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chainofclovers · 3 years ago

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Ted Lasso 2x7 Thoughts

“Headspace” is a very apt name for this episode, in which we learned almost no new information about the characters in Ted Lasso but learned a great deal about the way many characters’ brains work.

Most of the episodes this season have been so full of new information (if you wanna know something about how my brain works, the critique that early s2 episodes lack conflict does not compute), so full of dramatic irony (Sam and Rebecca don’t realize they’re messaging each other on Bantr! Rebecca’s voicemail to Ted doesn’t actually indicate that she spent a significant portion of time panicking and looking for him!), and misunderstandings that it was really nice to spend a bit over thirty minutes on an episode with very easily mappable plotlines.

Ted and Sharon and Therapy

Ordinarily in my little recaps I talk about the characters as real people making their own decisions, because every character on this show feels very real. But I have to take a minute to just, like, celebrate the acting in these scenes. Sarah Niles and Jason Sudeikis brought the perfect energy to each of their three scenes in Dr. Sharon’s office.

The drinking bird toy! The way he switches from nodding along with it to shaking his head no while the bird continues to shake its head yes, just like Ted shook his head no while saying yes, they should hire a sports psychologist! The way he finally stills the bird in the final therapy scene in the episode...but performatively throws the tissue box.

(Someone is going to need those tissues, Ted. It might be you.)

I also LOVE that this is the first time we see Sharon in an extended scene that takes place in a session. We’ve seen her rapport with the players, we’ve seen the results, and we’ve seen the things she does to make someone feel comfortable at the start of a session, and that’s all the information WE need to know to feel confident in her excellence as a psychologist. But because Ted hasn’t been able to fully appreciate those things, it’s so fitting that his sessions are a time for us to learn more about Sharon’s approach along with him.

It’s just...such good acting. The way she tells him he doesn’t need to worry. The kind of charming (but not performatively charming, just...charming) smile on his face when he claims he knows he doesn’t need to worry. And the way his voice changes a little as the conversations progress—deeper, less controlled, with some very genuine Midwestern “ma’am”s.

Sam and Rebecca and Awkwardness

Sam and Rebecca were so awkward when talking to each other in the hallway! If I had been in that hallway I would have been physically unable to stop myself from doing something even more awkward and diverting to make it stop. (I say this as someone who is neither disgusted by or delighted by the direction of the Bantr storyline. This is a good story about two good people who are in very different places in their lives existing in both a manufactured connection and the real, and very different, connection they have when they aren’t glued to their phones. This story is supposed to be awkward and uncomfortable.)

I did like the parallels of their friends sort of urging them on/coaching them through the inherent panic of the three dots that appear and disappear—a source of panic whether you’re the one creating the dots on the other screen or watching them and feeling at their mercy.

I like that in this episode both Ted and Rebecca are loudly broadcasting “I AM NOT IN THE RIGHT HEADSPACE FOR A ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP”—Ted with his rueful awareness that Michelle would be upset if she heard him still referring to her as his wife, Rebecca with her insistence that relationships are doomed and awful even though she’s talking to two people (Keeley and Higgins) in committed relationships.

Roy and Keeley and Space

This plot was a really wonderful...counterpoint? complement? to the places both Ted and Rebecca are in as Ted starts to come to terms with the fact that he’s going to have to deal with his past and the losses he’s suffered (including the loss of his marriage) and as Rebecca questions whether she’s really going to embark on the next phase of a relationship with someone whose identity she does not know.

Because Ted and Rebecca are stuck apart, it was great to see Keeley struggle with needing space from Roy without worrying for a second about whether or not this challenge was a threat to their relationship. (Keeley and Roy aren’t used to long haul relationships, so they both see it as a threat, but the audience doesn’t have to.)

There was so much going on in that boot room. I love the coexisting realities there—Rebecca and Keeley and Higgins treating the boot room as their personal room for secret smoking, but as the crowd grows all these other unspoken dynamics emerge (it’s been two days since the panic attack and this is the first time we see Ted and Rebecca in the same room and there’s no evidence that they’ve talked about what happened with the panic attack or Rebecca’s parents or any of the big stuff).

Everything about Keeley’s plotline this episode reminded me of how Ted and Keeley are so similar (and, to a lesser extent, Rebecca and Roy are so similar). Rebecca and Roy both tend to write things off (Rebecca is so certain any relationship she has will be doomed, but it’s just because of how hurt she already is; Roy wanted to convince himself he was happier as a pundit than as a coach, but it’s just because he was scared of how much he wanted to be back on on the pitch), only able to deal with things when a safe person like Ted or Keeley sort of startles growth out of them. (We talk a lot about how Rebecca should be in therapy, but Roy should too.) And Ted and Keeley! Everything’s great, everything’s sunny, but look at how Keeley stands on her couch and screams in sadness and anger when she blows up at Roy and he leaves.

This time, things work out between Roy and Keeley because he figures out what Keeley was trying to communicate and respects what she needs, but in the future she’s going to have to figure out how to articulate herself more clearly. (And so will Ted...not only in therapy with Sharon, but as everything with the other coaches and the team and Will and basically everyone in his life come to light.)

Nate and Beard and Twitter-Insecurity-Rage

Ahhhhhhhhh.

This plotline made me feel almost as nervous for Ted (the things he doesn’t know) and Beard (the things he knows) as it did for Nate and Colin and Will and everyone.

At first I was really bothered by the repetition of Nate checking Twitter. We know! He’s on Twitter a lot now that he’s semi-famous! He’s obsessed! But then it occurred to me that it’s extremely perfect that Nate checking Twitter becomes this silent refrain building him up or tearing him down based on the latest 280-character compliment or take-down. Because this is how the internet works! You get obsessed with something on it and then check it a million times per day until you feel sick. It could be a dating app, or a trending story, or almost anything. If you check it often enough, the internet won’t even have anything truly new for you...it just feels like it does. So the repetition of Nate scrolling Twitter wasn’t meant to deliver us new information, but rather to mimic the old information coming through again and again.

I feel so deeply for Nate, who’s brilliant about football but unfit to coach because the power dynamics of coaching are a totally foreign concept to someone like him, who relies entirely on external inputs to take his actions. Ted and Beard and Roy all go and learn things and bring them back to the pitch, but none of them have had the capacity to teach Nate how to do this. Even Nate’s private thoughts, which he wrote down during s1, only come to light when Ted prompts him. And when your external inputs are coming from social media and an unappreciative father and a hyper-awareness of insult after years spent on the receiving end of bullying...it’s very dangerous. Maybe even literally physically dangerous.

I also feel so deeply for everyone who interacts with Nate right now, particularly Will.

Some Bonus but Never Extraneous Trent Crimm

Trent in the pub made me NERVOUS. Seeing him in this new place where Ted goes to wind down, almost coaching Ted through lying to him about having had food poisoning?! When they both clearly know that isn’t what happened?!?

It felt very fitting that this uncomfortable yet kind-of-mercifully-executed lie takes place towards the end of an episode full of such positive and negative growth for the characters. Such movement. It felt all wrong (in a good way), like covering something new and smooth and precious with spackle because maybe you actually wanna paint something else after all even though it won’t serve you in the long run to do it. To paraphrase Dr. Sharon, the truth will set you free but first it will piss you off, and Ted’s conversation with Trent is a reminder of all the layers there are to cut through on the way to the truth.

If Apple TV could simply release 2x8 - 2x12 this week, I would bargain with something crazy and miserable like giving up caffeine until October 8, the air date for the season finale. I continue to love this season and to feel the serenity of watching excellent actors execute on excellent scripts...but we’re getting to the point where the momentum’s built up and is heading to ever-scarier places, and I neeeeeeeeeed to knoooooooow.

#ted lasso #ted lasso s2 spoilers #meta by me #ted lasso 2x7 #a lesbian watches ted lasso

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wild-at-mind · 2 years ago

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I liked that post about people neglecting the Doctor Who part of Superwholock when it comes to gay representation, but then tumblr kept showing me a tonne of additions of people going on about fucking Moffat era gay relationships and like.......look I hate to break it to you but Moffat fucking sucks. This is opinion obviously and I’m not very good at articulating why I don’t like his work, and I’m hardly the first person to point out that he sucks, but everything* from DW from the (mind numbingly long) era when he was showrunner makes me full body cringe. I react exactly the same way to Sherlock, and also my brain turns off during both, I just can’t follow the intricately bullshit plotting he tries to do, and why would I bother because he never resolves his plotlines.

This is all to say that yes there were canonical gay relationships in the show during the Moffat era but that doesn’t make them good or well written, you know? You don’t have to argue that people are ignoring them because they aren’t m/m or whatever, it’s highly likely to be they are just poorly written characters and poorly written relationships. Moffat is somehow even worse at writing relationships that feel real and genuine than JK Rowling and that is saying something.

For example, I thought Bill Potts had real potential as a great companion and from what I saw the performance was great, but oh my god the horrendous dialogue they had her say, in just the one episode I watched. One of the first things she says in the show is telling an anecdote about how she fancied one of her customers when she was working at the canteen, so would keep giving her extra chips, and then one day this woman comes in and she’s (gasp) gained weight and Bill doesn’t find her hot any more. And Bill says something along the lines of ‘I’d done this, I’d fatted her’. Like, wow. FUCK YOU Moffat. Was that meant to be a cute relatable anecdote? Can you write anything without making it weird?

RTD era Who was genuinely foundational to me as a young teenager for queer representation and I’m hardly the only one who has said this. But I really doubt if Moffat era Who was what I grew up with, I would have said the same for it. I’m not sure anyone would.

*except Vincent and the Doctor because I’m not made of stone. Moffat didn’t write it and I guess the script was good enough that him being the showrunner didn’t ruin it.

#moffat hate #i'm aware that jack harkness first appeared in a moffat written episode btw #but he's actually a little cringe in that episode! it takes other writers to make him what he became #rtd was just like 'i'm going to have a scene where jack shows off his sweaty body for the Doctor #and the doctor seems pretty into it because fuck you i can #lol that scene was so gratutious but i loved it

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uwua3 · 4 years ago

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if it's ok 😳👉👈 i really love your writing and i've had this idea in my head for awhile but i can't get myself to write it on my own 🤔 i wanted to see how your spin would be on it- so can i request a prompt where reader gets jealous of tenma's co-actress in a romance and tries to mimic what she does to him in a show they're in?? ty!!! 💕💕💕 i look forward to your interpretation

thank you so much for requesting~ ♡ i love you sososo much; i hope this lives up to everything you’ve dreamed of! ♡ ～('▽^人) i LOVE YOU!!! <333

summary: when tenma lands a role in your favorite drama, he had one goal: to become your favorite actor

warnings: envy/jealousy, food mentions, rivalry (all covered briefly!)

author’s note: after learning everything there is to know about the k-drama, true beauty, on tik tok, i’ve decided to write this! for context, the only thing i recommend watching before reading this is watching the “roar” scene!

this is also the first time i’ve introduced made-up characters with names! please enjoy jun, the first character who isn’t canon to the a3!verse :D

word count: 3,768

music: like a movie – b1a4

pretty u!

🌻☀️ sumeragi tenma

what the heck was love, and why did he have to be in it?

sumeragi tenma, future “world’s best actor”, was suddenly... seeing why he hadn’t won that award yet. with a script in his hand and confusion in another, tenma read the title of the next drama he landed the role for

“PRETTY U...” it was japan’s next major love story, advertised on every social media platform possible with the all-star cast in the spotlight already. although it had already been out for a season, tenma was entering as the up-and-coming newest character of the series

tenma was boyish, young, and much too confident for his age—perfect for the role of a second-lead bad boy who was going to steal the heart and test the protagonist’s commitment

except... he didn’t actually want to take up a new project so soon. he only did because—

“what?! you’re going to be chan on PRETTY U?!” he proudly nodded and watched as you began ranting about how much you loved this show. there was only one reason he came to the audition: tenma wanted to star in your favorite television series

you always went on and on about how great everything about PRETTY U was. after hearing so much and pretending not to listen (even if he could practically explain the entire plotline now without watching it), tenma let himself become a fan, too

after all, how could he not be a fan when you loved PRETTY U so much?

tenma didn’t respond to his manager’s pleas until one day, you revealed another reason why PRETTY U was your favorite production: the main lead

“he’s so handsome~ i love him so much!” “do you know him? could you get me his number?” “look at him... he’s the most perfect actor in the business right now—ah, sorry ten!”

tenma scoffed every time, claiming he could most certainly do better than that hotshot. although the boys typically didn’t do the same type of television, he had become tenma’s #1 rival without even knowing it

besides... what did that guy have that tenma didn’t? he was just nice! sure, he held open the door for the lead, bent down to tie her shoes, bended over backwards just to be the perfect boy-next-door. yeah... even he couldn’t pretend anymore

tenma pouted at the thought, skimming over his next pilot episode for rehearsal tomorrow. he was too good to be real, after all, he was meant to end up with the lead girl anyways (spoiler alert!)

but, it didn’t matter how perfect that actor was! because tenma had gotten the role of “chan”, the leather-jacket wearing mystery with an actual heart of gold, and he was going to make the entire audience swoon

(though, tenma just wanted to make your heart skip a beat when he ended up on the big screen)

tenma would never admit how fast he checked his phone when he felt it buzz in his pocket. sure, it was unprofessional during rehearsal but he knew it was you. however, his smile dropped the moment he read what you sent

you: remember to tell him how much i love him!

tenma: hah... no good luck for your new bad boy?

you: you know i’ll always root for you, ten!

tenma: but, i’m better than that actor, right?

tenma watched his message get delivered and was about to keep bothering you until someone called his name like they were friends. speak of the devil...

that actor’s straight, white toothy smile made tenma stand a little straighter (damn it, tenma was shorter), eyes wide as the actor gracefully introduced himself as his co-star for the next month or so (how did his voice sound even better in person?!)

“good morning, tenma! my name is jun, i’m so honored to meet a fellow actor on set! let’s work together well!” were they... really the same age? tenma barely registered the fact he was suddenly shaking jun’s (right, that’s his name) hand. why did he have such a manly grip?

tenma quickly (to his dismay) found out that him & jun had entered the industry around the same time but often had different projects, so they were never featured in the same production before. apparently, that was creating quite a buzz in the media that two childhood stars were competing against one another

a competition that tenma couldn’t lose. he was going to be your favorite actor, not his rival!

jun, like the perfect gentleman everyone described him to be, showed tenma around the PRETTY U set. jun had nothing but good things to say about the crew and vise versa. that only reinforced how tenma was oddly much more quiet than he usually was. luckily, one of the talents of being an actor was improvising, so jun was doing just fine

when they had reached the dressing rooms, jun shot a bright smile at tenma and gestured to the rather large room

“we’ll be sharing a dressing room together, tenma! we’ll be spending a lot of time together!”

tenma suddenly regretted his decision to become chan of PRETTY U. you couldn’t have had a different favorite show?! anything but... this

there were now three main characters for PRETTY U: hoshi, yuri, and chan, creating a love triangle for millions of viewers to watch every week

nakamura jun, leading role, played “hoshi”, the boy-next-door. this is the popular boy at school with the best grades and an even greater reputation amongst everyone. next, uedo ren, one of japan’s rising female actresses of this generation. she is adored as “yuri”, the perfect girl. she is the typical nerd who suddenly transformed into the prettiest girl at school from learning make-up

last (but definitely not least!) is sumeragi tenma, playing “chan”, the bad boy. it was nothing like tenma’s done before, since the character was much less expressive than he was used to. chan is a traditional rebel who is revealed to have a soft side for yuri. but, chan (ironically enough) has a secret history with hoshi, causing tension in this already confusing love triangle

(embarrassingly enough, jun had to explain to tenma the complications and ties between each character. tenma, unfortunately, found it to be extremely helpful)

even with this newfound knowledge of the characters in season 2, tenma couldn’t help but absolutely ruin the first day of rehearsals. even with a decade or so of acting as his experience, one thing kept him from being chan: his lack of chemistry with “yuri”

“cut!” the director called out again for the nth time, sighing as their eyes landed on tenma, who was not enjoying being the center of attention this time, surprisingly

“take 5, kid. once you come back, i expect you to actually go through this scene without messing up your lines.” tenma nodded and exited quickly, feeling flustered from the looks of sympathy directed his way. usually, it was one-and-done. it didn’t take a hundred tries just to do another romantic and cliché scene

tenma exhaled loudly once he felt the fresh air upon his face. without the fear of cameras in his face anymore, tenma ran his hand through his hair with a frustrated kick at the concrete. come on! he was renown child actor sumeragi tenma, why was he so in his head now?

tenma was about to yell into the sky before he heard someone close the door, standing beside him with their usual silence. tenma didn’t even have to look to know it was jun (probably with the most pitiful look ever)

“tenma? are you okay?” jun waited as tenma tried to not say anything he’d regret, shifting his weight on his foot back and forth before relenting, shrugging as if it couldn’t be helped

“i don’t know... i just, i can’t see yuri that way. how am i supposed to flirt with someone i don’t even like?”

jun pondered the thought for a moment, before tilting his head, a boyish smile overtaking his features. tenma unwillingly relaxed; jun finally looked his age

“who do you like then?”

tenma froze, a blush even foundation couldn’t hide blossoming on his cheeks. jun let out a teasing “oooh!” as he nudged tenma with his shoulder, who pushed back with an eye-roll

“i-it’s not like that! don’t be so—ugh!” tenma cut himself off, rubbing the back of his neck and avoiding jun’s knowing eyes. damn it, they barely knew each other. why was he getting so comfortable with his enemy?!

“well, whoever you thought of, imagine yuri as them.”

“is that what you do?”

jun shrugged, not giving a clear answer for once. before tenma could ask for more information, their break was over

when tenma returned to the scene, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes. when he opened them again, he watched as yuri transformed into the one person he’s been trying to impress this entire time: you

when “you” smiled, tenma couldn’t help but follow along. his first-take after break made the cut for the final product

“you must really like them, tenma~” — “stop!!!”

filiming afterwards became easy, especially when he imagined all his romantic words were directed towards you. he could feel the clamminess of his hands, the rapid beat of his heart, the intense blush across his face, all at the thought of you

(the only time he had to start over was when he accidentally said your name instead of yuri’s)

tenma was sure he’d become your favorite actor now! after all, you were his favorite person

“will you watch the first episode of PRETTY U’s season 2 with me?”

you had never said yes so fast in your entire life. when tenma learned there’d be a cast-viewing of episode 1 after finishing the season, he knew his +1 invite could only go to the biggest fan of the show

throughout filming, you were always the person who got him in trouble when the text tone wasn’t put on silent. you liked spamming tenma with a bunch of supportive and encouraging messages when you were available, meaning tenma always had something to look forward to after each scene

in return, tenma would send a selfie of him with his castmates or the set (or, what he was allowed to show under his contract). yet, despite your constant pleas, there was one co-star he’d never take a photograph with: jun

(“tenma! we’ve worked together for months~ shouldn’t i be called your friend now?” “no—” “huh?! don’t pretend you don’t like me!” “who said i was pretending?” “tenma!”)

at first, tenma was apprehensive about inviting you to an event where jun’s picture-perfect face would be on display everywhere. but, whenever he saw you, the weight of the tickets suddenly felt much heavier in his pocket. he couldn’t deprieve you of such an exclusive event just because of his jealousy (even if he was this close to doing so)

when tenma impulsively asked three days before, it felt worth it when you threw your arms around him (he hugged you back and pretended this meant something to you)

“i love you, ten!”

tenma felt like he was on set again, with yuri’s arms tightly holding onto his heart

“i love you, too.”

even after saying it so many times, tenma meant it even if he didn’t say it to your face every time

you looked like the star of the show

tenma fixed his tie as his blazer suddenly felt too tight. you appeared in your most formal attire, looking like a million bucks as you two sat across each other in the limo

“ten, look at all of this!” you pointed out every little thing of preparing for a professional event. the little glasses of champagne neither of you two could drink sat to the side as the leather seats molded to fit your posture. as the night lights of tokyo blurred by, tenma couldn’t help but think you sparkled more than this diamond of a city

“i can’t wait to go see the first episode! thank you for inviting me.” you bowed your head, as if suddenly overcome with gratefulness. tenma lightly kicked your shoe with his, fondly rolling his eyes as he tried not to smile (mission failed)

“don’t worry about it, who else would i bring? you’re my favorite pe—friend. friend, yeah...” tenma trailed off, suddenly finding something very interesting outside of the window. you only nodded, seemingly more interested in the fact there was enough room to walk around

when tenma caught sight of the infamous red carpet laid out in front of the theatre, he cleared his throat and put on his best face for the cameras. after stepping out of the car with his bodyguards nearby, tenma turned and gave you a genuine smile. not his typical arrogant smirk the news source ate up, but a type of smile only reserved for you

when he held out his hand, the flashing lights behind him seemed like a real celebrity, something you had never considered him to be before. it was like seeing tenma in a new light (both literally and figuratively)

“shall we?” you took his hand and wondered if you could ever have your own j-drama. perhaps, tenma could even be the main lead...

before you could step off to the side, tenma already had his arm wrapped around your waist with his unchanging expression (however, underneath it all, he was internally freaking out. what was he going to do now?!)

“you’re my date, right? walk the red carpet with me.” tenma winked (you swore it sparkled) as he gestured towards the carpet ahead. suddenly, the line seemed much longer

“t-ten... you’ve never brought a date before...” you mumbled, acutely aware of how soon it was to walk down together. tenma’s arm stiffened, but nothing else exposed the revelation as he looked down at you

“you’re my first, then.” and my last, tenma thought to himself. before you could change your mind, it was showtime. tenma put on his movie star face and introduced you to familiar interviewers, smiling away as if you two weren’t panicking on the inside

while you were focusing on the fact you were going to be going viral as tenma’s first “date” to the event, tenma was trying not to blush from how close you were. you felt... right besides him

tenma was a natural in front of an audience waiting for him to make a mistake. he flawlessly answered every question with swaggering confidence, his stride easy and poses photogenic

you did your best to follow his lead but it all ended when tenma took you into the theatre, staring down at you with a bright smile

“we did it! see, told you we’d be just fine.” tenma let out an exhale of relief, glowing with joy from the adrenaline of everything that came with being a superstar. as you looked up into his excited eyes, you saw him lean down before—

“your arm is still around me.”

silence, then a hurried separation as tenma put too many feet between you two. it was suddenly as if you two were strangers. you regretted the words the moment they left your mouth; you didn’t mind at all... why did you say something?!

“um... so, food?” tenma spoke up after an eternity of making excuses. you two quickly moved to the line of movie snacks, using candy and popcorn to substitue the suddenly awkward silence

when tenma ordered all your favorites without even asking, he turned around with the selection only to close his eyes and internalize every single thing he was feeling because there he was, his worst enemy

jun entered from a side door, most likely finishing up helping the crew with set-up (and 30 minutes early as usual) before catching tenma’s iconic bright orange hair, a grin lighting up his face

“tenma! it’s me, jun!” he said, as if they weren’t the two main leads of japan’s most famous drama so far. immediately, your smile matched jun’s as you watched as your favorite actor of all time make his way towards you two

“jun... of course you’d be here.” tenma said through gritted teeth, forcing a pleasant smile even with an armful of junk

“ah, still keeping the bad boy attitude? we’re off set now, you can stop method acting now.” jun joked, bringing his attention to you with a dazzling smile that would absolutely make any fansite’s career

“oh? who is this, a friend of yours?” tenma tried not to sigh so loud when you couldn’t help yourself and burst into a long rant about how amazing jun was. tenma waited until you reached your midpoint and stopped you with a quick nudge, trying not to scream (could jun stop being so... perfect? could you stop being so cute?!)

when tenma introduced you, he stood a little closer as he tried to maintain his jealousy. “they’re my date, by the way.” no one had asked, but tenma was clearly telling anyone who was around you two had gone together

jun’s eyes lit up in recognition as he let out a noise of surprise. “ah~ so this is who you—”

tenma didn’t regret losing his giant popcorn so fast to a co-star who could only be silenced with food. his wallet could afford another one, anyways. his pride on the other hand? could not let you know his acting secret already

“what was jun going to say?” you asked after you two departed for the viewing room. tenma nonchalantly pretended like everything was okay as he guided you to front row

“probably something about the fact you’re the one who always interrupts our scenes.”

“hey! my texts make your day, don’t lie!”

“go sit down and eat already, jeez.”

when it began, your eyes couldn’t leave the screen. it was better than you could have imagined. everything was perfect, it exceeded the standards of even the toughest fans out there. you loved every second of it... except...

tenma was too good at being chan. even with his bright hair, the dark clothes he wore made him appear intimidating, with his sharp eyes and even sharper smirk. chan’s appearance was tough, rough, and mean, everything tenma wasn’t

yet, you still couldn’t help but feel your heart sink when chan was clearly in love with yuri. yuri was one of your favorite characters by far, but she ended up bothering you for the entireity of the episode

especially every time she shared a scene (which were many times) with chan. chan was revealed to be a bad boy with a heart of gold, all with a special soft side for yuri

what was this feeling? were you... no, you couldn’t be! after all, you had never seen tenma that way before, right? yet, every time chan made an exception for yuri, you felt sick to your stomach

was it possible that tenma liked the actress who played yuri? you snuck a glance at tenma, only to see he was looking at you already (he’d never admit it, but he was watching your reactions to see if he made you proud. yet, every time you saw him, you subconsciously frowned)

were you not proud of him? did you not like his performance as chan?

before tenma could ask you, the scene changed into one of chan’s. he was standing outside in the school uniform, his head ducked as he swiped through yuri’s social media. before he could look up, yuri jumped in front of him with a teasing smile

“roar!” she called out, referring to their inside joke earlier in the episode. yuri cutely bounced back with another roar, holding her hands up like paws. chan watched, his typical rock-hard expression breaking to reveal his developing feelings for yuri

later on, chan stopped yuri in the hallway, other students watching as the school’s bad boy and goddess interact

“do that again.” chan demanded to which yuri innocently tilted her head, confused like a little puppy. “do what?” “that... that thing.” when chan roared, tenma sunk into his seat with an embarrassed defense and explanation ready. but, when he looked, you finally cracked a laugh at his little roar

your smile only fell when yuri roared again as a joke, but chan smiled for once. tenma wondered why... he thought you would be so happy to be here with him. maybe, he’d never be better than jun...

when the episode ended, it took a moment before you stood up and clapped. tenma followed along, but all he could think about was how he let you down. not only as chan, but as your boy, too

when you two left the room, you two hung back to watch as everyone congratulated one another on the success of the production. in the midst of the cheer and celebration, tenma felt small as he watched your blank expression

what did he do wrong? he put his best efforts into every scene; he might even say it was his best work yet. before he could apologize, you did the unthinkable: you roared

you jumped up into his face, holding your hands up like yuri did. when yuri did it, tenma didn’t feel a thing. but, when you did, tenma felt it. the butterflies fluttered in his stomach as he stared at you, frozen in place

“this is the part where you ask me to do it again.” you shyly trailed off, about to put your hands down before tenma weakly put his hands up, knowing he was about to regret his next move (if the embarrassment didn’t kill him, he didn’t know what would)

“roar!”

that was too loud, wasn’t it? the room suddenly went a lot more quiet as they turned their attention towards a teen actor roaring at his date

“yah! why didn’t you ask me the next line?”

“b-because... i know i like you even without you doing, that, again.”

you paused, taken back by his honesty. as tenma contemplated just falling onto the floor right then and there, you suddenly hardened your expression, standing up straighter with your arms crossed

“do that again.”

“do what?”

“that thing.”

when tenma roared again, much quieter this time, you nodded as you finally smiled genuinely for the first time ever since that episode started

“good, i know how chan feels now. i like you, too.”

“does that mean i’m your favorite actor now?”

(when jun released a video of tenma roaring online, he captioned it with “ROAR = ILY!!!” tenma realized maybe he wasn’t all that bad, but still)

#sumeragi tenma #tenma sumeragi #a3! act! addict! actors!#a3!#act! addict! actors!#a3! actor training game #a3! headcanons #act! addict! actors! headcanons #mankai a3!#mankai company #a3! x reader #a3 x reader #tenma x reader #a3! tenma #a3 tenma

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out-of-this-dimension · 4 years ago

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Hypothetically Rewriting Assault’s Story + Some General Assault Opinions

There’s a game my husband and I like to play when we watch a movie, play a game, or read a book that has a story that we don’t really enjoy or we enjoy certain parts of but not others. We look at things we’d keep and things we’d change and we build a story from there-- sort of like an AU but we don’t really go into the writing part, we just stick to theorizing and mapping a general story.

I decided to play that game with Star Fox. Not because I think Star Fox has a bad story but because sometimes I think the stories could have been handled better. Note: for the rewrite game, I only really look at story, even for video games, I don’t really look at gameplay mechanics, but I do understand those have a lot to do with story potential so I do take it in as a factor... I just don’t bother to “rewrite” the mechanics, if that makes any sense at all. Some of my list today will include boss encounters but I wouldn’t necessarily say those are mechanic-related... more like “event-related”.

I’ve mused a bit in the past about rewriting Adventures and Command and I do have plans to do a mock up of an Adventures remake eventually. However, today I was thinking about how I would go about handling an Assault re-write in particular. Much like Command and Adventures, I don’t have any beef with the core story but I do think there’s a few things that could’ve been better about Assault’s storyline-- like they had good ideas rolling but they didn’t quite refine them.

Under the cut because SUPER long.

My basic feelings on Assault are pretty positive. I think the game is generally just fun and I like that it feels like the natural progression from SF64. I liked getting to see planets we haven’t seen since the N64 era in better graphics and I liked seeing Star Wolf return. I also just thought the aparoids were neat enemies.

Generally speaking, though, when it comes to Assault, I think it suffers from the thing it tries to push the most-- the story. I think a lot of people get caught up in thinking the story is better than it is because it’s the first game since SF64 that really follows the same Star Fox vibe without retelling the Lylat Wars. Don’t get me wrong, the overall plot is great but the execution and pacing are... wonky. Certain characterizations also take a hit in some regards but no one really talks about that when Command exists. That’s something we’ll talk about later on with this post.

That being said, Assault really does have a lot good going for it. An absolute banger of a soundtrack, some great dialogue, a neat story synopsis, the introduction of cool characters like Panther and Beltino (who existed but was always off-screen), and just good levels.

So, here’s what I would add, I suppose, if I were to somehow have the ability to rewrite Assault. Originally I had this in paragraph form, but I’ve made it into more of a list under topic segments with main points bolded for your viewing pleasure. Some of these points might be considered nitpicky and while I do understand that yes, this is a game about space animals, I do hold the developers in high enough regard to make a game with a continuity that makes sense.

The Story Changes

- Reduce Pigma’s storyline in Assault. This is the biggest one for me because a bulk of the plotline feels like a giant chase to just get at Pigma and it feels like it derails from the actual plot with the aparoids. We only go to Sargasso because of Pigma. We only go to Fichina and then back to Meteo again, because of Pigma. That’s 3 levels in a 10 level game devoted to just tracking down Pigma and chasing him. While it makes the build up to fighting Pigma kind of nice, I personally feel like the plot could be reduced to 2 levels. If Assault overall was a longer game, I could see them making it 3 levels. Overall, though, in its current state, I feel like the side plot overstays its welcome and the aparoids promptly get shoved to the side in favor of “Oh no, we gotta get to Pigma!” And I get the main motive here is to show how the aparoids affect people and because of the build up, it does a good job at showing how utterly terrifying the aparoids are. But it’s still too long given the length of Assault’s story. The only alternative to this is make Assault longer, which... honestly, it should be.

- Revise the scene with Tricky. I’m obviously not well-versed in dinosaur biology but I’m pretty sure dinos didn’t grow that fast from what studying I HAVE done. And why is he suddenly king now? Did his parents die? He seems not affected by this at all? Like it’s a funny scene with him, Fox, and Krystal, but it’s odd if you really look at it. Give us, as players, more context because I’m still not even sure what happened to make Tricky suddenly the leader and... big. As a note, you’re gonna hear me gripe a lot about the Sauria level in this post.

- The Star Wolf + Peppy sacrifice is a low effort way to raise tension/stakes and then cop out. Oldest trick in the book, imo, is to act like you’re going to kill off important characters only for them to be alive miraculously. And let’s face it, as an audience we all know they aren’t going to kill those characters because it’s Nintendo and those characters are too beloved. I would’ve forgiven them for only doing this with Peppy or Star Wolf, but when you tack them both together and throw in the fact they make it seem like you’re going to have to kill General Pepper too... yeah, it’s just a bit much of the same trope over and over again. I wanted to put a note in here about how I’m fine with the Great Fox being “sacrificed” but overall, it needed to return to the series because of it’s icon status, but I think that’s more of a gripe at Command instead of Assault.

- Keep Pigma alive. This will conflict with a point I have later on about the game consistently having characters cheat death for easy drama points but with Pigma, I would’ve kept him fully alive... but maybe with some physical damage from the aparoids. I understand he’s semi-alive in Command and tbh I don’t know where I stand on that. Why keep Pigma alive, you might ask? I feel like his character has a lot more potential than being “just the greedy guy”. Like he’s got good potential future villain material for future games and... if I’m honest? I just don’t see Nintendo wanting to keep Pigma dead so why even bother killing him off? They couldn’t even commit to him being dead in Command anyways so it seems very moot.

- Bring Bill and Katt back. Assault is acts a bit like a big reunion of all of our SF64 favorites but our two favorite side characters are suspiciously missing. Wouldn’t Bill be out on the front lines fighting against Andrew in the beginning? Or maybe back in Katina? And wouldn’t Katt inevitably show up in the midst of the invasion, maybe to pointedly check in on Falco?

- Bring Andrew back for the final fight. I think Andrew being defeated early into the game is fine overall but I think bringing him back in for a reunion final fight against the aparoids would serve to really solidify that it’s really everyone vs the invading aparoid force. It would show that not only is Star Wolf willing to put aside their differences but so is basically everyone in the Lylat System in the name of survival. Imagine the Venomians and Cornerians working together against an aparoid fleet, giving Star Fox and Star Wolf time to attack the queen? I just think it’d be neat and it’d open up the potential for some fun banter mid-mission. I do understand that quite a few people consider Andrew canonically dead after Assault but personally, I feel that his defeat left his fate questionable (I’m a staunch believer that unless there’s a body, they’re probably alive, especially for Nintendo games because, again, they never like to kill people off) so him returning in Command never really bothered me.

- In general, reconsider some of the character portrayals. Unfortunately, when a series has a different studio for each game, character portrayals will inevitably have inconsistencies. While I give Namco a lot of credit for putting in oodles and oodles of detail into the game (particularly the levels), I think they failed in their portrayal of Fox, at the least, and Wolf is a considerable offender as well. While it’s obvious that Fox in Adventures was effectively modeled off of Sabre even in terms of personality, Rareware was at least able to justify Fox’s newfound jaded attitude with the passing of many years and a distinct lack of steady income, resulting in the team being in disarray. Assault’s Fox is a stark contrast to his cynical interpretation with seemingly no explanation other than maybe “Oh, I have more money and a gf, maybe I should behave myself��. As if the sudden change in personality wasn’t random, Fox also just seems very blah, like a blank slate stereotypical shooter game protagonist dude with little to no emotion. Wolf is less obvious but gets slated into a mentor-like role midway through the game and ends up in a respectful rivalry with Fox... which there’s nothing inherently wrong with that except for it happening abruptly (and, I mean, Peppy is right there). But I take less issue with this and more of an issue with the fact that there’s an entire level establishing that Wolf now runs a crime den with effectively what seems to be an army and no one bats an eye at this. He doesn’t even call on them to help with the aparoids. Did they all die when the aparoids attacked Meteo? Are they safe somewhere else? Where do they go? How was Sargasso able to operate without the CDF being on their doorstep with warrants for arrests?

- Don’t kill all the dinosaurs. A bit of a dramatic statement but the ending screen that showed all the damage to Sauria really bothered me. While I understand that the dinosaurs had less of a chance against the aparoids than a more technology-focused society like Corneria, I was a bit disappointed that the decision was made to just state that a lot of tribes had been wiped out. I know this could easily be retconned in a future game and I feel like it should be. “But why, Amalia? Why are you disappointed by that?” 1) It’s a little too grimdark for my tastes. 2) The fact it all happened off-screen felt very hand-wavy. And 3) It brings into question the entire point of Adventures. Why did we bother to save this planet if it was going to be reduced to rubble and ash 1 year later? Where were the Krazoa in all of this? Why did they not make an appearance at all to try to stop the invasion with their alleged powers? It just raises too many weird questions and I feel like Namco didn’t think it through too much. Which I mean, sure. Family, kiddo game. I’m not asking for bigbrain plot and lore but I’m squinting at this bit because it does feel very contrary to the lore from the previous game.

- Make the aparoids more relevant. As nice as it is to have a random bad guy from another galaxy, I feel like there was more that could be done with the aparoids in terms of their origins. Tiny things, mind you, not huge revelations. Off the top of my head, they could have been tied into Krystal’s backstory to help alleviate some of the complaints that she was too random to be added to the series’ main cast. Alternatively, they could have been a product of Andross or even a weapon prototype from Corneria that fled the lab (I actually thought the game was leaning in that direction for a bit then just Nothing Happened). I get that the vagueness of their origins leaves room for people to speculate and speculation is nice but... when you leave too many things unknown, it starts to feel less like giving fans room to interpret and more like just doing random things for the sake of it. I think a lore tidbit here or there would work wonders for the aparoids instead of leaving them as just borg/zerg clones.

Level-Based Changes

- Add either Aparoid RedEye or Aparoid General Scales as a boss to Sauria. Given that this level mysteriously lacks a boss, which is just weird compared to the other levels, I think that they had the opportunity to add something cool to go along with the cinematic feel they were going for with Assault. Assault’s cutscenes do play in a movie-like fashion and it’s clear they’re trying to make the game as epic as possible. It’s a shame they had so much fodder for a great boss here but they failed to go through with it. Alternatively: Add a Krazoa-Aparoid fusion. Why? Because Star Fox is about cool epic sci-fi and that would be cool epic sci-fi incarnate.

- Add a boss to the Aparoid Homeworld Level, aka the penultimate level. Another one I felt was personally weird that there was no “final defense system” to challenge the team. Would be cool to do an aerial battle over the aparoid planet with some giant flying aparoid.

- Be kinder to Sauria. The level had some good homages but overall was incredibly small and incredibly short. It felt like a bone tossed to Adventures fans but was not entirely true to the setting built by Rareware. I’m... not even sure where the Sauria level is supposed to take place? I presume it’s Walled City but it doesn’t really have the same color scheme or aesthetic? Also where is my revised Adventures music? Why do all the other levels get it but Sauria doesn’t?

- Put some of those funky items from the multiplayer into the main campaign. I don’t know why some of these things, items especially, were omitted unless it was purely due to time constraints. I remember having missile launchers and jetpacks in the multiplayer and was a bit sad that they were not in the main campaign. Retuning the levels and adding those in would be a nice breath of fresh air for the more tedious on-foot missions.

- More levels. Self-explanatory. Still sad we didn’t get the Zoness or Titania levels in the single-player mode.

I think all of the above changes would improve the game, though I recognize all of this is being said 16 years later after lots of time to contemplate Assault’s weaker points. I’m not entirely certain how long Star Fox Assault took to develop but given that there’s obviously quite a bit scrapped from the game (an entire arcade mode was scrapped as well), I’m going to assume that the studio felt pressured to shove the game out the door and into the hands of customers. It’s a shame, really, because I think a little bit longer in the oven would have done a lot of good. Still, the product we got was good in its own right and a game that many people look back on fondly. I haven’t gotten to replay it in years but I hope to quite soon.

You might wonder why I bothered typing this all out and I guess my point was this-- Assault was great but it wasn’t perfect, and while a lot of other games fall under a crushing amount of scrutiny, Assault seems to dodge it. And don’t get me wrong-- I adore Assault. But given that not many takes exist out there about rewriting it, I decided to give it a shot. For variety’s sake.

I do want to a mock up of a revised Assault story, which I think I will get to work on after completing this while all my ideas are still fresh in mind. So stay tuned for that sometime in the near future. I will also be doing my Adventures mock up at some point but probably not for a little bit as I do wanna focus some of my free time on actual fic-writing.

Anyways, if you stuck around this long, thank you for reading! Have any changes you’d like to see to Assault if you could time machine your way back to the early 2000s? Feel free to post in the comments, I’d love to read your ideas!

#star fox assault #starfox assault #super long #queue'd

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phoenixdnasty · 5 years ago

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The Problem with Season Five

this is already going to have a lot of you in the replies yelling at me. obviously, massive SPOILERS for s5 of she ra and the princesses of power if you haven't already seen it.

okay, so She Ra is definitely a kids' show, but it has a lot of themes aimed towards an older audience: abuse, war, found family, destiny and knowing who you are. I loved She Ra because it made me feel empowered, made me feel seen. after this last season, however, I don't feel the same. I will, however, talk about what it did well.

What She-Ra s5 did RIGHT

I very much enjoyed seeing the character development for most characters come to the forefront here. For example, SW returned to her original motivations. When she lived in Mystacor with the other sorcerers, her thirst for power was borne of a desire to fight the Horde. When she was rejected, then she chose to do what she did. We see a return to that in s5, where she takes a stand against Prime by enlisting Castaspella to stop her if she tries to take any power for herself. She ends up just wanting to help, to do what she can, which was excellent. Glimmer, Bow and a bunch of other characters are given some love here as well. I especially enjoyed seeing Bow and Mermista take on leadership positions in the absence of Adora; it was an excellent look into another facet of their personalities.

Character interactions in non-serious moments were, for the most part, good. Swift Wind and Scorpia being bros was not something I knew I needed but something I want more of. Netossa basically being Batman and knowing the weaknesses of everyone around her was great and an iconic scene. Bow thinking Catra was super adorable was also an excellent moment in the season and I could watch 9 more seasons worth of that. Something that surprised me was Entrapta's "not good with people"-ness being talked about and addressed by the other characters and explained by her; I wasn't sure if that was ever gonna be talked about in the show.

Side note: thank you Crew-Ra for giving Scorpia her own musical number, it was great.

Prime was also a fascinating enemy. He's this sort of religious figure, this world destroyer who's been around for seemingly centuries, maybe much longer. He's cold, calm and calculated. I've seen it pointed out that he's everything Hordak is not. He's manipulative, knows body language and facial expressions, and has a perfect grasp on how to get exactly what we wants. My favorite aspect of this season was the hive mind control. This was a very interesting plotline to me, and I thoroughly enjoyed HiveMind!Catra as well as Wrong Hordak. I loved the idea of pitting allies against each other and the angst and emotional weight that carried.

Going to use that point to segue into one of this season's strengths: Netossa and Spinnerella. Wow! We get a chance to see what a healthy queer/wlw relationship looks like, and two background characters get major upgrades in relevance. Two diversity points for one being a big girl and for the couple being interracial (in our world anyway), but diversity is the norm is SPOP and we might have to stan forever. It was extremely heartwarming and resulted in one of my favorite scenes to ever show up in animated media (one which I'll be stealing to add to my vows if I ever get married):

It was beautiful and I will absolutely never shut up about it.

There were some beautiful moments this season!! Absolutely gorgeous. A highlight for me cinematically was episode 5, which will probably bother some people when I say what I will below. I will be honest, the new transformation sequence and the scene of Adora holding Catra as She-Ra was powerful and had my heart pounding with excitement. It was awesome.

On the other hand...

What She-Ra s5 did WRONG

I'm going to break my issues with the final season down one by one, starting with the narrative of abuse.

From the very beginning, abuse is the most prevalent theme in the show. Prime (HP) abuses Hordak, Hordak abuses SW, SW abuses both Adora and Catra, and Catra abuses Adora. I liked the Crew-Ra tackling this issue. Abused people abuse people, right?

Why was everyone redeemed in s5? (Well, except for Prime, he was blasted away by She-Ra.) Hordak was given a blank slate to start over, even though he was the reason Etheria was war torn for at least a few decades; SW was given a hero's sacrifice, where at the end of her life she finally decides to do some good; and Catra is immediately forgiven for doing one good thing and all trust in placed in her simultaneously.

Hordak and H. Prime as abusers are pretty cut and dry; at no point are they ever remorseful for their actions, except for Hordak in the case of being abusive to Entrapta. SW is much more of an interesting character to analyze, because her motivations are geared directly towards herself. This seems to change in the final season, when she returns to her original motivations from back when she was in Mystacor. Defending her home. In her pursuit of the power needed to defend Etheria from the Horde, she fell into darkness. She began to abuse Adora and Catra.

One could argue that the hero's sacrifice she was given for redemption was unneeded. SW was an individual addicted to power. She was manipulative, using fake affection as a means to control. She didn't deserve a redemption. The only evidence we have of this supposed change of heart is a line to Castaspella: "...and stop me if I try to take the power for myself." Okay... so, SW, um... what changed your mind? Was it Micah? Because at no point has he forgiven you. In fact, there should've been much more hostility between the two of you (which is a point I'll address in a moment). In all honesty, the relationship between SW and Micah reminds me of what should've happened between Catra and Glimmer, or Catra and Scorpia.

And Catra... My problem with her story is that she was kinda just... forgiven? instantly. no repercussions, no long talks about feelings, no... consequences. Catra got the girl and that was it. A small list of things she did over 4 seasons, in no certain order:

Scratched what was implied were scarring marks down Adora's back

Was the cause of Angella's "death" #angelladeservedbetter

Kidnapped both Glimmer and Bow

Opened a world-ending portal all to ensure Adora failed

Also pushed Adora into what looked like an abyss

Verbally abused Scorpia into leaving

Wanted to pit Corrupted!She-Ra against her friends (dehumanization)

Got Entrapta sent to Beast Island, a deadly place no one ever returns from

And this is just the stuff off the top of my head. We all knew Catra was going to get a redemption, but this one was completely undeserved. She apologized to Adora and Entrapta. Two very short apologies for what canonly was at minimum, months of abuse, manipulation, intent to kill (which is literally mentioned by Adora) and general disregard for anyone or anything but revenge for something that didn't even deserve it. The entire cast should've been outraged. Glimmer in particular had a very big reason not to ever forgive Catra ("I'm not losing another parent!"), but it was all glossed over.

The biggest issue with season 5 was the abuse plotline completely dropped. You can't spend 4 seasons explaining how the cycle of abuse affects you and everyone around you... and shelve it. And we know the reason why it was shelved.

Let me first preface this with the fact that I am super happy we got representation. As a queer nblw who grew up feeling alone, it's so good to see things changing in media. An onscreen wlw kiss on a kids' show is groundbreaking and I'm very happy that She-Ra broke this barrier.

But all representation is not good representation. Catra and Adora is not a good representation of a healthy relationship.

Catra is shown throughout the series to be very unstable. This is even prevalent in season 5, when Adora "chooses SW" over Catra, she runs away. This breaks Adora's heart. The last thing that Catra needs is a relationship when she hasn't even confronted the issues that she has. There's no healing done in season 5, no therapy as the fandom loved to meme about, no long talks about forgiveness and the hurt caused. There's no callback to any of the pain and anguish that Catra put Adora through. Catra may love Adora, but if there is no healing done for the both of them, their relationship will fail. They will fall into the same cycle again. Adora will do something Catra doesn't like, Catra will do what she's done for all of the show, and it will repeat until something breaks.

I'm going to talk about the implications of the ending we have now, and feel free to argue with me.

She-Ra is a kids' show. Abuse is one of the main themes. Catra is shown to be an abuser. Here's what we are teaching younger audiences:

a. if you love someone enough, maybe they'll change

b. everyone deserves a second chance

c. your abuser will change as long as you're loyal and never stop trying to love them

d. things someone does to hurt you mean nothing in the wake of forgiveness

e. if someone who hurt you changes suddenly and wants to be back in your life, you should let them back in

Character interactions for the things that mattered (plot threads from previous seasons, general personality clashes, etc) were absent this season, in the moments where they mattered the most. (The best three in my opinion were Scorpia and Perfuma, the BFS inviting Catra in, and Mermista and Entrapta.) Glimmer and Adora should've had their time to talk. Scorpia should've gotten to say her piece to Catra. SW and Micah should've interacted more. Micah and Glimmer should've gotten more than an introduction!

I'm not going to get into how the entire final season was wrapped around making Catra and Adora get together (a fundamental writing no-no; it never ends up working), or how it was bad writing. I just want everyone to think critically for one moment. There are so many other glaring issues in what was, overall, a stellar show. If there was another season, or some mini episodes where the characters talk out their problems and past transgressions against each other, then I could excuse She-Ra. But I doubt we're going to get any of that. So I won't.

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ceterisparibus116 · 4 years ago

Note

Daredevil scenes / plot points you would have done differently? (I get a suspicion a lot of them have to do with the law stuff, Frank Castle's trial especially. 😉 )

Aaaaa I love this question! Warning: VERY long response:

DEFINITELY the Frank Castle trial. Man, it could’ve been SO GOOD. I have a lot of issues with it, obviously, but the main one is that Matt treating Frank as a hostile witness could’ve been amazing (character-driven, emotionally-charged, also at times hilarious), and we were ROBBED.

I also wish Matt could’ve been involved in more trial prep. The show makes it seem almost like Matt’s skill is limited to courtroom antics, but charisma and the ability to think on your feet in the courtroom mean next to nothing if you haven’t laid a foundation with good legal research and legal writing. I would’ve loved it if the legal plotlines showed us more of that. Like, you know Matt and Karen’s date night in S2 where she helps him come up with witness questions? I would’ve loved it if: a) they’d gotten, like, ANY part of that scene correct from a legal standpoint, and b) if we could’ve gotten MORE. I know that kind of thing might seem boring, but I don’t think it would be. You can really show off characters’ personalities in that kind of environment, and then the audience gets the reward of seeing that hard work pay off at trial.

Speaking of, I know we’ve talked before about S3 splitting everyone up. I still think that could’ve maybe been worth it if we’d gotten a S4 where we could see how everyone learned from how disastrous the S3 isolation was, but without S4, everyone’s isolation in S3 is really unfortunate. I would’ve loved to see Nelson, Murdock, and Page working together for at least half of the season, instead of just the last 3-ish episodes. It would’ve been fascinating to watch, since Matt would still not be in a great headspace, and Karen would still be hurt, and Foggy would be just Trying To Deal with his idiot best friends. (But since we don’t have that, at least we have my S3 canon-divergent retelling thing: Take A Deep Breath – shameless plug.)

I also would’ve generally kept the stakes lower in S2 and S3. I think you agree with me that both seasons would’ve been more powerful if we’d had more lower-level villains. But one of my favorite things about S1 is that we get to know the people who are at stake. Unlike in the Avengers where it’s just “the world” or “New York” or something, S1 showed us a little boy who wanted to go back to his dad, and Elena, and that one juror who was being exploited, and Melvin, and even a bad guy like Vladimir, and they’re ALL sympathetic. We really understand who Matt’s fighting for, but with the exception of Grotto, Jasper Evans, and Julie Barnes, I don’t feel like we really get that in S2 and S3.

Related: our S2 ninjas needed a clearer motivation. (That goes for Defenders, too.) Imo, they needed personal stakes. Fisk’s mission to clean up Hell’s Kitchen was personal. Frank’s mission to take out bad guys was personal. Everything about Elektra was personal. Dex’s desperate attempt to find a place for himself and find people who care about him was VERY personal. But the Hand? Not personal at all.

With Elektra…I’m torn. Part of me really wishes Matt could’ve told her no and maintained his boundaries all along, because a) I hate love-triangle-type drama and drama that could be resolved if people just stopped keeping secrets, and b) it would’ve been so refreshing to see the femme fatal trope subverted, and c) it would’ve given Elektra more agency. That being said…that might be veering too far away from comics canon. Matt is canonically a disaster with relationships, and he and Elektra have this whole…epic…magnetic…thing. I personally would argue that the show isn’t beholden to the canon in this specific way, but I can see how people would be upset if Matt and Elektra hadn’t turned out the way they did in S2.

I would’ve liked Marci to have a smidge more character development. She was so sweet and supportive in S3and I don’t…quite…know where that came from? Oh, well.

Speaking of character development: I wish Matt and Foggy could’ve had some real conversations. Aside from when Foggy found Matt at the gym in S1 and they talked about moving forward, I don’t feel like they had deep conversations that weren’t arguments. Matt’s S3 apology is good, but I would’ve loved to see Foggy apologize for how he contributed to the problems in their friendship. I also wish we could’ve seen Foggy explicitly thank Matt for, y’know…SAVING HIS LIFE.

As for Karen, I wish her revelation scene to Matt had been more about HER. It says a lot about how selfless she is that she used her own pain to try to convince Matt not to kill Fisk. But even though I know Matt’s super depressed and everything, I would’ve loved to see him put his own angsty issues aside for a sec and just be there for his friend and the woman he loves. Even the fact that she is the one who crosses the room to be close to him is telling; he should’ve gone over to her when she started crying and been there for her.

Although if I’m talking about Matt’s romantic relationships, I wouldn’t have minded if the show went a Clairedevil route. Although that would require A LOT. I do wish, if I’m being really fanciful, that we could’ve seen Claire in S3. Or, at minimum, seen Matt and Claire interact in Defenders.

FATHER LANTOM TELLING MATT THAT GUILT IS A SIGN THAT HIS WORK IS NOT DONE. I cannot with that scene. I love Father Lantom, but that? Really? I mean, I get it. That’s a common way that Catholic doctrine is interpreted, and it’s what Matt basically wants to hear anyway, but it is SUCH a dangerous thing to tell Matt (and I feel like Father Lantom should’ve known that???) and it’s also, as I understand it, not even the technically correct Catholic interpretation of guilt. Like, that’s literally not what guilt is or how it’s supposed to work. (Although who knows. I’m not Catholic, and as I understand it, Catholics themselves vary a lot in their interpretations of doctrine. So idk.) If I were writing that scene, I would definitely not have written Father Lantom to say that.

On the religious theme, I wish S3 had circled back to Matt’s original objections related to the book of Job. He gets quite a few things wrong in his recap, and I’m not sure if Maggie didn’t correct him because she didn’t know better, or because she didn’t think a Biblical literacy lecture was what he needed at the moment, OR because the writers couldn’t be bothered to read the book. (In fairness…it’s a long and complicated book. But they couldn’t have been bothered to read a commentary on it?) I wish S3 had not stopped at giving Matt an abstract tapestry analogy to heal his faith when it also should’ve addressed his specific complaints.

I wish we’d had more time to see Matt and Maggie repair their relationship, or start to. And I wish she’d hugged him at Literally Any Point.

I wish the whole Matt-hallucinating thing had been clearer. Was he actually hallucinating? Or was that just his internal monologue manifested through other characters? If he was hallucinating, did he just...stop? Is he not freaked out about that? What was going on????

Oh, and if only they could’ve gotten Dex’s psychological diagnosis right.

Other than that, there are a couple scenes that I feel like drag on way too long (S3 especially has an odd amount of monologues that generally strike me as OOC anyway—except with Fisk; he’s just Like That) but I don’t want to go into all of them. It would be hypocritical, given how long this reply is. :P

So yeah, I think I’ll stop there, although I’m sure there’s more, haha. Thank you again for the ask and the excuse to ramble about Daredevil! I look forward to your thoughts as well.

#daredevil #daredevil meta

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throwaninkpot · 4 years ago

Text

Notes from the Return of the Thief launch party Q&A with MWT!

• (I meant to keep a Not Telling tally but I got distracted by all the good words Megan put together.)

EDIT: A VOD of the stream has been posted here!

• It took 20 minutes into the event to get the first Not Telling, and everyone was astonished it wasn't sooner.

• She referenced the Not Telling shirt made for her by @queensandkingsofattolia ! She wasn't wearing it, but she did have her Not Telling socks, which she would put on her hands and hold up to the camera.

• She talked about how she doesn't like suspense as a reader. She always wants the stories to get to the point instead of dragging on, so in writing, she puts light scenes in to break up the suspense. She doesn't always know what those scenes will be, she just has a feel for what's needed there. One example is when Sophos and the magus are traveling to Attolia in aCoK, when they eat the chicken. "We eat the chicken now!" was a scene that made her happy while she wrote it.

• She was asked to explain the gods and how the different pantheons work with each other, and said she never wants to explain the gods. She doesn't want them to be cut-and-dry or understandable.

• Asked about writing such complex, ruthless characters and making them likeable.

Alex (mod): Do you think [the POV characters] good? Megan: *silently presents Not Telling socks*

• Said that if you're going to spend so much time in a characters head, there has to be some part of them that you and the readers will like. And there are some people whose heads she didn't want to be in. Even the ruthless ones making terrible decisions, she does like. "Nahuseresh? Not so much."

Alex: *says something about how they've never encountered books with more poker face than QT* Megan: *big ol' grin*

• Talking about how these books have so many layers and so much suspense, Megan said a lot of that is owing to the fact it's a series and she needed to be consistent, she couldn't switch the style of it or tone halfway through. When she writes the next thing, it might be a whole different kind of book. She'll have to see whether that was just sonething distinctive to QT, or that's what she naturally gravitates towards writing.

• She mentioned that she isn't fond of 1st person narrative, and the chat collective raised a single eyebrows at the irony.

• In fact, TaT was written in 3rd person at first. But she realized that wasn't working so she scrapped that and rewrote the whole thing, bc it needed to be Kamet who was telling us the story.

• She pronounced Kamet as "Kam-et".

• When talking about the details in her books and how they go into logistics, she brought a book onto camera called Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army by Donald W. Engles. It heavily influenced the way she wrote about war and the politics thereof in QT.

• The Thief was partly inspire by a conversation she had with a young relative back during the Bush administration when Kuwait was invaded. The young relative didn't understand what the U.S. was doing in the middle east when we had so many problems to focus in our own country, and Megan explained that we weren't involved in that conflict out of the goodness of our hearts, but bc they had resources we wanted. (The way she phrased it, you could hear the magus talking to the boys in The Thief, and it gave me shivers.) And she realized, kids don't see that side of war in stories. Armies are always fighting Sauron and the forces of evil, and acting out if their own self-interests against people who might not be all bad.

• And thus, The Queen's Thief spiraled jnto existence.

• Why does she choose to write about disability and illness the way she does? Rosemary Sutcliff. Sutcliff was disabled for most of her life, and this reflected in the stories she told. Megan recalls Warrior Scarlet as the first book that challenged her as a kid to think about disability and illness as a natural part of life, and to question who gets to be at the center of the story. Who gets to be the hero? Who gets to be the hero of an adventure story? Why shouldn't characters dealing with illness or disability be those heros?

• TaT was a direct response to Sutcliff's novel Eagle of the Ninth, where an earnest young Roman soldier has these great plans for his life that get toppled when he is injured in his first battle and can no longer serve.

Megan: Costis checks every box for earnest young guy!

• In Eagle, there is a slave who travels with the protagonist and is freed by him at the end as part of the protagonist's journey. It was important to tell TaT from Kamet's point of view so that it was about him. "He is never an object of a quest, always a person."

• Megan has never read The Aeneid.

• She recommends Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin, which tells The Aeneid from a different POV.

• On writing process: She doesn't outline. When she has a book idea, she first tells it as a story by cornering her husband and telling him the whole thing with plenty of hand gestures. After that, she does a "sketch". She writes down the shape of the story, plotlines and characters, which is usually half the length of the finished book. Then she fleshes it out, and cuts and adds and cuts snd adds until she has pretty much a whole book, and then she edits again to cut everything that doesn't absolutely need to be there.

• She says it's important to remember you can't fix everything in one draft. You just need to focus on 20 or so things at a time, and then on the next pass you can focus on 20 other things.

• On keeping characters straight: "It's very crowded in my head." She doesn't focus so much on remembering exactly what she has written about a character before, but knowing who the character is so that she knows how they would react in whatever new situation she is writing them in.

Megan: Okay, Costis. I know this guy, I know what he's going to do. He's going to punch that guy in the face and it will be very embarrassing.

• A lot of people asked about the vampires referenced in The Thief and if they were real. She's not telling.

• Someone *cough*me*cough* Asked if she was planning a spin-off series about Eddisian vampires falling in love. "Never say never, but it's probably unlikely."

Alex: What happened to Ornon's sheep? Megan: Guys....guys......I have to put on another sock, come on, guys! *digs for her Not Telling socks and holds them up*

• On worldbuilding: You have to break with reality. It's great to research the process of how to retin pans! Adding details like that can enrich your story, but you can also add things that wouldn't have been possible in the real world. Like, pocket watches and window glass and printing presses all at the same time. The made up details also make your story richer.

Megan: Cut the research and tell a good story!

• On myths: She never writes the myths first. When she was writing The Thief, she would make a new line and type "[Myth Here]" and then go on with the rest of the story and cone back to that later.

• She recommends Ancient Near East Texts by James B. Pritchard for some good myths!

• What she likes best about DWJ: The Audacity(tm). DWJ would write about the most bizarre things very casually.

Megan: Her stories had a "hold my beer" quality.

• She told the story about hiw DWJ got her published (Alex: "She had good taste") and trying to send DWJ the advanced copy of aCoK before she died, but those stories have been retold elsewhere before so I won't bother with them now.

• Megan wore lovely, lovely earrings! And at the beseechment of the chat, she showed them to the camera and told us they were made by @freenarnian

• Finally, the winner of the trivia party was granted the honor of asking a question on camera, and Megan benevolently said she would not cry Not Telling on whatever was asked.

• Margaux, the winner, asked what the age difference was between Dite and Irene, and if they had grown up together.

• After a REAL long pause, Megan said that she didn't think they had grown up together. Irene is younger than Dite, and she was too busy, and I quote, "killing people." Her childhood ended early and she didn't have time to be a kid. Besides that, they wouldn't have been allowed to hang out in Attolian society, bc she was a girl and he was a boy. They were probably introduced to each other atvevents, but that was it.

• Also: Dite is pronounced "Die-tee".

• She has more events like this planned in the future!!!!! Keep an eye on her tumblr!!!!!

• EDIT: @whataliethatwas made a transcript of the event!

#megan whalen turner #queens thief #the queen's thief #queen's thief #mwt #rott #return of the thief #this has been a post

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pasiphile · 4 years ago

Note

idk if this is something you've either a) ever felt the desire to talk about (if not, please excuse the curiosity!) or b) talked about before, but how do you go about writing your ep(f)ics? it's one of those things i've always been curious about because there's plenty of chat about how to start an original novel and plot it etc but usually a good chunk of those hypothetical word counts come down to character building, which is less relevant in fic. any thoughts?

I don’t mind at all! Especially because after writing four (five?) of these fuckers I finally feel like I got the hang of how I actually tackle them.

(that is, the general method. If you're asking about knowing what scenes to write/how to decide what actually happens, there I can't help you. Imo, that's just a case of having imagination)

First a caveat, though: I don’t write chronologically. I know people who do, and honestly it seriously impresses me, but it’s not something that I can do. If you can write chronologically, please do, because you’ll save yourself a lot of headaches. But if you’re like me and you just hop around...

So basically I start out with a vague idea. In Laws that was picking up after ACWNR and showing how they got from there to the point at the start of the series, for TVD it was I wanna show Moriarty’s pov for most of the series, and for the Untamed it was what if post-canon someone starts fucking around with the Yin Metal again. Basic, huge ideas, that give me a start, a middle and an ending.

This is also the point where some people outline. Again, if you can, great! do it! give yourself structure! I personally keep trying and it never works so I’ve given up, and try to keep track in my head instead.

Once I’ve got the basic idea, I basically just... start writing. By which I mean, more specifically, that whenever I have a bit of free time I retreat into daydream-land and start imagining things that might happen. Anything might be a jumping-off point there; a thing I read in another story, an interesting meta I read, a detail I saw in canon. Anything that fits the general storyshape.

(A lot of those scenes start their life in the space before I fall asleep).

The trick after that is to get to a keyboard asap, before I forget what I actually had in mind, and write it down (this is also why fic fragments tend to show up in the notes app of my phone). Once I start writing those down, usually I go beyond what I initially thought of - they write themselves, in a way.

If you do that often enough, eventually you’ll end up with a critical mass of scenes. I do try to put those scenes roughly in the right place, chronologically, but that’s only an estimate. This phase two is basically one giant shuffle game: trying to see which scenes can follow on which, whether there’s a logical connection between them, and then cut-paste and adapt all over the place.

I don’t actually edit in this phase, to be clear. I might put in a placeholder and a note if I have an idea what needs to show up to make two scenes link to each other, but I don’t go any deeper. At this point, you need a bird’s view on your story.

Once that’s in place, I start the hard work, which is taking those scenes and turning them into a coherent whole. Basically I just start reading at the start (of the story/chapter) and then run through the story as if I’m watching a series. The bulk of it has been written by now, so I now have room to write in the connective bits, the references to previous happenings, more internal thoughts and reflections...

And at the end of that phase, you’ve got something that resembles a (clunky, messy, occasionally weird) story.

So then I reread. This is usually when the bigger things start showing up, the character arcs and relationship-building. Some of that is already present, but it isn’t until I’ve got the whole thing in front of me that I actually start seeing the patterns. I try not to edit straight in the text at this point (which is why I often put the file in epub on my ereader, so I don’t get tempted) and take notes about general trends. Detailed editing is later.

(sidenote: fanfic needs less character building than original fiction, but you still need character development. if you’re writing an actual long thing instead of series of vignettes or one-shots, the way the characters are at the start can’t be the way they are in the end. Something’s gotta change, both in terms of characterisation as in relationships, otherwise you’re just going to end up with a boring story.)

And once that’s done, the process starts over, basically. Based on the notes, I start writing missing scenes and shuffling around scenes again if needed, and while I’m at it, I also try to edit the more detailed things. Said editing process keeps going until right at the end: I line-edit in AO3 one last time, just before I post, with the chapter copy-pasted from words straight into the drafts there.

Is this an efficient, logical or neat system? Fuck no. But it’s the only one that works for me, and I’ve gotten some good results with it.

It is, however, a rather intuitive system, because I know roughly how stories work, how tension and character building works etc. When I read, I tend to sense where it needs a cliffhanger, or a spanner in the works, or a big dramatic reveal. If you don’t have that sense (which honestly, I think you can only get if you read/watch/consume shitloads of fiction) you’ll need a way more structured approach - but those have never worked for me, tbh.

TL;DR

Phase 0: have an idea. can be as vague as you want, but try to know the beginning, middle and end of the story.

Phase 1: just fucking write. give no fucks about writing ‘complete’ scenes, just put it down on the page, even if it’s just a dialogue fragment. try to put things roughly in the right place but don’t spend too much thought on that. Put all your energy into imagining things, and then scribbling them down as soon as possible before you forget them again.

Phase 2: shuffle. Move the scenes around until you’ve got an idea what happens and in what order. Don’t bother edting. Just try to get one coherent plotline going.

Phase 3: read-and-write. Start from the beginning and walk yourself through the story, writing as much connective bits and embellishing everything you can.

Phase 4: read-and-check. Read your story as if you were a reader, not the author, and try to see if it makes sense, what the characters’ arcs are, what the story tension is like, and what’s happening plotwise.

Phase 5: Adjust accordingly, ie Rinse and repeat.

#Anonymous #Writing #Writing 101

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hopevalley · 4 years ago

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Season 8, Episode 11: Changing Times

Well, as it turns out, my second Covid vaccine kicked me down hard. After sleeping for quite a long time, though, I’m tired of sleeping and ready to try and get this write-up done.

Surprisingly, or...perhaps not so surprisingly, I don’t think I have that much to say about last night’s episode. I think we’re just too close to the finale for me to feel “safe” in guessing/hoping for anything in particular.

Let’s hit up the plot points like before:

The Triangle

Carson & Faith

Rosemary’s Purpose

School District Problems

Jesse’s Disappearance

The Triangle

I’m probably one of the few people who liked Nathan who felt like the whole beginning scene was super weird and uncomfortable. Homegirl held his hand for one second in the last episode and now she’s going to warm his serge by the fire (while he just stands there awkwardly??? He could have done that himself while she got him some tea or something idk) and then dress him???

I think we’re meant to see that as her going back to...I don’t know...old habits die hard or something? But she was barely married for any time at all and it’s been three years since Jack died. No way would she be so far into those old habits that she’d fall back into them with Nathan lmao.

Like, it’d be a REALLY GOOD PLOT for a character who had been married for years and lost a spouse (cough Abigail cough) but considering the circumstances it felt like a cheesy fanfiction! I wanted to like it, but I just felt weird about it. Tonal whiplash out the wazoo.

Especially when we had to watch Lucas drive by and see Nathan’s horse at Elizabeth’s house.

Lucas sadly watching Elizabeth talk to Nathan was also awkward, but at least it gave him the courage he needed to break things off with her.

You’d think I’d have a lot to say about the triangle, but I’m saving all of that for some kind of...post-season discussion. Who is she going to pick? Nathan seems like the most logical writing choice, but it could yet be Lucas. I genuinely don’t care who she chooses so long as she picks someone.

Carson & Faith

I like to hate on these two a lot, so you might be surprised to know that I’m enjoying their storyline. I’ve criticized this series over and over for never bothering to portray realistic relationships and one thing I can say about Faith and Carson this season is that things actually feel...plausible.

I also appreciate how they try to tie Carson into the town a bit more: he talks to Henry and Minnie and even Lucas trying to figure things out! It makes perfect sense to me; how do you choose between someone you care about/the potential life you could make with them, and a career that you’re really and truly passionate about?

This is the most interesting Carson has been since Season 5.

Anyway, the pudding scene was genuinely funny, and a great way to break up the stress that I’m sure we were all feeling about his impending proposal. Faith’s reaction to thinking he might propose was...pretty telling. I really wish they hadn’t saved so many dangling plotlines to solve in the final episode, though. I was hoping Faith and Carson’s storyline would be fully figured out in the penultimate episode so that we could let him go (or whatever) in the season finale. It just seems to me like it would be a good, smooth ending for them.

Also, for what it’s worth, they tried doing this kind of plot with Frank in Season 5, but it was rushed and pulled out of thin air; he’d never shown an inclination toward pastoring toward dying children in the past and it was clear that they just needed to write him off the show. With Carson, this sort of plotline works VERY well; he was a surgeon, and he was passionate about it, but that passion took a hit when his wife needed surgery and she died on the table under his hands. He’s had some time to move on from that and process his feelings, so it makes sense that he’d find that passion again. I just wanted to point this out because it’s interesting how well it works for Carson and how...well, not-well it worked with Frank. I really felt like with Frank, it was just a storyline that could have been given to anyone with the same success rate, whereas with Carson they took a look at the character and what we already know of him, and built the storyline specifically for him. That’s good writing, babes!

Anyway, Carson trying to propose in the vague hope that Faith will come with him, even knowing she doesn’t want to leave Hope Valley, is pretty manipulative and awful, but it really goes a long way toward making his character feel like an actual person. Like yeah, he does actually want the best of both worlds. Do you blame him?

Rosemary’s Purpose

I know a lot of people are really into this storyline but I found it boring. The only good part was when Lee called the other desk in his office “hers.” Everything else just felt like a bit too much to come to the conclusion that she should run a paper. We already had her “advice” column in the paper and it was...amusing while it lasted, but eh. I just don’t see good storylines coming for her from this angle, especially when they went the route of her finding out she wants to start the paper back up to share information with the town. Are we really going to trust Rosemary’s integrity when it comes to writing news stories, especially when MOST of the time the things she’ll be allowed to write about are, you know, who grew the biggest cabbage? It makes me dread the potential for Round Two of Nosy Rosie.

I dunno. I used to really like Rosemary but this season’s been pretty rough on her character. Good for you for wanting to find your passion career, but most of us work so that we can eat, not for a fun way to pass the time and stay busy. :/

School District Problems

Mr. Landis is right and Elizabeth is an idiot. Sure the school board is being assholes for no reason (as if they’d care if one blind child was sitting in a classroom in one western town lol), but Elizabeth’s really going to dismiss his concerns about how she can juggle the added work necessary to teach Angela while also keeping up with everyone else?

It sucks that Angela will get left out, but Elizabeth should be working with Mr. Landis to come up with a plan to teach Angela without sacrificing the education of her other students. Better yet, she could rely on her friends for advice. Like Rosemary.

Still no apology there...

Anyway, a projected 100 new kids? That’s outlandish. The only way that will happen is if they open a factory in Hope Valley, and even then it could take years. I MEAN, WHERE IS THE HOUSING GOING TO BE FOR ALL THE ADULTS THAT WOULD GIVE YOU A HUNDRED NEW STUDENTS LOL. I think we have to assume the plotlines are connected.

I also find it hard to believe the board would care about Elizabeth being certified to teach Angela. Where else is she going to get an education? It’s 1918 in the middle of almost nowhere???

This show drives me nuts with its attempt to be a “Frontier Show” while also shying away from the characters actually being stranded/cut off from society at large. You still had unlicensed teachers teaching in western towns in this time period because nobody cared!!!

ANYWAY, if Union City was like 3 miles away I could see them trying to combine schools. But it isn’t. So.

I dunno. I hate this plotline. I feel like they stole it from a better show (Road to Avonlea, where the bigger school was just a few miles away and it made sense to consider combining the schools for a better education system for the students as one-room schoolhouse teaching was proven to be less effective) but didn’t bother to consider any of the logistics of the storyline.

Maybe it’s my passion for education and history that makes me hate it, though. I know too much to find this storyline believable. I should also mention that I haven’t enjoyed Elizabeth’s role as teacher for a very long time. (I think they suck at writing Elizabeth as a teacher.)

I’m just not interested in wherever this is going to go because I can’t imagine it’ll have a lasting impact.

The only good thing I can say about the whole plotline is that I REALLY LIKED HOW BILL CAME OUT OF IT. I think he’s the only person who knows how to speak to Elizabeth. She struggles with blunt honesty at first, but ultimately tends to appreciate it, and that’s pretty much what she always gets with Bill. Also, the scene where he shuts her down didn’t make her look stupid, either (just worried/anxious), so I could appreciate it.

Jesse’s Disappearance

I couldn’t care less about this plotline if I tried. Jesse’s gone missing in the mountains before (was it last season? I don’t even remember because I didn’t give a damn about it then either) so this felt like a multi-reused plotline...for the same character, no less.

It’s also poorly implemented. Why doesn’t anyone else care about Jesse? Why is Clara pouring her heart out to Lee while her friends are failing to support her in the slightest? Why should any of us care when we know he’ll be fine?

It just feels so forced for the sake of drama, and it’s made 10x worse because there’s too much else going on at the same time.

Also, how convenient that they have to tell us how hard-working and dedicated Jesse is to his work to force this plot to even make sense... C’mon, he has never been a particularly dedicated to work. They just needed to explain why he would have left the car so that he could be “missing.”

Boring. I also don’t care that much about their “stolen” money.

The only good thing in all of this is seeing how soothing of a voice Lee actually has.

The best parts of the episode:

Henry calling Florence “Flo” GOT ME. It was so surprisingly cute???

I love Bill, and he really came out of this episode looking great! Finally, it seems they’re done writing him as a grouchy old man who hates everyone! In this season (and particularly in this episode), he is allowed to be capable, smart, helpful, loyal, and in possession of a great deal of integrity. I couldn’t believe that guy tried to bribe the judge in town right off the bat lmao...but the way Bill handled it felt very in character—very reminiscent of him from S3 or 4. He never shuts things down immediately, preferring instead to get more information to use against his, erm...opponent. Should he need it, of course. I was really happy to see him written well in this episode.

HENRY’S LETTER FROM HIS SON. STARTS OFF WITH “DAD,” AND SAYS PS. I LOVE YOU AT THE BOTTOM. Good for Henry.

Fiona’s backstory! Finally, we get some FIONA LORE. Neat.

PUDDING HANDS CARSON.

#when calls the heart

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mortedeveles · 5 years ago

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I’m Okay. (PART 2)

Continuation and end to this oneshot!

SUMMARY: Ever since you were young, your mind has always been clouded with negative thoughts about yourself and your shoulders were always heavy with an invisible weight. But now you’re dating the infamous Katsuki Bakugou, and you couldn’t be happier. He made you feel so confident that you decided to come clean to your dad about your mental health issues. Buzzing with courage, you can only hope everything turns out okay. But as it turns out, you were absolutely wrong.

GENRE: angst, like a lot lot, hurt comfort and fluff. [ONE-SHOT]

PAIRING: Katsuki Bakugou x fem!reader. (i will be writing gn! reader soon, but i still have to adjust to it)

TW: mental health issues, mentions of suicide, cursing, etc.

a/n: i really wanted to give the og oneshot a proper ending so i wrote this up in a day or two!! i want to thank @lafy-taffy for beta reading this, i really appreciate your help a lot! tysm!! btw, i don’t remember if i mentioned this before but y/n and bakuhoe have been dating for months in this oneshot, so they’re past the pining and blushing period!! please leave a like, reblog or comment if you enjoyed! it really helps! getting feedback makes me so, so happy, y’all seriously don’t have an idea lol. that’s all, i hope you enjoy!

A week had passed by since Y/N's attempt to express her illness failed miserably. She had decided against telling her boyfriend Katsuki since it was a very sensitive topic for her. Y/N tried her best to brush it off and act as if nothing had ever happened, but it was hard trying to be something you weren't.

Her relationship with her father had become strained and their conversations had become short and dismissive. Y/N had been brought up by her father, since her mother had left when she was a young child, and it pained her greatly that her one and only family relationship was being torn at the edges.

Even though her life at her home had become miserable, Y/N had continued to smile and work hard at U.A, even though the number of sleepless nights she had recently encountered began to take a toll on her body.

She had hoped that Katsuki wouldn't notice the shift in her behavior, Y/N had never been a fan of confrontation. She had always preferred to keep things under the rug. Unfortunately, her behavior hadn't gotten unnoticed by Katsuki. He would notice how she would come out of the restrooms with puffy, red eyes, and how her notes slowly became messier which was unlike her. Katsuki knew that Y/N always organized her notes. But since Katsuki had other things on his mind, he didn't think much of it.

It wasn't until she had rejected his offer to go out on a Friday night that Katsuki decided to act. He was confused, frustrated, and annoyed. They would always go out on dates on Friday nights. Always. Even if she came down with a cold, he would sneak into her house and stay in bed with her, watching a cheesy movie. And therefore, Bakugou decided to act. He had climbed towards her room and stole a look at her from her bedroom window. His blood ran cold.

There she was, crying her heart out with a rope in her hands. No...

Was she-was she going to kill herself? Katsuki knocked on the window furiously, feeling his temper swell with each look at her crying face. Who the hell made her sad? Who did he have to kill?

Y/N gasped and jumped. She dropped the rope and glanced towards her window, eyes widening when she spotted her furious boyfriend. She quickly rubbed her eyes and tried to make herself presentable as she opened the window with a forced smile.

''What's up, 'Suki? I told you I wasn't going to be able to go out tonight,'' Y/N said. She tried to keep the smile balanced on her lips and not break into tears.

''We need to talk, Y/N,'' he said gruffly. She swallowed thickly and nodded in response.

Katsuki kept his anger at bay as he climbed through the window and pulled Y/N into a tight hug. He buried his head in her hair and breathed deeply.

''What's going on, baby?'' he murmured. It was unusual for Katsuki to act to tender and calm, but something told him that he needed to approach his girlfriend carefully.

That was enough for Y/N to fall apart. She let out a loud sob, curling her fists against Katsuki's chest and her entire frame began to shake.

Bakugou could feel confusion stirring in his heart, who the hell had done this to her?! Y/N had always been a cheery and composed girl but right now, she looked so close from breaking away from reality. The sight made Katsuki feel as if someone was ripping his heart to shreds and burning it to ashes. It was too painful to watch.

''I just, I just can't take it anymore,'' she sobbed. Her shoulders trembled with each cry.

Slowly, he picked up Y/N in his arms and carried her to the bed. Katsuki held her in his lap and wrapped his arms around her.

''What's going on? Something's wrong, and you haven't told me anything.'' he sighed and nudged Y/N’s chest into his chest. He hoped it would be of comfort.

''I don't like me very much anymore,'' she spoke into his chest. The vibrations made him shiver, but her words made him freeze in shock.

''You should be with someone else, 'Suki. I'm sorry for being a mess.''

Katsuki furrowed his eyebrows and leaned back to get a proper look at Y/N's face. He frowned and brushed away her tears.

''Hey, hey, slow down, nerd. What the fuck are you talking about?'' he pressed a chaste kiss on her salty and swollen lips.

''Can you start from the beginning, baby? Can you do that for me?'' his arms tightened around her.

Y/N slowly nodded and breathed shakily. Katsuki nodded in approval and patted her back.

''That's it, good job. Now, can you tell me what's going on?'' His patience was running thin- Katsuki had never been very patient, but he knew this was Y/N he was talking about- his amazing and kind girlfriend- so he forced himself to be patient.

''Um,'' she lowered her gaze to her lap. ''Ever since I was young, I felt that there was something wrong with me. I would feel so lonely, I wouldn't fit in anywhere, and most of the time, I felt so sad for absolutely no reason! I don't know why I feel like this, but I hate it,'' she forced a sob down her throat. ''I've never told anyone about it. I didn't want to bother anyone,'' Katsuki let out an angry growl, but quickly quieted down. ''I don't think I should be in U.A. There's this self-deprecating feeling in me, there's this voice that likes to taunt with me and tell me I'm worthless, I'm absolutely nothing,'' she whispered, blinking as tears fell on her hands.

''I can't help it. I've tried to make it stop, but it's stronger than me. It consumes me and it's eating me from the inside. I haven't been feeling well lately, and although I'm very afraid of talking about this, I decided to tell my dad about it.''

''And?'' Bakugou's voice was firm but slow. Knowing that Y/N was suffering so much in silence and he had no fucking idea made him furious. ''What did your old man say?''

Y/N let out a bitter laugh. Bakugou raised an eyebrow and bit down on his tongue. Her laugh sounded so, so wrong. It wasn't a happy laugh, filled with amusement or joy. It was void. Empty. Harsh and bitter. Nothing like Y/N.

''He told me to get over it-,''

Bakugou growled. ''That motherfucker! I'm going to kill him!''

Y/N smiled and pressed a hand on Katsuki's arm. He sighed and lowered his fists.

''I’m sorry…’’ he mumbled. Y/N nodded in understanding and continued explaining.

''-And to be fair, I think he's right. I have a roof over my head, food in my belly and there's nothing I'm missing. My dad has suffered so much and I'm just a spoiled brat that doesn't appreciate what she has,'' she looked up at Katsuki with watery eyes and a strained smile. ''I'm so lucky. I have you as my boyfriend,'' She giggled and hiccuped, pressing a soft kiss on his jaw.

''Don't worry about it. I'll be fine, 'Suki. I'm okay.''

Katsuki clenched his jaw and tightened his fists. He lowered his head and narrowed his eyes.

''Why didn't you tell me...any of this?''

Y/N sighed. She pressed a gentle hand on Katsuki's cheek and smiled.

''I didn't want to bother you with it. You're amazing, Katsuki! You're strong, determined, your quirk is great and you're the next Number One Pro-Hero. I didn't want to get in your way. Besides, you're so confident and beautiful,'' her voice faltered.

''I didn't think you'd understand.''

Katsuki was silent. His head was lowered and Y/N couldn't see the expression on his face. He was silent. Was he mad? Ashamed of her? Ashamed of having a girlfriend that wasn't mentally stable? The insecurities began to jab at Y/N's heart.

''Katsuki, are you okay? You haven't said any-,'' Y/N raised her hand to touch Katsuki, but he quickly grabbed her hand in a firm grip.

Slowly, he raised his eyes and met her gaze. His eyes were blazing with too many emotions. Y/N couldn't understand what he was feeling. Was he sad? Angry? Furious? It seemed to be a combination of all three.

''I'm your boyfriend, Y/N! Fucks sakes, I'm the one who's supposed to protect you,'' he croaked. The hand that gripped her wrist began to shake. ''Not the other way around. You're supposed to tell me everything, baby. If someone's bothering you, I'll make sure they'll never bother you again. If you're in danger, I'm the one who's supposed to swoop in and protect you!'' he growled.

''I'm sorry, I-,'' Y/N began, but Bakugou quickly silenced her with a finger pressed against her lips.

''Shh. Don't apologize anymore,'' he grumbled.

''How can you think like that about yourself? You're my girlfriend and you're the most beautiful person I've ever met,'' he whispered.

''Seeing you makes me smile. When we're together, I feel so happy I fear my chest might explode,'' he barked out a laugh. ''You're not worthless, baby,'' he held her face in his warm hand. ''You're everything to me, even if you don't believe it. You're a strong, kind, and determined girl. You're going to make an excellent hero, I know it. And I'm not just saying this because you're my girlfriend. I'm telling you this because I know it's true,'' he pressed a kiss on her lips.

Y/N slowly moved her lips in sync, tugging Katsuki forward, but he broke apart from the kiss. He grinned and shook his head.

''Not so fast. I have some other things to say. It doesn't matter if I'm training or busy, fuck, I could be dying and you still have to tell me if something's on your mind. Or have you forgotten, Y/N? Being Number One Pro Hero isn't my only priority. You're so fucking important to me! Of course, you're my priority. I don't know what I'd do without you,'' he mumbled, burying his face in Y/N's chest.

Y/N hiccuped. Katsuki quickly snapped his head upwards and stroked Y/N's hair. Her sobs were louder by the minute, so he gently pushed her face into his chest. He murmured words he wouldn't even dream of saying out loud, rubbing circles on her back and stroking her soft hair. Feeling her sadness and pain nearly brought tears to his eyes, but he forced them down. Katsuki had to stay strong and patient for Y/N.

''I'm so tired, Katsuki,'' she cried. ''I just wish I didn't feel like this. Why can't I be normal?''

Katsuki shushed her and pressed a kiss on her forehead.

''Hey, hey, calm down, baby. It's okay to feel tired. You can rest here with me. Don't worry baby, we'll get through this,'' he murmured. ''I'm here for you.''

About half an hour passed by quickly and Y/N's hiccups and sobs slowly quietened down.

''Thank you, 'Suki,'' Y/N raised her head and met Katsuki's soft gaze. ''I know I'm a handful.''

Katsuki sighed and flicked his finger on Y/N's forehead. Immediately, she cried out and clutched her forehead.

''Ow! What the hell was that for?'' she frowned and crossed her arms defensively. The sight made Katsuki chuckle.

''Don't say that about yourself. It's not true. You're only feeding your insecurities if you say them out loud,'' he gripped Y/N's hand and squeezed it.

Katsuki cleared his throat loudly and prepared his speech. ''Now, repeat after me. I, Y/N L/N, am the most beautiful girl ever and no one can say otherwise!''

Y/N's eyes widened and she laughed quietly. Katsuki smiled and squeezed her hand. At least he managed to get a smile out of her. Seeing Y/N without a smile was like if the world had gone dark, and all the colors were reduced to a boring grey. It shouldn't be possible for someone as beautiful and kind as her to look so sad and miserable. She should always be smiling.

''You can't be serious, 'Suki,'' she chided. ''I'll sound like a dumbass! Seeing you say those words with complete confidence made you look like an absolute clown!'' she giggled and shook her head disapproval.

Katsuki snorted and grabbed her face by her chin.

''I don't fucking care. C'mon, say it. You'll feel better, I promise.''

Y/N sighed and decided to surrender. ''Fine,'' she grumbled.

''I, Y/N LN/ am the most beautiful girl in the world and no one can say otherwise!'' she exclaimed, raising her arms for a dramatic effect. After she had repeated the words, Y/N began to laugh wildly as she buried her face in Katsuki's chest.

''That was sooo embarrassing. I'm never going to say that again!'' her words were muffled against his chest.

Bakugou smiled as he felt Y/N's face heat up in embarrassment.

''It doesn't matter. Good job, baby. I'm proud of you,'' he sneaked a kiss on her lips.

''Thank you, 'Suki. I was a dumbass to think that you wouldn't understand.''

Katsuki sighed and tightened his arms around Y/N. He placed his chin on the top of her head and stared at the window. It must've been midnight by now but when he was with Y/N, time seemed to be an abstract concept. He could spend a century with her and it would feel like a few couple of minutes.

''You are a dumbass for thinking like that,'' he grumbled. ''I know I'm not very vocal about my feelings and all that bullshit,'' he paused and licked his lips. ''I understand how you feel. I've felt like that many times. I thought that if I bottled up my emotions, I would be fine, but I was so, so wrong. I used to feel this insane pressure on me because of my quirk, that I had to be better than everyone because if I tried and slacked off, even just for one moment, I'd fail. I would be reduced to nothing and...'' his voice became softer and faltered. ''That terrifies me.''

A moment of peaceful but bitter silence swept over them as they held onto each other tightly. Katsuki could feel his chest tighten. He had done the impossible- express what he was truly feeling. And his chest and shoulders had felt impossibly lighter afterward.

''Oh, Katsuki,'' Y/N sighed and leaned her forehead against Katsuki's.

''You should've told me about this earlier. I admire your determination, very much, you know that, but you have to cut yourself some slack. You're doing great and even if you slack off, you won't fall behind,'' she smiled and met Katsuki's hesitant eyes.

''I promise. Your dreams and goals are important, but you should take care of yourself too. Don't forget about yourself in the process of reaching your goals. You're an extraordinary person and don't think I've ever met someone like you,'' she murmured, tracing her thumb over Katsuki's soft cheeks. He laughed roughly and leaned closer, closing his eyes.

''I think I could say the same thing about you.''

Y/N smiled and closed her eyes, pressing a soft kiss on Katsuki's lips. He smiled against her lips and tugged at her bottom lip. The two of them danced with their lips, tugging at their hair and necks. It wasn't until Katsuki spoke that they broke apart.

''When you're ready, baby,'' he gripped both her hands as he stared into Y/N's eyes. ''We can get some help if that's what you want. Maybe some therapy would help you.''

Y/N smiled and nodded. She squeezed Katsuki's warm palms. ''I think that would be nice.''

''We're going to get through this, won't we, 'Suki?''

Katsuki nodded and tugged Y/N closer. He wrapped his arms around her waist as he breathed in the pleasant smell of her hair.

''Of course. I know we will.''

Y/N pressed a chaste kiss on Katsuki's neck, making his face redden and his grip on her body tighten.

''I love you, 'Suki.''

''I love you more, you damn nerd,'' he grumbled. With a heavy nod, the two of them began to descend into hours of sleep, finding comfort and solace in each other's embrace.

and that’s a wrap!! i hope you guys enjoyed it! should i make a permanent tag list, in which you’d be tagged for ALL my fics? DM me or comment if you’re interested so i can make it! next update is for Tainted Flowers which will prob be up tomorrow, and then we’ll get back to model for me! have a good week y’all! xx

#bakugou katsuki #bnha bakugou #bakugou x reader #katsuki bakugo x reader #katsukibakugou #katsuki x y/n #mha bakugou #bakugou x you #angst #fluff #hurt comfort #my writing #mha #veles' writing

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liliplayschoices · 4 years ago

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So, I finished playing Open Heart, Second Year

I have a lot of thoughts about small details that I liked or disliked, but my overall impression of the book is... mediocre.

It was far from the worst book ever, but it wasn’t good, either. I was bored during most of it, waiting for the story to pick up, and it never really did. I’m not angry or anything, but I’m certainly not super excited for book 3.

The writing was honestly not that great. There were waaaay too many subplots that didn’t go anywhere at all. They multiplied the subplots and ended up with a weird mess of ten thousand things happening at once, and never getting a proper development or resolution because there wasn’t enough space for it. I mean, take the Panacea storyline for instance. They were kind of the big bads of book 1, but the resolution of them being sent to court was like... mentioned briefly at one point and that was it. And it was the same with all the subplots. Esmee and MC only had a short conversation about what Esmee did, the conflict between the surgeon and Esmee was handled super quickly and then they were cool (despite him harassing her and her breaking his hand? like, those aren’t small grievances), Bryce’s conflict with his parents was handled in an off-screen phone-call, MC barely seemed to experience consequences from almost dying and watching her friends die...

Also the end of the book was extremely rushed. Suddenly, weeks and weeks passed by?? the hospital closed and opened back up again immediately?? the last three/four chapters were SUCH a mess that it barely left an impression on me to be honest.

It was honestly a mess, and I don’t accept the excuse of the rewrites at all because I don’t believe the story changed that much. I mean, we all know what the rewrite was about: not killing Rafael, and giving characters other than Ethan some screentime. So the core of the story probably didn’t change as much. So yeah they have zero excuses for this mess. Plus, having to rewrite because you were being racist isn’t an excuse to do a poor job lmao

Some random thoughts about the book:

- I don’t understand why the fandom hated June so much? Like yeah she did one questionable thing by reading up on her colleagues but... I remember when everybody was playing, thinking she must be a horrible person to deserve such hate, and... she’s really not?

- okay so I don’t know how hospitals work in the US. But it bothered me that they could close the hospital and then open it again after a few days?? Like, wouldn’t they have like... sold most of their equipment? I don’t know, it’s a detail but it was weird xD

- As much as I don’t care about Leland, the story with him and his wife is awful... The part where he talked about having to check himself to prevent from touching her out of habit... God that was sad. I’m in a long-term relationship, and that moment made me realize that I don’t even think of all the times I just casually kiss or hug my boyfriend, and the thought of not being able to do it made me genuinely tear up a little. So yeah anyway I hope this might take more space in book 3 because it’s actually a really sad, but compelling story! Hopefully, if PB get their act together, they’ll focus on fewer plotlines to give them enough time to develop, and I hope that’s one of them.

- To be completely honest, before reading the book, I thought people were exaggerating a little when they were talking about the overbearing presence of Ethan in the story. And... yeah I get it now. I don’t hate his character at all, but... it was too much. Waaaay too much. I never romanced him but I enjoyed his and MC’s relationship in book 1, the way it was a mentorship but also they appreciated each other but also annoyed each other. It was a really fun dynamic, and it was completely gone in this book. Instead, there were romantic undertones everywhere that made me a little uncomfortable seeing as I’d never romanced him in the past. I genuinely hope PB does better for the third book because I don’t like the fact that this book made me go from “oh good I like them together!” to actually rolling my eyes when Ethan came on screen.

- I really loved Esmee! I didn’t spend a lot of diamonds on her but I still really liked her, so I hope we’ll get much more of her in the future!!

- I headed into this book knowing I would chose Bryce over Rafael (I romanced both of them in book 1) because I knew Rafael spent most of the book off-screen with a girlfriend. But honestly, it still hurt to barely ever see him, and to have the book completely ignore the fact that he was ever an LI. I’m not going to go in depth into this because you all know about the situation around the treatment of his character. But reading it was truly a bad experience for me.

This is only part of my thoughts on the book, and it got long and convoluted so sorry about that xD Feel free to come talk about it with me because I have a lot of thoughts hahaha

#open heart #open heart second year #playchoices

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panharmonium · 4 years ago

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next round of in-progress naruto thoughts under the cut

[i actually haven’t progressed that far from where i was last time, honestly, but i could feel myself getting to a stage where i had some things i needed to write up.]

fyi, this one is a little more gripe-y than usual - still enjoying myself, but there are some things in the current arc that are bugging me.

[spoiler policy disclaimer first, as always: I am watching naruto for the first time and have only gotten to the point where naruto and bee break out of the island barrier and leave to join the war. i am trying to avoid spoilers, so please don’t interact with this (tags included, because the notifications now show them to me automatically) with any spoilery commentary, including even general things like “oh i love this show but it gets less good after X point” or “X season is better than Y season” or any general assessments of quality/likability/etc re: future seasons. Thank you! <3 ]

anyway, to go ahead with my grousing -

there are a couple things about this current arc that have me feeling "ehhh.”

1) too many dead people

i’ve personally always been lukewarm on the “revive/reanimate dead characters for the Confrontation Value” trope, which is probably due to me having been a comics fan for so long (i was pretty deep into DC-land during Blackest Night, and that’s not even the first/last time this sort of thing has been done there, so). i’m not saying it CAN’T be done in an interesting way, but most of the time my experience with it has been that it’s kind of cheap/redundant storytelling. it usually doesn’t add much to an emotional arc, for me, and when it retreads an emotional arc that did have a strong conclusion, i feel like all it does is weaken the original story.

so like - places where i feel like shippuden does this well are with minato and kushina. i found both of those scenes with naruto to be powerful moments that added something new to the story/to naruto’s development. (but they’re not even part of the whole reanimation jutsu plotline, which is what i’m mostly feeling “eh” on, so it’s not even the greatest example.)

a place where i’m kind of in the middle is with asuma. on the one hand, i really don’t think that this needed to happen, because the original story arc with him was SO strong. however, they did kind of redeem themselves in a way by focusing the redux on choji instead of shikamaru, so at least they were still saying/exploring something something new.

places where i’m still pretty dubious are pretty much...everyone else. i’m just not sure...well, i don’t know. i can’t really say definitively how i feel about it until i get to the end of the arc and see how it ends, but at the current moment, i’m just not sure what we get out of seeing people like zabuza+haku, lady chio, itachi, nagato, etc....ALL of those stories had such powerful endings; it just makes me leery of these “resurrections” invalidating everything we saw previously/weakening the impact of what came before.

2) mixed messaging

this is my bigger gripe, and it’s something i’ve kind of had floating on the edges of my mind for a long time, but this season especially is highlighting it.

the one thing that is guaranteed to make me frustrated about this show (besides its obvious disinterest in female characters) is when it starts to lean super hard into the “Naruto Is The Only One Who Can Do It!” for every single task that needs to be completed. and i know this is a stupid thing to complain about when the show is literally titled “Naruto,” but the reason it gets frustrating is because the initial message of this show was never “one super special person must do everything on their own and save everyone else.” the original message of this show was teamwork.

the very first lesson kakashi teaches the kids (and the foundation upon which the rest of the story has been built) is “you are stronger together.” if you had all come at me together, you might have been able to take [the bells]! he specifically criticizes naruto for working alone: “naruto - you do EVERYTHING on your own. EVERYTHING.” and that’s understood to be the Wrong Thing; it’s the reason naruto ends up tied to the stump. but in the last few seasons especially (though there have definitely been previous moments where this has shown up before) the ONLY thing we keep hearing is how naruto has to accomplish everything by himself.

it didn’t bother me in the Pain arc; i actually thought that confrontation was appropriate and necessary for naruto’s development. but ever since then, it’s escalated to a point where now it’s like - “naruto is the only one who can fight sasuke! naruto is the only one who can defeat madara! naruto is the only one who can stop the war! naruto is the only one who can erase everybody’s hatred!”

and that’s the point at which i start to get frustrated, because my mind is like “okay, and the other characters are going to be doing...what, exactly?”

again, maybe it’s stupid to complain about that when the show is literally titled “Naruto.” but i don’t think so. title notwithstanding, this story at its heart was, in the beginning, an ensemble show with four main characters, whereas nowadays, the messaging is that only one of those characters can actually accomplish anything. so i get kind of resentful, when i’m told that the other members of the team can’t do anything but step back and hold naruto up, because the essential message of this story has ALWAYS been “teamwork is more important than anything. you are NEVER stronger by yourself. we ALL have something to contribute.”

right now, the other characters feel like they’ve just been shunted off to do busywork. none of them have grown or changed at all since the end of season 10 (and even the end of season 10 was starting to slide into the “only naruto can do anything about sasuke in the end blah blah” - yes it’s a huge pet peeve of mine but it is what it is; whatever; moving on). we haven’t even SEEN sasuke since the end of season 10. there’s been no consideration given to how kakashi is handling being drafted into a second war and being put in charge of 20,000 lives (and his clash with zabuza was just a vehicle for all the characters to reflect once again on how great naruto is). there’s been virtually ZERO attention given to how sakura is handling things, minus that one scene where she’s looking at gory pictures from the previous great ninja war. everybody is just marking time, punching a bunch of identical white zetsus until naruto can come solve the problem and wow everyone with his new abilities.

part of my annoyance might just be due to the fact that the timeline is so wonky due to filler arcs - it feels like ages have passed for me, but in-universe it really hasn’t been all that long. but i also think there are legitimate reasons for me to be frustrated, when the show introduces things and then just unceremoniously drops them without any indicator of when they might be picked up again. like - the uchiha genocide reveal was (i thought) a Huge Fucking Deal that should have Major Repercussions - but it’s just kind of.....disappeared as an issue??? and yamato - he’s been CAPTURED!!!!!! but the show has not shown a single character reacting to this, or even being informed that it happened, and i think that’s shitty, actually. yamato isn’t a minor character. he’s been naruto’s personal guardian since season 2. he has done SO MUCH for the kids, and he is kakashi’s friend, and i think it is shitty to have him get captured by the same people who experimented on him as a child and then not spend a second or two making it clear that other characters CARE about this.

anyway. this is just something that’s been creeping up on me as time goes on, and the last few episodes of “Naruto is the Savior of the Entire World” talk just made it feel more immediate, i guess. plus the new intro (which i know may not be reliable; sometimes they show things that never happen) had a shot of naruto fighting itachi, and i think that tipped me over the edge, lmao, because you know what? enough!!!!! naruto can’t be the one who gets to do EVERYTHING! some stories are not about him! there are other characters who have relationships that are not about naruto. there are places where other characters should be able to accomplish things naruto can’t do. the other main characters should be allowed to complete their personal arcs, separate from (not just secondary to) naruto’s journey.

like - just - this is how i feel: this show started out as a story about a group of four people, and the root theme was “teamwork is everything.” i don’t like how the show has slowly started to mutate into a story about naruto’s “solitary” quest to save sasuke, when we have seen MANY TIMES that:

a) sakura was the first of the kids who even knew that something was wrong with sasuke, while naruto remained utterly oblivious all the way through shonen jump (and partway into shippuden, tbh)

b) kakashi in the past has connected with sasuke in ways that NEITHER of the two kids have been able to achieve

i just don’t like it. i don’t like how S10 had sakura say the line “naruto...you were the first one to ever see the darkness in sasuke...” when she’s reflecting on their fight on top of the hospital, because that is a LIE. it’s a blatant retcon. of the kids, sakura was the one who knew from the very beginning that something was wrong with sasuke. she was the one who was with him when he had that semi-dissociative episode during the bells test. she was the one who was with him during all the curse mark stuff in the forest of death. she was the one who knew something was off when he challenged naruto to a fight - naruto was just psyched that sasuke wanted to “spar” with him! and SHE was the one who suspected that sasuke might do something as drastic as leave the village - naruto explicitly told her not to worry; that sasuke was totally fine; he would never ever do something like that!

like - the show already barely gives sakura anything for herself; now they try to take this away from her, too? and give it to naruto? to hammer in a kind of connection between naruto and sasuke that demonstrably did not exist?? (i’m not saying that naruto and sasuke don’t have their own important relationship! but it is just provably untrue that naruto was the person who understood sasuke best. shonen jump goes out of its way to demonstrate how clueless naruto is about what sasuke is really like and what he’s going through. naruto is SHOCKED that sasuke would go to orochimaru. he doesn’t realize that their fight on top of the hospital is anything more than their usual rivalry business. when sasuke pops out of the coffin behind kimimaro, naruto waves and starts laughing, because he thinks sasuke is still on their side and is going to run right home! and even in shippuden, when naruto hears that orochimaru is dead, he gets all excited and goes “so sasuke must be on his way back to the leaf village!!! :D” like. he just doesn’t get it.)

and i won’t really get into kakashi’s side of things here, because i would end up writing too much, but suffice to say that i am just...wary of the way it feels like recent parts of the show are trying to minimize or...push aside the real, textually-documented connections that kakashi and sakura had with sasuke in favor of “Only Naruto Can Help!” it frustrates me. kakashi made inroads with sasuke that neither of the kids ever achieved. sasuke talks to kakashi in a more honest way than he ever does with either of his peers, even when he’s out of his head with rage. and i would prefer to see this show taking the angle that all three of sasuke’s team members are going to be indispensable for saving him.

you know. like teamwork.

#anyway #it's important to note that this is all preemptive grousing #it's based on how i'm feeling right now #but i still have so much to watch #the show could easily prove me wrong and handle things in a way that i feel better about #but i was feeling annoyed enough that i wanted to type this all up anyway #naruto #pan watches naruto

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lyricaris · 4 years ago

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tired

TW: references to suicide, death

So I watched the RWBY V8 finale yesterday, and...besides being not okay, I’m fucking tired.

I’m taking a moment to rant, because this episode really bothered me. As someone who started watching this show in ~2015, I feel like I’ve invested a good chunk of time in the series. For fans who enjoyed V8 and are looking forward to V9--I’m happy for you, I am. And I completely respect your opinion.

But personally, I couldn’t stand this last episode.

It felt like sloppy writing. Sloppy writing, combined with an artificial shock factor. And on top of that, cheap emotional manipulation.

I’ll start at the beginning--

I’ve been really bored with the Ace Ops storyline for a while, but I recognize that’s just my personal disinterest in the characters, nothing to be upset about. But to break them apart further by having Vine sacrifice himself, when we BARELY knew Vine? If there was a flagship character for the remaining Ace Ops, that would have been Harriet. Adding the death of ANOTHER of her colleagues came off as an incredibly easy way out, and terribly unplanned. Like RT was dumping development onto characters with a very crude inclusion of self-sacrifice.

Then, of course, there’s Penny.

I don’t really have the words to express how disappointed I am that Roosterteeth chose to kill her again. To kill her, again, when she just got her body and overcame all of Watts’s manipulation. To kill her, again, by having her deliberately kill herself. To kill herself with Jaune’s sword, when HIS development has already been rooted in the death/sacrifice of another girl character already. To kill her, and then in her last moments with Winter, to portray her as looking HAPPY.

I have a real fucking problem using suicide as the climax of a plotline (I think there are places for this but it has to be done VERY carefully, and TWICE IN ONE EP, REALLY?!?), and now I’m also realizing that the maiden powers being based on death-transfer makes me incredibly uncomfortable. Especially when we KEEP coming back to this device like it’s the only way to get around this OP power.

Do I even need to mention that Penny suggested sacrificing herself before, two eps ago, and Ruby expressly REFUSED to even consider that option? THAT is what makes team RWBY and their friends strong: that they believe every person matters.

With the amount of screen time Penny has gotten the last two volumes, and the amount of energy that has gone into giving her a nuanced plot...well, it felt like we were throwing all that down the trash. To kill a character, resurrect her, give her growth and a continuation story....and then have her kill herself? There were so many better ways to execute this.

(As a side note, I’m not against the ending because it was sad. Sad finales are often quite phenomenal. I was on board with the end of V3, and I loved Pyrrha even more. But Pyrrha walked into a fight with bad odds because she believed she could make a difference. She wasn’t just giving up. Stabbing yourself because the only choice left is your death, is, well, another matter entirely. And it’s not like Pyrrha had ALREADY died once before. Character deaths should MEAN something. I will include here a very quick note that when it comes to Penny or Winter or even Cinder, the power inconsistency is getting on my nerves.)

And re: Winter--

I fucking love Winter. She’s a great character. Seeing her reach out to Weiss and confront Ironwood made me incredibly happy.

Having the show insinuate that Winter 1) NEEDS maiden powers to defeat Ironwood, after 2) writing an entire arc where Winter comes to terms with her destiny of NOT being a maiden? That makes me mad.

Generally, I like the idea of Winter as a maiden. And the design of her powers? Pretty cool. But after V8, it feels like Penny was simply a vector for Winter to get those powers. And you know what? I wanted Winter to learn that she was ENOUGH—that she was damn powerful, maiden powers or not. And that she doesn’t have to be following orders or witness a friend’s death to BE that powerful and make a difference.

Last but not least--damnit, if RWBY falling into magic rabbithole means that they get split up AGAIN, I will be extra pissed.

Overall I’m just exhausted with this show, with this finale. It wasn’t enjoyable. I don’t know if I’ll tune into V9, or how excited I’ll be if I do. And that’s okay--as they say, if you don’t like it, don’t watch it.

That’ll teach me not to have such high expectations, lol.

#rwby #rwby volume 8 finale #rwby volume 8 spoilers #rwby spoilers #rant

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ordinaryschmuck · 4 years ago

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What I thought about every episode of The Owl House Season 1 (Part 1/2)

Salutations random people on the internet who probably won't read this. I am an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons.

Hey, do you miss Gravity Falls?

...

Yeah, I know, dumb question. Which is why I have good news! Not only is there a new series that is just as good as Gravity Falls, but in some ways, it's even better. That new series would be none other than Disney Channel's latest hit: The Owl House.

The Owl House, slowly but surely, became my new obsession since Eda reacted to decapitation with an unconcerned, "I hate when that happens." I wrote fan-fiction, made fan-art, and even began to separately review new episodes. Unfortunately, I got in a little late in the reviewing game and only managed to analyze the last four episodes of season one. And like an idiot, I promised that I'll review the rest when they came out on Disney+. Seeing that all of the first season has finally come on a legal streaming service (which means WATCH IT RIGHT NOW!), it's time I finally saw through to that promise. However, I'm not going to over-analyze each episode because that would be insane. So instead, we're going to lightning round these suckers. Because it's my Tumblr, and I get to decide what I review and how the hell I review it...hooah.

Which means this is your last chance to avoid spoilers if you haven't seen The Owl House yet. Seriously, it's a great show, and you can catch up right now on Disney+. A week-long trial is more than enough time to watch the series, so DO IT! With that out of the way, let's get started with:

“A Lying Witch and a Warden”: This episode gets a lot of flack for having poor pacing and being too preachy with its message. And to that, I say...you're not wrong. Yeah, I wish I could be that person who can defend this episode against criticism like that, but these are understandable problems that just left this icky feeling in my tum-tum when watching. But that's only when looking at it as a regular old episode when in reality, people need to see it as a first episode. The first episode in any show needs to get viewers interested enough to continue watching by answering these five essential questions: What's the plot of the show? What's the tone? Who are the main characters? What's the world they live in? And what are the rules of the same world? "A Lying Witch and a Warden" does a great job of answering all of these questions. And if you stuck around until the season finale, then that means it did a great job of keeping you interested in sticking around as well. So seeing how it got its job done, albeit, with mixed results, I give this episode a B-.

“Witches Before Wizards”: Don't mind me. Just reveling in the fact that Luz escaped to a fantasy world to avoid Reality Check Camp, only to get a reality check anyway. Because that's what this episode is in a nutshell. Through the "quest" that Luz goes on, she learns two important lessons: One, don't trust strangers who offer you something nice and shiny (bonus points for Eda warning Luz to avoid men with sandals and then have Ategast wear sandals). And two, there is no such thing as having a predetermined destiny. I love the idea that Luz coming to the Isles was just a twist of fate, and everything that happens afterward is pure dumb luck. And that moment when Eda gave a speech about making your own path instead of waiting to become something special? That was the moment when I went from thinking this was going to be a fun show to thinking it's going to be a great show. So consider this episode a solid A in my book.

“I Was a Teenage Abomination”: How is it possible for an episode to get better and worse with time? Because here's the thing: This episode does a great job of showing how perfect Amity's development is. After one single season, it already feels jarring, seeing the way she acts in certain scenes. However, in that same respect, it's the same reason why this episode got worse. I didn't mind that Willow practically got away with cheating and vandalizing the school with her magic because she and Luz were basically trying to show up a two-dimensional bully. But knowing what we know in the future, it does seem unfair that Amity gets punished for their bad behavior and Willow got little consequences for it. Sure, Luz got banned and had to work at gaining Amity's trust, but what about Willow? Although, despite this complaint, I don't really hate this episode. It builds a believable connection between Luz and her friends, and the B-plot King and Eda show off their budding friendship. So while this episode is a C-, it's a somewhat enjoyable C-.

“The Intruder”: Is it weird for anyone else that King gets most of the blame in this episode? Yes, he took the potion, but Luz was the one who kept pushing him. This is why it never sat right with me seeing how everyone, including himself, blames King for this episode's incident. That being said, "The Intruder" is fantastic. Eda, as the Owl Beast, is legitimately threatening, and the way the episode treats Eda's curse like a chronic illness is actually kind of sweet. It teaches kids how this is something that just happens to people, and they're not any weaker because of it, as long as they take the right steps. Which is cool, and it's why this is another solid A episode for me. Sure King getting the blame bothers me, but it pales in comparison to everything else “The Intruder” does right.

“Covention”: If you want my personal opinion (obviously, seeing how you're reading this), "Covention" is the perfect episode to show a friend to get them into watching the The Owl House. Everything there is to love about the show is seen in just these twenty-two minutes. Eda being a chaotic good, Luz being a sweet and understanding character, some incredible/natural world-building, an actually decent B-plot, an epic fight scene, great comedy, and, my personal favorite, the building of Luz and Amity's relationship. In fact, this episode has the most quintessential moment between these two, that Dana Terrace herself took charge of making the animatic for it. A scene that is so perfect that you can do an analysis of these few minutes alone...which is what I did. Click here to read it! "Covention" gets an A+ in my book and might possibly be the best episode of the season. Maybe even the series!

“Hooty’s Moving Hassle”: There's not really a lot I can say about this episode. I don't hate it, but I'm not exactly in love with it. The interactions between Luz and her friends are adorable, and there are a few good jokes that kept me laughing. But the story is kind of bland, and I just find Eda's sudden obsession with Hexes Hold'em kind of odd. Especially since a card game is what nearly defeated the "undefeatable" Owl Lady. If it wasn't for the nice reveal of Willow's and Amity's friendship (which comes into play in a far better episode), I'd say that you could skip this one on future rewatches. Because this is a C grade episode that just doesn't grab me as well as others.

“Lost in Language”: Ah, yes. The episode that made dozens of fans jump aboard the Lumity ship...unless you're like me, and you've been shipping these two since the show's theme song (And I don't know why, either. It's just the second I saw Amity my first thought was, "Oh, honey. You're gonna fall in love with the main character, aren't you?" AND I WAS F**KING RIGHT!). But jokes about shipping aside, "Lost in Language" is a fantastic episode. It has a great lesson about how people are more complex than their first impressions (Or to not judge a book by its cover, if you wanna stay on theme). Edric and Emira seem like a chaotic duo who cause mischief all for good fun. But Luz, as well as the audience, learns that Ed and Em are kinda the worst (they get better in future episodes, but still). Then there's Amity, who hasn't had the best first impressions in the last few episodes. We got glimpses of a good person here and there, but for the most part, that's all they were. Glimpses. Then there's this episode, which gives us more than a small look, but some actual insight into who Amity really is. Better yet, who she wants to be. It's something that I appreciate about The Owl House in that it wastes no time in developing Amity's character. So much so that I can forgive this episode for shoehorning a "Two idiots and a baby" plotline that does nothing but add maybe two minutes of padding. So yeah, it's an A+ for sure.

“Once Upon a Swap”: "Ugh! It's the body swap episode! How cliche and-" SHUT UP! Shut your mouth, and listen: Something being cliche does not always make it bad. Only when the cliche fails to tell an entertaining story does it have the right to work as a complaint. "Once Upon a Swap" may have a cliche premise, but it's still an enjoyable story (or stories) with great laughs and even some ok lessons. I can understand if you hate the episode because its premise is something you've seen a dozen times to the point where your sick of it. My most hated story idea is the "Character A saves Character B, and Character B becomes a life slave." If you have seen this story once, you've seen it a thousand times, and it's the same case with a "body swap" episode. But guess what: The Owl House is a kids' show. Kids'. Show. You can complain all you want about predictability, but kids are the type of viewers who will be new to this experience, despite if it's one that is done to death. Which is why this is solid B of an episode if you ask me.

“Something Ventured, Someone Framed”: Can people please stop shipping Gus with Mattholomule? Because that slimy, greasy, weaselly little son of A BASTARD BITCH WEASEL DOES NOT DESERVE LOVE IN WAY POSSIBLE!

...

But enough about how Mattholomule is the worst character ever, because "Something Ventured, Someone Framed" is a B+ in my opinion. Sure it shows the worst side of Gus and lets Satan's little herpe win in the end, but there is still quality to be had. We get insight into who Gus is as a character, on top of Eda swallowing her pride and cleaning the school so Luz can get into Hexide. Also, Eda's permanent record was the first time this show brought me to tears due to laughing so hard. So while I have to take points off for the inclusion of Mattholomule (I don't make the rules. I just live by them), this is still an episode I wouldn't mind revisiting.

“Escape of the Palisman”: I subscribe to this theory that Luz will one day have Eda's staff as her own. And episodes like this that strengthen the bond between Luz and Owlbert help confirm that theory. Luz's dedication to trying to make things right could just be part of her kind nature, but I like to believe that this is Dana and the crew trying to set up this possible outcome. As for what I think about the episode itself...it's ok. Again, Luz's dedication is nice to see, and King's adventure with Owl Beast Eda is somehow insanely adorable, but there's not really much to say other than that. So it's another B episode for me.

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And that’s the end of part one! Part two has probably already been posted by the time you finish this, so you can go ahead and find that if you’re interested.

#the owl house #the owl house review #what i thought about

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