#this duology did a lot of things that were completely bleh

[randomnameless]

Re about humans and other weird beings living with them, I remember I really liked the Tales of Xillia duology’s take on this -

You start with the female protagonist who is not a human but a Spirit/God, and has an important mission, and has to travel with a human for plot reasons but we see how out of touch she is with various human idioms, customs, but also morality...

Is it because Milla is a spirit?

But later on, we see her being insecure, jealous, prideful, teasing, forming friendship bonds, supporting people, being kind... while still thinking of her mission -

And well, plot happens and it’s revealed Milla -

isn’t a spirit at all, but a human construct by the real “God” who made her to act as a bait in a plan to, hm, get rid of people who want to use Spirits as fuel/fodder for their tech.

At the same time, when Milla shows more and more “human” emotions, we are introduced to her “sister”, Muzét, who is a bona fide Spirit.

And lo, Muzét, on introduction, is also aloof, doesn’t understand idioms, is apparently here for a “mission” and doesn’t interact much with the party (even if there’s the bazonga joke).

When plot happens, Muzét, the Spirit, is revealed to have a cruel and mean streak, mocking the male protagonist - but also a buttload of other emotions as she also realises the God who created her actually... doesn’t give a fuck about her. Muzét feels anger, jealousy, ire, despair, sadness, a crap load of abandonment issues, latches on the first guy with a giant sword around just to have someone to “follow”...

And we later learn, through sidequests that she’s also someone who can be kind and considerate and who can also be shy and has a lot of insecurities.

Both Milla and Muzét, despite not being born as humans (and Muzét never having been one) have a long... list of feelings, that definitely mark them as humans, as in not biologically humans, but as human as Jude or the rest of the cast is.

Come ToX2 and we learn there was not 1 God but 3 ones, who were pissed at humans for, iirc, mistreating spirits or something to do with a reincarnation cycle, so they made a bet/trial, if some humans managed to reach a door before a certain time, the world won’t be destroyed, otherwise, the God in charge of the reincarnation process will stop doing his stuff and the world will be destroyed.

Pretty simple as in “whims of Fate” simple, right? But then, we learn little by little, but especially at the end, how one of those Gods rigged the Trial so humans would lose, because he doesn’t want his pal, the God who oversees the reincarnation cycle, to continue overseeing this cycle (because it apparently hurts him or something). And the God from the first game (the asshat who created Milla and Muzét) also apparently fell in luf with a human, a long time ago. 

Well, just to say that despite posing Humans and Spirits as two pretty different entities, the Xillia games - in both opuses - takes time to tell (and to show!) the player how they are actually quite similar, especially regarding their feelings. The losers who wanted to continue using spirits as fuel for their magitech have a semblance of “morally earl grey”, that quickly disappears because 1/we see spirits dying and the cast doesn’t treat it as wind on a windmill 2/it’s treated lightly, but it’s also the reason why the male protag develops new magitech for those people that won’t need to kill Spirits to work.

The Tales series always (at least from the games I played!) had two different factions/races being at war/in opposition (spirits and humans, humans and elves and half-elves, clones and originals, etc etc) but the party always finds a way to make them accept to live together, or at least acknowledge that the other isn’t “something” but is “someone”.

So to see the FE franchise - that is of course very different in its story telling, I know! - utterly fail with the Fodlan verse and continue treating their pointy eared “humanoids” as “others” without anyone telling the local specist that, no, people can live with you even if their ears are pointy, is really a disappointment.

[immobiliter]

alright spoilery thoughts below the cut!

okay so let me preface this by saying that i do think a lot of reworking of the og trilogy was needed. i'm personally not a fan of a lot of stuff in the trilogy and there were changes that they made in the first few episodes that i thought made sense. however by ep 6 it seemed to have gone completely off the rails lmaoooo. not to mention that my favourite part of the trilogy is the ending for alina & mal and i really hate that it was changed here. alina losing her powers in favour of a quiet life running an orphanage with mal is such a powerful thing after all they both go through, and now to suddenly hint at "dark" alina while packing mal off on a ship to play at being sturmhond is just. dumb. lazy. not a fan. assumedly it's a way to keep the actors involved provided that the show moves forward but still. bleh.

my other issue with the way they kept borrowing things from every single grishaverse book is the way it all felt very crammed in. the plot just kept going and going and it was as if they wanted to get as much in as possible in case the show gets cancelled after its second season. but that came at the expense of the characters, who in many cases were not allowed to breathe or have the development that they needed for some of the emotional beats to actually land. there were plenty of things i didn't care about because the plot simply didn't allow me room to care about them.

positives, though: kaz, nina, genya and david were the highlights, although i cannot believe that they have killed (?) david off without his bromance with nikolai. but genya and kaz really did kill this season and were the most watchable parts

the crows were wonderful, i can understand why they brought in aspects from the duology ( and a lot of stuff from crooked kingdom ), although i kinda wish the pekka rollins thing wasn't wrapped up after four episodes ( even though i'm assuming from pekka being in hellgate that it's Not Over Yet ). i'm still not sure how i feel about jesper and wylan already Knowing each other, but they were cute so there is that. kaz and inej were one of the strongest dynamics this season.

the show vastly overestimates how much i care about the darkling moping around in his dilapidated mansion. nor do i care about the unhinged tidemaker girl. i don't give a shit about either of them, thanks.

the fight scenes were so very camp and it was both funny and also kinda sad.

hahahahahaha nikolai okay. so my overall opinion is that he was Fine and if it was anyone other than nikolai that would be okay, but nikolai as a character is meant to be so much more than fine. he is meant to crackle with charisma and steal every scene that he is in and not just be the dashing privateer and boy prince, but a madman and an absolute pain in the ass for everyone around him, and i just ??? didn't get that ?? he did get better as the show went on but, aside from his scene in ketterdam in episode 1 ( that i did really like ), he really did blend into the background when he was sharing the screen with the likes of kaz and jesper and even tamar. i don't wholly blame the actor, i think it was also a combination of the show's breakneck pace with its plot and the writing, but i just found him bland in comparison to all of the other characters

i also still don't really know how to process what was going on with his family. vasily ????? like he's an idiot but why did they make him a full blown antagonist ?? also why wasn't he blonde like the lantsovs are meant to be ??? he was so cookie cutter it was ridiculous

whoever decided that nikolai and zoya should be kept apart for the entire season. i would just like to talk. zoya was so sidelined and even though i liked some of her stuff with nina it was kinda ridiculous seeing as she has such a key role in the og trilogy

and then don't even get me started on how it's not even the darkling who turns nikolai into a winged monster, and that he still hasn't transformed or become the king of scars by the end of s2. i don't like it. i also don't like that they kept the political marriage between nikolai and alina and followed it all the way through to nikolai's coronation.

but yeah. i probably have more thoughts but on the whole. i think i'm going book based lmao