#the problem is that. for a seasonal job? yeah I can do anything probably. almost all of these are a smash just bc well. I Need A Job

[trifoliate-undergrowth]

the thing with applying for federal seasonal jobs in national parks or forest service is they'll put out a general application for like 50 locations and ask you the check the ones you'd be interested in working at. Not all of them will allow you to select "any" and they generally want at least your first preferences. So basically the federal government has me sitting here with maps open on another tab playing lightning round smash-or-pass with "places I would be interested in working at for 6ish months of my life" checking answers as I go.

[awritessomething]

Don’t know if you take requests but I really want a fic with Pierre where y/n is a presenter for Sky Sports or something and they start having an affair. Maybe they sleep together after his podium when his gf isn’t in the paddock and then it starts to become and regular occurrence

𝐏𝐨𝐬𝐭-𝐑𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰𝐬 | pierre gasly x fem!reader

requests

𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘆 | Pierre’s girlfriend manages to not be in the paddock for his podium. Someone else steps in to do what she should’ve done.

𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 | smut, cheating, swearing, protected sex, straight to the point, dom!pierre, sub!reader, doggystyle, slight degrading, missionary, oral m!receiving, hair pulling, no aftercare.

also yes I do take requests ty for leaving one 🫶

After a long and treacherous race in Zandvoort, Pierre managed to snag third place by 3 seconds. The Alpine team was going insane over his podium as it was the second Alpine podium of the season. He got out of the car as soon as he was free to do so and ran over to his team who were all there to congratulate him.

There wasnt much time between the moment he got out of his car and before the interview that he was about to have to do. There was a younger woman with Sky Sports who was there to work with him. Walking up to him with a smile on her face, she motioned for her cameraman to follow. Pierre turned to her and walked forwards to meet her halfway.

“Good afternoon, Pierre. It was a good race, right?” She asked with a smile. His eyes swept over her quickly, so quickly that it probably wasn’t even all that noticeable to anyone except for her.

“Yes, I mean third is always a good way to end so uh… I’m happy.” Pierre answered with a quick nod. Her eyes narrowed on him for a moment.

“That’s great. Can you tell us a bit about what you had to do?”

“Yeah.” Pierre licked his lips before telling her a bit about what had happened during the race and what he was thinking. She tilted her head slightly as she listened to him talking. Pierre stuttered for a second as he saw how she looked at him.

“Thank you. Congratulations by the way.” They finished up the interview. She glanced back at her cameraman to confirm that they weren’t filming anymore. He nodded and started to walk a bit away to give her some space.

“Did you like the race?” Pierre asked a bit more boldly now that the cameras were away.

“I did. You’re an impressive driver.” She whispered and swayed slightly.

“Thank you.” Pierre kept his voice quiet as well. They both had the same kind of idea as to what they might be doing.

“Of course. So, are you sticking around in Zandvoort for a while longer?”

“Ah, not too much longer. My girlfriend is waiting for me at home I believe.” Her brows raised, feigning surprise. She acted as if she didn’t know that Kika wasn’t there.

“She’s not here tonight?” She tried her best to sound shocked to try and fool Pierre into thinking that she didn’t arrive with these intentions.

“She is not.” He fell for what she was doing for just a moment but then he put it together.

“Too bad.” She tsked softly. “You know, if I was her, I wouldn’t miss a single race. I would want to be there for everything.” She said, shrugging. Pierre raised his brow and smirked.

“Would you be able to?” Pierre was a bit intrigued by this idea. She was a bit surprised that he was actually going along with what she was saying, but she surely wouldn’t be complaining.

“My job is to follow the races. I’m at almost all of them. It would be no problem.” She smiled up at him, a look in his eyes that he could recognize in pretty much any woman. He cleared his throat as someone called his name to go and do his other post-race duties.

“I’ve got to go.” Pierre turned to leave.

“Wait.” She called out. He turned to see her. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her card. “If you think of anything else that i might want to hear about… call me.” She handed it to him. He glanced down at it and then back at her.

“I will. See you.” Pierre held onto the card and then walked away. She watched him go before running off to go and do other interviews with other drivers.

Later that night, around nine at night or so, she was laying in her bed at her hotel. She was on her phone, just scrolling through her phone and occasionally texting a friend or two. There was a call that showed up on her screen from an unknown number. She picked up the phone and put it up to her ear.

“Hello?” She asked, a bit confused as to who would have her number.

“Room 321. Be there in five minutes.” Pierre spoke into the phone. She recognized his voice.

“Ill be there.” That was all she said and then hung up the phone. Everyone with Formula 1 was staying in one hotel. Every team, every media person, they were all in that hotel. Most of the drivers were out partying, but apparently Pierre wasn’t.

She got out of bed, slipped on her shoes and a jacket, and then walked out of her room. She put her hood over her head to hide her face and made her way to room 321. Five minutes later, she was there. Before she could even knock on the door, it was opening and she was being pulled inside.

“Anyone see you?” Pierre asked as he locked the door. She shook her head.

“No. No one.” She breathed out and looked up at Pierre with wide eyes.

“Good.” He muttered and then leaned forwards and kissed her. His stubble was rough against her face but she welcomed the sting. Her hands flew to his hair as he shoved her against the door, already reaching for the bottom of her shirt. “Jump.” He grumbled against her lips and tapped on her thighs. She did as he said and he caught her, holding her by her thighs. Her head fell back as he kissed her neck before tugging off her shirt and unclasping her bra.

“Pierre…” She moaned his name as he nibbled on the sensitive parts of her neck. Her back arched off of the door, chest pressing against his.

“Mhm..?” He hummed, not even pulling away from her for a moment as his lips moved to her breasts, taking one of her nipples into his mouth. She whined and her head fell to the side.

“Condom?”

“In my wallet. I’ll get it in a minute.” He sighed and then took her off of the door and carried her over to his bed. She laid on the bed and tugged off her pants and panties, watching as he took off his own shirt while getting the condom from his wallet.

“You were ready for this?” She teased him lightly. Pierre scoffed.

“You never know.” He smiled and went to take off his belt. She shook her head and moved forwards so she was sitting on the edge of the bed. Her hands went to his belt and she removed it for him, throwing it aside as she pushed down his pants. He stepped out of them, along with his boxers. His breath hitched as he watched her take the condom from his hands and then set it aside.

“Think you can wait for a minute?” She asked, looking up at him. Pierre shrugged. One of her hands went to his cock, stroking him a few times experimentally. His head fell back as he groaned.

He stood in front of her, hands resting on the back of her head as she took him into her mouth. Her eyes met his as she swirled her tongue around his tip before beginning to suck him off. His brows knit together as he closed his eyes. Pierre hadn’t had another woman touch him ever since he started dating his girlfriend. He forgot how good foreign touch could feel.

His hips thrusted towards her mouth and she closed her eyes as tears pricked at the corners of them. He held her head still as he began to fuck her mouth, head falling back as he did. She listened to the sounds that came from the tip of his cock hitting the back of her throat repeatedly. Her nose pressed against his abdomen as he pushed her head down as far as it could go.

With just a few more quick thrusts into her mouth, his cum spurted down her throat. She had her hands holding onto his thighs to stabilize herself as she swallowed around his cock, making him grunt from the odd sensation. Pierre pulled out of her mouth and looked down at her as she coughed.

“You swallow?” Pierre gripped her jaw and made her open her mouth. She opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue. “That’s what I thought.” He gave her cheek a gentle smack as she smiled up at him. He reached down and picked up the condom from beside where she was sitting and ripped the package open. She watched with interest in her eyes as he slid the rubber onto his cock.

He pushed her back onto the bed and then positioned himself over her. He knew he couldn’t really just ram into her, so he reached between their bodies and circled his fingers over her clit for a moment to just make sure she was ready. She gasped as she felt his tip press up against her entrance. Pierre looked into her eyes for a moment but then just decided to watch as he bullied his cock into her hole. A choked moan left her lips as she was almost about to run her hands down his back. He shook his head and pinned her wrists to the bed.

“There can’t be any proof that we did this.” He hissed. She nodded and any other thoughts left her mind as he started to slowly thrust into her. Each drag of his cock inside of her was perfect. Her walls were tight around him, molding to fit his cock perfectly. She could feel each vein, each little part of him.

Pierre pulled his hips back so he was almost pulling out of her completely, and then ramming back into her with more force until he was sure that she was ready. His hands gripped onto her hips as he leaned back. He pulled her hips flush against his. She shuddered.

His thrusts were rough and there was absolutely no sort of romanticism or friendliness in their actions. Just pure lust. Pierre had obviously done this before. The kisses that he had left on her neck had been rough, but not enough to leave any marks whatsoever. The grip he had on her hips was tight, but it was just borderline bruising. He knew how to do it just right. Her eyes rolled back into her head.

Pierre grunted with almost every thrust as he watched it knock the air from her. Her moans were muffled with one of his hands moving to cover her mouth. He wasn’t leaving any chances of them being caught and she wasn’t complaining. If anyone found out that they were having sex, both of their reputations would be destroyed. She would probably lose her job too.

They both knew the risks, but neither seemed to care as they fucked like animals in the hotel room. It must’ve been around 10 at night before the other drivers began to even start returning to the hotel. They were still going at it. His eyes met hers as he fucked himself into her still. She had lost count of how many times he had pushed her over the edge at this point. The only thing that she could see anymore was his muscles flexing in the dark room. The lights were off so that if anyone did manage to come inside, they wouldn’t be able to see what was happening.

Somehow, Pierre hadn’t managed to cum once. His stamina was evident from the long time they were able to go at it. Her cheeks were damp from the tears that had spilled from her eyes. As she was able to notice his thrusts getting a bit messier, she realized that he was nearing his climax as well.

“Fuck- I’m gonna cum.” He groaned out as his hips snapped into hers. Her legs were shaking uncontrollably around his waist. Her eyes met his again in the dark room. Pierre watched how her eyes seemed to widen slightly with each thrust, but then narrowed every time he was pulling back.

With a few more thrusts of his hips against hers, their skin met for the first time in a while. He came into the condom, she could feel the warmth inside of her. She fell over the edge for the final time that night. Pierre continued to buck forwards for a few seconds longer until they had both ridden out their orgasms.

Pierre pulled out of her and reached down, taking off the condom and tying it off before throwing it out. She watched as he did this and then walked across the room to put on a shirt and a pair of sweats. She sat up, catching her breath and running a hand through her hair. Standing up, she walked into the washroom to fix up her appearance. Pierre could be heard rummaging around in the room, opening the door to the balcony to let in some fresh air.

“See you at your next race, Pierre.” She said her goodbyes as she slipped on her clothes again. He nodded at her and then she left the room, heading back to her own.

That was how it all started.

After nearly every race for the rest of the season, they would end up in each others hotel rooms. If Kika wasn’t there, she was in his room. If she was there, he was in hers. It didn’t seem to matter anymore whether she was there or not, they were just always finding a way to be with each other.

After the final race in Abu Dhabi, Pierre found himself standing in front of her again. She had the microphone held up to him.

“Nice to see you again, Pierre. What did you think of the outcome of this last race?” She smiled at him as if their relationship was purely professional. They both hid what happened behind closed doors behind an innocent facade.

“Its not what I had hoped for, but it was a fine race. I’m excited for next season.” Pierre answered, leaning forwards slightly so he was a bit closer to the microphone.

“Of course. Are we expecting a great season from you, Mr. Gasly?” She asked, holding eye contact with him. He nodded.

“It will be a great season for all of us, yes.” He tried his best to sound humble. She laughed quietly at this.

“I’m looking forward to it.” She snickered. “I suppose I’ll see you next year. Congratulations.” The camera shut off and she turned to confirm it. The cameraman nodded as per usual and began to walk off. She raised a brow to silently confirm their plans for later on. He nodded. He walked away.

As expected, that night she found herself in his hotel room. She wasn’t too sure where Kika was, but that wasn’t her biggest worry. According to Pierre, she would be out for pretty much the whole night partying with the other WAGs.

Her face was pushed down into a pillow, muffling her screams as she gripped onto the sheets too. Pierre’s hands gripped onto her hips, pulling her to meet each thrust. He was not too happy with getting 13th on the final race of the season. She could feel that.

Pierre rammed into her from behind, gripping roughly onto her ass, watching how it moved as his hips snapped against it. One hand left her ass to move up her back and to her neck.

“Think you’re gonna be able to stay quiet?” He grunted into her ear as his hand moved into her hair, pulling it back. Her back arched and her eyes rolled back, lip trapped under her teeth. “I’m expecting an answer.” He growled.

“I- can stay quiet.” She choked out quietly. Her chest squeezed as she was fighting back her moans. Pierre nodded. His other hand also left her ass to clamp down over her mouth.

“Dont believe you.” He hummed against her neck. She was pulled back so she was pretty much sitting up straight as he fucked into her. His tip slammed up against her G-spot with nearly every thrust. Her clit throbbed and she sobbed into his hand.

If he was to let go of her hair, she was sure to collapse. That was just what he did. He released his grip on her hair and watched as she fell back onto her face, burying her face into the pillow again. His hand slipped underneath her to rub at her clit.

During their second or third time meeting up at night, Pierre had discovered that he took more pleasure in fucking her than with Kika. He wasn’t sure if it was from the roughness of which they had sex or whether it was the adrenaline that pumped through his veins from the thought of being caught, but something made it better.

His mind when he was fucking his girlfriend often just drifted back to her. He wondered how she might act.

His eyes were locked on the small of her back, watching how it twitched occasionally as he hit her g-spot. Her knuckles were white from how hard she was holding onto the sheets. He was worried for a moment that she may rip them. He didn’t know what he would do about that.

Pierre knew that he wouldn’t be able to last much longer this time. His stamina had seemed to go down over the last while. He could hardly contain himself with her.

As per usual, his thrusts got sloppier and he lost his rhythm. She could feel as he came into the condom once again. She moaned in satisfaction as it pushed her over the edge once more. After a moment of both of them riding out their highs, he pulled out of her again.

“Ill see you in a few months?” She asked as she got off of the bed, stumbling for a moment. Pierre touched her waist to help stabilize her. He didn’t need her getting hurt right then.

“I sure hope so.” Pierre muttered and then passed her the shirt that was now on the ground. She took it from him and slipped it on.

“Bye, Pierre.” She gave him a quick pat on the arm and then pulled on her pants before walking out of the door.

How was he supposed to go months without that?

[coraniaid]

#19 for person of interest and #2 for willow rosenberg

#19 ... one behind-the-scenes trivia fact I've learned somewhere and my thoughts on it.

I honestly don't really know that much trivia about Person of Interest. One thing I think I remember reading somewhere once is that the writers originally cast Amy Acker to play [a version of] Caroline Turing and only quite late in production decided on the twist that Caroline Turing was actually an alias for Root [at which point, presumably, they renamed her character, because she probably wasn't called 'Turing' before that].

Which is kind of amazing to me, if it's true: Amy Acker as Root is such a huge part of the show that's it's strange to think it almost didn't happen [and, presumably, the show itself would have gone off in an entirely different direction in Season 2 without Root: we'd have seen a lot more of Alicia Corwin for a start].

But, well, I can't find the original claim now and even if I did it probably didn't have any particularly solid proof to back it up. So maybe it's not true at all. (I think it's obvious that the writers hadn't yet cast Amy Acker as Root in Season 1's Root Cause, but that's a much less interesting claim to me).

#2 ... ...how I would have chosen to change their story from canon

Not an original take, I suppose, but to me the big problem with Willow's arc is the way that everything the show has been building up to since (at least) Becoming gets utterly derailed by the Willow-as-a-metaphorical-drug-addict subplot in Season 6. And, yeah, I can see arguments for this subplot: magic had been used as a metaphor for drug abuse before, and it does fit with Season 6's wider theme of exposing the characters to more bleakly quotidian problems like bills and dead-end jobs and (metaphorical) battles with social workers. But it just doesn't work for Willow or her arc. Willow's descent into villainy ends up being almost something that happens to her [because of bad actors like Amy or Rack or Warren] rather than something that evolves naturally from her own flaws.

And that's frustrating, because the show's already spent a lot of time setting up Willow's character flaws and how they will surely lead to tension between her and Tara and her and Buffy. We know Willow has self-image problems ["I'm not your sidekick!" she snaps at Buffy in Fear Itself], that she's afraid that people won't like her if they see the real version of her [see her dream in Restless for example], that she compensates for this by trying to help everyone and make herself useful ["I want to help", she tells Buffy in The Harvest, "I need to"].

We know Willow is prone to being jealous when other people get attention despite (in her eyes) not working as hard for it as she's had to or when they threaten to come between her and the people she loves [see: Faith in Season 3, Anya in Season 5]. We know Willow is very often unsympathetic to other people's problems if she can't personally relate to them [see ... well, many examples, but in particular Buffy in Dead Man's Party].

We know that Willow's been getting into magic to an extent that worries all the other sympathetic magically-aware people we know. We know that Willow has a strong sense of herself as a 'good person' despite the fact she often does things that are illegal or dangerous or unwise. We know that Willow is proud of her intelligence and her accomplishments and that she often ignores advice she doesn't like or lashes out at people she thinks are talking down to her [see, for example, the way she talks to Tara in their fight in Tough Love]. We know Willow has had trouble respecting other people's wishes and that her first reaction to relationships going wrong is to try to work out how she can "make" people forgive her [how she reacts to Oz discovering her with Xander in Season 3, for example].

None of this has anything to do with Willow being tricked into being a magical drug addict by a girl who used to be her pet rat. It just doesn't.

In my ideal version of Season 6, Tara still leaves Willow (for much the same reason she does in canon: Willow not respecting her boundaries, using magic to mess with her memories to 'resolve' arguments they have) and Willow still reacts terribly (and manages to de-rattify Amy). But Rack doesn't exist and more generally Amy is not at all the person she is in canon who pushes Willow to use magic more and more because she's some sort of self-destructive hedonist.

Amy should be more or less the same person she was halfway through Season 3. She shouldn't be luring Willow into drug dens [drug dens which she shouldn't even know about!]. She shouldn't suddenly be recast as a Bad Influence. She should be more or less the person she was in Gingerbread. She should be (honestly) amazed by how much better at magic Willow's gotten since high school. She should think of Willow as her friend and try to 'stand up for her' because she (thinks she) knows that Willow lets people push her around too easily. She should (unintentioally) feed Willow's ego: tell her that she's perfectly in the right and it's everyone else who's over-reacting to her growing magical strength.

And yes, maybe eventually she should start directly encouraging Willow to misuse magic (to help her 'fix' her relationship with her Dad, for example, or to get back into college despite technically not finishing high school). But it should be a gradual process. It shouldn't be something that starts fan theories about Catherine Madison somehow posessing her again. And the narrative should [and I can't stress how much it doesn't do this] care the slightest bit about Amy herself as a person, and recognize that she has gone through something awful and traumatic.

Amy's role in the plot of Season 6 should be to encourage Willow to keep telling herself she can use magic all the time whatever anyone else says because she's a good person. She should enable Willow, sure, but not intentionally. She's been a rat since she was 17; she shouldn't know things about the world she didn't know three years ago (except rat things, I guess). She shouldn't force Willow to do magic or trick her into it, because then what happens to Willow is no longer a consequence of who Willow is as a person.

You can make Amy a catalyst for Willow's continued bad behaviour without making her deliberately evil. You just need to make Willow the more active partner in their relationship. Wilow should be the one to decide to keep using magic but just keep it hidden; the one who keeps finding excuses for why she can treat people like objects and still be a good person; the one who keeps redefining where the line is everytime she steps over it. Until eventually Willow goes too far even for Amy, and she has to reckon with what she's been doing all this time.

And that makes Season 7 Willow works better too, because she's actually got something real to feel guilty about. She's not just sorry that after Tara died she reacted by temporarily going a bit crazy and having a relapse into her former addiction [and then being persuaded by some bad magical energy she absorbed into wanting to end the world]. She should be sorry about what she deliberately did to Tara (and to Amy, and to Buffy, and to Dawn, and to everyone else), not what she almost did to the world when she wasn't in her right mind.

I mean, sure, you can keep Warren killing Tara if you want [I'm not sure I would, but...]. Play up the parallels between Warren and Willow, even. Keep Willow killing him and trying to kill Jonathan and Andrew. Keep her trying to end the world, too. But the fundamental moral agency should be Willow's.

Her arc shouldn't be a temporary drug habit she's tricked into by her Bad Friend followed by going cold turkey for a bit and then relapsing after a random horrible event. She shouldn't decide to end the world because a coven of witches we've never met use Giles as a proxy for some elaborate and almost self-defeating 11-dimensional chess game (I quite like Grave, all in all, but that particular twist is infuriatingly stupid). Willow should drive her Season 6 arc by being Willow, only worse. By being the same "callous and deeply strange" Willow we know from the high school seasons, just more so, one who ignores Buffy's advice from Ted to "use [her] powers for good".

The writers shouldn't be afraid to acknowledge that Willow Rosenberg (who, to be clear, is one of my favorite characters in fiction) actually does have the capacity to be a bad person without external factors forcing her into it.

[shunin-gumis]

As Master Joe Wishes - Track 08

Seasonal Team Event - L4mps

Thank you Aca for handling this chapter!

Location: Manor - Bedroom

Joe: Don’t come any closer!

Anonymous Member A: That said, what should we do?

Anonymous Member B: What’s up with this teddy bear anyways? Seems to be a high-spec robot from what I can see. 

Anonymous Member A: There might be some worth to this thing. Let’s take it back with us.

Daniel:  Funny you guys think you can leave here in one piece.

Anonymous Member B: Huh…?! When did you appear…!

Joe: D-Daniel…!

Daniel: Thought that if anyone was going to break in, it would be from the 2nd floor’s corridor. Seems like my guess was dead-on.  So blocking this path would cause problems for you lot, yeah?

Daniel: So, if you don’t want your heads to get blown off, put your hands up. 

Anonymous Member C: Even if you’ve predicted that much, it’s quite rash to come here alone.

Daniel: So you do have back up, huh.

Anonymous Member A: Now, grab that teddy bear and let’s leave!

Anonymous Member B: He’s just an amateur. Try shooting us if you can! 

Daniel: Sorry, but I got no hesitation to shoot this gun. 

Daniel: (For now, I should aim for the guy who’s holding Joe’s foot. I’ll leave the rest of ‘em to Sammy-san and the others.) 

Anonymous Member B: Ugh… Huh? I didn’t get hit…

Daniel: Wha…

Daniel: Why does this gun shoot out tulips and cherry blossom petals?!

Anonymous Member C: Let’s leave, go go!

Netaro: I found you, Daa! So you see~ That little gun was made for parties! Did it surprise you?

Daniel: Y-Y-You Idiot!

Daniel: Ugh, my back…! Even though I started feeling better…

??: Gah!

Netaro: Mhmmm, I hear the shriek of men from downstairs! How exciting!

Location: Manor - Large Parlor

Nagi: I’m really sorry for the inconvenience….

Anonymous Member A: Don’t you think it’s a bit rude towards the manufacturer to drop an iron  on our heads?!

Anonymous Member B: Making the door knob scalding hot is a cruel and unusual punishment! I almost burned my palms! You’d better pay for my hospital bills!

Anonymous Member C: If something like this ever happened to me, I’d become traumatized enough to quit my job!!

Nagi: I never thought that the trap combo from that movie would work so beautifully here… that said, this probably would cause trouble for the movie’s production company. This was all my fault. Good kids shouldn’t try this at home. 

Daniel: Why the hell is Nagi apologizing to the hand-cuffed thieves over here?

Hiramei: Well, the booby traps he set up worked, and we successfully captured the Anonymous members that tried to get away.

Hiramei: If they had taken Joe away, this probably would have become an international issue. That Hachinoya-san is truly a life-saver for the JPN police as well as my career. 

Joe: You don’t have to apologize to these felons, Nagi!

Nagi: No, I say this is already a fine form of unjustified self-defense. Samejima-san, please apprehend me. I’ll be turning myself in.

Samejima: Eh~?

Yodaka: However, with this, the other Anonymous members will know that the “prized treasure” would equal to a teddy bear.

Samejima: That’s true. Hiramei~ Don’t neglect your duties to survey the surroundings~

Samejima: We got 3 hours left, there might be a chance that back up may come to get their revenge. 

Samejima: They don’t seem to be the kind to negotiate.

Samejima: Besides, there is no mistaking that these mobs are just underlings used to cause trouble. Their tricks are quite daft.

Hiramei: Yes, sir! I’ll also report it to the units outside!

Location: Manor - Bedroom

Ryui: …..

Toi: …..

Netaro: …..

Toi: I’m glad that Master didn’t get abducted…

Ryui: Yeah, all thanks to Hachinoya this time. 

Toi: … Ani-sama, why did you leave Master behind?

Ryui: Well, I worry about you more than anyone else in the world.

Toi: Then does that mean…

Toi: You’d prioritize me above anything else?

Ryui: Yeah. Obviously.

Toi: Then, would you listen to me if I asked you to not protect Joe-sama?

Ryui: … Yeah.

Ryui: (That’s obvious… This has always been the case.)

Toi: I see…

Toi: I’ll get something to drink.

Ryui: Hah…

Netaro: Oh~

Ryui: What do you want?

Netaro: I had a thought if I were to cook up a replica AI of you, that thought process of yours would be horribly simple and easy ♪

Ryui: The hell you mean by that?

Netaro: I just have to set it up so it’ll do anything that Toi says. It’s pretty easy-peasy and lacking in excitement.

Ryui: You tryin’ to call me stupid… Asshole.

Ryui: (Ah… Can’t help but hate myself for leaving Joe behind. I’m sure I made the right decision when the lights went out and those bastards showed up, but still–)

Netaro: Is Toi your owner, Ryui?

Ryui: …..

Joe: No one owns each other. The same goes for me, as well as Ryui.

Ryui: ! You…

Samejima: Hey there~, sorry for interrupting.

Netaro: Joe and Sammy, what’s wrong?

Samejima: Actually, thanks to a request from the higher-ups, I’ll have to head to the airport now. I can escort Joe by myself for the rest of the evening.

Netaro: Hmmm… Wasn’t it a problem that you would look suspicious carrying a cute teddy bear around?

Samejima: Hm? It’s all right, an old man can even carry a teddy bear around. 

Netaro: Hmm?

Ryui: … Hey, earlier when I left you behind and went off, that was my ba-

Samejima: Oh dear, I must go now. I’ll contact you guys after, when the handover goes through.

Ryui: Ah…

Ryui: …..

Location: Manor

Hiramei: Well then, thanks for your hard work!!

Hiramei: *sigh* I’ll have to send those 3 in custody to the station, and then that’s it…

Hiramei: Huh…? Where did those 3 and the guards go?

Location: Manor - Large Parlor

Nagi: The party just a while ago seems like a lie now that it’s gotten all quiet. 

Toi: Yeah. It became a bit lonely here, somehow.

Yodaka: Let’s go meet them once things have calmed down.

Netaro: *snoring*

Daniel: I think I’ll go back and rest up, too~

Ryui: …..

Ryui: (If I were able to meet her again…)

Ryui: (Fuck, if I’m gonna be this agitated, I should have apologized even if I had to force it out of myself…What the hell I should do.)

Ryui: (Hm? There’s a sound coming from the wardrobe.)

Ryui: Who–?! The fuck?!

Nagi: Eh, there’s someone tied up in there. 

Daniel: ! Wait, is that?

Ryui: Samejima?!

Yodaka: Let me take this gag off for you. 

Samejima: Puha! A.. ake!

Nagi: For tonight’s dinner, we’ll be having cake?

Samejima: No, that me from earlier is a fake!

Daniel, Ryui, Toi, Nagi, Yodaka: Huh?!

[dobbiamo-capire]

IF YOU DON’T WANT TO RUIN YOUR DAY, KEEP SCROLLING, DON’T GET MAD WITH FERRARI, this will be a long and hurtful ride.

The topics that will be under the cut will be: the reason behind the dnf of Charles and why we should be worried for all season and how this and Sanchez’ firing could be connected both with Binotto’s departure, which goes actually back from summer break of 2022

Also I’m really really tired from work, my English will be the worst, it could not make sense but I’m not in my best shape to translate this possibly huge and intricate scandal

First of all, let’s start with the most probable reason of Charles’ DNF

Apparently the problem was that the way they put the EC and the other electric components in the car and their wires were putted in a way that with the bouncing and porpoising were shaking that component so much that it went against the wires that hurted that component and it was kinda a circle of hurting all due to the bouncing. So yeah the first component is safe but the second went kaboom because the wires disconnected and without electric power the engine doesn’t work anymore. Where that component must go is also an aerodynamic issue because when you remodel a car you need to move also the components inside and that was not the place for the EC (this is an important info for Sanchez later). We now don’t know how much work they can do and in what time to fix this problem: it could mean a 3h solving problem or an entire season problem, we won’t know, but it basically was all a “wrong placed” component. They put it in a way that it bounced more than prev years and since ferrari is apparently the car that bounces more it affects them more than other teams, also apparently the way wires were putted in is a factor in that kaboom problem, I didn’t really understand how and it’s in arcaic italian so I won’t translate this part because I don’t understand either but yeah it’s just bouncing + wrong placed EC + missplaced wires

What does this had to do with Sanchez’ departure? Because yeah they basically fired him “it doesn’t have anything to do with Bahrain dnf” my ass. From this source that also gathered previous infos, Binotto’s departure was almost sure since summer break. That meant that everyone that was close to him (Sanchez in primis) knew that their heads could have been the next to follow. So since developments of miss F1-75 since France 2022 to the project of the next year (sf-23 nowadays), they could have by purpose sabotage both of those projects, knowing they won’t get the credits of a good job since they’ll be fired. And they knew that the sf-23 wouldn’t be born in a good environment since a long time, and this is kind the confermation they needed before releasing this “mediatic bomb”

[thefirstknife]

I feel like the abandonment of gambit (and to a lesser extent the slowness of updating the other two core activites/vendor armor) is the end result of those activities being free. All of the dev time that used to go in to making new strikes, maps, weapons, armor is in the paid content (seasons and expansions) and the "core playlists" are relegated to being a demo. Strikes are a demo for seasonal activities and raids, crucible is a demo for trials, but gambit never had any paid counterpart, and consequently gets even less attention than the other two. Not even sure if there's an answer here that isn't just "make the base game paid again" but that has its own problems.

That's possibly one of the explanations yeah. I can't even imagine what's going on in Bungie's marketing department and how they view spending resources into free activities. Genuinely something we will probably never know anything about conclusively. I can see how axing one of these would be preferable to them.

Not to mention that Gambit is so far down at this point that they would not only need extra resources, they would need SO MANY resources that it's genuinely just not worth it. Like, nobody would approve financing that. It's still on them because they should've gradually worked on it step by step over the years instead of letting it fall so low, but hindsight is a bitch.

I mean, Gambit enjoyers could've told them a long time ago about the issues, but I'm genuinely convinced that the negative community attitude towards Gambit that has been cultivating for years contributed to this. Gambit doesn't really have big advocates or content creators or people who will make 2700000 tweets a day about the lack of new maps or bad modes. It's a fully accepted "joke" in the community to hate Gambit and it's been around since before I got into Gambit. I also distinctly remember thinking about getting Reckoner back in Worthy/Arrivals and everyone's reaction to it was always "you have to be insane to do that." And like, I did it and had a lot of fun. I 100% enjoyed getting Reckoner. But if you look online, you will only hear about The Horrors. The amount of jokes that I've seen about titles and for Reckoner it's always "If you see someone with Reckoner, know that they're the most insane bitch on Earth to go through that." Unrelatable: I loved it. So even back when Gambit was still good (imo) and Gambit Prime was still in the game, people hated it already. Years of that attitude certainly contributed to where we're at now.

A few more asks under for length, using today to have a group therapy session:

Yep, pretty much. I feel like the moment it became widespread to hate Gambit, something should've been done right away. If the whole community is acting this way, it should be concerning. Bungie should've wondered why the community's stance on Gambit was that it's a horrible thing to play. Not only just to fix Gambit, but also to like. Wonder why they're pushing people into an activity that's almost universally hated. And not only was it hated, but it consistently dropped player population. Like, crucibros hate on the Crucible, but still clock a fulltime job working hours into playing it.

As soon as this became widespread, paired with the fact that no one is doing Gambit content online, it should've sounded the alarms. If resources were put into Gambit over time, something could've been done. Send out surveys to players, to content creators even. What would make you want to play more Gambit? What would make you want to create content for Gambit? What do you expect and want from this playlist activity?

There's so many ways to make changes and so many directions to go to with this game mode. But now it's simply too late. To make any significant fixes, you would have to invest too much and you don't have a guarantee that it will work. Therefore, bye.

Honestly, this. I think this would've been fair. Not to screw over Crucible players or anything, as much as I don't like the crucibros (thanks other anon for this word), I still don't want players to experience what happened to us gambitbros.

But splitting the work between seasons/expansions and giving every playlist the proper focus would've probably helped much more in the long run. Take two seasons and focus on Crucible only. Then take another two season and focus on Strikes only. Then another two for Gambit. Anything like that, as much as needed. And if we need another cycle like it, do it again. I am completely fine waiting when I know that eventually we will get the proper attention and resources.

I can't even gauge how many people are even outraged over Gambit for genuine love of Gambit and how many don't care but they're going to be pretending to be outraged just to join the shitfest. Because if there's a lot of people being outraged for real, then where were all those people when we needed to let Bungie know we want meaningful updates?

But yeah. We'll still be able to play and we'll still be able to do Gambit for our weekly stuff, but I fear that the population of the mode will be really low and imbalanced. We'll have to wait and see. Would definitely have loved if Bungie cycled time and resources between the core playlists over the past few years, and especially if Gambit received at least a little bit of extra love.

[naquey]

Analysis of Drake Parker

Because he is inherently my favorite little guy, and I relate to him a lot. I also watched Drake and Josh, but I'm not quite finished. I just have way too many thoughts about him.

Also, I just want to say his bowl cut sucks, and I like his season one haircut. Anyway, let's go!

First, the show makes it very obvious from the get-go what his character is supposed to be. He's the cool, popular guy; girls like him, and he is friends with almost everyone. His character is the opposite of his step-brother Josh, who is more nerdy and quiet.

One problem with this is that Drake canonically has one friend. How is he supposed to be popular if he has one friend? And it's Trevor. No one mentions that Scottie, Drake's old drummer, and Trevor are brothers, but I know. It's on the fandom wiki. However, the fact that he has one friend leads me to think that Drake is only popular or well-liked because he's attractive. My guy has the pretty privilege and has been using that to make friends. Without it, he probably won't talk to anyone other than Josh or Megan.

But throughout the show, Josh and Megan are the only people he interacts with on a personal level. Can I just say the show has established that he's cool, suave, and popular? It seems more like he's a loser on tier with his brother and Mindy Crenshaw. The only thing that makes him "cool" is the amount of girlfriends he's had.

He's had 72 girlfriends, and I don't think that's normal for a teenager, but I could be wrong. 72 girlfriends in the span of four years. Granted, he would date them for three weeks and then break up, but that's like a good chunk of a month. How did bro have the time??

This brings me to the point about schoolwork. You may remember your high school years, but at some point, we all had that classmate who didn't want to do the job and would fight with the teacher about it. Drake is the slacker you wouldn't want on your group project. He wouldn't do any of it, and then you would be forced to do it all yourself. That must be how Josh feels when he tries to get his brother to do homework. Now, aside from saying he has any sort of neurodivergence because that is up to you to figure out, and I'm not going to speak over anyone on that topic. He will easily get distracted if you dangle something shiny in front of him.

But, also, the adults didn't really push him to do anything. They left him to do his thing and focused more on the people who had either already done the work and got an A+ or they (Mrs. Hayfer) insulted him. Like, I'm sorry, I can't believe that Drake is 100% a slacker; he may be disillusioned with school because of how piss poor his teachers were, but with the proper guidance, he could have gotten good grades. He had potential, but no one saw it, so eventually, his only skill became music that no one really validated. (And let me just say, it's fucking torture having one skill you're good at that wasn't really validated. Granted, my skill was writing, and I can hardly imagine how a beginner musician would feel.)

He's just giving me a gifted kid that burned out too quickly. For starters, we don't know what happened between his dad and mom. I can only assume divorce (mainly because I don't want Dave Parker to be dead) since he's in the military. Divorce is hard on a kid. I may never know, but I can understand what it's like suddenly losing a parent. And Drake? Well, he went unchecked. I don't blame Audrey. She was a single mother trying to raise wild-child Drake and Megan. (Maybe this is why I relate to him???) Drake was essentially denied when he never even got to prove he could do something, so he resigned to lounging around instead of doing it out of fear of failure.

Can I circle back to his 72 girlfriends? Because I had ten relationships in four years, I don't know how he could have 72. And yeah, it's a funny joke that he's a womanizer and is just "sleeping around" for fun without actually doing the do. Look, I may be 20, but like... I feel awkward saying it in a semi-professional sense. At least, I view this analysis as professional. But, honestly, I think his dating around so much is also tied to that fear of failure and rejection. For example, if he's too afraid to work on an assignment sheet, you better believe he'd be too scared to put himself out there and get to know someone. Which could be why he never directly asks any of the girls out. He lets them come to him.

I could even say that Drake has an avoidant attachment style and that he can feel stifled if his partner overtly expresses interest in him beyond making out in the lobby of The Premiere. But there is a point I forgot to mention. There are a few girls for whom he is absolutely head over heels. One is Carly, and the other is a girl who beats up football players for him.

He saw something with Carly because she liked the same music as he did and was pretty. With the girl who is stronger than him, I can only assume it was because she beat up four football players who were harassing him and Josh at The Premiere. I don't think I could see either of those relationships going anywhere; all things considered, Josh did help him grow and change as the series progresses, but he is still shallow and vain.

This analysis has gone on too long, and I have touched upon everything I've wanted to say, but if you want to hear more, let me know!

Sidenote: Once I rewatch BTR, I am totally going to analyze James Diamond because in a way I think James and Drake are very similar and I could even compare them after I do a James analysis!

Side, Sidenote: I'm in the process of setting up a ko-fi I just have to figure out a couple of things!

[synergymagicbabeee]

The possibly unintended (though I doubt it) brilliance of Z.O.E.'s power-ups

With @zoe-oneesama's season 5 of Scarlet Lady slowly creeping to its big finale, I am sure anyone familiar with the AU knows how well written everything is, however something in particular caught my eye as a world builder, that being Marigold's power-up. In case my name didn't make it obvious, my entire thing is magic systems. The Miraculous as a system are immensely interesting, and part of the reason I dropped canon is that they didn't flesh it out as well as they could, leaving it feeling flat.

Why's there a five minute timer post-ability for underage users? They aren't old enough to handle the full power, but that isn't an in depth answer. There's no internally consistent logic to it, or if there is I can't find it. Why are the Kwami bound to their holder's orders if they're primordial basically-elder-gods that embody inherent concepts? What defines suitability for a Miraculous, or is it literally just personality? We don't get these answers, and while not the largest reason by orders of magnitude, it is one of the many reasons I don't like canon, and that's when they don't turn around and straight up contradict themselves.

Oh, underage users have a timer? Not if they "master" their Miraculous, but we won't define what that mastery is or how to achieve it, because that would mean admitting the writers are talking out their asses! Like yeah, we can infer that the Guardians were shit from the reason Feast came to be, but the Mage was supposedly borderline Saint like, so why would he force the Kwami to obey whoever holds their Miraculous?

A line from Plagg (known gremlin and likeliest to slag off on the Guardians) talking about it could have fixed that issue, just imagine! "Oh yeah the Mage was awesome! The problem was his students, who would go on to form the Guardian order. Once he died, they used his research to alter the enchantments on the Miraculous' to force us to obey them. Jokes on them though, doing that weakened the jewels by a ton!" Boom, problem solved.

Anyway, while some of these questions haven't been answered, and probably won't be (we have like five episodes left including Maledictator, plus it's at least a little bit a parody, it's job isn't to answer) there is a neat little thing that has shown up, specifically in the first episode of season five, Zombizou. And that was the introduction of Bee Balm.

This power introduces a lot of shit and does so brilliantly, foremost being actual requirements for a power-up. In canon, we have the introduction of the Akuma talismans that comes from... Maribug understanding her powers and believing she can do more? This isn't a bad way to do a power-up mind you, and she was absolutely due some level of recompense for the universe repeatedly kicking her in the metaphorical dick, but it doesn't feel like it fits in this situation particularly.

The Akuma talisman boost would work if this is Marinette finally getting past a mental block and we knew about it, but I can't find anything about that, so it feels almost like a payoff without a conflict. Compare that to the introduction of Bee Balm, where the heroes are constantly stressed due to having to simultaneously fight Hawkmoth and pick up Scarlet Lady's slack, so they're both near constantly stressed and training their asses off.

Then, Chat Noir is taken out. More than that, he's taken out defending her civilian identity, after being essentially betrayed by their incompetent partner, who's then taken out in turn. Bare in mind that this same sociopathic bitch is vital in stopping Akumas and preventing swarm incidents, and without her they're essentially fucked. She can't go get a Miraculous from where she is, and that wouldn't help anyway, meanwhile her partner and the dumbass they have to tolerate are out of commission. So what does she do?

She develops a power relevant to both her Kwami's concept and the situation at hand. If she can't purify the Akuma, then she'll purify the effect their having on others. And looking at Zoe's other power-up posts we see that the ability is clearly specific to her, because we also get to see Queen Bee's and Vesperia's power-up forms, and none of the three Bee users share a power apart from Venom.

This of course all made my little world builder's brain light up, and the fact that we get to see new forms for Carapace, Rena Rouge, Pigella and Purple Tigress did so even more, and not just because Nino's entry gave me more clues for my personal theory as to how they work. With all that out of the way, I think I just locked down the conditions for a new ability. First is the emotional component, a degree of anguish and desperation on the level of a mental breakdown. Marinette looked like she was a few seconds from a literal heart attack before the awakening hit, for god's sake.

Next is the affinity the user has with their Miraculous. A person who isn't suited for a particular jewel simply isn't going to be able to use it properly.

Third is the domain a given Miraculous commands and the way the user interprets that domain. Bee Balm is an application of Subjection, created when the horror toward Zombizou's powers and actions against people Marigold had sworn to protect reached a critical mass. Her subjects, if you will, were being forced into a state where they had no agency in the most literal sense possible, and thus she gained the power to free people from such an influence, both commanding the Miraculous magic affecting them to fuck off and bypassing a lesser form of her domain of influence.

Fourth is the environmental factor. That specific thing you can trace for exactly how the power formed the way it did. Bee Balm having no effects on the inanimate because there was no collateral damage factor, Carapace's theoretical waterbending power-up, they shape the power because they are exactly what was needed at the time. Nothing else would suffice, they have no more tricks in the arsenal, and even if they did none would work.

With all that in mind, I think I have an idea as to what set evolved!Pigella off in Z.O.E.'s last power-up design post, as well as a possible ultimate form(?) ability of my own which would give Hawkmoth a cold sweat.

The first (love chain's activation) would probably be a Scarlet Moth incident, possibly even the first depending on if the timeline the power-up happens in is closer to the Scarlet Lady one or not. Rose has the Pig Miraculous, she's got it active, and she's fucking terrified. People are getting mass akumatized, it's a known factor at this point that a Miraculous doesn't make you immune to Akumas and Rose had looked into Princess Fragrance enough to figure out that she was sandbagging, hard. Remember, this was the Akuma with airborne mind control and was likely capable of making any number of chemicals.

So Pigella is in the streets fighting Akumas and is stressed out her gourd. She has to maintain a positive attitude, while helping fight a what's basically a small scale apocalypse with a tambourine of all things, and she can't use her powers because they're one use a transformation, and only affect one person. So you can imagine the stress she's under.

As she's going across the city, she spots a swarm hit a group of people. None have been akumatized before so there's a small delay as the butterflies try to decide on the host forms, but Rose knows she's got maybe twenty seconds from the other end of the street. At this point the stress is at an all time high, a headache is forming, she has no idea if her friends and loved ones are okay, and...

Then it hits, that little piece to the puzzle. Loved ones, love, specifically how it can develop and relate to other emotions. Right now, Paris needs love very literally, it needs positivity to resist the swarms, and if Gift as it is can't help, then something new is in order. Grabbing the side of her tambourine with her free hand, Rose twists the handle and lets go, allowing her weapon to take its new form.

With a cry and a pull on the not-muscle that normally indicated her power, Pigella's new whip flies across the road and sinks into the nearest Akuma-to-be with a strange ripple effect, like the end of the weapon had dropped into a pond as opposed to hit a human being. A soft glow encompasses the civilian, before sparks leap off of them and onto the person next to them like forks of lightning, and the process repeated. In less than a dozen seconds the entire group was affected and in the face of such joy, the Scarlet Akumas were forcibly ejected.

While I don't have an actual story-bit for the ultimate form power, I do have a general idea how it would form. The power would be called Blessing, and befitting it's Ultimate moniker, it's absolutely cracked.

Blessing would be a support/empowerment ability formed when someone close to Rose (for this example, Juleka) was Akumatized again, and her sheer incandescent rage is enough to unlock an ability, turning her tambourine into a weapon not unlike the Voltron Bayards.

Blessing allows the user to purify an Akuma while it's still in the person, granting them a set of powers similar to that Akuma form, and also preventing them from being transformed into that state again if they have multiple forms. In other words, Blessing permanently eliminates options from Hawkmoth's roster while empowering the victim to let them better fight back.

[tokyo-daaaamn-ji-gang]

Uh honestly Yuzuha is a queen.

Queen got knocked like 9 feet.

Stood up, again to protect her little brother ran at Taiju even though she had no knife to protect Hakkai.

Also, the Anime was doing a bad job of showing it but in the manga, she knocked the ever-living fuck out of Sei. The dude face-planted to the ground hard when he came up to Hakkai with a knife when she cartwheels kicked him.

Like holy shit.

Also uhm SHE ALMOST KILLED TAIJU AND probably HELPED the team by fatally wounding him.

Uh we're she learning to kick so we'll?!?!?

Older sister powers are real 😭

Can we talk about how Taiju was so disappointed at Hakkai like he was ' Uh you little bicth will you grow a pair of balls already?' Like he knows Yuzuha is more badass bro weirdly proud of her for being so strong

In conclusion the verdict is:

Yuzuha is not a queen BUT THE queen of this season.

Sorry I made it to long

No no you right, Yuzuha deserves the long appreciation ask. She has got to be one of the best siblings in the series, she just never gives up and will do anything to protect Hakkai. I just wish she'd take better care of herself too

Yeah I noticed the manga kick seemed to be more impressive too, it just felt tougher i guess???? Though the anime gets a pass since it cut out another uncomfortable part of it.

I would like to know more about Taiju's opinion of Yuzuha though, we never really get to hear anything by him about her. Aside from him blaming her for Hakkai's problems and telling her to stay out of things.

[lepurcinus]

What do you think of the three watership down adaptations?

This is probably very unpopular or strange. But here I go (W VEEERY long text/rant)

The 78 movie: Ehmmmmmm how to say it, I like it but not that much????

The animation style and this one itself I love, very beautiful captures the natural environment very well and the designs of the rabbits are impeccable even though they can be somewhat similar at times. I even appreciate that each warren follows its own details and even each rabbit has a unique part.

On the other hand in terms of story...it is the most faithful adaptation and follows everything almost to the letter, failing due to lack of time and thus having to cut things out. And it shows. I don't feel any kind of depth or charisma for the characters like their written version, they are just there existing (Except Bigwig and maybe Fiver) and the important scenes that should identify them are no longer the same (Ahem Dandelion saying he will tell the story of his journey to the youngsters when we never see him narrate a single story). Also new characters that only exist to die and also don't give me any kind of impact and even ruin the other characters in passing (Violet/Blackavar). And yes I definitely hated with all my being the focus on scary, violent and so on. Look, the book also has its moments and the presence of death is constant, but here I just see rabbits bleeding gallons of blood and dying at every corner and bad rabbits just because, Watership Down isn't about that. The scenes concentrate on horror and not terror as it should be (they are different things). Although read I will give points on the setting for the scenes of Fiver and the black rabbit. Actually that more ethereal part was very good, the way the visions of him in the art were presented was amazing too, very intriguing.

I'm still reeling from the pain of having the lettuce story scene removed.

The 99 series: Passable, a middle ground.

Some additions are a bit weird but it follows the line well, changes like Blackberry's gender don't bother me and I'd say it's even exaggerated the hate they gave it at the time (Because surprise it's not violent like the woooh movie).

In other terms, let's say that certain things didn't fit me. The personalities of the characters while I appreciate that they aren't talking rocks like the movie it bothers me a bit that they feel so generic/stereotypical/one trick. More than anything I have this problem with Bigwig, I don't know if it's my problem but seriously his version here I don't like him I feel very annoying and bloody to an unbearable level. He's naggy but not in a fun and understandable way like in the book. Something like that happens to me with the others.

New characters like Hannah and Kehaar's treatment eh, I don't hate every minute of his presence but yeah, they are not my favorite. The idea of having Kehaar abandon his people in favor of the rabbits is kind of missing the point of his character? Then they kind of backtrack and decide to give him a mate to leave and then replace him with a baby voiced hawk.

Although I found characters like the Yona's, the mole or Bark to be likable and cute.

The third season is a hit or miss. The change of style is not too bad although some designs look ugly (On the other hand Woundwort and Campion look very badass like that). The implementation of magic as something straightforward and affecting the world it seemed ridiculous and unnecessary. They detract from the fact that the Watership Down rabbits won by their cunning and teamwork and that Woundwort fell by his own stubbornness. Here they brought out a mouse with powers taken from a wizard turtle to summon fucking death itself to take everyone down???? Seems like inle needs to be summoned to do his job lol. (And yeah, I didn't like his characterization here, especially that edgy voice with filters ugh).

Other more additions like the new warrens and the El-ahrairah stories I love them but i wish they would have delved into them more. I really wanted that chapter on Inle's story had been done. The concept of Darkhaven and its rabbits, although it seems to be taken from a Fanfic with ocs the truth I found it interesting and I liked several characters a lot (I love you Granite). Also this version includes my favorite characterization of Woundwort and Vervain (and Campion I understand why many like this version) they are not 100% villains and they have their background and seeing their rise and fall is worth it. Although I feel that outside of them and characters like Moss Efrafa contributed almost nothing, there were not all those characters that helped us to understand how life was there and there were only brute and aggressive rabbits without more, it all felt very wasted. And again Blackavar is used as a rag because apart from being half secondary then completely forget about him. Wanting to take advantage of a person

Wanting to take advantage of characters like Silverweed was good, the truth I liked him outside of his oc superpowers.

The overall art style is not bad but looking at the concept art I would have wished it would have stayed that way. I can't help but see them as colorful Wallabies instead of rabbits and other animals that don't even look like the species they are.

I could add more but these are the most important thing to say.

Netflix miniseries: Well, here we go. I'm sure some will already want to flame and crucify me for this, but fearlessly I'm going to say it's my favorite adaptation of the three.

And look I FULLY UNDERSTAND your annoyances (Except for the stupidity of complaining because it's less violent than the movie). I agree that the animation leaves a lot to be desired and that the bunny models could have been better (besides the pawpads and constant digitigrade posing). And yes, I can see why several changes in moments and characters don't generate the same impact as in the novel. I read the thousand and one reviews everywhere that talk about that and I've noticed it myself.

However, even with all that I dare to say that it is my favorite and I'll tell you why.

I really like to enjoy it as a different version of the story, it's a different vision and unlike their other adaptations here I can't force myself to understand it as a super watered down and flat version of the novel nor as an episodic series with new additions. It's a new form of Watership Down. Get my point?

Here I really see characters changing and with personality. While it's true that some are still driven by being somewhat repetitive like Hawkbit and Dandelion, but here I didn't feel them overly heavy-handed like in the TV series. They are fun to watch, they are charismatic.

I've seen several complaints about how Bigwig here is too aggressive and pedantic but personally I didn't feel him in that way?? I mean yes, he definitely lacks that softer, more sympathetic side but I think his character comes across well. And yes, I can see why one would be upset with him being treated more like a stupid strongman here instead of the strong but knowledgeable and analytical bunny.

Other characters. I see the annoyance with the more insecure Hazel and a bit Simp, on the other hand I like that he has a couple of flaws that evolve as he progresses. I certainly don't think it was done in the best way and I feel him still very emotional and driven to danger by his own lack of judgement, however the fact that Fiver is the one who complements him with being the one who backs him up and makes him understand is something I appreciate.

Fiver is actually my favorite characterization and I don't know if I would say the boldness of it made me love him much more here than even his literary version. He's neither a hypernervous anorexic bunny driven by trauma nor a calm possessed child. He is a balance, he is sympathetic, level-headed, intelligent, though he can be intimidated he is also not afraid to speak his mind and is true to his ideals and takes his views seriously but at the same time fearful because of how unfamiliar and perplexing they are, sometimes even leading to blame himself for not wanting to understand them if it allows him to help others. To me that's a good way to look at Fiver.

Added as doe Strawberry and Clover, let's see. Again the gender change I could care less about, Strawberry active cheerful and helpful I thought was great, she is very cute and cuddly. And her complement with Bigwig doesn't seem bad to me (some say it didn't make sense because they didn't interact but actually they did, she even defended him when they were arguing and come on even in the book the rabbits who are a couple at least even spoke to each other??).

Clover on the other hand, again the idea of her being a more active character I thought was great. Although the fact that they try to focus on her being a caged rabbit and her unfamiliarity with the wild is handled, I see the flaws in this as well. She gets used relatively quickly and even though it was precisely because of her naivety that she got into trouble it doesn't feel as much. About his romance with Hazel, look, I see it cute but I understand why some things get messed up. The fact that it has to be her instead of Fiver who ventures out to find Hazel after being hurt, because true love, was definitely an egregious change. They could have had Fiver go and Clover impatiently try to follow him only to get lost on the way and get captured instead.

Kehaar though definitely very grumpy and rude compared to his version who though defiant and brave is also helpful was a bit ehh. I still find him charismatic in his own way and his "rivalry" relationship with Bigwig I feel worked well considering.

What their personalities are like here.

Efrafa and does. Uffff how to say it, the change from being a super populated den due to its oppressive environment as a derivative of the desire to hide it as much as possible from man is lost. Here it is an oppressive and evil place because yes, Woundwort has his background but he is entirely corrupted and what he does he does out of sheer power and desire. It's not such a bad take but it still loses its depth, I would have liked to see that concept where Woundwort's brother was still alive and together they created it while he looks with sorrow at his brother's corruption, it would have been great.

Looking at it this way then, well it definitely captures that terrifying and oppressive aura very well, these rabbits do look powerful, terrifying and dominating. Vervain and especially Orchis looked great to me, most of all the latter. I have a thing for these charismatic and intelligent villains who know how to use words well instead of force to get what they want. Sainfoin and Campion were also good, in a way that they tried to go with a similar path to the TV series with the latter I saw it great, more in this context. Also we see something more about Efrafa's life and although the idea of Bigwig being presented as a narrator instead of a member of Owsla was somewhat rare, the more I appreciated his interactions with the other characters watching him with intrigue, training him and interacting with him as comrades in storytelling.

About Hyzen and the does. Again in this context they work. They are in a really horrible place with thousands of horrible eyes on them. Even with that Hyzen and the others are still girls trying to overcome whatever happens to them, she still wants the best for her teammates even if it leads her to be much more distrustful and bring her to the brink of breakdown. I wish her ability to be like Fiver had also been added but I still like her.

Also I appreciate finally having Thethuthinnang and Nettle's involvement as a Nelthilta equivalent, maybe I would have wanted Vilthuril to also be part of the group to equally give her a role and then her bonding with Fiver. How Thet wants to be that force of encouragement for everyone with his songs is a beautiful thing to me. And Nettle's betrayal as an attempt to want to do his best without knowing the damage it meant was very painful.

And yes, Holly's involvement and her relationship with Hyzen seemed appropriate to me. Despite this Holly lacking a lot of the veteran side and knew his original counterpart, I saw him as nice collaborative and challenging and how in a way his mistake in not listening to Fiver made him pay and reflect on being better to then tell Campion great!!!. Others say it's kind of weird but consider that all along Hyzen and Holly interacted and knew each other in Efrafa as well as being a link for her to trust Bigwig. Although their interaction was little it's actually a possible scenario to see. Then he sacrifices himself and mourns his death, gosh, I prefer that over Blackavar's unnecessary and weightless death in the movie. This one at least does have weight and reason.

Plus they finally make Blackavar justified, I love him so much here as a wise old veteran but hurting, capable of being tough. He really participates in the story! And I loved his role along with his line "your plan doesn't make sense but if you pull it off and we remember it I want to be able to say I was part of it" (It wasn't like that as is but you know what it is.).

And lastly, I really missed the lack of stories. Despite being told secondarily, I would have liked to hear this version of Inle's story. And speaking of which, love this version of her, so serene, good and kind but at the same time mysterious and creepy. My favorite without a doubt.

Anyway, here's all my chatter, there would be more but I've already overdone it. Answer me what you want about this and argue, even if there are new points that I'm happy to hear my general opinion will remain the same :P

[cherryblossomsandhydrangeas]

Sk8 Rewatch Ep12

You know, if Adam vented by dance skating in the rain more often, we might not have the problems we have now.

God the animation of Adam’s shadow as he dances is so fucking good.

Imagine being this poor fucking tailor man. It’s early in the morning, it’s a fucking monsoon raging outside, and then a lunatic in a matador costume bursts talking about making him a suit.

Sketchy is so cute~

Langa, it is not your job to fix that grown ass man.

Kiriko’s search warrant and subsequent raid on the Shindo household was completely erased from the narrative. Like, she had the warrant and never used it?

Miya asking Shadow about his injuries when Cherry probably cracked his skull in at least two separate places, had an arm and leg in a cast, probably some- at least- cracked ribs, among other things. Listen, if the founders are actually gods you can go ahead and reveal that, but at least acknowledge that Cherry’s injuries were far worse than Shadows.

If season two never finishes up Cherry’s hangups with Adam I will riot.

Imagine going to S, seeing a whole ass tombstone at the finish line and not turning the fuck around to go home.

Honestly, I love Adam’s second costume more than his first, but actually imagine being Langa, walking all the way up there and seeing your opponent dressed like the grim reaper talking about it’s your day of departure.

Langa using Cherry’s move to dodge Adam’s Love Hug Full Swing Kiss Combo. 😍🤩😭

The Zone is just Adam’s way to not feel any pain- something he’s experienced a lot of in life- as he completes his child murder suicide.

Oliver I feel like you could have visited your son long before now.

Adam: So I never had...an Eve to begin with, did I? No, no you did not.

Adam: There’s not...anyone at my side Okay, now who’s fault is that?

While I agree that adults can learn something from children. This 100% should not have been on Langa’s shoulder (thought narratively I understand why it was).

Adam says friends will ultimately betray you, flashing back to the “I have no opinions” scene (which lol ok), but we never get a scene from where Cherry and Joe supposedly betrayed him, showing that that they never did and that Adam left them first.

Adam: Nobody understands me! They never could! No one in this world can read minds. You actually have to tell your loved ones what’s going on with you. And also, Cherry’s repeated asked you what was wrong and you tried to kill him.

You know, in previous episodes, when someone got knocked down, it was an immediate win for their opponent. But when Langa gets up from him and Adam knocking each other down, and Adam was still struggling on the ground, the match is still on. Bullshit.

This show is trying to make me feel for this man, but it’s just not possible. Like, yay, you remembered the fun you used to have with the guy you treat like shit. Good for you.

Adam almost killed Kaoru, Hiromi, Miya, Carla, and Sketchy with that parachute.

Tadashi as his boss goes to sexually harass a minor again: UWU

I want Koyomi to attend S in season 2.

Don’t worry shadow, they weren’t shown kissing, that could just be her brother or cousin for all you know!

The end scene tries to play Adam letting Tadashi believe he was going to go to jail for weeks as a positive “aw, he cares” scene, but Tadashi really believed that his life was over and Ainosuke is just like “Yeah, no, you’re stuck with me, dog.” Like, that’s a fucking threat coming from this man.

“You’ll be my dog for the rest of our lives.” Listen, have a pet kink if you want fandom. This is still an abusive relationship between a boss and his subordinate. Adam signs his paycheck, owns the house he lives, and could literally do anything he wanted to him. This is not sexy.

Knowing Reki’s and Langa’s luck, they tied.

[kobblefort]

Blackfaint: Origins 2

I feel that this entire song is emblematic of rat world, but the "conversation" part at 2:49 is most important for our purposes of understanding it. This is how I imagine all of the rats speak to each other and the kind of things that they speak to each other about. "Well not really because I fucking had to buy beer" "That's fucked up man" is the kind of thing they are all saying to each other with that exact cadence. I think the lyric "Raise your hand if the system has missed you, man" also applies to rat world because the system has quite literally missed us - we can't create military squads or appoint administrators because the warlord needs to at least appoint a caravan leader for us to get the Nobles & Administrators screen back and I don't think she gives a fuck - it's still Vakeek Malignreasons last I checked and yeah she's a little busy seeking that artifact and doing other dubious necromancer activities. But it's okay, we're just treating this like a challenge run. Rat world is kind of like how I live because there is no structure to my life and I have never held a single job for more than three months in a row. And I try not to drink alcohol anymore but sometimes I still do and I just immediately start scrolling through my contacts looking for people to flirt with, harangue about Media we both like, or ramble at about some story I'll never actually write (usually all 3 at once) I only have an apartment by literally an act of god extending divine mercy directly to me and it's a fucking mess where I eat the $1 for an 8-pack hot dogs from Aldi cut in half to make them lie flat on sandwich bread with just diced onions and seasoned salt. "You take what you get in rat world" is one of the things we say in rat world, besides "Fuck it!!" lol, thats the main thing we say in rat world but yeah there are other things we say in rat world basically.

There's only two and a half more Z-levels we have to grate up before the aquifer drain is complete and we never have to think about it again. Considering there's 11 levels from the aquifer to the drain that means out of the 176 grates we needed to make there are only 40 left.

This farmers' guildhall I'm making just to have it out of the way when it inevitably becomes necessary kind of looks like a buttplug. Oops almost out of food and drinks again :\ rat worlddddd

A problem is quickly becoming apparent: rats get upset over not wearing shoes, but rats can't actually make shoes. I'm not sure we will ever actually get a caravan from The Nightmare of Tunneling, much less any other merchants, and without being able to actually assign any squadrons, sending them out on missions to retrieve them from any poor settlement that catches my eye won't be possible either. Keeping seed stocks up is another problem, and since I'm running the mod that fully forbids the eating of plump helmets, we can't rely on the plentiful stock of those from the caverns. It's sort of just a race away from the bottom right now, constantly scurrying out to grab handfuls of boar tails and cave wheat and cook them up just to watch them scarfed down. I am, however, deeply enjoying the fucked up layout of this fortress so far. Maybe when we get 50 rats they will be able to elect a mayor and thus start having administrators? It's entirely possible we see the end of this fort without ever being able to use some absolutely critical features of the greatest simulation game of all time Dwarf Fortress. But nobody said rat world would be easy.

As a matter of fact it has just been confirmed that rat world is easy. The dwarves have come to wreak vengeance upon us!! And it's like what did we even do!? Sure we're part of a civilization known for havoc and pillaging and violence but none of us did anything! I literally went and checked! The only one who did anything is Ikeek Hatredeel.

And she never even killed a dwarf, just a kobble! Come on! Whatever you're mad about it probably wasn't us!!

The best we can do right now is breaking down the stairway and setting up hatch covers to bar shut just above the bedroom level, which is above the main floor. The dwarves don't seen to even notice the entrance to our little hamlet, at least, which is good. It's just as well, what business do we have up on the surface? All the plants are dead and what little we left in the wagon was just a few sheets and crutches. (I am notoriously bad at remembering to break down my wagon because I hate "all-purpose" stockpiles and only designate piles as they're needed, but I don't want my kobbles/dorfs/rats to leave stuff on the ground, so I usually just leave it there for like... a year at least.)

They just keep dancing around a dead tree. There's really no reason we can't wait them out, but then again, if a forgotten beast comes wandering in through the caverns, we'll be kind of fucked. But that's rat world dude. The thing about rat world is sometimes you're just helplessly scurrying around looking for plants to cook into the saddest little biscuits ever while some dwarfs come trying to maim you for no fucking reason. They've got a lot of silver weaponry, which makes sense because we are monsters, and the one with the steel crossbow could cause some real problems.

Giant monkeys appear, which is almost always cause for celebration, but ESPECIALLY now. They're not doing so great against the dwarves though.

We got some tablesss

Me too

The only way any food gets put on the table in rat world is by everyone scampering out to the caves every few minutes to grab more of whatever they can find growing wild on the floor, which has to be arranged manually. Then I manually have to go over to the kitchen and put "prepare easy meal" on repeat until it runs out, which is usually 30 seconds and 5~15 food units after I press it. If you'll permit me to be honest right now rat world is just really not feeling that sustainable. I'm not going to say like oh I give up and just let the dorfs come kill us all or whatever but you know sometimes rat world just actually sucks.

Speaking of shit that just sucks, I feel like the rodent men should be chill with us, but well...

They're not. Luckily, we're fucking fast in rat world, and as long as we keep the numbers right, stronger than them too. We can't just bar off the cavern since then we'd starve, so the only real option is just... every rat for themself.

But the truth is that rats together are strong. Do you not understand this, rodent people??

oh wait, this might be bad... Yeah we got nothing on steel weapons actually.

It'ikik ghoulscar, who was described as someone who was "made deeply uncomfortable by differences in culture or appearance," does not survive a stab to the brain. What should I not say he was racist?? Ohh his body's still warm you can't say he's racist!!! Well he was a racist is the thing. I don't think he'd even object to be called that. I don't know though because most people who'll admit they're racist are a lot less racist than people who vehemently refuse the idea that they could ever be racist. A guy who says "yeah i'm racist" is probably going to catch himself letting media/institutional/just stupid shit he thought when he was a kid bias cloud his judgment, but a guy who says "You're Calling Me RACIST??? That's Like Calling Me The N Word!!" has completely internalized whatever "FBI Crime Stats" are on HTTP colon slash slash BootSuckerNews.Cuck without even knowing what the words "materialist political theory" mean when you string them all together like that. Like I'm just going to say it I trust a guy who listens to Cum Town to actually not be evil when it counts a lot more than a guy who thought Million Dollar Extreme World Peace was a good show. Oh and for the fucking record I actually was a huge fucking MDE fan when they were new, I'm talking about the 00s when I was a teenager and they beat Tim & Eric to market with the "insane editing" game and did it way better. Shit like Malbone Trucking and Extreme BassFX were and are genuinely still funny, I don't care man, but the TED talk was basically the end of an era, all the shit that came afterward where Sam Hyde just records himself yelling into a mirror is absolutely fucking insufferable, and the fact that when they finally got their shot at TV after that they just made a fucking crappy sketch comedy show where all the jokes are edgy teenager trying to get in trouble bullshit instead of utilizing any of their previously many strengths is the biggest fucking let-down in the world, Sam Hyde let his ego blow up like a fucking car bomb and was helped along to do so by post-Stormfront invasion 4channers, 90% of whom just thought he was crazy and that it was funny to see a crazy guy yell into a mirror and record it with a cell phone, I will never not be so disappointed that it gives me a fucking ulcer about what could have been, sometimes I go back and watch College Cunts and it's almost hard to enjoy because it's like wow this is where it ended - this glimmer right here is the last diamond before they started just shitting. Oh god, what we lost. What did we lose again? Oh shit, yeah, the game. We're down to 18 rats.

Kikeek Menacebreeds takes one down. Nice, good shit.

The last remaining rodent person earned the name Nightsea from the fracas, and just starts camping one last area. He seems to stop being hostile and just lets everyone pass him as they run around the caverns freely. Maybe he'll make a good bulwark against the first forgotten beast we have to deal with, I don't know. For now he's just an annoyance. Youve got to take the Ws you can get in rat world that's one thing for sure. As an anarchist it annoys me that the game requires a strict military hierarchy in order for citizens to start arming themselves and training but I guess we can start putting down some traps. But first, you know, five rats need to get buried real quick before they start haunting this bitch. Also, a while ago a "Glassmaker" went into a strange mood and has just been standing in the door of their bedroom - Been there dude!! I have no idea what to do about that, I'm not bothering with glass here, they refuse to claim any kind of workshop so I guess I'll have to just let them do their thing and eventually weather whatever kind of tantrum they're going to have.

In the worst moods now are Eeteek Terrorslip, K'keek Attackdemons, and Vatekeek Learnedmaligns. Eeteek in particular has just really been upset over not owning any shoes. Embarrassed about it, angry about it, sad about it. Like I'm sorry. I would love to do something about it. But, well, I can't!! Maybe - and this is a big fucking maybe - we'll be able to make leather out of the rodent people and then maybe we'll be able to make shoes or at least boots out of their leather, but I'm not optimistic about it!!!

Oh that was fast. See Eeteek there's a guy you could learn from, she doesn't mind having no shoes. She doesn't mind having no clothes at all!! She's just fully embraced the mania in this bitch!!

Burial time, lol. Oh and despite the advent of some giant ibexes, a giant tick, and other random terrifying creatures, all 10 dwarves up on the surface are completely unbothered. Siege is going great for them. Ass holes

The "natural mist generator" is really not good enough to offset all the miserable violence, ratfolk don't particularly care for natural beauty anyway.

Kikiteek Jackalgranite suddenly has 11 fucking children, all of whom are good to go and get straight to work the second they're born. Dude what the fuck is even going on in rat world.

After setting up some cage traps around the cavern entrance (sorry, I know they're OP, but I need them for this fort lol) everyone cleans up the blood on the main floor and starts partying. Uhh except R'eekeek. R'eekeek dies.

It's still not really feasible to actually open the doors back up yet, but the tavern has been officially "opened to the public." I'd also like to start building a library but I don't know if this is the fort for it. Ratfolk library seems like a great way to get some necromancers on deck and well, necromancers are always a rare treat.

I'd really like the dorfs to fucking leave already too. There's actually some live prickle berries and red spinach on the east part of the map, but of course these Ass Hole's are just camping out here keeping us from prosperity. I cannot imagine that any rat still enjoys cave tubers but that's all we got.

After ages they finally fucking leave and we can go scoop up the goodies. Spinach and prickleberries baby!!! Sounds awful actually but when all you've eaten for like 9 months is the same thing it must taste awesome.

If it's not one thing it's always just another.

Our carpenter is caught out during the attack, but she's fucking fast. Every time she sees one of the rodent people she just dips the fuck out of there across the entire map, then goes back to just wandering around. We barred her in there, but we'll eventually have to do something... There's twelve rodent people running free, three in cages, and Srekitdret running around randomly like he's our fucking mascot or something.

She actually manages to do some serious damage, but she has other things on her mind, and would just really prefer not to fight I guess. The fact that there's a thing called "Holy Ape of The Faith of Tribes" sounds really interesting to me, I'll have to learn more about that. If we survive. Or actually if we die it'll be a good excuse to hop back into legends mode. So either one is fine by me!!!!! Fuck it!!!! Lol I hit the 30 image limit I'll probably update again tomorrow

[likeadragonfruit]

I’m surprised that I don’t have as much to go over in separate posts this time. So it’s roundup/brain dump time for book 3. Also yeah it’s been a few months haha 😅

Big Picture

Overall flow

This is the best season so far. I’ve even seen people say this is better than ATLA, and I don’t know that I’d go that far, but this is probably the most watchable it’s been so far. (And watchability isn’t damning with faint praise, Law and Order built an empire on being watchable.)

It does a decent job picking things up from the previous season and moving forward from there, especially considering how much book 2 looked like it was setting up a series finale.

But that cast size problem? Getting worse. We’re now up to Korra and the rest of Krew, Tenzin and his family (including his siblings still), Lin, Korra’s family (minus Unalaq), and adding in Lin’s family, airbenders (most prominently Kai) and the Red Lotus members

Also, the trend of breaking Korra in some way at the end of each season  continues, expect this is the one without a hasty recovery

Korra and the airbenders

It’s the event that shapes the whole season: new airbenders emerging post-harmonic convergence

And it’s ambiguous exactly what happened but Tenzin (acting as an authorial mouthpiece) attributes it to Korra

So the point is consequences? She (supposedly) created a bunch of airbenders but also kickstarted the Red Lotus plot via Zaheer’s escape

Which later almost kills her, except for the other airbenders who prevent Zaheer from escaping

Anyway, the way this plot is introduced initially bothered me a lot, but since it’s what the season revolves around, I kind of had to deal with it regardless.

Politics:

The politics of moderation reign once more

“(Bad) monarchs are bad, but so is anarchy” is a take I suppose

It’s kind of weak with the Red Lotus being more straw man anarchists than anything

Character opinions

Korra: I’m actually a little bothered by how little I have to say about her currently.

Mako: as said previously, I didn’t hate him and he’s even better now that they’ve freed him from the love triangle. But they’ve also been quarantining him with Bolin.

Bolin: oh Bolin, you’d be so good if you were good. He’s more tolerable this season at moments, and so obnoxious at others still. (Yes I’m ignoring last season.) Ultimately I still landed on not liking him.

Asami: she still isn’t getting storylines, but she’s basically the best supporting player there is. She works well with any character you pair her off with.

Tenzin: pass

Jinora: pass

Kya: oh you get to do so little this season, but I still love you.

Bumi: was alright this season.

Kai: a pretty classic jerk with heart of gold, but the classics are classics because they work.

Hou Ting: pass

Lin: I was actually a bit conflicted because the whole “being forced to interact with Suyin” thing during her mini arc was not a good look on her.

Suyin: so for her all her faults, I actually kinda like her, and it’s hard to explain. The best way I can think of is she scratches the part of my brain that’s a fan of Gon Freeces. And put in a way comprehensible to non-HxH fans, it’s that her selfish and hypocrisy reminds me of other characters where those flaws were critical to their arcs, even though I already know this series will never call Suyin on it, really.

Opal: the only of Suyin’s kids worth mentioning this season. 

Zaheer: he gets talks up a lot as he franchise’s best villain but meh. 

Ghazan: I want to come up with more, but basically I like him, for the little we get

Ming-Hua: see Ghazan

P’li: better than the last combustion bender we got. But most of the positive things I could say are either design or action related. She just got so little to do character wise compared to the rest. 

Shipping

yeah, still keeping this section

Korrasami: well they’ve spent more time together this season. As far as build up, umm…

Jinora/Kai: they’re cute, puppy love

Zaheer/P’li: meh

Bopal: love/hate relationship here. Sometimes I’m just like, “ugh, no, run Opal.” Others, it scratches that “aww dorks in love” part of my brain. But ultimately “girl, run” is winning. (You can do better, Opal!)

Stray observations

This season, having been ordered at the same time as season 4 is clearly setting up things that will come back in the next season. Are they the best use of these connections? Umm…

It’s odd seeing Kuvira this season as a dancer in her (background) introduction and for the rest of the season as the guard captain Lin and Suyin bark orders at, save her saving Tonraq’s life. It’s also a shame since so much more could be done with her and better set up the next season

Why is spirit projection an airbender technique? Because Jinora is an airbender, therefore it must be a form of airbending somehow?

You know, I actually really like the Mako detective moments. While I wouldn’t say I’d like a spin off, an au fic would work

If I had a nickel for every time a villain threatened to or tried to wipe out the airbenders/airbending, I’d have three nickels…

In the “Enter the Void,” Grey’s Ming-Hua starts slipping more into her Azula voice

Okay fuck Bolin for this moment

8 years later and I still vibe with Ghazan’s death over prison attitude

It’s been a very different experience watching book 3 like this, even more so than book 1 and 2. 8 years ago, I was watching books 3 and 4 during a stressful time in my life and didn’t necessarily mind all the details then

And with that, we’re in the homestretch. Just book 4 left now…

[unpopularly-opinionated]

I’ve been watching How to Get Away With Murder lately and let me just say I’ve had several topics that this fucking show has made me want to blog about that I just don’t wanna spam y’all with so let me bullet point this for you:

Warning: Long AF post about complete nonsense.

1. I never finished Scandal (another series by Shonda Rhimes) but I sure did watch a shit ton of it and I used to genuinely think it was a great show at the time. Haven’t seen it in a while so I’m not sure how exactly I’d feel now, but if watching HTGAWM has shown me anything it’s that god does this woman suck at writing characters. She’s pretty good at writing serialized legal/political dramas, I’ll give her that, but she legitimately only has like maybe 4-5 character archetypes that she just copied and pasted from Scandal onto this show, and boy do the flaws show in this series.

You’ve got the strong, black female lead whose job it is to basically fix problems, ethically or unethically, she pretends to care but doesn’t really.

You’ve got the sociopathic do-it-all guy who does all the unethical dirty work including breaking and entering, kidnapping, killing, destroying evidence, planting evidence, etc. with a troubled past of being in prison.

You’ve got the incredibly basic girl who starts off all shy and cute like she’s an innocent little sunflower, who then falls in love with the sociopathic do-it-all guy which inevitably leads her down a similar road of corruption.

You’ve even got the soft-spoken, ‘dreamy’ white man that the lead has the hots for (as well as the mentally-damaged white girl).

There’s probably more, but honestly that’s all I can remember from Scandal at this point. It’s actually kind of insane to me how it’s literally just the same exact characters just transplanted to a different plot. I don’t know much about her personally, but she strikes me as someone who would probably make bank writing romance novels or Y/N fanfic.

2. Binge watching shows has ruined pacing of older shows, such as HTGAWM, because without that weeklong break in the middle (sometimes longer for holidays) you overlook details because you don’t have time to process them properly, and oftentimes plot points that require time passing (such as relationships, breakups, etc.) can fail completely because it’s not really believable when a couple is together one episode, breaks up to be w/ someone else the next, says “I love you” the next, and is pregnant in the next (yes, this is something that actually happened in HTGAWM).

3. Just in general, the writing for this show really begins to plummet after just S1, but mostly S2. I’ll give them credit where credit is due, a lot of shows that begin with this ‘hook’-like idea--in this case murder and how to get away with it--tend to fail miserably by wrapping up that initial hook in the first season and then winging it every season after that. This show surprisingly doesn’t do that, and every season begins with a new murder that they then have to “get away with” (almost comically-so).

But as I said, this woman doesn’t seem to know how to write characters, at least not likeable or consistent ones. It sometimes feels like I’m watching reality TV or something because a lot of the conflict between characters is incredibly forced. I’m halfway through S4 and despite the fact that these people love to profess how much they love each other, they’re a family, etc. in nearly every episode you’ve got someone “not trusting” someone else, someone keeping secrets “just because”, or someone yelling at someone else for something because it’s “all their fault” when like none of that is ever actually true.

Oliver and Conner broke up because Oliver felt like the relationship wasn’t healthy because, even after he lied to Conner about something really fucking important, Conner instantly forgave him, which yeah sure that absolutely sucks and is a totally valid reason to break up with someone, albeit a sad one because obviously you two still love each other...except in the next fucking episode, Conner is hooking up w/ strangers and Oliver is genuinely considering jumping into another relationship, and also Oliver is changing his story and claiming the reason he broke up w/ Conner was actually Conner’s fault because of like trust issues or something which just isn’t true at all?? It was a wild retcon that came out of nowhere for no other reason other than I guess she needed them to sleep w/ other people that season.

Also I’m sorry but how is Michaela supposed to be even a remotely redeemable character when she’s written to be this huge uptight, racist, homophobic (or possibly biphobic), bitch? I don’t think she ever gets better. Right from the get go in S1, she has this whole ordeal over her fiancé having had one gay experience many years ago when he was younger, and like okay I would understand it if it was just about the fact that he didn’t tell her about it, but she continued to spiral out over it, accusing any man even in the vicinity of him as being his secret lover, and continues to badmouth him as “gay” (I can’t write tone here, but she says it in a very accusing way) to the others including Conner who is literally gay. There’s also never really a refutation to this either, so by the time Aiden is completely out of the picture, I guess we’re left to just assume he is actually gay, despite all possible evidence pointing to the contrary. But I guess all of this is A-OK because she becomes GBFs w/ Conner later for...some reason, I guess.

Then there’s the way she treats Asher which, in the beginning I was like okay fair, he’s the douchey frat boy character. Totally understandable why you’d treat him like an asshole. But when they hook up and eventually get together, she is so unbelievably racist towards him??? She’s constantly going on about “white boy” this and “white people” that, and the poor dude just takes it because he’s super whipped.

The way she also talks about other black people is even off, like if she wasn’t black (and Shonda Rhimes wasn’t black) I would daresay it comes across as fetishistic. In fact, a lot of this show is written like fetish porn of black people. God help if this was written by a white woman which ironically enough, it really does feel like this was written by a white woman. I’m not even joking, if I didn’t already know who Shonda Rhimes was, I would swear to you this show was written by a white woman who really loves black people, to an uncomfortable degree. I’m not even talking about cringy “black empowerment” either, that’s not what bothers me. It’s one thing to promote strong black (female) characters in a show which you know it’s fine I guess, whatever, but this show fetishizes that instead. Black people aren’t just strong and powerful, they’re the strongest and the most powerful. It’s creepy and weird.

At this point, the only reason I’m watching it is because I like Viola Davis and despite her character being iffy at times, she’s still a tremendous actress. And ofc I like Colliver, even though it’s messy a lot of the time. I know I just sat here and shat on the show a bunch, and to be clear it’s definitely not a show I would ever recommend, but it’s not strictly-speaking terrible. It just has a lot of bad moments/elements to it.

[soul-dwelling]

Konro fighting his doppelganger is in my opinion already a retcon - because first time we see the infernal it looks nothing like him and nothing suggests that it is somehow connected to him And even when its revealed to be a dopplelganger ir doesnt look as simmilar as the later doppelgangers, leading me to believe that Ohkubo hadnt developed the concept fully when he first mentioned it in manga - even Benis father figure doppel looked more infernal then the doppelgangers in the end which basically looked one to one (but at that point he commited to making a meta point)

You're right, I got it wrong: I just quickly re-read the Asakusa Arc, and I can't find any place where Konro brings up the Infernal being his doppel--that was an addition added later to the series. So, yeah, possibly a retcon, or at best Ohkubo couldn't dump all of that lore all at once and used it as foreshadowing to reveal later.

Still, though, yes, I can't find anything in the Asakusa Arc where Konro specifically said it was his doppel.

As for the argument that "the doppel doesn't look as similar as the later doppels": that is its own problem, seeing as the doppel rules conflict with the eventual rules about how a pyrokinetic is form. It was my understanding that you become a pyrokinetic when you are bitten by the bug, and that bug bite causes your doppel from Adolla to merge with your body to give you fire powers. Okay...So how come even after people like Shinra, Joker, Benimaru, Konro, Iris, and so on develop pyrokinetic abilities, their doppels are also around at the same time? Can you have two doppels? How do Joker and Benimaru become pyrokinetics but also later fight their own doppels? How can Iris develop pyrokinetic abilities if she is a doppel of Amaterasu? And that's not even getting into how Mari can exist as a doppel of the Evangelist. And Mari hardly ever looked like the Evangelist to me, so, yeah, I don't get how the series acts like any doppels look like their sources.

Granted, Iris never looked like Amaterasu to me, but I blamed that mostly on Ohkubo having a same-y style to certain characters' faces. (Iris looked more like Patty Thompson to me--maybe a casting gag when getting Patty's English voice to play Amaterasu.)

As an aside: there is almost something clever to the idea that doppels are the embodiment of how the world views you...except it's also another soapbox moment for Ohkubo to get all righteously indignant that people didn't get what he was going for with Joker and Benimaru, so their doppels are exaggerated versions of the original character: "You thought Joker was a bad guy and Benimaru was battle-hungry, that you missed the nuances to the characters!" Or, those qualities are there to the characters, and now your doppels just exaggerated what was already there. I mean, jeez, I'm sorry that people initially thought Joker was probably a bad guy since, you know, he was an antagonist, he was blowing stuff up, it was hinted he was expediting some Infernal situations--I'm so sorry I didn't realize he was actually a Batman figure (intentionally ironic, given the name). You can't complain that you did too good a job tricking the audience and then blame the audience: you design a character to look like that (that's on me for judging by appearances), but you stage scenes to leave it to the readers based on that evidence to conclude this is the bad guy, offered little evidence for a persuasive counter-argument (because you wait until later to offer that evidence), and then act holier-than-thou when the audience reaches the conclusion you wanted them to reach before you staged your disappointing and poorly executed plot twist. (And I am back to glaring at the end of Bungo Stray Dogs Season 5 for doing that same damn annoying trick: "You thought the person doing bad things was the bad guy, but he's really a good guy!" ...No. The dude still did bad things--he is a bad guy, even if he's not "the" bad guy, Wreck-It Ralph.)

[voxblade]

Rant under the cut. It's past my bedtime so it's probably not my best work but I have. Thoughts.

It's been a hot minute since I binged this show so if I misremember or get little details wrong, I apologize in advance.

God they had potential. Basic? Sure. But Haida's crush in the earlier episodes was so cute. It's hard to watch season 1 and not root for the guy, as he flounders awkwardly trying to impress her or get close while Retsuko's too caught up in her own problems to notice at all. He's a decent dude doing his best. Season 1 Haida comes with the advantage of even acting fairly mature about his feelings, too. When Retsuko dates another guy, after all his years of pining? Haida gets upset, yeah, but he acknowledges it's his own fault for being too slow to speak his heart, and doesn't take it out on anyone but himself. Even when he does confess to Retsuko at the end, he acknowledges that he doesn't know the real her at all... but would like to. Goober! Precious bean. Ahh, etc. etc.. Of course, Retsuko, politely, rejected Haida's confession at the end season 1. She clearly wasn't interested, and goes on to say as much multiple times over the show and in the episodes to follow. In a normal situation, Haida should've learned to realize he and Retsuko weren't gonna work, let go, and move on. It sucks, but it's a healthy lesson to learn. Sometimes the person you think is your true love just... won't click. Instead of fixating forever, you owe that person and yourself the freedom to live. If they left things like this, I still might've quietly shipped it on the side anyhow, with the full knowledge and support of canon's message.

But no!!!! The narrative refuses to let Haida do anything but pine, even when it'd be healthier for him to, EVEN WHEN RETSUKO HAS MADE IT CLEAR SHE JUST SEES HIM AS A COWORKER. The writers kept pulling the stupid "will they, won't they" card. This isn't getting to the stalking, the light two-timing shit he pulls between Retsuko and Inui, but I won't let go of the karaoke scene at the end of season 3 where Haida (not a licensed therapist, not even a close friend) fucking. Goes to Retsuko's room, drags her out of her house and taunts her out of the trauma she got fROM ALMOST BEING STABBED TO DEATH by calling her a fucking chicken so she can go back to work. Why was he at her house? Well. You see. Because on an experimental dating app, it scored Haida and Retsuko as soul mates. So clearly that meant it needed to be him to help her.

Yeah.

He's deemed the most worthy person to confront her because of a DATING APP ALGORITHM. AN APP THAT WASN'T EVEN PUBLIC YET, IF I FUCKING RECALL. I stress, Retsuko and Haida are barely even work friends at this point and she had a network of other friends and sHE WAS ALMOST STABBED TO DEATH-

"but, she needed the push or she'd lose her job!" Her mental health recovery was more important than preserving the show's status quo! Even if she lost her job, do people think it's impossible for her to oh I don't know. Apply somewhere else when she healed?! Yes the job market sucks, but employment isn't impossible!!! She had security living with her parents in the meantime, she wasn't doomed. And even so, it doesn't change that rushing to fix a problem as major as ptsd for shipping fuel with a guy she's been lukewarm towards at best up to this point is still sloppy writing!

And the narrative rewards him!!!!

And there's that whole clusterfuck in season 4 where Retsuko is FINALLY willing to give Haida a chance, having been worn down enough to consider. But Haida. Haida sabotages himself on purpose. And romanticizes his own fuck ups. I can't.

I never finished season 5 but their chemistry felt flat even when they finally got together officially. Too little too late.

It never feels like Retsuko is with Haida because she chose to be, y'know? It feels like everyone around her sorta pressured her into it. Fenneko, Haida himself, Tadano's app, etc.. Idk. It's so sad they leave a bad taste in my mouth now. I love you, season 1 Rethaida. Season 2 Rethaida is soured a bit. Season 3 and on is a big no from me.

Do you ship it?