#theres a lot more going on but I didnt wanna talk about the more spoiler heavy stuff ig??

[llitchilitchi]

i reallyyy like ur oblivion au it seems so cool! im bad at asking questions slbut i wouldove to know more, so use this ask to say things about ur au u havent said yet :D

ohhh gosh you really just gave me all this power

note: if you need to look anything up regarding the lore stuff I'm dropping because you're not familiar with the games, PLEASE go to UESP and support their hard work! alternatively, FudgeMuppet has really good videos that go pretty in depth

->there's a 30 page word document detailing the whole progression of the story and another 20 page document covering the maps for all the travel Dream has to do through the story (I did want to turn this into a full fic but got busy with life)

->Dream is a dark elf, George's mother was Breton, Sapnap is an Imperial, Bad is a wood elf (this might not mean anything to people who never played the game, but yes, everyone had a race assigned. there's a good chance that Karl will be an Argonian)

->Dream has a proper angsty backstory, since the player character in the actual game is up for interpretation and we don't know why they ended up in prison I had to come up with something for Dream. unlike in the game, Dream has been in the Imperial City prison for a couple weeks at the start of the story

->Dream had long hair before, but it got gross in the prison so he chopped it all short and grew it out through the story

->some of the other ccs that are in the au are Ant, Punz, Techno, Tommy, Tubbo, Phil (and Kristin), Tina, Foolish, Sylvee and Niki. I'm sure I forgot some

->Dream has a tiny bag of flax seeds that he constantly chews on. it drives George crazy

->Dream and George didn't get along at first and would constantly argue

->if you've played the game you would know this, but George was part of a daedric cult

->Dream's an Azura worshipper and a huge supporter of the Reclamations (this is just A Lot of Morrowind lore to unpack)

->Dream and Sapnap both get their hands on legendary weapons that are in the game

->beside the main quest of the game, there's a couple more quests included in the story, one of which is Go Fish. Dream ends up bitten all over by the slaughterfish and George has to heal him while laughing in his face about getting fucked up by a bunch of fish. but they needed the money, so the work was worth it

[sonknuxadow]

okay big wall of some of my shadow generations thoughts . spoiler warning obviously

i will start by just saying that this game is soo good like in general. ive said before that i was initially very skeptical of this whole thing but very quickly changed my mind upon seeing the first trailer and im SO glad that it did turn out to be good. this feels like one of the first times in a really long time that theyve put actual care into shadows involvement in a story instead of just throwing him in something for five seconds because they know hes popular. the game IS a bit short but i was expecting that and its somewhat reasonable considering its technically only half the game. but what we did get was great. we are so back .

i love the gameplay i talked earlier about how i like that they put more effort into making shadow play differently from sonic by incorporating his chaos powers into his gameplay, but the doom powers are really cool also and were such a fun addition. ive always wished they would do more with shadow being part black arms but didnt expect it to ever come up again so everything about this is kinda surreal to me

i love love love the optional dialogue i went out of my way to make sure i didnt miss any of it and theres so many cute ones and i have to stop myself from mentioning specific ones on this post because if i do ill be going on forever

also the music was good Obviously thats a given with sonic games. but special shoutouts to the menu music i thought it was a cute detail that sonics side had a remix of it doesnt matter while shadows was a remix of throw it all away. and that all hail shadow remix for the final boss goes sooo hard i was honestly expecting them to use i am all of me but this is cool too

as far as criticisms and nitpicks go. uhhhhh . this isnt that big a deal but i do find it the tiniest bit disappointing that they didnt really leave anything a surprise in terms of the gameplay, if im remembering right they showed pretty much everything in the trailers except for the final boss but im sure everyone knew who that was going to be it was jut the specific form he took that was the surprise. but like i said its not that big a deal especially considering they didnt show much of the story in the trailers so it balances out in a way . also i didnt know what the best place to put this in would be but i just wanted to say i got so excited when i got to the final stage because radical highway is one of my favorite sonic levels . peace and love on planet earth

i also think chaos island was a weird choice for a stage because all the others are from games shadow is a main character in but he isnt in frontiers at all? maybe they didnt wanna repeat games and were running out of ideas so they just threw a frontiers stage in since it wouldnt have any representation otherwise. i dont know.

there is only one real "this sucks" thing for me and its rouge's voice acting. its soo terrible ive never liked her current voice but she sounded particularly bad here to the point where it was distracting..... when it comes to other voice actors who are one of my less liked voices for their character im at least able to say that theyre doing a good job or have improved a lot over the years even if theyre not my first pick. but i swear to god rouge has gotten worse

anyway . good game . the ending made me tear up a little. thumbs up emoji . will probably play sonics side at some point too but idk if ill do it today

[bigmack2go]

So you finished your outline kr even your entire story? And now yove gotta come up with a title but you don’t wanna be as boring as using the main characters full name? LET ME HELP YOU!

Idk how to make a good intro to this but i’ll just try by starting with: theres a difference between fanfics and books

For fanfics it’s okay to have a shitty title, a song related title or just a whole ass quote(all tho that last ones debatable) theres still a lot of fanfics with great titles though.

This one seems obvious but please at least make your book SEEM interesting

But if you do want or need a good title let me help. I have no idea where to start so jm just gonna give u a couple of things to keep in mind withoutany particular order.

Okay so idk how to start this but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE keep your title at two words or less. If you have three… fine i guess but thats the absolute limit. Also absolutely avoid going over four syllables! That also in most cases means: no quotes, not songs etc unless theyre short enough. This is not optional! There’s nothing that i hate more than a name that takes ages to say when i try to recommend a book or show or movie which is why i simply dont do it. And you don’t want that. You want your storry to be recommended. Like the summer i turned pretty. Great book. Great plot. The title almost made me not read it.

Talking about at one. The summer i turned pretty also made no sense what so ever! Especially with the sequels??? Please make your titles make sense for the story! And if you wanna do sequels i’m BEGGING you to keep that in mind for the title.

Dont spoiler anything but for fucks sake make it make sense

Also pls dont start it with “the” cuz thats bad enough as it is but thats not even my point: if you dont want something boring as the MC’s full name, you also dont want something like the important object or just some random noun i promise. It CAN work if its like a name for a group of people like the outsiders or a gang name or smt but its like that it won’t so just… dont

I’d also avoid using original words that u amde up for the story. This isn’t necessarily smt that makes the title bad but it automatically means that it’s harder to remember so if you wanna be recomended thats probably a No. Unless its super easy to remember foe whatever reason.

So now that ive told you what NOT to do, let me give you some ‘DOs’

So theres several kinds of titles.

My personal favourite are like word plays. Not necessarily puns bc they often create new words which are as we’ve established hard to remember. But just something with a double meaning or something like that… i love that

Something else that always works are inconsistencys. Nothing like titles that contradicts itself! It sparks confusion and most importantly: INTEREST. People wanna know what the fuck is up with that. And it can alsk be rly soothing (for some reason)

References and innuendos are smt else i’ll never say no to if they’re used right. This can also overlap with wordplays. Famous (short) quotes or sayings, places or names are never not it

Smt else that slaps is good ol’ simplicity. Be bold. This👏does👏not👏have👏to👏be👏a👏spoiler! I promise you that just because you make it obvious what’s the book about that won’t spoiler shit.

Talking about: i love a good On-The-Nose title especially because most people expect nothing less than the exact opposite of it. Dont get me started on how banger of a title “They Both Die At The End” would be if it were just a little shorter!

And lastly even tho fullnames are an absolute turn-off last names can be sooo good. Especially when they’re about the whole family and especially when they’re in singular

Ofc these rules don’t always apply. Here are some examples of when they didnt

Fifty shades of gray (not defending the book itself, im just saying: the title is awesome)

Ansalom

The guy who didnt like musicals

Pride and prejudice

The kangaroo chronicles

Dracula

Alice in wonderland

That nineties show

Lollita

Bonny and clyde

Out of africa

Come from away

The never ending story

But trust me they usually do apply and just because a book is doing well it doesn’t mean the title had any part in it! Here are some books that should not have done so well and wouldn’t if it were for the title

Harry Potter

Percy Jackson

Mathilda

Birth Control is Sinful in the Christian Marriages and also Robbing God of Priesthood Children!! (Like holy shit dude wtf u literally have not one but TWO exclamation marks in there and take up TWO lines)

The little shop of horrors

Here are some really good titles

Red clocks

Hamlet

Star Wars

Maze Runner

Qualityland

Hamilton

Let’s win

Newsies

Half bad

Blackbird

Avatar

Chrimson rivers

Fight or flight

Young royals

Bridgerton

Titanic

Here are some titles that could have been soooo good if they just… (and what i would change them too

How to get away with murder its so long (sort of wordplay?, interesting)

The fifth season- season five its too long sry (interesting)

Maze Runner-*not having sequels* it just doesn’t make sense for the sequels (simple and interesting)

Just lovers (like we’re suposed to be)- just lovers (contradiction, interesting)

History is all you left me-simply history (?) (contratdiction) too long

More happy than not (interesting) too lonh

They both die at the end (on the nose) too long

Half bad: the bastard son of the devil himself- half bad (interesting) too fucking long dudeee

Also some that DID folow the rules but are still… not so good for some reason? (This is only about the titles not the works!!!!!)

Best friends brother

Choices

Girl in pieces

Boy meets world

No one saw

That nineties show

Lalaland

Im also maybe gonna do some of these on covers and genrally viduals

[dodecademons]

I love avatrice dont misunderstand, excited for them to come back and be all cute together. However, there's so many other things that I wish people would talk about in terms of what the hope is explored in future seasons. So here's some things I hope get explored. Spoilers if you havent seen the show:

Shotgun Mary back. WE DIDNT SEE A BODY!! I understand there was personal stuff going on thats why they did what they did but the rule is if i didnt see a body, then you arent dead. Shotgun mary is out there and she will come back with a vengeance

Lilith what is your plan girlie? I still dont even fully understand why you specifically changed when in Reya's realm. Foils and all that but did Reya actually make that decision? Was it happenstance? Also i want her to just dunk on her mom she deserves more than that.

Reya's realm, must see more. Wtf is going on over there. Who else is over there? Are there other dimensions we haven't seen yet? Must know more about this mysterious place

Beatrice backstory. Whether thats before she joined the church/ocs, her parents, when she first arrived in the ocs/church. Anything, i just want that good good backstory

Holy war. Sounds intense. Theres wraiths all over the place still. Just because Adriel was torn into four pieces and exploded doesnt mean the thousands of people that were possessed suddenly stopped being possessed. BABIES INCLUDED! No more pope and half the religious figures in the church publicly betrayed it (and are also a smear on the ground). Like what is Kristian gonna do? Gonna crawl back to Jillian or continue to lead delusion?

Ava, my angel my sunshine my sin-namon roll, i wonder if they will age her up or if she isnt affected because of the halo. Must know about other realm shenanigans because I stand by my theory that Reya would prefer if ava was out of the picture

Mother superion and Camila duo. I need more of it. Probably my fav duo, i live for it. I wanna see camila leading some new nuns in tech skills or something. Shes learned a lot and shes one smart cookie

Yasmine oh yasmine. Stay safe my child. I wish to see more of her. Whether thats in or out of the ocs. She has knowledge that for generations was kept a secret. She has cards up her sleeve

Theres just so much more to explore

[neutrallyobsessed]

I challenge you to make a tier list of your opinion on Ace Attorney ships >;)

Challenge accepted motherfucker >;))))

i did like 5 different lists cause not all them where complete enough to my tastes and then i found this MASSIVE tier list (with a lot of crack xdd) so i was able to do it, fortunally the nrmy week gave me some time to work on this and EVEN THEN some kinda obvious ones were missing so i had to edit them in from the other tierlists, plus stuff i made up lol

also, for it not be too long and mark very clearly my Heterosexual Bias, the list was divided in two, so let's start: (spoilers for investigations cause shih-na doest appear as shih-na)

The OTP category is very self-explanitory, so the second place is all other ships that i like and ship too just not as hard since i have OTPs for the characters already~~

Ohters I like and Im listening have varying degrees of crack but im still considering as potential ships to like seriously

the canon ships acting as a neutral divider, they are canon, you can't complain about that (or you can im just a tumblr post you can do what you want forever). if they arent higher is cause they are not as interesting or funny as the above ships, i still love them very much

then theres the absolute crack that i find amusing but couldnt take to ship it seriously and then ships that are either boring: too tame, lack spice, feel like avoiding being problematic was the priority instead of they'd be cute togheter; or ships that feel a bit too cruel for comfort and i percieve as no longer fun, but sad

this tier list didnt have ema/nahyuta but did have poly ships that included the three so there we go, the only het ships i dont like (2)

finally, the only gay ships i consider to be neat, silly funny friends-to-lovers not overly popular, very cool and epic

And now, the interesting one:

Rangu referenced and teased by canon joke ship goes first of course!

for real tho, there's friends to lovers OR rarepairs OR lawyer x assistant ships, being my go-to in het ships they'd rank higher here

Evil People In Love! What else can I say? When 2 people are down bad for each other and down for destroying everyone and everything whether for revenge or the lulz cause they're bad and they're doing it togheter it's just beautiful~!

anything crack or toxic in a funny way goes next

incest as a neutral divider since being gay is super normal thus uninteresting but adding the taboo incest spice that will NEVER be approved by society IRL will make me a bit more interested but like you know- neutrally

any boring crack or toxic in a unfunny way goes next

and finally we reach my real (yet still neutral) beef with the ace attorney shipping fandom, being the popular ships that get talked about ad nauseum and if you wanna talk about any other ship you get ignored at best or harrassed at worst. Overrated could be the perfect way to describe this ships as they're so oftenly rated over other ships when they're SO LAME AND BLAND AND BRING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. i am not criticizing originality, you know im unoriginal as well, but other fandoms have this something called ✨VARIETY✨ that EVEN IF the boring bland m/m ship still is number one ship of everyone and their grandmas, it'll still be in a relative equal number of fans and content (or directly opposite where Super Popular Ship has like 100 fans producing stuff and literally anything else has like <5, so you only have to block 1 or maybe 2 Super Popular Ships and then is smooth sailing full of variety~)

tl;dr they're annOyedTPs actually they're not bad, they are meh plus the over exposure can really grind someone's gears, second place being not AS popular thus annoying but still pretty much talked about and liked by many people as they are second places to ships in the normie zone

and finally finally what i actually dislike, shipping canonically het married characters with same-sex characters (and not in the funny way)(specially the gay best friend in love with their straight friend, my absolute belothed) or any flavor of enemies-to-lovers, whether it's a tame rivals-to-lovers or a legit hero x villian (stockholm syndrome can be fine but it depends on how its presented....or if it's... y'know funny) or same-age shipping where the characters maturity levels are SO DRASTICALLY DIFFERENT idk it feels kinda icky :////

In any case, i'm still answering asks for particular ships if y'all want a more in depth opinion ^w^

[wooahaes]

HII HOW WAS WATCHING SPIDERVERSE

tumblr keeps stopping my attempts to answer asks but ill ramble abt some non-spoilery things tht i didnt talk abt in the other ask!!

i love the way miles's parents are written in both this movie and the first. its just genuinely heartwarming to see a lot, and i cannot wait to see where they go with this next because i think miles and his parents are always a highlight to see. someone please get jeff and rio a cake, they deserve it.

i dont think this is much of a note bc maybe its just been a while since ive seen the first one, but god i love gwens design (as well as gwen herself. fuck i wish i had been that cool at 15, i was a loser) so much. i love all of the designs a lot, to be fair, and i love the mish-mashing of styles a lot in general. definitely had to be a bitch to make, fuck production for forcing these animators to work on crunch time.

mmm while i feel like a few sequences dragged a lil bit (not a ton--but i did get hit w the 'i feel like this could have been cut down a smidge' feeling two or three times, max), the movie is genuinely gorgeous to look at. but more importantly: the fucking MUSIC. there's certain things that i feel return from the first movie in the soundtrack, and i can't rly go into it all tht much without dropping spoilers, but ugh it was so good since those things were things that stood out a lot when watching the first

p much anything else i wanna talk about is a spoiler, so ill just leave it at tht!! theres a lot of interesting story beats tht i enjoyed and a couple things i saw coming (but predictability doesnt mean its bad--i'd personally say its good if sometimes the audience picks up on your clues ahead of time and feels satisfied rather than a 'ugh that was obvious' but thts a different convo probably), def a fun experience to sit through tho even with the fire alarm going off in the middle of it haha

anyway!!! solid movie. cant decide whether i like it more than the first, but its still a solid experience and id recommend it <3

[livecharliereaction]

U know what. Im reading the umi mangas but instead of making proper separate tags and all im just going to dump it all in one big post under the read me for each existing tag #Yay

Id like to read it on my own unfortunately im obsessed with Talking

Starting from ep2 cos i feel like it

Obvious spoilers im not going to pretend like i havent read all the vns

Shes so cute

Actually think about her and george a lot recently. From what i think shannon is.... its very very sad to me actually... shes living a sort of bride fantasy but its not with the one she REALLY wants right... And i find it interesting that most people default to calling yasuda sayo (i think it suits her enough and im used to seeing it around too) but the idea of her "true name" being the one that is exclusively used by george in the series is kind of interesting to me... some sort of declaration... I think this manga will overall make me decide what to call them anyway im using yasuda right now to make sure its not confusing but yeah ok

Actually not sure how to interpret that belief of hers either... Im still not completely sure on what i think magic means like i think the simple answer is Love but. I dont know

ALREADY PUNCHING ME IN THE FACE WHAT? KIYO?? Ok maybe thats why then. Hmmmh.

This scene i briefly forgot about actually but i did remember it the other day and out of all the magic items and stuff the mirror thing is the most obvious. So awesome

They draw her insane pretty im kinda obsessed

jessica said georges into "family oriented girls" oughhhh I was thinking about this too well not this exact scene but i did notice shannon visibly get a little quiet whenever george brought up kids. I used to hate the couple so i just assumed it was just their dynamic like george says things and shannon seems like she doesnt even like him But yeah.

Eva one of the people ever isnt she.

Well she does too #HALF COUSIN

UGH. i love her. one reason i wanted to read was to check some subtle things i didnt pay attention to for example is shannon+kanon the only person to call herself furniture? like eva here saying shes worthless n shit but not using that word. Another thing i wanna see how often those two are in the same scene and generally just idk staring at them

Hi kanon. Lmfao i was reading my old livetweet i kept saying he looks like a girl. Yeah. Kanon shannon appearance counter: theyre both here yes but theyre alone

Bae. I missed her. Omfg is she lowkey being born here. I think she doesnt appear in ep1 except maybe tea party... Oh man

like u see it right. im not sure how long ago this was though i forgor even though they just said it. less than 6 years surely

yes ok i checked it was... lets think

i love them

this too makes sense to me even more now. She wouldnt want to end up too close to george like physically i dont mean sex necessarily but like, at all and george is sheepish enough that he might not even have asked

jessica ur so fun to me. favorite cousin? ohhh but i love maria too But jessica is up there. I love her so bad

Now this is funny as hell to me u know. she was saying she wants a boyfriend tooooo and look whos going to show up sooner or later Extremely funny. I remember thinking her and kanon were super crazy good so... I want to OBSERVE

theyre talking about the affinity for seeing magic CLICK CLICK CLICK i dont remember exactly WHO was able to see beatrice surely it was just maria and well shannon and kanon

ugh

There it is #REAL ohh but i like the vn translation phrasing better

EYES WIDE OPEN. KANON IS STANDING THERE WITH HIM

LMFAO. I think he means it too... But it was shannon who suggested to jessica shed do it too... These things can coexist to me

they made him look CRAZY hes complaining. Ok gender dysphoria!

shes so cute i understand what happens next kiss kiss fall in love

Wait i dont like a lot of kanon depictions besides og sprites but i like this he looks CRAZY

OH GIRL SHE DOESNT KNOW WHO SHES TALKING TO ITS SO CRAZY.

Apparently theres a 30 image limit per post but thats ok im alr like 1/3rd done with this ep so ill just split it up. ANYWAY I FORGOT THIS IS HOW HE ANSWERS ITS. He was NOT thinking about it before this. Oh ur crazy. Since the sayo thing bothered me i thought about it a lot too like why yoshiya where does it come from. Im sure theres something w the letters n stuff but idk japanese so i wont know. Yoshiya

[lostacelonnie]

Definitely understandable i easily lose the energy to talk with people when i have to interact with family. So you're good. Ah yes the dont worry about it approach my favorite. Especially when what you do in regards to you is your business. Well between last message & now i forgot so thats a good indicator of how thats goin. Beaches over here are hit & miss but the closer ones to me arent as popular thankfully. Hm. What is a2 knowledge & how is it getting worse? I adore colder climates heat is not kind to me at all. Tents are. Well. Some are decently priced depending on how big of one you get. Oh i definitely recommend going with friends its a lot of fun. Ive been slacking a bit on the game but so far clara is workin for me. Probably wont have enough for kafka. Oooh good luck to you with all your pulls. Story spoilers aren't a major thing for me because the how is always still fun. Definitely understand some just dont want em at all. Every time i try minecraft im like. Never sure what i want to do. So kudos to you for stickin with the game & having fun. Smaller cities are nice love having close stuff without being in like. A big city. Ah dang i hope you find that dye again in the future. Makeup is hard it should be easier for those who wanna wear it. Ive been so busy i missed. So many events whoops. Problem of bein stuck level gaining to continue story. Motivation is hard to come by. I busy myself reading or looking up new science discoveries when i dont wanna leave my room.

thankies ahdhfjfj!!! and, once again, apologies for the late reply. my grandma fortunately left a while ago but i was feeling Cranky and didnt wanna sound Annoyed With Existing ahdjfh. still kinda dying inside since i return to school in 2 weeks but fuck it we ball we stay silly etc. COMING BACK. yeah like "nobodys gonna know-" "theyre gonna know." "how would they know". and understandable sjdkfgjk consider this your reminder then. and ahh fair i live pretty far away from the sea so i dont really know good Spots i guess. BUT i do like lake beaches since theyre way more quiet most of the time. and basically im not exactly sure in how many countries it applies, im thinking most of europe? but essentially language knowledge here is divided by levels, a1 -> a2 -> b1 -> b2 -> c1 -> c2 with c2 being the highest. and well i guess theres also a0 but thats just when you start. a2 is just speaking Basic English, so like enough to survive if you go to an english speaking country but not much more. for reference, by tests ive done, my level is like between b2 and c1 so very decent but i dont know most of the "fancier" and more specific words. and with it "getting worse" i mean that [at least from what our teacher told us] the textbooks are getting easier and easier so people are leaving school not actually knowing almost anything. yeah SAME its been so hot here recently so ive been Suffering. and yeah i know but me and my mother dont really know if its a good idea to buy one since we dont really go camping anyway. but maybe when im an adult im gonna get more into it, esp if i have ppl to do it with. and ah thats nice to hear!!! i DID manage to get kafka and her lightcone so ive been having fun with her recently. actually overpowered. tho i heard shes quite f2p friendly. and oh understandable!! i unfortunately used to be on tiktok where they spoil EVERYTHING and its impossible to avoid so ever since then ive been extra careful. tho i kinda feel that way ab fontaine rn [cos i ended up actually being kinda interested] since i cant download it rn but still am excited 4 the story despite knowing little unconnected bits. and fair, minecraft def isnt for everyone but its very good for chilling out at least to me. rn im procrastinating on beating the ender dragon so im just maxxing out my gear rn. and yeah but im still gonna see whether or not i wanna live a long way from my family. oh well i still have time. also thanks!!! i have not been successful yet but i bought another dye so im gonna keep you updated on that. and ahhhh understandable, ive been Grinding so i didnt have that problem sjfkg i should build my sampo but. ah. i hate grinding artifacts. pretty excited for the 1.3 simulated universe update tho!!! esp since im really curious about the aeons so seeing more of the propagation is sth im looking forward to. but good luck!!! and VERY real i like doing wikipedia deep dives esp about marine animals. im a fishpilled oceancel but i unfortunately suffer from Not Remembering Anything Ive Read Ever.

[everybodysaycbx]

YOUR TAGS ON SOO’S FILMOGRAPHY ALFHAKHSAKBit really do be like that 😭😭😭

Like 75% of his stuff hits straight to the water pipes, even the stuff he only has a minor role in

LITERALYYYYYY its so hard to watch most of his stuff even tho i want to bc hes such a good actor but when theres a new movie of his coming out its almost always a serious drama and im like,,,,,,,,,,do i wanna watch him die again or do i need some happiness rn bcjskqkwjjdjshhhsqjj

probably why i rewatch 100 days my prince so often its my favorite kdrama of his (i love historical dramas so im biased lol) and yeah theres some sad and even tragic moments but its overall a good time and very interesting (plus he and nam jihyun are wonderful in this (and everything they do tbh) and so are the supporting actors

also now im going to use this as an excuse to ramble about my thoughts on the show bc i love it but i have Critiques™ so ill put a read more for spoilers bc ill talk about them a lot

almost all of these issues if not all are all about the writing so there wont be any criticism of the acting which i thought was pretty good overall by kdrama standards (there were only a few times where i thought it was detrimental to my enjoyment but again it was still more to do with my problems with the writing)

so to really get into it, the pacing suffers with the back half of the episodes feeling a bit rushed especially in the last few episodes. i didnt feel like the first half was dragging much except in a few areas but again it didnt detract from my enjoyment. the last id say 5 or 6 episodes really feel like they were speedrunning which made the ending less satisfying

so when i looked at reviews of the show years ago i saw many people criticizing how the main antagonist died bc it felt anticlimatic and i do agree, especially on first watch. while its not as jarring as the first time when ive rewatched it the way he dies still doesnt feel built up as well as it could have been and i think it could have worked if the pacing for the ending wasnt so rushed (plus the numerous twists during the last couple of episodes made it a bit hard to follow where it was heading and some of what WAS set up i think was lost in that but tbh thats par for the course for kdramas lol)

speaking of the ending, i get why it ended the way that it did with the marriage mandate happening again to make everything come full circle, but character wise i dont think it was the way to go. wondeuk has always expressed even before he lost his memory that he hated being royal and never wanted to live that life because of what his father did to get it. and even knowing that he wasnt wondeuk and was probably a noble at the very least he wanted to be with hongshim in the village or wherever they needed to go. hongshim similarly has already gotten used to being a commoner and has lived that way longer than her former life. even in the epilogue she doesnt really live her life as a noble even if her status has been reinstated. i think it wouldve made more sense if he renounced the throne and chose to live with her in the village.

adding to the last point, if they had stayed in the village together and he abdicated, then his half brother would be the crown prince and the queen wouldnt be on her bullshit even at the end of the show!!! dude literally killed the guy who was threatening you and controlling your husband and you still cant stop trying to fuck him over so your son can be king??? i know the evil manipulative queen is a trope in these but shes so illogical it was a bit annoying which is a shame bc i usually love those characters

the show like,,,,,less than halfway through forgets wondeuks half brother is even a character like why was he even there. theres some indication in the beginning of the show that he likes the crown princess but that doesnt really go anywhere (its only brought up in like 2 scenes at the beginning and in the epilogue wheres shes moved to a remote location with the baby and goes to visit for some reason.....dude yall had maybe 3 lines of dialogue between each other. why are you here) and he even tells wondeuk that he hates him but we never really figure out why bc he doesnt really want to be the crown prince that much (not that i can recall rn) so his only role in the story is to help the queen be a red herring but not be a real character of his own

this is more of what i felt upon rewatch but every time i rewatch it i find it more and more annoying but the palace drama where the queen is spreading rumors and then the guys who support the antagonist make fake fliers about how the kingdom wants her deposed for this in order to manipulate the king is just,,,,,extremely uninteresting upon rewatch. like so much is happening that goes on for so long and its dragged out for way longer than it should be AND it takes time away from the village plot with wondeuk and hongshim aka the actual interesting part. so now i mostly just skip those parts even tho when i first watched the show it was fairly interesting tho i felt it dragged on a bit too long so i wont say this is a huge strike against it or anything

while i knew the brother was going to die bc thats how these kinds of stories work i was still upset fjisjshdsjsh he was a great character and while i think it still makes sense why and its still narratively satisfying imo, i think it would still be satisfying if he lived and he and the princess escaped successfully. i think it would work a little bit better actually bc it would make the antagonists decisions make a little more sense in the finale bc not everything is going to his plan and hes losing more control (plus they deserve to be happy :(( they deserve the happy ending wondeuk and hongshim get too) plus it would still tie in with hongshims motivations for rejecting wondeuk initially before the epilogue

thats the last of the criticism but this isnt a praise so ill leave an idea i had for like a what if scenario ig: so i always wondered what would happen if either the antagonist doesnt get to wondeuk in time during the festival or he gets killed by the people the king sent to attack him and hongshims brother gets there to take them them plus her dad with them into hiding. and the awkward tension that would ensue when wondeuk either figures out her brother is the assassin thats been coming after them or just immediately knows when he sees him come to get them but they both dont want to hurt hongshim by telling her what they know about the other but shes distressed that they obviously dont like each other and this is all happening while theyre running around the woods and trying to find a place they can hide out and her dad is just,,,,,,,so confused the entire time but trying to make everyone get along fjwwqkdhuheuedh idk i could add to this later bc i have so many ideas on how it could play out but ill stop there fisksjbdjssjdjssj

[unlimitedhorsepower]

been rotating t&b2 cour2 in my mind like a 5D object...

i wanted to write more comprehensive post to air some of my grievances, and of course finally releasing my exclusive statement on my special beast ryan goldsmith.

however when i started to write this i realized i have a shitton of thoughts and could rewrite the entire cour if i really thought about it, so i actually mention most characters in this self-indulgent essay of mine and you can just skim through if you were interested in my thoughts.

i talk a lot of yuri here even if i went into this thinking that ive already talked about him enough, because he fascinates me...

anyhow, here they are, my more comprehensive thoughts under the cut because theyre not spoiler free:

this is unbearably long: ive bolded some key sentences that build up to something if youd like to skim it instead of reading it. i also suggest you using Ctrl+F to find mentions of characters you care about because ive literally mentioned every single character in this in some way and it genuinely is incredibly long and convoluted.

i talk about some characters way more because i wrote those parts earlier and felt more full of energy. i also talk a lot about ryan. perhaps even more than he deserves! but he is my favourite character, youve been warned. i didnt even mean to make him seem so important because hes not, lmfao.

ill say, it can definitely be a bit confusing if its not being read it order but like, meh... i guess it was also more important for me to get my thoughts out so that i can have other thoughts again.

this entire thing got away from me and at many points devolved to me not only ragging on t&b2 but extensively discussing my alternatives which couldve imo built the entire thing into something more worthwhile...

ive added like three screencaps to make it a little more exciting to scroll through, and if i have energy left im gonna add more images to make it less like a huge wall of text, which it is. but right now i just wanna post it because i genuinely spent 10 hours straight writing this and then woke up today and spent another 10 hours writing it.

i think this is my therapy over yuris arc, because that genuinely made me sick. maybe im unreasonable and just pissed off about that specifically, but who knows. not me!

so, to begin... t&b2 cour2.

hmm.

i initially called it “good” and said i enjoyed it besides yuris arc, but that feeling was born from the sheer emotional turmoil yuris death gave me. in comparison, everything else in the cour was fine- great, even!

there can be missteps and flaws that diminish your enjoyment but that are easy enough to fix in your mind, and then theres a misstep of the sort of a character dying after the narrative spends a lot of time giving me what i can only describe as trauma porn.

i already wrote about that here, so ill skip some of the things related to yuri (i just cant get over it... i keep circling back to him throughout this document because hes such a central figure to what we got and what i thought we would get).

cour2 had such a solid basic understanding of characters, but there was just way too much going on at the same time and way too many loose plot threads. cour2 was like building a house of cards on top of a solid brick foundation and expecting it to hold water.

cour1 isnt perfect, but it was pretty good in introducing us to new concepts, new characters (three new heroes to our ensemble cast, one returning talent from the rising who needs less establishing, and the new villains, and more) and the new plot threads, but i also feel that misogyny unfortunately played a great role in who got arcs and what sort of arcs.

season1 isnt perfect either, of course, but one could imagine a sequel follows up tonally with its predecessor and also improves upon it, especially because this has been explicitly suggested by the creators (like improving on nathans portrayal, for example!).

cour2 majorly failed to follow up on the promises of cour1 and the overall promises of what t&b is like in tone and content. there were too many plot threads and too many characters. i wouldve entirely cut out aurora and large parts of yuris/lunatics “arc”. the latter i wouldve tied into LL audun and a greater plotline of mr.legend and heroism.

speaking of mr.legend, yuris hallucinations of him were excessive and felt extremely cheap. i know i said i wouldnt focus on yuri, but i feel like i have to... mr.legends force ghost saying anything will never amount to any healing or retributive action from the man himself, but i felt like i was supposed to feel it was “good” he knew those things.

i felt that the narrative was telling me that indeed, yuri had loved his father once, and he had positive qualities, but i already knew that. i also never doubted that both of his parents had once loved him- its just that those things dont take away from how poorly they treated yuri in the end.

im willing to extend some sympathy to yuris mother, but to mr.legend, never. in one of the mangas mr.legend in the past asks young maverick to wipe his memories of him ever having powers (even though the memories will return to him in due time since thats a major thing to change) so that he can be free of the guilt he feels.

even without that, i already knew that the real mr.legend most likely felt some sense of guilt over his actions, not just the mr.legend force ghost/yuris hallucination.

i know: i simply dont care! he may have been put into a shitty situation and suffered, but it was his choice to hurt others. it was him who used his status to fix fights and beat his wife and child. he was in a position of power, and he took advantage of it to make himself feel better.

side note, alcoholism keeps being equated to evil by it being explicitly referenced with mr.legend and gregory sunshine even if by itself its a taxing addiction and addicts are people who are suffering, not caricaturish evildoers. antonios drinking habits have been equally worrisome sometimes -if you look at his schedule in KOW the rising, he is very much using alcohol to drown his sorrows- and this briefly comes up in cour1.

in cour2, its played up for jokes: antonio took ivan drinking and ivan drank way too much and did funny things while he was drunk (more on this later). antonios just different actually, because hes fundamentally good.

it was shown to us that mr.legend was very active in the match fixing himself... i think it wouldve been more fitting to show child yuri spying on his fathers discussion with maverick trying to suggest it to test the waters of seeing how easy it would be to manipulate mr.legend into it, perhaps about to offer him coffee to signify hes about to change memories if he needs to, and mr.legend jumping on the offer instead of declining it and shattering yuris high opinion of his father.

maverick not being included just reminds me how yuri is somehow a secret child nobody knows about. we remain in the dark on how yuri ended up taking care of his own mother and what he did to attain the position of a judge.

we still dont know the details of who covered up mr.legends death and why and how. it wouldve only made sense it was maverick, but how the hell did he then not know that yuri must be the one with the powerful NEXT power?.. how did he in general not recognize yuri once he became a judge? was he not distrustful?

more importantly, why did he not try to manipulate yuri? wouldnt it have been a huge boon for him to find a vulnerable child who is mr.legends son no less, and to raise him into a tool like he eventually raised barnaby?

i could see that yuris mother olga (i think its officially translated as origa, but its definitely olga) actually protected him back then. after all, he was the only remaining family she had left, even if she too grew to resent yuri at some point for some reason (and somewhat understandable, given how she was portrayed in s1 accepting mr.legends treatment: she had submitted to her fate and become traumatized).

however, olga has calmed down from her potrayal of throwing plates at yuri in s1 and the change happened without explanation but an acknowledgment from the caregiver, and she is never given any depth as to why she could blame yuri so deeply and fervently in some of her more lucid (?) moments.

in cour2, she becomes just a vessel for inflicting more trauma on yuri, and its her only purpose: shes not her own character. shes a woman, specifically a mother, and thats all we need to know about her.

i know that my tinfoil hat theory of gregory sunshine being yuris biological father is implausible at this point after all that talk about hero blood in yuris veins, but it wouldve genuinely given olga much more depth to give her a reason (not a justification) on why shes been so aggressive towards yuri and blames him specifically, if yuri had been an illegitimate child or somesuch. but i wrote about that already in the linked post and its replies.

back to parental figures, i think laras mother zamira was a great character in cour1. shes not a morally good character, no, but i think her portrayal was strong? it was very clear to me that shes treating lara as an extension of herself instead of her own person. she controls her and her life, and she reprimands lara for having thoughts and feelings beyond her control.

it is her who has set lara on this path to heroism, and it is for her benefit. lara is a vessel for her to life through, and this could be easily contrasted with yuri and his burden about being mr.legends son.

however, in cour2 the entire premise is undermined when zamira is proven to “actually care” about lara. if i dont remember wrong, paolin even says that “she reminds her of her own mother”, which i was meant to understand in a positive way. this is presented in tandem with mr.legend(s ghost) somehow “really caring about yuri” in that odd scene they had together.

its also proven that zamira wasnt an unreliable narrator about her prior tennis partner pamela, because we see pamela easily blame NEXT for existing in the news as proof that she is cruel. i get the sense were supposed to think zamira was just sad and trying her best to raise lara and make sure nobody takes advantage of her like she was taken advantage of.

i frankly dont care! she had, undoubtedly, treated lara the way she treats her in cour1 for laras entire life: shes 14. it leaves a lasting mark she can never take back. “im sorry” doesnt even begin to fix it.

i wrote about yuri adopting lara here, so i wont delve into some very specific AU, but it wouldve felt much more reasonable and realistic for lara to be freed from her mother, not even necessarily in the way my pipeline dream describes, in a way that couldve emphasized yuri and his good qualities.

t&b has never been free of misogyny and other issues, but i feel like this cour really brought a lot of those issues to the surface instead of improving on them... instead of a nuanced portrayal of a fractured mother-daughter relationship, we were given something that just felt like underlining the fact that zamira is a mother, of course she cares about lara in more ways than for her own benefit.

zamira is a mother like olga, and thats what we “needed” to know about them in addition to knowing that they experienced trauma that just made them forget about their motherhood for a moment, but we learn that olga cared too, she even made those cookies. their mother-son relationship is similarly glossed over.

lara -like yuri- is done a great disservice in the process of redeeming abusive parents. shes a kid who killed a villain on accident in self-defense in cour1, and it felt significant. cour2 doesnt bring this up as a plot point in any way.

i was imagining her getting a much bigger arc that couldve overall easily tied into revealing mr.legend as a horrible parent instead of being its own distinctly separate arc.

speaking of mr.legend being exposed, it was ridiculous that yuri revealed mr.legends awfulness to kotetsu and barnaby and it fell fully flat due to kotetsus and barnabys reactions, or rather due to their lack of reactions, which was strange for them both.

its realistic enough to have yuri do something like that, even if it was sudden: it feels like he was under a lot of duress and clearly seeking help in any way he could, justifying it to himself in some “logical” reasoning for it because i dont think he would consciously realize he needs and wants someone to believe him.

before i get into that and how i think they shouldve reacted with far more compassion, i want to say that to me its clear that kotetsus career in heroism has led him to neglect kaede, especially in the past when kaede didnt know that her father was a hero. this is brought up a bit in cour1, and for example is prominent in the beginnings additional scene where kaede begs for her father to show up at the ice rink just this once.

the series shows their father-daughter relationship mostly from kotetsus side, so that we know hes trying his best and really wants to be involved in kaedes life but hes genuinely busy, but if you think about it from kaedes perspective, kotetsu hasnt always been a good father to her and kotetsus business doesnt take away from his failings.

misogyny plays a role in this portrayal, and that i cant blame kotetsu for as a fictional character, but the fact that some of his actions are played for jokes and the fact that he continues doing them bother me, like pretending hes doing yoga like kaede suggested and instead of actually doing it. i wish he was more honest with her, even about those little things!

narratively in the rising, again, kaede is forced to adopt a tomoe-like role in encouraging her own father to continue his hero work, which isnt cute to me at all. its extremely emotionally taxing to have to be more responsible than your own parent and give them advice.. in cour2 she is again protecting her father from the truth that his mother is bedridden (nothing, afaik, comes out of that by the way?).

why is kaede protecting kotetsu, and why does she feel the need to do that? shes a child! she should be able to depend on his father, not feel like she has to protect him just because hes a hero.

those things frustrate me about kotetsu and the narrative around him and kaede, because i think this moment especially couldve used to do something about this dynamic and parenting. however, every parenting-related thing in cour2 was atrocious.

kotetsu has flaws and i think he has done wrong despite trying his best (sometimes your best isnt enough!), but he isnt cruel and genuinely does care about kaede, and he cares about others even if theyre not his family (he is a busybody, after all). he is a single father and a widower whose late wife pushed him into hero work, and his old mother supports him greatly, as does his brother.

despite family being so important to kotetsu, he ends up not reacting much to yuris admission that mr.legend beat his wife and child. doesnt that seem like something he wouldve focused on? good-hearted as he is, wouldnt he have been utterly shocked to hear that someone who “saved” him couldve been so thoroughly rotten?

it shouldve shocked him more than match-fixing and clinging to the identity of a hero: imagining himself becoming a cruel parent (and a husband).

i think he shouldve admitted that his own hero career has caused him to neglect kaede, and that he didnt even properly realize until as of late how much it had affected her- that he has flaws too and cant claim to be special or that mr.legend was an outlier, and that he cant imagine how hard it mustve been for yuri to go through that.

it wouldve been far more compassionate of him, and he really has a lot of compassion for others! i refuse to watch that scene again right now so maybe i remember some part wrong, but still: in my opinion he was a dick to yuri, and very defensive about himself. he didnt try to console him, it felt like he wanted to set himself apart as a better person than mr.legend.

i dont understand why he didnt at least try to find yuri after hes stormed off and hes realized that he said stuff yuri probably didnt want to hear? thats a thing kotetsu does all the time: he meddles. he gets things wrong, sure, but he meddles, and pulls people aside to have a chat with them and to try to help (like he later on does with barnaby).

kotetsu believes in heroism and his ideals of heroes, and its also very personal and family-related to him, so for him to be more shocked by mr.legend clinging to his hero image than the abuse part explicitly was a weird narrative choice to inflict more pain on yuri. i dont think yuri felt understood at all.

i think kotetsu wouldve been able to discern the most important part of this: that mr.legend was a bad father and husband, and he shouldve extended compassion to yuri (even if yuri didnt ask for any). thats what he did with barnaby in s1 as well!

just like kotetsus nonreaction to what really mattered in what yuri told the two of them, barnaby didnt have much to say which made the entire scene feel more callous.

its a deliberate choice, and its as odd as kotetsus reaction.

barnaby saw his parents dead in front of his eyes and was taken in by maverick and regarded him as a parental figure he could depend on up until the moment it was explicitly revealed to him that maverick had killed his parents and used him like a tool.

i could understand kotetsu initially being defensive (hearing someone he was “saved” by being thoroughly awful is not easy!) if barnaby had chimed in and snapped kotetsu out of it, which wouldve also played into the idea that people need others to support them and also to “steer them on the right path” so that kotetsu manages to focus on the most important but also the most painful part even if it also hurts him to think about, including admitting to his own failures as a father.

i think barnaby shouldve immediately been sympathetic towards yuri, and it couldve also signified how far he has come from his first appearance in s1 where he explicitly had closed himself off from others, and perhaps even realized that yuri is acting like he once did and is deeply lonely.

his sudden admittance to being mr.legends son is an urgent cry for help!

canonically, the moment started and ended and neither kotetsu or barnaby cared enough to say anything nice or follow after him. i think it was out-of-character, and they were forced to act like that to make sure yuris downwards spiral would continue. it was cruel.

the plot often felt explicitly manufactured towards a certain endpoint instead of feeling natural and in-character, going so far the narrative took explicit steps to prevent certain things from happening.

the “prevention of things” was especially obvious with ryan.

this is going to be long because not only is he my favourite character, but ever since his introduction in the rising he has occupied a specific niche that couldve played into the theme of questioning who really is a hero and why, and what makes a hero.

because karina forms blue golden with ryan, i dont think i can discuss ryans lack of any real arc without bringing her up, especially because karina and ryan have both been positioned as being more of “main characters” than the rest of the supporting hero ensemble, which is why i especially expected more out of them.

karina has been central ever since the pilot of t&b, in which she is featured: she has a lot of connections to kotetsu including her childish crush, and out of all heroes, it is her who kaede calls when she wants to plan something, and ryan was introduced as a main character in the rising and embodies traits from both kotetsu and barnaby, including visually.

to begin with, ryans themes from the rising arent contradicted by cour1 setting him up as having very personal beef with gregory sunshine, the most prominent antagonist because the heroes never properly meet rosicky and LL audun is a last-minute addition (who wouldve deserved more screen time, more on him later).

in cour1, we come to know that gregory caused ryan collapse a building on himself and nobody helped him, his fellow heroes laughing at him before they leave him bleeding underneath rubble. in cour2, we see more of it and that he didnt only get buried underneath large amounts of rubble, but that he majorly injured (or worse) a large amount of civilians as well.

again, im not sure because im not going to rewatch, but i understood it was supposed to be the same instance as the one where his fellow heroes laugh at him, unless its just a nightmare he has that civilians were injured as well.

regardless, he was personally affected by gregory, and he wants gregory to not to run free, and its a fact that hes actually very emotional and acts impulsively under duress, like trying to leave sternbild the moment he thought karina was going to ditch him as a buddy (because he, like yuri, is actually lonely and wants people to understand him but gives up way too quickly).

he also breaks the door into gregorys apartment without a second thought (this is breaking&entering!), and later on we see him yelling and gesturing at blue goldens manager in a quick background scene about their new contracts.

however, his reaction to mattia allegedly ratting them out to gregory is “slightly miffed” at best, even if gregory was so close to being caught by him. it feels unbelievable to me, especially because i think his loud and genuine emotions are his strength but also his potential flaw.

i think he shouldve acted way more unreasonably emotional about it, instead of only bringing up how anyone can betray you at any time. to take a detour to karina for a bit, it was also ridiculous that karina had nothing significant to say to that.

she has difficulties speaking up sometimes, but karina shouldve been allowed to feel personally slighted by ryan after all the buddy hero arcs being about trusting each other.

it seems that she can only be given arcs that revolve around men and not, for example, her feelings about herself and being able to take pride in being a very hard-working hero, idol, and now a friend too, especially when the new manga shows her reoccurring troubles in trying to balance different aspects of her life like studying and being a hero.

it wouldve stung to hear ryan say that like he was brushing her off: did ryan learn nothing, and was he just saying all that stuff earlier to put her at ease instead of being genuine? it also ties into ryans issue of always being genuine but his eccentric personality making him seem fake/suspicious, like in the rising.

his personality felt utterly stagnant in cour2 with smug quips, however, and he was just positioned as “morally good” instead of the narrative allowing him to reasonably continue his arc and meaning for the narrative by going after gregory as a hero even when its against the law.

some of the themes of ryans character pair off with yuris and any arc he couldve been given with gregory wouldve been perfect to compliment an arc with yuri/lunatic, the truth about mr.legend, how LL audun couldve tied into that.

yuri is positioned as a vigilante, even a villain, but hes shown to save kotetsu on-screen, and he follows his code of justice very strictly. we know his reasons to act the way he does, and he is sympathetic. ryan, on the other hand, is positioned as a hero, but he can be kind of a prick and his idea of justice is remarkably lax in some ways. we can make a good guess why he acts like that, and like yuri, he is sympathetic.

they both are characters kotetsu and barnaby know well, and theyre both more severe than the titular protagonists. kotetsu has bent the rules on occasion to act according to his idea of heroism, but in my opinion ryan is set up as someone who would explicitly break rules for his idea of heroism (or lack thereof).

ryan is a good person and very much a hero, but he isnt the flawed but idealistic hero full of passion like wild tiger, or the humble and pure-hearted storybook hero like sky high, hes the egotistical heracles clad in the golden pelt of the slain nemean lion who knows just how good he is (and thats all he has going on for him, that ego of his).

its obvious that he can be a bit selfish: in the rising he uses his gravity dome to not only to save the building, but he traps all the other heroes in it, including pulling sky high from the air. from the movie commentary track ive gotten the idea that he did it on purpose since he can control the height of the dome he creates.

he also stretches out his dome later, so it begs the question if it was ever necessary to get any of the other heroes trapped in it to begin with.

he does save that building and the civilians within and causes no significant harm because he really is good at being a hero and hes not evil, but the narrative shows that he doesnt treat heroism like the heroes of sternbild do: he lacks the same sense of honorable justice our sternbild heroes have.

being a hero is first and foremost his career, which is why he brings up that “the money is good”, and because hes positioned as an experienced hero, he mustve started out as a child, given that he is younger than barnaby (even if in my opinion is not so much younger than he is).

the rising is strongly themed around justice day and the myth, and its also about him seeing the heroes of sternbild care about each other and their bonds with each other, instead of them all regarding each other as competition like hes used to people treating him, given how unbothered he is by figuring out barnaby didnt only distrust him but outright suspected him of being a villain.

due to seeing the bonds of the heroes of sternbild, he starts to “carry a heart of justice” as per the myth. barnaby suspected that he is a villain and the goddess of the story even if he ended up being more like the people cast aside by the goddess for their selfishness.

in the end he makes a choice: he can stay and keep the central bond between kotetsu and barnaby broken, or he can leave and mend the bond his hiring caused and bring the two of them back together as a duo. in the last shot, the winged lion of apollon media faces away from the camera like the way ryan leaves, while the justice tower smiles.

justice was enacted and she approves of it, and funnily ryan never thought that he could be a part of these bonds which is why he wholly leaves sternbild. in his KOW the rising schedule he meets up with a lot of people but theyre all just acquantaices, and he talks with his iguana. he moves around a lot, its in his title of the “wandering gravity prince”.

he lacks bonds like yuri lacks them, but by giving him a buddy partner in t&b2, he becomes more of a part of sternbild heroes, but its not just going to change who he has grown into overnight.

its intentional that ryan has wings on his hero suit like the ones the goddess is portrayed with, and the rest of his imagery plays into the this theming of the goddess/the sun while echoing kotetsus “tiger”.

lions are associated with the sun, even the zodiac sign leo is ruled by the sun. royals and gods have been linked to the sun in many places, so his old hero suit and title play into it. gold, similarly, echoes this sentiment.

in the opening, ryan “sun” is composed of the streets of the city and missing its center where the sponsor is displayed, but knowing the legend, its where the city was caved in, and it uses the same colours as the illustrated parts of the legend of justice day (in which the sun is displayed similarly, and yes, if you disagree on it looking like the sun, you could be right, perhaps that part is a coincidence.)

yuri is shown in the opening of the rising as well, his slide after ryans and his red moon the central piece of his background and juxtaposed with ryans hollow sun.

and i want to be clear, ryans background changes into a sky full of stars before yuris slide is displayed, which also makes sense for ryan because the heroes of sternbild are portrayed as stars more than once (and its funny for ryan to be the sun because the sun is just a star, its just closer to earth. hes not special, hes just loud about it).

its also significant to me that all heroes are portrayed with slides with a side-view of buildings in the background whenever applicable, even keith who can literally fly: it is ryan who has a momentary birds-eye view.

its the opposite of yuris, in which the lines around his red moon are buildings as if someone was looking upwards from the ground and also somewhat echoes the parts, including colour-wise, where the people are trapped in the cave by the goddess.

lunatic features prominently in the rising once yuri figures whats going on, and kotetsu gets to talk to him about how hes trying to save virgil/andrew from the burden of having killed and whatnot. the entire movie is themed around a holiday called justice day and showing mercy and who deserves mercy and why?

i genuinely thought that ryan being brought back indicates that tiger&bunny continues to question what being a hero really means, by giving the titular protagonists and the narrative someone to contrast with lunatic while ensuring kotetsu and barnaby can stay on the side of “good”/heroes for the sake of them being the main characters.

it wouldve been a purpose fulfilled for ryan to go against the law and becoming a vigilante because of how badly he wants to catch gregory: he has a huge personal reason to do so.

instead of the narrative following the logical conclusion of ryan going rogue due to how badly he wants to see gregory out of the streets, we get a scene specifically to explain why ryan cant follow through with the logical next step of his arc?

what a waste of everyones time, and i get the sense that the writers understand how strongly ryan feels about it (the foundation is there!) because it required both the company owner and manager to hang karinas fate over his head to ensure he doesnt just go on his merry way.

(i dont, by the way, understand that scene, and i cant bear to look at t&b2 scenes again... if you can explain it to me, then please do lol. like i specifically dont understand why ryan doing anything would cause harm to karinas privacy.)

not only wouldve it been meaningful for the entire narrative and ryan, this couldve so easily been used to give karina a satisfying arc that also shows that she is just as capable and deserving of an arc as the guy heroes of the cast, especially as the most prominent woman hero. now, instead, she ends up being a plot device to make ryan feel one way or another.

even if blue goldens buddy arc included ryan realizing that he doesnt need to protect karina, it was immediately undermined by “protecting karina” being his only reason to not go rogue to find gregory?

instead of letting ryan go rogue and giving karina agency in going after him by his own choice, we get that. what was the point?

one buddy pair explicitly going against the (unjust!) law couldve served to put lunatic in a different light and interrogate the hero system as a whole, and it wouldve make sense for it to be blue golden due to their proximity to the titular main characters.

realistically i imagine ryan would have enough respect for karina to tell her beforehand what hes about to do, but unaccustomed to working together with people, he would imply that hes going alone and karina puts her foot down about it: shes not going to stop him, but shes not letting him go alone, because shes going with him.

it is her decision, and it gives her agency and an active role.

they cant have a character essentially say “yeah misogyny and gender roles and that shit is kinda fucked up” and then follow it up with Absolutely Nothing and also give karina an another arc about her crush on a man.

karinas potential as a character is squandered time and time again. in s1 its incredibly easy to miss that shes almost always the 2nd on the hero leaderboard because more attention is paid to her funny moments like her “cutie escape” and general fanservice which is awful by the way, considering that for the most part of it she is a child.

its also realistic for the idol industry, and at times the show comes close to making some sort of commentary out of it but it never quite manages, in no small part because karina is never allowed to really shine.

either way, shelving the heroes couldve been more impactful for muddying the waters about the hero industry. the cartoonishly evil interference from the cops only serves to promote the view that the heroes are acting Morally Good because theyre being hindered by not the hero system and the law but the individually selfish police chief and ouroboros interference, and serves to imply lunatic is definitely Morally Bad for acting outside of the law.

it is eventually agnes who “gets everyone to break the law, together!”, and it undermines any reasonable narrative meaning for the entire thing and makes it feel like our heroes couldnt be heroes for a bit for the sake of a meaningless and boring shock twist included for some shock value because nothing really comes out of it.

having blue golden go rogue and the police going after them wouldve forced their hands into actually fighting against non-heroes and the law, not just being on the run while they try to find gregory. ryan and karina could cause significant infrastructure damage very easily to make sure the police dont catch up, and it wouldve been easy to summarise it as collapsed roads frozen over.

while i wouldve in this hypothetical scenario loved an extensive focus on this because ryan is my favourite, i think the whole “going rogue” part couldve been conveyed without taking up an absurd amount of screentime, and couldve easily been condensed for time by having the other heroes watching a news segment about it which wouldnt have felt an out-of-place gimmick given that heroTV exists as a central thing and the fact that this has happened more than once in t&b...

kotetsu and barnaby, and the rest of the heroes could be watching a live feed, and surprised to spot ryan and karina on the run because its unlike they wouldve announced thi. our hero ensemble, especially the protagonist pair, would know that theyre not evil and that they definitely havent turned against the people of sternbild, no matter that theyve now been labeled dangerous NEXT vigilantes.

they couldve been compared to lunatic, which is a very overt way to make the hero ensemble question lunatics status as a vigilante both loved, hated and feared by the general public.

it would be ridiculously easy to play up ryans “evilness” by including a reporter from that introductory press event in the rising where he just randomly used his power on all people in the room to introduce himself (why did he do that. hes so quirky and random.), and then another shot from the rising where he traps all heroes in the gravity dome and thats feels like proof enough? they couldve also recycled the animation.

the narrative couldve made a statement on positioning medias reaction to the beloved idol blue rose on the run as “ryans bad influence” instead of granting her agency, and maybe some of the heroes couldve thought that as well, leaving it to someone else (most likely kotetsu because he is our main character!) to remark that karinas not the type of person to let ryan talk her into this sort of thing and that she mustve instead agreed with him.

having ryan on the hunt for gregory feels natural, but it couldve also been meaningful for karina.

another established thing about gregory is that hes a fucking creep. and karina has dealt with creeps her entire life due to being objectified idol. in cour1, we see that guy trying to hug karina “just this once!”, and it wasnt made into as much of a big deal as it shouldve been because we focused on ryans feelings instead.

that wouldve been fine if it was brought up again, and its utterly wild to me that it feels like they perfectly paved the way for karina to have some sort of arc with gregory herself with ryan bringing up “hug the gregory”, but then the show entirely bailed on it? why the hug theme, then?

it couldve been plot-relevant for karina and the narrative to question what being a hero means for her when her career in heroism has notably led her achievements being belittled in favor of ��cutie escape" -moments and even now the media thinks shes out here because of “ryans influence” and not her own choice.

frustrated karina affirming the media somehow that shes doing this for her sense of justice, not because of ryan when some civilian fan of hers tries to save her, the poor little girl, from this vigilante escapade: what wouldve yuri thought of that?

to give karina cool moments wouldve been more impactful and couldve been plot-relevant instead of the disjointed ~girlboss moments~ of rosicky telling gregory to stop being a creep which equated to so little when rosicky is also killed by gregory.

capturing gregory couldve meant something, not been a footnote, and by showing us that fight with blue golden and gregory, they couldve showed us what they half-heartedly tried to show with the quick LL audun fight scene, with karina being the one who ends up protecting ryan after he was knocked out first?

ryan doesnt even need to have his skull caved in like that, all they wouldve had to do is to give ryan a reason to use his power and not be able to let go by having to continue holding something down with his gravity, calling back to barnaby accidentally letting him get knocked unconscious because he wanted to save schneider, except karina actually saves him.

in the process of capturing/pursuing gregory, karina wouldve had a reason to give us some sort of opinion on what she thinks about creeps without it being shoehorned in and how she has to tolerate them because theres so many loopholes in the law but finally, gregory is the one she can fight back against and its because now other people agree that hes evil!

also i genuinely think ryan wouldve loved to not only capture him but to beat the shit out of gregory because he really is different than our heroes from sternbild (and i think he wouldve been justified to do so too, lol).

to exemplify the themes of bonds, karina couldve stopped him but remarked that she feels like gregory wouldve deserved it, and she couldve vocally acknowledged shes having doubts on whether lunatic is so wrong or not, because has anyone or the hero industry itself ever really protected karina from creeps? no!

lunatic is actually making some sort of point when he kills a guy who is a serial killer of women? a bit drastic but hey. it works. that guy cant kill anyone ever again.

it would mean so much for karina to acknowledge that there indeed is something wrong with the hero industry as it exists now and heroes and heroism isnt just “morally good” by default, which also begs the question whether vigilantes etc are ontologically evil by default.

and personally, i dont think ryan would disagree with her? he is well-traveled and has seen so much more than just sternbild: im sure he has met corrupt heroes and heroes who arent even nice or “good”. im sure some places have very fucked up hero systems?..

they couldve made both ryans and karinas arcs mean something by having them face off against gregory (ive been talking of capturing, but they wouldnt even had to been successful and instead gotten captured by the police themselves or been forced to retreat), and it feels so obvious to me?

both members of blue golden wouldve gained something out of it, the overall plotline wouldve gained something out of it, and the setup of the plot wouldve benefited?

the viewer would also know that gregory deserves anything coming for him regardless of the media/public opinion because he is a freak, and the heroes too could explicitly acknowledge that maybe theyve been too harsh on lunatic by not trying to understand him like how blue golden is now misrepresented by the media without any grace? is lunatic just a killer, or... he does keep talking about that justice, after all.

both ryan and karina have interacted plenty with our protagonist pair, so it wouldve served well to draw kotetsus and barnabys attention to it. continuing to question lunatics “evilness” feels so central!

some of the children already said in the cour1 in that that law class of yuris that they thought lunatic was really protecting them and kotetsu was there to hear it, and then nothing came out of that? are you fucking kidding me? he was just like nope, wrong! its evil, end of story.

its like they were given the perfect foundation to do something interesting and valuable, and they didnt end up do any of that just to punish yuri for daring to exist in the way they forced him to exist since t&b is who made yuri the person who he is... but anyways.

yuri is prominently featured in cour2 for all of the wrong reasons, but his prominence couldve been interesting instead: he couldve been standing there looking over the heroes reacting to two of their friends gone rogue and given a cryptic statement on how it seems theyre no different than lunatic in the eyes of the public now that theyre pursuing their own brand of justice...

and everyone couldve been like alright director petrov:)! but also genuinely considered this while yuri is just there, observing the discussion and wondering how their bonds with the two new vigilantes makes it harder for them to be so sure who is a villain to be stopped and who is not.

unrelated to things i think explicitly realistic or in line of t&bs spirit, if i could choose i wouldve also had ryan and lunatic interact.

i think it wouldve been in-character for lunatic to show up to question what ryans going to do with gregory once he finds the man, with ryan answering genuinely but flippantly while karina is bewildered ryan is just trying to have a casual conversation with an fire arrow dramatically pointed at him.

lunatic questions his end goal, like are you gonna kill that guy maybe, and ryans like i dunno, i didnt think that far. now that you mention it maybe i should lol? and karinas like im sorry what is wrong with you?

we couldve gotten the yuri petrov comedy hes hard to rope into by having ryan act like he usually does with lunatic? you try to be dramatic and brooding when some guy is arguing with his emotional support buddy hero girl? ryans only prior interaction with lunatic is in the rising and saying that he looks creepy: he didnt care about a vigilante showing up because he knew the mecha flying over sternbild was the thing he should stop.

its funny because ryans notable trait is “treating everyone equally”, i dont see why he wouldve acted differently with lunatic, and to imagine karina interacting with lunatic because he showed up and ryan isnt having a normal reaction to it by being concerned. but why would ryan be concerned?.. hes good at insight and im sure he knows lunatics justice is very serious to him, and ryan knows hes not a killer so why would he be concerned right now?

but yes, the barebones idea of using ryan especially as a vessel to force the hero ensemble to reconsider vigilantism and lunatic couldve in my opinion been done without the two of them ever interacting directly, because its about what they stand for in the narrative.

what we needed to see was kotetsu (and barnaby) forming some sort of opinion on this, since we mostly see the hero side through kotetsus eyes: he is the main character, after all. all the narrative had to do was let ryan to go do what he clearly wants to.

my description of this all is very elaborate and keeps the entire thing somehow separate from the other heroes, but i think the idea or something akin to my elaborate view couldve been conveyed in a fairly conservative amount of scenes, because the cour only has limited time!

theres also a huge potential for the other characters to join in on the vigilante shenanigans like what ended up happening in the end in canon with all of them “going rogue”, and ryan and karinas involvement couldve been greater than other heroes but still far more smaller once kotetsu and barnaby get their ball rolling over the matter...

t&b2 has a lot of characters, and i think they couldve made it work, but the scenes wouldve had to been carefully picked without wasting scenes on counteracting things they had already set up?..

i dont feel like i can answer the question of “what narrative purpose did it serve to make sure ryan doesnt try to capture gregory on his own?” without pivoting back to “it had to be like this so that yuri would suffer and die and our heroes would stay morally Good unlike lunatic!”.

like, i LOVE ryan, hes my favourite character! and many of the scenes he was in i couldve lived without, because they didnt really add anything of worth to the overall narrative or plotline save for reminding us that he exists.

the entire thing where blue golden separates from the other heroes to go try to find gregory in the jail itself was similarly needlessly drawn out and condensed all the same?..

i understand it as necessary somehow (for the current plotline) to introduce LL audun, but because ryan and karina dont really have anything to do with the guy, it feels wasteful.

the pacing felt awkward to me overall. i was actually bored in some of the first episodes of the cour! and after that, everything starts happening so fast: the LL audun situation is especially sped through.

in cour1, heroes got progressively taken out until only “the essentials” in completing the arc were left, which was a great idea for the sake of stretching the limited screentime available.

it also had real in-world impact, unlike blue golden getting up a while later even if gregory flaunted that “it was so easy for LL audun to kill heroes”. it served so little purpose and was a waste of everyones time for a cheap “shock” because since it happened off-screen, i easily guessed they wouldnt kill a character off like that.

in cour2, we start knocking out heroes very late to the episodes and its not even semi-permanent. it wouldve been way more sensible to have some of the cast get knocked out somewhat early to let the remaining heroes to shine! they couldve even made to go berserk by gregory, so that we couldve then knocked HIM out and then gotten most of the heroes back for a grand finale of sorts, probably facing off LL audun and accompanied by lunatic.

even in the canon scenario, subaru couldve charged in (his whole thing is that hes hot-headed and a bit stupid even if his heart is in the right place!) and thomas couldve shown up earlier, eliminating many scenes that had little worth and focused on efficiently introducing LL audun.

they couldve had that fight with him and thomas couldve swiftly explained key details about him for exposition and made it natural because we already knew hes a fan. i also think their arcs werent so bad i suppose, but them fighting together was the conclusion to the mr.thomas buddy arc, so getting knocked out for a few episodes because theyre still rookie heroes and a bit silly wouldve made sense...

especially when they already were in the last fight in cour1!

it wouldnt have been a disservice to their arcs and wouldve given others more time to shine, and it wouldve been interesting to have other heroes react that the rookie team is presumed dead? they wouldve been fighting even harder against LL audun!

which leads me to say that the one good thing about cour2 for me was LL auduns character, but his potential wasnt realized. he was so prominent as imagery in cour1, with the twins and thomas both idolizing him.

we also know that mr.legend was a corrupt hero and there probably were others? instead of auroras introduction (it was such a gimmick), and gregory getting so much screentime for being creepy, it wouldve been far more interesting to focus on the fact LL auduns time active in vigilantism overlapped with mr.legends time as a hero.

i keep coming back to this, but LL audun couldve been the perfect setup for mr.legends crimes becoming public? it wouldve added intrique to the viewer too by have mr.thomas presumed dead and LL audun fighting the remaining heroes.

that wouldve made it harder to believe mr.legend really sucked so much by the general public and many heroes! kotetsu and barnaby wouldve felt inclined to share some part of what they learned from yuri earlier?

i feel like this wouldve been such an interesting way to make kotetsu and barnaby realize even more things about mr.legend, the hero system itself, medias part in who gets to be a hero and whos not, and lunatic... in a deeper way than the canon, half-hearted attempt at sympathetizing we got, because i just think its not in-character to have them react like that!

in-show its mentioned that LL audun “started to think hes a true hero around his tenth year in prison” but it felt like pure ouroboros/maverick interference to me (even if the current narrative mightve meant it for real).

wouldnt it have made more sense that LL audun was actually a "true hero” fighting against the establishment of the hero system itself, not because he hates heroes, but because he had figured out it was already rotten to the core becasue of maverick?

his simple nature was refreshing (in the same way i really liked fugan and mugan because they were villains but also funny about it) and kept the scenes with him light-hearted, a quality ive always been fond of in tiger&bunny. i do like intense scenes, but i think tiger&bunny should also be a little bit funny and not hard to watch.

he couldve lost his grip on reality a little bit since he spent decades in solitary confinement and focused very hard on his idea of heroism, or maverick couldve even fucked with his thoughts and made him into a ticking time bomb of wanting to destroy so many random people if he ever got out?

how the hell did maverick, mr.legend and the heroes of that time, realistically defeat LL audun back then? its not explained (again i could misremember) and its not important to the canon as-is, but imagine if the canon had focused on idk, being nicer to yuri and on the angle of mr.legends crimes and what if maverick, with mr.legend in tow, had promised to destroy sternbild if LL audun doesnt let them have their way?

it wouldve been, i feel, very easy to let us catch on that maverick was manufacturing LL auduns crimes and spread them on the media for the benefit of mr.legend and heroTV, and that LL audun couldnt stop maverick because he had been honorable about it, like a “true hero”?

hundred power is extremely versatile since it heightens all senses and weve seen that it can even boost recovery, and he can activate it almost continuously: what was it that stopped him from cracking mr.legends skull like an egg once the man himself had fully lost his power, given the canon itself features mr.legend worried about having to face someone he cant realistically win against?

LL audun outright refusing to kill mr.legend and/or maverick feels like the logical conclusion to the question of why he could be defeated. it would also give kotetsu something to think about, to realize this on the screen as our main character!

mr.legend was the hero who saved kotetsu, and then he learns from yuri that mr.legend was actually an awful person, and then, as i suggest, he sees a buddy hero pair go rogue- and then they all have to go rogue?

and to bring all of that to a satisfying conclusion, he faces off against LL audun, with the man questioning gregorys claims about who the real villains are because theyve all protected each other.

some further exposition later he could learn that mr.legend wouldnt have been able to be so awful if LL audun had just killed him when he had the chance, and that maverick couldnt have manipulated barnaby and been evil overall if LL audun hadnt taken up my suggested deal from maverick to voluntarily get imprisoned to protect sternbild and had gone the lunatic route instead?

kotetsu has always been so against killing people, and i dont think hes wrong to think so (well yes i think he is wrong. i think its morally okay to kill evil people! albeit not without emotional consequences for the person taking up that burden like lunatic. but i think its important for kotetsu to disagree with killing) and he wouldnt have had to abandon that principle of his, but this troubling reveal couldve given the narrative way more depth?..

and when kotetsu talks of the goal in the rising being saving virgil/andrew from himself: couldnt he have recognized the emotional toll lunatics actions take on him, and the emotional toll LL audun has taken due to his inaction?

like a real bit of some gray morality that actually has a purpose!

thinking about it makes me want to break something- i feel like everything was so perfectly set up for something like this, and not even this scenario but the concept of sympathizing with yuri further and helping him heal!

it couldve happened without revealing that lunatic is yuri and letting yuri continue in his position as the director of the heroes after the season has concluded (i wouldve enjoyed this personally so that i can imagine him out there), because i feel that revealing mr.legends crimes wouldve changed yuris position so significantly, and for the better!

kotetsu, as the main chracter, wouldnt have had to reveal judge petrov is mr.legends son either, maybe just lunatic for example! imagine yuri seeing people condemn his father? that wouldve been incredibly cathartic? that people agree that whoever mr.legends family was, they mustve suffered, truly and deeply?

yuri couldve gotten a scene like what kotetsu got at the end of the rising, with heroTV broadcasting random people having various positive opinions on him instead as he stands somewhere, contemplating taking off his mask and killing himself for his sins and his justice and whatnot while kotetsu and barnaby arent able to calm him down?

we couldve had a dramatic scene like that, and one of the manga chapters features that scene where yuri revealed his face to the terminally ill woman who had wanted to know who the man behind the mask is: he couldve even revealed himself to kotetsu and barnaby at least since theyre the main characters and still retained his anonymity by using his fire to shield himself from heroTV.

and on the broadcasted heroTV screen people from across sternbild could thank him for what hes done: could yuri, at that point, deny himself the possibility of being forgiven in some way?

it couldve also given us the hilarious dynamic of kotetsu and barnaby at least (and just for me, as a treat, ideally most if not all heroes) knowing that yuri is lunatic but they have a pact to keep his secret.

lunatic half-bleeds to death before jumping off but he doesnt set himself on fire and we dont see him fully fall but it serves as a momentary death fakeout.

then theres an ending scene of judge petrov opening the door to the hero lounge to give a briefing (returning us to the start of the season with yuri briefing everyone about buddy heroes) and he looks incredibly beat up.

agnes asks what the hell happened to him and he says he “got caught by one of the rampaging NEXT” or something else not unbelievable but ridiculous with a straight face, and none of the heroes contradict him.

like, wouldnt it be on-brand for kotetsu to try to joke about it while barnaby tried to shush him and causing someone like keith to quip that he doesnt really get it, isnt it a secret? and agnes could just scoff because whatever are the heroes talking about now...

my dream scenario is everyone laughing about this with yuri who is also laughing a little in confusion because now he has those bonds he hasnt had before? ngl i dont care i just want to see him happy lmfao<3

anyways see how ive lost the plot of this opinions document? bible-length and ive rambled about various topics, jeez. i also said i wouldnt talk about yuri so much but he just feels like such a central character and i like it- i just wish theyd been gentle with him instead of whatever we got. and yes, im about to talk about yuri again...

its unfortunate that with such a big cast, again, only the titular protagonists are often given scenes to interact with plot-relevant matters personally and with any depth...

of course, kotetsu and barnaby should remain at the centre of it all since theyre the protagonists, but cour2 especially included us seeing tidbits from the perspective of so many random characters, it begs the question why add so many bits from characters when i think its pretty clear the fans are interested in tiger&bunny for the ensemble cast too and want to see more of them?..

sorry to fervent mario the announcer fans or something i suppose, but if cour2 had used its time more wisely, we couldve gotten great moments from various heroes in the same time we didnt get anything done?

wasnt a single writer aware that the fandom adores the titular protagonists but theres also large fandom pockets for the other hero characters AND yuri? didnt anyone think that s2 and its buddy hero premise couldve more effectively been used to give us more lore and funny moments also for the supporting cast?

this makes me, for example, think of the scenes where everyone is deliberating X rampages and gregory things.

youre telling me that weve got all of these characters in a room and youre capable of making them act in-character while interacting with each other, but you chose the most boring ways to do it in pursuit of some sort of unneeded seriousness?

those scenes by themselves couldve been majorly improved by playing into what ive seen as the strength of tiger&bunny, with the way every hero has a distinct personality easy to play up for light-hearted moments without making it unnatural or forced?..

for example, they could be trying to talk of something serious when ryan, kotetsu and subaru get into a nonsensical argument because theyre all so loud and kotetsu and ryan actually get along well, so they couldve argued on purpose to ease the mood, while subaru got really serious about the argument because hes 17 and goofy?

barnaby, karina and thomas are all collectively sighing because of course their buddy partners are acting like this, and this goes on while keith is trying to get a word out on something actually valuable he thought of but hes too polite to interrupt the conversation, so nathan has to raise her voice and be like “boys can we please calm down keith wants to say something<3 you have 30 seconds before i get mad!″

and kotetsu, ryan and subaru are forced to apologetically sit on the floor or something, just to let keith convey an actually good point he came up just now while listening to them argue. expositional scenes dont have to be boring and lifeless?

of course its sweet to have them work together, but giving them light-hearted moments wouldnt have diminished that. theres just so much potential with the cast we have, and while they had a great foundation, the real potential was never really reached.

the way they neglect the strength of their ensemble cast repeats with who interacts with lunatic/yuri. and i know- kotetsu and barnaby are our main characters here, but sometimes i feel like hes in protagonist jail, because there are so many great interactions to pursue with him that could actually add something to the narrative!

nathan was kind of accidentally framed by him in s1, but we dont really get any follow-up on that. and for me, one of yuris greatest moments is in the manga when he saves keith (civilian) from dying while keith is trying to save the two criminals from dying himself, and keith is never none the wiser about it.

but thats more of a self-indulgence than a realistic critique, i imagine. however, from this i can get to talking about the heroes i didnt yet mention, because i can see so many ways to tie the supporting cast into the narrative and not just include scenes for “fanservice”.

the peripheral material has done this and more, why not include some of it in the show?

this is all mostly just a lot of musing on how underutilized everyone was, and how a lot of it felt disjointed and a bit wasteful of the time they had to convey the entire story.

ill start with keith: it was disappointing how he only smiled through the entire cour2, especially when you think about LL audun, who pretty much shares his “simple” worldview on heroism. we didnt even see him fight LL audun at all if my memory serves me right.

he didnt have any reaction to when the heroes get shelved, and keith arguably has pretty much no other life than being a hero, but he never has any sort of thoughts about the matter.

closest we get is firesky reminiscensing on the moments they had respectively gotten their hero suits, and keith remains one of the heroes whose backstory we know absolutely nothing about. i actually thought keith would drop some backstory lore there, but he didnt.

i feel that cour1 did a fantastic job on telling us what sort of guy he is in the episode nathan complains about him to kotetsu and barnaby: he is insecure despite all of his fame and how “perfect” he is without trying by nature, and he still he tries to act even more perfect to make sure other people would like him.

cour2 didnt really give us anything? i was genuinely expecting keith to break down at some point and that he was trying really hard to act unbothered to not make anyone else lose heart, especially after kotetsu remarked in cour1 that its keith and nathan who are really doing most of the advising around here and not himself and barnaby, the real senior buddy hero pair.

it wouldve not only given us a continuation of things from cour1 and given keith some sort of arc for the 2nd cour, but it couldve given us a character-driven moment used to show us why its kotetsu who is the protagonist even if we all know keith is such a picture-perfect hero.

ive always thought that kotetsu is more approachable than keith on purpose: hes a very normal person with normal concerns that are easy for many to relate to, and that is his charm and his strength, and he doesnt particularly stand out or excel, hes in the hero business purely out of his conviction and doing his best.

wild tiger isnt the most popular hero, but he has dedicated fans, okay! hes goofy and easy-going and meddlesome, and hes trying to make the world better, whereas keith could never be the protagonist in the same way kotetsu is because hes just too good, like how nathan found his projected perfection unnerving.

to let kotetsu participate in reassuring keith (since hes the protagonist and a busybody!) besides nathan as his buddy partner couldve served as a plot point to strengthen the idea that kotetsus various flaws are a part of what makes him great, and it couldve been used in tandem to again, interrogate the narrative about what heroism is, who can be a hero, and so on and so forth.

and with regards to my earlier thoughts about LL audun, keith represents the same type of ideal LL audun at least thinks himself to be, and the sort of ideal LL audun couldve embodied if they let me write t&b2, lol.

there couldve been some sort of plot-relevant parallel there that lets kotetsu actually figure out that LL audun is genuinely thinking hes doing the right thing and gregory was taking advantage of him- something to let kotetsu take the initiative in making LL audun question whether he actually is fighting against villains or not, because LL audun randomly questioning it himself was a bit too convenient.

it couldve been a time for kotetsu to shine with what he does best, trying to talk his brand of sense into the people hes fighting against, like how he always has a lot to say when hes facing off lunatic, or how in season1 his entire plan for making people remember who he is includes him showing up in his old hero suit and talking to them.

isnt that part of kotetsus charm as a protagonist?.. and LL audun wouldve been perfect for a discussion, because his personality wouldve lended itself to a very campy “two heroes having a dramatic discussion during a fight”.

i suppose i also personally dont need or want kotetsu be really good at fighting with the most powerful NEXT power, because thats not what makes him a fun protagonist. him goofing off and slipping on a banana peel on his way to an arrest makes him fun, and him talking the socks off of his opponents is just part of his way of being a hero.

kotetsu is into the whole “superhero flair”: heroes need to have secret identities, and heroes need to be a bit campy with thematic outfits and have dramatic discussions while they fight, and thats the spirit of tiger&bunny, isnt it? isnt that what were here for?

i at least never watched tiger&bunny for a yuri petrov suffering arc, when tiger&bunny has had an uplifting message throughout even if it tackles more adult issues due to the adult protagonists?

either way, to return to keith, i just feel like hes overdue for having that sort of very human moment to his character, because his nuance has largely been confined to manga and peripheral materials... it wouldve been nice to see him get a big moment on-screen.

even in cour1, the episode with firesky is largely shown to us from nathans perspective. having keith break down wouldve also been a great way to show how serious the shelving of heroes is and making the situation feel tense because keith especially is always so happy.

it couldve been a tipping point of sorts, where everyone starts to lose heart whether theyll manage to figure out the X rampage issue or not, because despite the boring seriousness of those scenes, i at least never felt a real sense of urgency or huge concern about them not being able to be heroes?

keith confessing that he is having a very hard time with the circumstances and making everyone visibly falter wouldve actually left an impact, and couldve let kotetsu shine as a protagonist by him trying to pick up the pieces.

it couldve also have bit of a callback to that scene where in the beginning movie hes called everyone together and claimed that the heroes and barnaby want to meet each other and everyone gets upset and leaves, one by one, but i guess it couldve been more that everyone leaves buddy pair by buddy pair since the season makes a big deal of pairing them up with them buddy pairs whenever possible.

it wouldve made me sad but not in an utterly desperate way because i know that the heroes will pull through and save the day, it wouldve been a good sort of sad.

this couldve also given nathan more of a spot to shine, because shes keiths buddy hero partner! she wouldve been there for him, but i also dont want to suggest any sort of reduction of nathan to a mammy stereotype-adjacent spot where her main function in the narrative is to take care of others, but more on nathan later.

the scene where nathan offers to hire keith as a secretary especially perplexed me and was left in the forefront of my mind. it was funny and cute, but thinking of keith losing his hero status and not immediately looking into civilian ways to help like finding volunteer organizations to sign himself up for them is so unbelievable to me, sorry...

and because i think cour2 shouldve used their episodes and screentime wisely, any such things with keith couldve been, again, tied to the bigger themes of heroism and such, right on the nose in fact! i dont think its far-fetched to have a moment of hopelessness by having keith break down and then reveal later on that hes signed himself up to ten different volunteer organizations when prompted by kotetsu.

one remark and everyone figures keith is so sad too, but hes still trying so hard to help?

keith is in many ways the best of them, and even if he was so crestfallen and suffering, hes juggling ten volunteer jobs at once even as people have complicated feelings about NEXTs due to the X riots and whatever. hes trying so hard to get people to like him and hes troubled by having NEXT powers and possibly putting people in danger if he lost control somehow (like, is he bad by showing up as keith goodman without admitting first thing he has NEXT powers, and also maybe without admitting hes sky high, as if it was a crime).

it was actually so odd how none of the heroes were ever really concerned about losing control?.. especially the heroes with powers that have the capacity to be really destructive?

and to return to keith, in my opinion he wouldve also suffered with the very human desire to be a hero again: its a huge part of his identity and it occupies almost all of his time! i think he would feel guilty that even if hes helping still in his own way by volunteering, he would specifically want to be reinstated as a hero.

it would feel selfish to him, that he has such a private desire. hes also extremely introspective and he canonically spends a lot of time thinking. he couldve delivered a very neat and conscise but very human monologue on the topic and it wouldve given the other heroes a great character-driven moment to share a bit more about how they feel about the situation?

to have our hero ensemble shelved from hero work and dedicate no scene for them to talk about how they feel about it specifically is such a waste, when it couldve showcased their personas and furthered the plotline by having them remember why theyre heroes in the first place and/or why they want to continue being heroes, etc...

what bothered me with firesky was that they also felt oddly separate from the rest of the cast at times during cour2 and the trailer made their role seem far bigger than it ended up being.

they had a bunch of nice scenes together that very funny and showcased their personalities, but i was very disappointing how those scenes kind of failed to tie into the main plotline so that they were just... there. even though theyve been a part of the main cast since the start:/

they didnt even get a major fighting scene with a big bad because LL audun knocked them out off-screen.

nathan suffers from many of the things keith suffered... she also didnt really have any significant role and well, it wasnt too bad i suppose, it was just oddly disjointed.

the heroes met up at helios energy, i think, but they couldve done so much more with nathans position as the CEO of helios energy.

it has always been a footnote in the show, even if the new manga shows us that nathan is aware of various changes in the hero system before anyone else by getting to participate in the discussions about those changes as her own boss! which is also weird ethically, but i guess its not taken so seriously.

it could have been easy to make nathan more prominent because of her CEO status. what if wed gotten to see the mayor talk to a wider board of people that included the owners of the hero companies etc and nathan was allowed to be there, hearing the talk about shelving heroes and being like wow! that certainly is a suggestion, but!..

this couldve also been used to emphasize that as his buddy partner nathan knows how important keiths job is to him? she couldve even alluded to how some heroes have really dedicated their entire lives to hero work and this is no joking matter!

instead of us getting scenes of the mayor and the assistant or somesuch, we couldve literally had a character there and given her a moment to shine while keeping it plot-relevant?.. she couldve given kotetsu and barnaby some insider knowledge on how to talk with the mayor, too?

i think her being a CEO and a hero is interesting because i dont think “CEO” is a very heroic civilian job, but i dont know if id want the series to ever delve into it overmuch because i dont know how it would be respectful to nathan who has suffered from being reduced to a homophobic/transmisogynistic stereotype before...

not like nathan is the only rich hero either, its just very different to gain income from only from hero work versus being a CEO. the peripheral material sometimes comments something about it like a gag strip making nathan say she wishes the heroes wouldnt go on a strike due to her being one of the shareholders.

what this does remind me of is that i dont think t&b2 really had any significant commentary on how money makes things go around? in s1, it felt kind of prominent. kotetsus old hero company literally went bankrupt and antonio suffers from his unpopularity driving down his sponsors profits.

its why the heroes have to also keep up appearances- its not enough to just be a hero, you have to work to be popular as well. in s1 kotetsu & barnaby cant go to a crime scene because theyre doing an interview and other popularity stuff so their hero alerts were cancelled for the duration.

we get the whole “ouroboros controls everything, actually!..” and a vague allusion to affecting The Economy, but thats it?

anyway, disregarding all of that, i feel like they couldve used nathans CEO status for something. what if she had put her career and status on the line to use her connections and money to reacquire the hero suits of those whose companies had really put them under lock and key...

i also think back to momentarily developing some sort of mega optimism brain rot and thinking that karina couldve had some sort of gay crush plotline with the girl who was trying to pretend shes rampaging and how incredibly sweet it wouldve if the noted LGBT icon of our lineup, nathan, gender-haver extraordinaire, had been able to support karina with that... like yeah ryan wouldve been there for her but... hes ryan. lol

overall, i thought the buddy pairs were fun, but man, i want to see the hero ensemble interact with everyone and not just one assigned "important” character per hero. it also made a lot of scenes a bit disjointed with how buddy pairs were a bit separated, in my opinion... it worked better when it was just kotetsu and barnaby, because theyre the main characters! of course theyll have more plotlines than the others.

one thing i already found a bit strange at the start of cour1 is that nathan didnt talk with antonio almost at all, and we know the new director is a huge antonio fan (which is actually funny to me, and you can see the antonio love shining through).

but.... in prior content nathan has also been regularly paired up with antonio, and i dont mean in a shipping sense (even if that has happened as well but it has only really been to make gags on nathan being creepy because of her poor portrayal before), just that theyve specifically been portrayed as friends before.

so it feels like nathan got sidelined purposefully while making antonio have that entire thing about agnes seep from mainly peripheral content into the main show... (i have a huge brain and am a gay antonio truther, btw.)

it left a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth that someone who has some say over the happenings in the show (?) and loves antonio hasnt acknowledged their friendship in any way... and nathans portrayal prior has been unfortunate, so it wouldve meant something to see nathan get to be friends with antonio with the gross sterotypes removed?

its not enough to say things have changed and you want to improve on nathans portrayal: i want to fucking see it!

while their dynamic is funny, the above has made me worry that nathan and keith were paired as a buddy pair because the writers didnt have anything better to do with them and keith is “naive enough” to hang out with nathan without them having to address anything about nathan properly, and cour2 really didnt ease my fear about it.

like one thing nathan has done explicitly in various material is to behave in a specifically “boy crazy” way which i as a lesbian dont really care about, but i think it wouldve meant something to let nathan act in that way without making it weirdly creepy and uncomfortable, and instead let nathan be a whole person of her own.

i am a serial friendzoner of everyone except characters who havent interacted in canon (lmfao) but the purposes of respectfully portraying nathan and proving that the horrible stereotuping is over, i think there couldve been real narrative worth in her being canonically romantically interested in keith and have that relationship develop, to show that nathan is so much more than those creepy stereotypical actions forced on her characterization before.

it wouldnt have to be keith in the case they didnt want to introduce any romance between the hero ensemble, but any romance plotline for nathan couldve been used to show they really did want to improve on nathans portrayal like nathan would deserve.

it couldve easily been used for a scene in which nathan properly brings up their identity because sure, its been discussed some more in peripheral material and the rising improves on what she was given before, but still retains multiple harmful elements... and it just makes me mad to imply youre going to improve on stuff like this and then not do anything with nathan.

as far as i know, her civilian outfit in the rising seems to be inspired by a japanese comedians gag character called “hard gay”, whose ensemble includes a leather bodysuit, and hard gay isnt exactly a respectful portrayal.

i also love to read tiger&bunny opinions online through google translate, from people who would understand nathans identity/possible tropes better than i do by the virtue of being LGBT+ and japanese.

one of the things ive seen raised is that nathans declaration of self-love in the rising is more compassionate than their prior portrayal, but that it unfortunately is somewhat of a trope in itself given the wording of it, which i think further explains how i think nathan wouldve deserved a bigger role?

theres also the recurring issue of misogyny, because nathan specifically says (dirctly copied from netflix translation): “they say a man is made of courage, and a woman is made of love. so what does that mean for people that are gay? we are invincible!”

men being courageous and women being loving is a cliche, which they included as a narrative choice and is not nathans fault... and t&b2 really didnt improve on the baked-in misogyny, which ive already talked about...

and ill be honest, i dont know how nathan romance shenanigans couldve tied into the main plotline lmfao, but they couldve called back to s1 and keith asking the girls for romantic advice, except now it wouldve been keith with the younger girls in tow trying to advise nathan, which wouldve been funny.

it wouldnt even had to have been a fuck you to people who like firesky romantically, because nathans plans couldve fallen through (by for example having the guy have been an antagonistic force in some way, perhaps interested in getting close to a hero after theyve been shelved just for the gossip, like an evil reporter, to make a point about media) and they couldve included a buddy hero scene afterwards where nathan remarks how keith would not do that.

because its true, keith would not do that, and it wouldve given people something fun to elaborate on?..

instead of remarkable improvements for nathans character besides the passive “no more creepy things”, we also get that scene at the end of the skyfire episode where subarus quip comes across as somehow homophobic to me, and i genuinely dont know what im supposed to feel about it. if youre wiser, then please enlighten me.

at this point i realized that talking about each character individually might kill me, because i have so many opinions, and maybe i should focus on buddy hero pairs a little better since thats how they were given to us in s2.

i also probably have more opinions on keith and nathan than the rest because keith is one of my favourite characters and i do really like nathan too, im just frequently haunted by the narratives past crimes against nathan and the currently occurring crimes as well, lol.

talking of subaru, his buddy partner thomas, and his sister ruby, why didnt they do something with thomas and the fact that nathan has been mentioned to have a little sister she cares a lot about? that couldve tied into the plotline?

i was very surprised ruby had no particular role and felt very separate from the rest of the narrative, and how nobody except subaru seemed to notice thomas wasnt present?

subaru begrudgingly (because hes 17 and wants to be independent) asking nathan or the firesky duo for advice because kotetsu saw he was acting weird and pulled him aside to talk about it and directed him to nathan on the subject matter couldve been a fun addition.

it couldve again showed that kotetsus strength is more than just some imaginary scenario where hes the smartest and strongest with all of the answers, because its not true. kotetsu couldve put himself down about it like oh bunny, i couldnt do anything, see! its those two giving advice again!

but barnaby wouldve correctly assessed that its only because of kotetsu subaru is doing this, and without kotetsu meddling, nathan or keith wouldnt have noticed to help subaru either.

mr. thomas overall had an alright arc. ruby was introduced, but much wasnt done with her. i sincerely thought she wouldve been adopted by ouroboros after everything that happened in cour1 and the mentions of orphans.

this drives me up the wall, because yet again, they had an obvious route to question heroism and villainy, and who is a victim of their circumstances and what acts exactly are evil.

kotetsu and barnaby wouldve had a lot of sympathy for ruby just because of their own backstories and personalities, and nobody else wouldve been unsympathetic either?

ruby is reduced to “little sister who loves and supports thomas”, and thats all: she barely has any real agency, even if it was her who sought thomas out. her personality is “gentle and understanding”. she continues the theme of being a woman in the show being reduced to narrative vessels to make the guys of the show do or feel something...

i also talked about them a bit earlier, so i dont have much else to say.

but one huge unresolved plot thread is their entire company? why did they even introduce the owner and manager of jungle when they werent relevant? and why did they seemingly sabotage subaru in cour1 by having his PDA not go off when heroes were called?

i thought it was significant? i thought jungle was sabotaging him?.. nothing came out of that?!

origami rock kinda won... they had a lot of good scenes. antonio was clearly beloved by the narrative. ive also spent two days writing this post so im kinda sick of writing it and this is one of the last parts im bothering to comment about so itll be kinda short, but...

like i mentioned earlier, alcoholism was kind of painted as something evil people do and antonios drinking problem was kind of bypassed entirely, when i feel like its a major thing for him? in the KOW the rising schedule, he really goes hard in on drowning his sadness and loneliness in alcohol.

it was also made into a joke moreso, with antonio and ivan apparently having gone drinking together?.. i feel like a more healthy direction for antonio wouldve been them focusing on things ivan wants to do... like, ivan went out drinking? seriously?

i guess that does feel like a major step for him in the sense that hes less shy and far less mortified by knowing he did silly thinks while drunk which is good for him to be less self-conscious... but its also like... i dont know, just weird me out that antonio would introduce ivan to that part of his life, which i felt was just his loneliness coping mechanism.

last but not least, kid cat... they really got the short end of the stick. they even lived in a dorm together and nothing ever really came out of that? it felt like a waste. i already talked about them a little bit.

paolin didnt really get a separate arc but she did really shine in cour1 at least, and maybe its just me but the whole situation around laras mom and kid cat being shoved into it soured their entire thing for me, especially the part of paolin comparing laras mom to her own mom, again... oof. that shit hurted.

i disliked that paolin was pushed into somehow vaguely motherly/caretaker-esque role with lara with her even looking up those damn parenting books and her fun energetic and somewhat goofy personality wasnt so well preserved. i wish a girl character was allowed to be goofy while still having serious and cool moments: they could do this with subaru but not paolin.

i already talked about karina earlier, but again, even if its actually incharacter and natural for karina to be be “the responsible one” in her dynamic with ryan which i do enjoy, i cant help but notice the narrative forcing all girl characters into that sort of role... i would include nathan (haver of gender) in this, because i feel like being goofy on the occasion is very central to her as well, but hmm.

its not even that i dislike karinas and nathans dynamic with their buddy hero partners, its just unfortunate that all girlies had to do similar things, because i cant ignore it... t&b2 really goofed with that.

it disappoints me personally that even if i dont understand how it wouldve made any sense wrt the narrative, i wish paolin had allowed to show her gender non-comformity somehow?.. i probably had my hopes up after hearing about them essentially saying they want to add a bit of representation into t&b2.

but i suppose that mainly meant ruby mentioning she has two dads and the girl with an ex-girlfriend.

all of the girlies got sidelined, which ive already talked about...

i feel like karina got the most major arc which does make sense because shes more of a main character than the rest, but it was also taken a little bit too seriously in my opinion, i wish the characters clearly treated it as karina being a teen who has a crush on some old guy because teens do that.

it was also kind of like a waste for me... i didnt need so many scenes about it personally. shouldve made karina do things for herself.

i have to admit that for a moment i genuinely thought that karina talking to that fake rampaging girl about her unrequited love for an ex-gf was going to awaken some feelings in karina, lmfao.

another thing about mr.legend i didnt manage to fit anywhere is that we still dont know his name? hes just mr.legend, even yuri doesnt say his name. it makes sense, but narratively, this ensures that mr.legend remains the stuff of myths. it feels like this is what they wanted, but it sucks!

to give him a name behind the hero gimmick wouldve brought him down from his status to that of a normal human. ive always been certain that petrov is yuris mothers maiden name as well, so dropping mr.legends name wouldnt have immediately implicated “yuri petrov” of anything.

nobody even knows he had a family! it feels like maverick scrubbed all of that clean, just in case.

as for mattia, i think his character has worth but is used wastefully: not only is he the one to develop the drug that drives much of the plotline, he gives us more insight to the worldbuilding of t&b and normal peoples opinions on NEXT powers. he doesnt hate the NEXT, but if he could choose, he would have NEXT powers himself.

this sets him apart from other similar characters like ben or saito, who are both normal people at the periphery of the heroes without NEXT powers who have been portrayed heroically in the past, since he explicitly wishes he could attain a sliver of the heroism he sees barnaby have, and he thinks he needs a NEXT power to be able to do so.

this couldve been, yet again, used to reinforce the theme that heroism is so much more than just having a powerful NEXT power. mattia couldve also been used more intelligently, and while connecting him to barnaby is nice to give him a new friend, some of his functions couldve been covered by kotetsu or some other members of the hero ensemble.

it couldve worked better if, for example, the hero ensemble had more strongly reacted to suspecting mattia to have ratted them out. i already said that i think ryan wouldve been more than annoyed about it, but the moment couldve been used to showcase various characters and their reactions to it!

i think the moment couldve been drawn out instead of being immediately resolved, maybe even included something about how mattia needs to prove himself to not to be a spy for ouroboros, not because i think its reasonable, but it couldve meant something to have our heroes be utterly wrong about someone!

i come back to this again and again, but it couldve been used as a point that the heroes arent necessarily right just because theyre heroes, and that mattia couldve worked with saito and proven himself to act more “heroically” (alongside saito!) than how the heroes treated him.

and, unfortunately, the narrative itself undermines mattia because of auroras existence.

she introduces a huge plot hole for me. mattia has worked hard to try to develop a NEXT drug, and has actually gotten results, its just that he hasnt gotten the specific result he wanted: why doesnt he just mail that drugs composition to aurora and have her complete it, since her unclear NEXT power seems to have no limits and gives her a vast intellect without even trying?

in fact, when theres any sort of problem, why dont we ask aurora about it? if shes so important, why havent we ever heard of her before? her inclusion didnt feel natural at all.

i really hated aurora, because her character felt so cheap and gimmicky in every possible way. sure, she was foreshadowed in cour1, but since she obviously didnt exist in s1, it felt incredibly stupid that there conveniently is one single person ouroboros has to assassinate to ruin all relations between people who have NEXT powers and those who dont...

her power makes no sense: if shes so fucking smart and has been Thinking of ways to better the world for literally decades, then why capitalism all over the world?

i do think its realistic to expect she cant force the world to become an utopia, but the way shes introduced and dealt with doesnt really give me a well-nuanced view of her. she looks to the side and saves some lizard species form extinction with an idea.

i think her character couldve been interesting if they had used the whole season to set her up and i guess made the themes of the season somehow align with her and “not being able to fix the world alone no matter how smart you are etc” and included her as the brain and LL audun as the brawns and how neither of them could ever fix the world alone according to their opinions, and only in their bonds can our heroes find the most of their strengths, including connections with other people like how kotetsu could chat with a child in s1 to ease him down from his rampage at the ice rink etc.

buuuut i feel like that couldve been the plotline for some other season altogether. now that we know LL audun, he could get him back later and see how hes doing, etc... in the case he was given more nuance or something and not just sent back to jail, i mean.

theres also the moment where aurora opened her eyes and i guess i was supposed to feel it was significant but i genuinely didnt care. like okay. yeah i noticed that. no i dont care that the day was saved and “she felt comfortable closing her eyes again”.

was that purposeful?.. the implication that shes closing her eyes from the world?.. and she only opened them when she realized she personally was in danger?..

that was so wild to me, i still dont know what the purpose behind that was, but that certainly was how the overall arc felt about yuri. eyes closed, who cares if some guy suffers for no reason.

rosicky was interesting to me, and it was a waste she got shot before she could have any sort of discussion?.. she just felt like a cheap trick to get yuris body fucked up. it couldve been an interesting moment overall, but, well...

not like were going to get anything about yuri reacting to how all of that went down? so it was just... weird.

and then rosicky died and gregory "won” their little squabble, and i wish gregory had fucking exploded because lunatics been making some points and i fucking hate him...

also just to return to the ouroboros ties of the season, they made ouroboros so all-powerful it was stupid and lost a lot of meaning to me. like alright, they can do anything, why are we even fighting, and why is rosicky alone in charge of this operation... makes no fucking sense, its such a forced situation.

the ending of cour2 was... well, it existed. i mean, i dont personally mind kotetsu retiring for good overmuch i suppose, but i think with everything that happened (especially in the way i think things should have happened) he couldve just continued as proof that even people without NEXT powers can be superheroes...

and also as a some sort of proof that it was mr.legends refusal to change any part of his hero image that really did him in: kotetsu could cling to his heroism while accepting hes just a guy without powers and not make it such an issue.

and i suppose if he retires, i wouldve loved to see him take some sort of director-like role instead: i dont think he would be able to let hero stuff go completely, but him being a senior you ask for advice would still give him a lot of things to do.

right now its also a bit of my fear, if they have any thoughts of continuing tiger&bunny in any way ever and yuri had to die so that kotetsu could take over the spot he ended up occupying as a director...:( genuinely makes me make a sad face in real life.

by the point we got to the end they had already fucked up the entire premise and any message they wouldve hoped to send and if they had some sort of uplifting message after yuris death, i failed to understand it. but it felt like a giant fuck you to the fans of the show called “tiger&bunny” to get that last bit of tiger&bunny pair disbanding because of reasons.

i mean, theyre not even remotely my favourite characters and i dont think about them overmuch, but leaving it more open-ended wouldve been so much more fun for so many fans? they really fucked up the shows undercurrent of interrogating who can be a hero and why in the first place, but like...

yeah that shit sucked ass sorry. i dont even have anything to add. people who showed up to see more kotetsu and barnaby content getting that half-hearted discussion about where theyre gonna go from here and then showing their plaque in the “true heroes” hall...

i feel like it undercuts kotetsus character so much, because hes always been the “underdog”, and hes pulled through everything that came before this. they explicitly mention that hes been working really hard to supplement his waning power, and then leave it at that: if i was supposed to understand from that part that kotetsu isnt really retiring or anything, it didnt really come across due to the other circumstances.

and again, i dont even really care about kotetsu! its just that he really exemplifies the tone of the show as a fact, and i like to think i have a modicum of media literacy. and by undermining the uplifting message of the show, they directly undermined him, and by undermining him, they further muddied the spirit of t&b.

i feel like an ending i wouldve killed for is one that couldve included that sort of tour of a museum, but it wouldve showed mr.legend paraphernalia being moved away from “true heroes” and also included our protags being inducted in there if they so wished, but leaving it more open ended... and definitely proving that mr.legend was not worthy of being thought of as a hero.

it was weird that the second league isnt brought up at all during the entire season from what i can remember? i dont even have anything significant to say about it, but i think second league heroes are and have been important, just by existing, to the narrative asking the viewer who really is a true hero and who insnt and what it all means.

they just didnt care, just like they didnt care about that question and yuri. again, they fully ignored anything they had set up before, and kept introducing new characters when old side characters couldve been brought back.

i have some thoughts on the police chief being a younger version of the police chief from double decker... im unsure if the implication is that double decker is more than a spiritual sequel and its not just cameo, or if its something more.

mattia did off-handedly mention that hes developing now trying to develop a drug that takes NEXT powers away if i read and understood it right, which would, i guess, make a canonical disappearance of NEXT powers possible.

i have actually never seen double decker myself, but i understand it references tiger&bunny while being separate and clearly “in the future” from it, and as far as i understand, it doesnt have people with superpowers.

i personally think that imagining double deckers world as a canonical sequel to the world of tiger&bunny sucks, but i dunno what the real implication there is.

i also want to talk about the art direction of t&b2 since im airing out my opinions and complaints, so why not: the art direction kinda sucks. everyone has been smoothed and thinned down and the essence of t&bs charming style has been lost in some ways.

you can really see the jump between older art and the newer art with ryan, for example... ill talk about ryan now because this is my post and i love this guy.

he is downright ugly in some parts of the rising, and i love calling him ugly, but in a serious way, yes, i think hes explicitly supposed to be handsome (because what else does he have going on for him even except being loud and looking good lol).

hes just a different kind of attractive than barnaby who is pretty, and theres various scenes in the rising where you can see that barnaby has more of a button nose while ryan has a sharp, short nose, unlike yuri for example, who just has a large nose overall (and its his charm point!).

ryans most notable quality is that his eyes are drawn to look hooded and deep-set with straight eyebrows that make his strong brow even more prominent, and he usually has a very distinct wrinkle across his forehead.

and what does he look like in t&b2? certainly nothing like that.

i know that the rising has a much larger budget for the designs than the episodic show, and either way they wouldve had to simplify ryans design to translate it into the episodic format. and we all know the goofy parts of season1 they fixed in the bluray release...

that never was a huge problem, and i wouldnt mind it. yes, i guess ryan couldve been changed for marketing, but he looked like that through-out the entire movie and was hugely popular regardless and BECAUSE of how he looks. but its not just ryan, its that the art direction changed drastically, and it made all the characters look so much more generic and samey.

just after the scene i screencapped above, you can see barnaby and ryan from further away with less detail for a scene that passes by quicker, and you can see that less care was used to make them look good but they still were kept distinctive and different. (and sorry to barnaby, i caught him in in the middle of a movement, so he looks extra goofy.)

t&b2 doesnt even have a lot of scenes that i can remember that really let the chracters emote and make goofy faces: kotetsu has always been hugely expressive! i want to see him make a funny face! kotetsu is also the main character, and part of his thing is being an Old Man (even if he isnt even that old for real, but thats beside the point).

he has wrinkles around his eyes in that shot even if its not hugely detailed, and in contrast i feel he was very smooth in t&b2. the art direction felt as aimless as the bullshit plotline, and equally as uncaring towards established characters!

everyone was drawn very samey. another example to me is the scene in cour1 where thomas inspects keiths pectorals is just sad, because hes been thinned down like everyone else. what was there to inspect? absolutely nothing.

this screencap from s1 has more to inspect than the scene where keith is supposed to be noticeably buff. by the way, this entire scene with the girlies and keith has more personality and goofiness than most of cour2.

and heres a screencap of keith from that episode, where his face shape and features are distinct.

ts been a decade and i know that anime production has gone through changes in this time and netflix-style mass drop of episodes may be harder on people in general, but comparing my s2 screencap below to the screencap above just makes me miss the old style because im scared to but s2 keith next to the one above... his eyebrows were so sadly thin and so were his face and body.

you know, lunatic doesnt even have a distinctly large nose, and his eyes arent even particularly sunken and he doesnt have many wrinkles around his eyes like i think is charming for him, because everyone is just smoothed down... and the above screencap isnt even a good example of it, but the charming thickening of lines at some parts is entirely missing in t&b2 from what i can remember? i feel like the linework used to be stronger and more interesting overall.

anyhow, yes, t&b was also fixed up for the bluray release but i feel like the atrocious-looking parts are kind of funny to look back on. i wonder if theyll be editing s2 visually? (and please revise the entire storyline for yuri too, thanks.)

speaking of s1, where did this entire sentiment disappear to? into the ether?

also, i cant help but be plagued by thoughts because the episode i got those keith screencaps from, kotetsu & barnaby are interviewed by kids who are taking the reporting very seriously, and their reaction to kotetsu saying the person he looks up to is mr.legend is lukewarm at best.

then barnaby talks of his parents and robotics, and they light up, which is funny because barnaby is way more popular, but it also narratively, in my opinion, shows that especially the new generation of sternbild thinks mr.legend isnt that impressive and would be more willing to accept that despite the myths around him, he was a man who severely sucked.

theyre ready for new heroes to commemorate, ones that really deserve it, and they (even in cour1!) dont see lunatic as a villain but an antihero who protects them.

oh well.

thanks for reading, even if you didnt read all of it and just read interesting parts or skimmed through it! i guess writing this was like free therapy for me because i need to deal with how deeply yuris cour2 canon arc affected me lmfao.

i dont think ive ever been so blindsided and taken aback by the total surprise i felt at the direction his arc took and that definitely factored into how deeply it fucked me up because if i couldve anticipated that yuri could for example die, i wouldve been a lot more normal about it.

but out of all things, i cant believe that tiger&bunny would do that to me, and make me see all of that pain... genuinely fucked up not going to lie. fugan and mugan and their father being shot to death is one thing because its shocking of course, but yuri has been in the show since the start.

yuri has existed in the minds of people for over a decade, now, so it feels so unexpected they would so callously kill him off, it feels entirely uncharacteristic, and i feel like its not something that anyone couldve expected, and maybe it wouldve been less shocking if season2 had come out like, say, an another year after the rising...

but still, i dont understand how we make the jump from yuris portrayal and the overall themes of the rising into t&b2 and his role in cour2. its wild, i dont know how to get over it.

breathing through gritted teeth how i published a few fanfics with yuri in a huge hurry before cour2 dropped because i wanted to have them started in case some major yuri details drop and ill feel compelled the rewrite the yuri parts of them but huh... well.... cry laugh

i love imagining scenarios with my favourite characters, but i tend to include yuri in the core ensemble cast of heroes: trying to imagine any post-canon shenanigans feels so hard right now like watching a VHS reel that ran to the end and has to be rewound, and actually makes me incredibly sad.

theres that new audiodrama coming out with ryan featured in it and i cant even be excited because i just get sick, like physically... i guess imagining myself casually engaging with tiger&bunny content makes me feel like im spitting on yuris nonexistent grave. woe is me. fuck you tiger&bunny2 cour2. TL;DR - my opinions, this entire post condensed somehow:

the whole arc for yuri felt like a giant fuck you not only to him and all of the fans too, and same with the ending kinda

ryan was brought back for a fun cameo only because he never became plot-relevant really so what was the point lol? screentime waste

plot points set up in cour1 and further before were ignored and scenes were specifically used to counteract them?!

big misogyny moment for all woman characters of the show

hero ensemble overall was underutilized

new characters/excessive focus on side characters like the fucking mayor and the police chief in cour2 felt gimmicky and unnecessary and generally didnt add much worth. i dont care show me my funny heroes instead

they tried to do too many things and lost sight of why t&b has been so great and why the idea of a more self-conscious t&b is so exciting: of course the show has had a lot of flaws, like nathans initial portrayal, and to imagine a show that has the same spirit but improves on those flaws is amazing. its just not even remotely what we got</3

never expected a flawless show but there are flaws that you can headcanon away and there are flaws that undermine the entire theme of the show this far. i dont know how to make s2 any better after seeing cour2 without totally ignoring any of it happened

cour1 wasnt even bad. it was solid. shit just hit the fan in cour2

the art direction was a huge downgrade, but maybe it was just budget constraints, so i dont know how harsh i want to be about it.

leave a comment if you want, lo, i love to talk, its relaxing. i also mightve mixed shit up so dont embarrass me too much if you notice any overt mixups since i really did marathon the cour once and i dont know how i can bear to look at it again. i also have some confusion over some parts of the story which i detailed above in my manifesto so if you wanna educate me, please do, lmfao...peace out...

[sailorhyunjinz]

Do you write yandere? If so, can I request skz yandere headcanons on how they would react when S/O rejects them because she doesn't wanna deal with whole drama that would come with dating an idol?

i mean kinda?? i have a seungmin yandere fic in my drafts sooo BUT YEAH

oh also, requests are not open but im just gonna do this one cause headcanons are kinda fun BUT REQUESTS ARE CLOSED <33

also why is the felix one so short-

Warnings; yandere!skz, rejection, k-dnapping, slight gaslightning or like manipulation, restraints, threats, aggression, mentions of masturbation, stockholm syndrome

Chan

nobody rejects him. nobody.

you two were friends from school and you were sooo happy when chan made it as an idol, finally persuing the dream he had been yapping on about for years. 

but in the midst of that he realized that he had feelings for you, he missed you all the time, just wanting to hang out with you and maybe explore the things he had on his mind. so,, he decided to confess when you guys were at a cafe.

“look y/n,,, there’s something I wanna tell you” he started to which you tilted your head

“nooo,,, are you guys going on a tour again,,, i wil miss you sooo much channie” you said with a pout but the boy shook his head.

“i like you y/n” 

your mouth stood agape, this was not what you expected and truthfully,,, not what you wanted. 

“chan,,, y-you know thats not possible” you said with a frown, looking at him straight ahead.

“of course it is,,, why wouldn’t it be? w-what are you trying to say y/n?!” his voice started growing louder, you looking around in order to see that people werent turning their heads towards your table. 

Minho

you have made a big big mistake my friend- 

wont even hesitate to keep you hostage in his basement LIKE IM NOT JOKING-

might just tie you up and like,,, not even do anything to you, just talk to you and admire you, maybe tracing your facial features and cuddle closer on the cold floor

just wants to keep you as a pet or smth and you are scared out of your mind cause you cant move cause of the restraints, you cant speak because you have silvertape across your lips that he only removes to feed you but if you start screaming you wont get any so you deicde to just stay calm and quiet before someone saves you and play along. 

i mean you do,,, kinda fall for him but you know you cant,, but you cant help but to fall for him and miss him whenever he’s out on schedule things

he always returns to you and you get so happy when you see the little crevice of light from outside when he opened the basement door

whenever he lies next to you, you put your head against his shoulder and take in his scent the best you can

he told you everyday that he would let you go if you agreed to date him but you shook your head,, maybe cause you liked being his prey. 

Changbin

he’s more of the��threatening type of yandere,,, like,, not that he’s violent but if you try to block his number he will create new ones and keep on sending you messages about how you have betrayed him and how he wished that you loved him back and all that,,,,

you guys often meet because you go to the same college and are students in the same department sooo,,,, avoiding him is pretty impossible 

he stares a lot at you,,, you guys have a couple of classes together and he just stares the entire time, his eyes are just filled with revenge, he somehow wants you make you his, own you but he doesnt know how yet, for now he can just look.

watch this fucking message conversation just be this;

[why did you talk to him during class?]

[you could have just asked me]

[nobody loves you like i do. no one y/n]

you are never getting rid of him basically,,

he’s gonna get to you first ;))

Hyunjin

i feel like he goes more to the stalking route than the kidnapping and drugging and whatnot- 

ok,,, you rejected him,,, but that doesnt mean you’re getting rid of him.

ohmygod what if he turns into a peeping tom- cause he obviously knows where you live. 

like yall were not even that close?? he just saw you backstage at one of the concerts and thought you looked good so he decided to go up to, you werent an idol so no problem he thought.

but he gets a bit too,, hasty with his decisions and often falls for people randomly and so when he politely greeted you and gave you his number you simply shook your head, explaining that this wouldn’t be possible since you worked in the same industry and you needed to stay clear out of any scandals in order to keep your job. 

no was not answer in Hyunjins mind. 

luckily he managed to catch your full name by flickering through some papers in an office and also saw your full adress there, knowing exactly what he was going to do on his free time. 

Jisung

if im being completely honest,,, i have no idea-

like,,, he gives me kinda pervy yandere vibes,,,

what if youre like his ex before he became an idol and now he wants to get back together with you-

oh,,, he masturbates to your pictures-

i feel like he always thinks about you, wondering what you like and wants to write songs about you but he doesnt do much-

but when he finds out that you have been hired by the same company as him to work as a like,,, economics accountant thingy he is all of a sudden vEEERY interested-

always asking the manager of when the group will have meetings with the accounting team,,, although they had nothing to do with them-

he just wanted to be in a conference room with you (and think pervy things about you in your tight office skirt and white blouse)

you went to the toilet on day and you saw him lurking around the same floor,,, WHICH ONCE AGAIN WAS NOT CONNECTED TO THE GROUP AT ALL- 

and idk,,, probably sneaks in with you and locks the door before you even react that theres someone else in the toilet- 

i feel like he’s pretty mild,,, but when he’s alone with you he is aggressive broooo

probably pins you to the wall and threatens you or smth along those lines,,,,,

(writing this is what my life has become to-)

Felix

“what do you think you’re doing?”

you turn around again, you had just thought of just leaving with a vague answer to his question but he was not having it. 

“answer.” 

his words sounded cold, his dark voice making an entrace, the exact one you’ve heard on many of the songs you listened to.

“felix,,, you have to understand,,, u-um,, if we date theres gonna be some issues” you said but he just stared at you with cocky eyebrows and a dark gaze, running his tongue on the inside of his cheek.

“do you think i care? would i ask you if i cared?” he said to which you shook your head automatically, what more could you do?

“you get until tomorrow to think and if i don’t get the answer i want well,,, we’ll see what i’ll do to you.”

Seungmin

he plots shit behind your back yk?

he’s more of the sneaky type of yanderes (oop spoiler to a fic heh)

like he makes this like fucking year long plan where the objective of the mission is to make you obssessed with him-

he starts kinda subtely,,, first its going to the same gym as you and like,,, knowing where you placed your stuff

and then he starts putting small notes like under your waterbottle when you went to grab something that say like “i think youre cute, call me” and then his number

you obviously dont react,,, because why the fuck would you contact a stranger at the gym 

BUT THEN you realize that its him, its mf kim seungmin. yo,,,, u didnt know he went to this gym,,, that was not,,, the best-

of course you got a bit interested,,, you wanted to know how he was off camera,,, like just in his everyday life and i meeean,,, he was attractive but obviously you should stay away bc,,, he’s a celebrity but seungmin didnt want to stay away

he notes somehow started to get more aggressive,,, suddenly being like “why are you ignoring me?” and such,,,

and one night you were left alone in the gym with him,,, it was sooo quiet, only the sounds of your strained breaths as you lifted a dumbell

here where the plan came to play ;))

Jeongin

he’s obsessed with you and you are not going anywhere, even if you rejected him. 

he’s more clingy?? LIKE HE WILL NOT LEAVE YOU

ok sure,, he falls more into the stalking category too,,, 

also veeeery much a obssessed kinda yandere,,, like his mind is not thinking about how to like capture you,,, more about how to make you soooo comfortable and fool you into loving him despite the circumstances?

i just imagine that you work in a cafe and jeongin often meets you there when he buys coffee and you are already in awe when you see fucking yang jeongin enter the coffee shop on your shift but you were even more excited when he leaves his phone number on a napkin and slides it over the counter before leaving. 

you thought about it,,, contemplating multiple times but,,, you decided it would be best not to since well,,, safety purposes 

but he would visit you and every day his face got more and more perplexed cause he wondered why you didnt call

mf would not leave you alone, he would even wait outside the coffee shop until you finished your shift and walk you home,,, so now he knew where you lived- 

and then do the same thing over and over again until you talked to him.

does. not. give. up. 

[bagelbucket]

*sigh* one hyperfixated mutual has the power of 1000 ad campaigns huh?

Kay, I'll bite, what's redacted asmr/ where can I find it?

ok so for whatever reason i literally cant find my old lists explaining what to listen to in what order, so ill make you a new one!

hi! and welcome to redacted asmr, now known as redacted audio!

redacted audio is a asmr-like channel that uses multiple character povs to tell a high quality and engaging storyline! each pov has their own "listener" which can be you or any oc you imagine!

it's pretty much a M4A boyfriend roleplay story, but with multiple bfs, and you're a different person for each character. a lot of us dont listen for that though, and stay just for the plot! (yeah...the plot mhm.../lhj)

sounds kinda cringe, yes, i know. but i promise you its worth your while. the voice acting is all done by Erik, the channel owner, and he voices dozens of characters perfectly. the plots are well thought-out and its never a dull moment. there's comfort audios and fluff mixed in with it all, and its just an amazing experience that i highly recommend! :D

- - -

To start: freelancer 1, vincent, milo, david, sam, asher,

(DONT LISTEN PAST THE INVERSION OR ELEMENTAL GAME VIDEOS!! SAVE THAT FOR AFTER WATCHING FREELANCER S2)

Then: freelancer s2, the balance (and any other audios in blake, elliot, and brachiums playlists that you didnt get to in the balance playlist), then inversion

Make sure you listen to the tws in the video descriptions, some of the content gets heavy.

Theres also: ivan (which partly comes up in fs2) (and then his endings which dont really matter but you can watch them for some easter eggs), camelopardalis (his videos talk about events throughout the whole prime universe story), and vega <- all of these playlists have something to do with eachother, but dont really effect the main plot and can easily be avoided

Then: avior, project meridian, (we arent sure of either of these timelines, but its side stories you can follow, and they have a bit to do with eachother)

then: ollie, aaron, geordi (these all have basically nothing to do with the main plot. They are side stories)

theres non-canon romances, which are mostly for freelancer and can be listened to for fun Id recommend not listening to the individual playlists (lasko..huxley..etc.) for freelancer because it can get confusing and all you need is in the Freelancer playlists, but its your choice!

Theres also imperium, which currently has two seasons (Imperium s1 and Cataclysm s2) and its like a “what if it was worse” au. there are a lot of trigger warnings for this one. so be careful and treat it as dead dove.

- - -

there are a handful of removed audios from that youtube policy ban-thing that happened a few months ago too, but those can be found for free on the redacted audio patreon! only a couple of those are actually plot-relevant, like some of gavins audios and adams audio (they were removed because of mild sexual content and heavy abuse. again, mind the tws). the rest are teasers for more explicit audios.

here are some links to some of my older posts for more!

thats about it! i have a lot more posts ab this on my blog archive. tumblr hates me and eats all my old posts on my blog, so if you wanna see any anything else for warnings or smth go there! also block #redacted spoilers if you dont want uh. yeah spoilers.

<33 have fun! and my asks are open if you need anything. if you're from my dsmp mutuals, i think you'll find this pretty easy to traverse.

[startagainaprologue]

Hiiiiiiii Pastell I'm also bored and awake!! Can you tell me about aitsf? It seems cool but I'm not sure if it's too scary for me >_<

HIIII!!! yes yess ill tell u about aitsf i love talking about it. ill try to uh,, keep it as spoiler free (at least like. mostly spoiler free. not talking about anything after Mizuki's somnium ig) as possible. <3 unless if u wanna hear more <33

kinda going off of memory here. SO. aitsf. its a murder mystery game. You play as special agent Kaname Date. He works for ABIS. He's a Psyncer there, which means that using the Psync Machine, he can go into peoples dreams (somniums) for investigations and stuff. He also has Aiba! Shes an AI whos meant to help him with investigations and also be a companion/friend? She's also his left eyeball

aiba :)

So anyways, you start off the game at an abandoned park and also the murder scene of a woman named Shoko Nadami. Shes on one of the carousel horses and her left eye appears to be missing.

After doing some investigating and talking with Boss and the investigator Date uses Aiba's x-ray vision and discovers someone hiding in the middle column of the carousel. He forces open the door and finds Mizuki Okiura. Shes the daughter of Shoko and her ex husband Renju, and shes also the girl you have been taking care of the last 4 years. When you find her, shes holding a bloody icepick in her hands.

Cut to a few hours later and Mizuki has been brought to the hospital, and Date stays with her there. He falls asleep and you have your first tutorial somnium with Aiba. you dont learn too much yet, but at the end of the somnium you get to see 2 mysterious people. neat <3

After that the game starts up at your Boss's office and you chat about the murder + just some backstory info (mainly learning more about how Date got Aiba and how he's lost all his memories prior to 6 years ago.). Aiba then tells you that shes found out who called the police about Shoko's body, Ota Matsushita. and you decide to go find him to ask some questions

You go to his home/the diner and talk to his mom, Mayumi Matsushita, for a bit and you learn that he's a fan of an idol named A-set, and that he's likely at the company where she works, Lemniscate (which is also owned by Renju, Mizuki's dad.).

You go there and talk with him, finding out some info like how he discovered the body with Mizuki and ran off. He also talks a bit about A-set before she actually comes in. She seems very interested in learning about the murder and manages to uh,, convince,, Date to bring her with him to the crime scene.

On the way there she ends up getting Date to tell her some info about ABIS. At the crime scene itself, nothing much happens. But at the end she collapses for a moment and Date ends up taking her home. You meet her mother, Hitomi. and have a nice chat with her for a bit before driving back to Boss's office.

She has taken Mizuki out of the hospital, shes currently unable to speak due to what she's witnessed and Boss tells you to psync with her to get more info.

I wont go over what happens in the somnium, spoilers! but. this is where you get your first 'path' to choose from. There are several routes in this game to do, which after doing all of them lets you get the "true" ending of the game. You have the left routes (red route, yellow route, and green route). and the right routes (purple route and pink route.) Mizuki's somnium determines if youre going to be doing one of the left routes or the right routes. If that makes sense.

Personally, I LOVE this game. i think its very interesting and i had a lot of fun playing it. but yeah i dont think its for everyone.. it has. A LOT of gore and pretty graphic deaths. and the sense of humor the game has definitely isnt for everyone either asjdfdklsgerw

I uh!!! hope my explanation made a bit of sense. this is a very brief explanation of what happens at the beginning of the game. theres a lot of stuff i didnt mention/forgot about im sure. The intro part of the game is.. very long

[omegawolverine]

I love it when people talk about things they're passionate about, tell me something cool!! Anything you want, just something you find interesting or want to talk about :D

hello anon my beloved, I am in a bad mood so you will be receiving a passionate, yet lowkey of pissy rant about why villainizing bakugou makes me wanna vomit and its NOT just because I'm a dumbass kinnie :)

tws: child abuse (emotional and physical), near death expierences, bullying, kidnapping, suffocation, lots of trauma in general tbh. if you've seen bnha then basically just keep all the general triggering plot stuff in mind incase i missed any warnings

also, note: I havent caught up on bnha in a minute, I'm at like the start of the war arc but I barely remember shit there tbh so like. probs missing new stuff. also bnha spoiler warnings lol

so, for starters, the homie bakugou has like,, a good handful of issues that come from his childhood that explain why he's an ass. he was always praised and never actually reprimanded for being a twat which led to him having a huge ego that ended up fucking him over majorly. this ego was something that his mother acknowledged him having, but literally didnt try to fix it with anything other than violence. see here:

like, instead of trying to help him, she hits and insults him, which is probably what led to his weird inferiority/superiority complex. being constantly told by others that you're outstanding and one day you'll be a top hero because you're rude and aggressive and then going home and being hit by your mother for those exact same behaviors is bound to fucking confuse a child.

so like, now that we've established that its definetly canon that his mother (parents? I think he said parents at some point but masaru doesn't seem like the type so 🤷) hits him though we don't know how much or how often (though if bakugou was as much of a little shit back then ((which as far as we've seen- he was)) then it was probably often), lets talk about how regardless of all that 1) hitting your kids as "discipline" not only doesn't work but is abusive lol like idc if it's spanking/popping them on the mouth for talking shit, slapping them across the face "on occasion", etc. shits not okay 2) hitting your kids!!!! does not work!!!!!!!! it is literally PROVEN not to work!!!!!!!! hitting a child who has done something wrong doesnt teach them to stop doing something it teaches them to be scared of you, which will cause the child to withdraw, removing part of their support system (assuming said abusive parents would even offer that up) and will most likely lead to them thinking they're a bad person, not that their actions were bad, which are two different things. so, ya know, that would clearly have an effect on a kid. like, as someone with a mother who reminds me all too much of mitsuki: I have acted like a complete shitbag and taken my anger out on people to feel better in the past because of the way my mother treated me. though it was nowhere near what bakugou did, I still know first fucking hand what a mother hitting and insulting her child will do, especially if they have no proper outlet for that (friends, a safe place to vent) which bakugou never fucking had.

theres also the fact that just talking to your kid the way mitsuki does (saying it's his fault he was kidnapped because he's weak, all while hitting him) is not??? okay?????? ive seen people arguing that this was just a joke in poor taste but like her son was KIDNAPPED and even if it was a "joke" there's literally NO WAY that would EVER?? BE FUNNY??????? she just sounds like the kind of parent who at the very least says shit without thinking that would traumatize bakugou (because being told right after being kidnapped it's your fucking fault by your mother is absolutely traumatizing) but it comes across as her being emotionally abusive.

mitsukis character as a whole comes across as a shitty mom who doesn't realize she's a shitty mom and thinks bakugou being an ass isn't at least partially her fault even though she's admitted to realizing he has always had an ego problem and doing nothing to fix it except for hitting and yelling which obviously did nothing but make him just as loud and violent as she is.

this is obviously not the entire reason why he's a dick but he was never properly taught that the shit he was doing wasn't okay and people not stopping it and/or praising him endlessly even tho he was a bully is basically the same as encouraging it, thank you very much.

moving on from that, let's talk about bakugous other traumas and how he naturally responds to them. hint: it's with either full blown panic or a fight response (verbal or physical, though usually physical. also sometimes it's the panic followed by the fight response.)

so far in bnha (keep in mind that I am not caught up, I've only read up to the beginning of the war arc and i barely remember those bits so) bakugou has...

nearly died via sludge villain (he was unable to move and was being suffocated to death- keep this in mind)

lost for the first time ever and against deku of all people (this nearly sent him into a full blown panic attack, likely because of that sexy little inferiority/superiority complex combo. think of this as like. gifted kid burnout lite. he has always been the best of the best and now suddenly he is being beaten by somebody who has always been weaker than him, which immediately makes him start thinking he was never actually that good, he's actually a fucking failure, a goddamn fraud)

won the sports festival by default (bakugou counts this as yet another failure because todoroki didnt try his best. had bakugou lost to todoroki full strength, he would've taken 2nd place with a bit of bitching, but he still wouldve taken it rather than refuse the medal as it would be a reminder that he failed. instead of accepting that like UA shouldve, the staff chained and muzzled him on live television and then had all might, his fucking idol, force the medal into his mouth. remember the sludge villain incident and how he couldnt move and was suffocating to death? yeah.)

been kidnapped because of the way he reacted to winning during the sports festival (he was aggressive and tried to refuse the medal because he felt he didnt deserve it and was then retraumatized by being chained up and muzzled. his "villainous attitude" was a fucking trauma response, do not tell me otherwise)

was then chained up once again by the LOV after being kidnapped,,, do we see the "retraumatize bkg" theme yet?

"ended all might" (he literally blames himself for all mights retirement because had he just not have been weak, all might wouldve had more time, right?)

my point with all of these is that bakugou has been severely traumatized and has then had his trauma responses (aggression, fight) used to further demonize him. not all people with trauma react the fucking same and the way the fandom just refuses to acknowledge anger as a valid form of trauma response is gross as hell.

moving away from that topic, bakugou has literally never had any actual friends, they all just used him and didn't care about him which absolutely will fuck up a kid, especially one who already has all that other shit going on. bakugou deadass never had a support system or people to help him grow as a person, let alone properly work through his fucking emotions so it's not surprising that he would take out his bullshit on the one person who tried to help him especially considering he saw dekus actions as him thinking he was weak. bakugou was raised to not seek help, he thought somebody strong shouldnt ever need it, so for somebody like deku (who bakugou percieved as weak and helpless already) to offer up help? deku must obviously think bakugou is even weaker than him, what other explanation could their possibly be!

speaking of which, there's his heaps of insecurities that he basically hid by being a twat and bullying others for most of his life. kid was so insecure he bullied deku for fucking years cause he thought deku looked down on him, thought he was better than him, etc. and that only got worse bc his idol then decided to take deku in, train him and even give him his quirk. there's probably some shit im missing but still he's got issues and always has had issues. that being said, he's actually improving and working them out now which is what makes him a really good, interesting character. it's also nice to see a character who is a dick without some tragic backstory (like his backstory is sad but its not the classic "my family was fucking slaughtered and i turned into a raging bitch who murders people" type shit) bc that rarely happens and it's like most assholes don't actually have a story like that they're just assholes lol

now lets talk improvement! lil bitch has been getting better since he got into UA and im so happy abt it!! he had a rough start what with deku suddenly having a quirk and all but like he is really improving now and it highkey shows that bakugou just mostly needed people who 1) didn't constantly praise him and actually criticized him instead 2) actually fucking punished him doing stupid shit and 3) some motherfucking friends

Since going to UA he's gotten actually feedback from teachers about his weaknesses and how to get stronger, he's lost against others, hes been told he has a shit attitude and is a dick, told he should be nicer and leave deku alone, etc etc. He hasn't gotten in trouble too much with teachers but others give him shit for what he does and aizawa has punished him too, while still acknowledging that bakugou is an amazing and dedicated student, something which no one else had done up til that point. and uh???? homie actually has friends who like,,, don't use him and also call him out when he's a dick. like specifically kirishima has done this shit and him and bakugous relationship is clearly very healthy and beneficial for the both of them. makes me feel all happy n shit, ya know

bottom line is: while it is absolutely valid to dislike or even hate bakugou because he is a massively flawed person who has been very cruel to others, villainizing him for the way he acts which in large part seems to be from a lack of guidance, a shitty mother and heavy amounts of trauma, is fucking awful. his actions cannot be fucking excused, he needs to apologize and continue to grow, but he is also a fucking teenager, who is just now being told that the way he acts is unacceptable by people who dont fucking abuse him (and I swear to god if any people who think mitsuki isnt abusive interact with this fucking post I will fullstop hardblock you, I do not fucking care) and actually treat him like a normal person instead of some prodigy child or someone who needs to be fixed.

people are free to debate my points or whatever bc I know some of this stuff is up to interpretation but like. dni if you're just here to say you hate bakugou for xyz reason or that he's irredeemable. also especially dni if you compare him to fucking endeavor yall bitches make me gag.

anyways thxs for the ask anon <33 sorry this is a kinda messy info dump lol

[gaming-thoughts-by-an-idiot]

The Call of Cthulhu

Spoilers ahead :)

Chapter 1:

"Okay, aah, shark-"

"Okay, lots of blood. Cool cool cool"

"Ew, I dont like this game and I'm only a min in."

"Uh, how do I 3rd pov"

"What's the controls like?"

*camera sensitivity, vibration, invert*

" *half laugh* wow, thank you, so helpful"

"Alright then"

"Onwards we go"

"To crouch press B??? NO??? EEE! IF IT SAY X TO RUN I AM GONNA CRY"

"Omg I'm so scared"

"Theres a meme for the face I'm making, the harold in pain."

"This is very scary"

"Can I run?"

"WHAT WAS THAT????"

"Ok, maybe our octopus baby is just scared of the light... that's ok, that's good."

"I have a lamp and I'm not afraid to use it. I'm actually scared if I dont"

"He speaks to me"

"Did lovecraft dude make the octodaddy a man?"

"Pff, I went from 'imma piss my pants' scared, to calling cthulhu Daddy"

"From the cover pic, cthulhu got a dad bod"

"AAAAA DONT FIGHT??? IT SAYS HOW TO RUN, BITCH-"

"Thank god, it was a dream"

Main character: I hate whiskey

Me: same

"Can i turn this shit music off?"

"The phone is ringing... imma ignore it"

"I dont like auto save games, especially not when i cant manually save aswell"

"Yoo, wtf is this? Hes like a pokemon"

"Or it's like level up skyrim and fallout"

"Omg fiiine"

"Would be fun if there were a sherlock Dracula game, like debunk him"

"Oooh, I get to choose my character points, like dragon age"

"Most on investigation... and strength ofc, no wait, I dont want that, one less... medicine or occult info... hmmm... i have zero % on occult... guess I'll do that then"

Sanity: confident in your abilities and your cartesian mind-

Me: a what?

*googles*

Me: logical and self aware, ok I guess

"This is interesting"

"So, she was a psychic? If she just 'sees' things"

"So far? Good game"

Pierce: something's queer-

Me: yeah, me

"Isnt it like, if you talk about or draw or whatever, it draws power to cthulhu?"

"I'm gonna find that honking car outside his building, and set it the fuck on fire"

"Darkwater island? I have to think of something else, but it sounds familiar?"

Chapter two:

"Basic achievement! Yay :D"

"Darkwater sound like a very nasty homebrewed beer"

"The loading screen is so slow, it takes me back to windows 96"

"Aa- I think the game got offended, suddenly it moved fast"

" 'Enter madness' lmao, same"

"What would happen if a boat didnt want to take him to the island?"

" 'A game by Cyanide studio' spooky"

"Scary stones in the water"

"I like the fonts of the title"

"I mean, some whale ships had it coming"

"I failed the skill test, wow, rude. Put points into medical, people"

"I was on the 'he started it', and now I'm not allowed to drink, ugh... I have to play by me, not what can get me things"

"Wait, those are the same thing. Damnit"

"Oh lookie here, a woman. How do I know? Shes clearly wearing lipgloss!"

"Damn, this game isnt good for me, I'm failing all of these dialogues. I'm a terrible detective"

"The captain is just watching me as I go through his stuff"

Captain Fitzroy: us men of the sea are superstitious folk.

Me: as you should.

"Killer whales are fucking assholes"

"I have heard of the depths, yes"

"Love me some mythology"

"Like, why, would you put the dead whale, back? How is it even on land??? Did they drag it? Or did it just appear ON land? Cuz bruh, I wouldnt even touch it then"

"I dont wanna look at a leg that's been on a dead man, ew"

"Tell me about the hella whale"

Me: I snooped through you shit, heres my thoughts-

Him, as he should: wtf??? Dont touch my shit

Me: understandable, have a good day

"Wtf is the jetty?"

"Thanks man, I'm about to talk to people and make more mistakes"

"No wonder I'm a failing detective"

"My sherlock days are behind me, I'm a fool"

"Hes running like hes not wearing shoes, and theres puddles on the ground"

" 'They were all burnt up' that's so fucking creepy"

"I can lockpick????? Fuck. Yes."

"I broke it :("

Pierce: statue of saint dude for sailors, vandalism, cant even say what language

Me: angry language

Bootleggers: if this (didnt pay attention) gets out, we will get in trouble with you-know-who.

Me: Voldemort?

"Oh, I had a lighter"

"How do I turn it off"

"Hah! You think you can fight me! Oooooh ouch, the penis, she kicked it"

"Ugh, this game is hard. This is why I always die quickly, I just cant stop being sassy"

"Cat looks like she needs to pee"

"Oh no, ah, if I do this, I might owe her a favour... HMMMMMM, god... am I gonna regret this? Probably"

"Yes."

"I dont like to say this, but she should get laid or, ya know, SLEEP, Go and sleep in a soft bed, take a bubble bath... wait, did they have bubble baths at this time?"

"Google says 1940, and this is like 1800 something... go take a relatively warm bath, Cat."

"Shes so angry, is she ok?"

"She needs a hug. Not from me, nuuuh"

"In a romance movie or something, Pierce and Cat would date"

"... or am I thinking fanfics"

"See! Anger and strength isnt the way to go."

"I clearly made a mistake asking for her help. Next play through. Is gonna be better"

Chapter 3:

Game: enter madness

Me: already there, baby

"Its odd that her husband had the final saying on the grave location..."

"Me avoiding the main quest, only to do exactly what the main quest wants me to to do, ugh"

"Okay! The guy, mr winchester is very angry and very scary- and I just got an achievement that says just that"

"I dont understand the way to choose level points, but ok"

"So from what I saw, the couple did have a fight... but there were also a third person... so that's not arson or a crime of passion... but I guess I'll have to say it was a fight"

"Eyy, I got a point I can use on something"

"This is odd"

Pierce: the lyrics of the drunken sailor-

Me: I know that one!

"I want to read lovecraft's books, but they sound extremely scary"

"Hahahha! He burned himself with the lighter"

".... that was a skull... a skull just, flashed in the corner of the scene, what"

"Its so dark in here, isnt there any light???"

"Lol, not gonna lie, the kid's drawings are like the Slenderman game"

"Oh no... the kid got the vision too"

"Huh, that painting kinda looks like pierce"

"!!!PERSON IN MASK"

Officer: where did he go??? Theres no way out!!

Me: dude, they're legit marks on the floor, secret bookcase

"Having some trouble with this damn puzzle"

"Eyy! I found norway on the globe"

"Italy looks like a shoe, and Norway looks like- well, better not say it"

"Damn, either I am really stupid...or this is actually hard"

"Gotta take a pic of the map"

"OH YOY BLOODYBFUCKI-- ARE YOU SERIPUS ARE ANFNAKBQKHDA I AM GOING TO FUCKING SCREAM"

"WOW, OK, HERE I AM- OH THANK YOU XBOX FOT THE ACHIEVEMENT, SO HERE I AM, TOOK A FUCKING PHOTO OF THE FUCKIBG MAP, REALIZING I CANT READ MAPS- AND I, JUST FOR LAUGHS, DECIDE TO PRESS IN THE COMPASS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GLOBE! AND GODAMN WOULDNT YOU KNOW HHHHHHHHHHH I'm so irritated."

"Wouldnt we hear it? If the person ran down there?"

"I wanna say, if this dude stole a painting? Just let him? This is a scary cave"

"I dont want to go there alone ;-;"

Chapter 4:

*spooky Blair witch type of thing hangs from ceiling*

Pierce: it's a dream catcher

Me: *sweating*

"I dont like that the lamp needs more oil, it gives me amnesia vibes"

"Nothing might happen if I touch the 'dream catchers', but I'm not gonna test that, crouching squad"

"Eating that huge whale must've made the sailors mad, crazy mad"

Sailors: we're gonna die, horribly

Cthulhu: here you humans go, a snack :)

Sailors: praise the lord!

Cthulhu: >:(

"100% what happened"

Pierce: OH MY GOD, WHATS GOING ON IN HERE? HMM

Officer: *softly* finally, there you are-

Pierce, not softly: SHUSH, WE ARE NOT ALONE

*very clear echo in the cave*

Officer: fuck. This is your fault, clearly, ugh

Pierce, still not quiet: LETS MEET DOWN THERE

"... theres a bloody, nasty hole in the ground... dont say it dont say it-"

"CTHULHU'S VAGINA"

"Or, I guess butthole"

"Oh no, we fell into it, terrible."

"Ew, 'the pit of horror', yeah xbox, this is definitely that"

"Oh wait, I was here earlier :)"

"Oh my god... I was here earlier D:"

"Cthulhu daddy will speak to me soon uwu"

Pierce: *picks up latin book*

Also Pierce: I cant read latin :(

"Oh... oh ok, 'Y' is where u take away the lighter"

"I dont think that's latin, m8"

"Keyboard smash sounds"

"Wow, they really just assumed cthulhu's gender"

"I wonder if the officer is gonna become a sacrifice"

"UHM???"

Cultist: ah! I... I feel him-

Another dude: shh~ you're gifted, indeed. Let him pass through every part of you.

Me: ... ew what

"Oh fuck. Omg. I thought that was it for me."

"I'm just crawling around, and then a dude, WITH A LAMP walks past me, I just froze, actually held my breath"

"Bradley died, the Charles dude is alive and looks like what a baby would look like, if Charles and cthulhu had a baby"

Chapter 5:

"I'm at the hospital:)"

"That was not a nice thing, I dont want to be a subject, sir"

"Wtf was that"

"BRADLEY IS THAT??? WHO IS THAT"

"I dont like this"

"I'm in a patted room"

"Guess I'll sleep then"

"Oh, where am I now? This looks like a clean place"

"For a 1800th standard"

"OH! Damn, I feel so dumb. Leviathan. Cthulhu, ugh."

"Go on, mr leviathan"

"Hes not very nice to me"

"Alrighty female person, lead the way"

Marie: find a way to get past these dudes lmao

Pierce: how???

Marie: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"Hhhh, the game tells me to be stealthy, I'm scared"

"I can hide in a closet, oh no, I dont like"

"Almost caught"

"This is stressful"

"I'm lost :)"

Pierce, pulls a random switch: have I? UwU activated something?

"Ok, apparently I'm doing something right"

"????? Ok, ok, I'm in, ok..."

"Dude wtf"

Chapter 6:

"I'm doing this in one go, baby"

"I chose to tell the truth to the wife of the crazy man"

"No, I'm trying not to drink"

"Cat is here at the wife place"

"Digging through some stuff here, tell me more"

"Its good to invest in charisma, look at all this info"

"So, he just saw a vision of the Sanders dude stare at the painting... and scratch his eyes out... and Pierce is like 'I must see it', bro???"

"Okaaay, let's look at the painting that's gonna drive you mad :)"

"Is this like smile dog?"

"Omg, ew ew??? Wtf is that????"

"Run run run"

"Hhh, this reminds me of Alien isolation"

"I broke a glass to get a knife"

"RUN"

"I JUST SCREAMED"

"AND I JUST DIED"

"That was a loud scream too, its 2am"

"Omg i cant do this, I keep dying"

"What happens if I just stay in the closet? Will he die from a heart attack?"

"Think I'll call it quits, and try another day :)"

"He just screams, I'll try and grab a knife"

"Nah, I died..."

"Uuugh"

"Hmm, it's not scared of the light"

"I'm just trying shit, cuz it's still scary, but idk what to do now"

"Hmmm... died again"

"Okay, another day"

[katoodlez]

uwu meter exploded and i ate dinner at 2am after watching this aka the sam and bucky show episode 5

The new episode was sO goOd omg tbh i didnt think i was gonna be able to watch it last night and i legit cried. But i did and i am very very thankful. Because it was a very very good episode. But before we start stOP reAdING cuz theres gonna be MASSIVE SPOILERS IN THIS POST.

Alrighty without further delay, the Sam and Bucky show episode 5 and all its best things (there are a lot, to no one’s surprise). Im gonna go in chronological order to avoid losing my mind.

1. The fight in the beginning. Omg. Walker looked like he was gonna do both Sam and Bucky in with the shield like 6 times and it was lowkey scary. And when Walker knocked bucky into the electric tower or whatever it was— skdjfjs i saw some people post abt Sam’s glare mid battle like “if this is sam looking at walker after he hurt bucky” anD IT ACTUALLY WAS marvel why.

2. Walker ripped Sam’s wings off omg. That was so brutal i audibly gasped. I think we’ve seen the wings being shot at or broken but never ripped clean off. 0 _ 0

3. I like how the fight ended with all three of them on the ground and the shield just lying there. And then Bucky picked it up, left it for Sam and left. Walker was defeated but it kinda shows how Sam still wasn’t sure about the shield, he just knew in that moment that Walker absolutely couldn’t be the one to have it. I feel like that fight scene really conveyed how all of them felt about the shield and it was done really well. (Ok but on a side note, remember in episode 2 when Sam was like “bruh we cant just run up on the man, beat him up and take it?” I guess they went with that plan after all)

4. TORRES MY BELOVED. He’s back and I’m so happy 🥺🥺🥺🥺 also i love how he’s not afraid to give Bucky sass lmao.

5. WHEN SAM TOLD TORRES TO KEEP THE WINGS. listen i havent read the comics but i know what happens in them and Torres is such a Falcon fanboy omg if he’s gonna be the new falcon im gonna be so happy for him ahhHhHh

6. Sam’s conversation with Isaiah Bradley. Man. I’m really really happy that we have that scene. The scene with Isaiah in episode 2 left me reallly uneasy because it ended on a really bad note with unfinished and unsaid things between Sam, Bucky and Isaiah. Also Sam didn’t really get to talk at all in that scene and I felt like he def had things he wanted to say. I appreciated how Sam said that he really didn’t get some stuff and he had Isaiah explain more of his backstory. I think Sam believes that things can change, for good reason, and at the same time Isaiah believes that nothing will change, also for a completely fair reason. But having the time to let the two of them talk, esp with the shield in the room and without Bucky’s complicated history was a really well written piece of dialogue. Thank you screenwriters.

7. SARAH WILSON SUPREMACY. I’m glad we got more of Sarah in this episode ahhh. She’s such a caring sister and I’m here for it. Sam and Sarah sibling dynamics also >>>>>

8. Sam calling in the favors to help fix the boat was so heartwarming omg. And Bucky just showing up lmaooo

9. Bucky flirting with Sarah to get on Sam’s nerves LMAOO

10. Sam and Bucky fixing the boat together was something I needed to see. That entire montage, the teamwork and warm lighting and akskdjajd my heart 🥺🥺💕💕💕

11. Bucky waking up to Sam’s nephews playing with the shield reminded me of the Black Panther end credits scene but also of that one scene in Wandavision with Pietro and wanda’s kids lollll

12. Sarah asking Sam if he’s gonna let Isaiah tell him what to do and then Sam asking/telling Bucky to stop letting others, even Steve, tell him who to be was just. Skdkfjaod. The character conversations in this episode ahHhh

13. On that note, Sam and Sarah having a chance to talk about themselves, their boat and their family was just amazing. They’re fighting to keep their history and also understanding each other at the same time.

14. Sarah telling sam that there’s the fight out there and then theres the fight in here is so special. It in a sense reflects/applies to not only Sam and Sarah’s relationship and struggles, but it also applies to Sam and Bucky’s relationship and struggles esp with Steve and the shield’s legacy, Bucky’s history as the Winter Soldier and all the weight he carries with it. They gotta sort out the inside stuff before getting into the thick of what I’m sure will be the final battle next week as superheroes in the face of the world.

15. On that note. Sam and Bucky finally having the chance to talk was so relieving and eye opening for both characters. Bucky finally understanding Sam’s perception of the shield and its weight on his conscience because he is an African American representing his people and Sam finally understanding a more personal side of Bucky’s relationship with/perception of the shield feels like a knot in their friendship that has been resolved. The development in this show is just through the roof omg.

16. Okay but Bucky talking about how Steve told him about the plan to give Sam the shield... wkerjkakdja I feel like that makes Endgame’s ending a little better 😭😭😭

17. Shield training shield training shield training ahhhHhHhHhh i swear whenever either sam or bucky touched the shield in this episode i started physically vibrating LOL. Its so cool to see the shield in the hands it’s supposed to be in again ☺️☺️ Sam’s training montage with the shield was also AMAZING omg it was so so cool to watch him grow with the skills

18. Not Sam asking Bucky if he has nightmares and talking to him about amends and stuff skdjfjskd lowkey Sam is the superior therapist in this show and he doesn’t get nearly enough credit for it aksjdjskdjajd. Also the implication that Bucky will go back to Nakajima and give him closure for his son I— 😭😭

19. Also im so glad the scene where they’re walking away from each other ISNT the last episode. Its sort of like a “we’ll see each other soon” walk : DD

20. Okay but Bucky helping the Wakandans capture zemo at the memorial (which i think is for his family? 😭😭😭) and then the favor that Bucky called in for sam. WHATS IN THE GOSH DARN BOX OMG. i think it’s either new Falcon wings, a vibranium Redwing (please let it be this) or a suit of some kind

21. And lastly what the heck does Sharon wanna kill Sam for?? She workin for the flag smashers now or sumn? Also Batroc coming back when the last time i think we saw him was in CA: Winter Soldier 0 _ 0

Did it take me an hour to write this post? Yes. Did I get everything? No. I dont think I discussed Walker in this post but he was super scary and deranged and Wyatt Russell blew it out of the ballpark in this episode. Also whats the special character that everyone was hyped about? Anyways. Until next week 0 _ 0 season finale and im not ready for it to be over