#they would team up only to kill themselves (and would fail because their future selves already killed them once)

[moghedien]

I love Lae’zel and Shadowheart’s character development because it’s not just “the person they are at the beginning of the game wouldn’t recognize the person they are at the end and that they’re better people overall.”

It’s “the person they are at the beginning of the game would be so viscerally disgusted by the person they are at the end and would actively try to kill them but also they’re better people now”

[tomeandflickcorner]

Umbrella Academy Recap 2x08

1x01 1x02 1x03 1x04 1x05 1x06 1x07 1x08 1x09 1x10

2x01 2x02 2x03 2x04 2x05 2x06 2x07

Last episode didn’t go well for the Hargreeves Siblings.  While Number 5 managed to secure a deal with The Handler that would ensure they could return to their own time, with both apocalypses being erased from the timeline, only Number 5, Luther and Klaus (and Ben) managed to make it to the touchdown point.  Diego got abducted by Lila, Allison was attacked by the Swedes and Vanya was held up and subsequently knocked out by the cops because Sissy’s husband wasn’t willing to allow her to leave.  Because of that, the three of them didn’t arrive in time, and Number 5 was forced to throw away what might be their only chance at getting home.

After getting knocked out by the cops, Vanya was carted off by the FBI.  It appears they suspect that she is a Russian spy, based on the fact that she has a Russian name and can speak fluent Russian.  (The latter comes as a surprise to Vanya, as she still has amnesia and therefore doesn’t remember how Reginald must have ensured they were all multilingual.)  And the fact that she clearly has some sort of supernatual power has not gone unnoticed, as there were eyewitnesses who saw her defending herself from the cops with her powers.  Vanya attempts to use her powers on the FBI agent interrogating her, but the nurse standing nearby quickly steps in with a chloroform soaked cloth.

Elsewhere, we see 1963 Grace poking around 1963 Reginald’s office.  It appears she hasn’t forgotten what Diego told her after the gala, about how 1963 Reginald was involved in a plot to assassinate President Kennedy.  In doing so, she finds the physical evidence to back up Diego’s claims, complete with a map of the route President Kennedy’s motorcade will take when he arrives in Dallas the next day.  Unfortunately, 1963 Reginald discovers her snooping.  1963 Grace confronts him about what she found.  She tells him that she wants to spend her life with him, but she needs to know for sure that he’s a good man who would never harm the president. 1963 Reginald doesn’t give a direct answer, simply stating that there are elements of his life he cannot share with her yet, but someday he will.  He just needs her to trust him.  However, 1963 Grace says she can’t wait that long and she walks out.

In the alleyway, Number 5 is angrily disparaging Allison, Diego and Vanya for failing to show up on time and ranting how he was better off on his own.  Luther, on the other hand, seems to have a much cooler head and suggests that perhaps something happened to them.  Number 5, however, isn’t swayed and storms off, declaring it’s every sibling for themselves now.  So Luther heads off after him, tasking Klaus with checking up on Allison.  Klaus complies to the request, pausing only to inform Ben that he’s no longer allowed to possess him.  As Klaus heads off, Luther tries to reason with Number 5, but to no avail.

At the Chestnut household, Ray is freaking out.  In order to save their lives, Allison had used her powers to get one of The Swedes to turn on the other one.  So now, there’s a dead body in their living room.  And if anyone ever found out about the dead White man in their house, then it’s an instant death penalty.  Not to mention it would destroy all the efforts their Civil Rights movement had tried to make.  It’s at that moment that Klaus shows up.  And he takes the presence of the dead Swede very cavalierly, calmly asking if they’re burying or burning the body.  Which probably didn’t help Ray’s sense of understandable panic and bemusement.

Meanwhile, the last remaining Swede is an emotional wreck over the knowledge that he was forced to kill his own brother.  Particularly since his entire family is now dead.  Filled with grief and guilt, he is all set to cut off his own hand.  But before he could do so, his attention is drawn to the capsule that had sent them after Diego back in 2x05.  As he studies the capsule, he begins to realize it’s a counterfeit capsule and it hadn’t really came from The Commission.  And, because it still holds the faint scent of lavender, he realizes that The Handler had been the one who sent it instead.  So now, he realizes he and his late brothers were played for saps.

Speaking of The Handler, she does not approve of Lila’s choice to bring Diego in as a member of her team.  (Remember The Handler placed Lila as head of security in the last episode.)  After all, Diego is Number 5′s brother, and they don’t have the best history.  However, Lila pleads her case, and in the end, The Handler agrees to allow him to go through initiation, with the warning that if Diego sets so much as a toe out of line, Lila must kill him herself.  (So, doesn’t Diego get a say in this?)

In any event, Lila proceeds to show Diego around The Commission’s headquarters.  Diego is not happy about being drugged, kidnapped and threatened with murder, but Lila is not perturbed by this.  Instead, she drops him off at Orientation, where Diego is forced to watch a training video.  At first, he seems disinterested, particularly since the training video seems to be talking down to the audience by having the narrator be an animated talking briefcase.  However, Diego is instantly at attention when he hears about the Infinite Switchboard Room, where the entire timeline is monitored for any anomalies.  After checking to see that the instructor has fallen asleep, Diego slips out to locate the Infinite Switchboard Room.  He manages to find it without much trouble, but can’t figure out how to operate it.  Fortunately for him, he then is approached by an analyst called Herb.  Diego gets Herb to help him look up the day of President Kennedy’s assassination.  (Herb agrees to this partially because Diego and his siblings are virtually legends within The Commission.)  When they watch the footage together, they see that an explosion will occur at the FBI building as President Kennedy’s motorcade drives through Dallas.  As a result of the explosion, the motorcade gets rerouted and the assassination never happens.  But because the explosion was blamed on the Russians,  it ultimately lead to an all-out war between Russia and the U.S. A war that resulted in a nuclear apocalypse.  Diego instantly realizes this is what Hazel had tried to warn them about.  With Herb’s help, Diego studies the explosion that occurred at the FBI building.  In the process, he discovers the explosion was caused by Vanya’s powers exploding out of her.

Simply put, throughout the episode, the FBI agent was continuing to interrogate Vanya through the use of electric shocks.  When the nurse applied some sort of eyedrops to her eyes, Vanya began to hallucinate that she was back at the Umbrella Academy mansion, sitting at the dining room table with the Hargreeves Siblings (including Ben) and Reginald.  This hallucination ultimately resulted in Vanya’s memories to return.  The return of her memories, combined with continued electrical shocks, resulted in Vanya snapping and completely giving into her powers, letting them take control of her.

In any event, Diego is forced to conclude that Vanya will always be the bomb that triggers the apocalypse.  He decides he has to get back to Dallas ASAP.  Fortunately, Herb is in full agreement with this.  So he takes Diego to a side room where a bunch of other Commission employees are.  Apparently, these particular employees seem to realize that The Handler was behind the death of the board of directors, and they are not happy with the changes The Handler made when she took over The Commission.  To help Diego out, they present him with a time traveling briefcase. 

While all of this was going on, Luther was finally able to get a chance to talk to Number 5.  Which leads to him realizing that Number 5 has managed to come up with an alternative plan.  Number 5 reminds Luther how, when he was stuck in the future after his first attempt at time travel, he ended up working as a temporal assassins for The Commission.  And his last mission for them before he found a way back to 2019 in the pilot episode involved him heading to 1963 Dallas to ensure President Kennedy’s assassination.  In other words, Old Number 5 is  also walking around.  So Number 5 plans on making contact with his Old Number 5 in the hopes that Old Number 5 will let them use his time traveling briefcase.  Of course, Number 5 notes that it’s a risky plan, as Old Number 5 was a dangerous assassins who probably won’t react kindly to being approached by himself.  Not to mention it’s very dangerous for individuals to meet their older or younger selves in the same timeline.  It often results in both versions experiencing paradox psychosis.  So Number 5 wants Luther to come along as a buffer, in case things get out of hand.

Luther and Number 5 head to some Irish pub, where they quickly spot Old Number 5 sitting at the bar.  Luther asks Number 5 if it would be easier to simply grab the time traveling briefcase and run, but Number 5 quickly shuts that idea down.  Old Number 5 has been trained to guard the time traveling briefcase with his life.  He would never allow some random person to grab it.  Besides, they have to tread carefully, because if they do anything to prevent Old Number 5 from traveling back to 2019, then Present Number 5 ceases to exist.  Their best bet is to talk calmly with Old Number 5.  Luther insists on going up first, stating that allowing Old Number 5 to see his younger future self without warning might freak him out.  Besides, Number 5 is showing signs of being itchy.  (Being itchy is one of the seven symptoms of paradox psychosis, as Number 5 explained earlier.)  So Luther heads over to Old Number 5.  When Old Number 5 recognizes his brother, as well as sees his younger self, he is visibly stunned.  Still, he agrees to listen to what they have to say.  Number 5 informs Old Number 5 that, when he heads over to the grassy knoll to oversee the assassination of President Kennedy, he’ll break his contract with The Commission and travel back to 2019 to stop the April 1st 2019 apocalypse.  But he’ll end up getting the math wrong, and end up being trapped in his younger body.  Number 5 offers his older-younger self a trade.  If Old Number 5 gives up the briefcase that he’ll no longer need, Number 5 will offer him the correct equation, so Old Number 5 will maintain his actual body when he executes his time jump and won’t be forced to undergo age regression.  Old Number 5, before giving an answer, slips off to the bathroom.  (Frequent urination was another symptom of paradox psychosis.)  Luther thinks the whole exchange is going well, but Number 5 isn’t convinced.  He doesn’t trust his older-younger self.

To try and alleviate Number 5′s concerns, I guess, Luther joins Old Number 5 in the bathroom, where he finds Old Number 5 looking at the glass eye that was supposed to belong to Harold Jenkins/Leonard Peabody.  Upon noticing the glass eye, Luther tells him that the glass eye was a dead end, and that it was actually Vanya who caused the apocalypse, on account of her anger over how her siblings treated her when they were kids.  Old Number 5 takes this in stride, but then he suggests an alternative plan.  This other plan involves Luther and Old Number 5 traveling to 2019 together and simply being nice to Vanya.  Because if they made up with Vanya, then she wouldn’t have gotten angry and blew up the moon.  Luther accepts this logic.  Until Old Number 5 suggests killing the Young Number 5, as he was nothing more than a faulty doppelganger resulting from a failed time jump and that Old Number 5 was the real Number 5.  Luther is highly suspicious of this, since homicidal rage was the final symptom of paradox psychosis.

As the episode winds down, Diego and Herb use the time traveling briefcase to materialize in the Chestnut household, interrupting Allison and Ray’s attempts to dispose of The Swede’s body.  After Allison awkwardly introduces Ray to her third brother, Diego fills everyone in on what he’d just learned, and how they have to get to Vanya before she can inadvertently blow up the FBI building and setting off the chain reaction that leads to nuclear Armageddon.  Understandably, Ray is REALLY freaking out right now (and who can blame him?), so Allison does her best to calm him down.  After a moment or two, Ray calms down enough to realize that Allison has to go away now, so this will be their final goodbye. And they have a tender yet bittersweet last kiss before Allison hurries off with her brothers.  

Meanwhile, Lila realizes that Diego skipped out of orientation, and that nobody knows where he is.  It’s not clear if she knows what Diego has done yet, but I suspect that will be revealed in the next episode.

By the time Allison, Diego and Klaus make it to the FBI building, Vanya’s memories have already returned, and her powers are spiraling out of control.  As the three of them seek cover behind a desk, Klaus presents an interesting observation.  They had been trying to save Vanya from the FBI.  But all the FBI agents on that floor are now dead.  So why is Vanya’s powers still going hayware?  To make things more complicated, it’s shown to the audience that Harlan is somehow experiencing the same things Vanya is, suggesting the two inexplicitly share a psychic link.

Closing thoughts/questions:

Okay.  So what’s up with Vanya and Harlan’s sudden psychic link?  How did that happen?

I really liked Ray.  He was such a great character!  Very likable, with realistic reactions to all the weirdness thrown at him.  And his relationship with Allison was so pure and wholesome.  Because in spite of everything, he still loved her.  While it’s really tragic that they can’t be together, its nice to know that he’ll be okay.  And I’m sure he’ll remember his time with her with fondness.

Never thought I’d say this, but I actually liked Luther in this episode.  He’s still my least favorite of the Hargreeves Siblings, but seeing him interacting with both versions of Number 5 was very enjoyable to watch.  It actually made him look like a real leader.  So kudos to him.

What’s Lila going to do when she sees Diego again?  Because this will probably be the ultimate test of where her loyalty lies.  Will she remain loyal to The Handler or will she allow her bond with Diego nullify that?

Likewise, now that the last remaining Swede knows The Handler was the one who misled them, ultimately resulting in the death of his brothers, will he be going after her?  That’ll be interesting, as he could potentially join forces with The Hargreeves Siblings, with them uniting against a common enemy. 

Hope Sissy can get away from Carl.  He’s turned into such a creeper. And she deserves better.

What’s going to happen to 1963 Grace?  Is it possible that 1963 Reginald genuinely cared about her?  Is that why he designed Robot Grace to look the way she did?

[rqs902]

.

probably unpopular opinion but i feel like “we are blazing” is a r1se promotion scheme and it’s kind of scary 

I’m not surprised that this tencent show is heavily biased towards r1se, but I feel like the fact that r1se keeps winning 3:0 is really discouraging to everyone else involved :( I’m mostly disappointed that they won 3:0 even against rocket girls. I watched Produce Camp and know every member of r1se, and I’m honestly not very familiar with rocket girls. But, I’m still disappointed r1se beat them 3:0. I’m sad because this makes it feel like r1se is never going to lose to anyone on this show and that is disappointing. it’s scary that tencent is literally going to create an image of them being the best group, with zero competition. 

I’ve watched zhou zhennan on 3 shows: the coming one, cyzj, and produce camp, and I respect him and know he’s popular. being the og survival show girl group, I respect rocket girls and I know they are popular as well and I don’t think they deserve to be treated like this by their own company. rocket girls’ stage presence was undeniable on “we are blazing”, and their performance was well executed. it feels like tencent is disrespecting them and their fans by allowing r1se to step all over them, and it’s likely because rocket girls is about to disband (i believe?) and that makes it even more sad, because it feels like tencent is abruptly dropping them without supporting them to shine brightly until the end. these last few performances they have together are precious, and if tencent is going to ruin their final memories as a group, that would make me really sad if I was a rocket girls fan. (at least iqiyi never purposefully tried to make nine percent look bad... it makes me sad to imagine if this had happened to nine percent. if iqiyi let unine win over nine percent in a competition show iqiyi put on, as a nine percent fan, I would be SO MAD.) 

I’m also bothered by the fact that “we are blazing” is really painting a picture that boy groups are superior to all girl groups. 

I appreciate that r1se put in the immense effort to make their own song and stage for this episode, and I admire xia zhiguang immensely for his courage and hard work to practice his extremely difficult part. I’m sure zhou zhennan and zhao lei and everyone involved worked very hard and I don’t discount that at all. when I watched produce camp, xzg, zzn, zl, and many of the other kids who made it into r1se were the kids I was looking out for, some of the kids I supported most. But the fact is that rocket girls is their predecessor, and I am 100% sure rocket girls worked hard too, and 100% sure rocket girls deserved to at least get 1 single point out of the three. despite all of this, tencent made it so r1se destroyed rocket girls. and that makes me sad. 

dont even get me started on blackace.... from day 1 they’ve been taking part in making their own stages, AJ has literally choreographed every dance, and him and other members also take part in making the songs themselves too. But do they get nearly as much camera time or recognition for it as r1se? nope. I knew blackace would be at a disadvantage going into this show, so I’m not surprised at all that they’re not doing as well. youku has failed to promote them and tencent has no reason to help them except to appease pinlin stans, but even tho pinlin was crazy popular compared to all the other trainees on afo, his popularity is marginal in the context of r1se. the fact that they have not even acknowledged any sort of interaction between pinlin, huadi, and liu ye makes it feel like they’re trying to downplay the existence of swin to avoid any sort of boost to blackace’s recognition. tencent has always downplayed liu ye in general, so they have no motivation to bring up swin anyway. (the fact that they didnt even consider liu ye as a contender for a dance soloist for the killing part made me so sad.... but im not surprised. liu ye is an AMAZING dancer but they often forget he exists....) 

anyway, I’m happy for r1se that their management really supports them so much post-debut. produce camp was partly a torture camp for all the trainees involved, but since debut, r1se has been given so so many more opportunities to perform together, film shows together, garner recognition and win awards together, etc. compared to any other chinese survival show boy group. and it’s something I would’ve wished for all survival show debuting groups. but seeing them completely beat out all the competition without fail like this just makes me sad.... r1se deserves recognition, I wholeheartedly agree, but other groups have worked really hard too, and they also deserve some recognition. 

I’m hoping that in the future, rocket girls will be able to get at least one point on r1se. I’m guessing the only reason tencent let snh48 win over r1se this week in the overall percentage is so that rocket girls wouldn’t be dead last / have to perform without yamy, so at least that means tencent hasn’t completely dropped rocket girls yet. apparently they’re willing to drop sis for rocket girls, but that’s not surprising either. 

from the next ep preview, im SO scared they’re gonna paint naicha as some overbearing dictator, without painting the whole picture of his tough love leadership style. his strong leadership is what got his team (tuo xian mu ou) to the final round of ayo and thank goodness for it. he’s not afraid to push his team members to their limits because he knows they can do better, and if tencent tries to make him look bad for it, i will be very disappointed. they already tried to make pinlin look bad this ep, and it made me sad. 

literally tencent doesn’t acknowledge AJ for his efforts to make the choreo (yet again) and focuses the entire blackace segment on making it look like pinlin was uncooperative and refused to follow the rules and failed to do the killing part well. I felt like the main reason why they highlighted long ge being so self-sacrificing towards pinlin and why they highlighted other people acknowledging long ge’s talent was just to make pinlin look bad in contrast. 

I think pinlin did well, and since everyone in blackace understands the backstory as to why and how blackace was formed, it makes sense as to why pinlin would do the killing part for this performance. the show mentions how the killing part is supposed to be representative of someone killing or overcoming their past selves, but completely ignores that this stage was a big step forward for pinlin to do a 30+sec dance solo. it represents a HUGE improvement for him since he started out on Super Idol as a vocalist who couldn’t dance at all and was always struggling to keep up with the rest of the trainees. but "we are blazing” doesn’t give him any credit for his improvement. (but they continually mention how much ycy has improved lol...) Yes, blackace could’ve easily given the dance solo to long ge, AJ, or even huadi, but they chose pinlin. Pinlin was afraid to let them down, he knew his own limits, but he still did it. and he did it to the best of his ability and I think he did well. all the blackace members know that pinlin is the most popular person in the group and the most capable of drawing in fan support through his undeniable stage presence. they trust him and tencent makes it look like he didn’t deserve that trust, as if he should just be grateful that he barely made it through to the next round. 

[ardenttheories]

On Princes and Knights

There is a significant connection, within the comic, between our canon Knights and Princes - certain parallels that intrinsically intertwine and affect both parties. As an in the works theory, and something I cooked up while wandering around the house, I’m tentatively suggesting that the best way to handle a Prince is to provide him with a Knight, and the best way to heal a Knight is to have him work on a Prince. 

In Homestuck, we see two significant Knight-Prince matchups; Dirk and Dave, and Karkat and Eridan. There is a lot more focus on Dirk and Dave, and thus we will start with them and focus primarily on their connections, but there is something to be said about the latter pair as well - predominantly “what if”s, but evidenced ones. 

It has always been of my opinion that Princes must be surrounded by people in order to grow. It is when they are isolated or alone - such as during the Epilogues, when Dirk actively isolates himself prior to losing his shit; or during Act 5, when Feferi not only dumps Eridan (who otherwise has no-one else he is close to), but refuses to be his friend - that their negative attributes come to the fore. These moments of isolation are all it takes for the Prince to fall into the trap of his Class, and lose himself to the destructive nature of it. 

When surrounded by people, it becomes easier for Princes to remember why they can’t blindly destroy. They can’t justify “a means to an end” when they can actively recognise that their efforts would seriously hurt the people they love. Consider Dirk’s development from the puppetmaster to an active team member; he openly talks about his friends, what he thinks (in a positive way) of them, and how good they are as people more and more throughout this transition. He wants to avoid destruction as much as possible for fear of the harm he’ll cause to them - of the harm he was causing when he wasn’t keeping himself in check. 

A Prince without this backup starts to lose his sense of connection. He might, to some degree, start to lose his sense of reality on a personal level; like we see in the Epilogues, after his isolation Dirk has no qualms of spearheading the narrative and driving it towards his own goals. He sees them as people he loves, yes, but they lose their humanity to him. He no longer worries about stepping over the boundaries, even to the degree of completely ruining Jake’s character for the sake of petty revenge, and tries to force Dave to kiss Karkat before he leaves. This is not the work of a man who recognises the people around him as real, living things.

However, I think there might be more to it than that. Princes need people around them to tether them down to reality and remind them what they hold back for, yes - but I think they might also need a Knight to hammer the point home. 

This is where we come to Dirk and Dave.

Dirk and Dave share Aspect themes. Dirk is the Alternate Universe self of Bro; this is a Time-related phenomenon as well as a Space-related one, and essentially makes Dirk a “younger” Bro - a Bro back in Time. Likewise, the connection of them being brothers (or, more aptly, father and son) provides the Heart-based connection between the two. While it certainly leans into the realm of literal Blood, the fact that Bro is, in essence, a splinter of Dirk, stands more prominent - as well as Dave’s more Heart-aligned disposition (how much more emotional he tends to be, how romance plays a significant part in his life/development).

This connection becomes more apparent when the two of them have their rooftop talk. When Dave talks to Dirk, it’s about what Bro did, and thus what he went through. This is a conversation that heals them both. 

Dirk’s constant struggle throughout Homestuck is the inevitability of his destructive nature. His splinters, what they say about him, his actions, whether or not he’s a good person, and how he can do good if he’s so obviously bad. Talking to Dave about Bro shows him exactly what the extent of his negative nature is; an abusive man bridled with Rage and toxic masculinity that is completely blind to the harm he causes for the benefits that wait at the end. He even admits that it’s refreshing to be presented all of his flaws so critically, and it gives him the chance to reflect on that in a healthy way.

It also provides Dirk with the opportunity to actively say “wow, that’s really fucking bad, and you never should have gone through that”. To admit that Alpha Dave was an inspiration to him, and that he’s glad he had that inspiration, but that there’s a disconnect from the people they were that is good for them. That they don’t need to be those people now, and it’s for the better. That he’s glad he was told all of this by Dave - someone he has a good relationship with, and who he connects to good things.  

This moment gives Dirk the worse-case scenario. It shows him what he could become without him actually becoming it - and it gives him the resolve to never, ever become what Bro became. It gives him the chance to work this through with someone he deeply cares about - someone who’s always played an important role in his life and upbringing - in a way that he admits lets him do it healthily, properly, without the self deprecation. 

In turn, it gives Dave a chance to work through everything he’s never truly spoken about to the person it most relates to. It’s his way of accusing Bro without actually accusing him; of facing his abuser without being in danger; of telling him it was fucked up and being validated for saying it. 

It also provides Dave with the confirmation that he doesn’t need to be some grand hero to be worth something. Alpha Dave was a hero, was grand, was cool - but the takeaway from that conversation is that Dave is just as good, if not better, than Alpha Dave to Dirk. That he’s real in a way Alpha Dave was not, and that, despite everything he’s been through, he’s come out the other side significantly stronger than anyone would have ever thought. That, to at least one version of Bro, he’s worth something more. 

This conversation is vital to their character arcs. It shows Dirk slipping into the role of the Realised Prince, and Dave into the role of the Realise Knight. 

I thus posit that every Prince must have an associative Knight, and that part of their growth is the acceptance of themselves through one another. 

It’s no coincidence that the Knight and Prince happen to be in the perfect position to help one another, imbued with the Aspect of the other. Dirk is exactly what Dave needs to heal as a person, and Dave is exactly what Dirk needs to reject his future potential. Had this conversation not taken place, with them in these exact circumstances - and with them holding such specific Classpects - Dave may never have gotten closure, and Dirk may not have become so self-aware. After all, it’s their specific connection as alternate universe brothers and Dave’s specific Heart-based struggles that make this work so well.  

Knights face trials and tribulations at the hands of highly destructive forces - forces that their Princes represent. Knights also have a duty to Protect their Aspect - which influences the Prince significantly. 

What we see here, then, is a Knight standing up against the representative of the thing that caused him to pull up his facade, and a Prince being protected from the concept he struggles with most. 

This intrinsic connection is deeply important. If we assume that Knights and Princes are made to reflect one another, then a Prince will almost always represent that which the Knight fears most, and the Knight will represent everything the Prince needs to accept. 

(Again, using Dirk and Dave, that means their Classpects and situations were specifically engineered by SBURB to ensure that Dirk, as a Prince of Heart, held the potential to be the destructive force that Bro was in order for Dave to safely stand up against the memory of Bro, and that Dave, as a Knight of Time, was able to show Dirk that his various selves are not predictions of the future)

This is thus where we turn to Karkat and Eridan. 

Eridan is a representative to everything that Karkat is fearful of, and has suffered because of; blood, the hemospectrum, and specifically, murderous highbloods in positions of power (especially those that are steadfastly against progression). 

In return, Karkat within the comic acts as a last Hope to Eridan. Their interactions, though brief, often come down to the same thing; Karkat helps Eridan feel Hope in the ways that everyone else neglects, and remains a single, strong bond post-Feferi that even he refuses to destroy (Karkat is, after all, the only troll that Eridan doesn’t kill during his “rampage”, despite him being frozen in fear the entire time).

Karkat is exactly what Eridan needed to be a better troll. Eridan suffered a severe disconnect between his true self and his outer self, and while that chimes true with Heart, a lot of the reason behind his disconnect was because of his inability to Bond with people. 

His Hope had previously been destroyed by his friends laughing at his Belief, and he never truly recovered from it to form the sorts of Bonds he needed to become a Realised Prince. Arguably, he may never have had those Bonds to begin with - and instead of trying to form Bonds that could become useful to him and his understanding of the real world, he isolated himself among his theatrics and Historical dramas in an attempt to become something he thought would command respect. 

Standing as a facsimile of the old ways of Alternia, Eridan would have been safe for Karkat to stand up against in order to fully transition into his Realised state. Likewise, being both a lowblood and a mutant, Karkat would have been in a perfect position to challenge Eridan’s views and help him regain his Hope - as well as more than capable of teaching Eridan how to form new Bonds.

Part of the reason this never comes into fruition is the Failed nature of their session. None of them except for Vriska manage to attain God Tier, and they don’t fully grow by the time they initially finish the game. There was simply no chance for them to viably reach this point, as much of this growth occurs within the Meteor; either Eridan would have had to live much longer than he did, or this development would have had to happen within their session - and thus, the session would have had to have lasted longer. Or maybe Hussie should have just focused on it in more detail.  

Much like Dave and Dirk, Eridan and Karkat likewise share Aspect themes. Hope is as prevalent in Karkat as Blood is within Eridan. The things they represent perfectly reflect one another - and may actually be why, when I first read the comic, I thought they were going to become moirails. This Prince/Knight combination has a natural coexistence that seems akin to moirailegence, and may even be engineered this way by SBURB to ensure that there is some way for a Knight to stand up and a Prince to step down that is beneficial (and healthy) for both, as well as natural (as in, not forced by a Sylph). 

And, on a lesser note, since this came to mind: Latula, as a Knight of Mind, would have been the perfect foil to Kurloz as a Prince of Rage. Someone who is specifically brainwashed alongside someone whose Classpect focuses entirely on the protection of the Mind? Had more come out of them, I can definitely imagine Latula being able to help Kurloz slip away from that harmful mindset (and his assistance to Lord English), while Kurloz would provide her with the Rage-based determination to reveal her true self. 

In essence, since this came out weirdly wordy and pretentious,

Our canon Knights and Princes have an odd Aspect connection that makes them perfect for helping one another. Their circumstances reflect perfectly what the other needs to grow - the force that the Knight struggles against, and the concept the Prince needs to understand/accept - in a safe and healthy way. Their connection is likely facilitated by SBURB, and specific Knight/Prince Classpects are likely assigned in such a way that a Knight and a Prince will always be able to help one another. 

Whether or not they do, or are able to, help one another is entirely up to the session itself, but nonetheless it seems always present as an option. 

[ifeveristoday]

team Slow Burn/Burn it All Down

“Real monsters don’t announce themselves or present opportunities. Not here. They enter your head, your heart, tear at you from within.” -- Angel, Hellmouth #2

Are we talking about the demons underground or the demon walking around with Angel’s face?

Hellmouth leans heavy on foreshadowing and having unspoken/underlining meanings that differ from the actual words on the page. It continues using elements from Egyptian and Roman/Greek mythos but the main draw of this issue - and I’m assuming the rest of the series, is the reluctant partnership of Buffy and Angel. I don’t agree with the criticism that taking Buffy and Angel away from their respective apocalypses ruins the flow of the overall arcs. It’s a vast story to tell and the pace of the reboots (which is something I have criticized) makes it difficult to include in the main storylines without sacrificing important character development. There are just so many characters, especially in Sunnydale. Jordie’s writing excels at the character and emotional beats rather than plots, and while we have had some great strides in Willow, Xander and Jenny’s personal journeys, there remains some distance from the namesake characters, which I feel like it was intentional to get to the place that Hellmouth occupies. 

Love it or hate it, the Buffy and Angel relationship is a huge part of both of their stories and character developments and we’ve had inklings of how Buffy is going to change/possibly wreck Angel’s life in Angel, but he’s remained a shadowy figure in Buffy’s story. Hellmouth changes all of that while retaining some of the original canon’s flaws/trademarks but also poking gentle fun at them.

Spoilers from Hellmouth #2 below the cut.

Buffy and Angel are slightly different from their canon selves - Angel is independent of Buffy’s journey at the very beginning and already has his purpose set in Los Angeles. Buffy is a newly minted Slayer, living with her secret for a whole three weeks before wacky Slayer hijinks puts her in the path of Willow and Xander. Their initial meeting/relationship is reminiscent of the very early episodes of Season 1 Buffy - with a reasonable amount of wariness on Buffy’s part and Angel’s dry/slightly cocky attitude with a 2019 update of their anxieties. There’s also a flip in roles as Angel asks Buffy how she’s feeling and what she wants to do in the future at the start. It’s just the feeling of a connection with no romantic overtones. 

The comic recognizes the fucked-upness of Buffy being a child and fighting the forces of evil and sympathizing with her via the character of Jenny. While there is an obligatory nod to Buffy’s desire to be normal, it also makes a point of isolating her from the Scoobies and her frustration at knowing how to be the best Slayer she can be. Giles tells her that he’s to direct her, but not tell her explicitly what she has to do sounds an awful like parents preparing their children for adulthood. There is no handbook. While Buffy is welcomed into Willow and Xander’s circle (and that’s another flip - it is Willow who reaches out to Buffy first and invites her into being social), they’re very much a unit while Buffy sort of floats between their friendship. But I feel due to them being so young, it’s easy to claim best friendship, because - the intensity of feelings and hormones.

This makes Buffy’s character kind of harder to read, and less sunshiney than her OG counterpart. But it’s a shared facade - TV Buffy just hid it better underneath girliness and bouncy hair, while Boom! Buffy is focused, for better or worse to her duty. This is a Buffy that hasn’t quit Slaying before, who gets slightly conflicted guidance from her Watcher and who needs Willow and Xander more than they possibly need her to be a connection to being sixteen. Everyone has their own stuff to deal with.

Hellmouth gives Buffy the spotlight and also drops her into an immediate partnership with Angel. It very pointedly is not a romance - they both get on each others nerves actually, and it inspires A+ bantering while revealing the most of each character so far. Buffy’s venting to Angel (Buffy #8/Hellmouth #1) implies that she’s worried about her friendships and failure to connect, that she’d rather tell a complete stranger this than confide in her friends/Watcher. 

Angel listening and not judging shows an immediate empathy for her - and his actions during Hellmouth show a more vulnerable/less closed off Angel. He doesn’t occupy the same caretaker vibe he has with Fred and Gunn that he does with Buffy, namely because Buffy refuses it. She calls him out on trying to be the mysterious weight of the world Loner who takes on all of the responsibilities. 

Angel quickly realizes he just can’t be That Guy with Buffy, and it makes his character hilariously resigned/looser in response. He warns her about dangers in the Hellmouth but accepts Buffy’s way is different from his, but that doesn’t make it wrong. He’s willing to admit he might have been wrong about demons being upfront when the slithery shapeshifter demon confronts them - and Buffy’s snarky response “Cool, cool. Won’t rub that in.” lightens the tense moment. 

Notably, Angel is the one that gets injured/dragged by the demons while Buffy runs to save him. The fighting sequences are highlighted and Buffy’s scenes, in particular, are very smooth and highlights her Slayer grace. They fight beautifully together and despite their prickly banter, feel a shared responsibility to each other’s well being. Their separate confrontations with the shapeshifter shows their fears - Buffy ‘abandoning’ her family and friends and failing to protect them, Angel seeing the ghosts of the people he’s failed to save. Buffy reacts strongly to how her family and friends need her, while Angel angrily tells the shifter to stay out of his head and that it doesn’t know anything about him. Circling back to Buffy saying she doesn’t know what she wants, the Ominous voice implies Angel doesn’t really know what he’s doing and who he is.

Ah, vague accusations of something evil and upsetting, how I haven’t missed you.

After Angel demands to know who’s blood is needed for the further escalation of Evil Plan, and the Voice doesn’t reply, he immediately realizes Buffy is in danger and runs to find her.

Buffy’s still fighting the shifter and it mentions she could put an end to her family and friends’ suffering with her sacrifice - namely, that her blood will save the world.

While Buffy logically knows that the shifter isn’t her mom (because of course, the shifter would take on the form of Joyce), this emotional blackmail breaks her out of the illusion and she kicks it’s ass. Almost punching out Angel in the process. 

Angel is less emotional about his ordeal and Buffy lets him have it again, telling him that it's unfair that she’s the only one being vulnerable - “I opened up because we need to work together, and you haven’t said a thing.”

Instead of being defensive and defaulting to Sir Mopes a Lot - Angel sincerely apologizes and tells her that his fears were also centered around his friends and him not being able to save them in time.

And it’s Buffy’s turn to reassure him/pass on wisdom - she realizes that the Hellmouth wants to separate them to make them weaker and that Angel deserves a little more empathy from her.

THEY’RE COMMUNICATING THEIR FRUSTRATIONS AND CONCERNS WITH EACH OTHER, Y’ALL.

Angel does have a moment of saying, “Silent suffering is more my cup of tea,” and Buffy’s quick response of “And how’s that working for you?” showcase their differences/similarities nicely. Angel despite making friends doesn’t tell them what he’s thinking because he’s used to being alone, Buffy with her very loud opinions isolates herself (un)intentionally because she’s new to Slaying and being a teenager at the same time. They can’t talk to the people who care for them--- but they can talk to each other.

When they face hurdles, they take turns reassuring/pointing out the Obvious Evil, and then a tiny moment - Angel adds onto Buffy’s observation of not getting surrounded by the demon horde by saying, “Just like Thermopylae.”

As with each issue of the Boom!verse, when names I don’t recognize I obviously google them - and Thermopylae is a reference to both the battle of Thermopylae (think the 300 comic and uh, history) and the “Hot Gates,” and is the cavernous entrance to Hades.

Is my theory/wish that there’s going to be Persephone/Hades parallels and Eurydice/Orpheus vibes in this story going to play out? God, I hope so.

Anyway, back to the moment - when they inevitably get surrounded by the demon hordes, Buffy remarks, “Well, there goes thermometer.”

The. Classic. Buffy. Malapropism.

My heart.

Angel gets slashed in the fight, and Buffy worries about him, but there’s a bigger problem - 

narrated by the Voice - “Are you sure everything is as it seems? You’ve been wrong before.”

“Blood is spilled...vessels are filled...every pretender killed.”

Shot to Drusilla as Prometheus in chains, spouting some of the worst “Dru-esque” dialogue I’ve read. Sorry Jordie, this is up there with the clunky faux Whedonisms of the early issues.

So Dru isn’t the major Big Bad, but rather the unseen Voice, who we, of course, don’t know.

Is she ultimate sacrifice, the vessel (after all she is of Angel’s bloodline) and oh, Angel Still Hasn’t Told Buffy He’s A Vampire which...

Boo.

All of the voice overs hint that the confession when it happens is going to cause Buffy Big Mad - after all, Angel knows more about her than she does of him, AGAIN.

The art and coloring is stunning as ever in this issue - Carlini really knows how to draw action sequences, and the varying light/color schemes really make the sense of Buffy and Angel descending into the Hellmouth feel vivid and real.

tl;dr I loved this issue and each issue the stakes definitely seem higher. The bantering and a slow reveal of their personalities are also excellent. The foreshadowing/double meanings of the dialogues.

The stuff I don’t like - the Dru dialog at the end, Angel being secretive about his Vampire self.

[thesffcorner]

Avengers: Endgame

Avengers: Endgame is the latest and concluding  film to the first 10 years of the MCU. Endgame, takes place right after the events of Avengers: Infinity War, and follows the remaining heroes as they try and regroup after Thanos’ snap.

This is a film that, in some ways has been in the making for over 10 years. As such, there are a lot of expectations placed on it, and I don’t think it’s humanly possible to meet them all. For the most part, I enjoyed it; there were some issue with the pacing and characters arcs, but overall, this film is a masterpiece, if nothing else than it’s sheer scope. The Russos have set out to make a celebration of the entire Marvel universe, and in many ways there were successful. As an experience, watching the past 10 years of film-making being brought in and celebrated the way they are here was super positive, and though I found the story a bit lacking, I think it’s worth seeing if nothing else, then for that alone.    

Let’s be real though. You don’t want me to convince you to see this. You were already going to see it. Presumably, if you are here, you want to read what I thought about the film. So let’s cut to the chase, and under the cut and let’s get into my SPOILER FILLED thoughts.

Let’s start with the run-time.

This film, is a little less than 3 h long, and you FEEL, every single min of those 3 h. Part of the problem, is that there is no intermission; the other part is the structure. The first 40ish mins, are setting up where the characters are, the bulk of the film has to do with the Avengers going around collecting the stones, and then the third part is another 40 mins of a CGI battle that feels like it lasts an eternity. Helms Deep, ain’t got nothing on this; it’s so long it actually felt more draining than the almost identical hour long Battle of Wakanda for Infinity War. Then, when that’s over, we still have another 15-20 mins of tying up loose ends, and finally the film is over.

The film is too long. The issue is, I couldn’t tell what things could have been cut. The beginning set-up is slow, but it’s necessary to get us up to speed on where these characters are now, and if they have changed. While I found the battle needlessly long, it was cool to see the entire MCU come together, and every character  gets at least one little moment to shine, even if it’s just a few seconds long. There are dozens upon dozens of characters at the end, and the sheer enormity of the cast makes it impossible to have the battle be short, but I still think it could have been significantly truncated. After all we already saw a massive brawl in Infinity War; I don’t necessarily think we needed one here too, though I will admit that that’s probably an unpopular opinion.

The set-up at the start was imo, one of the better parts of the film. It’s incredibly depressing; the scene between Tony and Steve at Avengers HQ was harrowing; I liked the brief spike of energy when the Avengers go after Thanos, but it’s quickly deflated when he tells them the stones are gone. Then we get the ‘5 years later’ card, and it was like a blow to the face.

Having the bulk of the main plot set 5 years later was both a good and bad idea. On the one hand, 5 years is long enough for certain people to have moved on (some haven’t) and what little we get of what the world is like now was interesting. The best two story-lines for me were Thor Clint; I have been hoping we would get the Ronin story-line at some point in the MCU, and we get a glimpse of it here.

Thor was absolutely amazing; Hemsworth got his wish to have Thor be exactly like what he and Taika developed in Thor: Ragnarok.

The rest of this part was more than a little contrived. Scott getting released from the quantum realm by a rat, Tony figuring out the time travel in a single scene; it felt like the Russos just needed an excuse to get the characters from point A to point B, and went with the most uninteresting way to do it.

I had some issues with the main hook of this film, being time travel. First, I’m not a huge fan of time traveling stories; I tend to find their stakes are jumbled and rather low, they over-rely on common tropes, and almost never end in a satisfying way. I’d like to say that Endgame avoids this, but unfortunately it falls into some of the same traps, as all the films it tries to distance itself from.

There is a catch here in that the Avengers aren’t trying to prevent Thanos from snapping his fingers, but trying to collect the stones before he does. They even make a point of explaining why they can’t just travel back in time and steal the glove from Thanos before he snaps, in a pretty entertaining scene between Nebula, Rhodey, Scott and Hulk. I liked that they had to travel to a point in the past where at least one person had a direct contact with the stone, so they have a precise anchor in the time stream (and also it’s a clever way of going back to the battle of New York, Asgard, and Morag with the Guardians).

It was the part of the film I found most creative and had the most fun with. The team splits into 4 groups, and each group has to work around the obstacles of being in the past, with the group in New York being the funniest. Everything about the Battle of New York was great; the clever way in which they try and get the scepter and tesseract; trying to outwit Loki, Shield, Hydra and their own past selves. I can’t decide if I like the scene with Cap fighting himself more, or Scott giving Tony a heart attack; either way this was the most entertaining part of the film.

Hulk going to the Sorcerer Supreme and trying to convince her to give him the time stone was also good; I liked the reason why she didn’t want to give him the stone, and why she ultimately changes her mind. The idea that removing the stone would split an alternate reality where the Sanctuary failed at its job to keep Earth safe from dark magic was clever and we even see it in action, when Scott and Tony fail to get the tesseract, enabling Loki to escape, meaning in this new timeline, the Avengers failed to upper-hand Loki and lost the space stone.

Tony and Steve going back to the 70’s on Tony’s birthday to steal the tesseract from Shield/Hydra was also really fun. Hank Pym’s amazing 70’s hair was great, but the real standout was the scene between Tony and Howard; it was sad, funny and heart wrenching, and I’ll talk a bit more about it when we get to the characters.

Thor and Rocket go to Asgard to get the aether from Jane, which was likewise hilarious, both because Rocket and Thor as a tag team work really well, but also because it’s so clear that Natalie Portman refused to come back for Endgame, so they had to work around her, by reusing her scenes from Thor: the Dark World, and inserting Rocket. It was also really nice to see Asgard again, and like Tony, Thor too gets a really sweet and emotional scene with Frigga.

The third team is Nebula and Rhodey which was a fine pairing, but I feel that both characters were very underused. They bond a little over both having to rely on prosthetics to live, but most of this section is devoted to getting Thanos back into the film. Thanos being able to see what future Nebula could see through past Nebula’s cybernetic eye (something that maybe Nebula should have thought of before being the one to go to Morag, or at least warned the others about BEFOREHAND), was neat. However, another unpopular opinion of mine is that bringing Thanos back was unnecessary and only needlessly prolonged the film. We had too much Thanos in the last film, his story is over; I realize the Russos wanted him to have a rematch against all the Avengers combined when he’s not mortally wounded, but I would have gladly just watched the team traverse through the time-space continuum looking for the stones for 2 hours.

The final team was the one that actually made me mad. Clint and Natasha have to go to Vormir and get the soul gem. Okay… first off: why out of all the team members, do Clint and Natasha have to be the ones to go to Vormir? Wouldn’t it have made so much more sense for it to be Rocket? Nebula and Thor are indisposed, but they could have called Carol back, if nothing else than as back up, seeing as Vormir is in freaking space. Even without Carol, both Clint and Natasha could have easily done New York, considering they were there instead of Tony, Scott, Steve or Bruce.

Second, we are shown in the film, that the group is discussing what the best course of action would be, and they take notes on all the stones, and each person’s contact with the stones. When they were discussing Vormir, Nebula even says that that’s where Thanos killed her sister. So how come when they get there, Natasha and Clint are completely confused when Red Skull tells them one of them has to sacrifice so the other can get the stone?

Third, we have this ridiculous fight, between Clint and Nat about who will sacrifice themselves, and the Russos picked Nat? The ONLY female founding Avenger, the oldest member of the group along with Clint and Fury, and she does NOTHING this entire film, but throw herself in a pit to further Clint’s already massive man-pain over being a murderer and losing his family. This bit INFURIATED me; even if the reason Nat had to die was because Scarlet Johansson wanted to exit the MCU, there had to have been a better way to have her leave than killing her halfway through a 3 h movie, where her role up until that point had been sitting at a desk and crying.

Since I’m already talking about Natasha, let’s talk about the characters. In my review of Infinity War, I said that Nat, and Steve had such a small part, because the Russos were saving them for this film. For Steve that’s mostly true; his role is bigger, he gets some funny scenes, he gets some ‘character development’ (we’ll get to that). But Nat? What does she get? She’s overworking herself because she can’t move on, and is sad about Clint turning into a murderer. Then she sacrifices herself so Clint can get the soul stone and go back to his family, and it’s supposed to be a callback to when he didn’t kill her all those years ago, and had her join Shield. It was so reductive and uninteresting, and had nothing to do with her actual character. And don’t give me that ‘greater good’ bs; the Russos have been writing Nat for 4 films now, if they wanted her character arc to be about sacrificing for the greater good, they should have written it that way, dammit.

With Steve, like I said he gets a few touching moments, like running the support group, giving the rally speech before they go to the quantum realm, and getting up to fight Thanos after he has been beaten and his shield is broken.

But what was his character arc? Like Nat, the Russos have been writing Steven for 4 films now, and in every single one, they have failed to understand him as a character. They have had 4 films, and they still don’t know what to do with him. They seem to have this idea that Steve is just incapable of letting go: he can’t let go of the past, he can’t let go of the life he could’ve had with Peggy, he can’t let go of Bucky. He has spent 11 years out of the ice, has made a new close family with Tony, Nat, Sam, even Thor and Bruce, he’s even had a new love interest with Sharon, and he’s still completely stuck on the idea that his only chance at life was 80 years ago.

So here we have more of that: Steve can’t and won’t move on. He will risk his, and his friends’ lives for the slimmest of chances that things could go back to the way they were. That he can save everyone. It’s noble, but it’s not a character arc. Steve is exactly the same character he was in Captain America, and he has had no progress in 7 films.

He started out as someone who didn’t know his place in the world, and he ends this film by choosing to abandon his entire life and all his friends he worked so hard to bring back, in order to go back to Peggy. Everything he did in the present, all his friendships, memories, getting Bucky and Sam back, meeting Sharon, saving the world, none of it matters as much as being with Peggy. I’m sorry, but I just don’t buy it.

Moreover, this brings its own host of issues. If Steve went back in time, exactly when did he go? Before he crashed the plane? How did the bomb not detonate then? After he was frozen? Either way, in that timeline there are 2 Steve Rogerses. Did he just… convince Hydra not to dig him out? Did he kill his past self?

Was he still Captain America? If yes, then that should drastically change the timeline in the present day right? Things wouldn’t have happened the same way, so why would Hulk, Sam and Bucky be at that spot at that time? If the present timeline didn’t change, then how did Steve end up old and on the bench?

If he wasn’t Captain America in the past, how did he hide it? Did no one recognize him? Peggy did. Also, if Sharon exists in this timeline, then wouldn’t Steve have committed incest when he kissed her in Civil War?

I have the same timeline question for the rest of the cast. When Hulk snapped, he brought every person who disappeared, 5 years into the future, right? So is everyone 5 years older? If yes, then wouldn’t that make Peter Parker 19-20 years old? Why is he still in high school then?

If not, then how is Ned, and all of Peter’s other classmates exactly the same age? Did they all gets snapped? Every single person on that bus? That’s not random selection then now is it?

Clint, another character that the Russos don’t like or understand, didn’t fare much better. In the comics, he becomes the Ronin because Norman Osborn becomes President, and he creates a government sanctioned Avengers team full of criminals, where Bullseye is Hawkeye. He becomes Ronin to work illegally as an Avenger. Here it’s because his family got snapped, and because of that he is angry that some criminals remained alive, so now he’s killing them? What?

And then he just… gets his family back? And now everything is ok, and all those people he killed are completely forgotten?

Not to mention the absolutely infuriating scene, where Rhodey, Clint, Hulk, Thor and Steve, argue about whether Natasha is really dead or not. 5 men, argue about the ONE woman who had to sacrifice herself so they can all feel guilty and argue about it for 2 mins? This film really hates women, doesn’t it.

There’s a scene during the battle where Captain Marvel has to take the stones through Thanos’ army, and then all the female characters stand around her as back up, and it’s supposed to be this really empowering moment to see how far the MCU has come in representation.

Except it’s not, because having all the women fight CGI blobs for 1 min of a 3 h movie, while cool, doesn’t make up for the other 179 mins of shitty treatment of all your female characters.

Case in point: Gamora and Nebula. I really, really hated this plotline too. First, I hate that the Russos understanding of Peter Quill just seems to be that he’s an idiot. Great.

Second, since we can’t bring back Gamora from Vormir, we have Gamora from 9 years ago coming back to the present, so all the development James Gunn did with her character, he bonding with the Guardians, her relationship to Peter, he relationship with Nebula, all that is reconnected away. Thanks a lot guys! Way to completely negate years of development for the sake of your shitty plot twist!

Then we have Thor. I absolutely loved Thor in this film; he’s depressed, suffers from panic attacks, hides his pain with alcoholism, has put on weight, is very funny, and has the best interactions with all the cast. The scene in Asgard where he gets to talk to Frigga was beautiful; however, I wish he had gotten a scene with Loki or Jane, because that would have completed his arc. Like, it’s a bit strange that he seems to have forgotten that Loki died last film, and has no reaction when they sneak by his cell, but when he sees his mother he loses it?

While I do love Thor and Rocket, and I did think the final scene between Thor and Peter was funny, I just don’t want Thor in the Guardians films. Guardians already has a blonde, hot but dumb as bricks leading man, we don’t need two to compete for who gets to say the most dumb things this minute points.

Carol is barely in this film. She has 2 lines and 2 fight scenes, and I wonder why they even bothered. She is the strongest character in the MCU, and here she has a tug of war with Thanos for like 5 secs, before she gets swatted away, and isn’t in the rest of the film. They could have written her in if they wanted to, since she had contact with the tesseract in the 90’s, but nope. She’s off to space somewhere, because no girls allowed.

I don’t have much to say about Hulk. He’s in the movie. He says things. He has a single funny scene. He gets to do the snap. Yay.

Finally, we have Tony. The Russos love Tony Stark. I love Tony Stark. Tony Stark dies in this film. It’s made painfully obvious from the very first scene, and the film does everything it can to tug at your heart strings. And I still bought it.

First, we have him surviving a near death experience in space. Then when we cut to 5 years later, he has a daughter with Pepper, as well as a nice cabin in the woods. He doesn’t want any part in quantum traveling, because he got his second chance. He knows he won’t get a third.

I liked the scene where he and Pepper discuss what to do. It’s nice development for both of them; Tony has learned how to communicate with her, and tells her about the Avengers and the quantum travel. Pepper tells him that trying to get him to stop doing something is impossible for both of them. I also enjoyed all the scene between Tony and his daughter; they were sickeningly sweet.

Then we have the scene between him and Howard; I really loved that Tony still loves his dad, and doesn’t think he was a bad man even if they had a bad relationship. I also liked that Howard was worried about being a good father, since he knew he cared about work more than anything else in his world.

And then, to make things the worst, he gets a reunion with Peter, which was the final nail in the coffin. It was so emotional and seeing Peter say goodbye to Tony was even worse. He also gets the hero’s goodbye; he kills Thanos by snapping his finger and the gauntlet kills him. It’s the goodbye he deserves, and it’s the goodbye Nat deserved to have, but didn’t get.

So that’s it. Them’s my thoughts on this film. It was bittersweet, and it was mostly satisfying. I don’t expect that it could have possibly lived up to my expectations, but I am proven once again, that Marvel doesn’t really understand what I like about these movies.

It will be interesting to see how this changed universe will go on now: Thor’s in space, Sam is the new Cap, Tony and Nat are dead, and Clint is a murderer. I hope we get a lot more of Carol, T’challa, Hope, Steven, and Peter, but as for the OG Avengers, the ones that got me into this cinematic universe, this was a pretty decent, though not perfect send off.    

[philosworkbench]

Yes And, A Good No, and the Dangers of Wing-Walking

I did a weird thing for an improviser to do today. I declined an offer.

“No” is something people say every day. Kids say it a lot. I don't have kids; I had cats, and they would often say something very much like no. But in improv, we're taught to say yes. Specifically, when someone on stage with you says something to define the shared fictional reality, we call that “making an offer.” When that happens, you're supposed to accept it and heighten it as far as it will go.

If your scene partner says that you're both monkey space pirates and it's time to capture the frigate of the talking bananas, well then you just better put on your monkey space suit, pull out your monkey space cutlass, and get ready to fight! Is it ridiculous? Of course, it is. (I mean how are you going to pull out your space sword after you’ve already put on your space suit? Stupid monkey pirate!) Nevertheless, you Yes And! It's banana hunting time! Take no banana prisoners! Eat all you kill! #YOLO #LivingThatMonkeySpacePirateLife #blessed

There was this guy with an interesting online tool for facilitators --  bizarrely enough, a different online tool than the one I talked about yesterday. (I’m networking a lot, y’all. And by y’all, I mean cold vastness of Tumblr.)

This guy was ready to make me his U.S. distributor-partner for his product. No buy-in, all commission, and the ripest territory on the planet. Perfect side hustle, if not a full hustle for the right person.

I said no.

It f*cking terrified me.

Beyond the pros and cons of the opportunity and the reasoning for my decision, what most intrigued me was my emotional reaction. I'm not destitute. My spouse and I are okay, even in the midst of COVID. Why did it freak me out so much to say “no”?

Honestly, I think there are a lot of reasons. Here are the ones that kept me up tonight.

Yes And is great medicine if you have the disease it’s meant for.

If your team or entire organization has become a stalled, “no but” culture, work on Yes And. When you and/or the system has become so stable that it's stagnant and momentum towards a vision has become inertia towards change, work on Yes And. When you need to shake things up and create opportunity for positive disruption, work on Yes And.

Cut to 20 years later.

I’ve done Yes And. I’ve taught it a lot. I’ve seen what happens when a room of people have to make a decision and their only experience running things is from a career spent in improv. It has come to me as no surprise that the hypocrisy of the improv community was laid bare by the #MeToo movement. A healthy respect for no is crucial.

This is when some improv people tie themselves in knots. “It’s not that we’re asking people to say ‘no’ to each other, but to say ‘yes’ to themselves.” Fine. Whatever looks good in your Bullet Journal. Even if improv didn’t need a worldwide reckoning around consent, it would still need to learn how to say a “good no.”

A Good No means Listening to your Full Self

To explain this, let’s go back to why we try to break people of “no” when they first start taking improv classes. It’s because their “no” at the time is usually based in fears.

I’m afraid of looking stupid so I say no to anything my partner says -- I just can’t risk it

I’m afraid of not understanding what’s happening so I say no to anything too crazy

I’m afraid of not being funny so I say no to anything to too normal

And, if you squint enough to read between those lines, you’ll see similar fears that show up in almost every meeting at work:

I’m afraid of looking less valuable so I say no to my peers’ ideas -- they might keep mine from being recognized

I’m afraid of putting my name to something that fails so I say no to innovation -- or at least no until we have all the necessary data (because by then the opportunity will have passed and we can blame a lack of good intel)

I’m afraid of not making a name for myself so I no to the simple, no-frills solution that will work, but that no one will notice

These are the bad noes. (These are not the Glengarry noes.)

There’s nothing worse than watching an improviser try to improv while fundamentally afraid of the art form and uncomfortable with themselves. Improv and all theater begins with a fearlessness around “nakedness.” Don’t really get naked when improvising. We get too many letters. Instead, take Peter Brook’s advice from The Empty Space:

“The creative actor also longs to cling on to all he’s found, he too wants at all costs to avoid the trauma of appearing in front of an audience, naked and unprepared—still this is exactly what he must do.” (Brook, 1968, p.142)

It sucks to be naked like this while doing bar-prov in front of a bunch of drunks at 12am, so we teach Yes And. It’s probably not so much “be more naked on stage,” but more, “it’s awkward to try to cover yourself on stage so we’re all going to just keep covering each other. Trust that your partners are there to keep the grossest parts from hanging out.” That’s Yes And.

When improvisers understand that, you start to see them use “no” again. But now, it’s not an awful, awkward, scene-halting “no.” It’s authoritative, exciting, and directional. A good no can be the best yes and. It doesn’t stop the motion, it transforms it.

Back At Work: Good Noes are Good News

Time to read between the lines again, to see how this translates from improv to the boardroom -- by which, of course, I mean Zooming with your team members while you all pretend to be wearing pants.

Once we have a foundation of Yes And, and our default setting is to rally around each other and support each other. Then, revisiting No makes sense. You can bring your full selves to it. You’re not making the “no” choice out of fear.

This is great news because then you can say no with complete candor but also complete support. You can say, “here’s where I’m at right now.” People know where you stand and can factor in your real, honest feedback. If the team knows that everyone on the team gets what “Yes And” means, they can hear “no” in a whole new way.

So why was I so upset about saying “no” today? Like everyone who's ever done therapy, I blame my stepfather.

The First Law of Wing-Walking

Amazingly, it is not, “you don’t talk about wing-walking.” You apparently talk about it a lot, especially while your stepson is growing up in your house.

My stepdad was in Organizational Development. (So, I guess you could say, I’m a “legacy,” or whatever. #NBD) 30 years ago, he would often say, “Matt, remember the first law of wing-walking:

Don’t let go of what you’re holding onto until you’ve got hold of something else!”

Years on the couch. (For other stuff. Not for that.)

I’m in a lot of transition right now. I’m trying to launch a new company. I’m trying to do right by the companies I work for now. And COVID feels like a bad time to be dreaming big, but I am.

But I don’t feel I am holding onto anything. I’m just keeping a ton of different stuff in reach. I haven’t “burned my boats,” and yet, they are drifting further and further from shore. Without me.

I have a beautiful vision for my future, but I haven’t gotten anyone to buy it yet.

And then comes this guy, and he has something to hold onto.

Getting Lost in the Role

One of the best moments in a long-form improv is when you find a truly interesting character that you can consistently play from scene to scene. You “have” them.

The audience is intrigued. You feel good at improv when you play them. And, best of all, you get to stop thinking about who you are for a while. All of your anxieties about “am I good at this? What should I do next?” have to leave a message at the beep. You’re somebody else now. And they’re busy.

But what about when you’re decidedly not getting lost in the role. You just feel “lost.” That’s kind of where I am at right now. Not as bad as the “upside-down,” but definitely the “in-between.”

And here’s this guy, and he has a branded polo shirt with my name on it if I want it.

But I don’t.

I want a branded polo shirt with my own company’s name on it.

And yes, in his mind, I could have absolutely built my own company while I did this for him as a sideline. There were plenty of Yes And reasons why this would have been a great partnership. He helps facilitators. I help facilitators. Except I’m not really helping facilitators yet. I just want to.

Whose Thing is it Anyway!?

So, now I think I can finally come to the point. Sometimes you have to pass up good things.

When you are not sure of your path forward or not confident the path you want will happen, the universe will sometimes send you lifeboats. And you may not realize you’re only saying yes to it because it’s a lifeboat. It’s better than flapping around in the water.

But is that a good Yes?

Is it going to bring you closer to your path forward? Or will it give you hours of distraction so you’ll have the perfect excuse not to move forward? What will you say when you look back?

“Yes, I really wanted to have my own monkey space pirate ship, but while I was building it, another monkey came by and offered me a chance to work part-time on his ship. I figured I’d get back to mine eventually, but I just kept doing so well on his. His is awesome now! As for mine, I don’t know. Maybe when I retire.”

Just writing that has me shaking a little, like an honest-to-god baby panic attack. Not a full-blown attack, but one you would serve around on a tray at a cocktail party.

I was terrified of saying no today because of all the fear of passing up a good thing.

But now, as I reflect on it, having spent the last 1700+ words ruminating on it, I realize that what’s f*cking terrifying is taking a good thing when it’s not actually your thing.

Don’t get me wrong; many of the best accomplishments have been the work of dedicated people working diligently for other people. If you see an organization with a mission you believe in, that treats you right, and treats the world right, jump on that.

But if you know you need to now do something on your own, even if it fails miserably. If you need to pass up the good thing so you can have the space to create your own, do it.

Say a good “no” to the stuff that isn’t truly for you. 

Even when it’s terrifying.

[auburnfamilynews]

Auburn football’s 2010s weren’t actually bookended by Outback Bowls. The 38-35 victory over Northwestern 10 years ago rightfully belongs to the 2009 season; if you count that as part of the just-concluded decade, you have to logically shift the Tigers’ recent 31-24 defeat to Minnesota to the 2020s.

But who cares about logic in the face of a narrative contrast like this? 10 years ago, Auburn went to Tampa with a 7-5 record, no top-25 ranking, and an SEC mark that left them sharing the West cellar with Arkansas and Mississippi State. But Gus Malzahn’s exciting offense, cathartic wins over West Virginia and Ole Miss, and a stirring challenge of undefeated Alabama had Auburn fans buzzing enough for the Outback folks to take the Tigers over several equally qualified SEC candidates. Against the Wildcats, Auburn didn’t play well at all — Northwestern racked up 34 first downs and outgained the Tigers by 196 yards — but squeaked out an OT win thanks to a bevy of Wildcat turnovers, missed field goals and general lack of explosiveness. With a five-star JUCO quarterback signee tailor-made for Malzahn’s attack already on his way, Auburn fans entered the offseason universally thrilled about the direction of the program.

A few weeks ago, Auburn went to Tampa with a 9-3 record, a No. 12 ranking in the polls (and a top-5 resume according to SP+), and the glory of another riveting, emotional Jordan-Hare victory over Alabama. But 10-win seasons for four other SEC teams meant an Outback bid nonetheless, against a Gophers team that had gone 10-2 itself. The Auburn defense struggled for much of the first half, the offense for much of the second half, and in the end the Tigers were outgained by 262 yards in a game that wasn’t as close as the 31-24 final. With major questions to answer along both lines of scrimmage and the offense’s continued habit of collapsing for long stretches against quality opponents, even Auburn fans who still support Malzahn enter the offseason ambivalent about the direction of the program.

Two seasons, two Auburn teams, one of which was easily better, one of which accomplished more, one of which represented a stronger and more stable Auburn program. But the other got a much easier opponent in its bowl, an opponent who played much worse. So that’s that team who gave Tiger fans the better feelings entering the offseason.

Two Outback Bowls, 10 years apart. The 2020 edition didn’t leave Auburn fans less happy because these Tigers weren’t as good. In fact, they were much better. The competition just got much harder.

There’s your decade.

Let’s briefly list Auburn’s accomplishments over the past 10 seasons:

— The program’s only national championship since 1957

— Two conference championships, tying with LSU for the most of any SEC team other than Alabama in that span

— Three SEC West titles, more than any team other than Alabama in that span. Among all SEC teams, only the Tide and Georgia claimed more division titles

— Four BCS or New Year’s Six bowl berths, tying Florida for the most in that span among SEC teams other than Alabama

— Four wins over Alabama, with the Tide ranked No. 9, No. 1, No. 1 and No. 5 at the time of Auburn’s victories. Those wins represented 36 percent of all SEC wins over Alabama during the decade, with the rest of the conference going a combined 7-70 against the Tide

— Defeated unbeaten No. 1 Georgia and unbeaten No. 1 Alabama in the space of three weeks in November 2017

— This

— This

— This

— This

— This

— This

Given the ruggedness of the current SEC and the depth of Auburn’s accomplishments, the 2010s were Auburn football’s greatest postwar decade aside from the 1980s. If you give extra weight to what we might call the program’s extracurriculars — a Heisman trophy winner and an all-time college football legend in Cam Newton, the most unexpected and exhilarating regular season in recent college football memory in 2013, the wonder of November 2017, the catharsis of beating Bama for Rod and Paula, nothing less than the greatest play in the history of college football — you could argue the 2010s were Auburn football’s greatest postwar decade, the end.

Either way, the person far and away most responsible for that decade is Gus Malzahn.

————————————-

It’s the rancor I don’t get.

Wanting Gus let go: that I do, sure. Despite the midseason run in 2016 and the records set in 2017, for six seasons now Gus’s offense has shown all the steady reliability of a teenage TCBY employee. Those offensive collapses have meant a long string of soul-pummeling defeats far more frustrating to experience than they appear to be on paper. (Given that LSU just cemented themselves as one of the best college football teams ever assembled, “LSU 23, Auburn 20” reads as the sort of score Tiger fans could look back on with fondness for a valiant effort. Nope!) That simultaneously keeping up with Saban’s Alabama, Smart’s Georgia and now Coach O’s LSU is a herculean task doesn’t mean it’s not the task assigned to Auburn’s head coach. If Gus can’t perform it — and as the Minnesota game reminded us, the offense’s vanishing act doesn’t seem like a problem he’s yet learned how to resolve — Auburn should try to find someone who can. In theory, that person would only have to maintain what’s already a more-than-capable defense while building an offense that simply has to avoid melting down like so much grilled cheese vs. the teams that matter. Shouldn’t be so hard, right?

I can’t bring myself to agree with that argument. But if you want to make it, be my guest. There’s a logic to it.

What there’s no logic to is looking at Auburn’s 2010s and snarling about how Gus sucks. There’s no thinking behind looking at everything Malzahn has brought to this program — as both coordinator and head coach, on the field and off — and yowling like a hurt cat that he needs to be fired yesterday. There’s nothing rational about being more angry over bowl losses to UCF or Minnesota than you are happy over Iron Bowl victories over Alabama.

College football fandom is an inherently irrational enterprise, I know, and I can’t sit here and guarantee that no other coach would have achieved what Malzahn did at Auburn these past 10 seasons. But I can guarantee an unholy crapton of coaches would not have. Many, many coaches would have lost that game on Nov. 30, would have let Derrick Brown and Marlon Davidson and Kam Martin and a whole lot of other good Auburn Tigers walk off Pat Dye Field for the final time as losers.

He didn’t. For goodness’ sake, some of you, show some damn gratitude.

———————————

I wrote before the Georgia game that Auburn football couldn’t stay in the same place. It needed to beat Georgia and Alabama and move forward with confidence under Gus, or lose to Georgia and Alabama and move forward under someone else, or split and watch Gus ride off into an Arkansas sunset.

The moment the Tide fell for Gus’s punt team shenanigans, none of those scenarios had a chance. Auburn wasn’t ever firing a coach that had gone 9-3 against that schedule with that win over Alabama. Gus wasn’t ever leaving a job where he can win a national title for one where he can’t if his seat isn’t white-hot.

So it turns out Auburn could enter the new decade in the same place after all. Gus will take another stab at stopping his offense from falling down a flight of stairs four times a year; the defense and recruiting will push ahead as their usual high-caliber selves; the fans will keep bickering in endless circles, trying and failing to make sense of a program that should be good enough to make us unambiguously happy but doesn’t.

Personally, y’all, I don’t know. I’ve given up on knowing. “I don’t want Gus fired, but I want a new coach, but there’s no new coach I want” is, obviously, gobbledygook. Nonetheless, it’s all true: I don’t want Gus fired. But I want a new coach. But there’s no new coach I want.

Gus hasn’t been nearly poor enough that I ought to want a new head coach. I know this. I remember all of the above. But for my entire Auburn life, a Tigers decade has been defined by a single coach: the ’80s by Dye, the ’90s by Bowden (mostly), the Aughts by Tubby, the 2010s by Gus. After 2018, after Florida and LSU and Georgia and Minnesota, I struggle to believe Gus still has enough of his offensive fastball to get Auburn off the train platform and onto somewhere better. The 2020s seem likely to belong to someone else.

I would like to find out who that might be. I would like an end to the endless arguments about Gus in my Twitter mentions. I would like to quit writing pieces addressing whether he should remain head coach. I would like to express my opinions about Auburn’s coaching position and have them not be gobbledygook.

But that’s not happening yet, and that’s OK, too. Another year of life in the muddled gray area won’t kill us (probably). Maybe having an experienced coordinator aboard Gus knows and trusts makes a difference. Maybe Tank Bigsby gives Auburn a Kerryon-esque anchor at running back, and that makes a difference. Maybe the lighter schedule makes a difference. It’s college football; there’s a hundred things we can’t see that could make a difference.

Another thing we can’t see: who on earth Auburn could hire who we’d confidently say would do better.

I’m ready for whatever the next stage of Auburn football might be. But considering what Gus Malzahn has given us — and that it’s unclear if anyone else could give us anything more in the near future than he will — I can wait for that stage a little while longer.

Photo via.

from The War Eagle Reader https://www.thewareaglereader.com/2020/01/a-decade-under-the-gusfluence/

[zanepresler20-blog]

Jenna Shrub Hager Apologizes For Hidden Fences Error At Golden Globes.

Have you ever seen a kid learn to use a bike, or a young child learn to walk? Within this article, I will look at the progression music innovation has created and also how it makes popular music making a lot easier. If you could laugh at yourself and your failed efforts, you will certainly have the capacity to remain in the beneficial electricity required to try once more or even take the next step. If you enjoyed this post and you would certainly such as to get even more details pertaining to yellow pages personal numbers uk (http://hacer--laopcionmasfacil.info) kindly see our web site. Mistakes are actually commonly not catastrophic. I am that I am today as a result of the spectacular trainings I gained from actions I as soon as called errors." I not find all of them as negative, foolish or lousy. 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If you want your site to show up amongst the top 10 internet sites in SERPs, you have to stay clear of these frequently dedicated blunders in search engine optimization. Once more, there is actually no reason for this error - as well as it is one that are going to establish you in addition to the others in your field. A terrific perk of slipping up is actually that you will definitely know something you didn't know before, as well as maybe you can utilize this session in your future. I am actually not exactly sure that the decisions I made as operations manager from the Orbital Handling Car (OMV) course nearly 3 years earlier were actually automatically errors, however the complications that inevitably killed the OMV were actually undoubtedly real.

[queernuck]

Two Towers, Falling

Baudrillard’s discussion of September 11th as an “Absolute Event” is important to reckoning with the current topology of globalization not only because it informs the particularities of American imperialism in Afghanistan, as well as the larger topography of the manufacturing of a dialectic Orientalist/Occidentalist cultural struggle in the context of loose assemblages of “terror” and various war machines articulated alongside or against the State of America as well as within States of their own, but additionally because of its ideological load, the semiotic context in which it is an Oedipal figuration that informs so much of the current structure of American politics given the roots of September 11th in the United States’ own imperial aspirations.

The ephemera of September 11th are so varied, so absurd in retrospect, that the apparent “death of irony” that some discussed as a cultural response to the Event becomes readily available in retrospect. A particularly amusing example is newspaper comics: long a relatively stagnant medium with “topical” references ranging from months-outdated to years-outdated, the funnies were suddenly filled with somber notes of remembrance, Americans able to look to Beetle Bailey for guidance in a time of absolute instability, the self-same instability that Massumi describes when a quarterback tosses a pass in the Super Bowl. A year later, the Super Bowl halftime show commemorated those killed on 9/11 to the sounds of U2 while the Patriots, a team now associated with supporters like Richard Spencer, won a victory that would come to stand for their entire ideological figuration: the sort of acceptable counterpart to the New York of the Yankees, who failed to win the World Series the previous November, compared to the imperialism of Tom Brady and his incredible arm. The return of the Patriots to the Super Bowl and their perhaps too-miraculous comeback victory has been part of continuing to weave a hyperreal fabric of hyperreal encounter, this ideological appropriation of the symbols of American affinity. The funnies united as part of a sort of turn toward uncritical repetition of an American act of Martyrdom: the empire was exonerated not only for its past sins, but the sins it would go on to commit.

Americans are fascinated with the early stages of the war in Afghanistan, as well as the moment at which Osama Bin Laden was killed by Navy SEALs, producing incredulous diagrams such as that of the caves at Tora Bora, claimed to be a fortress with hydroelectric power and a movie theatre, rather than a mostly natural cave system that had been developed into a stronghold by US-backed forces fighting alongside the Mujahideen, the caves under their control because they were the very same forces. That it was in the culmination of a reactionary, Anti-Soviet ideological thrust that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda were realized was lost on most Americans, even as the realization of Osama Bin Laden’s role in the attacks became quickly figured and fetishized within the American imperial libido. The previous structures of live coverage formed during the Gulf War were focused in order to have the opposite effect as their previous one: whereas the Gulf War was conducted for the purposes of the press, of creating a vocabulary of postmodern war, the creation and assemblage, the growing “spirit” of Terrorism that Baudrillard describes was creating a new sort of standard for the media. When the towers collapsed, so too did previous concepts of what the self within the nation could constitute. And in turn, rising in implosion, was the deterritorializing haze of the towers’ ashes, what Art Spiegelman referred to as “the shadow of no towers” in his autobiographical work of the same name.

These shadows still loom over Manhattan, where without irony the museum located at what became known to be “Ground Zero” has hosted dinners and receptions for New York’s bourgeoisie. “Ground Zero” has been an attraction for decades, but its singular designation as a site that reaches far beyond itself is astounding. Located in the financial district that drew the attack in the first place, the topology of Ground Zero is far more than mere memory, but in fact is further realized as a call for war, a creation of each and every individual victim of the attacks as enough to justify a decade and a half of occupation and a secondary war to accompany the first. The Absolute Event, in this case, is realized in that it stands as the ultimate justification, as an obliteration of irony, of any possible collapsing of the ideological heights the towers have reached in their absence. While hundreds of thousands of deaths remain almost nameless, a comparatively small sum of American military personnel killed in the act of occupying becomes further part of this justifying fabric, woven into an infinite blanket of meaning stretching across the nation, the creation of the world after 9/11.

The almost recursive structures, the infinite debt of American imperial violence, is thus realized only through this act of martyrdom. Previously, American intervention was conducted under the guise of humanitarianism, as creating a space of democratic possibility through the violent deterritorialization of bombing campaigns and uneventful occupations. American armies overwhelmed opposing forces, settled themselves in for some time, and eventually left to allow the fabric of capitalist exchange to be stitched up over the still-bleeding wounds. The project of negotiating the terms upon which the United States could navigate the shift from previous Balkanization to the integration of former Yugoslavian nations into the apparent Occident, of occupying nations such as Grenada and Panama; this was by no means as lucrative as the defense of the nation reckoned in the War on Terror. Even as the reverberation of American policy, the reimagined domino effect of a creeping, spreading terror having far more resonance in reaction to the figure of the American-controlled West than in any sort of Communist onslaught, the eventual turn of anticommunism toward fascist tendencies becomes clear. The exact sort of hegemony exhibited in anticommunist ideology, whether in creating the figure of Bin Laden or in defense of the war against him and his ever-growing ranks, the imagined figure of a single opposition was able to overwrite the reality of the disparate and moreover nomadic war machines that make up opposition to the Occidentalist imagination. 

The creation of an articulation in reversal, the ability of neoliberal ideology to integrate its own opposition into itself, is realized in the hegemonic force of American response to an ever-elusive “terrorism” as well as how the violence of assemblages of terror are able to rearticulate and create their own means of response, such that the realization of a terrorist lies in a sort of destabilized and continual Derridean opposition between democracy and terrorism, between democracy and an unremarked upon Other. This is an Other that is impenetrable specifically because it is unable to be met by any penetrating force, instead allowing for a naked phallus of American ideology to be projected in the space left. There is no Other, but rather a created lack, a space in which every American becomes a hero for their support of hegemonic violence, for their role in projecting the violence of American ideology. America has been at war in Afghanistan long enough that the children of the first soldiers to occupy the nation now have sons and daughters old enough to continue the same. It has become the absolute determiner of the American character, it has shifted the nature of the military from a space in which the American may be realized as collegiate, as developed, a space to better oneself as it was portrayed in the 90s, to its realization again as a war machine, one that proceeds the state and often attempts to wrest itself away from the state. The ideological figuration of veterans as experts on terrorism despite their often-reactionary ideologies, the resurgent presence of veterans in fascist movements, is in fact a neoliberal realization of a far different sort of war machine. This is not to deny the potential of veterans becoming revolutionary, but rather that the deep embedding of a certain sort of concept of American selves within those who have joined the military since September 11th.

The role of the event in becoming an Absolute Event, the means by which the structures of memory and the creation of a certain simulacrum far greater than any act of “terror” could be, is by far the resonating memory of September 11th. There will never be another act like it simply because no event has created such a cohesion of hegemonic violence since, no event has created such a violent sort of ideological process of reclamation and renegotiation and why there likely will not be such an event in the future.

[ardenttheories]

what do you think about time and space being cardinal aspects if, according to your and many others' theories, the knight is who helps the space player do the frog breeding? an even more far fetched take would be a knight of space solo session, because time isn't as essential, is it?

The importance of the Time player is to ensure that you have some form of backup state should your session ultimately fail. Anything relating to the Scratch is intrinsically tied to your Time player’s Land; without a Time player, there’s simply no possibility for this to happen. 

It’s also imperative to note that in Homestuck, and SBURB as a whole, Time plays an incredibly significant role. The entire game is based around stable time loops and paradoxes, from the creation of the players to the creation of the game itself, and even throughout the game to ensure that things will always end up in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. Every session will, at its base level, hold this degree of Time manipulation. 

The importance of the Space player is to ensure that the game is even potentially winnable. Anything relating to the Forge, or the Genesis Frog, is intrinsically related to your Space player’s Land; without a Space player, there’s no fertile ground, so to speak, for the new universe to grow, no new beginning to aspire to. 

So, Space also plays a significant role in Homestuck, and SBURB as a whole. In conjunction with Time loops and paradoxes, multiple portals exist that allow players to traverse through their Lands, and it’s Skaia’s defence portals that allow the players to go back to their point of origin to begin with - but that also provides the space for an Alpha session, which exists parallel to the Beta session. Beyond the all-important Universe Creation, Space also ensures more than once that objects and people are miraculously transported from one place to another, and provides one of the easiest ways to overcome obstacles.

What this means is that Time and Space have to work together for SBURB to work. That’s why they’re seen, I think, as the Cardinal Aspects. You can’t make the Alpha session without Space having some sort of involvement, and you can’t make the Genesis Frog without the assistance of Time through the breeding device (the last frog, in particular, is just plain unreachable without it). 

You also can’t have a fully functioning session without both Time and Space, as multiple times throughout Homestuck we see things travel in two directions; into the past, and into another universe.    

For instance, SBURB not only travels from the human session into the troll session, but it’s also sent back in time so that Aradia can find it during one of her archaeological digs. It would be all well and good if it could only go back in Time, or travel through Space - but it would never reach that instance of Aradia, the one who didn’t know fully what it was and was in the prime position to have Sollux recreate it for an Alternian audience just in time for the Reckoning. 

Clearly, Space is the more valuable Aspect when it comes to winning the session. You quite literally need it to even beat the game, and so long as you’re either incredibly careful or incredibly lucky, you’ll be able to pull through to the end. This even goes so far as to be a main point in Homestuck itself; Doomed!Dave and Rose are well aware they can’t win the game without Jade, and thus going back in Time is the only option. 

But they wouldn’t have that option of Dave weren’t a Time player. Their session would also fail, almost immediately, even if Jade was present; their session faces an extreme lack of Time, and Dave manages to do several weeks of work within a few hours through the use of stable time loops. Without his work, Jade would never be able to finish the frog breeding in time - and they’d remain a barren session. 

When it comes to why they’re called Cardinal Aspects, I think it’s because they form the foundation of Paradox Space. As I’ve shown, you need a mix of Time and Space present within a universe in order for any part of SBURB to fully function. If one or the other were lacking, as we see with the Beta kid session, there’s just no way to complete the session, even if you have the other Aspect present. 

More than any other Aspect, you need these two. It’s why Caliborn and Calliope’s session even vaguely works. One’s Time, one’s Space. They fill the bare minimum requirements to have a viable session - but then, of course, once one of them predominates the other, it’s game over. Alternate Calliope has no choice but to bide her Time and wait for an opportunity to strike in a session that has no End, and Caliborn struggles to grow in a session that contains nothing but Ends and hosts no universe for him to go into. 

I think that’s part of the importance of Time, honestly. Space is the creation of the universe, but Time is the end of the session. You need to have both to ensure that one Ends as the other Begins. 

It’s also why the Alpha session is so barren - even more barren than any other session we see (disregarding the Alpha troll session, but that’s not their own fault; that’s an overabundance of Time a la Lord English). They don’t have Time to end their session, nor do they have Space to provide the fertile ground for Skaia to grow. They have Heart, Hope, Life, and Void - all important Aspects, sure, and especially important when related to the individual - but they are at a complete loss for any ability to redo, to progress, or even to come to an end. 

As for the solo Knight of Space…

First of all, it’s just a bad idea. I’ve mentioned this before, but for Skaia to grow fully, you need an even number of players and at least 4 minimum; Skaia evolves with each prototyping, and if you don’t allow it to progress through those stages, you’ll never have it reach its fertile state. A Knight of Space might be able to fudge this a little - it’d be well within their powers to, for sure - but as a general rule of thumb, one player sessions just do not work. It’s why Caliborn’s session is so broken. SBURB is a team game, and working on your own will never allow you the opportunity to grow. 

Without Time present in their session, the Knight of Space would likely really struggle with… anything Time-related. There’d be no sending themselves things back in time, no future warnings or assistance, and they’d be almost entirely unable to keep a stable time loop going. They’d have to play the game by the skin of their teeth, trying to get everything right first try - which means full prototyping, God Tiering, playing without the assistance of stronger fraymotifs, and a battle against the Black King completely solo. 

They might be able to do the frog breeding, but again, they’d be incredibly pushed for time. SBURB is a multi-player game, and is almost entirely about resource management; imagine trying to get the sort of grist Dave does when you’re only one person, and also need to focus on your Quest, your Denizen, your Choice, the Reckoning, the Black Queen and King, Dersite Agents, and the construction of your own home. 

The easiest way I could see a Knight of Space doing this is… duplicates, maybe? We’ve never seen that happen for a Space player, I think, but imagine Double Team from the Pokemon games; creations of oneself that aren’t physical, but exist as you do and are capable of copying things you would do. If they can resize things, then they can definitely copy/paste things - and I’d assume for a Knight of Space, duplicating yourself (like Twice does in BNHA) would be the easiest exploit to try and get around the lack of help.

Otherwise your poor Knight would be frequently trying to zap themself around between the Moons, Skaia, and their Land in order to complete everything in an orderly fashion. 

My biggest concern is whether or not they’d be able to snatch the last part of Super Special Frog DNA to make the Genesis Frog. 

That Super Special Frog is what awakens the Space player initially. It’s specifically, if I remember correctly, transported back in Time to an early point of a young Space player’s life, and then has to be disposed of quickly to ensure that it can be paradoxified - as happens with Jade, wherein Bec kills the frog so that she can paradoxify it to get its genetic code in the future. 

This is also why Karkat and Kanaya fail at making the Genesis Frog. Doc Scratch awakens Kanaya prior to her seeing the Super Special Frog, and if I’m remembering correctly, she never sees that Frog at all. This is why they can’t find the last piece of genetic code, and why the human session ends up Cancerous.  

So even if the Knight of Space manages to achieve everything else, they may never be able to find that Super Special Frog. They may never be able to paradoxify it, or they may never have seen it to begin with (since it’s sent back in Time, and your Knight has no way of easily ensuring something will go through Time as it’s meant to) - and thus they’ll never be able to finish off the Genesis Frog. Sure, they’ll be able to beat the game (just barely, at this point, and with difficulty against the Black King unless they exploit the multiple selves thing), but the universe they go into won’t be healthy. 

I have seen it mentioned somewhere that you do need a Knight of Time in order to successfully win the game, but I think that’s probably a bit much. The chances of having a Knight of Time, specifically, in your session is incredibly low - literally one in the five sessions we see within Homestuck - and is only relevant to the Beta human session because of their lack of time. SBURB doesn’t want every session to win, and there’s a much higher ratio of barren sessions to successful ones, but it at least gives you a fighting chance. Failure is typically attributed to Failed Classpects, lack of growth, or the team just not getting on well enough to try and win together - not because you were missing such a specific thing. Even the Alpha session got a Space player in the end.  

The Knight as a Class is imperative, I think, because of its Exploitative/Protective nature - though you do need the Time player in order to ensure there’s enough Time in your session for normal aspects of the game to even work. 

So! For TL;DR:

- Space and Time are Cardinal Aspects because they’re vital to the running of any session. It doesn’t really matter what other Classpects you have in your session; without Space and Time, the fundamental characteristics of Paradox Space don’t exist, and you won’t have a winnable session

- A Knight of Space could, potentially, win a game of SBURB, but the chances of it are highly unlikely, and they’d likely end up with a cancerous frog 

- Knights are important to the process of breeding the frogs because of their specific powerset and mentality, and though they don’t specifically need to be a Knight of Time, you still will need a Time player separate to the Knight in order for frog breeding to be a viable process (at least if you don’t want a cancerous session)

[tomeandflickcorner]

Umbrella Academy Recap 2x09

1x01 1x02 1x03 1x04 1x05 1x06 1x07 1x08 1x09 1x10

2x01 2x02 2x03 2x04 2x05 2x06 2x07 2x08

We’re nearing the end of the season now, and things are heating up!  Number 5 convinced Luther to help him make a bargain with Old Number 5, who was also walking around 1963 Dallas to ensure President Kennedy’s assassination occurred as it was supposed to.  This bargain involved Old Number 5 handing over his time traveling briefcase so the Hargreeves Siblings could return home to their time in exchange for the correct equation that would allow Old Number 5 to timejump back to the day of Reginald’s funeral and prevent the 2019 apocalypse, without undergoing an age regression. However, both Number 5 and Old Number 5 began to display the symptoms of paradox psychosis, an unfortunate sickness that could occur when a person interacts with their past or future selves while time traveling.  And it’s possible that the two Number 5s might try to kill each other as a result of it.  At the same time, because Lila abducted Diego and brought him to The Commission’s headquarters in the hopes of making him part of her security team, Diego was able to determine that the new apocalypse of 1963 would occur because the FBI captured and interrogated Vanya, whom they suspected of being a Russian spy.  The FBI’s interrogation methods would ultimately result in the amnesiac Vanya’s memories to come flooding back, which would lead to Vanya’s powers bursting out of her, causing an explosion that would be blamed on the Russians, cumulating in a nuclear war. In the hopes of stopping this from happening, Diego, Allison and Klaus hurry over to the FBI building in order to save Vanya from the FBI.  But it appears as if they may have arrived too late, as Vanya’s powers are already spiraling out of control.

Because of Vanya’s powers going out of control, Diego, Klaus and Allison are faced with the challenge of how to reach her without getting themselves killed.  Eventually, Allison gets sick of Diego and Klaus’ whole ‘not it’ bit and decides to volunteer herself.  Which is very fitting, given the sisterly bond the last season had been setting up.  However, Allison ends up getting knocked out.  Diego also fails to make it to Vanya, so it’s up to Klaus.  And he almost makes it, due to the improvised firehose rope that Diego managed to set up before he was knocked out, too.  But Klaus also gets thrown back.  Of course, there’s still one last hope left.  Because Ben is also there.  And because he’s a ghost without a physical body, he isn’t affected by Vanya’s powers.  Upon entering the room where Vanya was strapped to the interrogation chair, Ben manages to possess her, indicating the power of possession was actually tied to Ben and not Klaus. 

Once he’d possessed Vanya, Ben is able to wander about inside Vanya’s mind, where he eventually makes contact with Vanya’s subconscious. Vanya’s Subconscious is clearly scared and upset, having remembered everything and knowing that she might end up destroying the world all over again.  She bemoans over how she can’t control her powers like her siblings, and admits she doesn’t feel like she deserves to live, as she killed Pogo and almost killed Allison.  Ben, however, isn’t deterred and begins to reassure her. He tells her that it’s not her fault she can’t control it, as Reginald hadn’t given her the chance to learn.  Instead, he treated her like a bomb and forced her to keep it bottled up by drugging her and keeping her locked up.  He goes on to tell her she has every right to be angry about how she was treated, but that she’s not a monster.  She’s his sister, and the others are risking their lives at that very moment for her sake.  He also tells her that’s she’s not alone anymore.  In the end, Ben’s words are enough to reassure Vanya’s Subconscious and she begins to smile.  But as she gets to her feet, they notice that Ben is starting to glow.  Ben realizes that he’s finally crossing over.  Vanya’s Subconscious is upset by this, feeling that this is her fault as well, but Ben tells her it’s okay.  After all, he’d died 17 years ago.  At least now, he can say goodbye properly. Before Ben can fade away, he asks Vanya’s Subconscious if she could hug him before he went, and she complies to the request without hesitation.  As they hug, Ben gives Vanya’s Subconscious one final request.  He wants her to pass on a message to Klaus, which he whispers into her ear.

Over at the farmhouse, Sissy notices that Harlan is acting strangely.  Because, as last episode revealed, he and Vanya somehow have some sort of psychic link now.  And therefore, Harlan is experiencing everything Vanya is right now.  Of course, Sissy doesn’t realize this, but she is still alarmed when she sees Harlan sitting stock still in his chair, with his head tilted backward.  As Sissy kneels down next to him, Harlan utters a single word- Vanya’s name.  Obviously, this is a big deal, as this is quite possibly the first time Harlan has ever spoken in his life.  But Carl, who had also witnessed this, doesn’t focus on how miraculous it is that his son is finally speaking.  Instead, he accuses Vanya of doing something to him and immediately starts bringing him to the car with the intention of taking him to an institution.  Sissy, on the other hand, is dead set against this, and she moves in front of the car, aiming her shotgun at Carl.  She tells him that she’s not going to let him take her son from her, because if Harlan is brought to an institution, then they’ll never give him back.  In response, Carl suggests Sissy doesn’t deserve him anymore.  Of course, that was the wrong thing for him to say, as Sissy has had enough of the way Carl has treated her, and she does not back down.

The moment Ben crosses over, Vanya snaps out of her trance at the FBI building.  Likewise, Harlan also snaps out of it in time to witness Sissy and Carl’s confrontation, with Sissy finally admitting that she’d fallen in love with Vanya, and she wants more than what she’d had with Carl.  When Harlan gets out of the car, Sissy gets momentarily distracted, which allows Carl to try and wrestle the shotgun out of her hands.  In the struggle, the trigger gets squeezed and the gun goes off.  The bullet heads right towards Harlan, but right before impact, a sudden shockwave bursts out of the boy, which is eerily similar to Vanya’s power.  The shockwave throws the bullet backwards, and it instead flies clean through Carl’s chest, killing him instantly.

Back at the FBI building, Vanya wakes up to take in the scene around her, with the bodies of the dead FBI agents lying around.  After a pause, she hurries out into the hall, just in time to see Allison, Diego and Klaus also coming around.  But then Diego consults his watch and concludes there’s still time to save President Kennedy, who will be driving by shortly.  Allison tries to stop him, but he can’t be reasoned with, as he believes that, since they’d already stopped the explosion from happening, they’re npw in the clear, and President Kennedy doesn’t have to die.

Elsewhere, Luther is making his way to the grassy knoll with Number 5 and Old Number 5.  And Luther is talking to Old Number 5 about his plan to kill Number 5, whom he claims is only a faulty doppelganger and not the real Number 5.  Of course, our Number 5 already knows about Old Number 5′s plot.  After all, he WAS Old Number 5, and he knows how his older-younger self thinks.  And he doesn’t hesitate to confront Luther over how they’re conspiring against him.  Which leads to his iconic ‘I'm the daddy here!’ line.  (You gotta watch this clip for yourself.  It’s classic.)  Before long, they make it to their destination, where Luther notices that Old Number 5 is also experiencing paradox psychosis.  Meaning his plan to kill our Number 5 may not have come from a sound mind.

As Old Number 5 gets ready to fire the bullet that will kill President Kennedy as his motorcade drives by, Number 5, due to the final stages of paradox psychosis, makes a mad lunge for Old Number 5′s briefcase, believing he can teleport over and grab it in time.  But Old Number 5 spots Number 5′s movements in the reflection of the lens on his shotgun’s sight, so he is able to react in time.  For a moment, it looks like the two Number 5s will turn on each other, but Luther steps in between them, trying to calm them both down.  Of course, this has no effect, as Number 5 simply kicks him in the groin.  And with Luther momentarily incapacitated, Number 5 and Old Number 5 begin to go at it.  Eventually, Luther is able to break up the fight and gains possession of the shotgun.  Immediately, Number 5 and Old Number 5 begin shouting at him, both ordering him to kill the other one.  After some deliberation, Luther ends up aiming the shotgun at our Number 5.  But after a tense moment, Luther turns and knocks Old Number 5 out with the butt of the shotgun.  He then orders our Number 5 to open the time vortex portal that would lead back to the day of Reginald’s funeral.

At The Commission headquarters, Lila, having realized she’s lost Diego, heads into The Handler’s office.  Upon arriving, she learns The Handler has already found out about how Diego broke into the Infinite Switchboard room and stole a time traveling briefcase, as she’d threatened Herb and forced him to tell her.  The Handler reminds Lila about her earlier agreement, which stated that Lila would have to kill Diego herself if he stepped out of line.  Lila instantly realizes that this was The Handler’s plan all along.  As they begin to argue over the matter, Herb notices AJ the fish in a nearby fish bowl and tries to discreetly scooch over towards him, which enables AJ to silently give him a message.  AJ has managed to write out the number 743 with the colored pebbles at the bottom of the fishbowl.  The Handler then orders everyone out of the room so she and Lila could speak privately.  Once they’re alone, The Handler tells Lila that she’s about to become the most powerful woman of all time, and she wants Lila to be her right hand.  But she needs to know if she can trust her adopted daughter.  And as she says this, she grips Lila's chin in an obviously threatening manner, making her meaning clear.  So Lila assures The Handler that she can trust her.

Meanwhile, Herb, following the tip he got from AJ, finds Case File 743.  Inside, he finds information that he clearly finds important, as he removes a paper from the file before placing it back in the filing cabinet.  After leaving the case file room, Herb is confronted by Lila.  She demands to know where Diego went, and Herb admits he’d helped him escape and return to his siblings.  Herb also asks Lila if she’s really going to kill Diego, and Lila says she won’t.  Because she loves him.  (Though she also threatens to hurt Herb if he ever blabbed that to anyone.)  Before Lila walked off, Herb showed her the paper he’d found in Case File 743.  The information on the paper is enough to make Lila drop to her knees in shock.

Upon recovering from the shock, Lila storms into The Handler’s office to confront her.  It turns out she’s now learned the truth.  That her parents hadn’t died in a robbery, but had been executed by The Commission.  The paper in her hand is a kill order against Lila’s parents.  A kill order that Old Number 5 had carried out.  But sadly, Lila seems she hasn’t figured out the full truth.  Because The Handler had used AJ’s signature to approve the kill order, thereby covering up her involvement.  Taking advantage of the fact that Lila doesn’t know she was the one who ordered their deaths, The Handler suggests that Diego might have been snooping around to get rid of the evidence that tied Number 5 to Lila’s parents’ deaths.  At first, Lila doesn’t buy it, but The Handler is able to place a small seed of doubt in Lila’s mind, suggesting that Number 5 has been behind everything and Diego had been following his orders all along.  As Lila numbly walks off, The Handler retaliates against AJ for his efforts at revealing the truth by killing him.

As the episode comes to a close, Old Number 5 comes to in time to watch our Number 5 opening up the time vortex portal back to 2019.  So Old Number 5 gets ready to jump into the time vortex, with our Number 5 telling him what he’d got wrong about the equation, which involved a misplaced decimal.  But unfortunately, right before Old Number 5 could depart with his math error corrected, Luther gets hit in the head with a fire extinguisher.  (For those who have forgotten, Klaus threw it into the time vortex when it had appeared at the Umbrella Academy mansion in the pilot episode.)  This results in Luther dropping the shotgun.  And with Luther unarmed, Old Number 5 tries to make a dive for the briefcase.  At the last second, fortunately, Luther gets back up and dropkicks Old Number 5 through the portal right before it disappears.  So it looks as if things might work out, as Old Number 5 went back in time like he was supposed to, this time with the correct mathematical formula.  And he also knows that the way to stop the 2019 apocalypse involves being nice to Vanya.  But unfortunately, the time traveling briefcase was damaged when the time portal closed around it, so it’s now completely useless to Luther and our Number 5.  Number 5 is not pleased by this, but there’s no time to worry about that now.  President Kennedy’s motorcade is driving past right now, and they hurry over to the fence to watch.  Likewise, Allison, Klaus and Vanya watch from the window of the FBI building.

Down on the street, Diego practically bulrushes 1963 Reginald, who has appeared on the scene as well.  But he discovers too late that it’s not really 1963 Reginald, but someone who had been dressed up to look like him.  The moment Diego realizes his mistake, the infamous gunshots are heard.  Horrified over how he failed to prevent the assassination, Diego demands to know where the real 1963 Reginald is.  In response, the Reginald impersonator hands him a note that simply says ‘I told you so.’

That evening, the real 1963 Reginald confronts the other members of the Majestic 12.  It comes out that he’d made a deal with them that President Kennedy was not to be touched.  And he is livid that they went back on their word and lied to him.  He tells them that they are never to contact him ever again and turns to leave.  However, the leader of the Majestic 12 isn’t bothered, simply saying that he expects 1963 Reginald to continue supplying them with his advanced technology.  If he doesn’t, they’ll expose him for what he really is- an alien from another planet.  1963 Reginald doesn’t take kindly to the attempt at blackmail.  In response, he sheds his skin a la Men in Black style, revealing his alien face (which we only see the back of) and proceeds to kill everyone in the room.  Again, while we don’t actually see it happening, the sounds we hear are enough to conclude that their deaths were quite painful.

At The Commission’s headquarters, The Handler is notified of the appearance of an anomaly appearing in the timeline.  When she goes down to the Infinite Switchboard room to see what’s up, she watches the footage of the new anomaly and promptly kills the man with her, after determining he hasn’t shown the footage to anyone else.  She then makes an announcement to the rest of The Commission, stating that they’re going to war.  And the episode ends with the reveal of what the anomaly is.  It’s Harlan.  Somehow, he now possesses the same sort of powers as Vanya.  And it’s clear he can’t control them.

Closing thoughts/questions:

How did Harlan get Vanya’s powers?

What’s Lila going to do now that she knows Number 5 was the one who ended her parents’ lives?  Does Number 5 even know?  And will Lila figure out that it was The Handler who gave the kill order and not AJ?

So Reginald IS an alien!  I thought so, as it was rather obvious since 1x10.  But I never guessed he actually looked like one.  I wonder if we’ll ever get to see what he really looks like without the human mask,

It appears 1963 Reginald didn’t want President Kennedy to actually be killed after all.  But what exactly did he expect was going to happen?  They said the plan was to get him out of the way, but how were they planning to do that without actually assassinating him?  I’m genuinely curious.

I’m really proud of Sissy.  She finally stood up to Carl and displayed the full extent of her strength at last.   And while Carl’s death is unfortunate, he did sorta bring it on himself.  I just hope Sissy doesn’t get in trouble for it.  Because people are going to notice his sudden disappearance.

I’m also sad to see Ben go.  But at least he’s at peace now.  And he got to have one last moment and hug with both Diego and Vanya before he crossed over.  It’s just a shame he didn’t also get to say goodbye to Allison, Luther and Number 5.  I do wonder what their relationship to Ben had been.  (Considering Ben was one of the people Number 5 called out for when he found the ruins of the Umbrella Academy mansion in the post-2019 apocalypse future, I’m guessing Ben and Number 5 had been somewhat close.)