#the main gripe of that first post i think was that they apparently made the characters more feminine (no they didn't not what i saw at leas

[ouredentogether]

seeing a post talking about how "misogynistic" tristamp was, blocking them and then seeing right under that post is a "here's how tristamp was GREAT in portraying female characters" made me giggle

[mumms-the-word]

Yet another Veilguard update with the usual good, the bad, the ugly, and the me freaking out about minor references and callbacks haha

This one is very long sorry

So since the last update I have done as much side content as possible before heading to the Hossberg Wetlands and later Weisshaupt (which I just completed last night) which included, briefly, unlocking all of the solas regrets murals

And uh WOW was that whole deep dive a doozy. I definitely should have spaced out the murals over time rather than movie-marathoned them back to back. But the things I learned about Solas…it’s insanity

In a good way

In a really horrifying way

I loved that our theories about Solas being a spirit of Wisdom first were confirmed, and I lost my mind over the fact that the first elves were spirits who gained physical bodies by taking Titan blood (aka lyrium). And the fact that Solas CREATED THE BLIGHT by essentially making the Titans Tranquil?? And that’s why Dwarves don’t dream????

Losing my mind. Solas what have you DONE.

I still ahev to process it all haha but I do have a few thoughts

So far, I wish there was more engagement with these elements and the Chant of Light. The companions react and say that these reveals basically dismantle Andrastianism but the Chant has several allegorical parallels to what, apparently, really happened. The Maker’s first children were spirits, and all that…so I kind of wish the Chantry had a bigger presence in the game with more reactivity

But that’s a post for another day. For now, I reloaded back to only 3 murals unlocked so the team only knows the story up to Solas creating the Veil. I’ll rewatch the others later.

I got worried about being locked out of stuff so I went ahead and did as much side content as I could with a couple of exceptions. Turns out, I probably didn’t need to do that and it would have made more sense narratively if I hadn’t. More on that in a minute

The Siege of Weisshaupt mission was SO GOOD!! Like…the main missions are really where this game shines, I think. I have gripes with some of the companion conversations, but in the actual story missions, the action, the intensity, all of it is so good. And I thought Ghilan’nain turning her archdemon into a many-headed hydra creature was *chefs kiss* so cool. I love fighting big/unique stuff like that!

All that said the follow up scene with the team at the table leaves…a lot to be desired

Listen, DA games pride themselves on bringing together a team of companions that players adore and fall in love with. Naturally we enjoy helping out our companions because we like them. We don’t have to be told to help them because we just generally do that…and if we don’t then, rip, suffer the consequences

So I got a bit annoyed when the scene suddenly turned to a very overt “fix our problems” narrative

I don’t know, that feels so…forced to me. Varric literally tells me I have to solve everyone’s problems. Which is like…I was going to! Because they’re my friends! But being straight up told like “hey you have to solve everyone’s problems and stop their distractions or this team isn’t going to function” is like…I’m sorry are we adults or aren’t we? Why am I being told to babysit the team? Can you guys not pursue these distractions on your own rather than wait for me to give you permission? Did we all forget that two gods are out there rampaging? That they’re strong enough to destroy a fortress that stood against the blight and various conflicts for over 900 years? That they haven’t stopped and show no signs of stopping anytime soon?

But no, by all means, tell me in very obvious terms that my job is now to reconcile all your differences before I face the gods again. That doesn’t feel very handed at all.

Let me be clear. I love to help my companion. I love the idea that you build a team that works well because you have shaped them via your leadership skills. I love the idea that your team works well because you have invested in them. That’s really the heart of any DA game—gather your team, earn their loyalty, and see how well the friends you’ve made along the way assist you in the big battles to come.

But…that scene around the kitchen table could have been so much better, so much more nuanced, and far less “Solve their problems.”

To me, that scene should have been everyone fighting, calling out everyone’s distractions and mistakes, and essentially devolving into outright arguments over the table until Rook yells at everyone to shut up. Everyone is mad, everyone is upset. And then maybe the companions are like “sorry Rook, listen, I have a lot on my mind. I’m still going to help with the Big Problem but I’m also going to pursue this Other Thing whether you like it or not.” No suggestion that it’s now your problem to solve, but a heavy hint that it might get done more quickly if you help (which also gives you room to be an ass and not help). In this scenario, everyone ends up being very disgruntled with you, but you still have your hint that you need to pursue companion questlines if you want to see their cool abilities or special items or get them to be a Hero of the Veilguard or whatever…but that’s just my opinion

Basically I wanted subtly and tension. So much more tension.

What we got instead was a couple of annoyed comments and then Emmrich being like “oh dear we’re all distracted by the things that bother us” and everyone offering up distractions that, yes, need to be resolved…but it’s very easy to be like “hey bud the Hand of Glory and the Nadas Dirthalen can wait until the gods aren’t threatening to destroy the world I think.”

It’s not the worst scene in the world, but it could have been reframed better. Either frame it as “Sorry Rook but none of these factions trust you enough to aid you in the fight, you have to prove yourself to them” (and loop in the companion questlines that way) or show your team literally unraveling because they can’t get along or agree with you—now you see the evidence of what you need to fix, and nobody has to outright tell you to “solve everyone’s distractions.” It’s just implied. Because you saw them fighting. A lot.

Like duh I knew I’d have to resolve everyone’s problems if I want them to like me or stick around! That’s just what I’ve come to expect from RPG games like this. It’s an expectation of the genre. But I don’t want to be told that’s my job now. If anything it triggers my contrarian nature and now I want to see what bad ending I get when I don’t listen to the game’s extremely heavy push for me to deal with everyone’s issues

I won’t, but I’m tempted

I just…wanted it to be better. I want see everyone bitching at each other until everyone leaves in a huff and Rook just sits at the table, head in their hands like “oh my god everyone hates me and they hate each other and we’re going to die if everyone can’t get their shit together”

Then maybe Varric sits down next to them and goes, “Hey kid, did I ever tell you about the time Hawke tried to convince a Rivaini pirate, a weird abomination, a Dalish blood mage, a stiff-necked captain of the guard, a broody elf who glowed in the dark, and a few other friends besides to all agree to fight as a team to stop a qunari invasion in Kirkwall? It worked, more or less. By the end of the night, everyone had worked together enough to end up with one dead Arishok and an entire city’s gratitude.”

Maybe Rook looks up and says, “And how’d they manage that little miracle? Without everyone trying to kill each other in the process.”

And maybe Varric smiles and shrugs. “They had their differences, trust me. Half the time you couldn’t put two of them in a room together without a fight breaking out. But they all believed in one thing. They believed in Hawke.”

Then maybe there’s a pause, as he lets Rook consider that for a moment, before he stands up and says, “It’s a good bedtime story, in any case. I’ll let you sleep on it.”

Sigh. It just would have been cool…

Now in all fairness the scene felt even clunkier because I had actively been doing side quests and helping out my friends so it was like…it felt weird to have this implication that I’m not already helping them. It makes me think I shouldn’t do any of their side quests until after the Siege of Weisshaupt but who knows

I keep pendulum swinging back and forth between moments of brilliance and moments that leave me baffled and wondering who made some of these narrative/writing calls. I don’t hate the game by any stretch of the imagination. Like I said the Siege of Weisshaupt was amazing! And I loved the callbacks to precious games! You should have seen me live reacting and screaming about codexes in the Weisshaupt library haha But it’s like whiplash when something that good is followed up by a scene that feels excessively more hamfisted in comparison.

Anyway I am very busy this weekend and dunno when I’ll get to write another update soooo if you’re following for more, hope to give you more updates in the near-ish future!

[littleprincefan]

my singular issue with The Little Prince 2015

ok now that im posting shit publicly again i Need to talk about my main gripe with the 2015 little prince movie, which is how they stripped the LP of his personality for most of the movie.

since this movie’s main emotional focus is on the older aviator befriending the little girl, the movie wants you to be sad and cry during Their emotional scenes (i.e. when they fight and the aviator goes to the hospital without the girl managing to saying goodbye), so they made the little prince’s part of the story less emotional

in the book’s story (which in this movie is portrayed by the paper stop-motion segments), we get to see the aviator slowly warming up to the little prince, being extremely annoyed by his antics, his mysteriousness and his stubbornness, yet intrigued by what the prince Does tell him, and we get to see a lot of vulnerable moments between them. his death scene, the peak of their relationship and the saddest part of the book, is also barely five minutes long, where in the book it’s like two chapters long and so much more vulnerable and emotional

one example of this is when the aviator snaps at the little prince for asking too many questions about the sheep being dangerous to the rose, and in that scene we see the little prince getting angry, accusing the aviator of not caring about anything other than what grown ups deem important, and most importantly of all, he cries.

the little prince is a very real character, a very real little boy, as strange and inhuman as he is (not being really human and all, with my hc being that hes made of stars), and what’s charming of him is how real he feels, how emotional he is, how he has flaws that any child would have, with his stubbornness being one of his most apparent flaws in my opinion. him crying at certain points of the story (specifically this scene, the garden scene and the wall and death scenes) is crucial for understanding him and how his emotions work.

now, back to the 2015 movie. in that movie, the little prince does not cry ONCE. not when he finds out his rose lied to him about being unique, not when he fights the aviator (which the movie doesnt even show), not even when he’s about to die, even if he knows only his body is going to.

hell, his emotions dont even feel that present at all. in some scenes he’s confused, in others he’s sad, and hes afraid when he first meets the snake, but it doesn’t feel as present as i wanted it to be.

i do really like having him feel like an odd apparition in the aviator’s eyes, that’s really fun, but only in certain scenes, and where that’s what the audience is Supposed to feel, like he’s not really from this earth (because he’s not). but for that, what I (now this part goes to personal opinions of how i would adapt this book. im still traumatised from twitter so i gotta clarify that) would do would be to make it clear that this is the aviators POV, like in the book, and that we as the audience don’t know what’s going on in the LPs head, only what he shows us (which is almost nothing), so his uncanny vibes are purposeful, because let’s be real a child from space that looks human but is probably Not human would be an unsettling thing.

but again, i absolutely adore this movie, i think its a great way of building onto this 80 year old story and continuing it in a way that feels modern, but my deep autistic love for this book and the parts that no one talks about of it make me very sad on how the movie utilised it. like if fucking Mr Prince shows more personality than the title character then somethings wrong.

[utilitycaster]

also like, the cast approves the official art right? the official artist does not just make changes however they please

so i understand it not being up to your taste or whatever but this is how the cast wanted it to be, so being rude to the official artist accomplishes absolutely nothing

So here’s the thing: it’s totally fine to not like the cast's decisions! I think a lot of the weirdness I feel exists and talk about frequently is that there’s this unevenness and inconsistency in who you can criticize and the content of that criticism. Like, the main reason why ship discourse is so fucking fraught is because no one ever says “I wanted these two characters to kiss and then they didn’t and I’m sad.” It has to be “This guy’s story was clearly building up to a roaring rampage of revenge and this player was clearly avoiding their backstory and was obviously burnt out on the character and this character was clearly being infantilized in the ship I didn’t like and convenient, isn’t it how almost all of this is in the passive voice and I’m not actually coming out and saying I personally simply wasn’t happy with the choices the cast made?”

What’s also super telling is that I keep seeing the exact term “yassified” with regards to Fearne (and to a lesser extent Imogen). First off, whenever I see a very specific turn of phrase repeatedly it’s always a bit of a sign of like…does the person posting this actually feel this way in their individual thoughts or are they just parroting others. But what’s far more interesting is that Friederichs has outright said she fell somewhat short of Ashley’s intentions with regards to Fearne in the initial art, and was able to better grasp the uncanny and too-bright nature of the character now that she's seen the character in action for much longer.

It’s not really about what the cast wants. It’s literally as basic as “they changed it and I don’t like change.” And to be clear that’s very human and understandable. Before going back for my grad degree I worked in a tech role that bridged the gap between developers and end users, and people will lose their shit over minor cosmetic changes in software, let me tell you - but it’s also not rational, and it doesn’t need to be justified. A big part of life is realizing that brains are to an extent wired to be sensitive to changes in their environment, but if it’s a harmless change, it’s often beneficial to take a deep breath and let it sit for a while before knee-jerk deciding you hate it.

But I think my biggest gripe is that like, we’ve just seen the immensely swollen heads unofficial fan artists get about their work. We’ve seen people come up with truly bananacrackers faux social justice reasons to defend every hack who thinks they’re making a ~*statement*~ by drawing Imogen wearing the same exact style of glasses as twenty other people. We’ve even seen unofficial fan artists claim that their ability to make work that people will pay for is in fact evidence of their validity and contributions compared to others in the fandom. And then the second a fan artist actually gets paid by the production because they liked her art enough to hire her, it’s open season, apparently.

Personally? I strongly suspect the reason why the art of female characters in the cast gets the most criticism is because the weird refusal of many fans to be normal and say ‘hey I don’t love their choice in roleplay here’ means there’s just gallons of simmering toxic resentment about the women in the cast and their characters and choices below the surface, and somehow the official artists (who have also all been women) are considered an acceptable target for this bile.

There are also people I respect who aren’t loving the art! I think that’s a completely reasonable response. But they’re not making up a zillion reasons why actually they are correct, or yapping about it in highly visible places! It's fine to dislike it - just admit this is a personal preference with nothing deep behind it and keep it out of the tags! Like, part of why I’m so fucking wild about this relatively minor thing is when I (and others) have made untagged “I’m not a fan of this choice” posts I’ve gotten a barrage of anons thinking it’s time to change my mind and how dare you the cast likes it but for the official art it’s suddenly totally cool to be a huge fucking asshole in public.

[childofaura]

Ok... I swore to myself I wasn't gonna make another negative MAWS post, that I was just gonna leave it at the Twink Slade disappointment post.

But apparently there's this trend that's been happening on Twitter, where people are trying to bring up the 2004 "The Batman" designs to try and defend the designs of the MAWS rogue gallery. And that was the territory I CANNOT let go, as someone who is a fan of Jeff Matsuda and his character designs.

SO FIRST, LET ME CLARIFY: I'm simply making ONE post about ONE factor of MAWS that irritates me. I'm not here to just sit and constantly bash on the show. I wouldn't do that, I have a personal close friend of mine who enjoys the show and I'm happy for her and I want her to enjoy the show. I have SO many gripes and reservations but I recognize those are personal.

I'll be putting this under a Read More and tagging it as Anti-MAWS so MAWS fans don't have to read/deal with this post. Probably just don't read my tags as well.

So if there's one thing that has irked me the most about MAWS, it's the redesigns and rewrites of Supes' rogue galleries. Mostly the redesigns though. MAWS took a bunch of colorful, diverse, and fantastical designs and made them monotonous, bland, and simply not fun at all. And yes, while the in-universe explanation (Being that they're all mechanically enhanced rather than freak accidents or born that way) makes sense, it still makes the villains incredibly un-appealing. EVERYONE is in boring black, white, and gray armor (aside from Parasite and while I think his physical design is neat I have issues with his character rewrite too, I'm just not here to discuss that). Everyone who had incredibly fun or creative designs was horribly washed out. Silver Banshee went from being a literal ghostly wraith to a boring motorcycle-looking chick. Livewire went from a vibrant blue lightning motif (that SHE herself created) to boring merc armor. And yes, I have issues with Slade's armor, the head was promising but the overall design has color-balancing issues.

Now let's look at the redesigns of the rogue gallery for the 2004 "The Batman" show. These are mostly drastically different from their original design counterparts, just like MAWS. But the massive difference is that most of these designs are still colorful (where it applies, obviously not to Penguin), recognizable, and push the borders of imagination; They're so ludicrous and exaggerated in their design and their physical features. Even if I was disappointed in some of the character rewrites (Like Mr. Freeze having only a small cameo to Nora in the flashback, but mainly being another selfish thug), the designs are still great. You can look at The Batman villain designs and easily recognize them because they follow the basic structure of their original designs.

Joker:

Is still in his green, purple, and orange color palette, with his trademark freakish grin. The design takes creative liberties with the spiked hair, the more athletic physique, and the actual clothing style of his outfit, but this is clearly meant to be Joker.

Mr. Freeze:

Is now essentially a cryomancer thanks to his mutation, but this is still obviously Mr. Freeze. Some kind of helmet (in this case encased in his own ice) wearing a thermal freeze suit, and his red eyes invoking the red goggles he wore in his original iteration.

Catwoman:

The design exaggerates a lot of features of the OG outfit, like the ears and the goggles (though the OG design really just has eye spaces), and uses shades of crimson and purple, but you look at the black bodysuit and the whip around her waist and she can clearly be identified.

The main argument I'm making with the 2004 Batman designs is that they're A) recognizable to their original counterparts by invoking the same color scheme and basic design points, B) Colorful and pushing the lunacy of a world full of supervillains, and C) Completely stand out from each other, no two villains look as though they're of similar origins (besides obvious pairs like Joker/Harley Quinn and the two Clayfaces, the latter which was a guy who took concentrated serum made from Ethan Bennett's Clayface DNA). The Batman designs are good because while they ARE drastically different from their original counterparts, they honor the original designs.

Whereas in the MAWS redesigns, none of the redesigns are reminiscent of their original counterparts (besides the obvious Brain and Monsieur Mallah, kind of hard to fuck that up), and lack the fantastical element that The Batman redesigns (And the original Superman show, where it applies) had.

Livewire:

Looks nothing like her original counterpart. The armored clothes, the lack of lightning motif, lack of color to her outfit (I'm not here to talk about the race-swapping), none of it is supposed to tip you off to being Livewire, especially when her character is written so drastically different. You should be able to tell who Livewire is BEFORE you see her powers.

When OG Livewire looks like this:

Silver Banshee:

Is just a regular human in drab clothing. There's some kind of attempt to give her the hint of a ghost motif with the bone legs, but then that disappears in her later costume design. Same later costume that tries to half-ass a skull motif on the helmet but it doesn't work with the helmet's angles.

When this is Silver Banshee's original design (going with a still from Batman Unlimited)

And if they wanted to stray from the whole "supernatural" aspect, they could have compromised like they did in Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay:

Which I mean I still don't like that redesign as much as Silver Banshee's OG design, but it's still recognizable and it's still cool.

The bottom line is basically this: You don't have to justify liking this new Superman show and its take on new characters. But to try and say the character designs on MAWS are like the 2004 "The Batman" cartoon redesigns is such an unequal and imbalanced comparison. The thought process for the character designs in these shows are so drastically different from each other, and the execution of said character designs aren't comparable.

[writers-in-moominvalley]

💝Snorkmaiden and Love Life💝 (pt. 2)

In which I analyze Snorkmaiden's relationship with her main love interest; Moomintroll.

Ever since I made the post rating Snorkmaiden's crushes and love interests, I tried chewing on what they exactly mean for Snorkmaiden's character, because if you look hard enough there is indeed a pattern of taste to be discerned here.

And with this, I think I could finally better conclude on what the real wedge between Moomintroll and Snorkmaiden is.

When people talk about Moomintroll and Snorkmaiden's relationship they only talk about Moomintroll's gripes about the relationship, that his genuine interests lie elsewhere (Snufkin, "obviously") and he needs to get out of it purely on that. But, especially in the comics, this is a far more complex issue than a boy crushing on his best friend and a girl trying too hard to make the ship work, because this is a cyclical on-and-off relationship that withstands all else to an unhealthy degree, and the root of which is a fundamental incompatibility of desires and stubbornness.

Moomins on the Riviera is the third episode of the comic strip, and the first one in which this dynamic is established; Snorkmaiden falls for a guy, Moomintroll gets violently jealous and does anything in his power to get her back, Snorkmaiden returns to his arms.

But here's the important question: Why did Snorkmaiden date Clark of all people instead of sharing her ventures with her current boyfriend?

That's exactly where the fundamental disagreement lies, Moomintroll is a homebody like Moominmamma who doesn't take a particular liking to socializing in an unfamiliar environment, Snorkmaiden and Moominpappa do. And here's where the parallels between Snorkmin and the Moominparents are drawn, both of which are relationships between an outgoing extrovert and a tagalong who is very comfortable at home.

And this is a point I've seen some people make about Snorkmin — that they're merely trying to copy the Moominparents for the Perfect Heteronormative Relationship that's expected of them, but it isn't that they look to the parents for example in the slightest, not even a reference to the idea, no direct copying of action or sentiment, no, if it was the case then it would've been an easy joke to make for the comics but it never was made. It's actually quite the opposite:

They ARE natural parallels of the Moominparents, but Snorkmin fails where the Moominparents don't. Moominpappa's romantic interest has only ever belonged to Moominmamma, Snorkmaiden's doesn't. Moominmamma is a very patient and thoughtful person, Moomintroll isn't.

The Moominparents have compromise and don't cross their lines, Snorkmin lacks it and they do. That's the fundamental failure of Snorkmaiden and Moomintroll.

Another crack in the foundation is their conflict of interest about what they get from the relationship. Remember when I mentioned the pattern you can see with Snorkmaiden's love interests? All of them seem like severely different types of people to fall for, but they do have something that Snorkmaiden apparently wants:

They all provide novelty and/or intellectual stimulation. Clark came packaged with the new and exciting lifestyle of the Riviera, the Pirates were a fun and novel kind of danger, Mr. Brisk was a talented sportsman well-versed in the then-foreign land of winter, the Fillyjonk was packaged with following the Prophet's teachings of a new life, the Nobleman came with exploring the 16th century which she found terribly romantic, the Revolutionary was an intellectual and good writer, the Accountant Fillyjonk had a passion for accountancy, the Poet wrote poems and thusly had a way with words, and Dr. Hatter was a psychiatrist with a strange sort of exoticism in his work.

What does this mean for Snorkmaiden? Given her almost direct parallel with Moominpappa, the answer would be obvious; she wants to experience new things and new perspectives, and she finds a connection with men to be the safe and fun way to do it. Moominpappa expands his horizons by leaping at opportunities for adventure while Snorkmaiden takes the subtle route by forming relationships with people that could guide her through those horizons.

(….. iiiit just so happens that she didn't have a discussion with Moomintroll to establish that their relationship is open. But hypocrite that she is, she also gets mad at HIM for falling in love with someone else)

And the reasons these relationships fall apart is either because of circumstances separating Snorkmaiden from her interest or because she's grown bored/tired of them. Moomintroll didn't need to intervene with any of them, really, they would've run their course naturally.

But on the contrary, in Snorkmaiden Goes Rococo we are provided a reason as to why Snorkmaiden stays with Moomintroll: he's familiar. She knows what foods he likes and how to make them, he's willing to do the low-key things she likes like go to the beach, unlike the Revolutionary who outright dismisses and insults her for such things. So while she may want to experience new things in the great wide somewhere, she's become too comfortable with Moomintroll by the time Snorkmaiden Goes Rococo takes place, and it's how the cycle finally takes on its unbreakable effect.

On the other hand, Moomintroll is someone who is extremely comfortable with homelife, he actually isn't characterized as a thrill-seeker, even if he tries to have fun with his circumstances as much as he can. In Tove's run, the only other person Moomintroll falls for is the leading lady of a circus, La Goona, who is an incredibly gorgeous woman and also a vamp, the latter of which is the main point of her character. Moomintroll REVELS in falling with her, in fact, very much to Snorkmaiden's dismay (although he does ask her about the situation and she pretends not to care a little too well).

What does this say about Moomintroll? He… likes pretty women. It is in fact the reason why he was interested in Snorkmaiden in the first place, for him it was infatuation at first sight and he hasn't been able to let go of it since.

His possessiveness of Snorkmaiden is partially inheritance from of father's fragile masculinity, but where Moominpappa's manifests in his insecurity as a husband and father, Moomintroll's manifests in his domineering and violent jealousy towards Snorkmaiden's love interests. So rather than communicating with his girlfriend like a rational person, he challenges the new interests by sabotaging them in direct confrontations or other dishonorable means.

Snorkmaiden may find this violence attractive (she finds it terribly exciting in general, multiple times, even outside of romantic contexts) for the short term, but it only returns both of them to their purgatory-esque dissatisfaction once the romantic euphoria wears off.

Moomintroll is stubborn in that he is unwilling to accept change in the status quo, to accept Snorkmaiden's apparent disinterest in him.

Snorkmaiden is stubborn in that she tries to do the same thing over and over with complete disregard or even ignorance of Moomintroll's reaction.

And this stubbornness keeps perpetuating the cycle yet again.

This is a relationship where both of them are at fault, their total lack of communication and commitment leaves the same bitter taste in eachother's mouths but unable to separate due to their familiarity.

This is a comic strip and thus everything is set up to return to the status quo at the end of each episode so that the new one may begin, but there is a distinct lack of fans truly reading their relationship outside of the lens of Moomintroll's frankly sparing queer coding in the strip. Snorkmaiden also has her own unfulfilled desires due to Moomintroll, they may not be pertaining to a girl but Moomintroll is stuck to her arm as she is stuck to his.

It's a hodgepodge of gendered expectations, unmet desires, lack of communication and plain stubbornness from both parties.

They have their genuinely sweet moments but they work so much better without the expectation of romance in the way, they are far better off as friends.

(Rest in peace book and Brigands Snorkmin you were incredibly cute before The Things happened)

[deafeninggardenerpanda]

have u finished extra mode and true arena i think that solves most of ur gripes with the ending of magolor epilogue

just be sure to always read the new 120 energy sphere dialogue for both main and extra mode i think it makes more sense that way

i did finish everything! ive read all of the lore in the game actually. actually the reason why i havent made another follow up post on everything is because im wildly overwhelmed with how much new stuff they gave us lol, but anyways since youre prompting me ill write up something right now

first of all i dont know what you mean at all with extra mode and true arena solving my gripes. i do think my general impressions were improved after taking more time to think about it, but none of that came from playing the other modes. from what i can tell neither of those "solved" any potential misconceptions i had previously, unless you mean like, him saying hes been to a lot of different worlds before in a few places, which i still dont know if that Solves anything. alas almost all gripes remain

continuing about the new stuff, magolors timeline (and this whole remake's actually) is way too fucking fuzzy to make any solid conclusions. this isnt a gripe i have im just stating this as fact. apparently some places might imply that he was from the clash universe originally instead of the other way around?? everything about and revolving around magoland is pretty dubiously canon. magoland being in the background of the first level of nutty noon (i think) despite it not being the same universe makes the entire main game dubiously canon too if you choose to think about it that hard. like im just really confused about this whole remake mostly. also if by end of true arena you meant that something was supposed to be solved by magolor soul going into a different portal than the og, i have no fucking clue what that was supposed to imply so sorry

really final thoughts on the whole thing are: great and fun as a game, had other good and interesting additions to lore regarding the ancients, but the overall mago lore im taking from this remake is:

was in clash universe At Some Point for some amount of time

magoland is in a different universe and a lot of aspects of it are dubiously canon/just hee hoo game mechanics (masks, him taking minigames from different worlds)

hes not from halcandra (doesnt entirely rule out that hes some descendent of the ancients)

had character development (nice)

anything more indepth they gave us, im keeping in the corners of my vision but mostly ignoring for now LOL i do not know what to do with any of it

[marshmallowprotection]

Seeing as VAE Saeran remains as Ray, does that mean Suit is still able to emerge?

I sincerely think this is a complicated question because the game itself does not properly explain what happens.

If you want my opinion here, I feel that Ray and Suit Saeran still exist separately. I always write the two of them Post-V’s-After-Ending with that in mind. I can't see it going any other way given what's given to me when I read through what you’re given in the Forgiveness Ending. I'll cut out a snippet here to talk about.

So, one of my main gripes with Jihyun is that he just can't bring himself to understand Ray or Suit Saeran. That happens in V Route and Ray Route. He'll disregard anything you say about Ray because he doesn't want to take the time to understand given how wrapped up he is in his own self-loathing.

As if to say, his opinion appears to be that his Saeran is Saeran no matter what. He doesn’t know why Saeran is calling himself “Ray” other than the fact that Rika tortured this new name onto him and made him horrified to hear his birth name. His persistence in this realm serves to disrespect Ray and Suit Saeran without meaning to do so. It isn't his intention hurt others but it happens regardless.

But, that’s who V is. 

He is the path paved to Hell made with good intentions. 

"Saeran wasn't the one blamed. It was ANOTHER Saeran, the one who sought love."

"The REAL Saeran is safe."

"Listen to this very moment. Then, you would feel the real you. Feel your body."

"...I'm scared to feel the real me."

There's always this back-and-forth talk about who Saeran is and who Saeran isn't. It confuses him, confounds him, and leaves him unsure of what the person looking back at him in the mirror feels. A lot of it comes from people pushing him to identify one way or the other, his autonomy over his sense of self is normally lacking. People nudge his heart to be one way or another.

Both Ray and Suit Saeran are fragile. They are terrified and afraid of the world at large. Why wouldn't they be? It hurt them again and now it's hard to believe in anything. One of them lives to protect through decimation and destruction and the other holds on to this fleeting hope that maybe it's okay to believe in something good. They fill a role in protecting their body and believe in it greatly.

They cling to those feelings and pray, praying that they survive even if it's as a weed.

This is an apparent identity crisis for Ray and Suit Saeran. But, it doesn’t help that V only calls them Saeran. I wish they would dive more into this because it doesn't have the same conclusion that it does in Ray Route. The only reason GE Saeran is able to emerge the way he does is that Ray and Suit Saeran fuse, ultimately creating GE Saeran with every part of their being.

That came from a desire to not only protect themselves but to be able to protect the person they loved together. That doesn't exactly happen in V’s Route. No, they blow up and almost die in that bomb back at Magenta knowing their first love doesn't love them the way they love them. That was mainly Ray's feelings for you, but I know Suit Saeran had to have consented to that bomb just as much as Ray did.

They were abandoned by everyone in their eyes and had nothing left but the end.

Then, V swoops in and stops that from happening. No wonder they're lost and confused! Pointedly, what makes me believe that it's not just a singular Saeran here is the fact that he keeps having "episodes" as V might call them where he thrashes and acts out saying that he will kill his twin brother. V thinks it's the elixir causing that to happen, but we all know it's a combination of drugs, abuse, manipulation, and the feelings mixed between Ray and Suit Saeran.

Suit Saeran is angrier than Ray is by this point. Ray gave up when he decided to hit the bomb switch. He wasn't happy with the world he'd been given and wanted the pain to stop. Yet, we know in his last few moments... he would've prayed that he could live happily the way he did before Mint Eye. With his brother, with V, and maybe even Rika.

I just can't see Suit Saeran getting over that contempt for others. He's the one that would set back V's "return".

Suit Saeran is the protector.

How does he know that V is going to keep up his end of the bargain? How does he know that they're not going to be pulled into something dangerous? How does he know that it's all going to work out and there's nothing to be afraid of? How does he know that Ray is going to be able to survive seeing their brother again? How does he know that it's going to be okay when the V cannot promise that? He barely has any trust for V as it is.

Even as Suit Saeran tries to heal, and tries to overcome his hatred; That's not going to stop when he is angry and confused.

If he is cornered when he is upset, it's only a matter of time before he explodes and he can't exactly control himself when that happens. His body acts without thinking and he lashes out. I can imagine what that would be like because the game won't tell us shit about it. I have to sit here and make educated guesses.

V won't let them go back because the "angry" Saeran keeps lashing out. "Angry" Saeran, my ass. It's Suit Saeran still struggling to accept this reality. He needs time and patience to get there. At least, V has given him the opportunity to handle it at his own pace. The same way Ray has if Ray is still here like I assume him to be.

I don't think we'll ever have confirmation that the two of them are together or apart, you just have to figure it out for yourself. I just can't see any of that time spent with V bringing the right direction for them to come together as it does in Ray Route. It's just a shame that we're not shown anything about Ray or Suit Saeran enough to know what happened and how they're feeling.

So, honestly, VAE Ray, VAE Saeran, or VAE Suit Saeran could all very well exist. There's no right answer given so you just gotta make one for yourself.

[little-green-lies]

I can't believe you think they're treating Choni badly this season or that they have bad storylines and especially that they painted Toni as a villain in 708 when she was simply finally granted some perspective and they tackled an issue with their own writing that always plagued Choni back in the high school days, to show how much they've matured. Their content this season is nothing short of excellent.

Okay this is the second time I'm typing this because Tumblr glitched and wouldn't post the first one. I probably typed too much but I really wanted to give you a solid answer. I will try to keep this more succint but I have a lot of thoughts on this so hopefully it posts this time.

I apparently also deleted my first paragraph so I've typed this section out three times now. I do not think they are treating Choni bad this season. My issue is and will continue to be the setting for this season. After two seasons of them not being together they've now thrown them into a situation in which they "can't" be together and that irks me. I thought when we got confirmation that they were soulmates, that maybe just maybe they'd let them be fully happy in the final season. And that is the full crux of the issue, it's the LAST season. I discuss Riverdale a lot more on my main page (which I encourage you to check out because I do speak about this a lot more in the tags of a lot of my Riverdale reblogs) but i actually just made a post stating that I think this may be Riverdale's best season. They opened this season with one of the strongest episodes I've seen in television thus far. Especially coming from a CW show. I do think this season is also shaping up to be Choni's second best season. They've had a lot of solid scenes and Vanessa and Madelaine are giving it their ALL. That being said, forgive me for hoping the last season would be spent wrapping up happy endings mixed with the usual Riverdale drama. I did not go into this season expecting SO MUCH new plot. And if it wasn't the last season, I wouldn't complain as much. That's always been my biggest gripe, it's the last season. That's all. If this was season 5 or 6 and I knew we had 7 seasons, then I would have nothing to say. Because yes, it's given us some really good content. I just don't want it for the finale. They could've tackled homophobia back when Kevin came out to his dad or when Cheryl came out to Toni. I don't want to see my favorite character forced back into the closet because they decided to set us in one of the worst eras in American history.

Now for my villain comment. I stand by that. I do think that scene framed Toni in a really bad light and here's why: Everything she said was valid and yes, it's an issue I've been wanting them to tackle for YEARS. What she said is not what made her the villain. It was the way they framed the scene that I knew would be misconstrued by the people that watch this show and always have a bone to pick about whatever she says or does. Up until that scene, we were led to believe that Toni's biggest issue with Choni is that she lost herself. But all they show that as, is she's given up writing for cheer. Okay fine, drop cheer and go back to writing. Cheryl wants to see her gf but she's not gonna stop her from doing what she loves. However, Toni breaking up with her felt out of left field to me because she's allowed to be her own person AND still date Cheryl. So I figured maybe they were setting it up for the fact that she doesn't like commitment and the other greaser got in her head about Cheryl being a rich girl too scared to come out of the closet. Also a valid reason. But that's not the scene they gave us. What they gave us was Cheryl asking if the issue was because she was white and Toni saying yes. Nothing up until that point had given us any indication THAT was the issue. What frustrated me even further was that they don't even give them room to have a discussion about it. Toni says her peace and leaves and all we get is a shot of Cheryl crying. She clearly cares about Cheryl enough to have pursued her for that long and then she drops her without even having a discussion?? And so soon after they got together? If we had gotten a scene where the difference of their skin was brought up before that (and that could've have been anything from an offhanded comment to Cheryl laughing about something someone says in their presence she didn't know was meant to be a dig) and we see that register with Toni, it wouldn't have felt off balance. Especially since her and Betty get along and she's white. Her and KEVIN get along and he's white. Kevin and Clay are dating and there seems to be no problem THERE. So they can be okay but she can't date Cheryl because of it? It just felt like after they gave us such a strong opening ep regarding race, to then have her drop that with no nuance didn't sit right with me. All of the digs against Toni that we had seen had been because she was bi or at least "queer adjacent" as far as Evelyn was concerned. The only time we see anyone being racist, is when she's dealing with the adults, never the teens. And I knew someone was gonna watch that and say "oh of course the black girl has an issue with her white gf blah blah blah". That's why I said they set her up to be the villain. Not that she was one. Purely based on how that scene was framed. It just felt like it was missing context. And who knows, maybe they filmed a scene and then cut it but either way, it felt off to me and having it not get brought up again until the Black Athena ep just left me feeling unmoored.

[anghraine]

I was re-reading an old LOTR post that quoted Aragorn's line from the book:

"Little do I resemble the figures of Elendil and Isildur as they stand carven in their majesty in the halls of Denethor. I am but the heir of Isildur, not Isildur himself."

Some things that immediately jumped to mind:

1) It turns out that Aragorn actually does look quite a lot like Elendil and Isildur, but it's only noticeable when a) he cleans up or b) he's coming into his own on a more ... spiritual yet practical level, I guess.

Significantly, when Pippin is later struck by Denethor's very Númenórean appearance in ROTK, he specifically associates it with how much Denethor's specific features resemble Aragorn's. The Appendix reiterates this; as Thorongil, Aragorn looked like Denethor's "nearest kin."

I don't think this response is completely false humility, though, because Aragorn doesn't really look like that in the specific scene where he disclaims the resemblance, and probably hasn't for a long time (and he's talking to Boromir, who does seem to be considered remarkably beautiful even by Tolkien standards). But I also doubt it's coincidence that Aragorn specifically mentions Denethor and their common ancestor, Elendil, in his response.

(It's possible that Elendil and Isildur themselves didn't look quite as majestic as their statues, but eh, it's actually a big deal that Aragorn and Denethor are so similar to each other and them, so I'm inclined to think the statues are accurate.)

2) The specific way he ties Denethor in is by referring to the throne room/hall, complete with majestic statues of the kings, as "the halls of Denethor" rather than one of the various other names it goes by. This could be strategic, since he's trying to dial down the tension in that moment; he goes out of his way to acknowledge the authority of Boromir's father and family to his face, when pretty much everyone else has acted like he's just some guy. It might also be a concession that right now, they are Denethor's halls.

It's also interesting because, when Aragorn later tries to exclude himself from Rohan's laws based on his royal stature, Háma sharply responds, "This is the house of Théoden, not of Aragorn, even were he King of Gondor in the seat of Denethor.”

Of course, the literal seat of Denethor, the chair of the Stewards, is pointedly not the royal throne, but lbr that's Númenórean sophistry that the Rohirrim don't care about. But I do think there's something interesting in the way that specific physical objects of the hall—the chair, the throne, the statues—are linked to Denethor and Aragorn and their own interrelationship.

3) Aragorn is extremely careful here and often elsewhere to not link himself to Anárion, though he is also descended from him and the tie to Anárion formed a critical part of the original formal claim made by Arvedui (though IMO Arvedui did pretty significantly misrepresent its significance under Númenórean law and tradition).

Aragorn's choice may be because of the failure of the original claim and to avoid getting caught up in legal minutia when both he and Denethor are descendants of Anárion outside the direct male line. And his ultimate presentation to Gondor as claimant makes zero mention of Anárion or Fíriel. So here's one of the first instances of that careful downplaying of the tie to Anárion.

4) Not to make literally everything about my gripes with the Jackson movies, but this is a very clear example of something the movies do a lot, which apparently was one of Christopher Tolkien's main causes of frustration—taking lines (esp dialogue) from the original novel and moving them to different characters or contexts to serve some different purpose that changes their meaning, sometimes radically.

That is very definitely the case here. Even though the full quote above, in its original context, would make zero sense for movie Aragorn, the bolded part does make it into the movies, but in a context which completely reverses its meaning.

In the book, the point of "I am but the heir of Isildur, not Isildur himself" is that Aragorn is freely acknowledging that he knows he doesn't have the spectacular majesty that Isildur did and he is only Isildur's heir. In the films, the line shifts to Arwen IIRC, and is re-contextualized as comfort for Aragorn that he isn't doomed to being a morally weak fuck-up like movie Isildur just because he's descended from him.

And honestly, while re-purposing Tolkien's lines doesn't always bother me, re-purposing them to mean exactly the opposite from the original does rub me the wrong way, ngl, esp given how difficult it's been to even talk about Isildur for the last ... uhh 20 years without everything being reduced to some movie!Isildur meme that makes zero sense for Tolkien's characters.

[heartshapedcreaturefromcriptoon]

So I guess Pennywise ain’t considered ablest even though the horror icon she’s based on, Goddamn fucking bit both of a child’s arms off and made him struggle and crawl and bleed the fuck out before devouring him and then the leper shit happened with Eddie, huh?

You know what? This post has the same energy as disfigured people unironically starting their own “I Am Not A Witch!” campaign over The Witches remake even though that movie was terrible and a slap in the face to Anjelica Huston and should never have been produced in the first place. Disregarding the fact that the source material already has it’s issues while GDT has been implementing disability in his narratives throughout his work since the start of his career but apparently people only started paying attention after he won an Oscar?

Like, do we think that this person would feel significantly dehumanized if they found out that the spawn of The Creature from The Black Lagoon also happens to be Australian and loves sports? Or if they knew about this, would they suggest Monster High as an alternative to consuming adult media?

Do we think that every single disabled person who ever threw a fit over The Shape of Water would feel significantly dehumanized by this?

I’d say 50/50.... Since I once saw a slam piece for The Shape of Water written by an adult disabled person whom unironically and in all seriousness compared Princess Ariel ( a protagonist from a G Rated Disney Film) to Elisa Esposito (a protagonist from an R-rated Adult Flim) just to argue what a twat Elisa supposedly was throughout her movie and of course how she should’ve ended up with Strickland and how Ariel was supposedly the better “Representation” out of the two women, because Ariel ended up with a human....... I think I vaguely remember how this adult disabled woman who was possibly in her 30′s or over, also openly wrote about about how she was certain Princess Ariel would be able to “Kick Elisa’s Ass” in the event of a hypothetical fight between the two fictional characters....  Because that’s a very mature and nuanced way to criticize film.  While the irony of how The Shape of Water at it’s core essentially is just an underwater retelling of Thumbelina (if we’re going to be bringing Jodie Benson into this) was basically lost on this women throughout her entire article.

Wake could be Elisa and The Amphibian Man’s own son, overall having ... a body... like that...  for as much as we know .... ^_^;

I have my gripes about the way Wake’s story was handled in that episode (since we’re dealing with Monsters it could’ve been something so entirely different even though it was more of the same; infantilization bad, blah blah... boring, safe, story only written to teach ables and that’s the main problem. Same “Special Episode” every decade. Even at Monster High where the main protagonist that started it all is the daughter of one of the most disabled coded monsters of all time and her limbs can and will friggin detach themselves from her body on a whim which is also the main focus of her character intro:

But that’s besides my point here....

Like okay, we already have a fish man in a wheelchair at Monster High: A franchise with a fandom that has already accepted Greta as a Trans Icon TM.

But God. Fucking. Forbid. God Forbid, if some little girl who also happened to have Ectrodactyly or some other limb disability were to see herself in Greta and want to play with her? That poor delusional thing would just be dehumanizing herself, now wouldn’t she?

And what if that girl also happened to be trans? Even worse!

Yeah, I need to know where all of my crippled monster lovers are at because it’s the cold takes like the above that are actually so tiring for me to have to read and listen to. Over. And Over. And Over Again.

The person who made the bad Shape of Water review is a freaking paralympian for a living. So clearly a biased jocks perspective and not a horny goth’s.

The OP above phrased what they’re saying as if they don’t enjoy horror at all. And I know that they’re are some people who interpret Monster High as an “alternative” to “Actual Horror”...

(Like dude? The original Gremlins designs already had three fingers and this is already way toned down as per usual, with Monster High Dolls? You really want a girl with a limb disability to have this potential representation be taken away? In favor of just giving Greta fingers and hands that present as more “human” or “normal”? Go buy the 2016 reboot and fuck off!)

I didn’t want the Pennywise doll in the first place because of that whole painful scene in the beginning having to watch the little boy suffer and then the whole leper scene....  I did not see the second movie, nor do I really have any desire to.

If I did buy her it would be for my mother and if I did play with her, I would have a little custom clown wheelchair built for her, keep her in it always, and then have more of her personality and accent be based around Tim Curry. 

If this offends any of you, I can assure you, I do not give a fuck.

Because reading this honestly made me want to go on ebay and pay a reseller just so Greta can finally have a home with someone who actually appreciates her. (And Gizmo too. And I don’t see any of you throwing a fit over his cute lil’ hands because who thinks like that?! No one!)

I can think of people saying it’s a racist film, because at the end of the day, like yeah, and I can definitely understand saying The Witches in general is ablest among other things, including the shitty shitty remake, even though I think that people could’ve picked a better name for their protest than a Christine O’Donnell quote...

But, I’d never thought I’d see a white person claiming that gremlin hands were actually ablest, no less on a fashion doll that’s been drastically toned down from it’s source material.

This is the same level of asinine bullshit as someone claiming that Operetta’s existence “felt ablest” to them because The Original Phantom of The Opera was disfigured... So discarding the fact that Operetta was the offspring of a literal ghost in this incarnation, I guess OP was offended by the fact that Monster High let a disfigured outcast of a man find love and fuck and then let his equally disfigured daughter attended their school.

But going on both these peoples logic, are Jackson and Holt not already considered ableist and dehumanizing because Systems exist?

Are Peri and Pearl not already considered ableist and dehumanizing because conjoined twins exist?

What they already did to Ghoulia in the reboot is a literal can of worms so we won’t go there right now.

I just thought of another thing going by this logic though: Do we feel as though Garret Sander ever felt significantly dehumanized by the Werecat or the Grady Twins because he is a twin? Of course not!

I really gotta hand it to the dipshit in the above screenshot though because they made me see this Greta doll in an entirely new light now: Not only is she a Trans Icon for Monster High, she’s also another Disabled and Disfigured Icon in Monster High.

Another thing that I noticed? Watch this everyone:

Finnegan Ryder Wake’s debut episode title ....

Gizmo’s favorite song from the Gremlin’s 2 Movie, canonically ...

I mean, I know that Finn already has a girlfriend in Gigi I guess? And I was going to suggest this as a Halloween prompt to make the wet blankets who think that Greta’s existance is an ableist hate crime even more uncomfortable and angry by drawing Finn Seducing Greta, getting to her heart through Gizmo and singing his exact favorite song, only of course replacing the words “willing” with “wheeling” .... And then just have all three of them having a private little dance party together which ends with Greta covering Finn in kisses ......But if any one did want to use my idea for an art prompt I can assure you that I wouldn’t be stopping you.

Okay, so uh .... Update.... Remember how I said that the person who made the above post made me so angry I could just pay a reseller and get it over with? Remember how I implied in my last post regarding someone else being a complete loser about Greta, how collecting was all new for someone like me and money was no object? Well, in the spirit of speaking about something not stopping us ....

Here are the pretty babies, safe at home with someone who actually loves them, taken off the hands of someone all business and no cutesy bullshit or faked Mattel purchese price markups whatsoever in item description, only actually purchased by me once completely sealed shipment box was shown to be physically in dude’s hands, pre-checked by me personally via youtube before actually placing order just to ensure said box was real and that other people were already receiving their shipments from Mattel Creatioins that quickly (it was and they were) and so my actual buy was shipped to me within 48 hours of my order with constant UPS tracking updates from ebay... Considering how I see people in these tags every other day who like to be calling these Skullector Dolls “shitty customs” and I paid little more for this Greta than I do when I find a OOAK on Etsy that I really do admire, I claim that this was a really fair exchange. Not “good” of course, but fair.

I honestly just wish the money that I paid for one of her “Customs” in this case was actually going to Rebecca Shipman herself considering how many ungrateful shits some of you have been to this woman for giving you the Skullectors series.

But why pay extra in the first place, you ask?

Well, besides fact that Greta Gremlin is worth it the first place, I’m going to paint a picture for you:

Imagine being someone who uses a wheelchair and a hand splint, and having your caregiver claim that they’re going to help you, but then all they do is hijack your own card, tilt your own computer over to their side, and then proceed to read your own credit card info out to you like as slowly as humanly possible, number by number as you’re attempting to type that in with one hand while your hands are shaking as it is already and your computer was tilted to one side for some reason and no one offering to actually help type for you. Now imagine if you’ve already flubbed up the whole “I Am Not A Robot” thing two times prior to this and realizing the irony of how the one test getting you through to payment, but one that you knew in your gut you were going to lose her on, is the one test asking you to “identity stairs”.

Now imagine how the sense of powerful irony and rage you feel, carrying around the knowledge of how you lost Greta Gremlin because you metaphorically had to climb up a pair of stairs in order to be allowed to access her .... Is tripled coming across some absolute ding bat whining about how disgusting and ableist Greta Gremlin supposedly is for being born having three fingers, exclaiming how she’s “Monster Highs 1st Ableist Doll11!!1!!1!1!!!11 n no 1 iz goin 2 caaaaaaaaaare... :’(″

When a character..... like Pennywise.... canonically exists in this universe.

This post seriously had me livid and the abled-bodied autistic 19 year old who wrote it should be ashamed of themselves, but I’m grateful that this display of absolute dingbattery from an adult teenager with a Jojo icon gave me the extra push that I needed to spite some of you ungrateful bitches before Christmas.

I really just said “fuck the stairs” and took an elevator. I already got the BeetleJuice one, retail price on Mattel Creations, first try (cause I had someone helping me type then). 

I was not going to just give up Greta after that especially not after seeing some of you guys’ appalling behavior regarding this doll.... And I know I’m definitely not as spoiled as some of you grown adult Cheapy MCcheapskates who whine about having to pay $60 while tearing apart everything about these dolls anyway when you know that it’s just Rebecca and her team who are essentially building you these gifts from scratch to be able to even afford the reboot. One of the reasons I didn’t get into Monster High as a teen is because since I refused to settle for a shitty android, I couldn’t actually afford my own iphone until I turned 25, meaning my first ever phone that I own now is the iphone SE 2020 that just came out last year, just for clarification if some of you think not having a phone in that era wouldn’t effect anything or make someone feel left out. Why buy dolls if accessing extra perks and features required a cellphone?  Why buy dolls that reminded you of how you were too poor to afford a cellphone?

I also adore the clearly campier direction these Skullector’s are going in, for the record. And I can’t understand why the rest of you mediocre foamy squirrels keep demanding Jennifer’s Body and Johnny Depp and more pale faced humanoid characters while you’re treating Rebecca Shipman like shit.

I’m as happy as ever with the results of my decision to take this extreme risk and personally I think Finn would be proud of me for choosing to take the “elevator” out of spite to get to Greta after reading That Post too.

Because posts *like that* are the reason why no one takes actual discussions about ableist microaggressions seriously.

Bite me.

[antiloreolympus]

May I ask why you dislike LO? I enjoy reading the series, and there are faults in the writing (as no series is perfect) and I have my own gripes with it, but overall I just really like the myth of Hades and Persephone.

I'll admit there were things that made me uncomfortable when I first started reading it (and they still kinda do) like Persephone being a teenager while Hades is, what - 40-60ish? The timeline (of the story taking place over the course of only a few weeks, when a Lot of stuff is going on), Hera the goddess of marriage having an affair, Demeter being an overbearing mother who financially takes advantage of her daughter, some of the flashbacks (like specifically the one where a much younger Kore meets a drunken Hades and falls on top of him while naked? And its played off as a meet cute)

But thats besides the point - I'm curious as to why you don't like LO and/or the creator of it I guess?

Also your posts are showing up in the lore Olympus tag - (and I know there's probably a seperate "anti-lo" tag but I also wouldn't be surprised if angry anons came into your inbox for spamming the tag of the webcomic they like with criticism, because apparently thats what people do on this hellsite instead of just blocking). And, of course your entitled to critique the series, but I'm sure some people are not going to be happy about that. (I say this as a person who enjoys critiquing media, like netflix's spop reboot, and have had angry anons come at me before, so stay safe out there).

Also, sorry this is so long.

Heyo! And I understand

I'll take this time to get into why I don't like each character as it's one of the reasons I don't like LO as a whole:

(Some I removed because there isn't much to say about them)

Main Characters:

• Hades - Man in his Late 30s to Early 40s actively pursuing a 'teenaged girl'.... He acknowledged that this was wrong at yet pursues her anyway? Plus, he's perfectly fine with slave labor and using his power/status to get his way. His character is also inconsistent when it comes to Minthe because one minute he can stand up for himself and the next he's terrified?

• Persephone - An overly sexualized teen who acts like a child. She also killed people but it was because of a 'feeling'. She still committed murder and yet it's framed as a "well, it's not her fault" but I'm also supposed to believe this 19-20 yr old would make a great and feared queen.

• Hera - Not only does she treat the lower class like garbage but she's also a hypocrite (the affair). Plus, she just randomly goes back on her word about Hades being a creep for no reason.

• Eros - Put a girl in some random dude's car and gave her "apology donuts" as a sorry gift 😒

Antagonists:

• Minthe - She was coded with bpd which wouldn't be a bad thing if she wasn't so demonized by the story.

• Apollo - How come this dude is one of the most prevalent people in the story and we don't get a strong motive for him until season 2? Even then, we barely know anything else about him. I get the whole "well, he did this so I don't want a backstory for him" but at least give him a solid motive. One that comes from him directly.

• Thetis - One of the sweetest people gets turned into a homewrecker for no reason. Even then, people gloss over her being verbally manipulative to Minthe.

• Leto - Also verbally manipulative to her daughter. How comes RS decided to demonize the goddess of motherhood, too? There's really no justifiable reason for that.

Others: 

• Hecate  - Also switched up about Hades and Persephone. Let's not forget her hitting Hades 3 times and him having to tell her to stop.

• Artemis - I get letting her brother in the house but Eros and Hermes? That's just inconsistency right there.

• Demeter - Got demonized for the 5973th time 😔🤚

• Aphrodite - Also rude to the lower class but it makes more sense as she's Aphrodite. Still rude af though.

• Hermes - Man got mad at Thanatos for "messing with his money" as if he didn't cover the whole thing up with Demeter      

• Hestia + Athena - Just hypocrites and the fact that they're supposed to be (aro)ace goddesses.

• Ares - He and Persephone also made out when she was 18 and I assume he was way, way older. Plus, him simping for Persephone in front of Aphrodite was an odd move.

• Hephaestus - This issue has more to do with RS's writing because how the hell did he hack Apollo's phone from Persephone's sim card alone and why is that just never explained?

• Daphne - Excusing nepotism as if Thanatos doesn't work in the same place as Persephone

Now, onto the story:

Its pacing is slow but also extremely fast for what it is. Everything (excluding flashbacks) has taken place over the course of 2-3 weeks. Persephone literally gets SA'd the day after the party. But then you have to think about how Persephone and Hades are probably going to get married like a month after their second meeting. We haven't even gotten to the trial yet and it feels like we never will with how slow everything is. LO honestly isn't made to be like a regular webtoon, it's made to be binged like a Netflix show or something. That would be fine but I can tell from interviews that it wasn't RS's intentions.

Also, RS herself? Yeah, don't really vibe with what she says a good portion of the time

I'll show some examples:

Not all of them are bad, just very weird

Besides the wonky art, she does have potential but LO doesn't really show her skill. Hopefully, she does learn from this comic though.

About the hate, I honestly don't care that much anymore as it really doesn't change much. I respond but only because I find it funny/entertaining when someone tries to tells me what to do with my own freetime.

[butwhatifidothis]

I did it! Finally fucking did it! I 100% the support log for 3H….Holy shit, that took longer than I was expecting, lol. 

(Long rant, so heads up.)

I came in thinking “Oh they finally time-locked the supports, so I don’t have to have the damn cursor mocking me every time I open the menu like in Awakening and Fates, hurr hurr”. No no no no no. At least for Awakening and Fates, it was on my dumb ass for pressing the S-support and saving when I knew I shouldn’t. First off, if they wanted us to regain supports for Byleth in NG+, why the heck are supports for characters like Edelgard, Rhea, Dorothea and Lindhart locked? I don’t mean time-locked like the post-TS supports in a regular playthrough, I mean deadass “you can’t buy this, period” locked. “Oh it’s because you haven’t advanced that far in the story yet”. I can buy post-TS supports for the other characters, what makes El and Rhea exceptions?! The only thing that would be lost is that I don’t have to replay their entire route to get their S-support twice. It’s not like there’s enough differences between Bylad and Bylass to warrant the supports being locked, none of the characters specify a specific gender in their dialogue, and as far as different models go, changing models during a cutscene is coded into the game, so that should be no issue.  

After going through the monastery option enough times, the hubworld is in this weird limbo state where it feels like it was made specifically for Byleth’s benefit (faculty training, recruiting party members, etc,) but the rest of the party seems to benefit from it instead (Instructions, Motivation points, etc). The Explore vs Battle options just don’t mix well, which feels like poor design choice. You can focus on auxiliary battles to raise your party’s level, but at the cost of potentially missing out on more party members. You can instead focus on the monastery to recruit party members, but at the cost of Byleth falling behind due to splitting activity points between recruiting and faculty training, and being in the monastery means less time grinding for levels. This isn’t as much of a problem in NG+, but if a game needs NG+ to lessen a design problem, then that’s more of a sign to me that the idea itself needed more ironing out. 

 As far as using the monastery to raise support points goes, the hubworld definitely needs a revamp. The only (good) options available are Meal Time and Choir Practice, with the latter being limited to once per week and the former making me think that the monastery must eat their own weapons to survive due to how fucking scarce food ingredients are. Getting meat and fish isn’t too big of an issue so long as you have enough money, but produce might as well be an urban legend. There were too many times where I had 60+ fish/meat, but produce was at fucking 1. I get that they wanted to be “realistic” in having seeds grow once per week, but if it’s at the cost of a gameplay element being nigh unplayable, then some more thought needs to be put into it. Sothis is a goddess of life and time, maybe her powers allow Byleth to make plants grow faster. Just something to make this section actually playable. 

The final thing I wanted to talk about when it comes to the monastery is that, for some baffling reason, it is entirely possible to lock yourself out of key events like S-supports or being able to choose CF, simply by skipping to the end of the month. I’m not sure why this is a thing. It’s not like the game was designed with speedruns in mind (I mean, it is possible to beat a route in an hour, but fuck me if I ever succeeded in that), and nothing happens like a prompt popping up that you have to explore the monastery during that month or even limiting your options to just Explore (which the game has done before). This is especially weird for the quest in getting Jeralt’s ring (how to access S-supports), since Byleth is supposed to be sad in this month, so not being able to do seminars or Byleth being undeployable during auxiliary battles would make sense. 

The option to choose CF is even worse though, because at least for Jeralt’s ring it’s a Red Quest that doesn’t allow you to finish exploring unless you complete it. For Edelgard, however? A dime-a-dozen quest prompt you can entirely look over and skip. No prompt by the game, no indication to talk to Edelgard, nothing. FFS, Rhea’s tea time quest was given more thought. At least her quest marker is a unique color. 

(End of rant…sort of) 

…So anyways, that was my experience with the game, lmao. Now you or someone else may be thinking, “nonnie, if you had this many problems completing the game, why did you bother?”, and the answer to that good question is…I’m not completely sure, lol. I know there’s more than one reason why, so bear with me here. I know part of it is due to sunk-cost fallacy (“I’m already this far into the game, I might as well fully complete it”), but I think a bigger reason is because I knew ahead of time that the routes were so similar to each other that there was little point in having a route split to begin with (except for CF, but who gives a fuck about that?). Despite all of my bitching, I do really like 3H even if I admit that it’s my least favorite FE game that I’ve played so far. I guess a part of me just wanted to like the game more despite my issues with it. 

Now that I think about it, maybe the main reason was for fear of future mainline games. People are fear to like whatever part of a game that they wish, but I do think that 3H introduced some fundamental storytelling flaws that I’d rather not see repeated in the future, with me focusing on 3 in particular: 1) The Monastery, 2) Route Splits and 3) Byleth. 

Aside from what I already talked about in regards to the monastery, if we are going to get another hubworld in the new FE title, have it to where it doesn’t conflict with how the rest of the story is presented. Is it better to simply tell us that the Western Church is xenophobic in an easily skippable side quest early on, or is it better to show us? Enemy Western Church NPCs going after foreign party members like Dedue or Petra more aggressively and calling them “animals” or the like, the map having Duscari NPCs locking themselves indoors for fear that the Western Church will persecute them, things of that nature. Is it better to tell us that there has been civil unrest in the Empire and the citizens revolting against Edelgard, or is it better to show us? Enemy Adrestian Civilian NPCs, assassins specifically going after Edelgard in a map, maybe one where a large farmland has been stripped bare. Things like that. 

I’d rather do away with the Persona-calendar/Monastery hubworld, but if they are here to stay then they need enough content in it to keep the player engaged for 20-odd chapters, because there isn’t enough content in Garreg Mach to even hold up 12 chapters. Speaking of more content, if there’s going to be another route split in the next title, then there needs to be enough differences in the routes that actually warrants having a route split. Fates already did this well in having the route split be early in the game, along with the plot and story maps of each route being different, you could even skip to the route split moment on subsequent playthroughs, so 3H’s approach in having to play the same 12 chapters 3-4 times just felt like a massive downgrade. Playing multiple routes should feel rewarding rather than tedious, is what I’m trying to say. 

Finally, and most importantly, I know that no one at IS is reading this but on the off chance that someone is - please, for the love of God, do not make another blank-slate/self insert main character like Byleth. Or at the very least, don’t have them be the focal point of the story, it’s a big reason why AM just works better than the other routes. For a game like FE, “self-insert” and “protagonist” goes as well as oil and water. Now, out of those three flaws listed, the Byleth one is what I’m hard set on. The monastery and route split flaws, my opinion might be flexible within reason, but the Byleth one…not so much, lol. If we really do get another self-insert doll for a main character, that alone is going to make the next game a hard sell for me, because seeing all the praise Byleth got (and has been getting) makes me fear that IS is going to take the wrong lesson from this and think they don’t have to put effort in making their protagonist anything resembling an actual person and their audience will still lap it up. It would be one thing if I just hated the character, but I don’t. I’m disappointed, which is even worse.

…With that said, it’s still better than whatever the heck Cap’n’Crunch is doing. Okay, rant over. For real this time.

—

I agree with a lot said here! But I do have a few disagreements, though they’re mostly my opinion than anything else lol

And this first one is probably like, extremely unpopular given how much shit I’ve seen flung at this aspect of 3H, but like… I actually really like the Monastery? Like yes, absolutely, it should have done more to not shelter the player from how bad the war is and it should change more with the world instead of being in this mostly limbo state where apparently seasons don’t real. I definitely also have those complaints, but to me, the Monastery was fine for the most part. A lot of the issues you brought up, like supports and Faculty Training and supplies for eating, weren’t a problem for me almost at all. My only real gripe is with how hard it is for Byleth to get training in Flying, Mounted and especially Heavy Armor without NG+ unlocking weapons ranks, since they don’t have access to Weekly Chores. I do believe I still managed to recruit everyone while only unlocking C in Faith on my Maddening playthrough of GD, but it certainly wasn’t easy. But I feel a lot of the problem people have with it are on subsequent playthroughs where they’re trying to do things like 100% any aspect of 3H, which yeah is gonna exacerbate the issues tenfold. Cuz like, while those three weapons ranks I mentioned are hard for Byleth to raise, on Normal mode you have unlimited auxiliary battles to help with all the other ones. 

Like, I wanted to get Claude’s Dex to the max amount right? Just cuz I felt like it. And in doing that I found out just how tedious it is to get levels once a unit gets to a certain point, just cuz while Normal Mode gives you the Retreat option that lets you keep exp so you can drop a unit down on a yellow spot and get a decent boost in exp… you can do that like, twice or thrice on a story chapter. Once if it’s auxiliary (and not the freebie one). And that’s if you even have internet. And using the greenhouse to get Ailiell Pomegranates was a pain because they weren’t really guaranteed even if I used nothing but the right seed - doing that is more consistent, but not always, and I usually only got one anyway. It was annoying! But I was also doing a specific thing that’s gonna heighten the flaws in the system that I never would have noticed - didn’t even notice - unless I did that. The flaws are still there, don’t get me wrong! The Monastery definitely still needs improvement, battles still need to be a little more streamlined for future playthrough, but the flaws can seem a bit bigger than they are once you do certain things outside of a casual playthrough, know what I mean?

But, for example, when replaying 3H on hard mode and looking to recruit everyone after my no recruitment run, I didn’t come across any dilemma over “recruitment or Byleth being good, pick one.” That was the run my Byleth was usable, in fact - my first blind run that was no recruitment (save for Shamir) had my Byleth be pretty much completely useless while literally everyone else was fine. Also never came across problems with supplies for cooking (or at least not any big enough to comment on). So like, while these (and the above stuff) can certainly be problems for players trying to do everything everything in 3H, at least from my experience I just haven’t come across them. The monastery itself definitely needed a better story implementation, but yeah. I could’ve just been lucky tho lmao

I don’t mind how they implemented trying to get on CF at all tho lol. If you’ve been playing the game like it suggests you do - supporting characters and exploring the monastery  there’s no reason for players to have missed getting on CF. If players wanted to ignore one of the biggest aspects of the game I don’t really feel that bad for them when they miss out on very achievable things. Plus, CF’s requirements are nothing in terms of FE’s madness when it comes to getting on a route. It may be more specific than any other route, but like I said, playing the game as the game tells you to would naturally land you in it (the only thing that might be a bit unfair is that I think if you talk with Edelgard at all that month you have to decide right then and there, and then the whole month is lost. Kinda ass). 

Binding Blade, for example, requires you to do specific things that few first time players would think to do in multiple, random chapters in order for you to get the best ending. With absolutely no warning as to when these chapters happen and what to do in them. And some of these requirements are not fun lmao, I’d prefer how they did it with CF than with how they’ve handled ~secret~ stuff before personally

Pretty much agree with everything else though! While 3H is actually one of my more favored games in the series, I’ll be the first to admit that its storytelling is in dire need of improvement. Having the story and lore of the game just be spat out in lore dumps and this or that NPC just isn’t that good. Or if they are going to do that, at the very least give some visuals to go along with it! Imagine how much impactful Rhea’s story would have been if it was in a visual format, like CGs and/or a cutscene. It still would be an info dump, but at least we can see for ourselves how horrific the Red Canyon was for her! And I do not want another avatar in whatever next mainline game we get, personality or not. We’ve evolved past the need for self-inserts that all the characters Just Like lmao

But thanks for sharing your thoughts!! And sorry that it took so long for me to get to answering ;w; 

[cutestpatootie]

Lets talk Love, Victor Season 2

Spoilers Ahead throughout the entire post, if you dont want Love, Victor Season 1 or 2 spoiled this post is not for you:

I made a post after Season 1 aired that harshly criticized the show for its piss poor queer representation and storytelling. I still stand by the things I said about Season 1... but Season 2?? Wow. I have to say I feel a noticeable shift in the right direction and I’m extraordinarily excited for the future of the show.

S2 shaped up to remedy a lot of the things I felt were really lacking from S1. As far as queer storytelling goes. (Note: I have gripes about the overall quality of the show but I'm not interested in fixing that). S1 proved to be a poorly written, tropey, straightwashed mess and S2 manages to make that more apparent. Now S2 is still poorly written and tropey, but my god am I so happy to see this show actually flesh out the queer main characters’ romance, drama, and story arch. We got Benji/Victor going through highs and lows, Rahim brining some desperately needed “feminine gay” energy, along with his and Victor’s budding romance, and last but not least Lake’s new potential girlfriend. Also I don't know about anyone else, but sistren... I was gooped by that. Truly did not see that coming for Lake!

Of course, there were still moments where I was like, “chile why am i watching these straighty’s be straight” but I think thats just the spirit of pride month possessing me because Victor/Benji really shined bright here. They really got a proper queer romance that felt substantial. It felt ALOT more balanced than in S1. As a result though, I feel as though it put a lot of responsibility on their storyline to do all the representing through most of the season. Fortunately Rahim came in at the perfect time to really expand on the queerness of the show. *cough* As it always should have been *cough*. His introduction really helped refocus on the core of the show: Queer people, existing in an overwhelmingly straight society, who then seek out community with other queer people. His budding romance with Victor also felt pretty welcome. Its nice to see queer people have multiple romances, and love triangles and choices to make. Options! Is it realistic? Nah, not really. Is that why its perfect for a fictional show? YES!

Lastly, I have to give Lake her own spotlight, because I am elated to see potential for bi representation. Finally. I remember how this show was marketed for S1. Since its clear they aren’t going to do that with Victor, I’m so excited to see it could happen with Lake. I just wish they didn't wait till S3 to flesh that out. 

All in all, this season MASSIVELY improves on queer storytelling than the first season. Even the side plots with each character didn’t feel like it distracted too much from the overall queerness being explored. I still have my hesitations about this show, but I’m feeling how I did with Love, Simon. I feel excited for the generation of queer kids watching this show who might grow up seeing their stories and hopes play out on screen. Might have just brought a tear to my eye

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Divide”

Hello, everyone, and welcome back! It feels good to be doing some normal RWBY-ing in this strange world of ours. First, some supplementary materials.

Number One: In response to any (valid) questions along the lines of, “Hey Clyde, it’s now been a full year since Volume 7 was airing and you still haven’t answered my ask about it. Or the ones about Volume 6… what’s up with that?” I’ve created what I hope is an informative video detailing the problem:

(I assure you, the Earth, Wind & Fire was a happy accident during the screen recording.)

Needless to say, there’s a lot and I’ve known for some time now that I will LITERALLY never get through all my asks. Which doesn’t mean I don’t want you to send future thoughts in! Just know that as we head into Volume 8 territory I’ll most likely prioritize those, as well as any Volume 7 asks that aren’t woefully out of date. But I do want everyone to know that I read all the asks I receive, appreciate them immensely, and think too much about hypothetical answers, even if I don’t have time to actually write them out 💜

Number Two: There’s a bingo board this year!

Jury’s out on whether I’ll remember to update it, but at the very least this serves as a decent glimpse into my — and others’ — expectations going into this volume.

Number Three: I’ve collected a list of things I’ve heard about Volume 8 from what seem to be reputable sources. I did this because RT is developing a tendency to talk up certain points and then fail to deliver, either because something was taken out of a volume/moved to another, or because RT apparently has radically different ideas about what including something means. So this might be handy to keep on file and ask ourselves two months from now, “Did RT actually deliver on what they promised?”

Emphasis on Ruby’s leadership and how Summer’s death has impacted her

Insight into Ren and Nora’s flaws

May Merigold will supposedly have a larger part

More information about The Long Memory (Ozpin’s cane)

Theme of the volume is that you can respect someone but that doesn’t necessarily mean you agree with them

Very short timeline (supposedly just two days)

Yang in particular is very suspicious and distrustful

I was also going to include a list of all the threads that need to be continued/wrapped up, but honestly that would have taken too large a chunk off my life. Let’s just throw out the highlights:

Are we really going to have Qrow gunning for Ironwood?

Clover is dead regardless. Press ‘F’ to pay respects

Oscar bb you got shot please acknowledge this

Ozpin bb you got done dirty please acknowledge this

Penny is a Maiden now. I feel like the fandom has been sleeping on this (myself included)

Queer baiting, queer baiting… you’re on thin ice at this point, RWBY. Just skate on over to the queer snack bar before you fall straight into the lake.  

Ren spill your deep dark secret already and it had better be something more than just ‘Oh no Nora might someday die :( ’

Salem is here so how the actual fuck is the cast surviving this?

Will Ironwood likewise survive his descent into antagonism? Yes or please yes no?

I think that’s all the biggies. I strive to keep lists like this in mind while analyzing, but honestly RWBY has a hundred moving parts that are abandoned or changed or simply retconned at the drop of a hat. So an attempt will be made.

Number Four (last one I promise!): Normal disclaimers and reminders for Recaps apply:

Please don’t fill up the already full inbox with flames. It’s still 2020. No one has time for that nonsense.

There will absolutely be typos and wonky parts because I try to get these out the same day an episode premieres. I have now been working on this for ten hours, nearly straight, and have no more energy for edits. Apologies in advance and RIP to my Saturdays.

I reserve the right to use stupid GIFs and memes at my discretion.

I strive to keep my focus on recapping/analyzing but salt tends to worm its way in… If you’re a die-hard RWBY fan with little patience for criticism, let alone (at times) snarky criticism, please proceed with caution.

No wait I lied, this is the last thing:

Okay, got that out of my system LET’S DO THIS!

We start not with the episode itself but rather Rooster Teeth’s (RT’s) strange non-promotion of it. If you follow my blog you may have caught the post where I pointed out that there was nothing on RT’s website to suggest that one of their most popular shows—if not the most popular show—was premiering today. Nothing on the main page. Nothing on the RWBY page either, not unless you count the Volume 8 poster background (easily mistaken for the Volume 7 poster) and the trailer buried all the way down past Episodes, past Merch, in the Bonus Features section along with videos like Live From Remnant and the volume intros. RT… the promotion of your feature show is not a bonus. This should be front and center! Honest to god, five minutes before the episode dropped I was checking the website for a Volume 8 section, a countdown, anything that would tell me the episode was imminent without relying on fans on tumblr to keep me in the loop. We got nada, zilch. I’m not sure whether that speaks more to RT’s iffy management of the series or simply the website’s horrible design—RIP losing RWBY on Youtube—but I was surprised when I saw the episode a few minutes after 11:00am. At that point I honestly expected to hear about a dely.

So that’s the mood I entered the premiere in, but truly? We start off strong. Things take a pretty severe nosedive later on, we’ll get to that, but I was impressed with our beginning and that probably has a lot to do with the fact that we start with our villains.

We open on a Cinderella character, Cinder, and thus I’m immediately pleased that we’re getting something about her backstory after all this time. Seven years! She appeared in episode one, folks! To say we’re overdue is an understatement. There isn’t a whole lot to go on, just a younger Cinder sadly scrubbing the floor, poised under a spotlight. What we learn, or potentially learn, is based far more in cultural knowledge than this scene. We know Cinderella’s story, which includes the abusive family, the longing for more, the eventual escape, and thus we’re able to read all of that in this image, despite the image itself not telling us any of this overtly. That means we could be wrong in our interpretation, but if we’re not it’s an easy shorthand in an already packed story.

What I’m really impressed with is the sound bridge between the scrubbing and her nails on the back of Neo’s chair. Fantastic way to confirm that this is Cinder as well as showcasing just how far she’s come. The sound of her labor has been replaced with the sound of her power and given that Cinder’s power is stolen, tied to a grimm arm, the property of a genocidal maniac… that’s messed up. It’s a Cinderella story gone wrong.

So yeah, Cinder tells Neo to head straight into the creepy, grimm infested blood cloud to see Salem and Neo is like, ‘Uh… no thank you?’ lol.

RT does a good job this episode with her expressions, ensuring we know exactly what she’s thinking despite an unwillingness/inability to speak.

Poor Neo might be in too deep, but I quite like the overall atmosphere of this opening. Say what we will about Salem’s awful characterization, at least she has style. This woman knows how to make an entrance and, piggybacking off of the Apathy, RT knows how to infuse horror elements into their fantasy. The red and purple coloring of the clouds, spiked whale teeth peeking through, bright orange in the background looking like explosions… that’s all 👌 Including the intro card.

The only thing I want to gripe about is this:

I’m sorry, why does the whale grimm have landing pads? Or something like it?? The whale otherwise works because it’s poised between the natural and the fantasy synthetic. It looks like a real grimm whale on the outside, but is sporting a throne room, a control panel, and other unnatural elements on the inside. It’s a visual indicator of Salem’s ability to control and change grimm. Now though, the additions are wrong, infringing on the line between organic and tech, the line between what helps the grimm individually (giving monkeys wings) and what just helps Salem. Every other aspect of the whale straddles that line wonderfully, adding to the creep factor, like a grimm version of the Uncanny Valley: it’s not quite a whale anymore… but landing pads? That looks ridiculous. Why does Salem even have that? How many ships are her people feasibly using? Why are there five?

Take it away, please.

Cinder waltzes in like this is a normal home visit, but Neo has an appropriate ‘What the actual fuck?’ face going on.

They approach Salem on her throne where Cinder immediately kneels, greeting her with, “My queen.” I mentioned during my trailer breakdown that I think Cinder is lying her ass off here, and I still think that based on a line we’ll get in a minute, but now at least we have a sense of how she can pull this off. A woman who started out as a (presumed) servant is going to know how to mimic subservience, even if her heart isn’t in it. Salem is very good at playing the girl who will still kneel and scrub the floor for you. She will scrub the floor, she’ll do everything you want, she’ll just be plotting her own rise to power while she does it.

There’s quite a bit of interesting cinematography in this episode, not all of it good, and I think one of the mistakes is here when we get a closeup on Salem’s mouth as she greets Cinder. A closeup like that should be reserved for more significant dialogue—“Rosebud”—and yet we get this shot again when Cinder tells Emerald to be quiet. It’s awkward and coupled with the numerous eye closeups we got in the trailer, I think RT is playing a little fast and loose with the camera. Each shot should add something to the scene, not distract from it. If you don’t have a reason for including a technique like that then leave it be.

Back to the actual dialogue though. We knew that Salem knew Cinder was alive and now it seems that she just expected her to come back? I’m slightly lost. It feels like we’re missing something here. Cinder goes off to secure the lamp, fails, nearly dies, wanders on her own for months, and then randomly shows back up on Salem’s whale doorstep, yet Salem isn’t angry at all? Did she have faith that Cinder would return when she has something to offer? Did she just not care about Cinder, considering her return an unnecessary but otherwise welcome surprise? That would make the least sense given that she holds the key to accessing Beacon’s relic… but that circles right back around to why Salem is seemingly indifferent to Cinder’s comings and goings. Surely she can’t actually believe that Cinder is loyal?

“So I trust you wouldn’t return to me empty handed,” she says. Yeah, trust means nothing in this show, Salem, didn’t you watch Volumes 6 and 7? Again, I simply don’t know. I suppose I’ll just chalk it up to confidence, that if Cinder did bail Salem knew she could track her down again. Deciphering her motivations and beliefs is a lost cause when the show continually gives us so little.

The important thing now is that Cinder does indeed have an offering and you can see that Salem is somewhat surprised at being handed the relic.

Cinder, of course, takes credit for the victory and we’re given another wonderful shot of Neo. ‘YOU took it?’

Oh, Neo. Best get out while you still can.

Tyrian appears having obviously made his way to Salem’s ship sometime between her arrival and now. The exchange is pretty standard for this group. He insults Cinder for failing and needing this victory to make amends, talks about how any win against Ironwood says more about his lack of intelligence than her skill, and Cinder… doesn’t have a whole lot of comebacks, actually. I’d say Tyrian won that verbal spar, enhanced by a better use of the camera when we get his tail looming menacingly towards Cinder and Neo.

He goes on to say that Watts was a “necessary sacrifice” so, uh… I’m just going to toss out the ask I answered yesterday. Based on our intro I’d say Watts is still significant to the volume—hacking Penny is my guess—but by the end? He could be in trouble.

(As a side note: I plan to analyze the intro next week. It’s just easier when it comes first.)

Tyrian also calls Neo “little one” which I just found absolutely hilarious. In an on brand creepy manner, that is. Not that Neo couldn’t kick his ass, but there’s something wonderfully chilling about having the serial killer use an endearment towards a potential victim, one that comments on her size while he’s looming.

In contrast, Cinder refers to Neo as a “valuable asset” and we get our third mood of the episode.

Who’s going to start a Neo reaction image collection?

It’s true enough on the surface—who wouldn’t want an ally who can turn into anyone else?—but we’re still bumping up against question of why Salem needs this. She’s immortal! She has an endless army! Magic! This scene works well with a villain who needs a skillset like Neo’s to succeed, but Salem doesn’t. RT is doing a great job writing a story thus far, just not the story we’ve previously been given. This isn’t the story they set up.

This will come back up when we reach the RWBYJNOR group. Just wait.

Before that though, the gang’s all here as Emerald, Mercury, and Hazel show up, all in new outfits.

I think I like everything except for the weird Xs on Emerald’s jacket—it’s way too distracting and frankly makes an otherwise good look ugly—and the fact that she’s showing her midriff in Atlas. Hazel doesn’t have any sleeves! Oh my god, why doesn’t anyone dress for the weather in this show?

Frankly, I found their reunion to be kind of lackluster. I mean, there was nothing wrong with it. Emerald does sound briefly excited, she does run, and it’s in character for Cinder to cut her off… it just didn’t resonate with me emotionally. I thought after two volumes of thinking she’s dead, then working through the knowledge that she’s alive, that I would feel Emerald’s shock and relief more, but I didn’t. And I’m not entirely sure why. I don’t want to level any accusations at the voice acting because frankly I know next to nothing about that skill (and from what I’ve seen it’s usually praised in the fandom), but I will say that throughout the premiere I was noticing it more than I ever have before. The lack of emotion here and some awkward deliveries later, like when Yang goes, “Ruby, there is no way Ironwood will cooperate with us” and I immediately thought, “Wow, that came out stilted.” These observations stick with me because, as said, voice acting usually isn’t on my radar. It’s not something I’ve studied or had practice analyzing. If you’d never told me that Ren or Qrow’s VA changed then after a year hiatus I literally wouldn’t notice… but there’s something about this episode that didn’t sit right. Anyone else get that sense, or was it just me?

Regardless, the arrival of our other three villains really doesn’t amount to much, though I’m happy for all the Emerald and Mercury fans who get to see them in new outfits. The focus is still on Cinder as she delivers a line indicative of her true motivations: “That power will be mine.” Yeah, she’s not loyal to Salem, she’s just power hungry. Of course, Salem immediately takes note of this and raises her hand, in another nice use of the foreground, reminding her that she hasn’t given that order.

Cinder is shocked, angry even, but quickly covers it up with her “Without you I am nothing” line. If I caught it right I think she also calls Salem “Ma’am”? Hilarious. Again, skilled at playing the servant.

Also, before I forget, it’s worth noting that almost everything from our trailer appeared in this episode. Yeah, there are a few details like Nora attacking some tech and the group on their bikes, but on the whole we’ve already seen the majority of our promo material and will likely get most of the rest next week. It makes me both interested and nervous for what another twelve episodes are going to hold.

Salem opens her whale, or opens a portal type view in it, something that gives us a long-distance look at Atlas. I don’t know what exactly is going on here, but it’s pretty so I’ll take it.

She also delivers the frankly badass line, “Just because you’re more valuable to me than a pawn does not make you a player.”

She waves them all away with perfect ‘You mean nothing to me’ attitude and we sadly leave our villains.

Sad not because I don’t love my farm boy, but because things are about to get a whole lot messier.

Oscar has made his way to a camp of civilian survivors… all of whom are just hanging out in the supposedly deadly cold. Yeah, there’s a single fire, but at least four of them aren’t anywhere near it. Three of them also aren’t wearing gloves. What was that survival rate again?

A nice if gruff dude gives Oscar soup—water?—while showing off his… badger claws? I don’t know what kind of faunus he’s supposed to be, but he feels like the sort of two second, minor character who could easily become a meme lol.

Oscar thanks him (my polite son!) and hands the bowl back after a single sip. Which is impressive because I would have assumed the guy was giving me the whole bowl and just taken it. Hell, I’ve done that even when I didn’t assume it’s all for me. A Starbucks barista once approached me with a tray and a plate of samples, I knew I was supposed to take just one, yet for some reason my hand went to take the whole goddamn plate. He had to tell me off, then I was trying to explain that I didn’t actually want or think I should have eight shots of cappuccino all to myself, I don’t even like coffee, he clearly didn’t believe me… it was awkward. So good job, Oscar. You’re less awkward than me (though that’s not saying much).

Now a question, Oscar. Darling. Brilliant boy who has been through too much: why the fuck aren’t you talking to Ozpin? This will be A Thing later when he presents a lack of time to talk as justification for keeping more secrets (we’ll get to that too…) yet here is time! You’re just sitting there for who knows how long, with plenty of privacy to hide a supposedly one-sided conversation so the Mantle citizens don’t get weirded out or suspicious. Talk to Ozpin. Our headmaster gets two lines in this episode, utterly inconsequential lines like his airship scene, lines that feel like they exist to say, “See? He’s still included in the story!” even though he absolutely is not. Two volumes of mostly silence, a perfect setup to start the reconciliation process, but we’re going to put it off again?

Instead Ruby randomly and conveniently appears. I want to know how she found him. Oscar isn’t wearing a tracker. He clearly didn’t call them because he’s surprised when Ruby shows up. He fell alllllllll the way back down to Mantle and then wandered to a random part of the slums. You’re telling me they flew over the entire city—after beginning this search thinking he was in Atlas—and somehow managed to spot him from up in the air? C’mon. I would have rather had a beginning where Oscar makes his way back to the group himself, giving him and Ozpin time to hash things out.

“Need a lift?” Ruby says, eliminating that potential. Sigh.

Oscar immediately starts beating himself up when he gets onboard, saying that he “was stupid to think the General would listen.” Nah, you were stupid to buy into Ruby’s nonsensical confidence and for telling Ironwood he’s as bad as Salem. Sorry, Oscar, but everyone is written badly these days. I will, however, say that I am THRILLED at the group’s reaction to his return. Ruby says that she’s “just glad you’re alright.” Nora has a wonderfully tender moment where she hugs him gently rather than her usual glomp.

That? That added a year to my life. Everyone else seems relieved that he’s okay too, so kudos there. After four years of Oscar being an outsider in the group, this is one of the few moments that feel like he’s 100% accepted. Really glad to see it.

Now let’s see if it sticks after they learn Ozpin is back...

They fly to the Happy Huntresses’ base and I again feel like I’ve missed something crucial. When did they team up? I mean, RWBYJNOR was working directly under Ironwood up until the last hour and Robyn ran off to fight Tyrian/Clover in the last couple episodes. When did she have time to explain her (briefly) changed allegiance and why would the Happy Huntresses trust the group without that? Did Robyn share that Blake and Yang went behind Ironwood’s back for her? Do the Huntresses instinctively trust them because they’re now wanted by the military? How did they even run into each other?

Again, I think we would have been better served to have an episode before all this. Let Oscar make his way back and let the group struggle with the magnitude of their situation on the airship, before they find new allies. Transferring directly to, “They have help and a secret base and a plan in the works!” makes me feel like I missed the real premiere last week. You know, the one where Salem unexpectedly arrived and we left the group like this.

This is where we’ve ended up though. The group is cozy in this hideout, getting info from Joanna, and my only other thought is, “Why is she giving all this exposition?”  

Shouldn’t it be May? I mean, we were told that she was going to play more of a role this volume, a promise that’s pretty important imo given her status as a (so far off screen) trans character, so why not put her in the role of mediator between the Happy Huntresses and RWBYJNR? Giving her that setup as a leader among her people as well as lots of lines would be meaningful. A trans character just existing and being a part of this fight! May could obviously still fill that role—I’m well aware that we’re only one episode in—but it just seems like a missed opportunity to me. Out of all the undeveloped Happy Huntresses, our premiere focuses on the one who has the least importance to the fandom.

As said, Joanna talks a fair bit but what it basically boils down to is trying to get everyone to the crater below Atlas. It’s apparently not safe, but it’s warm, which is what matters right now.

So… let me get this straight. You want to gather everyone into a not safe crater, by leading them through an army of grimm, so that they can wait there in case someone moves the Staff, thus dropping an entire city on top of their heads? That’s the plan? Which admittedly isn’t Joanna’s fault. This is another instance of RWBYJNOR having information that a leader does not and they should really consider speaking up about it. But of course they don’t.

Also, how long does everyone have in regards to the cold? Shouldn’t there be dead civilians by now? The time it would take to find the Happy Huntresses, team up with them, get settled in the base, and find Oscar says that things should be pretty grim right now (pardon the pun), yet every non-aura user in this city seems content to just hang out in the snow. Either the cold is deadly enough to justify moving everyone to the crater, or it’s mild enough to let everyone survive this long, not both.

After hugs are given everyone obviously wants to know what happened to Oscar. His response?

“It’s a… long story. I get the feeling there’s been a few of those tonight.”

That’s a check for the bingo card! We’re halfway through the first episode and we’ve already got another secret. Yes, this is a secret. Oscar actively chooses not to tell anyone that Ozpin is back—something Ozpin himself comments on—and then skillfully draws attention away from himself with “I get the feeling there’s been a few of those tonight.” Indeed, all eyes go to Penny. Oscar’s plight is forgotten, which is what he wanted. His justification?

Ozpin: “You’re not going to tell them?”

Oscar: “You and I aren’t done talking yet.”

Along with this look.

Oscar no. There’s so much wrong with this I don’t even know where to begin. Let’s create a list.

As said, you had plenty of time to talk to Ozpin and chose not to. Miss me with this excuse.

You are now doing to your friends exactly what you and your friends did to Ironwood, which in turn is what Ozpin did to you! I can’t believe we’ve got Oscar critically side-eyeing him when they are still—still—repeating the behavior they drove Ozpin away for.

What is there to even talk about now? Oscar didn’t punch himself/Ozpin (lol) but he did steal Jinn’s name from Ozpin in the first place. You got what you wanted, drove him away, and have been lying and keeping secrets ever since. The only thing they should be talking about involves apologizing. Any further criticism—which is what Oscar’s expression and curt reply suggests—is beyond hypocritical.

Seriously, what needs to be discussed? There’s no reason not to tell the group unless Oscar wants to talk about whether they should tell them. There’s no good ending here...

Don’t you think it would be nice to know that Ozpin is back and you’ve got super magic powers while making plans to save the entire world?

This is all especially stupid given Oscar’s “Salem wants to divide us” reminder to Ruby in a moment. Oscar, you are doing the most to divide the group right now. By not forgiving Ozpin. By refusing to work with him. By keeping him secret from everyone else.

This is bad, friends, I worry for what the rest of the volume will bring…

The story is done with Ozpin for now so I guess I will be too. The group continues filling Oscar in and we get some shots of the base, including a rather prominent poster of what I assume are two Happy Huntresses. Did they die in battle perhaps?

It’s a little strange.

Oscar: “Where’s Qrow?”

Me: “Likely still making bad decisions.”

No one knows so they just drop it. Which I kind of get, only so much you can do to find him if he’s not out on the streets like Oscar, but it still reads as kind of iffy that two nieces look down at the ground for a hot second and then move on with their plans, content to leave Qrow to whatever fate befell him. In a minute we’ll see Yang firmly take Ren’s side regarding helping the people they can in Mantle, which frankly comes out of nowhere for her. I think an easy motivation would have been Qrow. Ruby wants to save the world, Yang wants to find and save their uncle, and that just happens to align with Ren’s desire to save the civilians who need immediate grimm and cold help. Don’t get me wrong, I like that there’s finally some division between the sisters, I just wish it hadn’t come about so abruptly. Ren had setup for standing up to Ruby. Yang did not.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Joanna lists the grimm horde and no heat as the major threats to everyone. The group agrees.

Me: What about Salem?

Joanna says that this is all doubly dangerous because there’s “no more military protection.”

Me: Oh, so now you want the military?

This is all so disjointed. Even more-so when Joanna mentions that Ironwood has stopped all evacuations to Atlas, likely due to the “hard light shields” that are the only thing standing between Salem and the city. Thing is, the show never makes this connection, I just did it myself based on this scene and the one that comes later. The show presents Joanna’s line as a pure condemnation. Ironwood won’t let more evacuees in because… he’s just evil, I guess. Yet there is a justification here, namely that continuing the evacuations even while he’s stuck without Penny leaves him wide open to a Salem attack, the death of everyone currently safe, but that argument is never presented to the viewer. I don’t need people to agree with Ironwood’s perspective, I just wish that perspective was offered as an option. The show is very good about acting like RWBYJNOR’s opinion is the only justified opinion, or simply the only opinion at all.

After everything is laid out Weiss goes, “We’re never going to sleep again, I just know it.”

I could make a crack about the lack of continuity and how the group should be collapsing right now… but that was a funny line. It can stay.

What is far more of a problem is the fact that no one is talking about Salem. Okay, that’s a lie. They do talk about her, but in a roundabout way like her presence isn’t impacting every decision they make. That’s the real issue. They’re acting as if Salem isn’t here right now, like she’s off far away, maybe approaching slowly, and they’re arguing over how best to prep the world for her eventual attack. There’s no emotion here—let alone action—to reflect that the series’ Big Bad has arrived and is poised to murder them all. Literally what is this? Ruby is yelling about warning the world and, ignoring the continued question of why that’s a good thing when the world can do nothing to stop Salem and knowledge of her continually drives people to horrible acts, she has yet to acknowledge that… she’s the world? Ruby is the world in this conflict. She, Mantle, and Atlas. Salem is here for you all. Right now. You are, this instant, in the situation you want to warn others about, so why don’t you try to do something about it? Or at least acknowledge it. Ruby wants to warn the neighborhood about a potential fire while her house is actively ablaze, and the fire could have totally killed her by now but decided not to for… reasons.

“Ruby’s right,” Nora says. They have to tell the world so “they can prepare.” How? How are they supposed to prepare for this? The story cannot continue ignoring Salem’s immortality.

“Ruby’s right,” is all Blake says and I’m starting to thinks that’s why her character exists now, to agree with Ruby. It’s great that she’s getting a little distance from Yang, but man.

As Ruby asks whether Pietro can get Amity up and running despite it not being finished (called it) we start an incredibly odd sequence of flashforwards to their individual missions. I’ve seen a lot of praise for this already and though I agree that, in theory, it’s a good way to save time, I found the actual execution to be jarring. Upon thinking back through our timeline, it became clear they were flashforwards, but while watching I thought they might be flashbacks (especially since that’s more common).

Some of the shots, like Nora’s, just look awkward when you’ve got the exact expression and pose transplanted from one scene to another, like she’s a cardboard cutout behind a green screen. To say nothing of how the flashforwards ruin any suspense (I use that word loosely) in the conversation itself. If the question is, “Will they decide to go to the military compound?” then that question is answered when we see Ruby scoping out the compound, not when the group actually decides on the course of action.

It just made an already muddled scene worse for me, so I hope this trend doesn’t continue.

And of course, Amity can be used despite all the info last volume claiming that it wasn’t finished. Pietro suddenly acts like it is finished and the only thing standing in their way is Ironwood providing access. If that were the case, he would have used Amity weeks or days ago like he wanted to! When was it finished? Not after Watts commented on how incomplete it was. When did they get back the resources they needed from Robyn? It’s as ridiculous and retcon-y as I thought it would be.

Yang points out that Ironwood will never listen to them and Ruby counters that “he doesn’t have to.” They’ll just take the access from him. Because why wouldn’t they in a series where they’ve already stolen two airships? Stealing from the super evil military that Joanna wishes were helping them right now is just the group’s go-to plan nowadays.

Pietro isn’t sold on this plan though. He lists at least three obstacles they’d need to get through “and then… oh boy, I might need to think about this some more.” “And just to clarify,” Oscar says, “This is the easy option?” Um...no it’s not? We also know there’s an access point in Ironwood’s office so… why not go there instead? They really think the Academy is less guarded than the military base? There’s a potential justification here along the lines of, “After Neo and Cinder broke into his office Ironwood will have the place on high alert,” but unless I missed it the group doesn’t assume anything like that. They just listen to Pietro point out all the ways they can’t get into the military base and jump straight to that being the best option. It feels like a transparent way to create conflict for the group. We’ll just have them taking the most dangerous route despite an easy route being offered alongside it. Why bother mentioning his office at all? Just have the access in the military base. Boom, done.

It’s that conflict and the fact that Ruby tends to hear “You can’t” and digs in her heels. You can’t go to Atlas. I’ll just steal a ship then. You can’t defeat Salem. Watch me. You can’t break into this base. Guess what I’m doing! She’s dangerous in her fairy tale, meta-driven insistence that everything will turn out her way because she wants it to.

Speaking of, we finally—FINALLY—get someone challenging Ruby. Sort of. Not actually but it’s the closest we’ve ever gotten:

Yang: “Ruby, when we came here we said we’d follow your lead… but things haven’t exactly worked out.”

Now, there are two things to take away from this moment. The first is how utterly shocked Ruby and the others are. I mean, take a look at these expressions.

Ruby straight up can’t believe what she’s hearing. Weiss put her hand to her mouth like this is the most dramatic thing to ever happen to her. Oscar looks down in a ‘Yeah, I agree but please don’t look at me and make me admit that’ way. And Nora looks indifferent in the screenshot but animated she goes sort of stern, likely pissed that Yang would dare say that given her own agreement with Ruby. This not only reiterates that Yang’s challenge came out of nowhere—seriously, how did we move from following Ruby no matter what to this? Last volume she asked a single question along the lines of, ‘You sure?’ and when Ruby said ‘Yes’ Yang was entirely on board—but also demonstrates that no one has EVER said no to her before. Ruby is amazed that someone would challenge her. The act of challenging Ruby is, in and of itself, shocking. This group has gotten so used to following Ruby blindly that the teensiest little pushback is greeted with this.

Because it is teensy. This is the second takeaway: Yang barely challenges her and that challenge leads nowhere. She doesn’t accuse Ruby of anything, she doesn’t question her continued authority, she just broadly implies that things could be better. We followed you, now things are bad, take from that what you will. It’s incredibly mild as far as criticism goes, making the shock all the more, well, shocking, but it also amounts to—wait for it—nothing! Because Yang didn’t truly challenge Ruby’s leadership. She’s still in charge, she’s still calling the shots, and they’re still listening to her. We might have gotten some change if this division had been allowed to play out, but instead Jaune comes in with a, “Let’s go for both!” solution. It let’s both groups get what they want which, in turn, releases them from the need to grapple with whether they’ll listen to Ruby when she’s advocating for something they don’t agree with. We have now lost the chance to see whether, when push comes to shove, Ren and Yang will cave to Ruby’s will or stick by their own beliefs.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s more conflict than we’ve gotten in years, but that doesn’t mean it’s particularly compelling conflict. It’s good by RWBY’s standards, which doesn’t necessarily make it good. The actual issues at hand—Ruby’s dangerous arrogance, the group’s loyalty, her choices up until now—are just swept under the rug. For all the visuals we get insisting that there’s this great divide in the group… there’s really not. Not in any way that matters.

Also, Ruby is an idiot. Okay, that was mean, but she really is in this scene. She’s actually not an idiot overall because she was written as wonderfully intelligent in the early volumes, but now? Lately? She makes me want to bang my head against a wall.

“But that’s how Salem got this far,” she cries. “By dividing us!”

Ruby… oh my god, Ruby. No one should have to explain to you that dividing people means turning them against each other, not literally dividing your team to complete separate tasks. This girl honestly thought that because there was this teensy disagreement and that half the team would complete Plan A while she and the other half completed Plan B, both of which notably work towards the goal of, “Protect people from Salem,” that this was somehow what Salem wanted. That is was dangerous. Honestly, it’s a scary look at her view of leadership too: If everyone doesn’t 100% agree with me and do what I say, that’s an objectively bad thing that the grimm queen wants, right? Does Ruby think that unification means following a single person (her) without question or variation? That would explain a lot...

The fact that Oscar needs to explain the difference to her is not good. It really doesn’t say great things about this version of Ruby. Though he was comparing Ironwood to Salem last volume, so really they should all be wearing dunce hats.

Penny offers to take the relic directly to Salem in exchange for her leaving the kingdom alone. I honestly didn’t expect that. If anyone took that risk I would have put my money on Ozpin (but of course, during all this talk of the women he knows best, he’s kept quiet). Oscar is again the voice of wisdom, pointing out that they have no reassurance that Salem will keep her word. At least Penny is thinking about Salem as a threat though, so kudos for that. When this plan is shot down she volunteers to get Ruby past the military security instead and, uh, she’s a little intense about it.

I’m not entirely sure what is going on with Penny. She disagreed with Winter but then seemed to come around to her point of view, enough to help anyway. They had another (stupid) disagreement about the value of individual lives, so that helps to explain why she’s teaming up with RWBYJNOR (if you ignore that Ironwood is also trying to save individual lives...). Did watching Fria die shake her up? Is it being the Winter Maiden that’s not sitting right? Does Penny have lingering feelings about the framing that haven’t shown up until now? Her status as a ‘real girl’? We’ve got a lot of reasons that could definitely explain this sudden need to fight, but we’re not told which—if any of these—is the driving force.  

We’re then given a lot of little details. Someone points out that if Salem gets the staff and “create[s] anything else” then Atlas will fall (so yeah, let’s move the people underneath it). We still don’t know what exactly the Staff does because “creation” is kind of broad and “powering a city to float” doesn’t seem to sit within that category at all. Pietro gives Yang the keys to his lab so they can get the bikes. We see the group dividing in the flashforwards, something I do like, especially since the show has gone out of its way to break up most of the usual duos. Nora in particular is pissed at Ren for his choice.

“Oh, I’m saving Mantle because I actually believe we can do this.”

#yikes. Well, I did say I wanted a conflict other than ‘Oh no, one of us might die’ and it looks like I got it. But Nora, the only reason you can do this is because the plot is in your corner: none of you are collapsing from two major fights, you didn’t lose your aura so the cold isn’t a danger, the military is barely a threat all of a sudden, Salem is helpfully hanging out in her whale instead of killing you, and the story decided that Amity can function so long as you all are the ones who get to use it. That’s why you can do this. Ren, who follows in-world logic and doesn’t want to risk a whole kingdom’s worth of lives on a pipe dream, thinks differently, oddly enough.

As they leave though Penny gets a call from Ironwood. I know precisely what the fandom is going to say here: “This evil man is just trying to use Penny to open the vault!” Of course he is. He needs it open to save everyone he can, Penny included. Plus the concept of “using” her is a double-edged sword. What do we think the group is doing right now? Using her to get past the security. Penny’s power is a tool any way you slice it. Granted, Penny volunteers to help the group, but notably here Ruby speaks for her. Penny seems torn and Ruby takes the scroll away with, “She’s not going anywhere until you change your mind about Mantle.”

Sorry, Ruby, but coming from you that sounds less like a reassurance for Penny and more like just an order for Ironwood. Remember Harriet? We’ll stop attacking you provided you do what we want. Ruby has yet to learn about compromises, let alone acknowledge that she might be wrong. How about you let Penny decide where she goes, especially since by all logic she should have a lot of loyalty to Ironwood. She knew him before she ever met you. She’s worked with him since she was rebuild post-Volume 3. Despite what Penny has said, if the story would just let her think about his actions for a hot second—making her the protector of Mantle, sticking up for her after the framing, sending her to the party, teaming her up with Ruby, etc.—she might realize that the ‘He doesn’t want me to have friends’ and ‘He just treats me like a tool’ assumptions are just that, unfounded assumptions. But no, Ruby speaks for them both because Ironwood is evil now.

“If she makes it through our defenses,” Ironwood says, “everything that follows will be on your hands.”

That’s true! Kind of like how it’s own Qrow’s hands that Clover died. When you insist on making a bad situation worse you hold responsibility when the shit hits the fan. You know though that Salem won’t get through their defenses now, somehow, so that there’s no chance RWBYJNOR will be blamed for it. Or, by that point Ironwood will be so crazed that anything coming out of his mouth is dismissed, no matter how accurate it might be.

We then transfer to the Ace Ops who are, despite what the fandom theorized for many months, clearly upset about Clover. Also pissed. Which they have every right to be. Their friend and leader was killed. Imagine for a moment that Ruby had been murdered by Tyrian with an allies’ help. Exactly what do you think the group would do? Swallow it quietly and get over it? Ha.

I’ve already seen some speculation that Clover survived due to details like showing us the bandage and his room being listed as for a “Patient,” but he looks pretty dead to me.

He got gutted through the chest and left out in the snow for who knows how long. We saw him slip away. Qrow screamed over his dead body. He’s not breathing now. If RWBY suddenly claims he survived this, I’m calling BS.

Most of the other visuals we get here were already dropped in the trailer. Winter is pretty injured from her encounter with Cinder, likely permanently based on her new outfit. Ironwood had to replace his arm—and I am calling BS on that “Losing his arm is reflective of him losing his humanity” commentary from RT. Please go read up on a couple decades worth of ableism in media and then get back to me.

We get Ironwood’s line about the light shields and, notably, a whole lot of empathy. Regardless of what he might want Penny for, he still called her with compassion. He’s watching the Ace Ops mourn their friend. He’s talking about protecting his kingdom. The first thing he says to Winter is, “Thank you, Winter. I don’t know what I would do without you.” Ironwood has a heart! It’s always on display, which makes this scene utterly ridiculous.

I literally don’t know how to respond to this. The gunshot made me jump, both because it’s a gunshot and because, again, what the fuck? I know I said that next volume RT might just have Ironwood descend into full villainy, shooting whoever he pleases now that he’s shot Oscar, but I didn’t actually expect them to do it. Because he never should have shot Oscar in the first place! I wanted the story to let Oscar grapple with it a bit and then quietly backtrack, acknowledging it as the mistake it was. The concept that Ironwood, empathetic Ironwood, rational Ironwood, always thinks before he acts Ironwood, let’s kids yell at him Ironwood, tried to team up with Robyn Ironwood, did everything Ruby wanted Ironwood, won’t kill Watts after he destroyed his arm Ironwood would shoot this guy just to shut him up is absurd. It was absurd then, it’s absurd now.

That being said, there’s a possibility he didn’t actually shoot the council member, but rather just (“just”) gave a warning shot down the hallway. I say this because the reactions to this are pretty tame. Everyone looks startled, yeah, but after the initial shot there’s nothing that I would expect if there was now a guy bleeding out on the floor. The council woman doesn’t scream. Winter doesn’t seem overly shocked. No one is running to try and help him. Basically, if Ironwood had just killed a political figure in front of six witnesses, entirely unprovoked, I would expect a bit more of a reaction than this. This feels far more like a, “Damn he’s not joking around, letting off warning shots to get people to leave him alone” not “WOW, our general just killed someone in cold blood!”

What I really hate though—beyond just assassinating his character—is how many fans think my friends and I are delusional for calling it character assassination at all. I hopped onto the RWBY tag for five minutes this morning and was bombarded with posts about how Ironwood needs to be murdered horrifically, anyone who likes him is sick, the Ironwood stans are as bad as Adam stans, you’re an idiot if you want him redeemed… because apparently the concept of a story writing a character badly doesn’t compute. I’m not here to argue that Ironwood didn’t do these awful things (regardless of whether he actually killed the guy or not). I’m not here to argue that they’re not awful. I’m just here to say that we never should have gotten these scenes in the first place, or if we were going to get them, we deserved an actual descent into murder at the drop of a hat territory. I’ve already explained extensively on this blog how early Ironwood was not accurate foreshadowing for this, and Volume 7 certainly wasn’t setup, but it looks like the majority of fans aren’t interested in examining whether any of this adds up. Which makes my job, as someone trying to examine this series somewhat objectively—in as much as that’s possible for any single viewer—as well as simply enjoy it as a show, really hard. It’s bad enough when a story keeps taking the characters you love and villainizing them, and doing that badly, but then when you turn to the community and see them rallying around the idea that you’re awful for being dissatisfied—you’re the bootlicker, you’re the blind stan, you can’t see what’s ‘really’ going on here… that sucks. For those of you happy and satisfied with Ironwood’s arc, that’s great! I’ve also seen a lot of posts hyping up the complexity of his character now. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying what we’ve been given and I’d never want to imply that just because it’s not what I wanted it’s somehow wrong. I’m honestly thrilled that after a year of worry so many people have adored our premiere, including this scene. I just wish that I could say RWBY had given me something I didn’t want in a persuasive manner and that the fandom as a whole was a bit more welcoming of differing criticisms.

Not that I didn’t already know the RWBY fandom had its flaws, but still lol.

That’s basically it for our premiere. Nice note to end on, huh? Our final scene is of Salem using the lamp to set her bloodhound grimm on the city. Why doesn’t she just go herself? What was she planning to do here in Atlas in the first place, considering that getting the relic was a surprise? Who knows. Little about this holds together. But we do end with another awesome shot, so small favors.

It’s always strange concluding a recap, but even more-so when it’s a premiere, during a historical moment in the U.S., amidst all the nonsense that is 2020. So for now I’ll just conclude with three quick things:

The updated bingo board will be listed at the end of each recap, provided I don’t forget about it lol. Today I’m checking off tone (not nearly enough freaking out about Salem), the team keeping secrets (Oscar), and major plot point dropped (Amity is suddenly finished). I could also probably check off the cold not killing civilians and getting Amity up and running, but we’ll see if any changes with those.

I’m including my Ko-Fi link at the end of recaps now. Not with any expectations. Not with anything resembling pressure. I thought long and hard over whether to include it at all—let alone mention it here—because I love doing these and never want anyone to feel like it comes with strings attached. But life is a little harder and weirder than it was last year, so I figure it can’t hurt. Feel free to pass on by and I won’t be bringing it up past this note.

Far more importantly: thank you for reading! :D

(Bonus 4. Editing this was an absolute nightmare — damn you, tumblr!  — so I apologize if anything is super wonky when I finally post.)

See you next week! 💜

[Ko-Fi]

[dukeofonions]

Duke Gets Personal

So I’ve been doing a bit of thinking lately (dangerous I know) since the last Asides and I’ve come to this conclusion: I miss enjoying this series. 

(This gets long and is just a mess of feelings and thoughts so sorry in advance)

I miss analyzing videos and the characters, I miss looking at theories and coming up with my own, I miss getting excited for future episodes. I really wanted to stop enjoying it and move on to something else, but then this flipping video dropped and I just loved it.

This is the first time I’ve just genuinely loved and enjoyed an episode since Dealing With Intrusive Thoughts, the one where I stayed up until almost 2 or 3 in the morning to watch even though I had work the next day. 

The videos that followed just didn’t really do it for me, and the whole concept of Asides didn’t help either since it’s purpose seemed to have been lost with the first episode. Heck, I hesitated to call this last one an Asides just because it feels like it should have been a main episode.

That combined with the waits (especially after Putting Others First) also killed a lot of my engagement with the series. I’ve said before that POF felt like it was set up to lead directly to the finale, only for Asides to be crammed in and forcing us to wait longer for the conclusion to that episode, and season two as a whole.

I’ve said countless times how Asides has messed with the flow of the original series, with the complete tonal whiplash that was Flirting With Social Anxiety being the follow up to POF, and how the introduction of Nico completely undid everything that happened (at least to Roman) at the end of POF by having things suddenly be happy and good between him and Thomas.

I’ve said that certain moments (like seeing Virgil having to face Thomas again after his confession) were ruined by the Asides as well since we don’t get to see them happen in the main series and tend to be, well, brushed aside.

And you know, to an extent, I still see Asides as completely unnecessary and it feels like it was thrown in at the last second because they forgot they wanted to add a love interest to the plot so had to find some way to do it without disrupting the flow of the main series but ended up doing so anyway and so far all these Asides could just be regular episodes because they were apparently necessary to have before the season finale despite Asides being a relatively new concept so why would we have to have them before the season finale unless you were planning to go this route the whole time so why bother making a “separate” series in the first place when you were just going to be telling the same story anyway???

Sorry for the run on sentence but it felt like the best way to describe my confusion.

But to summarize, the last episode clearly shows that things are being set up for the finale. Everyone is reaching their breaking point and clearly, everything is not as fine and dandy as I initially thought the series was implying. And it’s here that I get to the actual reason of this little post.

The thing is, I’ve been jumping to conclusions about the series and making judgments about it as if I have the complete picture when, that’s not even remotely true.

Like this episode clearly showed that things are being put into place, and there is more thought to the story and characters going on than I initially gave them credit for. Sure, there are things I still don’t like, but I’m starting to come to the realization that I just need to wait and see where things go before jumping to judge something I don’t even have yet.

And part of that is because I do want things to get better. Like take Virgil for instance. I hate how he’s been written lately because it feels like all his negative actions just get excused and the show never addresses how harmful some of the things he says and the solutions to dealing with him (I’m glaring at you Embarrassing Phases) aren’t actually good or healthy at all and maybe I’ll elaborate on that later. 

But my point is that I need to see these things be resolved and for them to get better. It feels like all these characters flipping hate each other right now and it’s exhausting to see them like this. I just want them to work things out and start on the road to getting better because my gosh I just want them to feel like a family again. 

And I understand that story-wise it makes sense as to why they’re all so prickly with each other but y’all, Virgil’s been mad at Patton for who-knows-what for awhile now and we still don’t have a conclusion to that and again, I think the waits are a problem when it comes to this series because things get left unresolved for months, or even years, only for an episode to finally drop and the issue is never even brought up because those characters are completely absent.

And that’s why the Asides bug me so much because they initially promised something (less angsty content that we’d get more frequently between the heavier longer episodes) that we never ended up getting and it gets treated like a joke. 

Like I understand that so far the main thing that separates Asides from Sanders Sides is that they tend to be filmed in a different format, but is that really enough to count it as a separate series when it’s existence is deemed necessary for the series you’ve already been working on for awhile now?

I dunno, I loved this episode, I genuinely did and I’ve loved seeing people pick it apart and analyze it because there’s so much to unpack with it. And just from a technical standpoint, my inner film lover was geeking out at the use of camera angles, lighting, music, all of it.

And since I loved it so much it started to make me wonder if I’ve been being too harsh on the series, and even Thomas and the team in general. Most of my thoughts have come through assumptions made, and my own personal feelings, towards Thomas and the team, and I’ve realized that yeah, I have been harsh. And honestly, a bit unfair.

I’m not saying I don’t still have my own personal issues with them all, but a lot of the things I’ve said have just been, well, assumptions. Especially in regards to how much care and planning actually goes into this series. With all the details put into this last episode, how could they not have been planning things out?

Now part of me is hesitant to let my guard down in regards to how this series will go due to a number of things. One of them being that this could probably be the last episode that Joan had any input in, and personal feelings towards them aside you couldn’t deny that they had so much passion and love for the series. And it makes me wonder if future videos will be better, worse, or even the same without them.

Another thing is, again, the waits for videos. I still don’t understand why Thomas’s content in general takes so long to make, especially the unscripted videos which are fairly simple in terms of their content, so why do they take months to come out? And with everything they’ve talked about wanting to do or are planning to do, it makes me wonder if anything will ever get done due to them not seeming to be able to find a way to make their videos faster.

Like I don’t know if it’s an issue with finding people to work on videos, or them continuing to make things more difficult than they need to be, or maybe them just not working as much as they say, or a combination of multiple things. But again, I don’t know if any of that is the case.

All we have is Thomas’s word and the end product when it does finally come out. And yeah, this last video was really good in terms of the production, but there are still some things about it that make me feel iffy about certain aspects of the series that could come in the future, but this post is already getting longer than I intended for it to be so I’m just gonna wrap things up here.

On one hand, I don’t want to get my hopes up all the way due to one video that exceeded my expectations (which I had zero expectations to begin with) when the rest of the series could end up going downhill. On the other hand, I want to let myself try and enjoy the series again and find things to love about it instead of constantly focusing on the negatives.

Negatives that, technically, aren’t even real negatives to begin with.

So what does this mean for my blog? Well like I said, I still have some issues with the series and other things that I’m not gonna push aside (I use that word a lot don’t I?) just because of one video. However, I’m going to try and stop making harsh conclusions about the series before I’ve gotten the whole picture.

And of course, my blog is still open to anyone that has their gripes with the series because that’s what it’s for. Even if we don’t agree I like to get other perspectives from people and a lot of y’all really do bring up some good points. And the last thing I’m gonna do is turn around and start saying that y’all are wrong for feeling a certain way about the series.

This is all personal here. How I’ve been thinking and feeling in regards to what I’ve been personally saying. And you know what? This could all completely change by the time the next episode finally comes out because who knows what could happen between now and then?

When you’re presented with a new perspective or new information, sometimes you’re just bound to change your own and that’s just the way it goes. 

I’m probably going to start delving into the fandom and series again. Maybe write a fic or two or just some simple analysis. I do have one passion project of mine that’s been in the works for awhile and I’m finally getting closer to making it a real thing so I’m excited about that.

But I also really wanna start branching out into other media as well. Talk about movies or shows that I like, dislike, or have some kind of connection to. Whatever it is, I just wanna start having fun again, in whatever form that takes. 

So, yeah. That’s the long and short of it. 

I am gonna make an actual post talking about the video because oh boy there’s a lot to unpack with that one. But this has been pressing on my mind quite a bit since the episode and I just needed to get my thoughts out. If y’all stuck around to this point I’m sorry for the emotional spiel, and I’m also sorry if anything I’ve ever said has made anyone feel bad or ashamed for liking the series because really, there’s a lot to love about it and I don’t want people to think they shouldn’t like it just because of what some random person thinks.

I mean heck, I love movies and shows that are considered “bad” by most and who cares? As long as it’s not my family hating on the things I love than I don’t care. 

*laughs in family issues*

Alright, gonna atually close this out now so... see y’all and hope y’all are going okay.