#this isn't worse than most fight scenes lol

[deliciouskeys]

A tragic tale (bot-to-bot chat, no interference from me after initial setup)

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

Just how much power did Marcy have over her friends pre-Amphibia? When they throw the kpop puppy party at school, the principal assumes "those two" pushed Anne into it, and Anne kind of admits it. When Anne is about to sacrifice herself, she says "all my life I've followed you two". During her one and only S1 appearance, she's seen maliciously nodding alongside Sasha when Anne steals the box, and with Marcy asking to meet up on Anne's birthday, while Sasha is the one to carry out the order, the implication is that they're almost like... working together. I know she was supposed to be "meaner" when they were working on S1, and I think they changed her personality because Haley Tju made her too adorable(? and maybe also because Matt thought the whole show would fall apart if people didn't like Marcy (considering what a huge impact she has on everything that happens, I'd say he was right). But Anne's line in THT and the flashback in All In implies she wasn't nearly as much as a doormat as it may seem sometimes, at least not as much as Anne.

Or maybe she was? Because you also see her in this place of submission when it comes to Sasha (and also Anne?), especially in BOTB, when she's happy to switch from Anne's song to Sasha's without even hearing the first, only stopping to consider Anne's approval. That scene struck me as her always happy to go along with her friends' wishes and never having much of an opinion of her own. That's why she was so desperate for them to get along during The Dinner, and why she never took a side when Anne told her she and Sasha had a fight. She closest thing to defying Sasha that we ever see her do is when she's working alongside like 10 other people to protect Newtopia from the Toad Army, and she says they had to "defeat Sasha and Grime" specifically, which I think makes sense considering they're attacking the city she's supposed to protect (she's IS a high-ranking member of its military forces AND a close advisor to its king), and not wanting to "defeat Sasha" would rock the boat with everyone else involved, Anne included. Yet we never really see her angry at Sasha for what she's doing, she just wants her and Anne to "work things out". I think it's clear that Marcy struggles with empathy, because if she put herself in Anne's shoes, she wouldn't expect her to "just work things out" with Sasha. In fact, she would have taken Anne's side agessssss ago, but she's way too focused on herself (her goal is for everyone to be happy forever and get along, while Anne and Sasha may want something else). Marcy being self-centered isn't a hot take, and I don't think she's any more self-centered than Anne was during most of S1. In fact, I'd argue Anne was even worse lol. The difference is that Anne made a million relatively small mistakes while Marcy made like two or three very big, very bad mistakes (bringing them to Amphibia, striking a deal with Andrias behind their backs, and not taking a side in Anne and Sasha's fight, which is something I never see people bring up as one of Marcy's most flawed moments).

So... going back to the question I made in the beginning... did Marcy just go along with Sasha's plans so enthusiastically when compared to Anne, who had more doubts and had to be pressured into them, that it made it look like she and Sasha were more in cahoots than they actually were? I think this is very likely. I also think it's likely that she and Sasha genuinely shared a liking for rule breaking back in LA, and her own self-centered-ness prevented her from realizing Anne wasn't comfortable with it. Maybe she never even considered if she liked to go along with Sasha's plans, like, Marcy strikes me as someone who doesn't look inwards much. I think we can rule out both Sasha and Marcy being equally controlling and possesive of Anne, because her relationship with Sasha was very much not one of equals, with Anne as a third wheel. Was she more of a third wheel? We know Anne and Sasha don't share most of her interests and will often ignore her and her needs, and we know she feels like losing them is becoming dangerously easy. We also know Sasha has no qualms taking Anne on some kind of birthday date without Marcy which I'm 75% convinced it's because she had a huge crush on Anne but I digress which, from a doylian perspective, is explained by the fact that they seemingly didn't want to show Marcy too early, but from a watsonian perspective, it just comes across as Sasha not priorizing Anne spending her birthday with both her best friends. Like, you can do with or without Marcy. She doesn't seem to remember Marcy until she texted her, actually.

But then you have lines from Anne about how "if you friend wants to you steal something, you do it, because if you don't, they may not want to be your friend anymore", which, oh boy, if she at least perceived Marcy as pressuring her into stealing the box (rather than it being 100% Sasha's idea) that would shed a whole new light on her relationship with Marcy, because it would seem like she, too, feels like their friendship could fall apart if she didn't go along with the other two's plans. And I do think Marcy at least somewhat participated in pushing Anne into it. It wouldn't be the first time she made Anne do something bad - she told her to lie to Valeriana about stealing the box, something Anne later appeared to be ashamed of, and she insisted of going along with the puppy party when Anne was having doubts. I imagine Sasha (who also pressured Anne into doing very much not so "lawful good" things, in more extreme ways than Marcy) might have come up with the idea of stealing it, and Marcy just supported it. Marcy taking Sasha's side. Possibly over and over again. We know Sasha didn't exactly manipulate her because she didn't have to: Marcy just always did everything she said. Anne was the one who needed a bit more convincing.

Marcy's relationship with Anne and Sasha is fascinating. She's definitely the most morally gray of the trio, and possibly the most complex one too, in the sense that she's full of realistic contradictions - an adorkable manipulator, an amoral softie, a self-centered sweetheart who loves her friends more than life itself, a possesive kidnapper with a heart of gold, a very selfish and self-sacrificial person... and it's never just a mask or anything, she's not just pretending to be nice, she really is that way, she really is all of that together. I think that's why people struggle to read her a lot of the times, because so much about her characterization seems conflicting with itself... but I think that's the key to making characters deep and realistic. In real life, we're all walking contradictions and we don't really make sense. Marcy's character doesn't seem clumsily put together to me, like they frankeinsteined all the different character traits she needed to make the plot work without any cohesion between them. I think she's a complex tapestry that sometimes requires a closer inspection to decypher it, and I think the glue holding everything together is her lack of intrapersonal intelligence, her inability to look inwards and notice her own contradictions.

We know she felt unloved by her friends yet desperately clung to them with everything she had, going to extreme measures to ensure they all stayed together, even when it hurt them. We know she's capable of manipulation, scheming and lying to the people that love her most in order to guarantee that goal. We know she's possesive with them, but she also loves them enough to let them go in the rare cases when she realizes she's hurting them (as seen in A Day in the Aquarium). From her journal, we also know she feels very ashamed of these possesive impulses. We know she'll neglect to form her own opinions and ideas to agree always with her friends' wishes, which means she feels completely lost when they want different things. But this also shows that she would never think of an idea of hers as being explicitly opposed to what her friends want. She wouldn't consciously do something that they wouldn't like. Which is insane, because, who would want to be separated from their family and thrown into a different world without any sort of notice? Which leads us to understand that Marcy has zero emotional intelligence and has never looked inwards in her LIFE, AND that her empathy skills are in negative digits because it would have taken her a nanosecond of thought to realize Anne and Sasha probably wouldn't like to be kidnapped. And since we know she never wants to do something they dislike, she must have just... not thought about it at all. No thoughts head empty. It really was just BLANK up there when she made that decision. I think Marcy is a very "true neutral" character who struggles with empathy and humility, who loves her friends but doesn't have the emotional intelligence to really understand them, and who is happy and enthusiastic to be Sasha 2 Electric Boogaloo because... that's what she knows. That's how her friend group works and her goal was never to have a deeper and more genuine connection to them, but to keep it close to her.

So... my conclussion is that, pre-amphibia, Marcy was Sasha's very enthusiastic (but emotionally neglected) right hand man, with Anne as their oblivious victim. It really IS complex because you have to then add Anne always looking out for her, losing sleep over her, yet also ignoring her needs, and Sasha not even bothering to hide how much she doesn't care about Marcy's feelings (which reflects on Marcy not consciously caring about her own feelings). There's also Marcy always assuming the best from them too, despite repeated evidence of their disinterest, and her fear of displeasing them looming over her constantly. Ik I said Anne was Sasha and Marcy's victim, but I meant that like... symbolically, because Anne is not innocent here either. She wasn't a great friend to Marcy before Amphibia. Here's why I always say Anne couldn't develop a deeper, more genuine and open connection with Marcy because of Sasha's oppressive presence and her own lack of emotional maturity. And Marcy couldn't develop a deeper, more genuine and open connection with Anne because of her own lack of empathy and reluctance to face any kind of conflict. So Marcy is Sasha's enthusiastic but emotionall neglected right hand man, who also feels subordinate to Anne despite Anne feeling subordinate to her. That's why they both feel like third wheels at different times. There's an illusion of Marcy with more agency and power than she actually has. In reality, only Sasha is on top, and the other two are two very flawed individuals, one slowly cracking under the weight and the other, less sensitive to the same pressure, trying to uphold the status quo.

[adamnablelittledevil]

Reacting to The Vampire Lestat - Part II (with a bit of spoilers)

I found out my problem with the narration and description isn't with Anne, but Lestat. That dude sometimes focuses on the most useless stuff instead of telling what is happening or what he's feeling. I'm like, Lestat de Lioncourt, get your priorities (not) straight? But it's not much of a problem anymore now, because it gives me a better idea of who he is and how he thinks, so I appreciate that. I enjoy the immersion, even with someone as chaotic and as distracted as he is.

Turns out when Lestat FINALLY gives me a good picture of things, it's with the WORST event possible.

Remember what Louis said about the little drink? That's the whole experience from the moment Magnus kidnaps Lestat, turns him, kills himself before his eyes and leaves him completely alone. Multiply your worst case scenario by a trillion.

Not that I would want Magnus to stay, God forbid, but the next moment is still pretty bad. You might believe it gets better after his death, but it's not immediately.

Lestat goes from being too frozen to move, to fighting with every fiber of his being and then trying to take it as a positive thing? Which, well, it's a realistic reaction to it, but also heartbreaking.

It's not exactly "rape", but it has pretty much everything a rape can have without penetration? So it basically felt like the same thing to me.

It's quite a long chapter, it's considerably graphic (at least for me), took me over 2 hours to finish it (maybe it was even closer to 3 hours, I don't remember anymore, but I struggled a lot), I kept taking pauses, whenever I thought it was over it kept going and kept getting worse.

It is well-written in the way that makes sense, that moves the story, that narrates and describes what's happening with details, that you can really picture it in your head, that is extremely intense and emotional... But it's obviously not an exciting part.

I feel bad for the way Lestat immediately shifts afterwards and tries to make the most of it. Not that I wanted him to be miserable and feeling sorry for himself, but I'm like, something terrible happened to you and it's okay to take time to deal with it. I'm not even sure he understands how traumatic that was? If he does, he doesn't acknowledge it, let alone admit it. Not even to himself. And it's just frustrating.

Even after I read it, it stuck with me and took me more than a day to get over. I kept remembering it even when I was doing totally different stuff.

It's cool to navigate through things with him as Lestat finds more about how his body and powers operate.

When he went to the village and began to experiment with his powers was fun. Him jumping, cutting trees and whatever the other silly things he was doing and I can't fully remember... It was like an ADHD child high on sugar and sort of cute.

Is that presence... Armand?

You can take the man out of the church, but you can't take the church out of the man (or the vampire), apparently.

This probably isn't necessary, but I want that scene that he sees the house with the family and reads their thoughts? The idea of seeing the thoughts of babies is so sweet... It's not even for him, it's more of a me thing, I guess. I would just like to see it. I don't know. Maybe I'm being too sensitive and PMSing lol. Don't @ me.

Lestat has kissed so many people at this point and he hardly gives details, so I'm like, what are you kissing? A cheek? A hand? A mouth? Is it a friendly peck on the lips? Is it tongue-kissing? Elaborate? I mean, I don't care because the way he does it feels as trivial as a fart lmao. The only one he really has a deeper relationship with so far is Nicki, so I only kind of care about Lestat with him. It's not really a problem, but I just find the whole thing vague and ridiculous lol.

It's not even Lestat that has BPD, but BPD has Lestat at this point. The man is intense, has crazy mood swings, has extreme reactions to things, engages in dangerous behavior, is highly irresponsible with money, has a chronic fear of being alone... I know one when I see it. And vampirism didn't fix it, it only made it worse.

A bit off topic, but there's something about France that is so enchanting? I've always been obsessed with it in some ways, some places, the architecture, the language, the art... It's not like I'm a big nerd or anything, I can't barely name stuff to save my life, but just looking, hearing and thinking about it... There's just some charm to it. I've realized that the simple fact of stories being set in France makes me excited for some reason. I would love if they filmed there and in some of my favorite spots (cough Sainte-Chapelle and Carcassonne cough), for the mere reason it would look gorgeous and they should because I said so. Maybe in a past life I lived there or something, but I've always had that fascination, God knows why.

"Why the hell did Anne write and word it like that?" moment #1, I guess. At least it was fast and I can erase it from my memory.

The book has gotten quite faster and more eventful now, it's definitely better than when I first started it. I hate when it takes too long for things to happen, so this pace is good. And crucial moments happen pretty early on, which I appreciate. It's nice to know I've read some of the most important events by now, even as disturbing as they are. One of the downsides of being in this fandom is not having the full information, so already knowing part of the big events is satisfying.

P.S. Nothing is permanent, opinions might change and this is based on Lestat's narration, which can be unreliable. I'm reading the books so I can find out more about the characters, what potential events might happen in the show, what I can expect etc. This is my favorite show in the universe, so I want to be as informed as possible. I have no idea if I'll become a legit fan of the books or not, but so far I'm enjoying it. I'm posting these comments only for fun.

[bereft-of-frogs]

I'm so glad I have actually stuff to analyze now to defend Indara and I don't have to just keep being like 'um that's not really how narrative storytelling works' and 'I suspect you guys just don't know what to do with reserved female characters who aren't evil' and 'not everyone who isn't a ray of sunshine is a secret Sith lord babes' this is even MORE fun than my reddit crusade over the last few weeks now that I have substance.

anyway, hopping back on the Indara defense train as I have been for a full month, but also talking about her 3 big missteps first:

Mistake #1: not putting her foot down and insisting on going in to talk to the coven alone the first time. Yeah, this was the last moment things could have gone well. I think she was right and going in alone would have looked less intimidating. Also given what she does at the end, she's a pretty strong telepath and wouldn't have had the weak point of Torbin to be exploited. I think if her level head had met Aniseya's level head they could have talked some things out, and the crisis wouldn't have escalated that quickly. There are definitely still some issues - what did Aniseya do to create the twins? why was Koril so afraid of the Jedi finding out? - and things might have come to blows anyway, but I don't think they'd have been as explosive if Indara had had the chance to initially diffuse some of the tension.

Counterpoint: they might have killed her or at least not let her leave actually. If it had JUST been Indara and Aniseya we're talking about, yeah, the fastest solution is a friendly chat between the two of them, I actually think the Jedi would appreciate some of Aniseya's philosophy, they have a nice little cultural exchange and part ways maybe agreeing to disagree on some of the specifics of the Dark vs Light side of the Force, but at least everyone lives. But there's the rest of the coven to consider. Koril particularly. She is DOWN to murder pretty much immediately, as we know from the advisor scene from episode 3, when she's like 'who would miss them?'

Aside: **Book spoilers, I wish tumblr had spoiler tags like Reddit or Discord, don't read this point if you don't want Path of Deceit spoilers** And eep, yeah who WOULD miss them? I sort of jokingly said this after episode 3 like 'lol well it did work for the Path of the Open Hand, that's not that crazy an idea', but now we have the context and oof, they're even MORE off grid than Zallah and Kevmo were. At this point they haven't even contacted Coruscant about finding the coven, right? So while the Council knows the planet they're on, they still think it's uninhabited and evidently the witches are pretty well hidden, they'd just vanish. Jeez, the Council knew the town and precise location of the Path compound and it still took an absurdly long time to figure out what happened after Zallah and Kevmo started missing check-ins, long enough for the Path to escape. I bet they don't check in as much on a peaceful survey mission vs an active investigation too, the four Jedi really could be missing for a long time before anyone realized something was wrong.

But yeah, Koril seems pretty down for murder, so while one Jedi going in alone doesn't look like that much of a threat and might set Aniseya at ease, Koril might have seen it as a weak point available to exploit. Fearing what Indara would report back to the Council about their presence and the twins, Koril might goad the coven into making an attempt on her life, and while Indara is clearly a formidable fighter, she is drastically outnumbered, fighting all the witches alone might have been too much for her. And of course, that makes things so much worse immediately. The leader and the most level head is gone, the Jedi are now grieving and rightfully fear for their lives, tensions explode even earlier. But that's really not much more than an interesting AU idea lol a slight counterpoint though.

Mistake #2: not being the one to go after Torbin when he ran off. This one is just going to come down to clunky writing, I'm sorry. Because there is zero logical reason for her to trust Sol to bring him back. She should have gone herself. Torbin was her responsibility, she's been reticent about how Sol's imbalance was feeding his the whole time, she should have known Sol was never going to deescalate and was only going to drag him further into trouble. But we can sit here arguing over her thought process and blame her but at the end of the day, it was just that the writers needed it to be Sol for the plot and...I don't know, didn't workshop other reasons to divide them like this. But yeah, in universe, there is no reason for it to have been Sol. Things still might have been escalated due to the events inside the fortress and Sol likely sensing Osha's fear when Mae starts the fire, but Indara could (and should) have stopped Torbin's part in it, that was her direct responsibility.

Mistake #3: suggesting the cover up. Yeah this one's not great. I think most of the 'wow Indara did nothing wrong' people are like '.....ok until the cover up'. And like this maybe also is going to get filed under 'clunky writing' but I'm willing to be argued around on that, I just can't quite figure out why they had to lie about the fire to protect Osha's dream of becoming a Jedi? That's the sticking point for me. They're going to have the same arguments with the Council to let her join, I'm not sure what the difference is whether they tell the truth or not.

On the characterization side though, I can also see where it's like....maybe Indara shouldn't have been making decisions at that point because she did just kill at least a couple dozen people with her mind and is probably kind of freaked out. It was an accident, yeah, but I could see being pretty unnerved by what she'd just done and not wanting to reveal that to the Order. I think a big point has been the way each of these characters (on both the Jedi and the coven's side) act out of fear and that being what dooms them, and this is the moment Indara acts out of fear. She's afraid of revealing this frankly kind of frightening telepathic power, she's afraid the Order will blame her as the leader and call into question her ability to lead, or maybe even to have a padawan. I could see in this moment her being like 'well this is technically true and upsets the status quo the least, let's just go with it.' And then gets locked in once Sol tells Osha, so she can't change her mind after she calms down a bit.

ok back to defending her against two things: 1) breaking the spell and killing the coven, 2) her teaching style.

The issue with the conversation around her breaking the spell and killing the coven that I'm having is I think one of 'authorial intent vs what comes through on screen'. Because in the Nerdist interview that confirmed Indara did not intentionally kill the witches, Headland also said that her mistake her was acting out of 'selfish attachment to save her friend' and not worrying about the consequences. And I just...my brain does not make that logical leap. You could maybe argue that if like...a bunch of other things weren't going on. Like the alternative to Indara not breaking the spell is: Kelnacca continues on his puppet rampage and she has to fight him essentially alone (Torbin is knocked out and Sol's tiring) and probably kill him, which could have also killed the witches, she doesn't know that.

I guess if she 100% knew that breaking the spell telepathically would kill the witches and killing Kelnacca physically would not, you could argue she was stuck in a trolley problem and maybe should have just killed Kelnacca, but even then it's like. Eh. So she kills Kelnacca. She's still vastly outnumbered by hostile witches who could just turn their attention to someone else. Maybe they go for Sol next and she has to do the same thing, then Torbin, until she's alone and Koril can re-form from the mist and kill her. (Nerdist interview all but confirmed Koril is not dead.) I think this is where writers get mired in the weeds of attachment, pacifism, and the greater good. Yes, the philosophy of the Jedi asks them to sacrifice possessive attachment to others so they are not fueled by those emotions and they try to find a nonviolent way to resolve conflict first, but this doesn't equal 'you should just lay down and die immediately rather than fight back against someone who's hurting you'.

TWO the teaching style thing. I've seen so many people over the last couple days be like 'wow she's such a shitty teacher' and call her style 'sink or swim' and imply she's letting Torbin drown. And I agree it's not perfect. Seven weeks is a long time to be stuck in a stalemate with your homesick student over whether he understands the grander purpose of your mission. But also I think it makes perfect sense if you consider that she's trying to teach him patience and also not influence his own line of inquiry (...unlike someone else which I'll get to). But first off, this seems like the perfect mission to teach this sort of patience. I'm even hesitant to call it 'sink or swim' which I'd apply more to like, if she brought him into a high-stakes, dangerous environment and was just like 'good luck.' Up until the last 36 hours or so (or less lol we don't know how long the day-night cycle is on this planet, but from when Sol sees the twins to the fire starting is about a day and a half), this was a safe, low-stakes mission. They're essentially doing a mystical ecological survey, on a planet that seems mostly uninhabited and without significant predators or other dangers. Finding the vergence doesn't seem to have any sense of urgency to it. Part of being a Jedi is listening to the Council, even when you have to do something boring or that you don't want to do. You don't really get to choose your assignments, especially when you're an apprentice and are expected to go wherever your master's work takes you. I think it was a fine situation for her to wait out. Yeah, she maybe underestimated how badly Torbin wanted to go home and should have interrogated those emotions earlier but still this is a pretty low stakes mission, I think without the sudden acute pressure of the situation with the coven and Aniseya exploiting that homesickness, they may have found a healthier resolution to those issues.

And, given what she tells Sol about not wanting to give Torbin answers but teach him to seek them for himself, that she might not want to influence his ideas. The masters clearly know what they're looking for is probably a vergence, but Indara might not have wanted to tell Torbin because he's young and inexperienced and then he might start seeing a vergence everywhere, rather than listening to what the Force is really telling them. (This is another thing where like, yeah if they were on Earth in our time with no psychic powers I think it's fair to criticize her for withholding answers that long...but they're psychic space wizards who are supposed to be able to sense things normal people can't, I think some of the pedagogy for that is a little different than what we're used to.) I think Sol was wrong to step in like that, especially considering the outcome, that Torbin does get so fixated on finding the vergence and going home he loses perspective. And I think Indara was right: this wasn't about what Torbin was feeling or needed, this was about what Sol was feeling. It seems like he was done with their stalemate (that exchange around the fire sounded like a conversation that's been had before, and like, not really faulting Sol for that, I would also probably get fed up with a moody teenager) and he thought he knew what Torbin needed better than Indara, so decided to override her and just spill the answer.

I think it's interesting that before Osha even comes into the picture, Indara has already accused Sol of projecting his feelings onto someone else. It does seem like he's feeding into Torbin's anxiety just as much as Torbin's feeding his, I kind of wish they had used that more in the scene where they head off for the fortress, honestly just a couple sequence changes would probably have fixed a bunch of that. (Indara comes and tells them the Council said no, they go over the results of the blood test, Sol says he thinks something is wrong and the girls are in danger, they decide to head off together, would eliminate the nonsensical 'Indara suddenly trusts Sol and Torbin to be alone together and not cause shenanigans' issue.) But yeah, that feels like foreshadowing of how he's projecting his own feelings onto Osha, like his was projecting his own feelings of being imbalanced and restless onto Torbin.

Anyway. Indara was a fine teacher probably, not perfect, but I wouldn't go as far as to say 'she sucks' or even that they were poorly matched. This was just...a long and tiring mission that ended with a literal explosion. Can't wait for the finale! Especially because ack, the 'Indara is the secret Sith' people have not quit on Reddit and there's still like the absolute remotest chance they pull something stupid like a double reverse twist - because for SURE in those early episodes she was being set up to be the 'mean one' vs Sol, and the twist is that she was actually levelheaded and willing to listen and sweet with the twins - and the final shot of the season is a cloaked Sith figured revealed to be Indara. Like there's NO way but...there is the tiniest way so I will not be fully comforted until the finale's out and that theory can be laid to rest. Though I don't think it will be, they could literally show her decaying corpse to definitively prove she's dead and show her spending the 16 years between the flashback and the present cuddling puppies and saving babies and being the lighty-est-side light-sider in the galaxy and I guarantee Reddit would still be like '...ok but here's how that really just proves she's the Sith...'

[fluffypotatey]

"I collar the beast." "Wukong's fangs have been pulled." I can't believe y'all fr. "I get all the punishment and you get to mope." He was moping because he cares and feels guilty, speaking of, THE BINDING SCENE IS SO MUCH MORE INTENSE HERE WUKONG'S SCREAM THE PANICKED STUMBLING ohoho yes. MK: "It's tense in here." Wukong, two seconds ago: yOU tHINK I wANtED tO bE trAPPED dOWN hErE wiTH yOU. Wukong's tail: *cute pokey pokey* "You got demoted!" Ha, also "Nezhy" Oh my gosh, I don't think I caught this last time but Wukong subtly looks over to Macaque who just nods at him ajksms they were feuding and glooming a second ago but now its all silent communication and understanding in a glance. I'm throwing them off a roof. I'm struggling to hear what Macky says here, but I'm going to subscribe to the subtitles with "he likes acting." It's funnier. Also MK's "best attorney monkeys can buy" gotta love thinking about monkeys needing attorneys and also having money and buying things lol. "A pain crab on Monkey King's head." 😭 "Why is it always like this when you come here." actually love this one more because he's so grumpy and I feel like it has a different, funnier implication than the subtitles. he isn't causing chaos AFTER coming here, it just IS. what does that say about the vibes you bring /j. crying at Macky's face at all times, he is the picture definition of a grumpy cat, and then when getting pushed and the absolutely DONE yell of "Wukoooong!" I can watch a whole netflix series of Macky being fed up with Wukong's antics but getting dragged into them. tricky plan demon huh, that's a quick way to silence them after just talking about someone pulling the strings, especially on you MK. also Macky is SO little creachure with his face hidden like a hermit in that cape. "I don't trust anyone who isn't standing here. Right. Now." SAME MACONDO what a shocking statement from your old buddy. more at 11 only on ShadowPeachNews. The writers KNEW what they were doing. Also AHHHHH *looks at you with my big brown eyes* Fluffy I SWEAR I told myself I wouldn't talk about this again until you were able to answer the asks on my last yapping about this, BUT THEY MADE IT SO MUCH WORSE. Firstly, Macky's *voice* for that line delivery is the most solemn dramatic thing I have seen. He lives and breathes the cinema. AND MK I'm really tossing him over a cliff because he just HAD TO GO "He'd get away, right? He always gets away...right?" UGH TFW YOU'RE SO KNOWN FOR BEING THAT GUY WHO FLEES FROM BATTLE that it's brought up this time not for the *dude really???* but as a plea, an attempt at faith, haha he's always doing that...he did it again right? NO BECAUSE THIS TIME HE STUCK AROUND TO FIGHT. and Wukong's constipated expression there bc ohoho some monkey is for sure thinking about the past.

i am, for one, with you on throwing shadowpeach off a cliff bc they make me so unwell in this episode 🫠

for another:

LI JING WHEN I GET YOU!!!!! HOW DARE YOU CALL WUKONG A BEAT AND PULL HIS FANGS!!!!

also i can’t help but think about why Nezha was even there in the first place. because the one the kings summoned was his dad. Nezha wasn’t supposed to be there and yet he comes along 👀 why? my thought is: to plead the monkeys’ case. he immediately tries to defend them to his father and it seems like it’s been an ongoing argument

like sure he rags on Wukong and hems & hahs at him because like have you met Wukong that cheeky lil shit??? his gremlin energy just shoots to 150% whenever Nezha is near. he can’t help it. it’s his DO NOT PUSH red button that he will absolutely push

and Macky’s “why is it always like this when you’re here” to Wukong has such a divorced energy i love it 😍 he knows Wukong so well and is just resigned to it. every time Macky has had to interact with Heaven, Wukong is always there making a scene (he’s not exempt to helping swk but his point still stands lmao)

Wukong’s pout, my beloved

when your ex says the reason he’s mopey isn’t because you got hurt but because he is in jail with you for something you’ve been blamed for. echoing his “NOT THE GREAT SAGE! HE’S GOTTA DRAG EVERYONE INTO HIS MESS!” comment from the memory scroll 👀

what who said that lol that was weird

god they’re so— squishes them and squishes them and squishes them and squishes them and squishes them and squishes them and squishes them and

[beevean]

Rewatching NFCV with @woodchipp and @the-crow-binary has been miserable so far.

Not because of them, of course: we all need each other to bear the Peak. but holy shit I forgot how mindnumbingly boring the show is. it's way worse at a second watch because now I know how much it falls apart! We're only at S2E3 as of this post!

S1 is the best season, and even that is largely forgettable, especially S1E3 which wastes 22 minutes of my life to say "here's the bishop. he's proof that CHURCH BAD". But S1E1 may be the best or second best episode of the whole show thanks to Dracula and his performance... and isn't that sad, that the show peaks at the very beginning? The rest of the show is just... Trevor doing his stuff (while the framing mostly makes fun of him), talking, some fighting, and CHURCH BAD. As positives, I still like Trevor's mini-arc in this season, and the vague effort to be faithful to CV3 (Sypha being petrified by a cyclops, falling down a chasm to find Alucard).

S2 is terrible. Yes we're still less than halfway through. I already hate everything.

I hate Alucard becoming a legend to the point that the Wallachians name his Alucard (as in, Dracula's opposite) after only a year - why couldn't he name himself Alucard? Why complicate matters so much? Isaac calling him Alucard, and Dracula recognizing the name, makes absolutely no sense: how do they know about it? Dracula lost contact with his son one year ago and I doubt Wallachian human legends have reached him. And Isaac was in the Sahara until sometime after Lisa died!

I hate Alucard himself. He's a cunt. He does nothing but insult Trevor and the Belmonts without provocation, and it's not funny banter, he's mean! He's genuinely cruel! He hears that Trevor lost his family at 12, and he can only say "lol and lmao I had more of a childhood than you. anyway they were mentally ill and child killers, they sacrificed chickens and hoarded dead cats". And this piece of shit is the most popular character of the show??? he's not even pretty what are y'all seeing 😭

(it's also weird how he's all angsting about killing his vampire father, but he hates the Belmont for being vampire hunters. bro. bro you're also about to hunt a vampire. why are you defending a race of monsters so staunchly. not even a hint of, I don't know, a Belmont hurting him when he was a child because he was confused for a full vampire? Remember that logically, a vampire child is a child turned into a vampire, we have no other indication that dhampirs are running all around the world. I know that in the games he seems fully on board with "vampires bad and me bad for being half vampire", but you have the chance of making it better and you squander it?)

Sypha is also ruder than I remembered. I think she suddenly became more cheerful in S3 and that's why I liked her, but also girl, you keep criticizing Trevor for being rude and not consoling you, but you look at him with a perpetual resting bitch face and insult the Morning Star calling it an "ugly thing"? Why does Trevor even bother with the likes of you? How is Trephacard the most popular ship in the franchise?

I hate Isaac. Oh, I gave him the benefit of the doubt back then, because I really wanted to understand why he became the fan favorite. But now? No, I'm sorry, he's overrated as fuck. He's so damn pretentious, his speech about how he wants a pure world without love is terrible from the lens of him being a Muslim who is devoted to the Devil, and his backstory is so tryhard and historically inaccurate that I almost prefer Hector's past being exposed through voiceover.

Oh, and Hector, I hate his scenes. Because he's actually treated with dignity. He's fine! I actually like the guy! I like the scene where he rebukes Godbrand (who as a character only exists to attract infodumps and to question Dracula) because "I have to work" - he sounds actually proud of his role, if not even competent, perish the thought. Also by reading the scripts online I forgot that he was the one who yelled "you do not question my loyalty!". Which I like a lot? I can hear the real Hector protesting like that out of pride, even if in private he would admit that he disagrees with the bloodshed. And the scene where he soothes the newborn Night Creature... yeah, this character used to be written with respect, and knowing how he gets tortured and disrespected and used for rape apologism by a sex pest hurts even more. Also, in retrospect, the scene where he stares at the fire while reminiscing about the day he set fire on his own childhood home doesn't go anywhere, even as the finale of S3 echoes it :^)

And Dracula, oh my poor man Dracula. He's already being presented as an ineffectual depressed old man spending his time staring at a fireplace, who can't even command his presence in the war room, who allows Carmilla to insult him and Lisa in front of everyone - it's so embarrassing how he gets the Red Eyes of Fury and then he simply... lets her go after he gets the flimsy explanation of "yeah I humiliated you because everyone is asking themselves the same question. I wanted to help <3" girl (Dracula), she's a mere regional ruler, as she herself said??? why do you need her so much that you allow her to do this shit??????? oh but then you posture to godbrand, he gets to be threatened because... he's not relevant to the plot i guess. fucking pathetic. what have they done to my man.

(and I hate Carmilla. but that has never changed. annoying smug ass #girlboss with the charisma of spoiled seafood. her way of manipulating Hector isn't even manipulation, it's just her telling him very plainly what she wants him to do. She and Lenore utterly suck at their job, and they only get their way because muh plot)

And then there's the infodumping. Oh my god these people won't shut the fuck up. Godbrand is like "why should we listen to two humans?" and Dracula dumps twice that he trusts Hector and Isaac for their human nature (which, again, it's a decent reasoning, but it goes on and on and even they should know, I get it). Alucard dumps about the apocalyptic scenario where Dracula wins and rules over a world without humans... but he only describes it as we look into his ugly face, instead of doing something more creative like actually showing what would happen. Hector gets this random flashback-through-sound, shoved there as if Ellis didn't know where to put it in the script; later on he explains to Carmilla the origin of Night Creatures, as if ever remotely matters. Isaac dumps about his jihadist philosophy about how by killing humans he and Dracula will create a pure world. Carmilla randomly reveals her Tragic Backstory after kicking Godbrand down the stairs, another scene I can't stand because it's all about what a #queen she is and how she's better than Dracula. At one point they seriously discuss about the myth of vampires unable to cross running water, which is a moot point anyway because Carmilla resorts to using a zombie bishop to bless the river!! No I will never let it go!!!

(also I love that in the one occasion where Alucard has the chance of describing his childhood, he retells the tale of Lisa meeting Dracula, something we've already seen and he was also obviously told about, not something he experienced himself. They couldn't even come up with another anedocte to actually tell us what kind of mother Lisa used to be. so lazy)

This show is half people sitting in a circle and talking, and half average fight scenes. Yeah at this point not even those impress me anymore. I'm serious when I say that Knuckles' fight scene in Divergence, also animated by Powerhouse Animation Studios, is of a better quality than what the show has offered.

And this is why I'm so reluctant to watch Nocturne. If the best seasons of this highly acclaimed show are so painful to sit through, how are we going to survive a sequel series that not even the fans liked it as much?

[rudesun]

Finally rambling about my pre-mutation Candyman i've been wanting to do this for too long

So ! As previously stated I named him Mehdi Insel. He was a known Lethal League player when it was still legal to play in it, but ! He also worked in a candy store plus he was an actor at the local Theater. He was the oldest out of the 4 kids of the Insel family (24 years old at the time).

He got into the Lethal League when his job and his side gig couldn't afford his appartment. The rest of his family was struggling already with money and so he felt guilty to even think of asking for help. A friend initiated him to the game and soon after Mehdi realised he wasn't so bad at it ! And as he got passionate about it, one night, he had an idea. He combined his current playstyle with his biggest talent, acting.

From that point each match he was in slowly became a theatrical performance, especially if the stage chosen for the fight is the Theater Mehdi works at, with music, costumes and stage lighting added to the experience.

Mehdi got a sudden rise in popularity. No matter if he won or lost, people rooted for him. Behind the scenes however, that rise made him anxious.

He started putting more effort into his style. Each performance had to be better than the last. If not, what would the people supporting him think ? He isn't going to let them down obviously. It was a terrible loop. A well he drowned in.

Of course, time passed and that anxiety soon became fear. Those around him noticed it. It was an awful fire, and yet the audience only saw stars.

This couldn't last any longer. But the way it all ended was much worse.

One day, during the quarterfinals of an important tournament....

Everything was going well, the show went on as Mehdi and his opponent fought in the most natural of ways. Yet near the end of it, when Mehdi was in the middle of smashing the ball, his weapon of choice, his cane, broke.

The ball flew around the room, hitting him right on his back, leaving him on the floor. Injuries during the game is common but not quite like this. Mehdi couldn't get up, and the impact was hard enough for it to ripple throught all his body. He was brought to the hospital immediately.

The last people that saw him alive were the doctors that were in charge of him and his younger brother, Hans, that has been living with him for four years.

Mehdi died two days after the incident.

The game was now declared illegal and as the Police got involved, it found evidence that the ball used during the match was sabotaged and with that in mind the opponent that played against Mehdi that day got arrested and sentenced to death despite the opponent claiming his innocence.

That day, people lost a friend and a brother. He was a talented young man gone way too fast. That's what the Tri-government wanted people to believe.

TLDR: Silly guy "dies" and the government is responsible lol

Anyways this was long ! I hope whoever read that enjoyed it, i'm very very normal about my LLB interpretation thingie

[dazais-guardian-angel]

Okay, a good amount of time has passed, and after having seen this post by @weretiger-be-my-horse , I've been turning it over and over in my brain going absolutely feral over this concept. I need to expand upon my thoughts on this idea and all the evidence there is pointing towards it, whether that be actual tangible things, or purely strong vibes I have.

First of all, full disclaimer: I did not like the season 5 finale, and how it wrapped up the DoA arc. To say that I "disliked" it is putting it extremely lightly, in fact -- I absolutely hated it, and I am still, to a degree, in disbelief that I actually even watched those 24 minutes with my own two eyes, and that it somehow wasn't a complete fever dream. While I'm not going to go in long-winded detail into all the ways that I feel like the finale almost completely bastardized all of its featured characters and destroyed any and all buildup we've had going on in this arc for 50 some chapters now, because that's not the main point of this post, I will not make any attempt to hide the fact that the theory-crafting I'm about to pose here is partly influenced and prompted by how much I hated the finale, and how much I desperately hope that it will not end up being manga canon. Therefore, if you enjoyed the finale — and that's fine! — and don't want to read any negativity about it, then I would not recommend reading any further (I mean, you've probably already left by this point, which is fair lol), While obviously it's important that I be as objective and unbiased as possible when explaining my thoughts, some of my negative feelings about the writing will be a part of this analysis, even if this isn't going to be a full-blown rant. Just know that if you proceed.

With that out of the way, let me continue.

So. In the aforementioned post, the theory presented is that the anime may be operating on an alternate timeline, and that this will become evident once we read the upcoming October chapter, wherein things will go completely differently post-chapter 110 than they do in the final episode — probably for the worse, with the s5 finale intending to lull us into a false sense of security and make us assume that everything in the manga arc finale will wrap up as smoothly and consequence-freely(? lol) as it did in the anime one. It also suggests that the Fukuchi we see at the very end that sskk are fighting came from the manga timeline, where he won, and that he used the Book to jump to a timeline where he lost, the anime one, proven by the fact that this Fukuchi is wearing a mask with the same design on it as the mask Fukuchi is wearing on the chapter 110 DoA color spread/title page.

First of all, I want to note the fact that it's not just the mask design that's the same: the entire outfit is roughly more or less the same as well. It's not completely 1-to-1, because the anime can never fully match the intricacies of Harukawa's beautiful outfit designs, and the Fukuchi in this scene has the kimono half-off because of the... super saiyan mode he's in, but most all of the main pieces of clothing are there. Any small inaccuracies could also be attributed to the fact that Harukawa probably didn't have this finalized art ready back when this episode was being made, so the animators wouldn't have had the complete design to work off of. But in general, because it's all so similar, I think we can quite confidently say that the ending episode Fukuchi is meant to be the one from this manga art.

Also, people have pointed this out, but it's worth mentioning that the mask Asagiri wore at Anime Expo in July was referencing this Fukuchi. It's not a crucial detail, but it just proves more that Asagiri is a gigantic fucking troll, and that he clearly wanted to draw attention to this Fukuchi design. It's important. He describes the mask here as made in the motif of an ellipses inside a speech bubble... could that perhaps be referencing meta aspects, like the Book?

Next, I want to talk about the even bigger elephant in the room, which to me is the most damning and undeniable piece of evidence there is of the anime operating on a completely separate timeline from the manga:

This Fucking Hand™️

As we all know, in the anime, Fyodor injures his hand when the password input device blows up, and as we all know, this does not happen in the manga. In the last episode, Dazai claims that the final nail in the coffin of his impromptu plan to kill Fyodor relied on this hand injury: because Fyodor couldn't pilot his escape helicopter himself, he would ask one of his Meursault vampires to do it for him, unaware that Bram and thus this vampire was now on the ADA's side, and said vampire could kill him while his guard was down.

Ignoring how utterly stupid and contrived this plan is when you stop and think about it for more than two seconds, the fact of the matter is that something that initially seemed like nothing more than an odd but inconsequential anime original addition ended up snowballing into being the entire reason one of the big bads was brought down. If Fyodor hadn't hurt his hand, he wouldn't have needed another pilot, and so the traitor vampire wouldn't have had an opportunity to get near him and kill him without him expecting it even though said vampire was presumably with him as they were leaving Meursault, and was probably already a traitor by then, so there was plenty opportunity for him to still die. not to mention by Chuuya's hands at literally any time he wanted to, because Chuuya was coherent the whole time. Also there's absolutely no way Dazai could have known exactly what Ranpo would do, no matter how smart he is and how much he trusts him. idk it's fucking dumb, just roll with it. Therefore, putting aside all other variables for now, we can conclude that, on the most basic level, this signifies that no hand wound = no death.

And let me tell you, this hand wound bothers me. It really, really does. Because they focus on it a LOT — they go out of their way to draw attention to it MULTIPLE TIMES, from the moment it first happens to the end of the season. Fyodor even talks about it to himself, about Dazai being able to cause him tangible, visible, bodily harm, (something that, again, as far as we've seen, has never happened in the manga). Hell, even after Fyodor's death, they're still drawing attention to it, because his right arm is all of him that survives, and Dazai picks it up and gives it to Nikolai to do his hilarious sad little gay fondling of it played completely straight even though there's nothing straight going on here at all! It's like it's a big red flashing sign at all times going "you see this injured hand? This is important. Are you picking up that it's important? Are you taking note of it?" Why is that? Obviously, it serves to give us the lore crumbs about Fyodor and "that man", but that's hardly the main, much more glaring reason, as I've already mentioned.

Fyodor doesn't hurt his hand in the manga. Fyodor won't die here in the manga. I am so dead serious by this point about this, and it's not just simply the fact that this was absolutely not at all the time for him to die, or the fact that his hand is the reason for his death in the anime in and of itself, but how much EMPHASIS they place on this, and on the hand in general. What would be the point of adding something like this, if it's not meant to alert us to the fact that it has a major impact on how the story plays out? We all know Bones: they struggle to get right and include everything that's already there in the source material; they would never go out of their way to add something this noteworthy if there wasn't a very good reason for it, if it wasn't absolutely necessary. I've seen a few people bring up the fact that Fyodor gets shot in the shoulder by Sigma and that that could lead to the same outcome in the manga, but I disagree: although he has blood on his shoulder in the manga, it seems like the bullet just grazed the top of it, because his arm and hand appears completely functional afterwards (not hanging limp by his side or anything). But that doesn't even matter, because this isn't even about the semantics/logistics of how the hand wound caused Fyodor's death because again, it's a stupid outcome, or what could serve as a substitute in the manga — thematically, this is a textbook example of the butterfly effect. Countless parallel universes exist within this series, ones where even the most minute differences lead to a majorly different outcome: this just happens to be one of them. There's no reason to think it isn't, and there's no reason to not think that the anime wants us to clue into the fact that things only went as smoothly as they did on the Meursault side because of this wound; in other words, that things will go very differently in the manga thanks to the absence of said wound. They wouldn't have added it in the first place and put such clearly deliberate emphasis on it otherwise.

Things are going to happen very differently in the manga, at least when it comes to the Meursault crew (but then, if you assume that, you then naturally assume it all will be very different). This is the only conclusion one can come to with the presentation of this anime-only wound, combined with the fact that parallel universes are a very real thing in BSD.

I'm going to go on a bit of a tangent, so bear with me. I play a lot of visual novels, and although such concepts aren't really as original now as they were a while ago, some of my favorite and some of the very best VNs out there are the ones that break the fourth wall and make the visual novel branching route format directly intertwined with the story: you know, the ones where the characters go "if only I had done things differently, maybe everything would have turned out better...!" in a wink wink nudge nudge moment, and the ones where the characters are aware of the different timelines, even, or even have the ability to gain information from their selves in said alternate timelines to influence events in their current one (I'm intentionally not naming the games I'm thinking of for the sake of spoilers, but if you know, you know lmao). It gets very meta in this regard, and this is how I started viewing BSD through the lens of ever since I first learned about Beast: like a visual novel with many branching routes, and only a few routes that feel entirely "right".

When I first read Dazai's Entrance Exam, I was struck by how unnerving the ending sequence in the abandoned hospital felt. Obviously, Kunikida's internal struggle over Sasaki's actions and motives is him still desperately clinging to his ideal world that does not exist, but the specific type of phrases he uses — "who is wrong?" "[who is] the cause of all this?" "there has to be an ideal world" "there has to be something, I'm sure of it" "There must have been something we could have done!" — and the framing of the scene in general, is eerily reminiscent of a bad ending in a visual novel, to me. There's a haunting, looming, bleak sense that a different outcome could have been achieved, if different decisions had been made, or if things outside of anyone's control had been different... and we know that this is true, because in Beast alone, Kunikida never goes through the Azure Messenger incident, because Dazai doesn't have his entrance exam. Hell, you could even consider the anime's version of the Azure Messenger arc an alternate timeline in of itself, if you really wanted to, long before we even arrive at season 5.

When it comes to Beast, this timeline has almost the opposite feeling of what I described above, that I've also encountered in visual novels: the idea of a "good route" or "good ending" that still doesn't feel quite earned, or as perfect as one would expect. Beast is presented as the "ideal" timeline purely for one sole reason: Oda is alive. It is the only timeline where he's alive, and keeping Oda alive is the ultimate goal Dazai wants to achieve, the only reason this timeline exists; therefore, disregarding all else, Beast should be the best timeline, because Oda's death is the greatest devastation in the series to date. We all want him to live, so why wouldn't the timeline where he does be the best one? And yet... of course, it isn't. Dazai is alone, and steeped in darkness and loneliness without Oda, and dies by the end of the story for Oda's continued living. Atsushi has Kyouka still, but he's suffering and more traumatized, and unable to heal while stuck in the mafia, and neither can Kyouka. Akutagawa is living a much better life in the ADA... but without his sister, and without what he has from his bond with Atsushi in canon, that isn't replicated in Beast. And Oda... Oda is alive, and he has his children and his novel, but there is a feeling that he is aimless, that something in his life is missing. He has everything he ever wanted, but all that means nothing without what he truly needs: Dazai, and his time with Dazai and Ango at the bar. In this way, things going well and us getting what we want — in this case, Oda living — goes against how it's supposed to be, the natural order, which is why it feels so hollow. In the specific visual novel I'm thinking of here as a comparison (again, shoutout if you know), there's an alternate ending that involves you inputting information you gain at the end of the game very early on in the game, wherein the protagonist now has memories of the future and is able to bypass and prevent all of the events that take place normally. This means that people who die or are hurt somehow in general are saved from that fate, and nothing bad ever occurs; everything wraps up neatly and nicely... but again, there's an undeniable, unsettling feeling of emptiness, of a victory that rings hollow, because what's the point if everything is simply handed to you easily, where's the sense of accomplishment, without any struggles to achieve said victories, or any growth along the way? How can it feel earned if one doesn't have to, in Dazai's words, "scream within the storm of uncertainty, and run with flowing blood"?

You can probably already see where I'm going with this.

This finale feels weird. Really, really weird. It feels too cheap, too simple, too unsatisfying. So much so, in fact, that for almost the entire runtime, as I was bombarded with resolution upon resolution one after another, I kept thinking "There's no way this can be real. Where's the catch? When is the "gotcha!" moment gonna happen? The "it was all a dream" reveal?". And this isn't just because I hated the writing, and that it really did feel like a fever dream watching fanfic levels of bad (actually, that's an insult to fanfic writers, tbh; they could do better) — no, it genuinely feels so incredibly fake. Even upon rewatching it and already knowing what happens, my brain still naturally keeps expecting some kinda of "sike, you THOUGHT!" moment to suddenly appear. It just.... feels "too good to be true". Dazai and Chuuya come out unscathed, and it's revealed that they were never in any real danger to begin with. Fyodor, one of our biggest threats, is dealt with supposedly for good (I say "supposedly" only because of the Jesus line, but if anything imo, I think that's just a hint that this won't be the canon ending in the manga, so in a sense he's going to "come back to life"), and Nikolai seems somewhat at peace with his death. The other biggest threat, Fukuchi, is also dealt with, and he and Fukuzawa get their final moment together of closure. Yes, Sigma is left in Meursault don't even get me started on how angry this alone makes me, and Fukuzawa loses Fukuchi, but overall, everything is portrayed in a positive light, and any negatives or losses are quickly glossed over. Everything is tied up nicely, neatly, and smoothly. ...And that is exactly what makes it feel so wrong, and hard to trust in.

I'm not sure if this will make sense, but to me, the finale is so incredibly poorly written that it almost feels.... intentional. It's so bad to the point of feeling self-aware in how bad it is, how unrealistically happy and convenient an ending it is. It had to end this neatly in order to rush to wrap up this arc for the season finale and not leave the last episode on a cliffhanger — which imo is chiefly the main reason it turned out this way, and, if this whole theory is true, Asagiri just used it to his advantage — and I'm not saying this was probably an effect Bones had in mind intentionally, I'm sure they just threw shit at the wall and went with whatever stuck, maaaaybe with some suggestions/approval from Asagiri, but the result is that you have a conclusion that contradicts so much of what was set up before and goes against so many character arcs, making some characters so out of character and even regressing in their development Dazai. I'm talking about Dazai abandoning Sigma, because he would never; hashtag #NOTMYDAZAI. Also Nikolai, Nikolai for most of that is so ooc I can't even begin to describe it oh my god. Everyone is OOC to a degree though lmao, and opens so many plot holes, to the point that it's impossible not to watch all that and get the feeling that it is subtly saying to you "did you really think it could be this easy? It feels wrong, doesn't it? It doesn't feel satisfying. It feels unearned." I find it incredibly interesting and suspicious in particular that they confirmed multiple theories people had about soukoku in Meursault: that Chuuya slowed the elevator's fall so that Dazai wouldn't die from it, that Chuuya slowed down the bullet so that it only penetrated Dazai's skin and not his skull, and that the both of them used Fyodor's camera angle to their advantage because they knew he wouldn't be able to see certain things from his view. I'm not saying that Asagiri trawled BSD twitter and tumblr after those chapters dropped for the most popular theories before the final episode was made lmao, there was no time for that (imagine though lol—), but I do think it's highly likely that he already had in mind exactly what theories would be made about these parts (I mean, the evidence for the gun scene was all there), and that Dazai rattling them off in his long monologue to Fyodor at the end is essentially him speaking to the audience and going "yeah, that's what you would predict, right? Those are the clichés, after all", much like him suggesting earlier that he can maybe bring Chuuya back to himself with a few moving words and the power of friendship, and Fyodor using the split personalities trope to fool Sigma. We expect these tropes to be true. Of course we'd fall for them, as Fyodor tells Sigma, especially if the evidence is right there. But Asagiri himself has explicitly said that he likes doing the opposite of what people expect. And so just because people predicted correctly with the three things I mentioned in this timeline... doesn't mean they'll be true in the manga's. Things happened how we wanted and expected it to, and everything turned out happily. So we can relax now, right? Everything will work out just as easily in the manga, right? Or... is the reason most of this finale feels so fake and unsettling and unsatisfying because it's meant to lull us into a false sense of security before all our heroes lose in the manga? Because deep down, we don't want an ending that's this simple, because we'd rather have a conclusion where our characters have struggled more and grown more and come out the better for it, and we know it?

After rewatching the episode a lot, and watching some other videos, and doing a lot of thinking, I am pretty confident in suspecting that the only part of this finale that is actually from manga canon, aside from Aya jumping off the building of course, is Fyodor and Nikolai's exchange after Fyodor leaves Meursault — specifically, them talking about Fyodor leaving Sigma behind, and their "new game" and Nikolai being excited at the prospect of it. This little conversation actually feels in character for them, and it's easy to tell this when contrasting it with everything that happens immediately after, wherein Fyodor is fatally stabbed, and Nikolai, completely at odds with what he was just talking about, just... stands there and watches Fyodor die while Dazai monologues lmao. I'm not sure if the helicopter is still a factor, but I would bet good money on Fyolai getting out of Meursault being manga canon, and that Dazai and Chuuya getting out as well and killing Fyodor + everything with FukuFuku, is part of the anime original ending, in order to wrap up everything positively. It makes much more sense if you think about, in reality (aka in the manga), Dazai and Chuuya still being left behind in Meursault (where they can eventually try to get Sigma), because none of it was an act and things did not go according to plan, and Fukuchi having an entirely different goal that doesn't feel so stupid and contradictory to his character, and Fukuzawa possibly dying — everyone seemingly loses, with Aya still being the last hope, perhaps by awakening her ability like we all speculated.

There's a youtuber I watch who covers BSD in-depth, despite being an anime-only (she reads the respective manga content after each season, though). Going into this finale, she knew about the fact that the anime had overtaken the manga, though she didn't know where the cutoff point was; despite that, however, she made predictions about what was from the manga so far and what was anime original, and it was almost entirely spot-on, based mostly on what she basically described as "anime original dialogue." She talked about how you can always tell when dialogue is veering into the realm of anime-original, because the sentences are very short, choppy, and slightly out of character, but generic enough to not be TOO out of character, and so that anyone can easily write said lines, even if they're not extremely familiar with the character like the original author would be. And when I heard this explanation, everything clicked — because so much of this finale has dialogue like that. The Fyolai scenes just feel peppered with it, around the lines I mentioned earlier, the Dazai dialogue does too, and ESPECIALLY shit at the end like Fukuchi and Fukuzawa exchanging the cliche death lines to end all death lines: "Are you there? I'm a little tired." "Rest up." That just isn't Bungou Stray Dogs. That isn't Asagiri. BSD is cheesy at times, yes, but it isn't like this; it's smarter. The dialogue is smarter, the explanations/plot twists are smarter, Asagiri is smarter, and the aforementioned youtuber I watched agreed. She's a pretty casual fan of the series, so if even she could pick up on these things, I think it speaks volumes.

I mentioned this briefly earlier, but this theory makes sense if you consider that this situation probably came about because of Bones wanting two seasons back-to-back when they did, and this arc being as long as it is. Season 3 aired in 2019, and I imagine Bones would have wanted season 4 in 2020, and might have then been willing to wait a bit longer for season 5 in order for more of this arc's manga chapters to come out — but then covid happened. Because of that, season 4 was delayed to 2023, creating the longest gap we've had between seasons, and I wouldn't at all be surprised if the delay made them want season 5 right together with it, after getting so far "behind", so to speak. S4 was announced in November of 2021, and roughly around that time, Asagiri was finishing up writing the plot of the DoA arc. If Bones came to him sometime in late 2021 and said they wanted two seasons now (so basically, one giant two cour season), Asagiri would know that not only of course would this arc not be finished publishing in the manga for a very long time yet, but that roughly 20ish episodes would not be enough to cover it all to the end, with this arc being longer than any arc the anime has adapted to date. Because of all this, and the arc manga chapters being nowhere near fully drawn to completion, he'd have to make a decision about what to do, and what to give Bones. Without ending season 5 on a massive cliffhanger that wouldn't be resolved for years until an eventual season 6, the only other option would be to rush towards an anime-original ending for the DoA arc.... and for Asagiri to take advantage of that, and integrate it into BSD's lore. Thereby creating a truly unique cross-media experience that utilizes the different mediums to create multiple timelines, that could make both the anime and manga interact with each other and become part of a bigger picture (not that you'd need to see both to get the full experience, mind you, just that it'd provide a little bonus if you did).... and would without a doubt be Asagiri's biggest surprise yet.

...I feel like at this point I'm starting to ramble, and my evidence become more and more incoherent and less substantial lmao, so I should probably end this post. 💀 Thank you if you've read this far, and hopefully it made some semblance of sense, despite not being structured very well; I know I promised at the start to try to be as objective as possible and curb my negative feelings, but I'm not sure how well I succeeded in that regard. If it weren't for the Fukuchi thing and the Fyodor hand thing, I probably wouldn't take how wrong and strange and bad the finale feels to me as serious evidence about it being an alternate timeline, especially since I seem to be one of the only people who actually hates all of it.... but combined with everything else, I am just so convinced of this theory being true. It started off as pure copium, but as more time has gone on, I fully, 100% believe in my bones (ha) that there is no way that finale is the same Bungou Stray Dogs I know and love, for so many reasons. It just isn't. It can't be. I know BSD better than this, I know Asagiri better than this, and I know that it's absolutely in the realm of possibility for him to cook up this whole scheme to completely blindside us with in the upcoming chapters, because that's exactly the kind of shit Mr. "Please Be Surprised!" himself would pull. If I end up being completely wrong, I guess I'm wrong, and you can laugh at me all you want then.... but I just know that ages ago people were teasing the idea of the anime operating on a different timeline from the manga, and I truly do think that only now are we finally seeing that idea come to fruition, as a setup for Asagiri going full-bore insanity with the Book in the upcoming arc(s). if I and the OP of that theory end up right, this will be the wildest time in the BSD fandom's history.

Like. I cannot even emphasize how hard they are trolling us at this point. Something is going on. Something is being cooked over there, the likes of which we've never seen before... and I don't think any of us are ready for it.

Oh yeah, and one last thing of note: both Fyodor and Nikolai here have their right arms hidden from view. Is that alluding to anything? I'm not sure. I also think that since chapter 110 was so short, next chapter will likely be 110.5 instead of 111, and if that's the case, this title spread could still technically be associated with the next chapter... wherein we might see this Fukuchi, who ends up wreaking havoc, right before he jumps to the timeline in the anime, as we see him at the end of the s5 finale.

I guess we'll find out on Tuesday.

[heretherebedork]

Curious to know your feels about the 1000 Years Old finale. You didn't post much about it. Maybe that's a commentary in and of itself LOL.

Part of the answer is that I struggle with watching things out of my usual schedule and had a very busy weekend so I'm just getting around to actually watching the finale episode after knowing all kinds of spoilers. I am actively writing this response as I watch the episode. So enjoy my live thoughts on your ask.

And, so far, my entire reaction is that they crammed way too much here in the end. They needed to spread this out more than they did and I get parts of it, I like having the soulmates reveal only at the very end...

But there's a lot of plot and seriousness that they just didn't touch on enough and that I think including in the rest of the show would have improved it greatly as well as helping with the pacing struggling most people had.

If more of the Janja plot had been genuinely spread through the show and more of these serious moments and the understanding of their agreement and relationship had started earlier I might care more about this. But I don't care about Janja at all! I just don't! I wasn't given reasons to care until the very end and that's not enough for me.

Also, having Yoh not fight for any of it really did disappoint me but the director of this show, as seen in multiple other shows they've done, seems to have a thing for one very passive character in the main relationship who will just Allow Things To Happen To Them without ever fighting back. And I never like that, frankly.

Yes, they dropped a few hints here and there but it just isn't enough to tie it all together in this show itself.

It's not a bad finale, it's not the worst, but the end of the show feels so rushed compared to the rest and us not getting all the fluffy times together only to be shown a single scene at the end of a long happy life instead of the time together that I want to see.

I like domesticity, not the end of domesticity.

I get why people liked this ending. I see how people who rewatch things, especially, will enjoy the recontextualization of the show.

But for me? It made everything feel rushed and the rest of the show feel almost empty and slightly worse in comparison. Either we needed more plot or less episodes for this to work.

(Every time I see Somchai I am sad we did not get Somchai and Shin. Every single time. Come on. You crammed this much into the final episode, you could have given me more of them somewhere else!)

Also, I love his random bodyguards, whoever they are. Love them.

Also, this year long time skip is stupid.

Seriously, I am deeply frustrated by Yoh literally finding out they're soulmates and then just... completely abandoning Pun and leaving entirely. It's not interesting to see him just give up and it makes him the most passive character ever. Which we also had in I Will Knock You and, frankly, in 2gether. That's just The Style.

JANJA LITERALLY TOLD YOH SHE WAS GIVING HIM PUN BECAUSE PUN WILL NEVER LOVE ANYONE ELSE. Whatever, at least the confession and whole thing is done and now they can be soulmates together.

9 minutes of happy ending is not enough. Absolutely not enough. Yes, it was cute. Yes, it was a happy ending. But it's just not enough and it leaves me wanting more and wishing that the show were paced differently.

(Still sad we couldn't get any more Somchai and Shin, we deserved more.)

Edit Okay, I didn't mention this originally but I actually hate that the soulmate/reincarnation line takes away the power of Yoh's gift to Pun being his first birthday present. It really bothers me because that moment was one of the my favorite moments and the finale just made it not matter at all and turned it into something much less important and takes away a lot of the importance away of Pun wearing the cross and it BOTHERS ME A LOT.

[deathsbestgirl]

okay here goes: never again & the cancer arc.

a little more in depth? than what i've already posted lol

never again opens with scully sitting in the basement office, contemplating where she fits, where she is in "their" office. she's holding mulder's nameplate and the first thing she says to him, after he ranted about having to take vacation, is "why don't i have a desk?"

he doesn't seem to understand why she's asking, where it's coming from and answers glibly, sarcastically. she's not happy with his answer. so she just...moves on, asking what he wants her to do while he's gone.

in the first scene, we saw scully not paying attention while their informant talked to mulder. she's looking at a memorial, the messages & gifts people left for a lost loved one. she takes a wilting flower petal.

season 4 has been tense. they've dealt with some twisted cases, she was held in contempt, she couldn't protect mulder or give him what he needed or stop him making a huge mistake in paper hearts. skinner was disappointed in her. they also had one of their most ridiculous cases in el mundo gira, an episode i know is commonly disliked. i don't necessarily enjoy it either but there are a few lines that really grabbed my attention.

it's about immigrants, who avoid the government at all costs in fear of deportation or jail (maybe worse). but they're mostly invisible. they're hired for cheap labor, but that's the most they're noticed for. their deaths & lives aren't a concern to this country.

scully is able to find the cause, but the two men infected & spreading the deadly fungus escape. they escape because they're "invisible"

scully wasn't there for mulder's conversation with lozano, but her statement at the end echos what lozano says in a way. when they first arrived, scully waved her badge around completely not understanding how she would be received in a migrant community as a federal agent. she made the same assumptions lozano did. but she follows mulder's lead, and the science, and the truth lands somewhere in the middle, and there isn't a satisfying conclusion to the case. yet again.

they rarely get all the answers. and even when they solve a murder, close a case — what's the cost?

i think scully sometimes feels invisible. her life is standing still. they're hidden away in the basement. she already had to fight for a place in male dominated fields. now she has to fight for the validity of the x files & mulder.

and maybe more than that, mulder doesn't always understand that scully wants to be on the x files, in the basement with him. she was assigned and he doesn't take her dedication & investment as seriously. not because he doesn't know the personal cost to her, or that she chose to stay, but because he has a hard time believing it, accepting it. he tells her several times there's life beyond the x files, to go be a doctor, she'll be head of the bureau. he never expected her to stay, to make it her life too. but she does. she chooses him & the x files over and over. and she wants him to understand, but i don't think she completely understands either.

i said once that it seemed to me scully truly realized how deep she was in with mulder in folie a deux. she was frustrated when mulder acts like he's the only one being "punished" being assigned to a case he thinks is a load of crap, but she was taking seriously. to her, it's always "we" and he acts like it's just him. he goes off without her, ends up needing her help & being right that it was a legitimate case & an x file! and in the end, she tells skinner as much as she can. she sees the zombie people. she sees the being in his room. a madness shared by two.

anyway. i think in never again she wasn't sure exactly what was bothering her, but she knew she was hitting that wall. and that's how she ended up with ed. talking about her patterns. mulder doesn't exactly fit the mold, but scully still wasn't getting what she wanted or needed. and she only calls ed for a date after mulder makes that comment.

mulder knew she would go, even though she refused in their office. he knew exactly where to find her. he was frustrated with her in the beginning, and then he's frustrated with her again for giving up the case when following pudovkin didn't lead to anything x files related, only russian mob. he wasn't trusting her, wasn't believing her.

the last time he asked her about a date was in the jersey devil. which he interrupted and she was happy for it. she didn't take the second date. this time when he asks, she decides to go on a date. exercise some autonomy instead of doing "as told, as always"

scully wants to work on the x files with mulder and have a life. when given the choice, whenever options are presented to her, she chooses mulder every time. but she wants to feel the same in return, especially after she feels like she's failed (him).

at ed's apartment, she doesn't want to go to the nice restaurant he got a reservation for. she wants to go the bar that's a great place to go when you're feeling crappy. because she's so obviously feeling crappy. when have we seen her seek out a date? or any other male attention? (seriously anyway, or without going back to mulder)

even though mulder isn't the typical controlling figure in her life, though he has his moments, like what's happening here...what she says about her father is true of mulder too.

she's hitting that wall, she needs to rebel. but how can she "rebel" against mulder & their work, on a illegitimate x file (lol). she rightfully hands off the case, then goes on a date, gets a tattoo and sleeps with a man who ends up trying to kill her (arguably stumbling into a real x file)

i think scully figured out what she needed to. she doesn't seem affected by this instance of violence like she was by duane barry, her abduction or donnie pfaster. (ed had just tried to kill her and she still tries to stop him sticking his arm in the furnace. she kept appealing to him.)

she knows what she wants at the end. but mulder won't say it, and neither will she. they both know but if they can't say it, they can't be on the same page and they can't really move forward. they stay in the ouroboros, in the endless line. somehow different yet exactly the same.

mulder not finishing his sentence, refusing to repeat her words back to her, was like a nail in the coffin. they know. it is their life. their lives have become (almost) completely intertwined, they made it this way. they are each other's person, they have the same path because of the choices they make over & over.

and then: mulder starts to do something different in leonard betts.

scully has always been there when he needs her, for the work, for samantha, for his mom. mulder is always there when she's emotionally vulnerable (as far as she lets him). she says she's fine over & over, she tells him she's back & she's not going anywhere. and when it comes crashing down around her, when she can't hold the facade & he's there & steady for her, she falls apart in the safety of his arms.

[side note: it's so funny to me how scully still never has any idea what she's walking into. if we don't see a slideshow, she's going in completely blind. he always gives the case to her piece by piece.]

this scene is just. my favorite. mulder can look at horribly disfigured bodies, he'll touch & taste anything at a crime scene. but he's disgusted when he realizes he's touching bile. he can hold it together at dismembered bodies, but would love to draw the line at touching them.

but scully asked for his help, and how often has she done that in regards to her domain on cases? i'm sure there had to be some, but i can only remember her asking mulder to smell a body in revelations.

anyway. this man is genuinely horrified at the idea of digging through a dumpster of left over body parts.

there's nothing he wants to do less, but he does it. because she asks him to. (and it should lead them to some answers.)

later, leonard betts goes after scully. tells her "i'm sorry, but you've got something i need" after they've ascertained is brain was "riddled" with cancer, and he feeds on it, could identify it in anyone, he spent a lot of time in cancer wards, likely scavenging when he could.

scully is shaken after.

and here, mulder doesn't understand what's bothering scully, and he does something we don't seem him do very often, if ever this outright? he explicitly tells her she did a good job, she should be proud.

i think i've said before i don't think scully lets herself feel proud very often. she craves validation, always tries to do the most, is always excited to tell mulder when she has something. here he's giving her something she should love, and she can't appreciate it because she needs to get out of there. she's terrified. another case solved, ending in death. she saved herself again. but now...she's facing the possibility of cancer. and despite being a skeptic, she believes leonard betts.

which!! we saw earlier in the episode too. when she's about to examine leonard betts' decapitated head and his eyes open & his mouth moves, almost as if whispering to her (genuinely reminds me of when she sees her father in beyond the sea) — she can't continue the autopsy. she calls mulder and he picks up on it immediately. and in this moment, she isn't particularly vulnerable. and more typically, that's when we see her believe most, when her defenses are weakened and she needs something to hold onto, or she can't bring herself to use her defenses.

"blinked or winked?" his jokes this episode are so important to me. because never again was so tense, so leonard betts taking place after never again and before memento mori is a good cushion. he's responding to what he understood about scully after never again, and trying to bring back their usual banter. scully is still pretty annoyed with him but they're still together on this case. they disagree, scully playing skeptic as mulder throws his crazy theories at her.

and scully's expressions whenever they're on the phone are so much more expressive. it's special. she lets go of her professionalism and just reacts, and mulder is having a great time. he thinks they're getting back to a better place, and they are, but everything still remains in the silence.

mulder is still making jokes and scully pretends to be unamused (she is hopeless in the best way). and because i love when scully says riddled:

so truly, leonard betts is a connecting episode. there are a few lighthearted moments after the intensity of never again, an episode that was about mulder not understanding where scully was coming from, and leonard betts is about what he was able to understand. giving her validation. it's also makes more sense that he doesn't try to give her any physical comfort after, to me, if leonard betts happens after never again. paper hearts happened not that long ago, and scully was fierce in that episode and physically affectionate with him.

mulder and scully both knew at the end of never again what's between them. mulder leaves "but it's become mine" unsaid, he cuts himself off. scully was frustrated with not truly knowing her place with mulder, on the x files, in their office. his unfinished sentence and the following silence said it all. if it was ever going to happen, it would have been right then. and it doesn't.

leonard betts is a little cushion between two intense episodes. the awareness of their feelings in never again, trying to find their rhythm again in leonard betts & scully's revelation at the end. they lead to the emotional & physical vulnerability in memento mori and through the cancer arc. the feeling of what they're losing before it even started.

[cainfortea]

WoT S02E06 deeper dive

There will be book references, both past and present, from here on out.

I'm not really gonna talk much about Egwene's damane scenes, primarily because they speak volumes for themselves and there is no profit from my viewpoints on them. I want to talk about the little things, the other things, that come up. Moiraine. She has finally hit bottom here. We keep thinking she has, but there's just that little bit more to go. She has finally admitted to Siuan, if only in writing, that she's been stilled. She has lost the Dragon Reborn. Everything her life has been about since Gitara's Foretelling is gone. The last thread she had was protecting and supporting Rand. She pushed Lan away, she lost her channeling, but that was all chaff to the millstone of keeping Rand safe and able to face the Dark One. And now, all gone. And so now she stands on the ruins of her mistakes, and realizes that she still should absolutely connect to those around her. She reaches back out to Barthanes. Trying to repair what she'd done to her connection to him. This ties into the Last Battle, in a way, given how Rand needs to learn the same lesson to stop being Darth Rand. Nyneave and Elayne. Nyneave is The Wisdom. From her perspective, her relationship with almost every single person in her life is as a superior. As the Wisdom, she was the one to give aid and comfort to the villagers. As the most powerful channeler in a 1000 years, the Aes Sedai need her more than she needs them, she got by just fine her whole life without them. As the victim of Black Ajah, she is the only one, beyond Egwene (and maybe Elayne), she can count on who isn't a Darkfriend. Now we have a situation where her involvement not only will make things worse, but is counter to what she needs, to go save Egwene. Elayne is the one here who can show her the way. Her whole life is basically having to hold it in, not do the thing she burns to do more than anything else. Elayne lights the path for Nyneave to come to terms with the realities of the new life she's in. And she helps, she isn't acting like the Princess that Nyneave kept calling her. She quiets her, reminds her, and Elayne comforts Nyneave. A totally new experience and one she desperately needed. Ryma. It's subtle and I love it but they're not just treating the magic as "whiz bang zoom fight the bad guys". They have character. Alanna was chucking fireballs and shit when fighting Logain's forces. Ryma is yellow. She's a healer. She is a MASTER of the human body and how the Power interacts with it. Of course she doesn't just throw fireballs. Of course she melts that sul'dam's face. Of course she folds that one like origami. That's where her power lays.

I'm holding judgement on the mat/rand things, because I want to see where it goes. The future will color my perceptions of this episode. I will say that it will not surprise me in the least if Matt actually comes to Rand's rescue and helps him break out because he was following him.

Also lol at Lanfear calling him Ishy. she's me, fr fr.

[theonethatwatchesalotofshows]

Hello there! Totally random but I've been watching Dawson's Creek and had a hot take and needed to share, and you have some of the best hot takes about these shows so I'd though I'd bother you with it lol sorry.

Granted, I haven't finished the show yet, I've seen til the season 3 finale, so this might be proven wrong by later seasons, but I've been thinking this for 3 seasons straight - Is it just me or is it completely and visibly Gail and Mitch's fault Dawson is Like That? Like, yeah, there are a lot of scenes of just Dawson complaining about his parents' relationship, but honestly? He's kind of justified! Their relationship is a mess, and they always put their son in the middle, and the drama was so needless and repetitive that by their S3 wedding they were even more boring a relationship than Dawson and Joey. And whenever he tries to bring it up with them, it's framed like he's just in the way of them being happy (whether that means being together or apart, whichever they're feeling like that week). It's not really any wonder that he has such a messed up relationship with Joey, because watching his parents, sure, why wouldn't he think he can treat her any way he wants and she'll still want him and they'll be "meant to be"? Works for Mitch and Gail! Not to mention, all their parenting consists of is telling him what a special and perfect boy he is (correct me if I'm wrong but I think the only time they "discipline" him is having him work at their family restaurant?). Once again, no wonder he gets such a protagonist complex and thinks he should always get his way and whines when he doesn't.

Dam, this show is just a mess... Every character either starts great and is completely assassinated or forgotten about (Joey, Andie, Jen, ...) or starts badly and is given a redemption arc bc the writers realized the actor can act (Pacey, Jack) or is barely even a character, just a plot device at the whims of the writers (Dawson). Anyways, this is all just because I've heard for years before watching the show about how Dawson is the worst and actually watching the show has me thinking Mitch and Gail might really be the worst. Sorry for the rant! But I needed to share this with someone. What do you think? Am I totally off base here or does this actually make sense?

Hi! No worries, you don't bother me, I love hot takes (unless they're extremely stupid lol).

My hot take is that Dawson is not the antichrist as most of the fandom tried to paint him. Is he annoying and whiny? Sure, but what teenager isn't. Now that I think about it, maybe the reason the fandom hates him so much is because they see themselves in him and they don't like it? Just a thought.

You are so right about his parents though! People like to say: "Dawson has nothing to complain about, all other characters have it worse". Sure, Dawson's parents are not dead (at the beginning), in jail, physically abusive, mentally ill or didn't ship him off to live with his grandma, but that doesn't mean they are perfect. They put him in the middle of their messed up marriage and fighting. No 15-year-old should know about their parents' sex life and that his mother is having an affair. I also think they were too chill and let him get away with too much, like you said. But that's in almost every American show. I can't imagine talking to my parents the way teenagers on tv talk to theirs, that's not just a Dawson thing. It might have something to do with how the actor plays Dawson perhaps?

As for the character assassinations, I feel like the problem is that the writers mold the characters to whatever they need in the moment rather than having consistent characterization and letting conflict naturally arise from that. That's why the characters contradict each other a lot and seem to change so much (I still maintain that Andie cheating on Pacey was completely ooc). Also what bothers me is that the writers rewrite history a lot in order to be able to recycle old plot lines. The best example of this is how Pacey underwent such a great character development while he was with Andie only for it to be erased so he can undergo it again with Joey. When he told Joey: "I have never gotten an A before" I rolled my eyes because he literally had the same storyline with Andie like two seasons before! It's like in season 2 the writers wanted us to root for Pacey and Andie, but in season 3 and 4 they changed their minds so they ruined Andie's character to make room for Pacey and Joey. But then in season 5 they decided: "scratch that, Joey and Dawson it is" so they erased all Pacey's development again and had Joey pine for Dawson again.

A bit off topic but I thought it related to what you said about the characters. I don't think Dawson is the worst. He was annoying but I feel like he got progressively less and less annoying as the show went on. Joey is a different story. I could rant more about that but it's a very unpopular opinion since everyone on here loves Joey.

[hikennosabo]

trimax vol 9 random thoughts

sorry if you saw this post disappear and reappear in the tag multiple times, i was fighting for my life much like wolfwood using trial and error trying to get it to even show up in the tag because tumblr is a functional website and not fucky in the slightest. </3

i wrote this post extremely sleep deprived 2 days ago let's GOOOOO

also heads up for potential spoilers for tristamp since i talk about it a little. even though i spoiled 98 untagged in my last post. sorry about that

chapter 1:

someone in the book club tag (don't remember who it was, sorry) said something about sharing food being a love language for wolfwood... :') wah...

^_^

why is this thing even on the building in the first place. and for that matter how did the dog even GET up there...... whatever

hi razlo. i don't know where to say this in the post so i'll just say now i unintentionally spoiled myself on razlo's identity because i was googling when i shouldn't have been. all totally my fault LOL [anime girl bleh gif]

the boy didn't even have the decency to wash the blood off his hands. kid, please, you're not doing livio any favors here.

livio manspreading on the couch... chapel, have you considered there's another reason why livio's breathing might be "irregular" as he helps you take his former home hostage? hmmm?

^ FUNNIEST PIECE OF DIALOGUE IN THE WHOLE VOLUME

thank god for livio, this guy was doing a speedrun on being the most annoying one-off minor villain--WAIT is he kicking him with his hands in his pockets? that's SO funny. i'm liking livio more and more.

chapter 2:

"he shouldn't be that old" <- the kids would be expecting wolfwood to be, hmmm, in his early 20s, thereabouts? ww looks around a decade older than that...

he's giving... something here. it's the combo of the glasses and all-white outfit i think. the y2k fashion vibe.

who is saying this? livio? razlo? both? chapel, since he was the one just talking? also, nice visual metaphor!

this is obviously NOT the reason wolfwood spared these guys, but this is reminding me of when oda said that luffy doesn't kill his opponents because shattering their dreams is worse than death. LOL

also i am convinced nightow drew this chapter for the sole purpose of making wolfwood do cool shit on his motorcycle.

that being said, all the cool shit wolfwood does is immediately overshadowed by livio CATCHING A BOMB IN MIDAIR AND THROWING IT BACK AT THE GUY WHO SHOT IT. stampede livio could never do this, he's too skinny

chapter 3:

people have already said stuff about this page, but I Also Want To Say Stuff. the wispiness of the smoke, livio's hair blowing in the wind... it feels very much like the calm before the storm, simultaneously serene and tense. and i LOVE how wolfwood is shaded in grey, while livio is the one shaded in black. fantastic contrast and composition, i adore it.

why is this razlo's first note to livio. "!" like...?! you're letting livio know you exist, but giving literally no other information like at all? okay. razlo's a bit of an oddball, to put it mildly.

the rest of his letters are... well they're not "normal," i guess, and not any less cryptic, but they are kinda sweet in their own way.

knowing who razlo is i love the way his introduction scene is presented. livio is keeping information from ww and from the reader, so it's both literal and not. also razlo is appropriately unsettling, i wish he would stop... unhinging his jaw like that.

...also who tf told him about EoM?! this is a difference with stampede... stamp!livio joined EoM because he wanted to follow wolfwood. no razlo involved in the decision-making, as far as we know. compared to here in the manga, livio left the orphanage on his own, so there isn't really a clear timeline on when ww joined EoM vs when livio did. we don't even know if he knew ww was in EoM at all.

also upon rewatching this scene for this post i got distracted by legato's lack of ass and had to pause because i was laughing too much

the guy is literally flat as a board help

*cough* anyway. razlo is only alluded to and never named or even really shown, except for a very brief very blurry reflection, so his level of involvement in... literally everything is unknown.

speaking of characters who are weirdly absent, chapel isn't around either...? i thought maybe they combined his character with conrad, but he DOES speak in livio's memory, i even checked the credits for his seiyuu. (hiroshi naka - he voices a lot of old men but most notably garp from one piece!) i don't really know how his role in all this has changed, if at all, since conrad seems to be the one in charge of the experiments...? and i really... do not like what they did with conrad in stampede, he went from being shitty but having nuance to just being extra shitty... okay, tangent over.

oh, this fight is so WEIGHTY!! i love it!! they gave a lot of weight and physicality to the livio vs ww fight in stampede too, (and all the fights, for that matter), despite stamp!livio's loss of bulk... it's a really fun fight to watch!

chapter 4:

OHHH..... okay.... soooooo.... this means he's coming back in stampede season 2 i assume?

not to go off on another tangent but this is the second time this has happened to me... i went into stampede more or less blind (oh how things change) and so when knives died at the end of the season I HAD NO REASON TO BELIEVE HE WASN'T DEAD... but then i saw people talking like he would come back in season 2 and i was like, "how?? he DIED" and then i read the manga and i was like oh. and now with livio too. i thought he served his narrative purpose and then died. and he shot himself through the head, which is notable because that's how ww killed monev who was ALSO a subject of EoM's experiments in the tristamp universe!! so i had no reason to believe he wasn't dead!!

i dont have that much to say about this chapter because it mostly consists of the fight, but OH what a fight it is...!! i know i should be rooting for wolfwood, and i am, but livio is just so COOL in this fight. they're both cool...!!!

also, how many little glass vials(tm) does wolfwood have?! honestly, it's amazing that he still has any at all left to drink, it's a wonder they haven't all shattered already with how much he's been thrown around. especially because the one he drinks from CRACKS when it hits the ground... these vials aren't exactly bulletproof, lol.

THE HUG...?! UUUEEEEAAHGHGHHGH

MESSAGE TO ALL BITCHES ughhh ww looks so pained here. when he told vash that his blood runs cold when he points his gun at livio... he's feeling that through this whole volume. man.

something about brothers fighting each other... vash and knives, wolfwood and livio... uagh.

chapter 5:

HEY CAN WE KILL CHAPEL ALREADY??

oh, the punisher is taller than him... i was trying to get an approximation of relative character heights recently, and i saw somewhere that the punisher is 5'7, the same height as me...

also, 10 punishers, huh... wolfwood's is one, razlo has three... does chapel's count even though it has a different design...? do livio's handguns count? will we see the others? is there even a significance to the number...?

oh great, is this another wolfwood death flag?! we haven't seen him drink THAT many of them so far but still. hope chapel keels over already. i know ww's making an effort not to kill people but can he please just shoot chapel in the head. also wolfwood's pose in that panel... he's kinda serving cunt

OH, THIS SPREAD FUCKS!!!! once again the CONTRAST... THE STARK BLACK AND WHITE... SO COOL!!!

so these guys work for razlo specifically, i assume? not livio? also... just who are they? random EoM goons?? why are they so loyal to razzy???

and he has a mechanical third arm. somehow. sure okay

^ um... trigun lol [roll credits]

oh, it's tri-p as in tri-punisher. i thought it was the word "trip" and didn't question it. ...although "trip" could still work.

--also, wait, hold on, upon rereading i noticed razlo's left ear is covered up (by... something) and it's making his head shape look uncanny (more like a skull?!) and now i have to scroll back through the previous chapters to see if livio has ears. [several minutes of scrolling later] okay, he DOES have a right ear. okay. another pointless diversion for this post

chapter 6:

razlo was a real one for killing livio's shitty parents!

also another thing i'm noticing! razlo opens his mouth pretty wide, while livio doesn't open his mouth much at all... i mean okay there are a ton of differences in physicality between the two of them, but that one in particular stands out to me because last volume i complained that i couldn't tell when livio was talking because he never opens his mouth LOL

spraying wolfwood with blood and guts is a fucking wild battle tactic bro. also i'm convinced that nightow gave razlo three punishers for the cool factor first and foremost. three crosses also brings the scene of jesus's crucifixion to mind... but nahhhh it's definitely the cool factor. unless...?

"killing and violence! killing and violence! :D"

ALSO CAN CHAPEL DIE ALREADYYYY PLEASE

VASH MENTIONED!!! i'm so caught up in wolfwood's story rn that i haven't even really thought about the fact that vash isn't present in this volume at all... and then it evolves into a fucking. memory montage. stop with the montage please that's another death flag

and... oh man... wolfwood getting back up to fight because he's thinking of vash... and last volume vash said wolfwood is his reason to fight... both of them staring death in the face and thinking of each other... oh my god. ohhhh my fucking god. oh my fuckign god you guys. VASHWOOD.

oh, looks like i lied when i said vash isn't in this volume, he's right here

...and that ends that volume. i said more than i thought i would... sorry for the rambles and tangents, i wrote this post running on about 3 hours of sleep lol. time for something lighter as i await next week's volume, let me continue to rewatch the 98 anime... what episode was i up to... ahh... 22, huh...

[alwaysteveswife]

Tina's Halloween Party | Steve Harrington x Fem! Reader.

a/n: I found this and what can I say, I love angst and unrequited love, plus I love Sandy Olsson. I wrote it in the middle of last year for an inktober lol.

This happens early in season 2, during the scene at Tina's house (and yes, I almost cried watching Joe cry in the bathroom, it broke my heart and I'm still not over it 🥲). Y/N has been in love with Steve for years, and due to his lack of good friends, she finds herself having to comfort him when Nancy yells cruel things at him while drunk.

Warnings: Angst, unrequited love, mentions of Sandy Olsson, Mention of Steve's great love for KFC.

Number of characters: 6,223

Y/N stopped in front of Tina's house, it was easy to spot her, among the drunken teenagers and the big sign at the entrance that said "spirit house" made it very inconspicuous.

She was wearing a costume of Sandy Olsson, the leading lady from Grease. She had to admit she had done a great job with the costume, it looked pretty much like her.

She walked into the house, seeing young people drunk and probably high on drugs. In one corner she saw Billy Hargrove, the new guy in from California, he was upside down, drinking from a giant beer mug. How could girls possibly like that?

Y/N shook her head, trying to erase the disgusting image of Billy with his naked torso full of sweat, alcohol and saliva. Inside the house the atmosphere was even worse. People canoodling, dancing around with each other, parties are definitely not her thing.

She started looking for someone she knew, so at least it wouldn't feel so uncomfortable. Luckily for her, Harrington was here. She noticed how he was dancing in a strange way, while smiling at Nancy. Y/N grimaced as she realized that they had most likely come as a couple.

She sighed, deciding to sit on the living room couch and tackle the kitchen so she could get out as much food as she could, no doubt the best way to drown her sorrows.

"Y/N! You came," Steve rested his hand on her shoulder, startling her. He was wearing a black suit along with sunglasses. He looked stupidly beautiful.

"Sure! I mean, how could I miss such an... amazing party?" She knew her face said it all. Disadvantages of being too expressive.

"I know this isn't your thing, but I promise after a while you'll get used to it," she could hear him laughing, sipping a glass of punch, or whatever that stuff was.

Y/N smiled hugely, proud that she was able to make him laugh. A year ago just dreaming about a situation like this made her gag. She never got along with Steve very well, but that didn't mean she was blind, she found him quite attractive. His attitude was that of a random jerk, or at least that's what she thought before she met him.

She's not sure at what point it happened, sometimes she think it was when he killed the demogorgon to defend her, or all the times they talked during the breaks when the two of them were waiting for Jonathan and Nancy. The point is, sooner rather than later, Y/N ended up falling for Harrington's charms, and she hated that.

And not exactly because he was a jerk, but because of how deeply in love he was with Nancy Wheeler. Having to see them every day kissing in the hallway, going home together, going on dates, was something she couldn't stand, it hurt.

Jonathan still didn't know about it, she was afraid to tell him and he would do something crazy, but she wanted to tell him more than enough.

"I see you came with Nancy" she looked at Nancy out of the corner of her eye. She was drinking like there was no tomorrow.

"Shit, wait here, okay?" Steve ran to her side, trying to get her to stop drinking.

From where she was she couldn't hear well, but Y/N could tell they were fighting, or rather, Nancy was fighting. As they struggled the punch landed on Nancy's skirt, leaving a big red stain on it.

After that they both went upstairs to the bathroom, and Y/N stayed there, alone. She went back to her plan A, drown her sorrows in food. For a second, she thought she saw Jonathan in the crowd, but dismissed that idea right away, he was supposed to go get candy with the guys.

She got up from the couch when she saw Steve come downstairs. He was coming without Nancy, and more importantly, he was crying. Y/N hurried to him, following him to the exit.

"Steve!" She grabbed his arm, breathing hard from the little run she had done.

"I'm sorry, I don't want to talk right now," He looked down at the floor, forcing his voice so it didn't sound like he wanted to cry.

"Then let's not talk, how about we go get a box of KFC? You like them, don't you?" She released her grip, waiting for him to agree.

"Okay," he sighed, getting into his car. "Get in".

"Yes!" She sat down as fast as she could, buckling up as soon as she got in.

The ride was quiet, they didn't talk until Steve asked for their order and asked Y/N what she wanted. Luckily, they didn't have to wait long, they had a few things ready, so Steve was only there for 15 minutes and then back to the car.

"Y/N?" Steve had his eyes fixed on the fried chicken in the box.

"Yes?" She stopped eating, looking in his direction.

"Do you think... You think I'm a bullshit?" He looked at her with teary eyes, biting his lower lip to keep from sobbing.

"Of course not," she hugged him tightly, avoiding touching his clothes with her fingers so as not to stain them with grease. "Why do you say that?"

"Nancy" He pulled his hair back, sighing "She said it was bullshit, that our relationship was bullshit, she... she said she didn't love me".

And he broke down. He began to cry as he hugged her. The only thing she chose to do was to try to comfort him, patting his back with her wrists.

"That's a lie, Steve, you wasn't a... that," she avoided the bad word, she didn't like to say them. Y/N pulled back a little to look him in the eye, "You've come so far this past year, and you know it. You're like a different person, a much better one. You got away from Carol and Tommy H. You saved my life" she was internally grateful that it was night and the car didn't have the lights on, she was probably red with embarrassment now "You're a handsome boy, and tender, and.... I'm sure there are many girls who would like to go out with you because of the way you are, because of this new and better version of you" her verbal vomit had sent thousands of hints, but to her good or bad luck, Steve is pretty slow at hints.

"You think so?" He looked at her with a twinkle in his eye. And no, it wasn't that glint they talk about in love books, it was the glint you get when you cry.

Y/N just nodded, sitting back in her seat, eating the rest of the chicken left in her box. "Maybe" thinks Y/N "when get home I'll go to my mom's room and cry and ask her why she had to have such an awkward daughter in love".

Masterlist

[fandoomrants]

for the send me a character can you do diego hargreeves!! sorry ik its third hargreeves in a row >_<

Hey, no problem and sorry it took me a bit but I was busy.

Here we go:

1. My opinion about them.

It took me a while to get to actually like Diego. I mean, I saw him at first and thought he's cool but then to actually start liking him... I think it was around his scenes with Grace. They were so heart-warming. Idk what's this thing where I love children-parent dynamics, I have good relationship with my parents, lol.

I think from all of them, he has the biggest "hero complex", and desire to prove himself since he's "Number 2". It's mostly shown in season 1, where he and Luther kind of fight for the leadership, and I think it's something that translated from his childhood, to his adult life, as we see him constantly trying to do some big heroic act (especially s2). He can sometimes get a tiny bit annoying even, but it's fun and it's just another way to express his own childhood trauma, I guess.

But yeah, altogether, I like him. Especially in later episodes/seasons, where his character got more development. (Here's maybe a good moment to say I like almost all of them.)

2. Who do I ship them with.

I love him and Lila! She's yet another character it took me some time to start liking, but I absolutely adore them as a couple, and their dynamic. They're both so unwell but they somewhat compliment each other. They can't "fix" each other but they don't make the other worse, and I feel like just the presence of the other one, makes them more considerate and responsible. I can't wait what's it going to be like when they have (a real, this time!) child.

However, I also liked him and Eudora's dynamic and I was eager to learn more about them. I was so shocked when she died. I would have loved it if we got to learn more about them and their history, they were so different but there was something there. Kinda the exact opposite of Diego/Lila but that's what actually made them so intriguing.

3. Platonic relationships.

Already mentioned but I ADORE him and Grace, and their interactions. There is just something so soft about how he calls her "mom", and I feel like he truly sees her as his actual mom. And he can be vulnerable around her, the way he isn't around others. I feel like he can put aside his desire to prove himself when she is there. It broke my heart how he had to be the one to "end" her life in s1, but at the same time, it felt much more important that it was him. Because he fully understood the meaning of it, and he did it with... Some weird affection. I think, had it been anyone else, it wouldn't have had the same impact. And then, the way he started stuttering the moment he saw the real Grace in s2, and she was nothing like the one he knew, yet he still called her "mom"! Ah... My heart!

I love his dynamic with Klaus. I feel like, maybe the two of them were keeping in touch, at least slightly more than the rest of them, before season 1. They have a true sibling dynamic, and it's odd how they both give "younger sibling vibe", yet Diego is somewhat protective when it comes to Klaus, however non-verbal it might be.

And I want to see more about his dynamic with Victor! I feel like they were once close but then things changed and they had a really rocky relationship. And Victor and Luther cleared some things between them but I want to see Diego and Victor actually bond as well!

And then there's Luther. I just laugh at them interacting, most of the time. Especially in s1, they were ridiculous. I feel like they both become a bit childish around each other, no matter how serious the situation is, because that's something from their childhood.

4. Unpopular opinion

I think that his powers are actually pretty cool! Like, I love knives! I know in the comics he has different powers, but I'm fan of the show, and I find this one better. Also, it was never explicitly stated what his powers are, and I believed it's controlling metals, but I checked, and it says it's "controlling flying objects", in any case, it's so badass! I know that this, compared to some of the other things the rest can do, isn't classified as that much of a superpower, but I still like it, and maybe if I could have any of their powers, it would be this one!

5. HC I love.

I'm pretty sure it's not a HC at this point but I like thinking that Diego really wants his family happy and together, just like that (kinda ridiculous) hallucination in s3 showed. I think this is also connected to him and how he truly sees Grace as a mother, and how he looks after Klaus and drives him around, etc. Even for the short while when he thought Stan is his child, he wanted to be a good father. He's really trying to be a tough guy but is actually a softie that wants a real family.

6. HC I hate.

Anything suggesting he has something for Grace, duh. I can close my eyes for the adopted siblings having sth for each other, but not that. Not with their dynamic.

[zukkaoru]

OKAY UMMMM this is hard bc I know most of this. imma give you a couple:

ezekiel jones bc silly guy & uhhhh chuuya or gin, ig you haven’t done them bc i literally CALLED that you’d love them!!!

also did you know that. um. ily~

hi beloved ily 🥰💕 starting with gin bc. fave 💓💓💓

first impression:

"wait 'he'? i didn't think corey said they were a boy??" and then i think i proceeded to actually pause the episode and check bsd wiki to make sure i had the right character and correctly remembered what you told me about them

impression now:

i need to see them again Right Now. please asagiri bring them back i need to see them i need to know they're okay i need them to reunite with akutagawa and i need to see what happens between them and tachi and and adn

favorite moment:

all of them <3 uhh real answer is i really love the omake where they're going around asking for advice about how to help akutagawa deal with his stress in a healthy way now that he can't kill people

idea for a story:

sometimes i think about a tachigin bodyswap au.. post-doa arc so gin has to deal with tachi's limited vision while tachi is suddenly faced with the brunt of gin's body dysphoria. gin hates hearing their voice but tachi doesn't actually mind it and he won't shut up. gin doesn't mind talking either now though bc their voice just sounds like tachihara's. and they don't actually mind being in his body either. but also having to watch their body from the outside is weird and awful. they have to call akutagawa to pick them up and take them to the agency so dazai can switch them back. akutagawa seems to hate the switch even more than gin and tachihara do.

unpopular opinion:

they're the best character in bsd.

favorite relationship:

any flavor of tachigin and also the akutagawa siblings!!! i want to see more of them in canon asagiri please also i'm kind of really intrigued by their dynamic with dazai,, like we don't really see much interaction between them in canon but i like how i picture their dynamic in my mind bc gin has a lot of complicated feelings towards him and i'm not sure dazai really even realizes that, or at least he doesn't realize the full extent of it

favorite headcanon:

transmasc gin!!!

chuuya:

first impression:

"he's the geto of bungou stray dogs"

impression now:

for someone who has literally the most fans out of all the bsd characters, there are surprisingly few people who even remotely understand them😐

favorite moment:

basic but probably when he comes to save the ada in the helicopter. or the scene in dead apple when he goes to fight the dragon and ango is like "dude dazai's probably dead. you're going to die if you use corruption." and chuuya's like LOL dazai??? dead????? trust me i'd know if that waste of bandages finally kicked the bucket. now stop talking i have a dragon to beat up

idea for a story:

i think i told you about this but a kunichuu 5+1 that's just chuuya not being able to shut up about kunikida when talking to literally everyone at the port mafia. they're spending a half hour talking about kuni during an executive meeting and they aren't even dating him yet. how is this somehow worse than teenage dazai and chuuya, mori wonders. at least it isn't dazai, kouyou argues, blissfully unaware that dazai will end up being part of the relationship too.

unpopular opinion:

i don't like transmasc chuuya. it won't turn me off a fic completely but chuuya is one of those characters like cherry and zuko who gets softened and uwu-ified and oftentimes, this is just made even worse when they're written as trans. which is. a problem across fandoms in general obviously since cherry and zuko get the same treatment. also this shouldn't be unpopular but chuuya didn't spend like eight months crying himself to sleep after dazai left. hello??? do you even hear yourself??? i'm not a big fan of femchuuya either and in fact like that less than femdazai. nor am i particularly into ada chuuya, mostly because people soften their character way too much when they write ada chuuya. i want my chuuya still recognizable as chuuya!!! alas most people can't even get chuuya's characterization right regardless of any au or gender headcanons. anyway i'm sure i have a bunch more but i'll stop here

favorite relationship:

have you heard of kunichuu. or kunichuuzai even. it's not as if we have spoken about this at length multiple times or anything

favorite headcanon:

nonbinary chuuya!!!!!

--

ezekiel:

first impression:

i first watched the librarians in 2015 i do NOT remember that

impression now:

i miss him :(

favorite moment:

in the apple of discord episode where he snatches the apple but nothing happens bc he's "already the worst version of himself". i don't think we talk enough about the implications of that!!! the others immediately went for murder but ezekiel's "worst version" of himself is?? a thief who's kinda lazy but still clearly cares about everyone around him?? do you understand how insane that is!!!!!!

idea for a story:

once a very long time ago (in high school) i started writing an arospec ezekiel fic. i didn't get very far and i'm sure whatever i had written was bad but it was such a good idea

unpopular opinion:

i don't think there were any popular ezekiel opinions i heavily disagreed with?? best i can think of is that i like caszekiel better than jassandra

favorite relationship:

jazekiel realness..... and i do enjoy caszekiel too

favorite headcanon:

demiromantic/demisexual ezekiel!! it's canon TO ME