire Wolcott! She was a living person!...You took her life!”

When his detective partner tries to calm him down, Jane responds with a simple statement:

J: “I…I just…I think he should be sorry.”

And that’s how I feel about Jake Rogers’ death. 

Sure, he was a blackmailer. He, too, shouldn’t have been doing what he was doing. But he’s also a senior in high school involved in, let’s face it, petty crimes at most. He was a living person.

I don’t expect the murderer to be sorry, like in the above example. But a kid was alive, and now he’s dead, because someone murdered him in cold blood. 

And I think someone should be sorry.

So how would I fix SCK? 

Set it in or near River Heights, flesh out the characters, acknowledge the wrong that all of them do. 

Make the culprit an actual part of the case. 

Have actual puzzles in the game. 

Acknowledge how terrible it is that Jake Rogers was murdered and that no one seems to care.

Have someone on his side, even if it’s only Nancy — Nancy, who shares so many similarities with Jake, who spies on those around her, who gathers evidence of their wrongdoings and, yes, holds it over their heads to get them to tell her what she wants to know. 

Give Nancy sympathy for Jake, wanting justice for Jake, and you’ve won half the battle.

[dailyfeartwdgifs]

Fear The Walking Dead Season 5, Episode 1 Review: Crash And Burn 

I'm having a really hard time mustering up any sort of enthusiasm for Fear The Walking Dead, and the opening episode of Season 5 isn't helping. 

It's not that last night's episode was terrible. It even had a few good moments, and an interesting twist with the mysterious armored zombies and the documents Al found, all pointing to the same group that whisked away Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead's most recent season. 

Likewise, when Strand (Colman Domingo) discovers that the guy Al (Maggie Grace) knows who has a plane is Daniel (Ruben Blades) and looks so distressed, I had a good chuckle. Strand and Salazar are not on the best of terms. 

I even liked the ragtag group of kids that the survivors run into, as well as the new sort-of-bad-guy Logan played by Honey I Shrunk The Kids alum Matt Frewer. I don't think I've seen Frewer in anything since that 1989 film, but I recognized him instantly. I say "sort-of-bad-guy" because the dude has a point. Just because Morgan and his group moved into the Mill doesn't make it theirs necessarily. If he owned it before the apocalypse, I see no reason why he shouldn't own it now. He got them out of there without firing a shot, also, which is pretty nice for a villain, especially compared to basically every other villain in either Walking Dead show. 

But other than that, and some cool Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) zombie killing moments, the episode just fell enormously flat for me. I think part of it is the premise now that the show has adopted Morgan (Lennie James) and his do-gooder philosophy. I guess now our heroes are literally heroes, out trying to help people no matter the risk. 

Crash Landing 

I mean, they somehow managed to get a plane which none of them knew how to fly, and then flew somewhere in order to help Logan (who was tricking them) with no real gameplan. I'm not sure how they were going to fit everyone in such a small plane after this theoretical rescue, but considering that they didn't even know how to land the thing and could have all died in the process, this just strikes me as enormously stupid. 

Almost as stupid as not drinking the damn ethanol when the tanker got shot up last season. My goodness, it's like watching a show about the stupidest people alive somehow managing to survive a zombie apocalypse. It's painful to behold. It would be funny if that was the actual premise (seriously, I'd watch the Idiocracy version of The Walking Dead) but alas, these are supposed to be tough, smart survivors. Not the imbeciles they've been written as. 

In any case, they crash land and Luciana (Danay Garcia) is impaled in the crash. Nobody else is severely injured. This would have been a good time to kill of Luciana who hasn't been an interesting or useful character since she became Nick's girlfriend shortly after being introduced as a badass leader, but no. Rather than mercy kill her, the character assassination will continue apace. 

Also, while I'm happy to see Daniel return (he's by far the most interesting character other than Alicia at this point) I'm not sure why Blades would want to return to this sinking ship. Maybe (hopefully) the season improves after this episode, but I'm not getting my hopes up. The fact that Al has also interviewed him is just too convenient, too much of a coincidence, on top of her having also interviewed Madison before meeting up with Morgan and John Dorie (Garret Dillahunt). Al just knows everybody, I guess. And everybody just magically shows up in the same vicinity as one another for some reason. 

Speaking of John Dorie, I really do like his character but they're just not using him for anything interesting at this point. I'm also having a hard time buying his and June's relationship. June (Jenna Elfman) is another character I just have no feelings for whatsoever. Why did they make her a nurse when she's basically a doctor? Nurses don't operate on people. They don't perform major life-saving operations like this at trauma centers or anywhere else. I could believe that she'd make an attempt in a pinch like this, but the whole notion that she's some seasoned surgeon at this point is just silly. Just make her a doctor in the first place if this is how you're going to use her character. 

I don't know exactly what it is that rubs me so wrong about June, but I guess maybe it's both Elfman's performance to some degree, as well as her character arc and how she's been written. The whole "nobody can help me" character always running away suddenly transforming into another of Morgan's Avengers just didn't land for me. And I'm not really feeling much chemistry between her and Dorie, though that may be a symptom of the writing. 

Stupid Is As Stupid Does 

In any case, Al is knocked out and captured by one of the mysteriously armored people because I guess she thought it was a good idea to go back to the crash site in the dark and rain by herself to investigate for some reason. Like everyone else on this show, and for reasons known only to the writers and producers, Al is a total idiot. 

Meanwhile, Logan pulls a fast one on Morgan by tricking them into going to a distant truck stop (we still don't know where, but I guess it was far enough that they had to fly in a plane they found somewhere but didn't know how to actually pilot, oh my god who writes this stuff???) and then peacefully taking back what was his to begin with. He even dumped a bunch of their stuff outside the fence in the process. In yet another scene of abject stupidity, when Strand and his new trucker pals, Sarah (Mo Collins) and Wendell (Daryl Mitchell) show up and see other people have occupied their base, they all get out of the truck and point guns at them, just standing there right out in the open, outnumbered, making themselves the easiest targets imaginable. If Logan had been a more ruthless foe, he would have had them all shot right then and there and wouldn't have faced a single loss. 

Who does this? Nobody, that's who. Nobody would just walk out there like that, knowing they could be easily shot and killed, with no semblance of strategy and apparently no lines of dialogue either. Also, they'd need to actually help Wendell get out of the truck and into his wheelchair, so now I'm just picturing how ungainly and awkward that must be when you're trying to have a proper standoff. Like, sorry yguys can you just not shoot at us while we get our friend out of the truck and into his wheelchair? 

Ugh. What a letdown. This show has really tanked since the new showrunners took over and since virtually the entire main cast was killed off and replaced. I was never the biggest fan of Madison, but she grew on me in Season 3 and it really was a show about her and her kids, and now Nick is dead and Madison is dead and it's like we're watching an entirely different show now. Why not just make a new show instead of cramming this new cast together? It's all so jarring. Morgan makes no sense on this show. I can't stand him and I can't believe they've actually made this show into a "let's help people" story. It was so much more interesting when Madison was playing both sides of the Otto/Native American conflict, or when we had characters like Troy around keeping us on our toes. 

It's gone from a zombie show about morally grey characters to one led Morgan Jones for goodness sakes. Morgan is a fine character, as a secondary character, as Rick's mentally disturbed friend, as a moral compass for the main group. He's not a leader or a lead. 

It's a crying shame that it's come to this. I am not particularly hopeful for this season, though they've surprised us before. Last season I actually really enjoyed the first few episodes before it went over the cliff, jumped the shark, killed off the best characters and introduced the lamest villain any zombie show has ever seen. So maybe the opposite will happen here, and the writing will improve and our heroes will stop acting so stupid all the time and we'll get a decent conflict.

Yeah, I don't think so, either, but it never hurts to have a little hope. Rebellions are built on hope.

[ganymedesclock]

( watched fictional crystal's new lotor meta vid ) oooooooo shots fired!!!!!!

So I have absolutely no idea what this means but if your intention was to baffle me into watching someone else’s meta video, by all means you succeeded.

And I think this is a decent video, all things considered. Fictional Crystals doesn’t do too bad of a job and I’m fond of her pointing out that Lotor is not on the empire or Voltron’s side.

Points of contention I would raise with the video, because it was a nice watch and inspired me, so now I want to pick at it:

Firstly, while Lotor could possibly develop long term objectives for cozying to Voltron, I think that it’s far more likely that it’s the obvious short-term objective was what brought him here. Remember in s4e6 he spent a long time idling in space doing nothing but avoiding the fleet. It would’ve been far easier for him to avoid them and stay on the move if he’d had a specific goal or location to get to, but he does not.

Noticeably Lotor spends most of the episode drifting and either trying to sleep or trying to predict his enemies’ movements. He’s very reactionary- to his own exhaustion and to the attacking fleet. Lotor generally operates with an agenda in mind, yes, but the problem is he very much seems to break that pattern.

His failure to react when Acxa shot him down pretty much flat-out tells us Lotor was not prepared in any magnitude for the betrayal of the generals- while he normally makes contingencies, he makes them for things he considers possible or likely. As a result, I think Lotor’s plans heavily fell through, because they hinged on Sincline, and Sincline needs a minimum of four pilots to operate under ideal circumstances. Given the third and final ship, it’s very likely that it needed five pilots.

Sound familiar? It should, because not only do Lotor and the Generals echo the paladins heavily in terms of armor, aesthetics, M.O. and strategy, they even mirror specific paladins and those parallels only go deeper the further you look. It’s not just Keith and Acxa- the most obvious and called attention to- that are counterparts.

This is a pretty potent indicator, here that Lotor was trying to make not merely ships, but, another Voltron, and he was making his plan in the certainty that the generals would be behind him every step of the way.

This is why Lotor doesn’t get desperate when he loses the rest of his team. He’s desperate first losing Narti- because losing any of the generals sends his plans into a tailspin and he latches onto the rift gate, with its high payoff, to desperately try to avoid losing the other three survivors because maybe they can crawl out of this and replace Narti, but only holding together.

Having failed that, Lotor doesn’t have the key elements of his plan. He has the comet, but no resources to work on the third ship, he doesn’t have two more people to pilot that and the ship he does have, and he doesn’t have the ship that Zethrid, Ezor, and Acxa took with them.

Furthermore, there’s the tricky business of given how supernaturally swiftly Lotor was able to turn around and pull these ships together, it’s very likely Sincline itself is a player on the board here and has already bonded with these people- so even if Lotor could physically take the first Sincline ship from the three generals... it wouldn’t answer to him. It’s dubious how long the ship he does have, which is rightfully Ezor and Zethrid’s, is going to obey him if he comes into conflict with its true paladins. Because Lotor’s true counterpart ship is the unfinished one.

But that all gets into counterpart analysis that makes me confidently say who goes where, and I’ll save that for its own post.

Back on topic- I’m pretty sure what drove Lotor to the paladins is the realization that he can’t keep going alone with the empire hunting him. He was already on a fast track to passing out on somebody’s doorstep and kept shortening his timetable for that by the precarious, destructive stunts he was pulling in rapid succession. He’s an incredibly strong-willed person, but that’s a lot for anyone to take.

But Lotor’s too smart to just keep pushing until his exhaustion catches up with him. That’s exactly what Zarkon is waiting for- because Zarkon has the resources to stay calm and composed, and as an undead nightmare the guy probably doesn’t need to eat or sleep. He can just pursue Lotor at his walking pace until Lotor drops.

So what to do, if Lotor- mortal, alive Lotor, who needs to eat and sleep and even if he can keep himself awake, faces the very real prospect of starving because he probably doesn’t have rations saved in the Sincline ship- isn’t going to stay ahead of Zarkon forever?

He makes sure he goes to ground somewhere even Zarkon will hesitate to follow him.

So I really think at this point, that’s Lotor’s only ulterior motive- he’s sticking his head in the lion’s mouth (almost literally) because of everybody that hates him right now, Voltron’s the least likely to bite, and when pure happenstance showed him a major decisive battle he could turn in their favor, he took that shot to ingratiate himself. Even if they don’t trust him, he’s paid his fare enough that they’re going to hear him out and not gun him down where he stands.

Is that going to stay his only ulterior motive? I don’t think so. With affection for both Lotor and Voltron, I think this partnership is doomed because the only thing motivating Lotor to reconsider these guys is that he doesn’t want to die and that’s not a sound connection here. But I don’t think he already has another plan in mind- this opportunity just dropped in his lap and I think any aspirations about Voltron, about the rift, is going to have to wait until he’s been able to eat, sleep, and otherwise get himself off the point of collapse. We’re gonna see Lotor put together his new plan in real time.

My second qualm is that while Crystals artfully illustrated why Zarkon and Honerva want the rift, I feel like they failed to illustrate why Lotor would want it. This is an amusingly meta problem to run into because our heroes, the paladins, have the same problem.

They haven’t been able to figure out what Lotor’s up to and part of their big underlying problem is that they assumed, until very recently, that Lotor and Zarkon were on the same side and wanted the same things. (Not exactly faulty, given the information Lotor gave them)

But they aren’t. Not even close. Lotor hates Zarkon, and he has very little interest or patience in conquest that he can’t immediately flip into a different advantage that he prefers more. (See Puig, where, no sooner had he captured the place than he seriously angled to get them as his willing allies instead of his unwilling slaves and failing the former, abandoned the latter)

So we still don’t know what Lotor wants the rift for. His own comments in s4e5 are that he seems to want to harness the energy between realities. This is interesting because in s4e1, Kolivan was explicitly questioning where the empire is getting its energy surplus, since they destroyed the Komar. (and in s2e9 Hunk and Keith pass planets that the ever-prophetic Keith states “died an unnatural death”)- so seemingly, wherever the empire’s getting their energy, even Lotor doesn’t know, because he’s been tapping a different source.

This is reinforced because we know that energy refined by the druids seems to overwhelmingly turn purple, and it’s the purple stuff the empire uses en masse- but when we see the fuel tanks of the Sincline ships, and the glow of Lotor’s technology, it’s nearly all blue- when the Altean castleship being plugged to the corrupted crystal in s1e4 would tell us that the color technology glows generally is suggestive of the type of energy it’s using.

This tells us whoever’s refining Team Sincline’s fuel for them is turning it Altean cyan, instead of empire purple- using a different method, likely different refining stations, and probably doing so behind the empire’s back. It’d explain easily why Lotor’s fleet, compared to Zarkon’s, is so small- even if he can get the materials to build other ships, he’s likely very limited in the fuel to power them, because... I think it’s pretty likely Lotor himself could be the one refining the energy. (Or possibly Narti- she appears to have magical powers herself)

So Lotor would seem to want to tap the rift as an energy source. However, all that tells us is he wants a lot of energy, not to do what with. My personal hypothesis is always that Lotor intends to challenge Zarkon- he has a huge amount of bitterness and scorn for the empire, I can’t imagine he doesn’t want to see it burn and take his abusive parents with it.

Now, my third thought here- and this is where I’ll actually completely agree with Crystals.

I think it’s very likely Lotor’s going to unleash the rift entity.

Why do I think this is so likely? Because I think Lotor doesn’t know they exist.

We have to consider their first aggressive foray into this world, defeated by Voltron itself, happened around the same time that Allura was born. At this time, Zarkon and Honerva were newlyweds- and I’m very skeptical that they had a child at the time, mostly because neither of them seem the type to leap into that. At earliest, I’d guess they’d just conceived and galra/altean gestation probably looks pretty close to humans.

So Lotor missed that first fight. He might have heard about it growing up, but, he’d also hear that Voltron destroyed their opponent.

The second time they attacked, that revealed they were still in there, it was only within the rift itself and none of them were expecting it. The official story was Zarkon and Honerva died due to quintessence poisoning. Not that they were killed by the rift creatures.

Lotor thinks the rift is safe. But Lotor is overwhelmingly a cautious person- he was going to charge in there with one ship, himself and Zethrid, ahead of Acxa and Ezor. This tells me he has no idea what might’ve been waiting for him on the other side if he succeeded.

And it makes sense. He’s basing off Honerva’s research, and Honerva overwhelmingly dismissed the perils the rift could pose. It makes sense Lotor’s treating it as no more dangerous than a stint of deep-sea-diving; well, the environment can kill you but it’s not going to attack you, you just have to be prepared, and they are prepared so there’s no problem.

The problem is Zarkon didn’t die, he was murdered- and nobody told Lotor.

So that’s gonna be a hell of an awakening for everybody involved.

[onyx-archer]

The Flash: Season 3 Final Thoughts

Well, this season was an over the place in terms of quality. Last week’s episode was a pretty good episode all things considered, but that was probably because they cut the bullshit and had Snart, which always makes an episode better.

This season has drained me, though not so much as a fan of the Flash comics, though it certainly did plenty of that. No, this season drained me in the sense that, as a writer, the show failed to provide a satisfying sense of progression and conveyance. Allow me to elaborate, since I’m posting this in tags that I know will get pissy over my opinion.

Back in Season 1, most, if not every episode, had a purpose. Not necessarily a progression related purpose, but more of a purpose of conveying the story beats that one should expect from a serialized story. Sometimes, the show would slow down, in a figurative sense, to give the audience something to chew on for a bit while Barry was out fighting the villain of the week. Every episode had something going on, and it felt... well, like a comic book. A teen drama version of a comic book, but a comic book nonetheless. The way every episode was structured was like... Barry would fight a new Metahuman, or someone equally dangerous, which gave it some bite sized plots to keep the show’s pacing from dragging.

Interwoven into those 45-ish minute bites, there was an overarching plot moving towards it’s conclusion bit by bit, with each episode either showing Barry’s development in terms of his heroics as The Flash, or his growing connections to his new friends at S.T.A.R. Labs. Each villain served to grease the cogs of progress. There was only one episode I think dragged in Season 1, and it was, ironically enough, the crossover episode with Arrow, since the events of that episode were largely ignored in each successive episode. Everything felt like it had some degree of significance to the overall plot. Everything. Eddie’s development, the secrets of “Harrison Wells,” and Barry’s quest to become faster/more skilled so he can take on “The Man In Yellow”/Reverse-Flash.

Season 2 was much the same, though to a less consistent degree. The subtle foreshadowing of “Jay Garrick�� being Hunter Zolomon (bravo to the writers and direction of Season 2 for making it obvious in hindsight, but not in the moment) was masterfully woven into the plots of most of the episodes preceding the big reveal, and it was great. The introduction of Wally West was also quite good, all things considered. I can bitch about how Iris basically acted like a complete moron in trying to get Wally to see the fault in his lifestyle choices, only to nearly get killed... but that’s not important right now. This Season had a lot more bumps in the road (like the Speedforce Episode... it was padding, and it was just bad), but it was overall just as enjoyable as Season 1 for me.

So then we get to Season 3, and I have to wonder “what the hell happened.” The show dropped the “episodic villains” to deal more in the way of trying to tell an epic tale about a man desperately trying to run against the currents of causality to save the woman he loved from a force he unleashed upon the world through his selfish actions... into a story full of dry emotional events and awkward pacing within it’s stilted writing. I’m not one to judge the acting of the show often, since it works for the type of material they have nine times out of ten. This season, however, I feel as though the writers and the directors were running out of ideas, and the line delivery just didn’t do it most of the time, with the actors trying too hard to make lines work.

This is especially apparent in Episode 21 of Season 3. AKA: The Amnesia Episode. My friends and my Grandmother both hate this episode, and they can point to one part that just made them not care, which I can completely agree with. The scene in question is when Iris is giving Barry a speech to help jog his memory so he can save people in a burning building. The speech is kinda hammy and over dramatic, but it was whatever... until one line was spoken. “...that was the moment we fell in love.” I’m likely paraphrasing a little, since it’s been like, 2 weeks since that trainwreck of a line was spoken, but it was basically everything wrong with the writing packed into one easy to understand phrase. I feel legitimately bad for Candice Patton, since she had to speak such a garbage line with conviction.

This is where I can point to the problems with Iris and Barry’s romance... or lack thereof.

In Season 1, Iris was a character that was mostly there for the tension between Barry and Eddie, which gave us a reason to give some time to Eddie and Barry’s relationship, leading to Eddie’s sacrifice being extremely heartbreaking to the viewers. Sure, she had other reasons for existing, and I’m not denying that, but all in all, she had a purpose, much like everything else in Season 1. In Season 2, her purpose was, in a roundabout way, to get Wally into the team, and back into her father’s life when he needed him most. And while I have problems with the way they wrote her going about that process, she was, in a way, helping out. She even vocally said she’d check out some journalistic sources at C.C.P.N., which is great. Sure, that amounted to very little, but it was some degree of contribution to the plot. Throughout both Seasons, there was an underlying implication that Iris and Barry were “bound by the red thread of fate” as one could say... but they failed to really DO anything that made that idea a tangible reality in an organic way.

Then Season 3 comes along, and Iris says some of the most cliche, cheesy lines about her and Barry’s “love for one another.” This is when I checked out. Why? Because they are acting like high schoolers, and they are in their mid to late twenties in the show. But okay, let’s pretend that’s normal for a minute, since this is a teen drama, and not reality. So where was the build into the romance? The rise to the payoff that was the romantic scene that shows that the two care deeply for one another, through intimate gestures and actions? Or even some cute romantic implications? No, the show didn’t do any of that, because they made it doom and gloom from the word go.

Most of the Season felt flat to me, because while there were winks at the idea of “WestAllen” being a thing in the two previous seasons, the fact is they then proceeded to ignore most logical developments of romance, and then have it be “oh noes, Iris is gonna die if we can’t change the future.” After that, all sense of romantic build flew out the window with the quality control of the show, and the romance became something half-baked and soggy. Iris hadn’t had enough of a chance to grow into a character that the audience could truly get behind (YES, I’m aware that SOME of the audience likes her, but outside of her relationship with Barry, what makes her likable? What makes you want to root for her? What makes you want to see her survive the events of Season 3?).

The romance didn’t have enough time to “ferment” in the minds of the entire audience, and that’s a problem, since you have to care about the romance (and the characters that are a part of said romance) in order to get anything out of the plot of this season. The entire Season’s premise practically relies on the viewer caring about the Barry Allen and Iris West romance, and there’s a good number of people who clearly don’t, so this season is going to piss them off. Obviously, I’m one of those people.

This season didn’t have enough breaks in the tension, nor enough of Barry being a superhero. It focused too heavily on a romance that wasn’t nearly ready for this kind of turmoil, and the writers tried to do it in a truncated manner that resulted in some of the most cringeworthy results in terms of romance fueled dialogue that rivals some of the drivel you can find on FanFiction.net or AO3.

I’m done with the show at this point. The writers clearly don’t care about writing smart, and instead pander to the demographic that only cares about “the feels” or whatever. Well, that, and I’m just not into this Wally being handed the mantle of “The Flash” yet, since narratively, he’s only had his powers for about 2/3rds of a Season, and not enough development, especially during this clusterfuck of bad writing that was Season 3 of CW’s The Flash. Barry Allen is just the Flash I like more at this juncture, and after the shitshow scriptwriting this season, I don’t want to give Wally a shot at the risk of getting burned on the scripts again.

((Oh, and to the dumb motherfuckers who are going to say I’m racist for not wanting to watch a black hero lead a show that was previously lead by a white dude, kindly fuck yourself off of a bridge. I actually LIKE Wally in the show, I just don’t think he’s ready to be The Flash yet. Oh, and I’m actually looking forward to seeing the first couple of episodes of Black Lightning, as well as the upcoming Cloak and Dagger show. But, of course, telling people that is a waste of time because I happen to be white, and am, in their minds, by proxy, racist.))

[orionsangel86]

Part 1 - Episode Review of 12x14

I have written my reviews of 12x14 and 12x15 together for the sake of a quick catch up. 12x15 will be posted in part 2 which will be shortly after this post.

Firstly, I skipped full reviews of these episodes and 12x13 because of my tumblr absence. 12x13 was goddamn awful thanks to bucklemming being the most incompetent writers of all time and only still working on the show thanks to NEPOTISM. The only things I took away from 12x13 was that Mary finally told the boys the truth about working with the BMOL (though the best parts of that conversation were handed over to Berens because Andrew Dabb is a smart man) and Dean’s face when Gavin and his ghostly girlfriend disappeared in a glowy light together which screamed of LONGING for another character who just the episode prior to that one went all glowy for a bit. Ahem. Rowena was also awesome but not written as well as usual. That’s all your getting from me on 12x13 I’m afraid. Moving on.

12x14 was a great episode for Sam content, finally pulling him back into the game and making him “pick a side”. Sam chose the BMOL. He killed the alpha vamp like the BAMF he is and basically owned the episode whilst Dean spent it either being emotional or being seduced by Ketch. (no seriously that was the ONLY way to read that scene). I also loved 12x15 mainly thanks to Cas and Crowley but I’ll talk more about 12x15 in part 2, firstly my main points from 12x14.

Dean and Mary

One really great point to take away from 12x14 was the conversation with Mary at the beginning. Dean is finally being open and honest about his feelings and MY GOD how long has it taken to get to this point?

DEAN “How about for once you just try to be a mom”

MARY “I am your mother, but I am NOT just your mom, and you are NOT a child”

DEAN “I never was”

AAAHHHHHHH this is the CLOSEST we have come to discussing John Winchesters abuse and what it did to Dean and OH MY GOD I NEED MORE! I do hope we see the continuation of this honest dialogue between them in the future, the final scene where Dean and Mary talk again kinda fell a bit flat to me compared to this moment because I think I wanted that conflict to last longer than just one episode;

DEAN “it’s not your job to make my lunch and kiss me at night. Were adults you gotta make your own choices even if I don’t like them, even if I really don’t like them. That’s just something I’m gonna have to get used to. Okay mom”

I guess another reason it felt kinda flat was because it wasn’t an apology. There is still conflict between Dean and Mary and I think that will continue. I doubt he will forgive her so easily for risking Cas’s life (especially since it was risked for a gun which the BMOL had no idea how to work until Sam showed them anyway).

Dean is basically controlled by his emotions. I talk about this a bit more in my Sam point below, but Dean is struggling with Mary due to the fact that she isn’t the idealistic fantasy mother he put on a pedestal when he was 4 years old any more. Even young Mary being a hunter didn’t really break down that fantasy for him as she was going through the phase of wanting to be a mother and housewife at the time. This Mary is a struggle for Dean to accept, far more than Sam, because of that fantasy. This is made even clearer when he calls her “Mary” instead of “Mom” and kicks her out. He is hurting, and when Dean Winchester is hurting, he gets kinda spiteful. But this was understandable in this moment. Though, as I mention below, Dean’s reactions are not at all based on her working with the Brits, but with a whole build up of other stuff based on the breakdown of his fantasy mother. Sam doesn’t act nearly as bad as he does, and as this episode showed, that really pissed Dean off too.

Sammy the Man of Letters

Sam’s choice to work with the BMOL has probably been greatly debated about on tumblr, though after 12x15 I think we are all pretty much in agreement that he is playing it straight right? I did wonder whether his intentions were to infiltrate but I now think he genuinely wants to help them, and set them on the RIGHT track. This is how I see it all going anyway. Sam was told to pick a side instead of playing middle man. He has unfortunately been kept on the sidelines in the season so far, not really having his own character arc in play and I am glad we are now seeing some more action from Sam. For years in the destiel fandom at least, we have been saying how we see a future for Sam as a man of letters, he has the intelligence, the love of the lore, the desire to do good. It is a perfect fit for him and it makes sense that Sam would jump on board before Dean. If only Bucklemming hadn’t butchered Toni’s character in 12x02 and ruined what could have been a really exciting story for Sam from the start, because now his working with the BMOL still puts a bad taste in my mouth after his torture and abuse. I just can’t see Sam Winchester forgiving that kind of treatment. HOWEVER…

Something that always interests me with the brothers came to play in 12x14 with Dean’s “pick a side!” that I want to mention, we have discussed it before as well in the latter part of season 11. Dean is the emotional character. He wears his heart on his sleeve no matter how much he tries to bottle up his feelings and his emotions tend to control his decisions and actions. This is extremely evident in his interactions with Cas through the entire series. Season 6 is a great example of Dean not believing his own eyes thanks to his emotions getting in the way and Season 8 also plays on this concept. The latter half of season 11 is glorious for this reason, showing Dean’s anguish over Cas’s possession by Lucifer.

Now, we are seeing this again with Mary. Dean is overly emotional, and as I have mentioned before, is struggling to deal with his idealised version of his mother being ripped off of her pedestal. He is struggling to accept the real Mary into his life.

Sam however, is completely different to Dean. He internalises his emotions so much that it is sometimes hard for the audience to understand him. This ‘playing the middle ground’ all the time isn’t Sam wanting to keep on everyones good side, as Dean implies, its him trying to remain objective about each situation as they crop up. He is also clearly hurt by Mary��s betrayal, but he shows it differently. Sam is incredibly unselfish in how he puts his own needs and own emotions aside for the greater good literally ALL THE TIME (except for in season 10 but then everyone’s characterisations were destroyed in season 10)  Sam didn’t have the memories of a perfect mother that Dean had for Mary to subvert. He isn’t ruled by his emotions either. He is the far more logical brother, hence his decision to work with the BMOL. Sam is more emotionally intelligent than Dean, he is able to put aside his own feelings to see the bigger picture. This was clear in season 6, it was clear in season 11, and it is clear now, because between the two of them, it is Sam who has far more of a reason to hate the BMOL than Dean does. But Sam gets to see what a shambles their operation really is. They NEED his help, because without it, innocent people may get hurt. I don’t think that Sam planned to infiltrate them to destroy them at all, I think he planned to make them BETTER and to bring them around to his way of thinking.

That topic leads me onto my next point from 12x14:

The British Men of Letters

In 12x14 we were shown just how poor the American operation was for the Brits, Mick clearly means well, but he isn’t doing so great when it comes to the big guns. Yes they may have been able to wipe out most of the vamps in the Midwest region, but that caught the eye of the Alpha vamp which lead to the death of over half his team. The majority of their success came from Ketch and Mary, but after this episode Ketch seems like a loose canon compared to the rest of them.

I think Mick will come around easily to Sam’s way of thinking, that they could even be friends and work together well. Mick may not have any field experience but he is motivated by a desire to do good. Unlike Ketch. When Sam finally realises just how black and white the BMOL currently are, Mick will be the first person he is able to convert. Ketch will become a problem.

12x14 went out of its way to show us how awful Ketch is, that scene of blatant sexism towards his female colleague was just the start. When he beat up that vamp girl it was difficult to watch, filmed in a way that the audience was clearly supposed to recognise how wrong it was. Especially since we never see the vamp girl being a monster, or hurting anyone. The entire episode she just seems scared and frail. This was done on purpose. Ketch’s treatment of her was uncalled for.

I am sure we are all joking about Ketch’s seduction of Dean, because I can still hear his moans of pleasure drinking the scotch and seriously, that was hella sexualised and kinda made me cringe. Sorry buddy, didn’t you know that Dean is taken? :P anyway, what struck me about this is that with all their flashy tech and toys and impressive monster killing stats, Ketch goes with the Scotch and tries to seduce Dean by comparing how alike they are. What intel does he have on Dean exactly? (sometimes it seems like everyone in this show knows he is in the closet except for him).

What has greatly interested me was his line “You’re a killer Dean Winchester”. This is the second time in the space of a few episodes that this has been said to Dean and I am just WAITING for the third. Because I fully expect the third time to be answered with “no, I’m not. I may be a hunter, but my first job is to save people. All people.”

I can really see it coming down to Mick and Sam, and Dean and Ketch. With Mick choosing to stand by Sam and Ketch fighting Dean. I am also very interested to see how Cas comes into all of this, since my money is still on Ketch wanting to pin him to his wall like one of those butterflies in Catrina’s box in 12x11. Ever since we saw those butterflies I got a sinking feeling in my stomach because we were saying after Ketch’s introduction to Cas in 12x09 how it looked like he wanted to put Cas on his wall like Magnus with his Supernatural zoo… then came the butterflies and urgh I just don’t see that as a coincidence.

But anyway, overall it was a good episode, I liked the return of the Alpha vamp but in a way I’m kinda annoyed that he died. Sam got the main kill which I see being an ongoing trend all of a sudden in recent episodes. Sam took out the Hellhound in 12x15,he took out the Alpha Vamp in 12x14, he completed the spell to stop the ghost in 12x13, and he killed Ramiel in 12x12. Interesting... They keep calling Dean the killer, but its Sam who is in killer mode at the moment. Where will this go? We shall have to wait and see.

Part 2 for 12x15 posting shortly.